Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Color

Wow that's hot. Social networking, mobile, photo sharing. $41M raised before launch. Testing conventions, with damn good timing. But will this color fade to grey?

Mobile social software application Color launched today. With more pre-launch funding by Sequoia et. al. than Flickr was bought for it is something to watch. Smart and accomplished team, which matters more than anything at this stage. Of course it screams bubble when we've all been trained to look for the pop. But there is a lot more to it.

That round -- obviously $41M for what someone could build for less than $1, minus the domain names, raises more than eyebrows. Sequoia didn't find themselves with a bad card in the the last minutes of a bingo game. They had a great team, hot space and different angle of attack. Get ready to spend a lot of time talking about the round which puts the startup behind it.

That hype -- perfect. That round. The team and investors. The trends from mobility to social to the end of privacy. Positioning that gap left open by industry darlings. When you've got time, money and enough of a controversial product to do a launch like this its pretty solid. You think Zuck questions our notions privacy? Not as public proof point step one. By positing the new sousveillant public, there is an endless stream of PR ready stories ready for them so long as enough people opt in.

That initial user experience -- funny, if you just use the app for the first time you don't realize what you are sharing is public. You take a picture of yourself and upload it. If you have luck or patience, you find others doing other stupid or delightful shit near you. Whoever the fuck they are. And if you are alone at home like most losers, you just took a picture of something somebody wants to steal if they are lucky enough to be taking a picture of the house they are casing.

That second hand experience -- first experiences with products aren't what they used to be. You used to find something while home in your underware clicking beyond your comfort area. And then follow paths designers well versed in HCI could anticipate. But now the interaction that precedes and in many cases is included in the app's initial interaction is social. Color needs this. And in fact prompts it. It adapts to the environment first before requiring the environment adapts to it. Like social should.

That low threshold -- the core user experience they have found is the lowest threshold of participation. The only contribution you do is take snapshots of a moment in time with one click. From there forms a graph of moments of movement that yields active discovery. Don't under-estimate finding something effortless for those who get past comforts, close to immeadiate voyeuristic rewards, and contrails of memories.

That movement -- I first installed the app within the hour it launched while on the train and then went to meet some colleagues in Palo Alto. Along the way of all things my snapshots got grouped with Color's launch party, so apparently they are there somewhere and are people doing things. Seems appropriate. But the point is an experience while in motion with minutea until and if there is critical mass with other people participating. There aren't hooks to easily have your friends participate with you yet. But you could see how SXSW could have been different with it. Not as a nightmare for those with photographic memory. But you could also see how if you were there and anti-social it would give you something to do. The app is best used in motion while others are.

The memory -- what Color keeps isn't what it shares. Lots of metadata about context. Lots of things with public sharing rights with no clear terms of services. Lots of things to build because its new. In many ways they are inviting the privacy tension, but it is memory about things made public that creates both a level of utility and more significant harm. I wonder how much they have thought it through. Some like LinkedIn did, others died, other blasted through it regardless.

That business model -- obviously, local advertising and offers has awoken a hidden market. Color could be well positioned to have people actively engaged sharing commerce. But what the model is isn't clear because it isn't being tried yet. I hope they do, fast. Because delaying that means uncertainty not just for the company, but effects how it works with the world. And quite frankly, with that funding, and a lot of that not shared, its all a mess of interesting brown.

The Terror of the Internet in the Middle East

As we watch the most incredible of events unfold in the Middle East, we certainly don't know how they will conclude and it may take longer to understand them. Social Media, nay, the Internet, didn't cause the revolution in Egypt. They underlying cause is more likely ineffective and unjust totalitarian rule. We can dismiss how Milennials are shaping the first world today. But whenever you have the largest demographic bubble in history at the peak of youth, and they don't have a just role to play in an unjust society, they tend to find one.

Democracies look back fondly at student revolutions, from 1968 and beyond. But what is happening in the developing world today could hope to end so well. About 15 years ago there was an article in the Economist that I can't access now that predicted the large concentration of impoverished youth in the Middle East would push thing to the brink. Were it not for the aggressive growth policies of Bejing subsidizing the poor in the Chinese hinterlands there would have been bread riots in a civilization predisposed to revolution. 

Revolutions happen when circumstances are unjust, there is enough of a body to form a politic and they have the ability to organize. The internet certainly reduced coordination costs to bring #jan25 together. But perhaps we have reached a point across the world where enough connections have happened that people expect the ability to communicate with a high degree of freedom. Even when forbid by dictatorial or oligarchical rules of law.

I believe in Egypt enough people had just enough of a taste of free communication to know what it means. The ability to communicate across distances, groups, openly published or with a semblance of privacy. And when you have that, it is hard to picture going back.

I believe where Mubarak failed was not in his believe in his own power. But they way he wielded it in the end within this new environment. He let the internet become a terrorist.

While that word may spark a strong reaction, let me explain. Since the time of the Zealots, terrorism has always been a series of tactics deployed by the minority to provoke change by the group in power by turning the people they have power over against them. Terrorists cause terror to provoke an overreaction by the State against them. As the State's countermeasures trend towards abusing their own norms and laws, and take away the civil liberties of the people, the people turn against them.

The protestor's use of the internet served to coordinate their actions. But it was also an act of publishing. One the state was not prepared for, let alone accustomed to. By the time it was amplified and coopted by traditional foreign media it had something it new it had to react to as a second order. But not how to deal with the first order. So it shut it down. 

When Mubarak shut down the internet, the people found ways to route around points of control. But the people also I believed realized that the state was acting unjustly towards them in an extreme way. It took away something they had learn to value if not expect.

The US administration has recently grouped net freedom into universal values, and is taking a stand to support them. I can't tell you how proud I am that they are taking this stand. This isn't US chauvinism that projects unilateral power and by direct consequence dismantles the greatest multilateral system of foreign relationships ever. That happened with the last administration. This one knows that in the balance of information arbitrage, the state with information values, Wikileaks or not, will prevail if it holds true.

This new foreign plank is what we used to be good at. Taking a stand upon a right or value and building alliances upon which it stands. It is foreign policy with the most modern purpose. For progression doesn't stop at your shores when you want to build your future instead of cower in someone else's past.

I wrote most of this on the day Mubarak stepped down to mark it for myself.

SlideShare Zipcasts for Real Time Collaboration

A long time ago Tim Oren scribbled this on a napkin to help explain a little of what he learned about collaboration.

We put wikis in the top left, email in the bottom left and IM in the bottom right. He described that at the top right is a collaboration sweet spot, but a place that is very hard to start off with. You create something to the left or below it and try to evolve it. You could easily put Twitter and Socialtext Signals in the top right. Twitter in effect evolved out of eariler learnings from blogging. Signals was an evolution of a social software platform. Good theory, and the point is doing new things in real time is hard.

Today SlideShare launched Zipcast, a web conferencing product that is fast, simple and social. Its a natural evolution of what SlideShare has been, a new way to asynchronously share slides. Its new not just in how it is integrated into the fabric of the real time social web. Building a collaboration solution on top of a thriving professional sharing community with millions of presentations viewed by over 45 million people per month is decidedly new.

If you are in marketing, you can host social webinars with promotion being a byproduct of using it. If you are in sales, you can launch a pitch immeadiately without the complexity of setup and asking someone to install a download. If you simply have an idea to share, there is no stopping you because it is free for public and viral meetings.

And what I really like about is it is web conferencing actually on the web.

A Letter from the Chairman

I co-founded Socialtext in 2002, and through eight-years of hard work pioneered the hottest category of Enterprise software. An old Estonian saying says "the work will show you the way." And what has kept me going through this journey is great people and a continual source of new opportunities. As I've written before, startups always have natural transition points that help both you and them grow. 

Starting today I'm stepping out of my day-to-day role at Socialtext. I continue to be Chairman of the Socialtext Board of Directors and will keep a desk at the company's Palo Alto headquarters. Socialtext continues to execute under the great stewardship of CEO Eugene Lee. We're growing, and not just market pioneers, but market settlers within a tremendous opportunity.  

Thinking back, I'm most proud of our series of firsts. The first commercial wiki company, first to adapt the best of the social web for enterprises each year, bringing web oriented architecture and emerging standards like OpenSocial into the enterprise, SocialCalc as the first native Enterprise 2.0 application and the creation of a social layer across the enterprise. All these first were made possible by focusing on one of the most rewarding problems you can address -- collaboration and sharing between people. 

But this has all been Made of People. Starting with my co-founders Adina Levin (currently VP of Products at Socialtext), Pete Kaminski and Ed Vielmetti and all the team members over the years. The best customers in the business. And throughout the whole ride we've played a contributing role in the broader social software and startup community that always seems to give back.

At the core, I'm an internet entrepreneur who plays at the boundary between consumer and enterprise. Where work meets life. I see non-stop innovation in this space as connections increase, disciplines collide and technology is democratized -- that can be applied to solve real big problems. Socialtext is changing the world of work with the things that come from life, and it won't be the last company I start by breaking boundary conditions.

Four years ago I was the first person to get a demo of SlideShare and I've been an active advisor since. Over the past year I've been helping CEO Rashmi Sinha and the team with new products that move beyond helping individual professionals promote themselves, to solutions to problems for organizations. We've grown to 50M visitors, 150M pageviews and 3B slideviews per month to one of the top sites on the web with a uniquely professional community.

I'm joining SlideShare as their VP of Business Development. As their first executive hire beyond the founding team my goal is to grow the largest professional sharing community, cultivate a vibrant ecosystem, and help organizations connect to each  through sharing. We've got a lot in store, and if you would like to work with or partner with SlideShare don't hesitate to contact me.

Socialtext began with a simple insight that early consumer social web technologies could be adapted for the context of an organization. Now I don't have to explain what a wiki is, but more why its the most widely deployed social software in businesses today. Now I don't have to explain what Enterprise 2.0 is, but more how it combines with 1.0 to holistically solve real business problems. Now I don't have to explain how a agile distributed startup works, but more the impact of broad access to the tools and practices of entrepreneurship. Socialtext and SlideShare are both changing the world of work in their own ways, and I'm excited for the work ahead.

The Intersect iPad App for Netflix

With all the movies available on Netflix Instant, have you ever started to figure out what movie to watch with your family like this?

You know that guy who plays the Scarecrow in Batman?

Then you have to hope someone in your family knows. Until now.

The Intersect is an iPad app that lets you explore the Netflix library through intersecting search. That is, searching and browsing by genre, director, actor and/or more. Once you've found something you can add it to your Netflix queue or watch it instantly. And if you have a new Apple TV, you could stream the instant movie from your iPad's remote to your TV.

It was created by Kirsten Jones, who used to work with me at Socialtext and now works for a movie rental company that was cool enough to let her do this on her side time.

 

Badgeville Wins at TechCrunch Disrupt

I'm an advisor to Badgeville, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt this week -- and won the audience choice award! Badgeville is a social rewards and analytics platform that increases loyalty and engagement with your web audience. It's been great to watch former Socialtexter Kris Duggan create a well timed startup from scratch. Here's their presentation:

TechCrunch Disrupt Presentation

View more presentations from Kris Duggan.

How to Bootstrap Your PR

Inc. Magazine interviewed me on How to Bootstrap your Public Relations. There are, of course, new opportunities and challenges given how technology is disrupting media:

"When you had to go through mass media, there's really a handful of media outlets or influential or important reporters. Because there were so few of them that had the ability to publish, there was this whole layer called the PR industry," he says. "Well, (now) everybody has the ability to publish. You engage in direct conversations with both traditional journalists and bloggers through the Web. As long as you were willing to be more open and sharing than in the past, now it's much more of a conversation."

The article goes on to provide some practical advice for entrepreneurs. In the interview I laid out some key elements for bootstrapping your PR, such as:

• Read first
• Amplify your interests, even if not on topic for your company
• Converse as an individual, to develop both your brand and the startup's
• Don't blog only about outcomes, share the process you are in and what you learn
• Practice what you pitch
• Develop real relationships

PR is the most important marketing function while bootstrapping and is a critical founder skill to develop. I also want to highlight that after the initial boostrap you want to staff the PR function in house or work with a PR firm for baseline programs and the ability to scale during key events.

Its the same topic as a Finance4Founders panel from early this year, I'll post a video if I can find it.

Growth is the #NewTwitter

For many the NewTwitter is about a new user experience. Or Twitter eating its client partners for lunch while adding content partners. But for me NewTwitter can be summed up in this slide:

You've probably seen a lot of charts labled Hockey Stick Growth, but this actually is one. But the good folks at Twitter probably saw something happening about six months back -- the potential for Tweets per day to level out. As Ev tweeted in his presentation: 

You don’t need to tweet to get value from Twitter any more than you need to make a web page to use the web about 2 hours ago via web

Six months from now they probably want to show another hockey stick, with today as the inflection point, and it will plot visits or views again. This is what they call mainstreaming. What's impressive is how Twitter pulled together their most significant upgrade. And if the goal was expressed in numbers it would be for mainstream growth. 

But a word of caution. Mainstreaming was the thing that Yahoo thought they did best, the core of their initial achievement. But as 2.0 came along the Mainstreaming legacy groups, culture and processes kept them from adapting. If Twitter succeeds, they need to be wary of the kind of success that can come from growth. And I hope they do, because this is still just the beginning.

P.S.: This post is really just about the obvious, while I'm waiting to actually play with it.

Management Consulting, Finance & Law Job Descriptions

DailyEndeavor, the job guide written by regular people (I'm one of them and an Advisor), just opened up three new job review categories: Management Consulting Jobs, Banking & Finance Jobs and Law Jobs. 

If you are a lawyer, consultant or budding tycoon please go share your experience for job seekers to understand what's out there and what job they would really love.

If you are a job seeker, watch this resource. For example, if you are interested in starting a career in Management Consulting, here are some job reviews that will save you some legwork:

• Manager in Strategy Management Consulting
• Analyst in Strategy Management Consulting
• Research in Strategy Management Consulting
• Summer Associate in Strategy Management Consulting

If you can't find the job review you are looking for, you can post a brief request. Other categories include Education Jobs, Human Rights Jobs & Microfinance Jobs with more on the way.