Social Media & Entrepreneurship

Course blog for Columbia Business School's 'Social Media and Entrepreneurship' Spring 2011.

[masonsexton-blog]

What kind of a bubble is this?

[socialstartup]

masonsexton:

Follow Mason Sexton @MasonSpeed

Over the past few months there has been a lot of discussion in tech circles about the possibility of whether we are in another tech bubble. Part of the rationale for this assertion stems from a few ominous indicators that proponents of said Bubble tend perpetuate: 1) The fact that the average series A valuation has crept over $4 million 2) That mega rounds of financing are becoming routine ($200 million+) 3) That there are multiple tech companies that are considering filing for an IPO in the coming months. 4) More early stage financings are being done without  viable product or prototype.

Sure, some of those indicators may be giving certain individuals flashbacks to the late 90’s but there are several major differences with these companies. The fact that series A valuations have crept above $4 million on average should be of marginal concern. In fact, there is no real precedent delineating that this average should be above or below a certain number. While not indicative of a bubble, it may be a sign that the competition for Series A funding is increasing among VC’s. This is a good thing for entrepreneurs. VC’s? Not so much. The second issue is also misleading given that the majority of companies that have received these mega rounds of financing are growing revenues and profits monthly, with viable business models beneath them. This is far from the “pie in the sky” business models days common in the last cycle. The fact that multiple companies are considering filing for an IPO (Facebook, Groupon, Zynga) should also not be alarming for some of the same reasons made in the last point. These are real companies with incredible cash flow generation potential. These are exactly the kinds of companies that should be going public in the web based economy.

But point 4 is the only one that gives me real pause. The “getting funded without an actual product” model prevalent in the last bubble was certainly a big part of the problem. We have all heard the legendary stories of would-be entrepreneurs walking into a VC meeting with only a pitch-book, yet would walk out with $20 million in funding. It’s one thing to value something or someone on potential. With these early stage companies, that is the only rational way to do it. But it’s quite another thing to assign excessive valuations to companies that have not created even a hint of value or a successful product (Color anyone?). I believe this is where the tech industry went awry last time and it concerns me that we seem to be headed down a similar path. There is no doubt that the market is starting to heat up…a really exciting development for those who work in this industry and have struggled through some difficult times over the years. And one has to expect a certain degree of mania with any up-cycle. But I would like to think that some lessons were learned from the last bubble, that capital will be reserved for only the best ideas that have a chance to scale into successful web properties. Over the long term that is good for VC’s, LP’s, and most of all, entrepreneurs.  

[masonsexton-blog]

[socialstartup]

masonsexton:

How Tweetdeck became the belle of the ball?

Follow Mason Sexton @MasonSpeed

Ever since Jack Dorsey came to our class last month I have been thinking about twitter’s growth trajectory since their inception, as very few web properties have grown as quickly or gone as “viral”.  Integral to this growth was their decision to open up their API in the early days of the service, allowing third party developers from around the world to build innovative (better?) applications/clients on top of twitter’s fast growing platform. The strategy seemed pure genius. By allowing the rise of multiple third party twitter applications, twitter successfully extended their reach and created an entire ecosystem of applications that subsisted on the twitter platform. This also allowed the management team to focus on efficiently scaling the property rather than worrying about UI/UX tweaks. Those issues were now being solved by an army of developers who were more than happy to leverage twitter’s widespread adoption.

 So how could any of this be a bad thing? It wasn’t… so long as no one twitter “client” wielded too much power. Even just a few months ago that seemed highly unlikely as twitter was the gatekeeper that held all the leverage. As explained in this Techcrunch article (http://bit.ly/h3YYCv), that possibility has now become a reality, as Tweetdeck has become the most popular twitter client with over 11% of twitter’s active user base (and 20% of total users). That fact in and of itself should not be alarming to twitter but these details should be: 1) Tweetdeck controls the most active base of twitter users 2) They plan to run their own ads on their network. As Mike Butcher references in the article, advertising follows an 80/20 rule; 80% of the revenue is made from 20% of the audience. So if twitter were to lose control of 20% of their most active users, it may cost them 80% of potential future revenues. Wow.

 So what can the do? The simple thing is to just buy Tweetdeck outright, giving them control over these power users. That possibility is now complicated by the fact that Tweetdeck has been in talks with UberMedia about a possible acquisition. The price has been rumored to be in the $50 million range, but could end up costing much more. So now twitter has a decision to make. Do they pay up for Tweetdeck, ensuring they maintain control over their most active users or do they call Tweetdeck’s bluff and focus their strategy on restricting parts of their API, possibly cutting off Tweetdeck as a partner if they decide to go rogue. My sense is that twitter will bite the bullet and acquire them. If not, I still feel some kind of common ground will be reached. But this raises some really interesting questions concerning guidelines around API’s. If this situation does become contentious, I would imagine the terms of service for API’s will become much more stringent for some of the larger web properties. I can’t imagine that will be conducive to future third party developer innovation. 

[chasingiam-blog-blog]

Perfectionism & Entrepreneurship

[socialstartup]

chasingiam:

I used to think that being a perfectionist was great. Until I decided to start my own business. I wish I could say I have mastered the art of letting go and unleashing the creativity within but my journey is still being written. I’m excited to see how the story goes…

A Brief History For as long as I can remember, I have always been a perfectionist. Writing this sentence alone took me at least ten tries and five minutes because the alternatives either didn’t look right, feel right or were too wordy.

Call it nature, nurture,… who knows? Growing up as a 2nd generation Korean-American, my parents raised me to believe that grades and performance were everything. The NYC school system did little to suggest otherwise, as standardized tests were the basis for getting into the top specialized high schools and, while college applications emphasized the importance of well-roundedness, there were certainly ways to work around that. As such, perfectionism felt right and seemed to deliver good results (national math championships, the best high schools, universities and graduate schools). 

Post-college, I found the professional world to be equally results-oriented. Performance reviews were the basis for raises, promotions. As an engineer, I was trained to analyze and optimize everything. I was doing well at work, making a good living and earning the respect of my peers.

BUT, there was another side to all of this… As a child, I loved to draw and create. In elementary school I doodled constantly, which gradually progressed to sketching, building and even computer programming in high school. I also loved music. I played the violin but quickly realized that I was less interested in classical and more interested in improvisation and jazz. I bought myself an electric violin and began to play with a band and was having tons of fun. But all of this was a hobby. People didn’t get paid to have fun, did they? Or at least not enough to make a living?

Since high school, I always knew I wanted to start my own business someday. My father was an entrepreneur and I’d seen him pursue the things he loved with great fulfillment and reward. I talked to people who were older than me, that had been “stuck” in the corporate world for their entire life, and felt I would never be happy working for “the man”. I needed to build something that could inspire people and make the world a better place.

So what happened? Perfectionism. The very thing I had seen serve me so well all my life became my greatest obstacle. Fear of failure, need for control, over preparation, analysis paralysis all prevented me from moving forward with my master plan to create, build, inspire. I was constantly thinking about ideas but too scared to execute on them. There was always something else I needed to learn, some other experience I had to gain, or cog that needed to be in place.

The Road to Entrepreneurship About two years ago, I decided enough was enough. I had talked about going to business school (still a risk averse move but one in the right direction) for long enough and had seen enough of the ideas in my “idea book” get implemented by people who weren’t afraid to fall on their face for what they were passionate about.

Since then, I’ve made it my mission to embrace the following two tenets through daily repetition and practice:

Letting Go As a perfectionist it’s difficult to let go (of control, details, etc.). However, as an entrepreneur you often find yourself pulled in a million directions at once. As life gets busier, perfectionism does not scale well and if you don’t learn to let go, you will self destruct. My daily practice of this ranges from setting time limits for things I am working on to delegating out work among a learning team.

Caveat. I believe there is such a thing as letting go without abandoning the principle of excellence. I am still trying to find that balance. :)

Failing Fast In my household, failure was not an option. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I had a “Tiger Mom.” However, academics, i.e. grades, were taken very seriously. As a result, I was raised to believe that failure was something to be ashamed of. Lately, I have made it my personal goal to embrace failure and dive headfirst into challenges that are much bigger than myself and my current abilities. It’s been terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

Lastly, I’ve tried to take it back to where it all began. My childhood. I am blessed to have two amazing children who inspire and teach me every day what it means to recapture wonder and to dream that anything is possible. They remind me of the raw power of imagination and reckless pursuit of the things that matter most.

I’ll stop here because Saurabh is next to me telling me that this blog post defeats the purpose of tumblr which is all about “more than a tweet, but less than a blog.”

To this, I say… If anything I said above is true, then rules are meant to be broken (sometimes) and we shouldn’t feel so confined by what other people say. Now let’s all go out and make stuff happen.

[babypoguer-blog]

The Greatest Idea Ever

[socialstartup]

babypoguer:

Guest Post by Fernando Ng. Follow him at @Fernandokng

I was stuck with my sister at the pediatrician’s office today. Little Bobby (my nephew) had a fever. Apparently he had been complaining about not feeling well for a day now, but my sister thought he was just whining.

Now let me tell you, this is not how I wanted to spend my visit to NYC. Between the kids crying, toy trucks ramming into my foot, and the faint sounds of Justin Bieber “Baby, baby, baby… ohhhh”, I was about to lose it. Instead, I took it out on my sister and asked

“How did you not know Bobby had a temperature?” “When was the last time he was sick?” “Was he supposed to get a shot or something?” “Where did they take him on the class trip? Didn’t he go to the birthday party over the weekend?”

My sister was clearly upset, and so I finally shut up. But I didn’t stop thinking about why parents didn’t have better technology to deal with… well being a parent.

That’s when I came up with the idea of combining medical monitoring devices, GPS, RFID, mobile apps into the ULTIMATE BABY MONITOR!

[babypoguer-blog]

Privacy Issues....again....

[socialstartup]

babypoguer:

Guest Post by Fernando Ng. Follow him at @Fernandokng

    More safety and privacy issues… GPS tracking device for children is still controversial even though the general technology has been around for a few years now, particularly in the pet market.

However, I think it’s an important technology that hasn’t been utilized enough. Ask any parent that has lost their child or worse had their child kidnapped. We’ve worked with the best of the best in perfecting the chip and implantation process. In fact, BabyPoguer is the smallest GPS tracker ever developed. We just successfully completed our Phase III tests on Betty the chimpanzee. The implantation took about 30 minutes, including anesthesia. No side effects, no scarring. The procedure was quickly approved by the FDA.

I have also been asked about privacy issues around “tracking people”. It sounds a bit like Minority Report when you put it that way, so we have included the GPS system for emergency situations only. It’s not a 24/7 monitoring system, and users will not have the ability to check if a child went straight home after school. It’s there when something goes wrong. For instance, you can set boundaries and receive alerts if your child runs exceeds those limits, or if your child has been missing for an extended period of time you can activate the GPS at that moment.

The system will also alert you when your child is sick, and can easily send the same information to your child’s pediatrician. Think of how much time this could save when families travel and are in need of a doctor. However, we did decide to ensure that the device has an expiration date to help mitigate the argument that it could be abused as the child grows older and is entitled to more privacy. NASA especially helped us with this technology, and the BabyPoguer will now disintegrate 7 years after implantation. The lifespan was determined based on a combination of health and safety risks as well as ethical considerations: SIDS occurs most often within the first year; developmental issues generally present before age 5; and children under the age of 7 are most likely to be kidnapped.

These issues were definitely the greatest roadblocks when pitching BabyPoguer, and admittedly took some convincing for even myself to feel 100% comfortable. After working with multiple ethics and health committees, as well as safety commissions and legal councils, I am confident that we have come up with the right balance.

[mpod-blog-blog-deactivated20200]

Stay tuned: Apple and the Smart TV market

[socialstartup]

mpod:

  Speculation has been rising over Apple releasing an iTV in the near future (6m-2y).  Will they or won’t they?  Marco Arment recently wrote  ‘I don’t think they’ll ever release a TV’.   Marco makes a strong case (as usual), and I suggest reading his whole post. But I fall on the other side, and believe we will see an Apple TV Set in the short/medium-term. The biggest issue here, in my opinion, is who controls the content?     Who selects the cable channels? Who pays the studios for those channels? Who manages on-demand and premium channels like HBO?  Marco seems to think that it must be Comcast/TWC (based on his questioning over whether Apple would agree to integrate with a Comcast’s Scientific Atlanta HD DVR).   The only way Apple enters the Smart Television Set business is if it controls the entire content delivery experience.  You cannot view the Apple TV within the paradigm of commoditized Vizio/Samsung/Sharp flat panel sets.  Those are dumb screens.  They said it would never happen with Mobile Operators, who historically controlled the entire ecosystem (i.e., content delivery, applications, UI, on-device purchases), and we all know how that turned out.  Apple’s iOS controls everything but the data pipes. In TV-land, the pipes and the content are now “inextricably” wedded, but there’s a way to sever that bond.   To be clear, this is very tricky — but not impossible. First, Apple would need to strike transformative deals with content providers (NBC-Universal, Disney, CBS, FOX, HBO, et al.), to let Apple create its own cable programming. Second, Apple would need to navigate relationships with Comcast, Time Warner, and especially Verizon. While their buy-in may not be technically necessary, these players will do everything they can to avoid becoming dumb pipes. Third, Apple would then need to create a new content purchasing experience, which could include:

per-channel subscription (e.g., HBO, NBC, ESPN for me, thanks)

per-show subscription (e.g., Mad Men, 30 Rock)

a la cart 24-hr viewings; good old fashioned bundling (all Disney channels; or just all channels).  

If you’re Apple, why bother? The size of the Living Room market — viewed holistically — cannot be overstated. It is the single most important distribution channel for premium content; when you look beyond cable, and include TV Sets, Video Games, DVD’s, Hardware, Peripherals, Music, the Living Room starts to look like one of the few ways Apple can sustain growth.  For example, imagine Apple’s game platform not just stealing share from Nintendo DS and PSP, but Wii and Playstation. Someone at Apple is wondering how it gets revenues from $100B/year (projected 2011) to $300B/year, if only as a defensive measure against other large Internet companies swimming in the same waters. Stay tuned.

[mpod-blog-blog-deactivated20200]

Facebook and Consumer Visualization

[socialstartup]

mpod:

The New York Times just announced that Facebook has acquired Daytum.  

To me, this cues a revolution in consumer visualization.  Facebook recognizes that big data isn’t only good for targeted ads, it’s good for showing users more about themselves with beautiful charts and graphs.

As a data visualization geek, I’m excited to see what Nicholas Felton can bring to the Facebook experience.  Felton stretches our idea of how large amounts of data can be communicated succinctly with infographics.  I honestly wish someone like him taught a class at Columbia Business School.  For a primer, check out his Annual Reports.

Social visualization is a glaring omission in Facebook’s current product: how many Likes do I have; how many do my friends have; what kind of articles, videos and websites do I like (by topic).  Facebook has tried this before.  In 2004-2005, Facebook offered a visualization to show how interconnected your network was (it was killed by 2006, I think).  LinkedIn now lets you do something similar.  It’s time to raise the bar.  Since my Facebook “friends” aren’t a true representation of my real-life network, I don’t care who knows who anymore. I care a who likes what.  And more than that, teach me what else I should like based on my mindless ‘liking’ across the web. 

This is strategic.  As Facebook and Twitter start competing for who influences the most behavior, they will need to make their products into better content consumption machines — Visualization is at the very heart of that.

[mike-brown-blog]

Where am I?

[socialstartup]

mike-brown:

I’m not going to quote 1984 or Brave New World.  Nor am I going to hide in the woods and read Catcher in the Rye under battery-generated light.  I am, however, going to share that I am surprised and unsettled by the increasing amount of formerly private matters being voluntarily offered up to the public. 

Relationships have been made and destroyed by Facebook statuses.  Pictures shared on such sites have lost people jobs and caused scandals.  Now, people are letting the world know where they are at any given moment through Foursquare and Facebook Places. It’s not that I am against technology, or even a disbeliever of the power of social networks and social media. I even have a Foursquare account and occasionally check in to places.  However, I think very hard about who I become “friends” with on Foursquare (current count is at 3) and I mostly use the application, not as a means of connecting with others, but rather as a travel log of places I’ve been in case I should ever want to go back or recommend a place to a friend (a real live friend). With Facebook Places, people literally have been telling thousands of people that they chose not to hang out with them, that they’re not home working on their part of whatever team project they owe (for work or for school), that they drink at bars on weekdays and often and, not to mention, that no one is home at their apartment or house for some time so come on by if you feel like stealing anything! 

Obviously, social media and such GPS applications offer many benefits and are here to stay.  I just believe that we haven’t quite caught up in terms of etiquette and vetting who we allow into what network and what information we should be willing to share.  I would hypothesize that once the pace of new social technology emergence has slowed and we’ve hit a point where we’ve lived with such things for a while, the usage of such applications will decline and become more guarded.  The need for privacy is human nature.  The problem as I see it right now is that people don’t universally appreciate the reality of cyberspace and the possible effects of baring all to the online world. 

[mike-brown-blog]

Tweet Tweet Tweet....

[socialstartup]

mike-brown:

I’ve always been a little bit older than my classmates and a little slower on the uptake for adopting technology and technological trends.  I learned to type when I was 25 and returning to undergrad.  I owned my first computer at 26.  When all of my classmates, who were 6 years younger than me and blogging when they were in their tweens, were signing up for Facebook, I joined reluctantly but felt the human race regressing into a permanent high school mentality full of popularity contests (number of friends), cliques and gossip hounds (newsfeed especially once that came around).  Of course, this regression was a complete success and led the way for the great cultural de-evolutionary trend of social media.  From then on, the pokes, brightly colored logos, sling-shot flung birds, lol’s and smiley faces abounded.  The developed world became app-crazy and face-to-face interaction became a step closer to obsolescence.  People craved Facebook “likes” and YouTube “hits” more than an actual hug or smile.

Facebook stati, desperate one-sentence cries for attention, called for a “brand new” re-framing of the same idea in the form of Twitter.  Twitter’s success has of course hinged upon its catchy and cute name for using its application, i.e. “tweeting”. As founder and director of a small nonprofit, I did everything I could to gain exposure and raise funding, including developing our website, e-newsletter and the occasional blog.  I reluctantly created a Twitter account as well for my company but rarely could think of anything to tweet besides publicizing upcoming events.

Now I’ve found myself in a class which has made regular tweeting mandatory and I’ve literally spent hours stressing about what the heck one is supposed to tweet.  What makes a good tweet?  What are major faux pas?  Is a question okay, as seen with Facebook status, or is one expected to deliver information only on Twitter?  And how does one become fluent in Twitter language?  Is there a Rosetta Stone for such things? Of course, as in undergrad, my classmates are all well ahead of me, tweeting away into a blissfully robust network of friends they’ve never met.  I’ve always tried my best to do well at whatever assignment is given to me, but adopting and embracing Twitter seems like such a lifestyle change and one that just doesn’t seem to fit.  I feel like a twit when I tweet and wonder why I even care.   The only person following me is Tom from Myspace.

[sagustin-blog-blog]

Five rules for new technology adoption

[socialstartup]

sagustin:

Attending this year’s SXSW festival in Austin Texas, followed by taking Social Media and Entrepreneurship at Columbia, has inspired me to earnestly discover what technology innovations I should incorporate in my life.

Two innovations have stood out in particular – first, Twitter, which I only started taking seriously the past month or so; the second, an iPad which I hoped might replace my netbook in the long run.

In trying to incorporate these innovations in my life, I’ve recognized five rules that may be helpful for others.

1) Establish use cases.

Every technology has use cases. One needs to figure out the appropriate time and place to use it, and make a commttment to using it. In terms of Twitter, I’ll check my messages when waiting for the elevator or at the deli, but not while eating my breakfast (I’ll catch up on case reading instead).

For the iPad, I committed to use it to respond to those quick easy to answer emails which demanded immediate responses. Longer, more complex notes would still require my netbook

2) Expect a learning curve.

Typing e-mail or notes without a tactile keyboard is clearly a pain. My iPad typing speed and accuracy were initially abysmal, but I did see significant improvements each day of additional use that went by.

Figuring out how to tweet and what codes to use on Twitter also required a learning curve, which I’ve progressed on over time.

3) Practice regularly.

Make a time to practice, make sure you’re practicing every day – even if just a bit. As with any learning, we learn best through repetition.

4) Look for tips, tricks, new add-ons.

Google search and Quora are definitely your friends here. Whatever problem you’re having adopting the technology, someone has definitely had it before. Even if you’re not having a problem , look up tips and tricks to see how to use the technology faster or more effectively.

5) Have fun.

Adopting an innovation should be a fun process. Keep it interesting and not a chore. Luckily, you’re probably not a tech editor who is paid to review every new application or hardware that comes down the pipe.You have the freedom to make the process fun and cool – what can I do with the iPad that I could never have done before? Who’s cool on Twitter to follow?

These tips, while fairly straightforward, might be of help to making the tech adoption process a smoother one.

[sagustin-blog-blog]

Creative combination in social media

[socialstartup]

sagustin:

In Napoleon’s glance, a Strategy course at Columbia Business School, Professor William Duggan introduced the idea that most so-called innovations and new ideas are in fact remixes of existing ideas, a process he refers to as “creative combination”. Entrepreneurs are essentially in the business of taking historical examples and combining them to create something new. Let’s examine how creative combination may have influenced several of the successful entrepreneurs who spoke to our Social Media class this semester. Qwiki, a site that generates on-the-fly mini-documentaries based on your search query, is really a mash-up of Google’s indexing and search, Wikipedia’s creation of standardized content on web topics of interest, and YouTube’s rich content medium. Kickstarter, a site that lets users fund projects of interest to them, is a mash-up of Kiva’s ability to fund micro-businesses while providing a social return and the age old concept of patronage for the arts - except that one can be a patron for just a couple bucks on Kickstarter. Finally, perhaps the biggest home run so far of the companies we heard from, Twitter, is really a combination of SMS as an efficient and constrained message delivery system, blogs as a delivery mechanism for user generated content, and RSS as a means of “following” content you’re interested in. My quick mash-ups are admittedly crude, and the entrepreneurs in question may very well argue with me regarding exactly how their inspirations came about, but I believe the fundamental process of drawing from examples from history to formulate new ideas is engrained in the way humans’s create new ideas. Next time the need to innovate comes along, crack open the history books!

[rayorbit]

What about a proper ride sharing website and app?

[socialstartup]

ray-on-air:

Wouldn’t it be great to be part of a carpooling community in which members could actually choose to share the ride with people of like interests? Leveraging social media the right way should allow for that and more.

A proper website and app for ride sharing would help alleviate the traffic problem in congested cities, reduce pollution, reduce fuel consumption, safe users money, while perhaps making daily commutes more enjoyable. The mobile app could use location tracking to allow users to identify other nearby users having the same destination (or a close enough destination). It could enable users to make ride sharing partner changes on the go in case of delays. Moreover, the website administrators could pre-screen members for ensuring safety, requiring all users to post a recent profile photo (for identification) and some basic background information (e.g. driving record).

With those ideas in mind, I did a search in Google and the Apple App Store to see whether a solution was already in the way. I found the following:

Carticipate: Website and Location aware App (http://www.carticipate.com)

Weeels: App mainly targeted for New Yorkers, it allows for finding someone to share the cab with… (http://www.weeels.org)

Car-pool: a German app targeted to European market (http://www.car-pool.com)

Other websites include: http://www.carpoolworld.com, http://www.eRideShare.com (mainly a listing for longer trips), and http://www.commuterlink.com.

From the above list, the better looking solution seems Carticipate (I still need to try it…), although they are all still far from offering the full potential envisioned above.

Snapshots of the Carticipate App:

[canadiansk-blog]

Credit where credit is due.

[socialstartup]

canadiansk:

So I’ll be honest - I started out very skeptical of social media. I felt like I was too old to ever have to use Twitter. I complained flagrantly about the impossibility of creating value in a message under 140 characters long. 

After taking Social Media & Entrepreneurship, I guess I have to admit my attitude has changed. I may not be a frequent tweeter, or have any desire to check-in anywhere, but I can say, that I now see the use of Social Media channels, as an essential component of any company’s marketing strategy. More importantly, social media will actually very fundamentally alter the way companies interact with their customers, and the public at large. With over 500MM facebook users, 126MM blogs, 2Bn+ Tweets each year, social media outlets are fundamentally changing both the way companies reach out to their customers but also provides them with a much more content rich vehicle to do so. And while I believe this change will require greater investment in employees to manage all of these different social media channels, it also has a significant impact on the cost of marketing their products and services to customers. As we can see below, the greater the number of blog posts a company develops has a direct correlation with the number of leads they generate. This means, companies will need to add headcount to ensure they have individuals to generate content for these social media outlets. Furthermore, these tools provide real-time feedback about customer sentiments about their products. 

In fact, we are now starting to see hard data about the lead generation and customer acquisition that can be driven using social media resources. In fact, we’re seeing that across the most popular channels (FB, twitter, blogs, and LinkedIn) a minimum of 40% of companies have already started to employ these tools as a way to market their products to customers. 40%! that’s nearing the majority. And i’m sure that all new companies will actually use these tools as a method to significantly reduce customer acquisition costs. I’m part of the Entrepreneurial Greenhouse Program and there’s no question that many students actually reduce the overall customer acquisition cost as a result of using social media tools to reach their customers. A commercial during the superbowl costs a couple million bucks and last about a minute, a daily blogpost, or Tweet costs nothing, and can provide the audience with significantly more information and content. In fact, one can argue that these vehicles allow companies to create richer content for their customer, and provide seamless access to purchase their products. 

Now - let’s not go crazy. I’m not going to start Tweeting regularly, nor will anyone ever see me Check In anywhere, ever. But, I’ll at least admit my eyes have been opened to the unique value social media provides. 

@CanadianSK

[canadiansk-blog]

Twitter - The Spectator Sport

[socialstartup]

canadiansk:

A “Field of Dreams” idea in business refers to a business or idea where a company develops a product or service they believe will attract a very large user base without any concern for how the company will generate revenue. The belief being that they do not need to focus on perfecting the revenue generation model, because they will acquire such a large customer base, money will never be an issue. 

If you build it… they will come!

Twitter went out and built a new platform for communication. And people did come. In fact, it is estimated that Twitter will reach 200MM users by the end of 2011. A lot of people came.

Having just recently joined Twitter (my 4 followers is a testament to this fact), I have observed that while millions of people signed up for the service, they “came” to watch, not to play. In fact, 50% of tweets come from 0.05% of users, meaning that certain twitter accounts (“the players”) generate an overwhelming majority of tweets - most users joining the service, only to observe and read what other have to say.

When I joined Twitter, I started following 15 different users. The scope of accounts I followed ranged from industry experts (@JackWelch) to interesting media outlets, I was accustomed to checking at least a few times each day (@TheOnion, @NewYorkTime, @CNN, etc.).

The problem is that those few users who generate content, generate so much content that their tweets act more as SPAM messages than any form of useful content. To continue the analogy, “the players” play so often, that no one wants to watch them play. In fact, over the course of my membership with Twitter, I have un-followed all but 2 of the individuals I followed. In fact, I was so turned off with the frequency with which the New York Times and The Onion sent me tweets, that I not only stopped following them, but I lost my desire to view their online articles. It was if Twitter removed my ability to decide which content I wanted to view, and when I wanted to view it. 

It is not secret that Twitter is in the process of trying to monetize their user base. When I look at the fact that so few users actually proactively engage in the product (unlike Facebook) it seems highly unclear how the service will manage to generate income. 

@CanadianSK 

[cocomamba]

I'll use Twitter how I damn well want to

[socialstartup]

cocomamba:

I remember going to a party about a year ago and meeting a Stanford professor who was very interested in social media and tech. A few minutes into our group conversation, she stopped us to ask how many Twitter followers we each had. One person said “About 400”, another “100, 150” and when it came to my turn, I shamefully admitted my mere “30.” Now, I’ll have you know that number has grown (that’s right, I’m at a whopping 41 right now). But what really bugged me, what realllllly got me thinking, was the way the woman proudly said she had over 500, implying she had real social power, and that in contrast, we all had some work to do.

Now, I’m not about to argue that there is no merit in having a lot of followers - I certainly concede that in certain situations and with certain people (or companies), that having a ton of followers can be really powerful. But I’ve listened to too many lectures about how brand should use Twitter and heard too many people boasting about their high follower count to let it go any further. I may be misinterpreting their underlying message here but assuming I’m not, I absolutely do not agree that the point of Twitter is getting your message out to as many people as possible. I’m sure there are a ton of people who find a lot of value in Twitter for this exact reason, but I sure as hell will not be judged by those standards since it’s fundamentally at odds with MY reason for using Twitter and the value that I derive from it.

I’m no crazy person, I promise, but I just don’t generally find value in reading boring tweets from people I don’t personally know or care about. And I’m not really comfortable sharing my thoughts with people I don’t know. I labor over each of my Tweets, making sure they’re as funny or provocative as they can be, and I take pride in them. At the end of the day, that sometimes means they’re not appropriate for everyone, but rather than censor myself, I’d rather speak freely and limit my Twitter followers to those close friends of mine who I know understand me and my intentions.

My main argument is that sheer number of Twitter followers is not in any way a proxy for social power and tells you nothing about your impact on others. I could probably have a good 100+ followers at this point, but that would mean that my tweets would be “cherished” by each and every spammer or loose acquaintance that chose to follow me. I do think of myself as a pretty interesting person, but I doubt any of those people would be cherishing anything I had to say.

[cocomamba]

Social Media + The 4th Wall

[socialstartup]

cocomamba:

As a 24-year old Stanford alumna, I’ve very much “grown up” around social media. I started using Facebook my freshman year when it was only limited to a few top-tier schools, I’ve been a faithful Twitter user for quite some time, I was the first of my friends to join LinkedIn. Few things I hear these days about social media really surprise me.

However, I recently heard a talk about social media by Randall Ringer from The Verse Group. Randall spoke from the perspective of brand management and how social media has changed the relationship between brand and consumer. Now obviously, lots of people have had thoughts about this for a while, but one thing Randall said really resonated with my own experience and summarized this relationship really beautifully: “In theater, there’s that 4th wall separating the actors from the audience. But now with social media, brands are no longer marketing from behind a 4th wall. Social media broke down the wall such that brands know exactly who their audience is…and the audience can talk back.”

To me, this idea of a 4th wall really crystallizes the difference between social media and traditional media with respect to brand-customer relationships and demonstrates perfectly how social media has really radically changed this relationship. With the audience (consumers) being able to talk back, they are in a tremendous position of power to change the performance, the characters, and other audience members’ perspectives. Effectively, they’re changing the game for everyone.

Naturally, this leads to a whole set of new questions: relatively speaking, social media is fairly new. How will this change the brand-customer relationship in 10, 20, 30 years? What other new technologies will appear that will have a similarly disruptive effect on brand marketing? Now that everybody is jumping aboard the social media train, what does this mean for brands who shouldn’t necessarily participate in social media? Are there any brands that shouldn’t participate?

This is certainly an exciting time to be working in marketing and thinking about these issues. If anyone has any thoughts about this or anything else, I’d love to hear!

[greenenmasse-deactivated2013120]

Get me a green job!

[socialstartup]

greenenmasse:

A week ago I attended a panel hosted by the Earth Institute (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sections/view/9 ) at Columbia University on the present and future of the green economy. Apparently it’s a “great” time for the sustainability industry and “so much” activity is going on. As I wrap up my MBA studies this week (it’s last week of classes at my joint degree program between Columbia Business School and the School of International and Public Affairs), I have come to test that statement personally in the job market over the past few months. As a result, I wanted to take a moment to share my personal experience with the ability of the sustainability industry to recruit and retain talent.

It has never been easy to find a great job in the green space, especially for someone with a non-technical, non-engineering background. And it is nearly impossible to find a really well paying job in terms of base salary (though start ups would offer equity stake to improve your upside). This isn’t surprising given how young and underdeveloped the industry is. Moreover, business skills are valued the most at the commercialization stage of a technology, not at the time of its invention. When it comes to adopting green technologies at scale, however, short of wind turbines, solar panels and a few energy efficiency tools, there are few out there that have reached the mainstream. I dream of the day when I get to see more electric vehicles on the road than I hear about Tesla on the news! From my vantage point, it’s been lots of talk and not as much action.

Before you proceed to dismiss my complaint as wining and tell me your story of how long it took you to land your dream job, let me tell you why I think you should absolutely start worrying about my tough job prospects. Yes, it’s true that it is only natural that niche industries like cleantech, or social media, or organic farming (or add your own example here) don’t provide numerous jobs. That’s implied in the definition of “niche,” correct? How many jobs could be provided from one Facebook, one Twitter and one Zynga?!

The real problem here is that a third of the world’s people live within 62 miles of the shoreline. As climate change progresses, more and more of the world’s largest cities including Miami and New York, will be increasingly vulnerable to coastal floodings (claims the National Geographic in its latest edition: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/05/bangladesh/belt-text). I am not worried about either Miami or New York City, however, as despite the tough budget times, I am confident that the US government will find the money to pay for the flood protection projects. Who I am worried most about are those states out there in the world who don’t hold a vote with the Electoral College.  It’s the Bangladesh, the island-nations, the people living on the edge of the African and Asian deserts, those are the ones who won’t get protection from floods or droughts. Climate change is a massive and complex problem with relatively small amount of brainpower employed to tackle it compared to the size and urgency of the catastrophe we are supposed to be trying to avoid. Again, from my vantage point, there’s not enough “we” in the fight against climate change.

So what is there to do for a recent MBA grad? Lobbying the government for more regulations or subsidies for clean technologies? Done before. With marginal results. Wait for carbon policy? Good luck in a few years! Keep looking for a job till you find one? Not a terribly satisfying answer. But I may just as well start learning Mandarin. In 2009, China invested $34.6 billion into clean energy development, that’s over 20% of the total global spending and 2X what the US spent that year for that purpose. These large capital flows are coupled with a range of predictable and generous policies to promote green technologies through: 1) national targets for emissions, renewable electricity and energy efficiency; 2) feed-in-tariffs; 3) tax benefits and long-term funding programs and well as 4) investments in transmission.

As a result, while American politicians would like to muse over the US’s ability to capture the lead in the new green economy, I worry about the ability of the US to retain American entrepreneurs within its borders. Let’s just put people to work first. Get me a green job!