Technology Blog

Via recruiting expert Shally Stackerl, the pros and cons of sites like LinkedIn, Spoke, and Plaxo .

This post was written by David Teten, source: Pros and cons of online networks

=================================================================================
Seeking ecommerce/consumer technology experts for Chicago Jan. 16th and San Francisco Jan. 17th Hedge Fund Dinners.
=================================================================================

Nitron Advisors, an investment research firm, is hosting two dinners for ecommerce and consumer technology experts to talk with hedge fund investors interested in these sectors. These invitation-only events will be taking place in Chicago – January 16th and in San Francisco– January 17th. You will have a chance to talk informally with some of the major institutional investors in this sector.

We’re looking for senior industry executives and other experts with the following backgrounds:

Consumer technology areas of interest:
+ Personal computers (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, etc.)
+ Flash memory (SanDisk, Kingston, Corsair, etc.)
+ MP3 Players (Apple, Creative, Archos, etc.)
+ GPS Systems (Garmin, TomTom, etc.)
+ Mobile telephones (Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Blackberry, etc.)
+ Distributors (Ingram Micro, Arrow Electronics, Synnex Corp, Tech Data Corporation)

Ecommerce areas of interest:
+ Online specialty retail (eBay, Amazon, Blue Nile, Overstock, Audible)
+ Online auctions (power sellers on eBay, other auction sites)
+ Search engine space (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
+ Consumer generated media/free video hosting services (YouTube, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, Google Video)
+ Online advertising/marketing (ValueClick, 24/7 Real Media, aQuantive)
+ Lead generation players (Autobytel Inc, Move Inc, Bankrate, IAC InterActiveCorp, HouseValues, etc.)
+Online media (PRIMEDIA, New York Times/About.com, etc.)

The final selection of experts to attend is based in part on the interests of specific investment firms who are attending. Attendees receive an honorarium as well as travel expenses and of course dinner covered.

If you are not already a member of our Circle of Experts and would like to attend, apply as an eCommerce specialist at: http://circleofexperts.com/apply-form.html?i=17&rid=0 . Apply as a Consumer Technology specialist at: http://circleofexperts.com/apply-form.html?i=11&rid=0 .

Otherwise, please contact Jesse Mandell, 1-212-682-6455, JMandell@nitronadvisors.com, with your response or further questions. Please note that we must review your bio and talk with you before we can accept you for the dinner.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Seeking ecommerce/consumer technology experts for Chicago 1/16 and San Francisco 1/17 Hedge Fund Dinners

I’ve recently talked with a few people about ‘social commerce‘—the idea that our online business activities will both reflect and in part be driven by our personal social network. My coauthor Scott Allen recently did a market research study on “Transactional Trust in Social Commerce”, which provides some context on this.

For example, many people would prefer to buy a used car from a friend or a friend of a friend, rather than a stranger. The social context is particularly important, in my experience, when purchasing services as opposed to products. Why? Because the quality of a service varies wildly depending on the motivation and context of the service-provider.

For example, my wife and I are currently evaluating some contractors to do some renovation for us, and a contractor who lives near us and knows some of our friends socially is less likely to rip us off than someone who is a stranger.

Amazon has a primitive version of this functionality, in that I can see that people who like book A also like book B. I’ve also seen quite a few startups who are working on various variations of, ‘What is an efficient way to buy stuff from friends as opposed to strangers?” See for example www.stylehive.com and www.thisnext.com. This was supposed to be a significant part of Tribe’s business model, and some of the local services directories (e.g., Yelp, LinkedIn) are also trying to leverage the fact that you trust your friends’ (or friends of friends of friends) recommendations.

I see several advantages of socializing commerce, in general:
1. Higher likelihood of truth in advertising. The friend is less likely to lie about how lemony the used car is, because he knows that interacting with you is a repeated game, not a one-time game.
2. Reduced purchase cost because of fewer intermediaries. By buying a car from a friend, you don’t have to pay a dealer’s markup.
3. Reduced costs of identifying the right product. Friends (or friends of friends) tend to have similar tastes. If my friend is (like me) a city dad with a child, then my friend is also likely to have a car to sell me that suits the needs of me and my family.
4. Helping out your friends/your community. No one does a business transaction unless he/she derives some benefit. You’d rather that your friend gets the economic benefit of selling a car than a stranger.

So does it make sense to use online networks to make commerce more social? To evaluate against the criteria I listed:

1. Higher likelihood of truth in advertising. Possibly also true online. However, online we already have measures of reputation that are not dependent on me knowing someone who knows the person in question: eBay’s reputation functionality, Rapleaf, etc.
2. Reduced purchase cost. I think in most cases this doesn’t apply online, and in fact the purchase cost when buying via a social network can be higher because I lose the advantage of a broad seller base competing with one another. In addition, somehow the intermediary (e.g., Amazon, eBay) has to make a markup. If I’m buying something online anyway, then I’ve got access to a shopping comparison engine which will lower my purchase cost to the bare minimum.
3. Reduced costs of identifying the right product. This is likely true, but only for a small number of products. For many products, my friends are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the product category than Cnet.com—so I should really just buy what Cnet recommends, not what my friends are buying. The one advantage of buying what my friends recommend is that, if conforming is my goal, this helps me to conform. If everyone else pays a premium for an iPod or Treo 650 then clearly I must buy one too.
4. Helping out your friends/your community. To some extent this is also true online. However, I doubt it’s a big motivation for many people.

Research from the likes of Forrester, Resource Interactive and Morgan Stanley is also beginning to focus on a new generation of consumers they term the Millennials (aka, “Generation Y”) who range in age from 18-26 years old. Their buying patterns differ from prior generations. The Millennials exceed the Boomers in size, distrust media and have little to no affinity for brands. As opposed to earlier generations, they value their peers’ advice and validation: therefore, CNet recommendations are less valuable. Jeff Leventhal, CEO of Spinback, observed, “this generation is the largest consumer group to date and will shift the commerce paradigm.”

It’s clear that many people like doing business with others in their community, or with others to whom they’re interconnected. Think how many offices have an internal email list for people to sell sporting tickets, TVs, etc. Think of the bulletin boards with things for sale that you’ll see in many churches or synagogues.

However, if you are already doing commerce online as opposed to face-to-face, I’d argue that in many cases it’s irrational to make your commerce decisions dependent on your social ties. In most cases it’s more rational to just buy things via a comparison shopping engine (Shopzilla, Froogle, etc.), particularly when buying a commodity good that could otherwise be found in a few block radius.

The good news for the startups trying to do something in this area: first, many people are irrational and will prefer to buy via a social intermediary, even if they get a worse deal. And second, for certain types of purchases buying via a social intermediary can be more rational, especially when the item is a not a common good, but rather a unique or collectible item. Used cars are the most obvious example, because there are so many ways in which the seller can deceive you about the true value of the product. If you’re a Pez dispenser collector, fellow members of your community can also turn you on to an impulse purchase which you would not have searched for yourself on Shopzilla, but which you are excited to buy because a trusted peer refers you to it.

Feedback welcome.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Social Commerce: Do you want to do business with your friends?

“On the 9th Day of Xmas, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters revealed to me: Nine Tools for Researching Leads.” Whether you are looking for sales or job-hunting purposes, there are a vast number of services you can subscribe to for free that will bring information on worthwhile new companies straight to you. This is a useful list.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Nine Tools for Researching Leads

I enjoyed reading a review copy of Truth or Delusion: Busting Networking’s Biggest Myths, by Ivan Misner with Mike Macedonio and Mike Garrison. Dr. Misner is one of the very few people who have written on this topic (besides Wayne Baker, Herminia Ibarra, and a few others) who’s done substantive research up to academic standards on what actually works in sales and marketing.

One key learning from the book: the importance of educating the people with whom you work about whom you sell to, and how to sell your firm. People can’t refer business to you unless they know very well who is a logical customer for you.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Truth or Delusion: Busting Networking’s Biggest Myths

Nitron Advisors is featured on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal:

Big Investors Turn to Network of Informants
“For professional investors, something akin to what Match.com has done for the nation’s singles…hooking up middle managers from hundreds of companies with professional investors desperate for an investing edge.”

More (requires subscription or two-week trial)

This post was written by David Teten, source: Big Investors Turn to Network of Informants

An interview with Michael Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Revisited:

“If they don’t fail outright, most businesses fail to fully achieve their potential. That’s because the person who owns the business doesn’t truly know how to build a company that works without him or her.. which is the key.” - Michael Gerber

Michael Gerber is the founder and CEO of E-Myth Worldwide, and best selling author of The E-Myth Revisited, and E-Myth Mastery. He defines E-Myth as: 1: The entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start a small business are entrepreneurs, 2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does technical work.

Since its publication in 1995, this business classic has sold over one million copies, and is published in 16 languages. Michael observes that most small businesses are started by “technicians”, that is, people who are skilled at something and who enjoy doing that thing. When these technicians strike out on their own, they tend to continue doing the work they are skilled at, and ignore the overarching aspects of business. Without clear goals and quantification benchmarks, they soon find themselves overworked, understaffed, and eventually broke. They come to hate the work they do. Rather than owning a business, Gerber writes, “they own a job.”

Click here for the interview.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

The creator of BugMeNot.com has launched http://www.retailmenot.com/, which provides coupon codes for retail stores, without the privacy-infringing registration requirements. A very useful tool.

Many online stores allow for a “coupon” or “promotion” code when you order to automatically assign discounts, deals and freebies (kinda like money for nothing). RetailMeNot.com is a place for finding and sharing these coupon codes.
So… when you buy online, check here for discounts first (unless you’re frikkin crazy).

Via GoodExperience

This post was written by David Teten (admin), source: Coupon codes for retail stores

Our COO, Scott Lichtman, is speaking at this event:

New York County Lawyers’ Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee

The Internet is upgrading to version 2.0 and so should your law firm’s marketing. More and more lawyers are taking their practices to the next level and this forum should help you do the same. Take an evening to familiarize yourself with how blogging, online referral networks, research-sharing wikis and more can expand your firm’s profile and attract prospective clients.

SPEAKERS

Scott Lichtman

COO, Nitron Advisors

Scott Lichtman is COO of Nitron Advisors (www.nitronadvisors.com), a provider of senior industry executives with specialized backgrounds to law firms for testimony and to investment funds for market advice. Nitron Advisors extensively applies Web 2.0 technologies – including blogs, peer referral networks, online expertise acquisition services, specialized professional search engines and live interactions – to acquire clients and experts as well as build awareness for the firm’s capabilities.

Martin Schwimmer, Esq.

Partner, Schwimmer Mitchell Law Firm

Martin Schwimmer is co-founder and Partner at Schwimmer Mitchell. He represents owners of some of the most famous and soon-to-be-famous trademarks in the world. He focuses on international and domestic trademark and domain name counseling, prosecution and litigation. Martin was General Counsel to an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar and continues to represent domain name companies. Martin was a partner at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu. Managing Intellectual Property Magazine selected Martin as one of the best trademark lawyers in the United States. Martin writes and speaks frequently on trademark and domain name issues and is editor of The Trademark Blog, www.schwimmerlegal.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet in this field of law (and generally ranked #1 by Google in this niche).

Bruce MacEwan

Creator and Host of AdamSmithEsq.com

Bruce MacEwan is a lawyer as well as a consultant to law firms on strategic and economic issues. He publishes the site “Adam Smith, Esq.” providing insights into the business of law firms, which generates 250,000 page views per month. You can read it at www.AdamSmithEsq.com. In his consulting practice, Bruce provides guidance on how to expand one’s business in the legal world. A recent engagement, for example, was a return-on-investment analysis of a knowledge management initiative at an AmLaw 20 practice. He’s also produced empirical studies of the structure of the profession, working with leading law professors. Most relevant to tonight, he has witnessed fascinating situations in which Web 2.0 technologies are being used to the fullest in law and related professional services. Bruce has written for or been the subject of articles in: The National Law Journal, Law Firm, Inc., Law Technology News as well as the Wall Street Journal and Web 2.0 magazine. He is a member of the New York State Bar Association’s committee on Law Practice Management.

Natalie Sulimani, Event Co-Chair, NYCLA Cyberspace Law Executive Committee;

Ron Katter and Henry Diaz, Event Co-Chairs, Co-Chairs NYCLA Solo and Small Firm Practice Committee

Thursday, November 16, 2006, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

NYCLA Home of Law - 14 Vesey Street

(between Broadway and Church Street)

RSVP: DLAMB(AT)nycla.org, Subject: “November 16 Forum”. Entrance and facilities for those with disabilities are available. For wheelchair access, a ramp is provided. Please call 212 267-6646 at least one day in advance to make arrangements.

This post was written by David Teten, source: New York County Lawyers Association: Web 2.0: Upgrade Your Web Marketing

For this blog and for Brain Food, We are looking for an email service that can convert our blog posts into both daily and weekly mailings. Services like Feedburner can automatically convert each blog post into an email. And a company like Constant Contact (and its many competitors) will take our mailing list and send out mailings.

However, Feedburner won’t let us upload our existing mailing list into their system, no doubt because of anti-spam concerns. And Constant Contact does not have a facility to automatically allow us to convert each blog post into a mailing to our whole list there. We’re currently using Mailman to address this problem, but the problem with Mailman is we are running it locally, and that makes our server liable for spam complaints. Also, Mailman usually puts each blog post into an attachment, instead of into the body of an email.

The ideal service would automatically create a weekly newsletter, including the most recent blog posts. It would also allow easy editing for readability – say, excerpts from the best 3 recent posts and subject links to the rest of them, plus some heading text. The About.com subject guide newsletters are examples of what we’re looking for. It would also include all of the unsubscribe/other reader functionality that Mailman and Constant Contact offer.

Does anyone have a solution to this dilemma? We’re happy to pay for a service that will work for our needs, which are common among blog publishers.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Where is the perfect tool to convert blogs to email?

Congratulations to the team at Accolo, which was just named the #1 fastest growing private company in the San Francisco Bay Area. Accolo is the company that acquired Teten Recruiting. For more on their approach to recruiting, see “Use Online Networks to Find Your Star Employee“.

This post was written by David Teten, source: #1 fastest growing private company in San Francisco Bay Area

I thought that some of our readers might be interested and qualified to attend one of our upcoming private hedge fund dinners.

============================

Seeking Ecommerce Experts for New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Hedge Fund Dinners
December 2006

============================

Nitron Advisors is organizing a series of dinners for Ecommerce experts to talk with major hedge fund investors interested in this sector. These invitation-only events will be taking place in New York on December 4th, Boston on December 6th, Chicago on December 11th, and San Francisco on December 13th. We will compensate you for flight expenses.

We’re looking for senior industry executives and other experts with the following backgrounds:
+ online specialty retail (eBay, Amazon, Blue Nile, Overstock, Audible, etc.)
+ online auctions (power sellers on eBay, other auction sites)
+ search engine space (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
+ consumer generated media/ free video hosting services (YouTube, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, Google Video)
+ online advertising/marketing (ValueClick, 24/7 Real Media, aQuantive)
+ lead generation players (Autobytel Inc, Move Inc, Bankrate, IAC InterActiveCorp, HouseValues, etc.)
+ Online media (PRIMEDIA, New York Times/About.com, etc.)

Qualifications: As an expert, you have at least four years senior experience in the eCommerce space. You have a “big picture” perspective on different firms in the space.

If you are not already a member of our Circle of Experts, please visit http://www.circleofexperts.com/apply-form.html?i=11 and apply to be a member of the Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts. Please contact Mr. Jesse Mandell, 1-212-682-6455, JMandell(AT)nitronadvisors.com, with any questions. Please note that we must review your bio and talk with you before we can accept you for the dinner.

============================

I should also mention that we’re hosting a dinner on Nov. 15 for consumer technology experts in New York. We’re interested in experts in PCs, flash memory, MP3 players, GPS systems, and mobile telephony. Register at http://www.circleofexperts.com/apply-form.html?i=11. Contact Mr. Jesse Mandell, 1-212-682-6455, JMandell(AT)nitronadvisors.com , for details. We’ll reimburse flight expenses.
============================

This post was written by David Teten, source: Seeking Ecommerce Experts for NY, Boston, Chicago, and SF Hedge Fund Dinners

From the “brazen careerist”, 10 Job-hunt tactics you might not know:

2. Use proactive recommendations.
Instead of waiting for a hiring manager to ask for references, have your reference call immediately. This works well if you have a heavy-weight reference, like a well-known CEO or someone who knows the hiring manager. But it also works well if you have little professional experience.

more

This post was written by David Teten, source: 10 Job-hunt tactics you might not know

One of the major themes of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (see Chapter 16) is the need to preserve ones corporate and personal virtual reputation. I’ve long thought that there was a need for a business that would be a personal PR agent, which would monitor what’s being said about you and destroy any negative information.

That business has been launched: ReputationDefender. What I like about the model is that I think it addresses a real concern that people have (or should have). 10% of Internet searches are for proper names; you are being evaluated every day online. ReputationDefender’s main competition will be the same competition that PR firms have: people providing the service in-house instead of using an outside provider.

An interesting question they’ll have to address as they scale is verifying the identity of the person using the service. If I say that I want to monitor the activity of my child, who verifies that that person is my child? And this is a great tool for stalking and identity theft (as are ZoomInfo and many other online network services): perhaps I fill out a form indicating that I want to monitor the online activities of a certain individual, who may not be me personally. Verifying that a given credit card ties to the name of the person being investigated is an obvious way to verify identity, but of course large numbers of credit card numbers are stolen every year.

I agree with Pete Cashmorethat it would be preferable to offer a very basic automated tracking service for free to get people into the system - “entering your credit card details is a massive barrier for the casual visitor”. After all, people can easily use any search engine/blog reader to view discussion of their name across the net.

More here and here.

Overall, I’m positive on the company’s prospects.

This post was written by David Teten, source: ReputationDefender Protects Your Online Reputation

“People who access the Internet for what have become routine functions — sending emails, writing blogs, and posting photos and information about themselves on social networking sites — do not realize how much of their personal privacy they put at risk, according to Wharton faculty and legal experts. Nor, they add, have the courts fully addressed the ways in which the Internet can be harnessed for questionable purposes that encroach on privacy. ”

Kevin Werbach observes:

…[L]ots of situations that used to be private are now public. It’s not a question of privacy but of social norms. Perhaps the answer is just, ‘That’s too bad.’ If someone had snapped a photo of [the Korean girl who didn’t clean up after her dog on the subway] robbing a bank and she said, ‘You can’t take a photo of me,’ most of us would say, ‘Too bad, you were robbing a bank.’ In a perverse way, we’re going back to the small town where everyone knows what everyone else is doing by virtue of the global information superhighway. My point is, right or wrong, this is going to happen. Google is not going to go away.”

I agree that we may be moving to more of a “small town” environment, where your actions are known to many people, instead of you benefiting from the traditional anonymity of the big city. However, unfortunately so far there’s very little evidence that this is resulting in an increase in standards of behavior, which would be my preferred outcome. Unfortunately, for broader societal reasons, we seem to be steadily defining deviancy down.

More at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1567.cfm

This post was written by David Teten, source: Unwitting Exposure: Does Posting Personal Information Online Mean Giving up Privacy?

This week, Work.com relaunched in the form of a Web 2.0-ish business community. The site consists of how-to guides for running your small business, written by a combination of in-house editors, certified topical experts, and members.

While this has admittedly been done before, Work.com has done a great job on the execution:
- great domain name
- a clean, well-organized design
- a highly consistent guide format that includes links to online resources to help you get it done
- a team of professional editors, community leaders and experts to make sure content stays current and appropriate and to help members get engaged in the community

I’m the community leader for the Sales & Marketing Channel, and there’s already a tremendous collection of how-to guides available on the site, including one I wrote on online business networking. Here are some of my other favorites related to virtual relationships, social software and Web 2.0:

• Small Business Blogs

• Start Podcasting for Your Small Business
• RSS for Small Business
• Marketing Your Small Business with a Blog
• Managing Small Business E-mail
• Managing E-mail Overload

I’ve committed to several more guides in the next few weeks — I’ll post here as they go up.

Also, if you have a particular area of expertise and don’t already see it covered (or at least not as well as you think you could), then you can also create a new guide yourself. If you do, be sure to stop by my profile and send me a message so I can have a read and come post comments.

Hope to see you at Work.com!

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Work.com Opens New Business Community

Via Wharton’s newsletter:

It’s always been assumed that when employees leave their companies to join other ones that all their knowledge and experience leave with them. But new research suggests that, at least in the high-tech field, firms can wind up gaining access to the knowledge being generated at their former colleague’s new place. The results of this research are presented in a paper titled, “Learning from Those Who Left: The Reverse Transfer of Knowledge through Mobility Ties,” by Wharton management professor Lori Rosenkopf and Wharton doctoral student Rafael A. Corredoira.

…

“Contrary to the view that companies lose something when a worker leaves, the study found that they stood to gain. Specifically, firms that lost an employee to another firm were 8% more likely to cite that firm than other equivalent firms, Rosenkopf says. The reverse flow of knowledge was particularly pronounced when the employee moved to another region. Then the old firm was 22% more likely to cite the new firm.”

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1565.cfm

This post was written by David Teten, source: The many benefits of your star employees leaving the firm (?!)

Given Nitron Advisors is in a reasonably competitive industry, I’m very interested in tools like http://competitio.us/. The basic idea is that it’s a tool for companies (or investors) to keep track of their competitors’ actions and features.

I’m not sure it’s got enough differentiation to be a sustainable business, but as a customer, I like it.

Via Techcrunch

This post was written by David Teten, source: Track your competition online

I’m working on a piece about best practices for network marketing / multi-level marketing online. I certainly know what I prefer to see, and have an opinion about what works best, but I’d like to hear from successful network marketers as to what’s working for you.

Now, I’m not going to define “successful” — I leave that up to you, but if you’re struggling with it, please don’t bother — you won’t be helping yourself or me either.

The survey consists of less than ten questions and should only take about 10 minutes of your time. I’ll be happy to send you a copy of the piece when I’m done with it, and your contribution may help make network marketing online better for everyone.

Take the survey

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Successful Network Marketers - Need Your Input

Less than three years after emerging from nowhere, the hot social networking website MySpace is on pace to be worth a whopping $15 billion in just three more years. Or is it? And is the much smaller Facebook really worth the $900 million or more Yahoo is reported to have offered for it? The problem, say Wharton experts, is a dearth of information — including data on expected revenue generation and cost structure — to plug into the standard valuation models.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1570.cfm

This post was written by David Teten, source: Dot-Com Bubble, Part II? Why It’s So Hard to Value Social Networking Sites