Quicks way to add video to your website

This month's cover story in Inc. Magazine is about how the Ford Model agency has become a runaway hit on YouTube. They started producing short "how to" videos of models applying make-up, cooking, putting together outfits and doing other things that gorgeous, thin creatures do with their spare time, and it's caught on like wild fire with young girls (and I'm sure guys of all ages). So now the modeling agency not only gets to extend their brand into a new medium, but they're also accepting juicy sponsorships from manufacturers, so they're making money from it too. Which is definitely something to think about if you have a product or service that might go well with a tutorial (for more ideas on how to use video for your business see Gary Vaynerchuck's Wine Library, plus tips on how to create buzz in "Wine and Web 2.0?").

I decided to test the waters by acting/directing/producing my own video, "Me 'n My PDA" (regrettably too late for entry into this Sunday's Oscars...but maybe next year!), to show off my brand spanking new HTC Touch smartphone, which I finally purchased after doing a little background research (see all the options I looked at on my recent post, Mobile Means of Communications). The HTC Touch offered the best features, including the touch screen (like the Apple iPhone), simple software (MS Windows), a camera, a decent screen and a pretty good price.

I used my web cam - which nowadays comes built in to many PC's - to record the 3-minute clip. My digital camera also has video capabilities - as does my new PDA (this will come in handy when acting/directing/producing the "sequel"). Since it was a simple script I didn't need to edit it (phew!), but for more ambitious projects I'm teaching myself how to use Movie Maker, which was part of the MS Office bundle that came with my computer.

The beauty of video is that it gets better ranking on search engines than regular text content might, so you'll want to post it on a video hosting site, like YouTube. I'm testing out Viddler based on this review from Webware.com, but you may want to download it to more than one site. Meanwhile over at Mashup.com they've done an amazingly thorough job of compiling a list of links any novice or experienced web videographer (in other words, artist/director/producer, like myself) would want to know: The Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources.

Check out my "masterpiece" below and let me know what you think (but please disregard that silly expression on my face!).

Mogulette Blog on Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com

If you're having a hard time keeping track of all the great websites you'd like to follow and don't have the time or inclination to program your own del.icio.us bookmark page, a new website called Alltop.com will do it for you. Created by uber blogger, entrepreneur & venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki (How to Change the World), the site aggregates news feeds from the top sources and groups them into 18 categories. There's a page for Politics, Sports, Fashion, Celebrities - even Ego (Rosie's there, Donald's there, you get the picture...). Their tagline reads: "all the top stories from all the top sources", so for each website listed you'll see the most recent 5 entries, making it really easy to scan through the page and select the story you're most interested in. Brilliant! And I am happy, thrilled, overjoyed to report that Guy (one of my heroes!) has included my blog, Mogulette-in-the-making, in the small business category!!

Small Business Summit Recap

It was the bright orange suede vest that first caught my eye, among a sea of entrepreneurs in corporate attire at the recent Small Business Summit in New York. Then came the bright blue striped bell bottomed pants. Who was the funky mama among all the "suits"? When I finally saw her face I felt a tinge of recognition. It was Laurel Touby - one of my role models, a huge inspiration to me, the type of fempreneur that I aspire to be (for more on Laurel see my post: "Mediabistro: Timeline to Success"). She looked like a hippie bohemian artist that somehow got lost on her way to Soho or the West Village and mistakenly landed instead at a conference for entrepreneurs.

There was no question - I had to go up to her and say "hi". Any shyness that I might have felt went completely out the window as I stretched out my hand and introduced myself. She was very friendly and approachable, listening as I told her about my blog, among expressive gushes of admiration. The petite blond multi-millionaire later spoke at one of the panel presentations (she's the one that stands out with the funky, boho-chic outfit above on the right) about her company's rise to success and gave a few insights as to how she made her business grow.

"Listen to your clients", was one of the first things Laurel said, which was made easier for her since she started out by giving cocktail parties for journalists. Every month she had a steady stream of followers that were very willing to tell her what they needed. They were the ones she listened to when she received her first infusion of venture capital money and was deciding how to spend it. And it worked - she sold her company for a cool $23 mil last year. That's one piece of advice I definitely will follow.

Among the familiar faces I bumped into at the show were Laura Allen from 15secondpitch who participated at one of the panels, Lena West, who writes the TechForward blog I mentioned on my last post, Stephanie Cockerl who does wonderful things to optimize blogs (www.nextsteph.com), Kevin Kennedy of Webgrrls and of Ulas Neftci of Baruch's Small Business Development Center. All in all it was a fabulous day of schmoozing, networking, meeting fantastic people and picking up a few new best practices. I was even able to get a picture with my idol!

Update: Nelly Yusupova of Webgrrls wrote a great summary of the panel entitled: “How to transform your business in 40 minutes”. Visit her blog to get all the details.

Mobile Means of Communication

"Don't get caught in analysis/paralysis", was the advice my fellow blogger Lena West gave me recently when I mentioned I'd been stuck choosing between all the different kinds of PDAs and smartphones available. Lena, who writes the Tech Forward blog at Entrepreneur.com, suggested narrowing it down to the 2 or 3 main features that are most important - the "deal breakers" as she calls them.

Now that I have my own business I find myself away from my computer a lot, so I regularly go through "email withdrawal". That means a plan with unlimited internet is a must. I also want to be able to text quickly, so I'd like a full qwerty board (the one with all the keys in it, as opposed to having 2-3 letters in each key). The screen should have a nice size, especially now that my eyes ain't what they used to be. I'm often kicking myself for not remembering to bring my camera to events, so I'd like that built-in to the phone. Other little extras that would be nice are a media player, since I totally skipped the iPod craze and don't own one (that means it needs to come with a decent amount of memory to store the music), and an organizer with a phone book, calculator, calendar and stopwatch. Less important to me are things like Bluetooth, for using a wireless headset; GPS, for finding yourself!; or speakerphone capabilities.

After a little research I narrowed it down to the 4 choices you see below. To help me see things clearly I created a PDA comparison table, which you can click here to see. Keep in mind that these are only online prices - the brick and mortar stores may offer different/better deals so I would check with them as well.

Since the cost varies depending on the service plans and the phones, I totaled up the expenses for the first year, to even things out. Believe it or not the best prices were generally on Amazon.com (free Blackberry Curve if you sign up to a two year plan!), so I put direct links to their specific pages next to the pictures below.


HTC "Touch"

Apple iPhone

Blackjack II

Blackberry Curve 8310 Titanium

To start out slowly I chose the packages with lowest number of minutes and texting, but they all have unlimited internet. I didn't include Verizon because their plans exclude Puerto Rico so that would mean extra roaming charges for me and who needs that. Also T-Mobile's price is less for me because they are my current carrier, so I qualify for a discount.

In the end I'm leaning towards the HTC Touch, only because it's got all the bells and whistles I want plus it's so similar to the iPhone and it actually has the lowest total cost. I'll let you know when I take the plunge...!

For more on smart phones and PDA's, read Entrepreneur Magazine's review in this month's issue: Pack a Punch.

Have you had good luck/bad luck with your portable computing devices? Please share!

Making Sales with Facebook and Flickr

Isn't it great when things just happen unexpectedly in your favor? That's exactly what Janice Cusano (that's her on the right), recently experienced. This former professor, who left academia last year to pursue her passion for designing jewelry, ended up selling one of her pieces on none other than Facebook, the subject of my past few posts (I swear guys, I'm not getting a penny from them! I wish!). Her story had a few good tidbits, so I thought I'd share the serendipitous series of events that led to the sale.

A couple of weeks ago, Janice was looking to revamp the photos on her site (see it on Etsy). Her friend Kathleen offered to take new pictures for her, which she then posted on her Flickr account because it was easier than sending them by email (the files were pretty big). She also placed one of the pictures on her Facebook page, (the turquoise and coral piece on the left).

Later that same night, an old friend of Kathleen's from college (who wouldn't have been in contact with her if she hadn't found her on Facebook) saw the necklace and sent her a message saying she'd love to buy it, so Kathleen sent her the link to Janice's Etsy shop, and bingo--she made a sale (she bought the earrings below on the right).

Janice also noticed that there were 48 page views of the photo within an hour of Kathleen posting it on Flickr and Facebook. Pretty good exposure!

The funny thing is, Janice doesn't even have a Facebook page for herself (but thank God her friends do!). Because of her former life as a professor, Janice has had a long-standing bias against Facebook. When the site first started out it was only open to students, so there was a stigma attached to it for those in the academic field. Last year when she was still in her teaching position she did a search and found only one other professor that had a public Facebook page. In her profession, Facebook was a non-no because that's where all the students are, and "poking" wasn't exactly conducive to a professional relationship. Plus Janice likes to keep her personal life separate from her students (now former). However, she's slowly warming up to the idea, as more professionals join every day. She also sees how traffic has increased on her Etsy site because of Flickr and Facebook. (On Etsy you can check to see how many people are viewing each page and where they come from).

Janice finds other benefits from online social networks. "Not only has (Flickr) distributed my work far and wide, I have been able to build community in more specific ways that I hadn't by blog hopping. For example, I am a color fiend and symbols are important in my work. I joined the group 'Blue and Green' and met some incredibly like-minded artists who I connect with on many levels. I actually connected with one contact I had met at a show last September! Every time this happens, I feel a little less out in the cold."

That chance encounter online gave Janice the inspiration for a series of posts related to large jewelry on her Goddess Findings blog. The picture of her contact on Flickr showed her wearing a chunky necklace that Janice liked, so when she reached out to say "hi" she also complimented her on it and asked her to submit a photo and talk about what that piece means to her.

Janice adds that artists can put pictures of their studios, their work-in-progress or things that inspire them, which gives buyers a better sense of who they are. "On Esty you see what they have for sale, but the visual images on Flickr are stronger", she says. By showing people another facet of your life, you create more of a connection.

How are you using new media in your business? Please share your story with us!

New Media in Puerto Rico

Happy New Year everyone! After almost two weeks away I finally got caught up and back to blogging. It was great to be in warm weather - Puerto Rico is fantastic this time of year. The temperature hovered around 80 degrees in the daytime while I was there, then dipped to the 70's at night, and it rained only once!

Those are pretty good conditions for jogging, which I try to do wherever I go, and luckily my mother's apartment where I was staying is close to one of the prettiest trails ever. It's the road that leads to Old San Juan, which still maintains its centuries old, colonial architecture and Spanish charm. I just had to take my camera along a few times to capture some of the beautiful scenery, as you can see from the photo above. For a complete visual log of the palm-tree lined promenade by the sea where I did my runs, visit my Facebook page.

Even though Puerto Rico may often lag in terms of the latest business trends, I was happy to see that new media has made its way there. If you do a search for "Puerto Rico" in Facebook you'll find over 500 pages, including ones for the main newspaper (El Nuevo Dia), three universities, afew radio stations, one for entrepreneurs (with 887 members), one for a major contemporary art musuem, one each for Apple, Walmart and Best Buy, one for a website that sells locally made goods (Antojitos), and one for a restaurant (Payá).

One thing that struck is that back home, networking is done more naturally - even a trip to the supermarket or to the bank will result at least one or two "hellos" and a bit of conversation, which is typical of small towns. I grew up in San Juan and came to the states to go to school when I was 14, so I still have many friends and acquaintances from back then. It seems that everywhere I went I bumped into someone I knew or someone that knew one of my four siblings, who all live there. I can't say the same thing happens to me in New York. It's seldom I'll see a friend on the streets or at an event, unless I expressly plan it that way. Here everything has to be arranged in advance, and God forbid you just drop by a friend's house uninvited! I definitely miss that feeling of community now that I'm back, so I'm grateful there's so many online social networks that exist, even though they may be second best!

How do you connect with friends and business contacts? Share your thoughts!

Using LinkedIn (or Facebook?) for Business

I promised you guys I would write a post about LinkedIn and here it is. I would have been perfectly happy just using Facebook as my business networking site of choice but so many of my friends nixed it, saying that they just used it for connecting socially. My LinkedIn profile had been half-finished for months until I realized that when I google myself (which many people seem to be doing lately), my LinkedIn page shows up as the second item on my results page. A site that can get that kind of ranking definitely commands my attention. And if people are going to be clicking into it, I better make sure the content has all the important information about me and what I do. So I dedicated the past few days to finding out how to use LinkedIn for business, and how it compares with Facebook. Here's what I've uncovered so far...

Beginnings
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is now the sixth-biggest US social network, according to a recent article I found commenting on rumors about News Corp.'s interest in buying the company. They also say that it logged the biggest growth among its peers in October and topped the expansion rates of both MySpace and Facebook, according to Nielsen. LinkedIn attracted about five million US visitors in October, up from 1.7 million a year earlier, and the company estimates it has 17 million users (compared to 59 million for Facebook and something like 300 million on MySpace).

Basic Features
LinkedIn offers some of the functionalities I covered in my 'Facebook 101' post, like you can fill out your 'Profile' to let people know what schools you went to and the companies you've worked for. (The more keyword rich you make this part the better the chances of ending up on more search results.) However, LinkedIn has a system that rates your contacts by degrees of separation: 1 degree means you know them and they know you, 2 degrees means they are a friend of your friend, and so on.

The section called 'Recommendations' allows you to leave or request endorsements from your contacts, which you can only do informally on Facebook by posting messages on people's 'walls'. Facebook also lacks the 'Q&A' section, where you can either ask or answer questions and interact with the entire LinkedIn population, not only your contacts, which can be helpful in getting exposure for your business and driving traffic to your website.

I asked Howard Greenstein, co-founder and NY Chapter Leader of the Social Media Club, (photo below) how effective the site had been for him. He says he recently identified a person he needed to connect with, got a quick introduction from a contact and then hooked them up with a company that wanted to business with them. He likes how with 'Q&A' you can send a question to your friends to get recommendations on potential hires.

"Some companies are encouraging their salespeople to find LinkedIn contacts in firms they're trying to sell to. Corporations are realizing that there's value in being outward facing, and that making more connections can expand their bottom lines," he adds.

Howard believes that people keep stronger business contacts on Linkedin vs Facebook so there's potentially more interesting data for companies to leverage. LinkedIn recently announced that they're opening up the site to outside developers to create unique applications that are specifically tailored to business users. Howard expects that in the near future the online social network will look for additional ways to make it easier to find people in your 2nd & 3rd degrees.

New Features
Here's some cool things that will soon be available on LinkedIn (from the company's Dec. 10 press release):

Partner Applications:

"LinkedIn’s first publishing partner, BusinessWeek, is developing an Intelligent Application that will reside on the BusinessWeek.com website. The application will enable readers of BusinessWeek.com to access their professional network to look up profiles of people and find connections at companies featured in articles."

Conference Calendar application:

"The conference calendar application has a view of upcoming events and people in one’s LinkedIn network who are attending upcoming conferences. Dates are color-coded to indicate how popular the conferences are amongst a user’s professional network, and users can see suggestions of people they may want to meet at the conference based on common network connections. The demo may be viewed at: http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2007/11/linkedin-news-r.html."

Up until now it had been difficult to differentiate friends from business contacts on Facebook. However, that's now changing with Facebook allowing businesses to set up their own"fan" pages, as they explain in their Nov. 6 press release:

"Just like a Facebook user, businesses can start with a blank canvas and add all the information and content they want, including photos, videos, music and Facebook Platform applications. Outside developers have created a range of applications to enhance Facebook Pages, such as booking reservations or providing reviews of restaurant pages, buying tickets on a movie page or creating a custom t-shirt. Companies launching applications for Pages include Fandango, iLike, Musictoday LLC, OpenTable, SeamlessWeb, Zagat Survey LLC and Zazzle."

This move towards a more business friendly environment has ticked off many old time Facebook fans, and some are jumping ship.

So what will it be for businesses, Facebook or Linkedin? The race is on... What do you think? Share your thoughts!

Mediabistro: Time Line to Success

I've been running around left and right trying to get my little operation into high gear and as usual fretting about the future, until I read an article (The Accidental Entrepreneur) in this month's New York Enterprise Report. It was about how Laurel Touby sold her company, Mediabistro, for $23 million this past July. It took her just 13 years...but she didn't make a profit for the first 9 of them, and she didn't generate any money for the first two. That really helps to put things in perspective!

I remember going to a few of her events and have seen her company grow right before my very eyes. Her story is so inspiring to me that I wanted to piece together all the details of how she did it, so I looked up a few other articles on the sale and put together a time line:

1994 - Laurel, a struggling freelance writer, starts organizing after-work cocktail parties for journalists - 10 people showed up at the first one but within months that turns into one hundred (FYI...today that database is about 700,000) - however, she wasn't making money from it

1996 - Started an email newsletter with job listings (still no money)

1999 - Started charging HR people $100/month to post jobs - got 8 checks the first month, then 16, then 25, 35, 45 (ka-ching!) - that's when she ditched her freelance writing and decided to make this a business

2001 - Received $1 million in funding in March (a big ka-ching), then 9/11 hit (took back some of that ka-ching - read Laurel's account of how they managed to pull through after the terrorist attacks:
The Strength to Lead in the Face of Crisis, from The Huffington Post)

2002 - Laurel follows a colleague's suggestion to add courses for journalists to her list of services, and later that year launches a premium content subscription membership (ka-ching, ka-ching)

2003 - Became profitable

2006 - Got approached by buyers

2007 - Sold Mediabistro to Jupitermedia in July for $23 million, pocketing $12.4 million (she owned 62% of the company's stock) (a really big ka-ching)

Here's more related articles on the story:

-Village Voice: The $23 million Boa

-NYC TV's NYC 360 (video): Interview with Laurel Touby

-Washington Post: Journalism Morsels Make for Profitable Dish at This Bistro

As senior vice president, Laurel will still oversee Mediabistro but now she will also report to her new bosses at Jupitermeda. NY Enterprise Report asked if her life has changed now she's wealthy and her answer was "no, I still take the subway. Maybe I’m eating out a little more often. The one thing I’m going to spend the money on is a gigantic loft apartment so I can have all my journalist friends over for dinner." Sometimes the more things changes the more they stay the same...

My take home message out of this? Create a community of like-minded souls, find out what they need, and deliver it to them. It's that simple. Do that long enough and eventually the money will come.

The Tao of Web 2.0

When I first signed up for the lecture entitled "Beyond the Web 2.0 Revolution" at the New School last week, I expected to get the latest scoop on some newfangled technology that will drive the Internet to higher heights. Was I ever wrong. I left there with so many ideas swirling inside my head I just had to write them down. Below you'll find a summary of the main points...

Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka, President of the think tank SophiaBank and professor at Tama University in Tokyo, had already started his presentation by the time I arrived (fashionably late!). The classroom was almost full but I managed to find a lone, empty seat in the second row. It took me a few minutes to catch on to what he was saying, and his thick accent took some getting used to, but slowly it started to make sense.

He was talking about how, at the same time that we move forward into to the future, there's also a resurgence of the past - but with an "upgrade". For example, auctions have been around for centuries, but online auctions have taken the concept and made it much more efficient. Similarly, e-learning adds additional value to the education process by allowing anyone to sign up to online classes with say, Harvard professors (also see "Yale to Make Select Courses Available Online").

He then talked about mutual infiltration, where systems in competition become similar to each other. In the past, businesses were either in cyberspace or in a physical space. Now all businesses are using both real and virtual spaces, evolving into a new integrated system.

Dr. Tasaka went on to define complex systems, which are living systems characterized by evolution and the formation of eco systems. He says that the information revolution has made all systems complex - for ex. companies, markets, society. The Internet is the largest man-made complex system. It's a huge system that no one can control and it's comprised of many eco systems - so it's difficult to predict or analyze or divide into parts. In cyber space, evolution happens quickly, so laws don't work. There's also the "butterfly effect", when small actions can change whole systems, making it difficult to predict the future.

He cited the iPod as an example of eco systems. Its success was due to the evolution of eco systems - both products and services. The Internet, digital music, licenses, lifestyles all had to evolve for the iPod to encounter such huge demand. So when creating a product, companies need to promote the evolution of the whole eco system.

Then he asked, what is the most complex system in this planet? The answer: the human psychology. It's the result of 13.7 billion years of evolution.

Dr. Tasaka foresees changes happening in 7 areas:

1. Innovation
We'll move from beneficiary innovation to participatory innovation.
Web 2.0 is about the wisdom of crowds, or our collective intelligence. To promote this he predicts there will be a new style of innovation. Up until now the government and large corporations were the ones pushing for innovation, with users and customers benefiting from it. From now on we'll see users and customers themselves participating in the process of innovation. The "prosumer", or the producer/consumer, will emerge, just as Alvin Toffler predicted in his book, "The Third Wave".

2. The Economy
We'll move from a monetary economy to a voluntary economy.
The monetary economy, which values the bottom line and is motivated by people wanting to acquire money, will merge with the new "voluntary economy", which is large and invisible, and made up of jobs you don't "see", like housework, and childcare. Web 2.0 will increase the importance of this because social networks give people the ability to pose a question and receive multiple answers. In essence it's people giving out free advice - it's like they're imparting wisdom on a voluntary basis - and that will drive the monetary economy. He cited Amazon's grass roots reviews as an example. Amazon reviewers are the voluntary economy but Amazon is the monetary economy, generating profits from people's reviews. Once at opposite sides, there will be a process of mutual infiltration between the voluntary and monetary economies. (here's an interesting post from OnFocus.com about what might motivate people to contribute reviews on Amazon)

3. Culture
We'll move from an indirect to a direct democracy of culture.
The professor says that historically the sequence of events that brought a product to market would look like this: the company does market research, they develop products and services based on that and then sales will drive their decision making. There's a hidden vote present - consumers vote with their wallets, and if sales are high the company will increase production. Similarly, in the music industry, a music producer will discover an artist, create a huge promotional campaign to generate buzz, and then look for further opportunities to create buzz. But with the advent of Web 2.0, all that is turned upside down. Because many niches exist in cyberspace, an independent artist can release his music on the Internet and become an instant hit when music lovers of his particular genre find him and tell others.

4. Talent
We'll move from single talent to multi-talent professionals.
It used to be that if you wanted to be a professional photographer you would have to train for years and work for peanuts as an assistant until you "paid your dues." But now with digital cameras and editing software it's much easier. People can leave comments on your site and you can improve your work based on their critiques. Then there's the "Da Vinci" effect, where we embrace our many talents and let them blossom. For example, you can be a sales manager by day and an ecologically-minded social entrepreneur during the weekends, compose songs and then release them on the Internet, write a series of essays on your blog and publish them as an eBook with photos that you've taken yourself, and finally you can produce a movie of your last trip to Europe and screen it on YouTube. Phew! Just writing about it makes me tired!

5.Personality
We'll move from a single personality life to multi-personality life
Web 2.0 allows people to express themselves in many ways, through daily blogs, photos, videos, podcasts, etc., which can have a healing effect. We have many personalities deep inside us, but we repress most of them to avoid confusion in daily life. So how can we express our hidden selves? Dr. Tasaka says Web 2.0 gives us three ways:

1. non-verbal expression (like a painting)
2. playing a character in a drama (Ever try playing Second Life?)
3. in an anonymous message (writing a short story)

6. Paradigm
We'll move from a mechanical system paradigm to a living system paradigm
Because we've been successful with science and technology, we tend to view the world as a large mechanical system that we can control, but we're just fooling ourselves. Nature is unpredictable - look at Katrina or global warming. The world is not mechanical - it's a large, living system. In the Internet, all systems are complex living systems. People organize themselves into groups that emerge, evolve, co-evolve and create their own ecology. Because of this, Dr. Tasaka says we will go:

-from analyzing to using intuition
-from controlling to promoting emergence
-from learning the laws to changing the laws
-from using power to creating empathy and coherence
-from predicting the future to creating the future

7. Civilization
We'll move from western civilization to eastern civilization
According to Dr. Tasaka, Eastern civilizations have espoused the living system paradigm more than Western cultures. Chinese medicine uses a holistic approach to cure illness - a change of diet, breathing, meditation, exercise. Western doctors on the other hand, look at the problem and say, let's eliminate it, let's cut off the organ or prescribe medication to cope with it - without investigating the cause. Dr. Tasaka says that same holistic approach used in the East can be used to change the problems of the world.

Diversity is very important in the evolution of eco systems, and the Internet can be used to promote that diversity of value systems. He says that Japan should use the web to introduce the following concepts to the US and the world:

-Yao-yorozu-no-kami, which means eight million Gods, or the co-existence of many value systems

-Sansen-soumoku-kokudo-sikai-bussyo, which is animism/pantheism, or the ability to role-play and become someone else temporarily

-Enishi, the feeling you get when you meet someone - is there a deeper meaning to this encounter? Nothing is by chance...

Web 2.0 makes it possible for us to see what daily life is like in the other side of the world (with for ex. YouTube videos). If we see how other people live, we will be more in touch with the state of the earth. There are many problems on a global level - global warming, terrorism, hunger. The Internet, he believes, was given to us to overcome these problems and grow as human beings.

And that, I finally realized with surprise, is the next "new thing". That's what's beyond Web 2.0. It's not about a new technology or a new gadget that will revolutionize our lives. It's about the Internet becoming an agent for peace and harmony through expanded use of social online networks. As more of us express ourselves freely and openly online, we access our true purpose, our spiritual core. Web 2.0 then allows us to come together with others that are doing the same, which will lead to ever expanding levels of integration and community. For Dr. Tasaka, that's what the next "wave" of the internet is, and he believes we're at the start of what will be a wonderful story for mankind.

Do you agree, disagree? And how might we apply this as entrepreneurs? Share your thoughts!
tao, web 2.0

Recap of the NY XPO for Business

One of the things I admire about multi-millionaires like Donny Deutsch, the advertising tycoon turned TV personality, is that they may have pot loads of money in the bank (he sold his advertising company for close to $300 million bucks) but yet they still go to work every day. As host of The Big Idea on CNBC, Donny helps others make millions too. It's "must see TV" for budding Mogulettes.

Donny was keynote speaker at the NY XPO for Business luncheon at the Jacob Javits Center this week and he stood in front of a dining room the size of a football field to give the audience a few golden nuggets of wisdom in his own charming, irreverent way.

One of the first things he said was make failure your friend, which I loved to hear because I have such fear of not doing things perfectly with my business. The biggest growth, he added, comes when we fail - we grow from the stupid things we do - it's a mathematical certainty. If you're afraid to fail you can't be great. You have to know that your product or service may bomb...but if it does, so what? He likened it to dating - if you get shot down once you go on to the next. (This month's Entrepreneur Magazine has two stories on finding success after failure: click here for more)

More of Donny's tips:
Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you are. Many entrepreneurs hire people that maybe have 5% of their own qualities. He suggests finding partners and giving them a portion of your business - as long as you keep 51% of it. Small business owners usually hang on tight to their companies - we need to let go!

About success he says do what you love. If you're passionate about what you do then it's not work. If you're not passionate about your work, then find something else!

Do it differently - if your product or service isn't unique, you can't win.

Put your money where your mouth is - show customers that you believe in yourself. People love underdogs.

Show your employees you care for them, for their success. If you root for them they'll root for you!

And finally, hate is good. You need an enemy. When you pitch to a client, tell them how you hate their competitors!

When he finished his speech I made a b-line to the front of the room to get a chance to introduce myself. Dressed in blue jeans and a sweater, Donny looked like the average (but really cute!) guy next door as he graciously listened to a long line of fans wanting to shake his hand. I literally had about 15 seconds to tell him who I was and what I did in a compelling way, and I think I did an o-k good job but there's definitely room for improvement. That's when I wished I had rehearsed Laura Allen's 15secondpitch a little more.

Laura was also at the conference (check out her batch of pictures here) giving a talk on how you can use her pitching methodology not only to introduce yourself but also when you develop your web copy. The same principles apply there as well: don't give them a laundry list - be short and to the point!

On my way out I bumped into an old colleague from my days at CNNfn, Pat Kiernan. He was making a special appearance for NY1, our local cable all-news station, where he is a familiar face every morning, delivering the morning news in his signature deadpan way. It was a thrill to see him and catch up on what some of our co-workers are doing since CNN's financial network shut down 3 years ago. (That's me next to Pat, and behind us, no - you're not seeing double - it's his life sized replica!)