I’ve launched a new blog focused exclusively on LinkedIn at www.LinkedIntelligence.com.

Why?

From the welcome message:

I believe that much of the reason for that growth is that LinkedIn does, overall, a very good job of delivering on its promise of being an efficient, time-conservative way of maintaining and leveraging your network of contacts. While you can certainly spend a lot of time there if you so choose, it has a strong appeal to busy professionals who understand the value of their network and want to be of service to the people they know and trust, but don’t want to spend a lot of time “networking”.

What I realized recently is that while there are dozens of excellent resources for the more highly active LinkedIn power users, there wasn’t really a source that delivered information with the same kind of efficiency that appeals to the majority of LinkedIn users.

I’ll cross-post somewhat here on The Virtual Handshake, but if you’re interested in a filtered, quality source of information about LinkedIn, I hope you’ll stop by and add it to your subscription list.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: New Blog: Linked Intelligence

I’m curious to see if anyone has data on the biggest providers of online network services. According to my sources, they include:

Yahoo Groups-90m users
MySpace-100m users (and many thousands more in the last day or so, no doubt)
Classmates.com-40m users
Neopets-30m users
Facebook-7.7m users

Jeff Weiner, SVP of Yahoo Search and Marketplace, reported at Yahoo Analyst Day on May 17 that Yahoo Groups has 90 million members. Does anyone have any more detailed information on this number? Are these 90 million members receiving and reading their Yahoo Groups emails, regularly visiting the Yahoo Groups website, or doing anything else to prove that they are “active” members in some way? Or does 90 million simply refer to the number of users who at some point in the past registered with a Yahoo Group, but who are not necessarily participating or involved in the group in any way anymore?

Thanks!

This post was written by David Teten, source: Seeking data on Yahoo! Groups and competitors

Do you want to break free of Microsoft’s grip? Use exclusively web-based apps, most of them free?

If you do, try reviewing Ismael Ghalimi’s list of ‘best-of-breed’ web apps, which together provide a reasonable approximation of the Microsoft Office Suite.

http://itredux.com/blog/office-20/my-office-20-setup/

This post was written by David Teten, source: Microsoft Office online—without Microsoft

Sid Yadav writes, “33 Places to Hangout in the Social Networking Era,” a summary with brief profiles of 33 different social networks, each with descriptions and target demographics.

This post was written by David Teten, source: 33 Places to Hangout in the Social Networking Era

Following up on my draft post on ‘Business Models for User-Generated Media‘, I wrote some notes on this morning’s iBreakfast.

Shawn Gold, SVP, MySpace: Marketing in a Networked Culture

MySpace has 100m users projected by july

84m registered users, 2m new registered users per week (size of Houston), 48m unique visitors per month in US

2^nd most popular site for content consumption on the Internet, as defined by page views. 29000 indie film profiles. 1.8m music profiles.

#1 video viewing site

#1 referrer to Google—8.19% of Google’s traffic

42% of YouTube viewing is happening on MySpace.

Goal:

MySpace will become THE full service community portal

Introduce innovative advertising solutions while being at forefront of pop culture

DNA of Myspace Generation : MySpace is their place. Where youth culture gathers to express themselves, connect with friends, and discover popular culture.

Big differentiator from competition is the way MySpace is used to discover popular culture, i.e., bands/TV shows.

All the growth is viral—they market to influencers not to audience members.

Nielsen: Myspace reaches 51% of 13-17 year olds online (which is 85% of all 13-17 year olds).

79% of the site is 18+, and 25M users who are 30+.

Why so successful:

-A user’s profile is a metaphor for their room or apt.

- The Internet generation has grown up sharing their lives

- The profile is a characterization of who they are

- They want to express themselves creatively.

Children lack a ‘their space’. 7-11 doesn’t let them hang out in front; the mall security guards kick them out. They’re used to being in public. MySpace is a form of identity production.

Everyone takes pride in their medium. It’s ‘vested media’ because they created it.

When people say the pages are unwieldy, just think of a teenager’s room.

Social networks/blogs serve as a publishing platform for early adopters. Word of Mouth has turned into ‘citizen journalism’, which people trust more than traditional media.

MySpace allows brands to become living, breathing entities that consumers can interact with.

Best brand programs tie into self-expression, facilitate connections between people, or is centered around the discovery of popular culture.

87m stories in the database, and a lot of that content is professional. Every nightclub, every major Christian band, every celebrity brand, is in the database. They’re now slicing the database by professional type, e.g., if you want to reach all the comedians.

Basic idea of marketing: "Tell a Friend"

Average page is visited 30 times a day. If you’re in the top 8, your exposure is exponential. XMen has 3.2m friends. If you friend them, you can have top 16 friends, instead of top 8.

Core: identification and individuality. Don’t separate them—that’s Geocities. Understand core needs (identification and individuality), and address their core needs: recognition, knowledge, self-expression, belonging, access, discovery, appreciation, and confidence.

We facilitate this on a social networking platform.

Next speaker—-Shelly Palmer, author, Television Disrupted

Five buzzwords you can use right now. You will sound like a genius if you use these.

- Mobile video: clipcasts or streamcasts. He dislikes the term ‘cellphone video’, because not all mobile video (e.g., ipod video) is via a cell tower. Why does ESPN Mobile have only 2400 subscribers—because it’s $30-$400/month. It’s a MVNO—they own the handset and customer experience. They’re $30M in the hole. All the vanity cell services will meet the same fate. ESPN invested a lot of money into the technology. Behaviors change glacially. In the last century, fastest time to market for an electronic tool was Xerox machine. It killed carbon paper extremely quickly. Instantly successful. Normally new tools take 5-100 years—fax machine took 100 years.

- IPTV—Internet Protocol Television

- Broadband Video—call it ‘IP Video’. ‘Streaming Video’ is a silly term.

- Podcasting—he hates this word. A use of the RSS spec—it has nothing to do with IPods or broadcasting. Coined by Adam Curry. Based on XML spec. Blogging is the most popular use of RSS.

- Mesh Networks—each node connects or two or more nodes. No central server. Self-healing. Hard to shut down. Napster was a file-sharing network, therefore easy to shut down. If they’re wireless they’re a swarm. BitTorrent is best example of a mesh network. Cant be used in real-time streaming.

Oct. 12, 2005: the date that Steve Jobs and Eiger unilaterally decided to put TV shows on ipod—Desperate HouseWives. Very controversial with affiliates. The day the TV world changed.

"Contact is King!"

Different words for all of you in the audience:

Cable companies call customers ’subscribers’

Phone companies call them ‘access lines’

TV cos. Call them ‘Viewers’

Computer cos. Call them ‘users’

2/17/2009: all analog TV spectrum will go digital. Your old analog TV won’t work. The good news: all the old analog frequencies will be reclaimed by the gov’t and auctioned off. Most likely it will be used to create a large broadband cloud—WiMAX? No longer will you use a little local wifi network—you’ll use the large broadband cloud. Hermistown, OR has largest broadband cloud in America: 700 sq miles, 5 megabits. It’s like living in Star Trek. Cant handle lots of streaming video/VOIP, but it’s enough for email. Intel is banking heavily on WiMAX.

Every cell phone call ends with ‘hello’, instead of ‘goodbye’, because of connectivity problems

Q&A

Shawn: They review every photo/video uploaded to myspace

Any member can report objectionable content

25000 volunteers police school site

Algorithms that search for underage kids—e.g., mentioning 12 candles on a birthday cake. They kick off 5000 underage kids/day.

Myspace is the size of two Californias—and the crime on the site is equivalent to 5 blocks in NYC

This post was written by David Teten, source: Shawn Gold, SVP, MySpace: Marketing in a Networked Culture

Tomorrow morning I’ll be speaking at http://ibreakfast.com/ on Business Models in User Generated Media. I have attached a DRAFT of my talk below. I’d be grateful for any feedback readers might have. In particular, I’m trying to get rough revenue estimates for each of the categories below.

Business Models for

User Generated Media (UGM)

(Thank you to Detelina Kalkandjieva for her research help!)

As introduction—-Shawn Conahan, CEO, Intercasting Corp., observes that several macro level changes are driving the explosive growth in user-generated media:

1. We are moving from top-down media to point-to-point media. 57% of online teens, ages 12-17, create content for the Internet.

2. Media distribution is changing from pushing from the center to circulating around the edge.

3. Lastly, media is converging with personal communication, and it’s happening in the mobile space.

We’ve identified five business models around user-generated media, which I’ve listed below in roughly declining level of revenues.

1. Hardware

There is tremendous opportunity in selling very small printing presses to the masses. For example, InfoTrends/CAP Ventures projects that worldwide camera phone shipments will grow from 178 million units in 2004 to over 860 million units in 2009. By 2009, camera phones are expected to account for 89% of all mobile phone handsets shipped. 100% of those devices are being used to generate content (photos, SMSs, emails, and of course speech), and the great majority of those devices are being used to generate media (which for purposes of this sentence I’ll define as content reaching more than one person).

2. Advertising platform.

Examples: Myspace, Facebook. A search engine like Google, which rides on top of the growth of Internet usage, is also benefiting from the rise of UGM. UGM is particularly helpful for advertisers looking to reach very targeted small communities. To be successful, UGM hosts will need scale in a) advertiser acquisition; b) delivering the right ads to the right person; c) hosting and screening very complex data– hundreds of thousands of sites with millions of transient visitors.

The backdrop for this phenomenon is, of course, the explosive growth in Internet advertising. Google will sell more advertising in 2006 than any of the major TV networks or newspapers. 24/7 Real Media observed that in 2006, "Internet advertising will continue along on the same trajectory that the cable TV industry traveled during the 80s and 90s. The key differentiating factor that will continue to fuel growth of Internet advertising is its transparency, flexibility and accountability."

3. Personal services

Examples: Clay Shirky; Danah Boyd; Zeldman.com ; Scott Allen. People use their virtual presence for marketing, for job search, business development, and so on. Charlene Li of Forrester VERY roughly estimated that her blog had generated $1m in revenues for Forrester. This practice is most applicable for independent consultants, but is more and more broadly relevant as more people move to a self-managed career.

4. Software

Companies like Six Apart and Lithium are happy to sell you software to build your own UGM platform.

5. Analysis: selling the long tail’s content

Jupiter Research reports that 26% of top search results for world’s 20 largest brands are consumer-generated. How do you think Iams pet food feels about the negative results that show up when you search on ‘Iams’? Nearly 150 mn searches are now conducted every year on the term ‘new car’. In a Forrester Research study in June 2003, 74 percent of car buyers named consumer reports as the most influential factor in their purchase decision.

Firms must know what’s going on out there. Having a corporate blog is one path; or firms like Trendum, Hitwise, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Cymfony, or Brandimensions would be happy to monitor the UGM world for you.

Another approach to analyzing the long tail is the approach of my firm, Nitron Advisors. We work primarily with institutional investors, and provide access to a network of frontline industry experts. The traditional model of consulting is: we have smart employees who will tell you what’s going on. Our model is: we have access to 5 billion smart people who will tell you what’s really going on.

Selected Sources:

Blogging Business Models

http://investors.qumana.com/blog/BloggingBusinessModels

The Rise of the Consumer-Generated Media Machine

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=28733

Consumer-generated media is becoming more and more commercialized by the day

http://www.m-travel.com/news/2006/05/consumergenerat.html

Lessons from Vloggercon 2006

http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/consumer_generated_media/index.html

How to use social media in B2B marketing

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/10017.asp

Are consumer-generated ads here to stay?

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9521.asp

What to expect from CGC

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9332.asp

The Agency of the Future: Consumers. Five consumer-generated campaigns (http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9265.asp)

The Year in Consumer Generated Content

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/7800.asp

Tagvertising = Blogging 2.0… Already?

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/5467.asp

Consumer-generated marketing

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4045.asp

This post was written by David Teten, source: Business Models for User-Generated Media

I’m happy to report that, after two years of successful partnership, I have sold Teten Executive Recruiting to Accolo. I’ll be continuing in my current role running Nitron Advisors, which is a separate company. Here’s the press release:

Press Release
For Immediate Release
June 21, 2006

Accolo acquires Teten Executive Recruiting; combined firm is innovator in using social software and online networks for recruiting.

Larkspur, CA – June 22, 2006 – Accolo, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Teten Executive Recruiting, a retained executive search firm that specializes in using online networks to reach and recruit the most qualified candidates. The firm focuses on the hedge fund, private equity, and strategy consulting industries. Founder and author David Teten joins Accolo’s Advisory Board.

David Teten said, "I first discovered Accolo ( www.Accolo.com) in my research for my book about social software and online networks, became a client, and then created a partnership with them. When I learned how they had re-engineered the recruiting process to incorporate the power of online networks, I thought: this is the way recruiting should be. I think that the traditional recruiting model is broken and painfully inefficient, and I am excited to have the privilege of working with a team that understands the logical way that companies should manage the process of finding great people."

In this cash and stock deal, Accolo gains access to Teten Executive Recruiting ( www.TetenCo.com) clients such as American Real Estate Partners, Net2Phone, OfficeTiger, The Trium Group, Zacks Investment Research, and IDT Entertainment. Teten Executive Recruiting is known as a thought leader in using blogs, listservs, online communities, social network software, relationship capital management software, and biography analysis software for recruiting. Accolo has acquired the proprietary tools that Teten Executive Recruiting has developed.

John Younger, CEO of Accolo, commented, "We were excited about Teten Executive Recruiting’s list of lighthouse clients and its deep expertise in social software and online networks. This acquisition is the logical culmination of a mutually beneficial relationship. The company is providing us with new strategies to continue raising the bar, as well as new clients to take advantage of our growing senior executive search capabilities. Just in the past year, we have recruited CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, and Vice Presidents for companies with revenues of $5 million to $1.5 billion."

Jon Weber, President of American Real Estate Partners (NYSE: ACP), commented, "Finding top talent quickly and efficiently is a high priority for us. We’ve been pleased with the way Teten Executive Recruiting and Accolo combine their talents to save us time and money to hire the best people. Their solution has worked well for several of our companies”

Martin Babinec, CEO of TriNet ( www.TriNet.com ), emphasized, “TriNet’s long association with Accolo has been borne out of a deep faith and confidence in the company’s innovative approach to sourcing and recruiting. The fact that Accolo’s team continues to seek out partners that will expand and deepen its already impressive service delivery is proof that the company won’t rest on its laurels. TriNet is enthusiastic about Accolo’s latest milestone and looks forward to its future successes.”

David Teten, founder of Teten Executive Recruiting, is coauthor of the first business book on these strategies and technologies, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online. He runs a business resource guide and blog about social software and online networks at www.TheVirtualHandshake.com . David also co-writes a monthly column about online networks for www.FastCompany.com, and was recently honored as a "Future HR Leader" by Human Capital magazine for his innovative use of online networks. David is a member of the Advisory Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (www.Womma.org), which is also an Accolo client.

David Teten will continue in his current role as CEO of Nitron Advisors, LLC (www.NitronAdvisors.com ). Nitron Advisors provides hedge funds, venture capitalists, other institutional investors, and law firms with direct insight from a broad network of senior industry experts, located at www.CircleofExperts.com.

About Accolo

Accolo has built proprietary, patented software and processes that automate roughly 80% of the recruiting process. Accolo leverages this toolkit to provide Recruitment Process Outsourcing services, becoming part of a company’s internal recruitment function. Accolo’s unique application of the “art” of recruiting within a highly automated framework, along with a network of over 300,000 past and present candidates, delivers quantifiable improvements in recruiting quality, efficiency and cost. Our clients meet the top performer they will hire in an average of 13 days. The average company spends 15.9% of an employee’s salary on recruiting; Accolo clients spend less than 9%.

Accolo is profitable and revenues more than doubled last year. The company is the HRO World 2005 Recruitment Process Outsourcer of the Year and a founding member of the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (www.RPOAssociation.org). The Company was founded in 2000 and its investors include Vedior (Amsterdam: VDR, www.Vedior.com ) and TriNet ( www.TriNet.com ). Accolo works with such leading customers as JDS Uniphase, Blue Shield of California, Starmine, CMP United Business Media, ValueClick, Verity, and PRNewsWire. For more information, visit www.Accolo.com.

Contact
Diane Hassett
dhassett at accolo.com
1-415-785-7833 x220

David Teten
press at teten.com
1-212-682-6676

This post was written by David Teten, source: Accolo acquires Teten Executive Recruiting

My colleague Scott Lichtman took some detailed notes on the TieCONEast panel last week on Trends in Online Networks and Social Software.

Participants:

ANGELA BIEVER

Angela Biever is Managing Director for the Consumer Internet sector within Intel Capital, Intel’s corporate venturing organization. She assumed this role in early 2006. Angela’s team recently invested in online blogging company SixApart and is interested in new computing models being generated by Web2.0. Prior to this, Angela was General Manager of Intel’s New Business Initiatives (NBI), a center for new business creation that also resides within Intel Capital.

Prior to joining Intel in 1999, Angela was a senior executive at First Data Corporation. She was President of one of its operating subsidiaries and also served on the Company’s Senior Management Committee, a group providing policy and direction for the then $2 billion information and transaction processor. During her tenure at First Data Corporation, Angela held positions as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Company, played a key role in its IPO, and was SVP of Finance and Business Development.

Angela has also held senior management positions at American Express Company and Time Inc, and was a consultant at McKinsey & Co.

Angela has been a member of the Board of Directors of Raymond James Financial since 1997 and is currently Chairman of its Audit Committee. She has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a degree in business from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.

Tim DeMello

Tim is founder, Chairman and CEO of Ziggs, Inc., his fourth start-up venture. In addition, Tim is the founder and creator of iGuess Games LLC. iGuess Games has created the first board game powered by Internet. The game, Favorite 4, will be introduced for Christmas 2006.

Prior to founding Ziggs, Tim founded Streamline.com, one of the pioneering companies in ecommerce in 1993, and took the company public in June of 1999. Prior to Streamline, Tim founded his first start-up company, Replica Corporation, an interactive educational and entertainment company. Tim sold his interest in Replica in 1993.

Tim began his career as a stockbroker in 1981 and was employed by Kidder, Peabody & Co., becoming a Vice President in 1984, and then he joined the investment firm L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin as a Vice President in 1985. He received his bachelor of science degree in Finance from Babson College where he also lettered in baseball and hockey. In addition, Tim started the Babson College rugby team. He has served on Babson’s Board of Trustees.

Tim has made numerous speaking appearances at the MIT Enterprise Forum, Fast Company Magazine and Inc. Magazine conferences, as well as regular speeches on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Boston University, MIT Sloan School, FW Olin Graduate School of Business, Bentley College and his alma mata, Babson College. He has also been featured in stories in Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, USA TODAY and The Wall Street Journal. Tim has been a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards and was recognized as one of Boston Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40. Tim was selected by Inc. Magazine as a top entrepreneur in their “Birthing of Giants” program and his first company was honored with a cover story in the magazine and listed as one of the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies.

He is an active competitor in the sport of triathlon and is an Ironman finisher. He is the father of two children and lives in Boston…where his dream about the day when the Red Sox finally win the World Series came true!

Torsten Jacobi
Torsten Jacobi or ‘TJ’ is a serial entrepreneur and investor with experience in software and media. Torsten currently serves Creative Weblogging Ltd as its CEO and director. Prior to Creative Weblogging, Torsten started SRM company newtron and the local chapter of First Tuesday in Saxony, Germany. TJ also co-founded Euro Venture Partners, a network of pan-European network of business angels.

John Younger

John is President, CEO and Founder, Accolo. For over 16 years, John has successfully identified and incorporated major trends and technologies affecting the recruitment landscape.

In January 2000 John founded Accolo, an innovator in networking-based Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). John’s passion to dramatically improve how people and jobs find each other is rooted in his deep understanding of technology, the recruitment process, and a core belief that everyone deserves courtesy and respect. This idea is central to Accolo’s vision, methods, and communications.

John’s vision for a completely outsourced staffing solution led him to found y/net in January 1996. After a successful launch of y/net, TriNet acquired John and his company in November 1996 where he remained until December 1999. TriNet was one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing companies in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999.

From 1987 to 1994, John was the Vice President of Human Resources for Bank of America where he led technical recruitment for an organization of 16,000 people.

John has successfully identified, incorporated and advanced recruitment solutions for over 16 years. He was Resumix user #2 in 1988 and established the first Vendor on Premises for both Bank of America and Olsten Corporation in 1992. He was an early adopter of Internet recruiting with the On-Line Career Center (to later become Monster) in 1993, and was Hire.com user #4 while running his Venture Talent recruitment Agency in 1998.

John earned a degree from Notre Dame in Mathematics and Computer Science and is a former member of the United States National (Olympic) Rowing Team.

David Teten

Biography…

Scott Lichtman’s Notes

Biever: Intel Capital largest investor in IT startups in the worldup. 100 investment professionals. Portfolio of 300 companies. Recently decided to focus on consumer internet, but have touched on it in the past. Invested in Six-Apart.

Even Web 1.0, e.g eBay, was community-based, based on common interests or objectives. Now, you’re seeing changing social customs. People spend more time on the internet than on broadcast TV.

Wonders about: looking on MySpace and see people with “800,000 friends.” What business model will allow them to sustain themselves. Ads, transactions are possible, subscription/premium type services. These will be increasingly targeted.

John Younger:
First, i’m happy to announce the acquisition by Accolo of Teten Executive Recruiting. (Editor: Details coming shortly on that topic.)

Recruitment Process Outsourcer – become your company’s internal recruiting function.
Working the same problem for 19 years – finding the perfect person for a job, eliminating all obstacles between hirer and the best candidate.

Four trends:
Social networking. Accolo’s Career Network is over 300,000 people.
Business Process Outsourcing – reruiting is the fastest growing segment
Software as a service
Candidate Scarcity – over 9,000 documented personal referrals

The productive of a recruiter’s pace of placing someone hasn’t changed since 1963.

Top 3 reasons candidates and members love accolo:
Real jobs verified directly with the hiring manager
Respect, confidentiality and follow-up
Easy for the two people who matter

94% of people who apply for jobs never hear back from anyone, ever.

Uses Google paradigm for ease of use. Any firm that can put only two buttons on the interface – ’search’ and ‘I’m feeling lucky’ – is a genius.

Their cost comes in routinely under 9% of first year compensation, sometimes under 4-5%, vs. 20-30% for the average recruiter.

Social Networking implies public visibility. If Metcalfe’s law means the value of a network is proprtional to the square of the number of users of the system, what does that do to your personal and corporate risk equation?

DeMello:

There will be a separation of personal and business social networks online. Some people are attempting to post multiple personalities, but they are all searchable.

Younger people don’t realize the consequences of posting semi-scandalous information and images about themselves on personal sites.
Story: they had interns working last summer for them. DeMello heard one intern hadn’t been working as hard. He was referred to MySpace/Facebook. Intern actually posted on MySpace where he said he spends the day screwing around at work. Intern said “I guess this is the part where I leave.” => Young people can be screened via FaceBook.

Ziggs allows people to post their own identity for free. Your professional identity on the web can be consciously framed. This is a “flight to quality.” Where you post your identify affects people’s perception of you.

57m times a day proper names will be searched on the internet.

Growing a business like this is about the first 1,000 profiles. The firms need to vet the first 1,000 profiles, which sets the guideposts for what other people post.

Torsten Jacobi– Creative Weblogging:

They hire some of the most influential and well-read bloggers on specialty topics.
They also work with more than 1500 citizen reporters. They contribute additional stories while building their reputation.

Teten: number one reason people come to TIECon East is for networking. Do online networks make face to face networking less important?

Tim doesn’t think online networks doesn’t weaken the need for in-person. It’s an “add” rather than a replacement.

John – has anyone read Bowling Alone? Bowling fills a social need. Online connectivity is replacing the lack of in-person connectivity.

Angela – complexity of the world we live in requires more tools. More cross-border deals, multi-party solutions. Online tools help manage this complexity.

Teten: Torsten is getting a lot of content from citizen reporters. How do you screen their content for validity/liability (eg stock recommendations, spam)?

Torsten – Our filtering mechanism is based on keywords, clicks and track record. Finds out what are the most interesting stories for the community. We also use this filters on spam and useless, mundane contributions.

Teten: Story: A friend “John” sent in for a job, the letter said check out my web site. Some readers thought this was self-aggrandizing to have your own web site.

Tim: People are getting smarter about this trend. People will think about how they want to be represented online. Years ago, people would buy the johndoe.com website and build their own. Now people want a template to populate content but not worry about layout or hosting. There will still be a creative flair but the effort and extremes will be tailed back.

Teten: John, how do you overcome barriers to sale in an outsourced business?
John – not easily. Any disruptive outsourcing play has to be sold at high enough level in the business to overcome the lower-level managers (HR) who want things to remain the same. They encounter
-Ignorance at manager level
-Complacency - at sourcing manager who things an applicant tracking system bandaid will solve the whole problem.
-Fear – recruiter will blanch at the metrics that Accolo can produce.

They focus on companies from 300 to 1,000 employees. The problem Accolo solves includes eliminating time to hire multiple recruiting agencies. The business process gets better after the first hiring – this is better than just getting one good hire.

Teten – How can people best use your service?

Torsten – people find good blogs by entering a normal keyword in google and add the word “blog”. There are some blog search engines like Technorati, AskJeeves has come up with a good one, Google and Yahoo have come up with their own. They are “good enough.” His best tool is to evaluate how many google backlinks go into a blog. He checks AskJeeves.com and technorati.com (check spelling).

DeMello: Ziggs vs. LinkedIn – both free. LinkedIn is closed, Ziggs is open, we don’t gate around you. Ziggs is Pagerank 6-7 in google. Search engines come to Ziggs looking for profiles on people. If you can post a profile that makes sense for free, it makes sense. They have 3-4m profiles. All words in a profile are saved because they may be relevant by search engines. He believes there will be 3-4 major professional networks online.

Younger: Accolo treats your informationally as confidentially as a credit card company if not better. They want to build career-long relationships. Some people take a fulltime job and stay four years, or a contract job and also stay for four years. It’s simple to get started – 90 seconds – then Accolo will reach out to you 1-2x per year about jobs

Q&A

What are trends for consumer Internet and convergence with education?

Biever: recalls interest in this space 5 years ago. Hasn’t focused on this recently but hears there are things going on.

Julian Borne from (PoxPro). Good article on internet/social networks going mobile. With wireless/proximity social networking, it brings people face to face when they’re nearby each other. What’s progress in this space?

Torsten – are people with online social networks really looking for face to face interaction? Online allows for quick, informal interactions. You only go forward if you really want to. Torsten is already delivering their content on cell phone screens. Bandwidth issues (including typing on phones) makes rich interaction hard. He expects 50% of relevant content on the Internet to be on mobile phones in a few years.

Teten: The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Look at countries that are heavily wireless. And kids in high school today will take their tools to the corporate world.

Younger – personal view on the mobile side. The form factor is too small for many things. But as a business person, it can solve many problems. What if Plaxo could (link with the database of people at this event) and tell me who I should be meeting.

This post was written by David Teten, source: TieCON East: Trends in Online Networks and Social Software

The Washington Post had an interesting article last week, Cleaning Up the Board, about how Tribe.net and other sites are cleaning up sexually-oriented content on their sites in order to appease advertisers and investors.

While Tribe started as a more “open” site, last December they implemented a new, strictier Terms of Service and began policing profiles more closely (and many would say inconsistently). This prompted some of the long-time members to start their own open-source, unrestricted (well, no child porn, no stalking, etc.) site, Free-Association.net.

“Our advertisers and our investors aren’t particularly happy with the adult content there,” said Darian Patchin, spokesman for Tribe Networks Inc., which runs the Web site. “We needed to do something that enables us to be a successful business and that our investors are okay with.”

In the I-told-you-so category, when we first profiled Tribe more than two years ago, we wrote:

Tribe’s biggest challenge is in creating effective and appropriate boundaries for business networking. On the one hand, they obviously want to encourage and support business networking, as demonstrated by the substantial professional profile section.

On the other hand, while it is possible to designate profiles and tribes as mature content, many that probably should be designated as such are not. Profanity and sexuality are not at all uncommon, even in seemingly unlikely places, and “trolling” (posting deliberately irrelevant and/or inflammatory message) is far more common here than on other business-oriented networks. One member, in response to a serious business question on the Bloggers tribe, responded to the poster with, “You, sir, resemble a cream puff.”

This may be a non-issue for the predominantly young male tech-savvy Californians, but “it won’t play in Poughkeepsie,” as the saying goes.

MySpace went through a similar cleanup recently, again for the wrong reason.

I’m glad there are sites like Free-Association.net around, and I wish they didn’t feel like they needed to go outside the U.S. for hosting. Censorship is bad. On the other hand, for most people, explicit photos and pictures don’t mix well with business (unless that is their business). This shouldn’t have taken 2-3 years to figure out.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Cleaning Up the Board

aSmallWorld (profiled here) just raised a confidential sum from the Weinstein Company, the production business started by Bob and Harvey Weinstein after they left Miramax.

Harvey Weinstein said, “I think we’ll become very successful with one million people,” he said, “but we have to find the right one million.”

more…

This post was written by David Teten, source: aSmallWorld takes Outside Investor

MySpace is now offering downloadable episodes of the Fox show 24 for $1.99 per episode. I was interviewed by Jennifer LeClair for E-Commerce Times. This is a pretty intriguing mash-up of social networking and traditional media. I applaud them for experimenting with it — someone has to, and this is easy for them to do — no big strategic alliances and joint ventures to work out — just do it.

One of the questions Jennifer asked me was whether MySpace is losing any of its “cool” factor because of this and other recent changes. That’s been a concern since their acquisition by News Corp. But here’s my answer:

“Big shifts can always happen, but MySpace members are pretty invested in the brand, with bulletins, friends lists that hold thousands of people, blogs and groups,” Allen told the E-Commerce Times. “MySpace would have to really make a huge error to lose any more than a small handful of members.”

But I am a bit skeptical. Doesn’t everyone have a DVR or VCR? And do people really want to watch full-length episodes on a mini-screen?

“There is a lot of potential here for MySpace,” said Allen. “I think it will grow as more consumers have portable video players. Right now, people would still rather watch ‘24′ on their televisions.”

In my conversation with Jennifer, I speculated as to Fox/MySpace’s reason for doing this, and it turned out I hate the nail on the head:

Beyond branding, MySpace.com’s decision to sell episodes of “24″ opens the door for the company to morph itself from a social platform only to a content delivery channel, Levinsohn [president of Fox Interactive Media] mentioned. It may be a long-term play, though.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: MySpace Offering Episodes of 24

Knowledge @ Wharton reports on: MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow?:

Popular social network sites, including MySpace and Facebook, are changing the human fabric of the Internet and have the potential to pay off big for investors, but — given their youthful user base — they are unusually vulnerable to the next new fad. As quickly as users flock to one trendy Internet site, they can just as quickly move on to another with no advance warning, according to Wharton faculty and Internet analysts, who offer some ideas on how these new sites can both increase user loyalty and generate revenues.

This post was written by David Teten, source: MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow?

I was discussing Phil Wolff’s comments on
social software in recruiting with John Younger, CEO of Accolo. He wrote:

What I find interesting in the intersection of social networks and jobs is that there is a third party that seems to be completely missed. Specifically, the party that pays the bills – the companies.

At the job level the equation gets easier. Use the network for find the right person for the job. Unfortunately, these networks keep on rolling even after the job is filled, and the hired candidate keeps on networking by definition. Two gaping holes:
+ Free-form networking (liked LinkedIn) actually encourages working around the company approved process, and
+ employees could be “networked” out of their new job in a relatively short period.

The solutions that “giveth and taketh away” will be fired in short order once the companies figure it out, which is a material obstacle to the theories of social networking and recruiting.

Responding to John’s point: I’ve heard through the grapevine that both Linkedin and OpenBC have been blocked at certain companies, for the same reason that many companies won’t let their employees surf Monster/HotJobs/Careerbuilder on company time.

Of course, the power of LinkedIn, OpenBC, and like companies is that they provide a motivation for people to maintain their public professional profile on an ongoing basis. By contrast, Monster/HotJobs/Careerbuilder have a relationship of “punctuated equilibrium”: a job-seeker uses them heavily for 2 months, and then doesn’t visit the site for 4 years until they start looking for a new job again.

The average American has been employed at his/her job for only 4.0 years. You cannot rely on your employer’s network or your father’s network; you have to build your own flexible, lifetime community to land your next job. When you’re currently employed, you’re only between job searches.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Social Software and Executive Recruiting

E-Commerce Times reports that:

In response to advertising industry concerns over security, MySpace.com has removed 200,000 “objectionable” profiles from its social network. The site erased profiles containing risque or hate speech content.

I’m quoted in the article, and I won’t repeat it all here, but let me expand on it…

This action by MySpace is a reaction to comments like this one (from Major Marketers Avoid MySpace):

Of six panelists representing major advertisers and ad agencies, not a single one advertised with MySpace or other social networking sites. Reasons for avoiding MySpace include concern about its potential for criminal use, especially given recent well-publicized reports about sexual predators searching for victims on the site, as well as fears that user-generated content–including pictures and text with sexual overtones–will be offensive.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in that kind of environment,” said David Cohen, executive vice president for Universal McCann Interactive, with a client roster including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Wendy’s International, and Sony Electronics. “You only have to look around for five or 10 minutes to find something offensive.”

They make a big deal of the fact that they found six people representing major brands that don’t advertise on MySpace. So what?!? I bet you could easily find six that don’t advertise in Playboy. or even Maxim for that matter. Or Sports Illustrated. Or, or or…

How about all the major brands that DO advertise there? Ironically, some of the companies mentioned above do advertise on MySpace as a result of syndicated ad networks.
- Microsoft (should’ve grabbed a screenshot - can’t seem to get it now, but I did before)
- Sony (Sony/BMG/Columbia artists are all over MySpace)
- Nike
- Panasonic
- Radio Shack
- Sprint
- AT&T
- E-Trade
- Verizon
- Cingular
- Nextel
- Energizer batteries
- Practically every pop/rock music label on the planet

It doesn’t seem that MySpace is having a hard time filling their ad inventory with major brands!

I agree that it’s pretty astounding that all six panelists don’t advertise there. But I think it’s astounding because they actually managed to find six advertising “experts” who feel that way. They’re obviously (see above) not representative of what major brands are actually doing. You want to see what’s really going on, “follow the money”. Just how “wholesome” do you need your cell phone provider to be, anyway?

I have no doubt that there were 200,000+ profiles on MySpace that violated their Terms of Use, which among other things, prohibit any content that:

1. is patently offensive and promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual;
…
4. contains nudity, violence, or offensive subject matter;

MySpace is well within their rights to delete these profiles. In fact, they should have been deleted a long time ago. It should have been no big deal - part of their ongoing business practices - rather than a reaction to advertiser concerns. Then they could have just quietly told advertisers that they were being more aggressive about enforcing their existing policies. Instead, by making a big deal of it, they have prompted negative reaction from users and even from industry analysts.

I don’t expect to see MySpace users leaving in droves (yet), but it just adds to the us-vs.-them mentality that has been growing ever since MySpace was bought by News Corp. And it was totally unnecessary. This shouldn’t have been a big deal - making it one was a big mistake.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: MyMistake - MySpace Does the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired!

Why multiplayer games may be the best kind of job training.
By John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas

In late 2004, Stephen Gillett was in the running for a choice job at Yahoo! - a senior management position in engineering. He was a strong contender. Gillett had been responsible for CNET’s backend, and he had helped launch a number of successful startups. But he had an additional qualification his prospective employer wasn’t aware of, one that gave him a decisive edge: He was one of the top guild masters in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft.

more….

This post was written by David Teten, source: You Play World of Warcraft? Youre Hired!

Podcast: What Makes an Online Community Tick? Ask Craigslist, Yahoo and Pheedo

“Online communities have become not just a major social force, but a significant driver of business activity both online and offline. Facilitating, nurturing and benefiting from those communities, however, is not a simple task. To explore what makes these communities tick, Kevin Werbach, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, spoke with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com, Julie Herendeen, vice president of Network Products at Yahoo, and William Flitter, CEO of Pheedo. “

Via: Knowledge @ Wharton

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1433.cfm

This post was written by David Teten (admin), source: Podcast: What Makes an Online Community Tick? Ask Craigslist, Yahoo and Pheedo

A

This post was written by David Teten, source: Social Networking Platforms: From Friendster to Myspace and Beyond

A

This post was written by David Teten (admin), source: Web 2.0: Wave of the Future

I think that one of the most obvious applications of the wiki model is in the legal space, and no surprise, it’s been launched: wiki-law.org . I think that this site has the potential to significantly change the practice of law. My motivation and likelihood to contribute to this site is far higher than it is to contribute to Wikipedia. Like many businesspeople, I already have a library of template contracts; why not share them? (And I’m not even a lawyer.)

I held an email interview with Pangea3’s Vice President of Litigation & Research, Dan Savitt, about the site. (Dan is a recovering litigator.)

Teten: What other online legal resources do you consider comparable or competitors to wiki-law.org?

Savitt: FindLaw is a common and widely used resource for a broad array of areas. But it isn’t always well-maintained, with broken links and such and it isn’t always intuitively organized.

My favorite free legal service, albeit not entirely open source, is the Legal Information Institute’s site (run by Cornell Law School). I know that LII is developing an open source legal encyclopedia but is extending invitations to only its members. Law.com is a good resource for legal news.

Teten: When A hires B to do legal work for him, who owns the text of the resulting contract? Does A have unlimited rights to post that text on a wiki, share it with friends, etc.?

Savitt: I’m not sure but the terms of the engagement would likely govern, with the default being that the client has unlimited rights to do what he wishes with the work so long as the attorney did not reserve rights in it. Generally speaking, the attorney would not retain any property rights in the legal content of the document– because the law isn’t copyrightable — although the attorney could retain a property interest in the format of the contract if the form is unique and the attorney takes steps to protect his interest by imprinting the form with a copyright notice and a reservation of rights.

For example, Blumberg is the dominant publisher of legal forms. Its forms are copyrighted. And Blumberg has 10 different forms of subpoenas for 10 different situations. Now, Blumberg cannot copyright subpoenas in general. Anyone can produce one, and Blumberg has no right to claim that it has a property right in all subpoenas because it contains the same language as its subpoenas. But it can have a copyright in the look of its subpoenas because it originated the look of its subpoena and the look was unique and not already in the public domain.

Another example is the cases that you pull down from Westlaw or Lexis. You will note that those cases have copyrights too — but the copyrights are limited to the headnotes and Westlaw’s or Lexis’s added content, like page cites or other editorial additions.

Then there is the issue of intent/fair use, etc. If you go onto thesmokinggun.com or findlaw, you will find many examples of copyrighted materials, contracts, subpoenas, etc. But these sites aren’t violating copyrights, because the documents were introduced into the public domain; the senders had no expectation that the documents would be kept private; the documents are not unique or may not have copyrightable materials; and the posting party put the docs online for newsworthy purposes/ for the public benefit.

But as the Supreme Court’s decision in MGM v. Grokster last summer emphasized, a poster may be held liable for copyright infringement if it posts copyrighted material on-line with the intent to encourage users to infringe the copyrights even if the main thrust of the site is for lawful purposes. "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

So if you are served with a subpoena on a Blumberg form, and you then post that form on-line with intent that people should use/copy the form for their own subpoenas (or otherwise know that people will use it for infringing purposes), then the poster may be liable for copyright infringement even if there is a substantial non-infringing use of the product/website.

Teten: In many cases, there is no formal term of engagement between a client and counsel. Client just says, please help me analyze/draft X, and the counsel does that. If there’s no formal documentation of ownership between the two parties, what should we assume are the ownership rights in a given contract?

Savitt: First off, New York — where I’m admitted — requires attorneys to enter into a formal written engagement agreements with their clients before beginning any legal work, so your question deals with a situation that isn’t or at least shouldn’t occur as often as you suggest. It’s just good practice, moreover, for an attorney to have an agreement in place that clearly defines the terms of the engagement, including who owns the resulting product.

Nevertheless, if, as you suggest, there is no agreement or the engagement letter is silent on who owns the resulting work product then, as I mentioned before, I would guess that once the attorney delivered the product to the client, the client then has full ownership rights in the product — be it a contract, complaint, letter or memo — and can do whatever he pleased with it so long as his use is lawful. There are at least a couple of caveats: such as, (i) the creation and delivery of a legal document by an attorney generally does not destroy any pre-existing third party property rights that are incorporated in the delivered product (like my Blumberg example) and (ii) that hypothetically the governing State’s law could suggest otherwise. That being said, I’ve never heard of a case where an attorney demanded that a client return all copies of a contract or memo he drafted because the client’s use purported violated a common law property rights. (The issue of a retaining lien is different and goes simply to enforcing the bargain between the attorney and client.)

Teten: Assuming wiki-law is successful, which is a reasonable assumption given the astonishing popularity of wikipedia.com, how will it impact the legal profession? In particular, how will it impact the "bread-and-butter" legal work that makes up a high percentage of the typical law firm’s revenues?

Savitt: I don’t see very much of a financial impact. If anything, it will detract business from other form providers. That’s because the beauty of law is that it is broad enough to cover new situations, and new situations rise up every new day. What is good for A yesterday may not be what B needs tomorrow, even though B believes that his situation is no different than A’s. How do you ultimately know that A’s form is good? It gets tested; modified and improved; and tailored. Ultimately, forms are only as good as the persons who use them.

Teten: Which is exactly the point of the wiki!

Savitt: True, but there is more to the law than cases, statutes and contracts. In the end, those are only tools. How to use those tools effectively to carry out your legal and business concerns? Well that’s the rub. And it’s awfully close to falling under the scope of practice of law statutes, which are typically so broad that they can capture whatever conduct the state regulators want them to.

Just ask the folks at We the People and look at wiki-law.org’s own disclaimers. We the People is one of several businesses that specializes in selling self-help legal “document preparation” service to non-lawyers using paraprofessionals. (I remember seeing in a couple of unauthorized practice of law regulatory actions that they have offered reference attorneys, who offer suggestions but do not create an attorney-client relationship with the consumers — to their customers as well.) Their target audience is small businesses and consumers who can’t afford to or don’t want to pay an attorney for what they perceive as relatively simple legal tasks.

In essence, the site says use this great resource – but caveat emptor and don’t blame me if the information is wrong. Ultimately, the reader has to decide for himself if he can rely on the information he finds on wiki-law.org. Is it is dependable? Is it complete? Is it up to date? How is someone supposed to know the answer except through professional expertise, intuition or blind faith? Lawyers know that the law doesn’t always work intuitively. I’m not suggesting that only lawyers can make that determination but odds are they will, as a group, be much better prepared than non-lawyers. Wiki-law could be very useful in educating non-lawyers about the law, but it cannot teach the ability to think critically about an issue that is beaten into every attorney beginning with his first year in law school.

Where I do see a tremendous opportunity is for attorneys to take advantage of the resource. I know that there are already dozens of web-based communities where practitioners of similar ilk compare notes and exchange ideas. In other words, the value I see in the site is as a legal resource, whose value will rise or fall depending on the reliability of the contributors, their content, and the strength of the site’s editorial guidelines. It may even work itself into legal opinions once it gains acceptance. I could see wiki-law as the ultimate living legal constitution that aggregates legal discussion, commentary and knowledge. The possibilities are really interesting. But all it takes is one wrong answer and the resource’s credibility could be mortally wounded – causing attorneys and their clients to stay away. Ultimately, the key will be in the content providers and their editorial good senses.

Dan continued….
Interestingly, our interview highlights one of my concerns about of wiki-law in that my answers reflect only my elementary largely uneducated understanding of copyright law as clouded by my experience and understanding of property law in general – “Savitt on Copyright”, if you will. But I am not an expert on copyright law and I haven’t reviewed any of the caselaw and secondary sources that are required to give a proper understanding of some of the issues (despite that I included a quote from a recent Supreme Court opinion that I happen to have on my laptop last night.) In other words, I learned long ago as a junior associate that you wouldn’t want to buy this version of Savitt on Copyright. So, I just want to clarify that that my response is more speculation than legal knowledge

That being said, I am sure that lawyers logging into wiki-law could annotate and properly give my responses the critical eye it needs and provide a more thorough response. But that leads to the issue of specific legal advice and independently rendering it to the public (something which we can’t do here at Pangea3). Would the site allow people to pose legal questions and then have anyone — lawyers or laymen — to offer advice tailored to those suggestions?

Teten: I don’t think that’s their current model, but that’s a logical service to offer. Ingenio.com and similar sites already offer this sort of access.

Savitt: The State Bar regulators wouldn’t be too happy about that and might see wiki-law or its users as aiding and abetting the unauthorized practice of law, which regulators consider just as bad as engaging in the activity itself.

And then there is the issue of liability for a wrong answer — could the responder/poster be held liable for malpractice or under an unauthorized practice of law? Why not? A court could find that the disclaimer was boilerplate and not want to enforce it. Then again, the (stated) purpose of unauthorized practice of law statutes/prohibitions is consumer protection — and not job protection. Regulators who see it as their duty to protect the public from charlatans posing as legal experts may ultimately see that the public would be adequately protected. 30 years ago, paralegals in a law office were a rarity, and now they are an integral part of any decent sized functioning law office taking on tasks that don’t require the lawyer’s full legal acumen. 15 years ago, contract attorneys doing document reviews were a rarity.

But now even the bankruptcy courts, with their strict fee sharing prohibitions, recognize that they are also an integral part of controlling costs in any decent sized litigation. And in the past few years, the ABA has promulgated amendments to its Model Rules to provide safe harbors for working with foreign attorneys and those amendments have been adopted in one form or the other by many States.

One additional thought, as legal costs have skyrocketed, and there seems to be no corresponding increase in the caliber of legal services to match the increases, the public, both businesses and consumers, are looking for more value: consistent high-quality service, reasonable price, and efficiency from their legal service providers. And they are expanding their sources for that value, which in part is driving Pangea3’s business (although we don’t independently provide legal services to the public): litigation consultants, legal technology providers, paraprofessional legal document preparation service providers and other alternative legal service providers. Wiki-law may fit in there but if and when wiki-law turns from a resource into a provider, well, then my paternal unauthorized practice of law concerns get tripped again.

In the end, intriguing legal issues. I’m having flashbacks to the bar exam as I type this.

Regardless, the site — like Pangea3 — is a natural progression in how law continues to advance and adapt to the world around it, albeit kicking and screaming.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Teten: Thank you! The medical and legal industries have both traditionally been marked (or marred) by a notable resistance to take full advantage of technology. For example, the healthcare industry spends a much lower percentage of revenues on IT than many other service industries. I look forward to wiki-law, Pangea3, and other attacks on the traditional model upending the traditional apple cart.

This post was written by David Teten (admin), source: New Wiki for Lawyers and Consumers of Legal Services

I really had a chance to have lunch with Torsten Jacobi, and followed up with an email interview. Torsten is CEO of Creative Weblogging , one of the biggest blog networks out there. The most innovative part of their model is Creative Reporter, so I focused my interview on that topic.

Creative Reporter has a fully buzzword-compliant business model: it is a Web 2.0 citizen media social software project which draws on the wisdom of crowds in the long tail at the edges of the network, drawing on wiki and blog business models. It’s even mobile-enabled (if your phone is set up to moblog.)

Or in plain English, Creative Weblogging is saving money on content creation by paying bloggers to create content for them. Of course, they’re not the only ones who are doing that or thinking of doing that: see for example Newsvine, which gives itself room in its user agreement to pay people (profiled by Stowe Boyd here). Nitron Advisors pays contributors for their unwritten content. However, alwayson-network.com, and the blogosphere in general, pay people for quality content in visibility and prestige, not direct cash.

Q: What is Creative Reporter?

Creative Reporter is a tool that integrates submissions by readers and guest reporters (citizen reporters) into the 50+ network of media blog that Creative Weblogging features. Anyone can submit a comment or brief news story, and potentially earn money for that submission.

Q: What other ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ blog submissions systems do you look to as models?

A: Creative Reporter is a unique model as a part of a blog network. It bridges the gap between readers and contributing bloggers. No other blog network allows this form of major interaction.

There are, however, solely user-made online magazines such as ohmymews.com or wikipedia. Both have reached a critical mass (at least in their home market) to provide quality journalism without journalists.

Q: First, let me get some metrics. How many submissions do you get per month?

A: We get around 250 submissions per month. We have right now nearly 650 registered Creative Reporters. Keep in mind Creative Reporter was just launched in September 2005.

Q: What percentage of submitted articles is published?

A: More than 30% of submissions get published. Each editor has its own reasons why he rejects a submission. Some reporters get 100% published; some only 10% - so there is a wide range.

Q: How much are you paying out per month?

A: Sorry, we do not disclose these numbers.

Q: How many, if any, of your major contributors have evolved into regular bloggers?

Several Reporters liked writing with us so much that they became regular

bloggers:

- Dorri Williams (http://www.wiredhome-weblog.com)

- Irene Nam (http://www.lesboutchous.com)

- Wolfgang Mueller (http://www.cio-weblog.de)

Q: What patterns, if any do you notice in the nature of the Creative Reporters’ suggestions, vs. your regular bloggers’ postings?

A: Creative Reporters surely have sometimes a hard time to adapt to a particular writing style predominant on some sites. Also Creative Reporters often focus more on original content and less on quoting news sources. Very often the posts do show a lot of insight a person possesses about a particular issue.

Q: Given that probably relatively few of your contributors are making money on their submissions, they’re much more likely to be motivated by Search Engine Optimization and ego than by the money you pay. So how do you control for quality and for manipulation of your blog? To what extent do you vet the individual contributors?

A: Payments is clearly a secondary factor for most of our contributors. We usually add two to three lines with information about each reporter after each end of the article. Each submission is reviewed and, if necessary, edited by our bloggers. This way we can control the quality of our sites easily.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Interview with Torsten Jacobi, CEO, Creative Weblogging