Blog of Cynthia Typaldos

article in NYTimes: ThinkEquity Starts Web Log to Gather Ideas

2005-02-17T09:19:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/technology/17place.html?

ThinkEquity Starts Web Log to Gather Ideas

By JENNY ANDERSON

Published: February 17, 2005

BLOGGING transformed political commentary, rattled the media business and inundated the Internet. Does it have a place on Wall Street? ThinkEquity Partners, a boutique investment bank in San Francisco, will find out as it introduces a Web log today. The firm, which specializes in technology, health care and other fast-growing fields, is seeking to make its investment research department - an albatross at most Wall Street firms - relevant.

article in CNN - Tools to ease Web collaboration

2005-02-17T09:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/02/16/web.collaboration.ap/index.html

Tools to ease Web collaboration

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 Posted: 1:53 PM EST (1853 GMT)

DonationPal | SPM Jobs

2005-01-24T23:59:00.000-08:00

Besides consulting, I’m putting all of my effort into my two entrepreneurial endeavors:

DonationPal

SPM Jobs

So I don’t have much time to blog.

Luckily my dog Sam is a prolific blogger.

Sam the all-black beautiful German shepherd dog

article: Wiki's gaining momentum

2005-01-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Tony Christopher for sending me this info.

------------------------------------

From today's San Jose Mercury, indications of the growing momentum for investment in and corporate use of Wiki capabilities.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/columnists/matt_marshall/10671792.htm

1/18/05

Wiki war born out of Walt Disney deal

By Matt Marshall

Mercury News

The battle between the two Silicon Valley wiki companies began in earnest this week. The outcome could say something about Silicon Valley's model of turbo-charged venture capital, and when it's a good time to take money and grow quickly -- or hold off.

A wiki, in its simplest form, is a single Web page that can be written upon, and edited, by multiple users at once. Companies are beginning to use wiki software to help their employees coordinate on team projects.

For complete article go here:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/columnists/matt_marshall/10671792.htm

article: The Rise of a New News Network By Om Malik, January 04, 2005 Business 2.0

2005-01-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

The traditional news media is going to need to reposition itself. Yes, I’m a Luddite, but I couldn’t live without a daily fix of the NYTimes. I also can’t see bloggers doing real in depth analysis or covering well events that span time e.g. global warming, invasive non-native plant threats to the environment, etc.

It seems to me the Social Network Analysis (not the social networking websites, those are just implementations) could be invaluable in vetting the information that is created by individuals. There has to be some kind of verification as anyone, anywhere can report anything.

Cynthia

----------

http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1013980,00.html

The Rise of a New News Network
By Om Malik, January 04, 2005

The 1990s proved to be the decade when cable news networks replaced network television as the primary source of breaking news for many Americans, just as the 1960s saw newspapers supplanted. In the new millennium, a broadband-enabled, always-on Internet threatens to usurp those cable news networks.

For the rest of the article go here:

http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1013980,00.html

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C y n t h i a T y p a l d o s: Passion, Expertise, Experience

cynthia@typaldos.com | 408 867-8875 office | 408 828-1370 cell

blog/net articles by David Kirkpatrick at Fortune

2005-01-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

Good summary articles.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,1014511,00.html

DAVID KIRKPATRICK
The Tsunami and the Net: Global Awareness, Global Response
The web not only gave us real-time news of the gigantic waves' destruction, but also pushed us to help the survivors.
FORTUNE
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
By David Kirkpatrick

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,1012909,00.html

FAST FORWARD
Going Blog Wild!
Personal Internet postings are not only changing how we communicate with each other, but also how business markets to consumers.
FORTUNE
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
By David Kirkpatrick

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1011763,00.html

Why There's No Escaping the Blog
Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product—or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore.
By David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth

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C y n t h i a T y p a l d o s: Passion, Expertise, Experience

cynthia@typaldos.com | 408 867-8875 office | 408 828-1370 cell

2004 Social Media - Best and Worst

2004-12-31T13:57:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be interesting if people posted their thoughts on the best and worst of social media (online communities, social software, social networking, etc.) for 2004. Kind of like the best and worst movie lists.

Feel free to push your own site/stuff but just be explicit when you are doing so.

Here’s my off-the-top-of-my-head list (but remember, my nickname is “Cynthia the Social Networking Luddite”).

BEST:

Dogster

Amazon.com’s Listmania: the best way to find what you really want even when you don’t know what it is

www.paidcontent.org by great newsletter/blog about the content industry

The Social Software Weblog by Judith Meskill

All of Robin Good’s stuff (MasterNewMedia)

Dogs that Blog and the dog blogroll there are now 6 dogs in the dog blogroll (which I maintain), 3 of which are written from the dog’s point of you. Yes, laugh all you like, but a major newspaper will soon be publishing a story on blogging pets. This could be the hot social networking topic of 2005

WORST:

Social Networking website business models (are there any?)

BzzAgent (NYTimes article)

Too many social networking sites

Dilbert develops a social networking site

2004-12-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20041223.html

Great concept but I think it has already been done J

Tribe.net ?

Cynthia “the social networking Luddite”

Dog Blogs

2004-12-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

more on buzz marketing...

2004-12-15T19:26:00.000-08:00

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1105.cfm

What's the Buzz About Buzz Marketing?

“There's a new marketing catchphrase that's getting rave word-of-mouth reviews. From articles in the popular press to conversations in the classroom, huge companies to boutique marketing firms, suddenly it seems you can't talk about new products without addressing 'buzz marketing.' "People are buzzing about buzzing," says Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn. "People think it's cool. There is something almost empowering about the idea of being able to 'buzz' your way into the products people buy." “

Happy Holidays from Dogster

2004-12-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is still my favorite social networking site.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dogster! Woof Woof! [mailto:dogsters@dogster.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:38 PM
To: Cynthia Typaldos
Subject: Happy Holidays from Dogster

Dear Dogster members,

Woof Woof Bark!

Have you seen the Holiday Picture Party yet? Over 1,550 pets have already
posted a seasonal pix. Is your fluffy part of the fun? Join and you could
win one of fifty free dog or cat books from HCI Publishing. To join the
party or take a stroll, just go to:

http://www.dogster.com/hpp/

By the way, did you know Dogster now has over 51,000 dogs and Catster more
than 15,500 cats! When Dogster launched in January I could barely imagine
10,000 doggies. Now we have two sites; 65,000 pets; 50,000 users from 130
countries; 900,000 friend-to-friend connections; 662,000 pet votes cast;
450,000 treats shared; 352,000 corralled favorites; 40,000 messages sent;
5,000 dairy writers and one really busy web server. I may have put my heart
and soul into this, but without your beautiful photos, colorful entries and
profound love for your furry family members it would be nothing but a bunch
of lonely web code! So, I sincerely thank you and offer virtual belly rubs
and head pats for a job well done.

Also we added more new features. If you want you can control who sends you
friend invites and you can optionally receive an email when you have new
Dogster private messages. We even added a holiday Gift Giving Guide to help
find something for even the pickiest pooches. What other new features would
you like to see in the site? Tell us:
http://www.dogster.com/contact.php

Thanks for loving the sites and know as the years roll by, you'll be able to
say, "I joined Dogster in the very first year!"

Safe holidays and a barktastic new year,

Ted Rheingold
Founder and local Top Dog
http://www.dogster.com

Ben Franklin on professional recommendations

2004-12-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is an amazing document. It should be the warning label on the home
page of every social networking website. Franklin's so-called
"recommendation letter" is hysterically funny and reminds me of requests I
used to get thru Spoke, where I didn't know either person.

I am posting this to my blog at
http://typaldos.blogspot.com

Thanks to Victor S. Grishchenko for the link.
http://pages.plotinka.ru/~gritzko/recommendation-cite.png

The 'Blog' Revolution Sweeps Across China

2004-12-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

The 'Blog' Revolution Sweeps Across China

December 2, 2004
By Xiao Qiang, New Scientist

Meet the bloggers who are keeping one step ahead of the censors

By Xiao Qiang, New Scientist
The "blog revolution" has a particularly revolutionary character in China,
where weblog technology is circumventing government censors by
decentralizing and popularizing the flow of information. By inviting the
Internet behind its "Great Firewall," the Chinese government has unwittingly
opened a Pandora's Box of free discourse that threatens its totalitarian
stranglehold on the media.

The entire story may be viewed at
http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2004_176/news/11478-1.html

Ohmynews - citizen journalism in South Korea

2004-11-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

From paidcontent.org

-- Ohmynews Profits from Citizen Journalism :Ohmynews, the South Korean citizen's media site, is bringing in almost $500,000 a month in advertising and makes a monthly profit of about $27,000, Asia Times Online reports. (Via EditorsWeblog )The site, which broke even last year, has a full-time staff of 53, including 38 professional reporters and editors, and more than 43,000 citizen journalists paid for their contribitions. Roughly 80 percent of the content is citizen produced.

Against a backdrop on media reform in South Korea, the lengthy article explores the site's reasons for success, including the country's overwhelming adoption of the Internet as a primary source for news and its emphasis on interaction. [Nov.29: Link] | Broadband | [by staci]

article about Wikipedia in NYTimes re: Bush/Kerry

2004-11-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/arts/10wiki.html?oref=login’

(registration required)

Very funny article about the Bush/Kerry areas of Wikipedia.

November 10, 2004

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History

By SARAH BOXER

20 reasons why you shouldn't post your picture on the internet

2004-11-06T04:18:00.000-08:00

Thanks to SiliconValley.com for this link.
http://www.columbia.edu/~rhee/

article: online feuds a big headache

2004-11-05T04:51:00.000-08:00

Online Feuds a Big Headache
Put a bunch of people in one place, give them some items and you're sure to start a fight. Online game companies are figuring out how to deal with it. Daniel Terdiman reports from New York.

Presidential Guidester - Choose wisely on Election Day!

2004-11-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

Just in case you are still undecided re: voting for president.

What’s next?

“What to Eat for Breakfaster”?
“Where to Go to Buy Groceriester?”
“Whose Turn is it to Take out the Trashster?”
“Should I Orderster a Ventester or Grandester or Tallster Lattester at Starbuckster?”

Pretty soon we will be able to use the collective opinions of our friends and colleagues, via the internetster, to make all of our decisions for us J

Cynthia

p.s. This is all a take-off on Friendster, which was a take-off on Napster.

To: cynthia@typaldos.com
Subject: Presidential Guidester - Choose wisely on Election Day!

Hi, I want to recommend that you try out Presidential Guidester, which can help you decide how to vote in the upcoming election. Give it a try.

*** Presidential Guidester
http://www.PresidentialGuidester.com/?org=Decidia

good article on open access

2004-10-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Open for Business: Why Open Access is Good for Business and Science Publications

By Janice McCallum

From Shorelines newsletter

http://www.shore.com/commentary/newsanal/items/2004/20041025openaccess.html

25 October 2004

“Many B2B and STM publishers have been struggling to find the right model for distributing their content as they confront pressures that are pushing them towards opening their databases to Web and enterprise search engines. These publishers are seeking the right balance between maximizing the reach and influence of their publications while maintaining the ability to provide - and to be compensated for - premium features for their core readers. If anyone doubts if there are successful business models in an open access environment, they need only look at Google, whose share price has more than doubled since it went public. B2B and STM publishers cannot be Googles, but they can leverage the openness that user-empowering technologies provide to create richer revenue models.”

Read the full news analysis

http://www.shore.com/commentary/newsanal/items/2004/20041025openaccess.html

WSJ giving up on subscriptions?

2004-10-25T09:54:00.001-07:00

Thanks to alert from www.paidcontent.org

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/cat_wsj.shtml

http://news.com.com/Extra!+Wall+Street+Journal+gives+away+Web+content/2100-1025_3-5423054.html

Extra! Wall Street Journal gives away Web content

By Stefanie Olsen
http://news.com.com/Extra+Wall+Street+Journal+gives+away+Web+content/2100-1025_3-5423054.html

Story last modified October 22, 2004, 1:31 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal Online, a bastion of subscription-only news on the Web, has begun giving away some content.

In recent months, the business news outfit has been sending nightly e-mail to bloggers, or online diarists, to offer up several daily stories free so that they can point to or link to them from their Web pages. And on Nov. 8, the company plans to remove its paid wall altogether for five days, for the first time in 7 years, according to the company.

For complete story go here:
http://news.com.com/Extra!+Wall+Street+Journal+gives+away+Web+content/2100-1025_3-5423054.html

Amazon adding community features - shared photos

2004-10-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Amazon is becoming a destination site.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-images/customer-image-guidelines.html/104-6017248-6987956?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B0001MBJHK&store=generic

Found out about this thru www.paidcontent.org

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_10_22.shtml#010874

Which referenced this blog entry by Steve Rubel:

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2004/10/amazon_jumps_in.html

Amazing list of weblog tools

2004-10-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to John Maloney of the Knowledge Management Cluster (KMCluster) for pointing me to this list.

WebLogs Compendium

http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html

Take a look at Xoops. Appears to be open source.

PoliticalFriendster

2004-10-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21diar.html?oref=login

Political Friendster

The site is a total clone of Friendster which in itself is pretty funny.

New York Times

Political Dot-to-Dot

By LISA NAPOLI

Published: October 21, 2004

Here's a Web site born not out of suffering from broken bones or passion for watches, but of homework. For an art class last semester at Stanford University, Doug McCune was challenged to "do something that involved the election," he said. "It was as open-ended as that."

The social networking site Friendster was popular on campus at the time, and it inspired Mr. McCune. "I just had the idea that since it was such a familiar concept for kids my age that using that concept to apply to politics would strike a chord," he said.

For the rest of the article go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21diar.html?oref=login

article: Evite takes on Zagat, RedHerring, 10/13/04

2004-10-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

More social networking…

Evite takes on Zagat’s

The party-planning web site launches a bar and restaurant guide.

October 13, 2004

Evite.com, the free social-planning site, plans to announce Thursday the launch of an additional service which will feature bar and restaurant reviews powered by social networking.

This new feature will allow Evite users to make decisions based on personal recommendations from friends and colleagues about where to go and what to do, said Evite President John Foley. The service also will be stocked with 1 million reviews of bars and restaurants provided by Evite’s sister site Citysearch - both sites are owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp in Los Angeles.

As Evite touted its refurbished site as a unique entry into the already crowded social networking space, industry insiders said it was no different from such sites as Zagat Survey, Yahoo!, Friendster, Tribe, and Meetup. Analysts also questioned the new site’s advertising-only business model, which has not yet proven to be a moneymaker for similar sites.

“In general, people are not going to use a web site for a typical dinner,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp.com, a social networking web site based in San Francisco. Mr. Stoppelman pointed to Yahoo! as a potential challenger for Evite because it has separate features for party planning and restaurant reviews. The only thing missing at Yahoo! is a connection between the two, he said.

That is Evite’s unique selling point, said Mr. Foley - there are no other web sites that offer similar services.

“It’s a totally new value proposition,” said Mr. Foley. “I follow the social networking players closely and I don’t know anyone who is going directly after what we are doing.”

For the rest of the article go here

Wikipedia users are defining politics - Bigger than Jesus

2004-10-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia users are defining politics

Complete article here: Wiki wars

Red Herring

Wikipedia users are defining politics

When it comes to political trash-talking, there’s no finer place than the Internet. Leave it to the net-heads to duke out their differences in an online encyclopedia. Wikipedia.com allows users to easily edit encyclopedia entries on its interactive web site. Needless to say, “Bush” and “Kerry” are the two most edited entries on the entire site. The presidential hopefuls beat out both Jesus and Hitler as the most defined and redefined personages on the page. You too can change your definitional destiny in the world of wiki, but before you dive into definition editing, check out Red Herring’s Wiki wars.

Bigger than Jesus

Indeed, entries for Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry have become the most contentious in the history of Wikipedia, said Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, president of the Wikipedia Foundation, which is based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry have created even more debate than entries for sex and religion. As of October 8, Wikipedia’s President Bush entry had been tweaked 3,953 times. Its entry for Senator Kerry had been modified 3,230 times. By contrast, Wikipedia’s article on Jesus has only been edited 1,855 times since the site’s inception in 2001.

Complete article here: Wiki wars

WSJ to open up all online content? (for a week....)

2004-10-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

WSJ to open up all online content? (for a week....)

From Rafat Ali’s amazingly informative daily newsletter www.paidcontent.org.

These two notes below link to the same story by Mark Glaser, very worth reading if you are interested in the topic of online content business models

But the question remains…what exactly is a viable business model for online content? Clearly the walled-subscription and premium content business models are not working.

My notes on this subject are here:

http://typaldos-expertise.blogspot.com/2004/09/online-content-business-models.html

WSJ.com To Open Up Site For One Week: That's the news bit coming out of the OJR story (also linked below): WSJ.com will also open up the entire site for five days starting November 8. This comes after the site started opening up one story a day through RSS and Google News, for bloggers to link to...
WSJ.com editor Bill Grueskin: "Between Google News and everything else, we had to decide how to open them up, and it's something I don't have the answer to yet." [Oct.20, 04] | WSJ |

Open Season For News Sites: Mark Glaser round up some of the recent developments in online media industry: sites such as the BBC and News.com are linking more outside their domains, and WSJ.com and NYTimes.com are opening up more complimentary content in a nod to the "news conversation" online. Call it the blog effect, really...
Richard Deverell, head of BBC News Interactive: "I think Google News has been a shot across the bow of all news originators, making us say 'hold on, there's a different way of doing this.' It's very easy to flip between different sources of news. We either try to reverse that trend, which is likely futile, or we facilitate it, and I'm keen that we take the latter route." [Oct.20, 04] | Newspapers |

Buy.com buys social networking site Metails.com

2004-10-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

-- Buy.com Buys Social Networking Site Metails: Buy.com, the online retail site, has bought out a small Boston based social networking startup called Metails.com.

Thanks to www.paidcontent.org for the alert…go here for more info:

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_10_18.shtml#010755

I never even heard of this site…not that I could possible have heard of them all. I wonder how many there are now?

Business Week article about revenue threats to content providers

2004-10-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

Business Week article about revenue model threats to content providers due to shared registrations and mirroring

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041019_9800_db016.htm

Why Web Publishers Fear a Little Sharing
Surfers are increasingly sharing passwords to gain access to online content, threatening ad revenue at registration-only sites

“…these community registration systems pose a problem for online publishers. To boost ad sales, many content providers require viewers to answer questions about their gender, age, and income level before allowing access to their site. With that information, they can tell their advertisers exactly what kind of demographic groups they would be reaching and then charge a premium to advertise to those readers.“

”Take away such registration, and the future of the $6.6 billion online advertising market begins to look fuzzy. Advertising typically accounts for 85% to 90% of an online content provider's revenues, so this has got to be troubling…”

…….

“A growing chorus says the only credible response is to abandon online registrations in favor of registrations for premium services, such as message boards. "We use registration only where it makes sense to do so from a reader's perspective," explains Adrian Holovaty, lead developer of World Online, the Web division of The Lawrence Journal-World newspaper in Lawrence, Kan. "The classic example is on message boards and comment forms, where readers want to register so they can own the rights to their usernames -- and, thus, their online reputations." "

……..

‘Net collaborators pose other dangers to publishers. Just in the last month, sites that completely copy a content providers' site have popped up. Mirrordot.com first posted in September copies, summaries, and links of stories that appear on Slashdot.org, a popular tech message board. Then Mirrordot.com simply caches the stories to which Slashdot links. Mirrordot.com, which runs its own ads with the stories as well as the original sites' ads, tallies the traffic for itself. And it all appears quite legal under current law, say experts.”

……..

“On the upside for publishers, getting someone to read a news organization's "dumb story", as Haughley puts it, may be getting easier. But making a buck off of content may be getting a lot harder.”

These are just excerpts, to read the entire article, please go here:

Business Week article about revenue model threats to content providers due to shared registrations and mirroring

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041019_9800_db016.htm

at the time of this posting, registration is not required J

Thanks to www.paidcontent.org (a great daily newsletter) for alerting me to this article

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_10_19.shtml#010777

My solution to this problem is called “SubscriptionPal”.

Cynthia

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C y n t h i a T y p a l d o s: Passion, Expertise, Experience

Social Media & Social Software | Web Communities | Online Content Business Models

Online Career Profiles & Social Networking | Software & Internet Product Mgmt & Marketing

cynthia@typaldos.com | 408 867-8875 office | 408 828-1370 cell

article - "Investors flock to Web Networking Sites", Wash Post, 10/13/04

2004-10-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28951-2004Oct13.html

Investors Flock to Web Networking Sites

By Michael Liedtke

The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; 7:05 AM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Internet whiz kids Marc Andreessen, Josh Kopelman and Joe Kraus share something in common besides reaping huge jackpots during the dot-com boom.

All three belong to LinkedIn, a rapidly growing online networking service whose ability to connect people with common friends and work interests helped persuade the trio to invest in the company before it even started to generate revenue.

"From Pull to Point: How to Save The Economist and The Journal from Irrelevance", John Battelle, 10/11/04

2004-10-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

Topic is the power of deep linking thru blogs.

John Battelle is Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, one of the co-founders of Wired magazine and the founder and former Chair of Standard Media International ("The Standard"), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/battelle/

He makes the same point that Adam Penenberg did in “Searching for the New York Times” (major media is becoming irrelevant because it can’t be found via links) but his emphasis is on blog links rather than search engine links. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64110,00.html

I added a comment to his blog entry and linked to my description of SubscriptionPal.
http://battellemedia.com/archives/000957.php

Cynthia

----------------------------------------

From Pull to Point: How to Save The Economist and The Journal from Irrelevance

by John Battelle

http://battellemedia.com/archives/000957.php

EXCERPT (NOT THE WHOLE POST)

“The real issue is how paid registration is handled. I find, increasingly, that sites which wall themselves off are becoming irrelevant. Not because the writing or analysis is necessarily flawed (though honestly, I don't trust journalists who eschew the blogosphere), but rather because their business model is. In today's ecosystem of news, the greatest sin is to cut oneself off from the conversation. Both the Economist and the Journal have done that.

”So what is to be done? My suggestion is simple: Take the plunge and allow deep linking. Notice I did not say abandon paid registration, in fact, I support it. Publishers can let the bloggers link to any story they post, but limit further consumption of their site to paid subscribers.

“I'd be willing to wager that the benefit of allowing the blogosphere to link to you will more than make up for potential lost subscribers. First off, if you as a publisher do not offer additional paid subscription benefits beyond the articles themselves, you're not paying attention to your community. And in any case, many folks will pay to subscribe to a site which is continually being linked to. In fact, I'd wager that the landing pages from blog links might be the most lucrative place a publisher can capture new subscribers. It's a massive opportunity to convert: the reader has come to your site on the recommendation of a trusted source (the blog he or she is reading). It's pretty certain that if you make that page inviting, and use it as an opportunity to sell the reader on the value of the rest of your site, that that reader will eventually feel like the Journal is worthy of his or her support.

“Why? In short, if a reader finds him or herself pointed to the Journal on a regular basis, that reader knows that by subscribing to the Journal, he or she would be more in the know. After all, all of the blogs read and point to the Journal, the reader thinks, so perhaps I should read it too. Before subscribing, the only time a reader might find out something in the Journal is if someone points to it (a far sight from where things stand today, by the way). But if they subscribe, they can get their own RSS feeds, and be first to know something. And, in the end, isn't that what drives subscription sales?

“Net net, I think allowing deep linking will drive subscription sales, rather than attenuate them.”

RE: [webcommunities] Yelp - local recommendations thru friends

2004-10-16T00:54:00.000-07:00

Charles,

Wow, thanks for the great link to Slashdot which linked to the Register article which is excellent and links to some other interesting stuff.

Warning!!!!! Social Networking Luddite opinions in those articles!!!! Don’t say you weren’t warned and don’t go there if your toes will get burned.

Cynthia

From: Charles Jo [mailto:cjo@inteliant-tech.com]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 11:20 PM
To: webcommunities@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [webcommunities] Yelp - local recommendations thru friends

Slashdot has a discussion on Yelp here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/15/1633235.shtml?tid=95&tid=111

My favorite comment from one of the readers is:

It's about time somebody saved me the hassle of having to hit that CC button, my efficiency is going to skyrocket now.

This one may be a tough sell unless they change their model. But out of curiosity, I may test it.

Best Regards,

Charles Jo
Silicon Valley

article: Neopets gambling controversy

2004-10-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Article: Neopets gambling controversy

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/15/1413222

Posted by Zonk on Friday October 15, @10:05AM
from the neoaddicts-eh? dept.
Neopoet writes "Players of the online virtual pet game Neopets (claims 70 million pet owners worldwide) have gone nuts against an Australian current affairs show called Today Tonight after the show ran segments railing against the Neopets for introducing children to gambling. Click below to read on.

It started when McDonalds Australia included a Neopets plush toy with every kids' Happy Meal in Australia, directing kids to the Neopets website.

To "feed" their pets, Neopets players have to win points in a variety of mini-games, including versions of poker and blackjack. Australia has a high rate of gambling problems with poker machines ("pokies"), so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker to feed his virtual pet, she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction.

TT aired the story Parents not McHappy over pokie toy and the Neopets message boards went nuts. Meanwhile McDonalds heavied Neopets into banning Australians from the gambling games. Today Tonight must have received a lot of hate mail because the next night came Neopet players fight McDonalds ban, featuring interviews with adult Neopets addicts. But this only increased the outrage on the Neopets boards - they're now trying to squash rumors of McDonalds withdrawing sponsorship altogether, and Neopets shutting down."

(this signature is in HTML format)
C y n t h i a T y p a l d o s: Passion, Expertise, Experience

Social Media & Social Software | Web Communities | Online Content Business Models

Online Career Profiles & Social Networking | Software & Internet Product Mgmt & Marketing

cynthia@typaldos.com | 408 867-8875 office | 408 828-1370 cell

my latest bio

2004-10-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

I wrote this new bio for the upcoming Online Community Summit conference sponsored by the Online Community Report.

I have been creating, developing, and managing online communities since January 1995 when my co-founder and I launched GolfWeb, a dot.com that included a golf course database with reader reviews and a "find a playing partner" service. With a small group of engineers and product managers I added further capabilities including a classifieds section (1995) and the "GolfWeb Players Club" (July, 1997).

The GolfWeb Players Club was a purposeful community application for golfers to use improve their game. It was offered as a subscription service and consisted of a game tracking system (golfers entered their rounds and the community provided the tee lengths for each course), private and public groups (where members could compare themselves to others in 30 different ways), online searchable and browsable profiles (including a reputation system), "invite a friend", and other features which were unique at the time; now standard in successful online communities. GolfWeb was featured in Business Week as one of the "Best Products of the Year" in the January 1997 issue that covered 1996 (click on the image to make it larger). GolfWeb was acquired by CBS Sportsline in early 1998.

Using my experience at GolfWeb as a specific example, I spent the next year exploring the underlying principles of communities by researching sociology and speaking with the leading sociologists involved in online communities (most notable was/is Marc Smith). From that research I developed "The 12 Principles of Civilization", a framework for developing and analyzing online communities (this space is now also called "social software" or "social media").

In 1998 I founded RealCommunities, a software startup that transformed the "12 Principles" into a software platform. We had early success with 3 major customers, then the internet bubble burst and RealCommunities was acquired by Mongoose Technology.

For the last three years I have been consulting and, with colleagues, creating and managing various free services including the Software Product Marketing eGroup (a.k.a. ProfGuilds) and the ResumeBlog.

My areas of passion, expertise and experience are:

I am particularly interested in how my clients can tap into existing services such as blogs, groups, Amazon (lists, reviews, guides), eBay, Evite, social networking sites, etc. to achieve their online community goals -- either as prototypes or even as the final offerings. I look forward to discussing this and other topics with the rest of the attendees.

I invite all dog-lovers to visit the blog of Sam, my foster German Shepherd dog, who is seeking his forever home.

Passion, Expertise, Experience

2004-08-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

I've created a new view of my career interests:
Passion, Expertise, & Experience

Blogs are boring

2004-08-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that blogs are boring. And the comments on blog entries are often worse than boring…not only are many of them silly but just like the online guest books of 10 years ago, the software is so unsophisticated that it allows the same entry again and again and again.

The goofiest blogs are the group blogs where a chosen “elite” get to post and the hoi polloi get to respond with comments. Each of the chosen attempts to make brilliant posts that will prove s/he is a genius, and each of the commentators attempt to either kiss up to the blogger (because s/he is one of the chosen), or prove that they (the commentator) are actually much smarter and have an even better idea, or just be silly.

However, I’m sure there are plenty of great blogs and great group blogs – but those are hidden from our view. They belong to cohesive communities, companies, friends, etc. – people that communicated before the internet and are just using blogs as one of the many online tools to continue to accomplish their purpose.

Feel free to agree or disagree or just be silly. And prove me wrong by pointing to a blog that you rely on and passionately follow (feel free to include your own).

Incompetent people cannot recognize their own incompetence

2004-08-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

This study on incompetent people came out a few years ago but a recent experience reminded me of how true it is.

So, in case you missed it the first time around...

"There are many incompetent people in the world. But a Cornell University study has shown that most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent. People who do things badly, according to David A. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well. One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. "

http://www.lingsoft.fi/~reriksso/competence.html
http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/overestimate.html
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DTI/is_7_29/ai_79826905
http://www.applesforhealth.com/competence1.html
http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/people/Faculty/dad6.html
lots more here:
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&q=Cornell+University+psychology+professor+David+Dunning+competence&btnG=Search

Blogging at the Demo Nat'l Convention

2004-07-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm reading the wrong blogs, but most of the convention blogs seem to be drivel. The second biggest story of the convention might we actually need journalists after all. I also found it difficult to even find the convention bloggers (OK, it took a few minutes googling but it should have taken a few seconds). And then they weren't connected to each other so it was a pain to go from one to the other. Only to read exciting comments such as "I'm going to my hotel room now to upload some photos". Please tell me I'm missing something here.

CyberTourists in Boston
July 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PT
By Charles Cooper

Professional politicians aren't famous for being early to embrace new technology. So when the Democrats extended credentials to bloggers to cover the party's national convention in Boston, I was left pleasantly stunned.

With all the pageantry and the circus-like atmospherics that make up an American political convention, you couldn't ask for a better backdrop to show off blogging's potential. In full view of the rest of the journalistic world, here would be the most welcome--albeit belated--recognition yet by the establishment that the media landscape is changing before our eyes.

All the more disappointing, then, to report back that blogging blew its big chance in Beantown.

With a few exceptions, most of the credentialed bloggers came off like cyberhayseeds in the big city.

for the rest of the article go here:
http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5289475.html?tag=nefd.acpro

John Dvorak on the blogger fiasco

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?dist=&param=archive&siteid=mktw&guid=%7B771BE781%2DB80B%2D48DD%2DB94D%2DA1917D357E4D%7D

Unfortunately you have to register to read, but here are a few tidbits.

Blogging at the convention
Commentary: Results of novel experiment prove mixed
By John C. Dvorak
Last Update: 2:55 PM ET July 28, 2004

Editor's note: John C. Dvorak is a regular contributor to CBS MarketWatch.
Dvorak is a longtime technology industry observer and columnist. His own daily musings can be read at www.dvorak.org/blog.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- When the Democrats issued credentials to between 30 and 50 bloggers and treated them to a special "breakfast for bloggers" at this week's Boston convention, you sensed something is changing in the media.
.......
From what I've seen so far on the Technorati convention blog watch, I'm not impressed.
Many of these posts are vapid observations combined with simple Kerry boosterism or knee-jerk Limbaugh-Republicanist complaints. Some are simply an undecipherable mess. Hopefully a few professionals will come in and publish some thoughtful pieces before the exercise is over, but this looks laughable thus far.
........
Blog mavens see blogging as a new form of media that will destroy the old media and its old-fashioned methodologies. They are living in a dream world.

Blogging is important and will take its rightful place as a resource, but not as a substitute for news organizations. And like the legions of Star Trek fans who pour over every episode frame-by-frame to find flaws, bloggers will, in fact, become the watchdog of the media, combing news reports, and keeping everyone honest. What's more important than that?

ProfGuilds/ResumeBlog Presentations

2004-05-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

We presented yesterday (5/5/04) at the Silicon Valley Product Management Association monthly meeting on the topic of Career Management in the era of globalization (this link goes to the current event, at some point our event will be moved to the archive so if this link does not describe our event, look in the event archive).

Our presentations are in the ResumeBlog blog. One is my presentation on Professional Guilds and Career Management, the other is Sachin Gangupantula's presentation specifically about the ResumeBlog. Heather Hamilton, the Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout, gave a presentation but rather than posting her presentation she will make comments in her blog.

BOB - the Big Orange Bee

2004-05-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

This is completely unrelated to "work" but...

My relationship with BOB (the Big Orange Bee) is written up in an article on the front page of Saturday May 1, 2004 San Francisco Chronicle Home and Garden section and includes a photo I took of him.
Uncovering the secret life of a blond bee, by Ron Sullivan

BOB is a male Valley Carpenter Bee.

On the webpage, click on the photo to get a larger version, or go here: my photo of BOB

Another photo of BOB that I took.

That’s all the non-blurry photos I’ve been able to take. He never alights.

My plant list is here if you are interested: www.ceanothus.com

My gardener is Jeffrey Caldwell.

My Career is My Business - Presentation

2004-04-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

I will be giving a presentation next week on May 5, 2004 evening title "My Career is My Business". I invited Heather Hamilton, the Microsoft Talent Scout, to join me. Sachin Ganganpantula who is a member of the core ResumeBlog team will also be on our panel.

The details can be found here:
Next SVPMA Event
at least until before the event.
I really don't like it when webpages don't have a permanent link. Anyway, if you are reading this after May 5th the SVPMA (Silicon Valley Product Marketing Association) has an archive of the events.

But here are the details. If you read my blog and come to the event, please let me know.
----------------------------------------

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004

My Career is My Business - Career Management in the era of globalization

Speakers:
Cynthia Typaldos, Founder and President - ProfGuilds
Heather Hamilton, Sr. Talent Scout, Microsoft
Sachin Gangupantula, ProfGuilds ResumeBlog Team

Location: Wyndham Hotel
1300 Chesapeake Terrace, Sunnyvale, 94089
408-747-0999 (map)

Cost: $20 at the door for non-members or $100/year for annual membership covering 12 meetings.

6:30 pm Registration/networking/refreshments
7:30 pm Presentation
9:00 pm Wrap-up/networking

Cynthia Typaldos, founder and president of ProfGuilds (previously known as the Software Product Marketing [SPM] eGroup) will speak and lead a discussion on managing your career in the era of globalization. Product marketing and management, like many other knowledge worker occupations. is being globalized and commoditized. Cynthia will speak about how the product management job market will evolve, and how to develop and market a deep expertise thus differentiating yourself. Cynthia will also cover how to achieve professional visibility online, build your reputation, and participate on virtual teams wherever your skills are needed. Heather Hamilton, Senior Talent Scout at Microsoft for marketing, will provide her perspective on the way she seeks out top talent and how this has changed and is further evolving because of the internet. Sachin Gangupantula, a consultant and key member of the ProfGuilds/ResumeBlog team, will highlight the process of creating a ResumeBlog and the benefits this brings.

Cynthia and Heather will also explain the difference between being a “wolf or a potato” in managing your career.

The audience will be encouraged to participate throughout the discussion. This promises to be a lively topic. Please join us and learn the strategies that product managers are using to succeed in today's difficult job climate.

50% off the entry fee if you bring a copy of your ResumeBlog! It’s best to print it in landscape format.

Heather Hamilton and a colleague will be interviewing candidates during the day before and after the presentation for marketing positions at Microsoft (for various geographical locations, not just Silicon Valley or Redmond). If you would like to be interviewed, please follow the directions here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/webcommunities/message/987

Speaker Bios

Cynthia Typaldos is currently the founder and president of ProfGuilds. ProfGuilds is a set of professional guilds for knowledge workers (formerly known as the Software Product Marketing [SPM] eGroup), currently consisting of 5 guilds in the software space (marketing, sales, engineering, project management, and jobs in India), and over 5,000 members. The ProfGuilds are not-for-profit volunteer-managed organizations composed of career-minded knowledge workers who are employees, consultants, contractors, and entire project teams in the software, networking, internet and telecommunications markets. In tandem with the not-for-profit professional guilds she would like to develop a for-profit company to provide services to the guilds including hosted social software, partnerships, consulting projects, and a barter economy (funding needed). The primary services are a job postings and the ResumeBlog service.

Typaldos is a two-time entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in software and networking. She was previously founder and CEO of RealCommunities, an enterprise software platform for collaboration (a.k.a. social networking) applications (acquired by Mongoose Technology in 2001), founder and COO of GolfWeb, one of the first dot.coms (acquired by CBS Sportsline in 1998), Director of Software Product Marketing at Sun Microsystems, Group Manager of Product Marketing at Data General, and Senior Systems Software Engineer at Bank of America

She is widely recognized as an expert on web collaboration, online communities, and social software. She earned an undergraduate science degree and did graduate course work in computer science at UC Berkeley and was awarded an MBA from MIT.

Heather Hamilton has been working in the staffing industry for ten years and is currently Senior Recruiter for Marketing Talent Acquisition at Microsoft. She is responsible for creating and driving strategies for identifying and attracting the industry's best marketing talent to Microsoft. Heather has been with Microsoft for 5 years in different roles, supporting business and technical organizations' staffing needs. Prior to Microsoft, Heather held roles leading the technical recruiting team at a large multi-line insurance company's corporate headquarters as well as staffing full-time consultants for Y2K remediation and application development and application outsourcing projects for a national IT consulting firm. Heather started her staffing career at Robert Half International in the AccounTemps division after a brief career excursion in accounting. Heather has a BS degree in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and currently resides in the Seattle area.

Sachin Gangupantula is an independent consultant providing services in product and technology strategy, Competitive Analysis, Product Marketing and business development. Most recently, he helped iManage develop, market and deploy highly reliable enterprise collaborative content management solutions. He has over 8 years of experience in developing and bringing to market innovative web-based products and services.

He is currently helping the ProfGuilds team in developing & delivering a compelling open-source innovation with the ResumeBlog Service that redefines Professional Visibility on the web. He is also on the board of SVPMA.

Sachin earned an undergraduate degree from BITS, Pilani and has a Master's in Computer Science from Univ of Hawaii.

Honesty Online Higher than Offline

2004-03-21T15:30:00.000-08:00

March 21, 2004
The New York Times
ESSAY
The Honesty Virus
By CLIVE THOMPSON

This is an incredibly interesting article, that draws the conclusion that people are more truthful online than in person or on the phone. I’ve highlighted the most interesting parts below.

The author’s last two paragraphs are astonishing…yet he seems to be on the right path. I certainly agree that I can get to know someone just as well, maybe even better, by working with them virtually.

The Honesty Virus

RealCommunities Business Model

2004-03-20T14:21:00.000-08:00

Summary: Goal was to own the API for personal profiles

The business model of my previous company, RealCommunities, had an ambitious plan to create and then dominate in the area of personal profiles. Here's the short description from my business model document that I prepared for our angel investors (written in September 1999).

Community (and Community Application) Portal

Enable individuals to find the “best” community for their needs (e.g. for mentoring, community opinion, experts, investment clubs, etc.)
Enable individuals to store, retrieve, update and otherwise maintain a “myrealcommunities” capability in order to
- More quickly join new communities (that are powered by RealCommunities)
- Be alerted to new communities of interest to them
- Quickly find and manage their involvement in various communities

RealCommunities Business Model Discussion document, 9/27/99
RealCommunities Executive Summary, 10/00
More about RealCommunities on Typaldos.com

Microsoft Talent Scout Blogs

2004-03-16T21:19:00.000-08:00

Heather Hamilton, the Microsoft Talent Scout who gave us all the great ResumeBlog tips previously
(see my notes at http://typaldos.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_typaldos_archive.html#107713767999431713)
has now started her own blog at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/

Several of the other Microsoft Talent Scouts are also doing a blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog

Heather invites all of the SPM members to send her questions about “Marketing at Microsoft” that she will respond to in her blog. See her note below.

If you send a question to Heather, be sure to mention you are an SPM member AND provide a link to your ResumeBlog.

If you don’t have a ResumeBlog, you can create one in 15 minutes by following the directions here:
www.resumeblog.com

Please do not forward this message or re-post it to other lists, but rather if there are other people you know that might be interested, invite them to join our spmdiscussion egroup at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/softwareproductmarketingdiscussion.

From: Heather Hamilton (Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout)
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 8:24 PM
To: cynthia@typaldos.com
Subject: RE: notes from our conversations

Hi Cynthia,

I wanted to follow up since our conversation and let you know that I am working on the "top 10 tips" article that we discussed. I have some other projects this week but it is coming along and you should expect it the middle of next week.

I also wanted to let you know that I am officially blogging at http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/. Maybe some of your folks would be interested in sending in some questions about "marketing at Microsoft". I'd love to hear from people! I've added a link to the Software Product Management eGroup. I hope I can contribute to some additional traffic for your resume blogs as well!

Internet-based Techniques for Recruiters

2004-02-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

The Microsoft Talent Scout mentioned the AIRS website where recruiters/talent scouts congregate. We (ProfGuids volunteers) took a look at their website and found two fascinating classes!

Some info on the two classes below but go to the class pages for the entire description.

This is excellent proof that recruiters and their like are using internet to troll for candidates rather than just posting jobs on the tradition media or job boards. I believe it also shows that recruiters are spending less time working their rolodexes and more time just finding the people directly.

Googling for Candidates

Class is offered once/month at $495 per person (discounts for multiple attendees)
Online, 4 hours.

The world of Internet search has been turned upside down by Google and other new search engines that reach farther into the Web to bring back pages never before available! This ground breaking class will update you on the hottest techniques on the cutting edge. This class is full of startling new ways to use Google to bring back great results - this is really fun stuff!

Why You Should Attend

Google Rocks!
Google is the uber-search engine that most people rely on today. If you're like our researchers, you've come to rely on the massive scale of Google's index, and the precision of it's results. Though it's still important to use a variety of search engines to canvass the Web, Google is definitely becoming the first stop for Internet search - and an increasingly great resource for finding passive candidates.

Documents You Won't Find Anywhere Else
Google indexes documents that other search engines do not. Learn to find MS/Excel and MS/Word phone directories, MS/PowerPoint organizational charts and other unique documents hidden inside the Web servers of companies, colleges, organizations, forums and other Web communities.

A Suite of New Search Tools
You'll learn to leverage the power of the Google Toolbar, Google News and Google Groups to flip Websites, find hidden pages, get past 404 errors, find executives and listen-in to expert discussions online. Google's advanced features and secrets are powerful tools for recruiters and researchers.

Learn From the Best
AIRS trainers are seasoned professionals with first-hand experience recruiting through a time of revolutionary change in the industry. All are Certified Internet Recruiters, and have cutting-edge e-recruiting skills and technical knowledge, as well as expert sourcing, contact, assessment and hiring skills.

What You'll Learn

* Getting around inside Google.
* The best advanced search process for passive candidates.
* The ins and outs of the Google Toolbar.
* How to find gurus in Google Groups.
* How to find the right Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
* How to find DeepWeb pages you can't get to any other way.
* Uncover phone lists, org charts and other high-value documents.
* Using Google Images and News to find specific kinds of candidates.
* Super commands and Google "hacks".
* And lots more!

Guerrilla Job Posting Strategies

Class is offered once in April at $495 per person (discounts for multiple attendees)
Online, 4 hours

Why You Should Attend

Reduce Your Advertising Costs
Lower your costs while you sharpen your focus. Why pay hundreds of dollars a posting to compete with over 400,000 other customers at Monster.com, when you can post your ads for pennies into specialized communities filled with passive candidates? Stop paying a fortune to job boards that broadcast to the general public - and start narrowcasting to the right candidate pools, at a fraction of the cost.

Leave the Crowds Behind
Knowing where passive candidates gather is a powerful competitive advantage. Now you can stop jostling with every other recruiter on the planet for the same overexposed group of job seekers at the big boards. Instead, you'll learn to go out on the Net to find fresh, untapped communities of passive candidates that you can capture with focused, personalized ad campaigns.

Reach Better Candidates
The best candidates are not surfing job boards, because they're not looking for a job. But that doesn't mean you can't reach them. This class will teach you to reach passive candidates by growing relationships with the alumni directors, mail list managers, forum moderators, user group presidents and other gatekeepers who can help you advertise to their targeted audiences.

Learn from the Best
Your trainers are seasoned professionals with first-hand experience recruiting through a time of revolutionary change in the industry. All are Certified Internet Recruiters, and have cutting-edge e-recruiting skills and technical knowledge, as well as a solid grounding in sales, client management and candidate development.

What You'll Learn

* How to write job ads guaranteed to produce better results.
* How to optimize your placement on the Big Boards.
* The most efficient niche board strategies.
* How to build no-cost and low-cost job posting campaigns.
* Find the right Web communities for your search.
* Low cost advertising into forums, mail lists and vertical portals.
* How to cost-effectively drive eyeballs to your own Web site.
* How to measure and refine your ad strategies.
* To reach the best passive candidates at the lowest possible cost.
* And lots more!

2004-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

Conversations with Microsoft Senior Talent Scout – Rev 2.18.04

Two sets of notes, the first set is from my conversation with the talent scout on Monday, 2.16.04, and the second set is from our group conversation with her on Tuesday 2.17.04.

There is a wealth of information in these notes including specific advice on how to improve your ResumeBlog to make yourself more visible to recruiters and more interesting once you are found.

Cynthia

--------------------------------------

Notes from my conversation with the Microsoft Senior Talent Scout, 2/16/04

Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout is one of 5 “Senior Talent Scouts” at Microsoft. Talent Scouts are essentially the recruiting swat team that helps the business division recruiters when they are having trouble filling a position. This Microsoft Senior Talent Scout first learned about us (ProfGuilds) thru a internet search using keywords (MSN or Google, I didn’t probe). She found the ResumeBlog of Andy Klein (www.andrew-klein.blogspot.com) of this group along with others. Several of the ResumeBloggers are now in discussions with Microsoft concerning open positions. In fact, the talent scout went thru most of the ResumeBlogs in the BlogRoll (the list of ResumeBloggers that is on the right-hand side of every ResumeBlog). This particular Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout and one other talent scout are responsible for marketing, the other three talent scouts are for technical jobs. Via email Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout has shared information about the ProfGuilds’ ResumeBlogs with other Microsoft recruiters. (Note: my ResumeBlog is here - www.cynthia-typaldos.blogspot.com, but see the advice below, my ResumeBlog needs some improvement! A ResumeBlog is different than an ordinary blog -- go to the ResumeBlog blog for more information.)

What the Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout is really excited about is the ResumeBlogs. Overall she is thrilled with blogs in general because they reveal more about a potential candidate and in particular provide insight into candidates that are the levels below director. Higher level people often have more information about them because of speaking engagements, being on company websites, etc. She considers blogs to be a revolutionary tool for staffing professionals to use to find top talent.

The Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout never uses job boards for a variety of reasons including:

Typically Microsoft already has a person’s resume if they have put it into a job board
The quality is lower than what she can find by an internet search
Microsoft Sr. Talent Scouts find candidates through internet search and then follow-up via phone or email to prospective candidates or people that might know of prospective candidates. They do not usually post their job openings as the internet search method is more effective.
When they (the Talent Scouts or presumably any of the Microsoft recruiters) find a community or cluster of similar professionals they are very excited because they have found these communities to be the best source of good talent.

Feedback on the ResumeBlog service overall:

This is exactly the kind of service she loves to discover. I got the impression it was unique amongst the various communities she has found. She has already told a number of other recruiters about the ResumeBlogs.
She did not realize the search box would take keywords. We need to change the box description to say “keyword search” rather than “member search”. She thought it was a search by member name only.
She would like to see the ResumeBlog members split out by ProfGuild (we are working on that already)
She would like a “last updated” flag next to each members’ link in the BlogRoll
She would like a service where a recruiter could sign up to receive notification of new or modified ResumeBlogs (some kind of RSS feed?)

As you can see, our conversation centered around the ResumeBlogs. Microsoft does not use our job posting services. However that doesn’t mean the job posting services aren’t important. These services are what attracts members to ProfGuilds and then it’s our job to get them to create ResumeBlogs.

Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout and her team are going to write up a list of 10 tips on how to get found as a job candidate on the internet. She will sign this herself and post it to our members. Our thoughts behind this are to get our members to hear directly from one of the industries top talent scouts on how to get a job. I suspect she will be quite convincing in getting more people to create ResumeBlogs.

But wait, do we want more people to have ResumeBlogs and therefore create more competition for ourselves? Absolutely because the more ResumeBlogs we have the more likely one of us is going to be found and as we have seen numerous times, once hiring managers/recruiters find one ResumeBlog they tend to use the search box or the list of links in the Blogroll to find additional candidates.
-------------------

Notes/Input from the Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout from group meeting with ProfGuilds on 2/16/04

Suggestions on how to improve your ResumeBlog:

Content

Explain more about product space, industry space in your ResumeBlog
Include product context: explain something about the product, that's useful information.
Make it look like a resume rather than a bio; link to other information about yourself (articles, website, press mentions, etc.).
Experience, even older experience is relevant. If there is a natural break you might want to just put company, title, date. Technology changes but functional role does not. Marketing people with previous technical experience is very relevant.
Red flags no dates of employment, too much movement although more acceptable lately.
Green flags. What did the person actually DO? What did they OWN, not just what did they do as part of a team. Strategic without tactics is bad. How they put something thru the whole process.
Keep personal stuff out of it (that is, don’t use it as a personal blog also). Blogs should clearly indicate whether they are personal or professional.

Getting Found

Talent Scouts start with an internet search using keywords of company names, product types, they find people, then use those people to find more people
They search discussion groups to find knowledgeable people too
Once find a person that might be interesting they do an internet search on the name of that person
Are they using social networking tools – LinkedIn, Spoke, and Plaxo? She doesn't use them for the intended purpose, just uses them to get names by keyword e.g. network security. Once she has names she does an internet search on those people. [By the way, my personal opinion is that references are LESS important in the internet world than previously, because now professionals have ways of actually showing their work to a wide audience via internet presentations, articles, press mention, etc. -- Cynthia.)
Smaller companies may have to use other mechanisms because they don’t get the same candidate flow.
Once you get your resume to one recruiter they will pass to other recruiters in that company.
Use KEYWORDS. Company names, titles, is what they do the initial search on. You want your ResumeBlog to come up in that search. OK to put keywords into source code -- talent scout doesn’t look for actual word. Market space terms server, business intelligence, security, digital media, desktop applications, operating systems, ebusiness, smart personal objects, mobility, embedded, consumer space, devices, home entertainment, customer segment specific experience, consumer packaged goods, branding and advertising, architect, developer, etc.
Be part of a community of similar professionals…creates a pool of talent for the recruiters to tap into. They will look at a lot of ResumeBlogs if the are in a logical grouping (e.g. our professional guilds, note that we will be breaking the ResumeBlogs into chunks by guild soon)

Getting Hired

Why are some product marketing/management & technical positions “hard to fill” such that the Talent Scout gets involved? Niche-y jobs. Not just hiring for the position, hiring for the long run. Hiring the best in the industry. Or some recruiters are working on a lot of positions (e.g. 40+) need help from the Talent Scouts.
Looking for people who are smart and not how to get stuff done. People that are successful in working towards a GOAL (and accomplishing that goal). This was THE most important thing she said re: Microsoft, their culture. Can't emphasize that enough. She noted working hard is commendable, but what's important is that the hard work is related to a GOAL.
Picking out doers from talkers. What have they done. Must have been at a company long enough to get stuff done (at least 1.5 yrs).

Recruiting Industry Observations:

How should we (ProfGuilds) approach recruiters? Network our way in, using email addresses on job postings doesn’t work because those typically go into a folder. AIRS is http://www.airsdirectory.com/. Go thru those organizations and find the recruiters.
Change in the recruiting industry: It’s now all about finding the BEST talent. Typically someone who has a web presence is viewed as a better potential hire…speaking at conferences, discussion groups, articles, etc. Who are the best people in this space?

Make your small URL HUG*E !!!

2004-02-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

Many of you are familiar with www.tinyurl.com to make a long URL short but…

What if you want to impress others? Wouldn’t it make sense to make a small URL huge?

There is now a service to do this and it is completely totally FREE. No obligation. Total privacy (I don’t actually know if this is true.)

I successfully turned my small ResumeBlog URL into the humongous URL below. You can do the same by going to www.hugeurl.com.

www.cynthia-typaldos.blogspot.com: original short ResumeBlog URL is now the huge URL below!

http://www.hugeurl.com/?NTg2OWE5MzYyYzhjMmU1Y2YzZGVhNjg2MjUyODEyMGYmMTEm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I couldn't get Blogger to accept this as a valid URL but if you cut and paste it back together you will see it actually works!!!

Amazing...

2004-01-31T18:24:00.000-08:00

Stanford Business School has just now published all of the videos of their speaker forums including the one on social networking that was sponsored by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab in which I was a panelist:

Social Networking: Is there a Business Model?
September 2003
link to original event description
link to video of event

"A handful of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have created a resurgence of Web sites dedicated to enabling social networking: business contacts, affinity groups and even dating. At the same time other technologists are experimenting with network platforms to enable new communication avenues. These were some of the topics that drew a capacity crowd in September for the MIT/Stanford Venture Laboratory discussion on Social Networking."

Since I was hardly allowed to speak by the moderator, Tony Perkins, I haven’t had the nerve to look at the video myself. But apparently my observations were noticed, at least by this person.

http://www.socialwrite.com/archives/2004/01/30/shooting-in-the-dark/

"There are some great videos over at the Stanford School of Business centre for lifelong learning with a panel discussion and keynote on finding a business model for social networking. Of all the panel members Cynthia Typaldos was the most realistic and informative. She was neither sceptical, nor oblivious."

My Business Networking Predictions for 2004

2004-01-30T21:30:00.000-08:00

Network Moves asked me to come up with a list of what 2004 will bring in the area of professional networking.

You can find my predictions on their website along with those of Scott Allen, Nick Corcodilos, Diane Darling, Debra Feldman, Craig Frank, Julie Jansen, and Andrea Nierenberg. I'm last since we "experts" are in last name alphabetical order so you have to scroll down to find my predictions. I'm going to asked them for a named link but until then either read it there, or I'll put it right here in my blog.

So far I think my predictions are holding up pretty well! Of course, it is only the start of the second month of the year...

1. Except in the areas of job/career, yellow pages, and small/local businesses, most online social networking is a dud. Do you really want to sell that crummy old couch to a friend of a friend? For more on this, see my recent blog entry, Social networking is mostly silly.

2. The move to member-owned professional guilds will accelerate as everyone realizes that he or she must be a business of one, taking full ownership of their career. Also, the definition of a career will change from successive promotions in corporations to participation in projects with various organizations and teams, structured around a core competency.

3. At the same time, professionals will demand full ownership of their career and professional data. They will say No to proprietary systems like Monster.com and various social-networking start-ups.

4. Not having a professional Web presence will be like not having an e-mail address or a phone number.

5. Open-software and open-innovation concepts and implementation will become even more attractive. For more on this, see my list of articles and books on open innovation.

6. Recruiters and executive-search firms will play lesser roles in the acquisition of talent. Human resources and talent managers—those who can find the absolute best person for any project—will become more important and less subjective.

7. Outsourcing will become less of a threat. Non-U.S. companies will hire the best talent anywhere, be it in Boston, San Jose, Bangalore, Singapore, London, or Mexico City. Virtual teams will become the norm.

8. What you have accomplished will become much more important than who you know. Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. Recommendations are simply proxies for understanding a person's work experience. Professionals will use their online portfolios to demonstrate their talents (ResumeBlog is a start). With connections and validations, white-collar professionals will be hired much more for what they can do rather than what others say they can do. This will be welcome news for those who are not part of the "old boys network," especially in high tech.

9. Successful online social-networking business models will be based on membership fees, the ability to match talent with jobs, and a barter economy. (For more on this, see my recent blog entry.)

10. Online social networks will be offered as features of many products—rather than as stand-alone Web sites, services, or tools.

My Career is MY Business

2004-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

mycareerismybusiness

This is the write-up for a talk I am giving in February 2004

In the syndicated comic strip "Sally Forth"(0), Sally's husband Ted, a middle management drone, types his name into Google and there is no mention of him. He is greatly disappointed and mentions his "absence of presence" to Sally. Sally responds saying that she will hire a programmer to build a website for Ted.

What's wrong and what's right with this scenario?

What's right with this scenario is Ted, a corporate employee, can no longer hide in his cubicle and expect promotions and projects to come to him. The 21st century is the dawn of the "Free Agent Nation"(1) and every white collar professional must manage his/her own career...not only is lifetime employment disappearing but many forms of employment are being replaced by contractors and consultants. No matter what you do, you need to accept this and learn how to market yourself as a business and manage your career. So, Ted needs to get himself visible on the web, because an executive recruiter might at this very moment be typing the keywords into Google that will bring up Ted...i.e. "tax accountant corporate merger" (I have no idea what Ted "does"(3), this is just an example).

What's wrong with this scenario is that Sally thinks she has to get a programmer to build a website for Ted's professional presence. Having someone build a website for you is the worst possible path because who will maintain it? There's a better solution which is....

...the ResumeBlog(TM)!(4) -- a professional web presence that is easy to create and maintain . Additionally, your ResumeBlog is not a lonely island in the vast sea of internet webpages; it is tightly linked with other people in your industry your professional guild, which makes you findable thru traversable links and a higher pagerank(5).

We will discuss all of the above including going thru the very simple steps to create your ResumeBlog so that when you leave this seminar you can go home and in 10 minutes be findable for that next great opportunity! This talk is appropriate whether you are a professional seeking to expand your opportunities, or if you are seeking talent.

Fortune Magazine's columnist/recruiter "Ask Annie"(6) and "Sally Forth" agree -- you gotta have a web presence in the 21st century!

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

(0) the comic strip is here: http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/sforth/aboutMaina.php, go to Nov 16, 2003
(1) see Dan Pink's website: www.freeagentnation.com
(2) read the first two articles by Prof Tom Malone, MIT: http://www.typaldos.blogspot.com/2003_11_18_typaldos_archive.html#106919390880564685
(3) actually comic strip characters don't do anything in between their daily appearance in the newspaper
(4) check out the ResumeBlog instructions! www.resumeblog.com
(5) Google's pagerank algorithm measures the ranking of a page in a search results partly by how many other pages link to it
(6) http://www.fortune.com/fortune/annie/0,15704,539758,00.html Ask Annie: Secrets of an Executive Recruiter, 11/10/03

Social Networking Sites = More Work for Me! Am I a Luddite?

2003-12-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

I posted this note in both the SPM Discussion eGroup (900 members) and the WebCommunities eGroup (350) members. Lots of interesting responses; you can search the archives to find them without being a member.

Elisa Camahort was among the many who wrote perceptive comments.

"Networking is much easier for the extroverts among us, and these social networking sites give a false hope to introverts that they can achieve the benefits of networking without really have to interact with people on an individual basis."
And no, I did NOT make my post just for the joy of using the word Luddite.

Cynthia

Pageview Counter

2003-11-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

Academic Articles and Books on Professional Guilds and Open Innovation

2003-11-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

Free Agents in the OldeWorld: The future of work in Free Agent Nation may look strangely like the past, says MIT's Thomas Malone. Prithee: Art thou ready to join a guild?, Fast Company, May

Retreat of the Firm and the Rise of Guilds: The Employment Relationship in an Age of Virtual Business, by Robert Laubacher and Thomas W. Malone, MIT. This paper appears in Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, a volume of articles edited by Professors Malone and Laubacher and their colleague Michael Scott Morton

Free Agent Nation, Dan Pink

Work in the New Economy: Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley, by Chris Benner, Manuel Castells, Preface

The Open-Innovation Model, Henry W. Chesbrough, MIT Sloan Mgmt Review, Spring 2003

Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, by Henry William Chesbrough

Open Innovation: Interview with Henry Chesbrough, April 2003, Corante

Career/Job Websites and Social Networking Business Model

2003-11-13T20:05:00.000-08:00

There is the potential of an eBay-like economy, with a transaction-based business model, once professionals accept 1) everyone is a free agent in the 21st century, forget being an employee, and 2) a critical mass of professionals have a viable web presence. This new economy will be based on the exchange of professional services thru a bartering system – essentially bypassing national forms of currency. eBay is already experimenting with alternative forms of currency, e.g. frequent flyer miles. and I suspect they are very deep into analyzing a bartering economy, not whether to do it, but when. Bartering is already very big business on the web…just do a Google search and I suspect you will be astonished at the types of merchandise and services, and the companies, that are already participating in bartering.

I believe there are only two really powerful uses of social networks – for jobs/career for white-collar professionals and “employee-type” roles, and for yellow page advertisers (yellow pages are essentially the proxy for personal commodity services, often location-dependent, e.g. real estate agents and for small businesses).

Friendster is silly for a variety of reasons, and the other social networking websites that are targeting professionals have failed to appreciate that free agents want to OWN their data – thus proprietary based systems (e.g. LinkedIn, Monster.com’s effort, Tribe.net, Spoke SW, Ryze) will fall by the wayside as open software solutions become available. In fact, it is already possible to create 95% of the needed functionality for an initial job/career social networking website out of freely available software and services (Google, Blogger, Yahoo Groups, etc.). See www.resumeblog.com for a straightforward example.

For more information on the above topics please read other posts in my blog, visit the ResumeBlog blog, my professional website at Typaldos.com, and the ProfGuilds/Software Product Marketing website.

I would love to get a small amount of funding for my concept – ProfGuilds – but unfortunately women entrepreneurs only receive 4% of venture funding. My team and I are looking for corporate funding instead.

2003-11-12T20:21:00.000-08:00

Today I updated the post about Connections and Validations (dated Thurs Oct 30th). The post mainly links to an actual specification on Job/Career Networking Connections and Validations which I also updated.

I'm hoping to get some feedback.

Cynthia
cynthia@typaldos.com

2003-11-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

Social networking is mostly silly

All of the rabid interest in social networking, and the use of the internet to do so, got me thinking about the real value provided. The whole concept may be flawed since "it´s who you know not what you know" is really a proxy for a measure of your competence, experience, and knowledge. That is, if someone is willing to recommend you (for a specific role) then that recommendation is a way of measuring whether in fact you have the knowledge, experience, talent, contacts, dedication etc. to actually accomplish whatever needs to be done. With the internet´s ability to allow you to actually demonstrate what you can and have done, and with validations by others that this is so (see my next post), WHO you know may actually be LESS important since you can demonstrate much more effectively WHAT you know and how you have successfully applied yourself in the past.

2003-10-30T08:13:00.000-08:00

Here’s a specification for the social networking links for professional guilds (career/job) based around a member’s work history. I’m interested in feedback.

Here's the intro, go here for the entire document.

Job/Career Networking

Connections & Validations Specification

Paying members are able to develop a reputation thru the use of connections and validations. This, along with the ability to do activities, is the main functional difference between paying members and non-paying members. For more on this concept see the presentation on a similar system proposed to Napster on my website at http://www.typaldos.com/presentations/monetize.file.sharing/monetize.file.sharing.12.5.02.12pm_files/frame.htm titled “Monetizing File Sharing Services” dated 12/5/02 but actually developed over a year or so earlier (along with a prototype).
Even though non-paying members are not able to develop a reputation (because their connections and validations are not visible), they can still accumulate these connections (but not validations) at the request of paying members. Again, this is simply another example of the basic reputation-based subscription service laid out in the original presentation prepared for Napster. Once a non-paying member pays, the accumulated connections which were hidden (to peers) become visible.
A working prototype has been built by me and Patrick Neeman. For access to the prototype please contact me. Be prepared to do a business deal rather than just exchange ideas.

Career/Job Social Networking: Relationship Management of Connections and Validations

2003-10-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

Linkname: resumeblogsearchbox

Importance of Search Box in ResumeBlog Blogroll
(see my ResumeBlog)
ResumeBlog Blog

I'm just realizing how important the search box is (and the member links too) in the column on the right. The more ResumeBloggers we have the more likely it is that a hiring mgr/recruiter etc. will find one of our ResumeBlogs in a general search. But there is a LOT of stuff out there, so doing another general search with slightly different terms might not even get near a ResumeBlogger. However, once the googler finds the search box, s/he is now searching ONLY within our membership.

So, contradicting common sense, having more ResumeBloggers increases the probability that an individual ResumeBlogger is likely to be found. Another factor that rolls into this is millions (maybe billions?) or searches are made, anytime one of those connects the googler with a ResumeBlog, there is the possibility that s/he will abandon the general search and do the specific search.

I'm sure there is a mathematical algorithm here that would show at which number of members is optimum. However the algorithm would have to take into account the total number of pages on the internet that would show up as being relevant. Since that number is extremely high for almost any relatively general search, I suspect that the number of ResumeBloggers (in an industry/function) could be very, very high, maybe even include everyone in that industry/function.

2003-10-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

Professional Guilds –
using the ResumeBlog™ to “Hang out your Shingle”

Linkname: hangoutshingle
This document is also at http://typaldos.com/word.documents/shingle/

What is SPM and how and why is it expanding?

SPM is a two-year old professional guild consisting of software, networking, and telecom marketing and business development professionals. Right now our main offerings to our members are a very targeted job posting service and an active discussion board about doing the job. Hiring managers, recruiters, and HR personnel who post to SPM repeatedly tell us that our members are highly qualified. This is quite different than less focused job boards or the sites such as Monster.com which will return literally hundreds of resumes with only a very few qualified candidates. Many job posters prefer SPM because of the smaller number of submitted resumes, and the much higher match of those that do apply. Numerous quotes from satisfied job posters can be found on our homepage at www.softwareproductmarketing.com.

We are actively branching out and creating additional professional guilds – and not just for software professionals. The new guilds and SPM will all be part of a larger whole call ProfGuilds.

However, posted jobs are only a small part of the total jobs open. We felt very strongly that we needed a mechanism to get our members in front of the hiring manager for the unposted jobs, which could be a very large percentage of the total. And our mechanism is the ResumeBlog™.

ResumeBlogs are a way to “hang out your shingle”

White-collar professionals had a big wake-up call in this current recession particularly in the technology industry where there have been thousands of layoffs and many people are into their third year of unemployment. Companies have been evolving to be more efficient, through outsourcing, streamlining, and depending more on part-time workers. But the typical white-collar professional was still sitting in his/her cubicle, working away, oblivious to the changes. And when that professional was thrown out like unwelcome guest, s/he realized that s/he hadn't developed the skills, nor had the resources and visibility to become a "business of me". Which is today's new reality – very eloquently discussed in the book "Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself". Small business owners, and many of the members of professions such as accounting, medical, legal, and academia have long understood that they have to make a name for themselves independent of where they are working, because what they do next will not simply be the company handing them a promotion – they have to go out and find the next project themselves.

Blogs arrived in the nick of time to help us out. Within a few minutes, any mildly computer-savvy professional can create a good-looking "ResumeBlog™ which is the equivalent of "putting out a shingle”, that is, signaling that you are ready for business, and equally important, ARE a business.

Why are blogs so uniquely suited to being the professionals’ “shingle”?

There are 5 key reasons that blogs are much superior to having a website or using a webpage consumer service.

First, blogs are designed to be shared. It's easy to set up a blog where multiple people can post, comment on each other’s posts, and even edit each other’s posts. This is critical in today's world where the ability to collaborate, especially virtually, can mean the difference between getting a job or not. And it allows the blog to be not just about me, me, me, but also about me as a member of the professional community, and a member of a team.
Second, blogs are much, much easier to create and maintain than a website. I have several (OK lots) of blogs and two websites (www.typaldos.com and www.softwareproductmarketing.com). Both of my websites are hard to maintain. It is difficult to share the workload, and doing even something trivial is not easy. For example, to update my website to include this text involves starting up Dreamweaver (a complex program in itself), figuring out what page to put this information on (or create a new page or a new section), getting it into the right format using several of the 10 or so little Dreamweaver toolboxes that randomly dot the computer screen, saving the page, firing up an FTP (file transfer protocol program), going the right spot in the website to update the page, transferring the updated page, testing it (I really should have a staging server), and so on. Actually, it's not even that easy. But for me to put this into a blog is completely trivial. I just log into my blog, put this all into a new post, push the publish button, and it's done. Now the formatting of my blog won't be as nice as it could be unless I am willing to do a little bit of HTML coding, but if you look at my website www.typaldos.com you will see lots of places where I tried to do nice formatting with Dreamweaver and somehow created a mess instead. As long as you know how to do the simplest things in HTML– bold, web links, headers, email links and bulleted lists, you will be fine.
Third, because blogs are easy to create and maintain, there are lots more of them. And that means you are more likely to have a colleagues and information that you want to link to that make your blog more integrated with the other blogs and websites. Traversing links is the basic lifeblood of the internet – links are the fodder that fuels Google – and are what makes your blog not an island, but part of a tapestry. With appropriate links pointing to and from your blog, as people browse the internet, they are likely to come upon your blog in the right context.
Fourth, it's easy for software developers anywhere in the world to design add-on tools to be designed for blogs. This means that lots of clever people are out there creating great tools that can then be incorporated into your blog. For example, we use a blogroll to maintain a list of all the SPM ResumeBlog members. We embed that tool in every single member's ResumeBlog (by having them use our standard template). For instance, in my ResumeBlog at www.cynthia-typaldos.blogspot.com you can find links to other members’ ResumeBlogs in the right-hand column. I doesn't have to maintain that list; it is pulled in real-time when his ResumeBlog is accessed. Incredibly, by using a trademarked keyword embedded in the blogroll, and a simple Google search box available free from Google's site, we have created a keyword searchable database of all of the ResumeBloggers! And we have done this without any software engineering, any purchased database software, and any hosting service! But we haven’t sacrificed quality – we have some of the best tools in the world at our fingertips – e.g. Google is our database search engine. Instead of outsourcing we have basically done away with the whole kit and caboodle of IT. Now, certainly someone is handling these issues for us...we use combination of tools from Blogger (now part of Google), Google itself, Yahoo, Quickbase (part of Quicken), CreateSurvey and so on. You can find the list of tools and services at http://typaldos.com/presentations/cybersalon/.

We are very pleased with having these companies as the basis for our ResumeBlogs, because these are some of the best companies in the business! We haven't compromised at all by not doing anything except the assemblage. Now, it does take quite of bit of cleverness to put these tools together in ways that make sense, and we also have to constantly stay up on what's new (and what's gone stale) and provide support. We believe members will pay a small (medium iced latte) monthly price for that service. But since our costs are nearly zero, we don't have to charge much!
Fifth, the 21st century is going to be more and more "self serve", a trend that began in the 20th century with the cafeteria. It's often so much easier to just do something yourself than to spend the time to explain to someone else what you want and then interact with them as they attempt to deliver the goods. Hiring managers, even at the level of the CEO, are prowling the web for the BEST person to do the job. And they are just like us; they start by going to Google and typing in a bunch of key words. Let's say you wanted to find someone with skills in social software, at a CEO level, which is now or has been an entrepreneur. Reasonable search terms are: "social software" entrepreneur ceo. You may not believe this, but I did NOT check Google before I came up with those search terms. Then I went to Google and typed in the keywords. My ResumeBlog comes up as item #7 in a list of 240 items. Why is my rating so high? Because I belong to the SPM Guild and by linking to each other (in ways that matter), Google recognizes my blog as relatively important. So, by being part of a guild, everyone gets more of a web "presence". Which makes sense. In real life an isolated worker with few or no business relationships is not going to be someone that everyone knows about.

What are some productivity statistics or share some success stories of how Blogs have been able to find work for a candidate?

We are just implementing the ResumeBlogs now, but already in the first few weeks approximately 10 (out of 125) ResumeBloggers have been contacted by a hiring manager, HR manager, or recruiter about a job. In today's market, having someone call YOU about a job is almost unheard of. If you apply for a posted position, your resume goes into a black vortex. Our beta ResumeBloggers are thrilled...several have even gone for interviews that came out of these contacts. And, as we expected, the person with the job was just plopping in keywords to Google and seeing who came up. For several of the ResumeBloggers, it wasn't their ResumeBlog that came up first, but the googler also explored the links of other ResumeBloggers and found them by traversing the links. Now, as I explained above, there are a lot of things at work here that enabled this to happen...the ResumeBlog had to exist of course, but that ResumeBlog also had to be part of a tapestry that is in essence the community of professionals in software marketing.

What is the difference between belonging to a “professional guild” and being an “employee”?

Right, it’s changing your orientation from employee at XYZ Corporation who happens to be the controller, to being a controller in the automotive industry who happens to be working at XYZ Corporation. Interestingly, there are professors at several of the top schools in the country (MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc.) that are studying the (re)emergence of professional guilds. References coming soon. Being part of guild includes networking with others in your guild (e.g. other finance people in the automotive industry, and other types of professionals automotive industry and even other industries. It’s all about developing an expertise and they aggressively seeking out rewarding opportunities to use and enhance that expertise.

What are two or three gems of advice you would give someone wants to change jobs?

1) You should always be thinking about the next job. That's a cliché, but it's truer than ever. That means you should have your "shingle" out on the web (using the ResumeBlog for example) you should be participating in activities that raise your Google presence (e.g. making presentations, writing articles, etc.), and you should be working part-time with others on consulting assignment where you can develop an expertise (or where you are already an expert). Your goal is that when the person with your perfect job types in the four or five keywords for that job, your professional presence (e.g. blog) comes up very near the top of the list.
2) Find a way to interact once/month with professionals outside your core competency, and even outside your industry. This will add to your “weak ties”, that is, your number of acquaintances. Professor Mark Granovetter, now at Stanford University, studied the use of social networks as professionals sought new jobs, and discovered that the acquaintances were the best source of opportunities. For more about Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” please visit http://www.softwareproductmarketing.com/about_spm/pg-weak_ties.asp
3) Develop an unusual expertise along with your must have skills. With the internet it is actually possible to fill the perfect job with the perfect person, because every professional can make him/herself findable. Again, as an example, suppose I need a finance professional who is an expert in stock option programs for venture-backed startups. I don’t want just your average Joe or Jill; I want the best there is. So into Google go the keywords:

finance “stock option” venture

The first 100 references show only one professional
http://www.hitechlawyer.com/index.html
He’s not a finance executive, but he’s got the right experience.

Don’t you want to found too? If yes, start ResumeBlogging at http://www.resumeblog.com/

2003-09-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 12:14 PM
To: dkirkpatrick@fortunemail.com
Subject: FOAF can be done for free!

David,

I enjoyed your article...

FAST FORWARD (article is below this email)
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends of Friends of Friends
Ties created by social-networking sites have people excited.
Sep 30 2003
By David Kirkpatrick
Fortune.com

...however, 95% of what these proprietary FOAF (friend of a friend) services provide can be done for free, using open web-based services such as Blogger, Google, Yahoo Groups, etc. And proprietary systems just aren't good enough anymore for two key reasons:

most smart people don't work in one company, therefore it's better to tap into the vast resources of the open source movement, and it's certainly less expensive;
in many areas, in particular in the job/career space, members will feel very strongly that they must OWN their data.

For example, my professional guild has created a searchable member database without writing a single line of code, buying any software, or procuring any hosting service. We simply cobbled together the services of Blogger, Google, and Yahoo Groups. Our ResumeBlog(TM) service is in beta now, you can create your own in 5 minutes (go to www.resumeblog.com) and look at mine www.cynthia-typaldos.blogspot.com. We have a whole list of features that we will be adding in the next few months, including basic FOAF links* again using totally free tools/services and volunteer labor.

* We call them connections/validations. Members (2 or a team) describe how and when they worked together, and validations of their accomplishments can be made by others. This all feeds into a reputation system. We have a specification and a working prototype of this feature.

The other 5% of what the proprietary FOAF services offer that we cannot do without writing code is just plain silly. Here's an example from one of these systems. My organization did an early beta test of the Namewithheld Software so I am still in their system. Recently, a senior executive at a Fortune 15 company contacted me thru the system asking for an introduction to a senior manager in a start-up. I would have been happy to make the introduction -- except I didn't know either person! What kind of value-add is that? The reality is unless the people involved are within 2 degrees of separation maximum, or a harbor a contagious viral disease, the FOAF concept doesn't add any value. More on this topic is in my blog and on my website:
Links and Nodes in Social Networks: http://typaldos.com/word.documents/profguilds/nodes/
More on FOAF a.k.a. nodes in Social Networking Software: http://www.typaldos.blogspot.com/#moreonnodes

Social Networks have value, but not in and of themselves, but rather as part of a greater whole. In the job/career realm, we see social networks as one of the many mechanisms that connect members of a professional guild. These professional guilds are built out in other ways too such as member-supplied content, member-member work history, member presentations, member bartering etc.
The Present of Professional Guilds, by me
Retreat of the Firm and the Rise of Guilds: The Employment Relationship in an Age of Virtual Business by Robert Laubacher and Thomas W. Malone, MIT
The Era of Open Innovation, by Henry W. Chesbrough formerly at Harvard now at U.C. Berkeley

I hope this piques your curiosity and is helpful information. Of course, feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

Cynthia
-----------------------------------------------------------
FAST FORWARD
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends of Friends of Friends
Ties created by social-networking sites have people excited.
Sep 30 2003
By David Kirkpatrick
Fortune.com

Joichi Ito, a venture capitalist in Tokyo, knows just about everybody in tech. That's good for business, but it also means others are constantly approaching him to broker connections around the world. Though the superkinetic Ito likes to help, he has trouble finding the time. "I need to throttle back my interactions with people," he says. "I need to get fewer requests from higher-quality sources." So this summer Ito joined a website called Linkedin, one of about 15 so-called social-networking companies or sites formed in the past year. These businesses, all part of the hottest online trend, act as intricate friendship flow charts, showing who is friends or partners with whom. The best-known site, called Friendster, launched in May and is already hosting almost two million users, most of whom--unlike the businesspeople using Linkedin--are looking for dates, love, or sex.

I know about Ito's network because a few weeks ago he invited me to join--adding my name to his 444 direct connections. (Not everyone is as dedicated; Ito is Linkedin's most wired guy). Now I have indirect personal access to 10,100 people on the site. What makes this different than just being able to rifle through his Outlook contacts is that any mail I send to a Linkedin connection of Ito's has to be approved by Ito. If someone I sign up wants to reach that same person, his e-mail has to go through both me and Ito. Today's social networks typically give you access to friends of friends out to four degrees of separation. Everybody you meet on such a site is thus connected to you by a traceable network of acquaintance. Not surprisingly, Ito hopes to use Linkedin to use his time more efficiently: "I can imagine eventually telling people, 'If you want to reach me, do it through Linkedin.' That way everyone would come with references."

In the free-ranging world of the Internet, the ties created by social-networking sites have people excited. Some are calling it a social revolution. Much of the talk has focused on how well sites like Friendster aid dating. But social networking can be used for lots of other things--for example, at a later stage in life, finding a babysitter. You might find someone to play tennis with, or someone who likes the same kind of music you do and can suggest new artists. And if the best jobs come through connections, what better way to find work than through a giant online social network? In San Francisco, where unemployment is rampant and social networking is nearly an obsession for just about everyone under 35, it seems everybody looking for a job is using sites like Friendster, Linkedin, Tribe.net, or Ryze, all of which allow you to join only if you invite friends to join with you, or if you are yourself an invitee.

The phenomenon may be seen as offering people tools analogous to the most powerful ones being used in business. Writes Yong Su Kim, who maintains a blog on software trends at YSK.com: "It's almost like the CRM and ERP of peoples' professional and personal lives. Social-networking software is designed to help people look for new relationships (acquire customers), maximize existing relationships (sell to the installed base), and optimize their social interactions (order management, manufacturing, supply chain, and distribution)."

So far Friendster and most of its competitors are free, and all the excitement is making this feel a bit like 1999. Dozens of companies are frantically trying to figure out how to make such connections into a profitable business without ruining their viral appeal. Venture capitalists are circling. Says one, Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital: "Free e-mail like Hotmail had viral marketing but not increasing returns. I see both in this social-networking thing. As the network gets bigger and bigger, there's more value to incremental users." Translation: The more people there are on the network, the more likely you are to find a hot date or a good job.

But where's the money? Gurley is certain it's there. "If you can generate that many users or page views--and I know this sounds very 1997ish--there's value." Ads, for instance, can be keyed to people's interests or hobbies. These sites could also end up being sold to the biggest Net players, helping them lure users. Few doubt that AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and maybe even Google will want to incorporate social networking into their portal businesses. Meanwhile new companies like Contact Network, Socialtext, and Spoke Software are generating revenues by selling social-networking software to corporations. Typically such products work behind the corporate firewall to mine employees' contact lists and e-mail traffic patterns. They have various ways of ensuring that no employee's data are used without permission.

There may be a new kind of Internet emerging--one more about connecting people to people than people to websites. The blog phenomenon, where blogs link to blogs, is another aspect of this same trend. Mark Pincus, an investor in Friendster and founder of Tribe.net, calls this the early phases of the "peopleweb"--a user-controlled network of identities and relationships that transcends any one site or company. How that web will take shape remains murky, but in the explosive growth of social networking we are surely seeing the future, using the Net to connect people with bonds of trust and friendship--and maybe sex.

***

David Kirkpatrick is senior editor for Internet and technology.

Questions? Comments? E-mail them to me at dkirkpatrick@fortunemail.com.

Or to discuss this column with other readers, go to www.fortune.com/fastforward

Visit FORTUNE.com

2003-09-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

-----Original Message-----
From: Marty Silberstein [mailto:martyls2002@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 10:43 AM
To: cynthia@typaldos.com
Subject: Re: [new-sfwow] (off topic) % jobs posted to total jobs

Hi Cynthia,

Lots of conflicting stats out there. :-)

The conventional wisdom is that only 10%-20% of jobs are advertised anywhere (so old fashioned networking works well).

I haven't seen the breakdown between conventional vs. online postings, but ran across some interesting "factoids" for something I was working on.

The SHRM (Soc. for HR Mgmt.) claims 80% of HR pros use the Internet for job postings and to find candidates.

DBM claims only 6% of hires for mgmt-level jobs occur through any Internet sites (as opposed to 61% through networking).

Only 4% of US job seekers found employment from a site (Bernard Haldane, 1/03).

More hires are made through corporate web sites than through the major job boards. (CareerXRoads) Niche sites are effective.

Online help-wanted advertising is growing (from 15.1% of the entire US classified market in 2001 to 19.5% in
2005) (Morgan Stanley, Forrester - 11/02).

Hope that helps a little, Cynthia. I enjoy reading your posts and wish you every continued success with your business.

Marty

**************
Marty Silberstein
Personal marketing & project management
marty@msmarketingservices.com
http://www.msmarketingservices.com

--- Cynthia Typaldos wrote:

> I'd like to have a semi-reputable % of the number of jobs that are posted compared to the total number of jobs open.

2003-09-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

More on FOAF a.k.a. nodes in Social Networking Software
linkname: moreonodes

This note is in response to the short article by Marc Cantor in AlwaysOn, "Social Networking as a Bubble".
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=A1067_0_4_0_C

For most social networking, once you are more than 1 degree away from a target, the whole thing gets pretty silly. That is, it makes sense for a colleague to introduce two people that s/he knows (you are A, your colleague is B, B knows colleague C and introduces A to C ), but little sense or A be introduced by C to colleague D (where D is a colleague of C but not of B or A).

There are 3 types of items that can be passed up and down a social network: physical items, information, and introductions. A three dimensional matrix can be built of these three items vs. node motivation & need for closure of feedback loop. If the node is not motivated, nothing will happen despite a million links between that node and the other nodes. If a feedback loop is needed it doesn't matter how many nodes the item successfully passes thru but only whether the first node, who initiated the activity, ever gets a response.

Details:

Physical item - example is a virus of an infectious disease. Nodes are all powerfully motivated by natural selection (that is, the virus is designed to infect others), but no feedback loop is necessary.
Information item - example is salesperson wants contact info for target customer. Nodes need to be given a reason for motivation (reputation enhancement could be a motivator), and it is essential that once the node with the information is discovered, the feedback to the initiating node is completed.
Introductions - example is a job reference. Introducing node must be 0 degrees away from one introducee, and 0 or 1 degree away from the other introducee.

Continuation is here: www.typaldos.com/word.documents/profguilds/nodes/

I was actually on the panel at Stanford on 9/16/03 that Marc refers to when he writes "Tony Perkins - went on and on on Tuesday night (9/16/03) about how social networking had the feel of a new bubble. He was basing this conjecture on the # of VCs in the audience - all there to hear Reid Hoffman, Ross Mayfield, Jonathan Abrams et al spiel on about their various ventures." Since I am not named as the one other panelist, I must be the "et al".

At the event, I did make a few comments, one was about use of social networks for introductions which I will repeat here. I belong to several of these commercial but experimental web-based social networking systems*. Recently, thru one of these systems, I was contacted by someone I didn't know, and asked to make an introduction to someone else I didn't know. While it's true that both of these people's email addresses were in the 18,000 unique addresses in my Outlook database, I still didn't know them, and the two people were surely better off going directly to each other.

*Note: in my organization we are creating our own web-based social networking capability but it's a simple element of a tapestry that a person creates regarding who they are in the context of being a member of a professional guild. We are also building it out of free services with no software development, no licensing fees, and no hosting or IT expenses. You can find out more about us here: Software Product Marketing eGroup and here: ResumeBlog(TM).

2003-09-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Named link is www.typaldos.blogspot.com/#socialnetworkingsitesandsw

Social Networking Sites and Software

with perceived focus

The below is a simple list. Please go to the Quickbase spreadsheet and add your knowledge!

Social Networking Websites by Type
DON'T USE THIS LINK ANYMORE!!!

The list has been moved to here: Social Networking Sites and Software sorted by name
Please note that YOU can edit this list yourself to make it more accurate and up-to-date! I am not personally maintaining this list anymore, I am counting on all of you to continually keep it updated. Thanks very much.

Websites
Ryze: business
ecademy: business
LinkedIn: business
itsnotwhatyouknow: business
Friendly Favors: business
ZeroDegrees: business (corporate)
Accolo: jobs
RealContacts: jobs
Eliyon: business, jobs
Friendster: friendship, dating
Sona Matchmaker: friendship, dating (India)
Huminity: friendship
everyonesconnected.com: friendship
Ringo: friendship
PalJunction: friendship, business, dating, roommates
Tribe: friendship, business, dating, roommates, classifieds
Club Nexus at Stanford - need URL: alumni, article
MeetUp: in-person
Buddy Zoo: IM social networking analysis
*PayDemocracy: political groups
*classmates.com: alumni
*.reunion.com: alumni
*InfoSpace: yellow pages (references)
*SwitchBoard: yellow pages (references)
*Match.com: dating
*People on Page: friendship, dating
*all of the other dating sites
People Aggregator: ???

*= could easily cross over into social networking

Software:
Spoke SW: business (corporate)
Visible Path, business (corporate)
**wwPlaxo.: contacts
**GoodContacts: contacts
**Accucard: contacts

** contact software could easily add social networking features as they have all of the necessary data

Blogs with some features of Social Networking
livejournal: blog
Expressions: visual blogging
Fotolog: visual blogging

Question Marks
WisomeBuilder
NetDiva

Preliminary Analysis
It seems pretty clear that not all of these social networking sites or software will survive. Clay Shirky states "The *only* thing these services have to base a business on is lack of interoperability". I believe there is another part to the value proposition that they offer users -- the ability to go beyond 1 degree of separation. However, it's really difficult to think of situations where going more than 2 degrees of separation is worthwhile, unless you are a contagious disease - see my whitepaper Links and Nodes in Social Networks. Unless >2 degrees of separation and node secrecy are valued by users (maybe not everyone but an interestingly large set of users), an "open" networking service will make these proprietary services and software obsolete. before they've made a penny.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to the many people who helped me compile this list including:

Clay Shirky
Danah Boyd
Doug Rush
Sean Murphy
Debi Jones
Patti Anklam

If I left your name off let me know and I will add it.

2003-09-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

I don't remember this being discussed at the Reputation Symposium (at MIT in April) or on this list before, but has anyone studied the effect of a transaction fee on reduction of fraud?

For example, Friendster is also called Fraudster because many of the members are fake e.g. Jesus Christ. If there were, and probably will be, a member fee, most likely Jesus will disappear*. Transaction-based reputation system can exploit the relationship between transaction fee and fraudulent behavior even more powerfully -- the transaction fee itself discourages fraud. For instance, on eBay sellers planning to commit fraudulent activities first develop a positive reputation. Once they have some credibility they commit the fraudulent act (e.g. no delivery of product). However, the the transaction fee for creating the positive reputation (and also selling the fraudulent item) is high, it can serve as a deterrent. Even better, the marketplace (in this case eBay) could make a argument for the transaction fee being higher (in either % or actual value) for certain categories of products by claiming that the higher fee reduces fraud. It's kind of like castor oil, even thought it tastes terrible, it's good for you.

Has anyone on this list explored this relationship between reputation and fees? My organization, the SPM eGroup and its sibling professional guilds, are going to be charging a member fee soon. It would be terrific if I could point to some academic or other studies that "prove" fees actually raise the quality of the interactions.

Thanks.

Cynthia

*Just for the record, I don't think Friendster has a successful business model if it is a subscription fee. The person who is most needed on the site, the matchmaker, has no motivation to join. And the matchmaking is only convincing if the matchmaker knows both of the people who are seeking a date. Is it really necessary to have a system that tells you who you already know? And the reputation system rewards not matchmaking, but the gathering of "friends" whether real or fake. For more on this go to: http://typaldos.com/word.documents/profguilds/nodes/ .

2003-08-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Two new documents added to my typaldos.com website:

White-Collar Professional Guilds - Executive Summary (ProfGuilds)
--- The coming demise of the Jobosaurus Era and how to profit from it ---
Rev 3.0

Thoughts on : "Ignorance, Knowledge, and Outcomes in a Small World"

2003-08-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

-----Original Message-----
From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 12:25 PM
To: SW Prod Mkting eGroup
Subject: finding a job using the internet

Everyone - here is a link to a new research paper by Christine Fountain at the Univ of Washington. It's very relevant to SPM and to each of us as a job seeker.

FINDING A JOB IN THE INFORMATION AGE: JOB SEARCHING, LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES, AND THE INTERNET
See especially the section titled "The strength of online ties", starting on page 26.

I just learned about the paper thru a posting on the Fast Company Blog. I added a comment to the blog about the SPM ResumeBlog project and how it helps the right candidate be found online since most jobs are never posted. The SPM ResumeBlog project also eliminates the resume in place of a 360 degree robust validated view of the job seeker's experience, skills, and professional network. Create your own ResumeBlog.

2003-08-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

My major efforts continue to be the SPM ResumeBlog Project, signing up leaders for the new software guilds, and developing a value statement for membership fees.

The most recent instructions on how to create your own SPM ResumeBlog.

Two SPM BlogProject team members are putting the instructions into a combination of screen shots and text. Then we hope to turn it into a replayhq.com presentation (ppt with audio). Here's an example from my website - Web Communities, Web Collaboration, Social Software

I'm working on a presentation that explains the purpose of the ResumeBlog (and its accompanying services such as the SPM Knowledge Center, RedPaper.com, etc.)

Here's a draft of the email I plan to send to the SPM Members this week:

Subject: The Future of SPM - pls read

charging for job postings
charging a membership fee

given the state of the market, putting any barrier up for a job poster is not appropriate
given that the number of jobs posted is 50 per week, charging for job postings would not bring in much of a revenue stream unless the fee was in the mid-hundreds of dollars
most importantly -- we believe the job seeker/job poster relationship is undergoing a profound change -- fewer and fewer jobs will be posted and more and more jobs will be filled by the candidate being "found" by the person who has a job to fill

volunteer project management
"360 Degree Resume" definition, implementation, rollout (this is an extension to the ResumeBlog project)
pricing analysis, cost/benefit analysis
implementation of membership fee software
incorporation as a not-for-profit
survey analysis and reporting
press communications
job postings
partner alliances
other?

The Future of Professional Guilds

2003-07-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Purpose of the SPM ResumeBlog:

Learn to blog in a quick and painless way
Get some experience blogging so that SPMers can speak intelligently if the issue comes up in an interview (web collaboration is hot now)
Use the ResumeBlog blog as the "professional home" for the SPMer's bio or resume -- this is especially useful for the majority of members that do not have a web site. Even those who do have a website may also want to have a ResumeBlog (and a also regular blog) because it is free and much easier to maintain than a website. The format of a blog is quite different than that of a website so it is useful for posting on-going progress updates and opinions and ideas. The blog also easily allows the blogger to capture information from other bloggers value and give credit, and link to others.
Provides additional mechanisms for a hiring mgr, recruiter etc. to find the SPM member on the web: a Google search on the member's name would bring up his/her ResumeBlog, a Google search on keywords that are in the member's ResumeBlog could bring up his/her ResumeBlog, once someone has brought up one SPM member's Resume blog he/she can traverse the links to other SPM members' ResumeBlogs, links to the ResumeBlogs will also be placed on the SPM website. Note that we do bios for the SPM Volunteers on the SPM website now, the ResumeBlog is a way of giving all members that service, without the overhead of a volunteer having to maintain the website.
Most importantly, the ResumeBlog gives the SPM member enough experience blogging so that s/he he can contribute to the SPM Knowledge Center (which is also a blog). Originally I started the SPM KC first but quickly discovered there was not enough experience by most of the members of the SPM KC team in blogging so get any momentum. Once a member has created his/her ResumeBlog (or any type of blog), s/he will be in a great position to add his/her content to the SPM KC. The SPM Knowledge Center will not only be a source of information for software marketing subjects, but will also be a place for the SPM member to "show off' his/her work.

Since the ResumeBlog only takes 10 minutes to create, why not try it out for a few weeks and see if it provides value?

When doing new things on the web I've found that it is better to experiment than intellectualize, because you get new insights by doing that you can never have imagined.

Directions on how to create your ResumeBlog.

2003-07-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Rise of the Blogeoisie

The whole article is interesting -- a fresh look at the blogging world and the bloggers who inhabit it. Note how Google's PageRank reputation algorithm has been turned into a tool for the blogeoisie to exploit. Below are my favorite paragraphs but go to the link to read the whole article.

15 May 2003 - Spiked-Online

Blog eats blog

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My term for what Bill Thomson calls the 'blogeoisie' and Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', is the '20 guys blogging each other'. Less elegant but perhaps more descriptive.

2003-07-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

Garden photos.

2003-07-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

Bloggers add Babble to Google

Google hogged by blogs
Spiked Journal
July 15, 2003
by Sandy Starr
'Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value.'

Best paragraphs are here but the whole article is good.

PageRank is a wonderful innovation, which has been of considerable benefit to web users over the past few years, regardless of what Google's more irrational critics say. The ideal behind PageRank, of combining a faith in the judgement of others with a desire to make high-quality content easily and publicly available, is a laudable one. But this ideal has been shot down by blogs.

The self-obsessed nature of many blogs, the incestuous relationships between them, the frenetic rate at which they are updated, and their obsessive use of links, have distorted the snapshots of the web that Google gives us. Blog culture has made links and idle comment into ends in themselves, irrespective of the merit or relevance of the content being linked to or commented upon. It is this failing of blogs, not any failing of PageRank, that has meant that the assumptions which made PageRank work so effectively are no longer tenable.

I sent an email to the author:

web page

http://typaldos.blogspot.com/

Dear Martyn,

I read with interest your article about the panel discussion. Your last comment is excellent: "It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers."

I see much of what is being done and called social software right now as "20 guys blogging each other". The technology industry is well-known to be exclusionist, elitist, and women-unfriendly, but the frenzy these 20 guys have worked themselves up to, and gotten to the head of the class thru blogging each other, is unprecedented.

-- Cynthia

2003-07-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

I'm so busy working on my other blogs that I don't have time to update my main blog.

We've kicked off three new projects in SPM.

SPM-Bio-Blog Project
Goal is that every SPM member has their bio on the web (using a blog). Here are the instructions. My Bio-Blog.

SPM Knowledge Center
SPM Knowledge Center eGroup
SPM Knowledge Center Prototype

New Software Guilds

-----Original Message-----
From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:15 AM
To: SW Prod Mkting eGroup
Subject: [spmjobs] !! new SW eGroups !!

Hi everyone,

We (SPM management/volunteers) are opening up new egroups covering the entire software industry to complement SPM (which is focused on software marketing and business development).

Our not-so-modest goal is to capture all of the job postings for software industry professionals.

The software industry includes internet, embedded software, software that is part of a hardware offering, social software, web-based software, networking software, telecom software, enterprise software, application software, etc.

Here is the list of the software job functions that will have each have its own focused egroup:
marketing and business development (i.e. SPM)

sales
engineering
QA, technical writing, project management
finance & venture capital
human resources
system administration
customer support
international
entrepreneur
legal
everything else (kitchen sink)

We are looking for entrepreneurial leaders to head up each of these new egroups and build a small team to run them. We (SPM) will train the egroup leader and provide the management tools. We will together form a software industry professional keiretsu.

Please forward this note to people you believe would be interested in being one of "professional guild" leaders. While these "professional guilds" will be not-for-profit organizations, we believe there is a tremendous opportunity to challenge the big job boards (e.g. Monster.com, HotJobs) and turn these endeavors into member-owned organizations that put our careers under our control. Our goal is that these professional guilds are the tool for white collar professionals to manage their own destiny and maximize our independence from employers and recruiters.

To apply to be the leader of one of these new software professional guilds, please respond as follows:

Send an email to the appropriate egroup below

softwaresalesprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwareengineeringprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwareqatechwritingprojectmgmtprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwarefinanceprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwarehrprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwaresysadminprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwarecustomersupportprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwareinternationalprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwareentrepreneurprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwarelegalprofguild@yahoogroups.com
softwarekitchensinkprofguild@yahoogroups.com

Provide relevant information about why you want to do this and why you will be successful. Since I don't beleive in resumes, please use other tools (e.g. your personal website, googlization factor, short bio, etc.) to validate your claim.

Be prepared to commit 20 hours a week getting the new professional guild launched, then as you build a small team, you will be able to scale back to 10-15 hours/week.
Be prepared to be an aggressive leader and spokesperson for your professional guild in meetings with company executive management, recruiters, reporters, investors, and government officials.
We are international and virtual, so your location is NOT important.

We welcome all general feedback, suggestions, comments, etc. You can email me directly or send to the SPM Management Team at spmdirectors2@yahoogroups.com.

Thanks very much.

Cynthia

2003-07-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here's an article about a panel discussion in the U.K. where the panel members presented their views on how social software will manipulate people into being better citizens.

Article17 June 2003, Spiked Online magazine
Computing Communities
by Martyn Perks

Here are the last two paragraphs:

The beef of the social software evangelists, perhaps, is democracy itself - because they refuse to trust individuals to make the right choices. All we are left with, then, is a belief in participation for its own sake, devoid of any content or realised goal. How could anyone hope such a model will change society for the better?

It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers.

I just sent this email to Martyn Perks:

Dear Martyn,

I read with interest your article about the panel discussion. Your last comment is excellent: "It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers."

I see much of what is being done and called social software right now as "20 guys blogging each other". The technology industry is well-known to be exclusionist, elitist, and women-unfriendly, but the frenzy these 20 guys have worked themselves up to, and gotten to the head of the class thru blogging each other, is unprecedented.

I would appreciate it you would look at a couple things on my website www.typaldos.com: The "12 Principles of Civilization" which are based solely on sociological principles, and my presention titled "The Future of Professional Guilds".

The the latter presentation I rate a number of the social networking websites against the 12 Principles and they come up woefully inadequate.

The internet is just another tool for us to use, not a tool to change or manipulate us. It is powerful, as are the alphabet and the telephone, but it will not change our basic behaviors and instincts which have served us well for millions of years.

By the way, the very top Principle (they are formed in a pyramid) is Purpose.

2003-07-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

Sunflowers and California Fuscia photos taken with my $40 StyleCam Blink Digital Camera:

StyleCam Blink Camera

2003-07-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

I posted this to the SOCNET list:

Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2003 2:50 PM
To: SOCNET
Subject: more on Networking as a Business

Several of us gathered up a list of all the the sites/software that are attempting to commercialize on networking. I thought the rest of you might also be interested in the list. No doubt there is already one, or more likely, many lists of these sites/sw in someone's blog. It's hard to do anything original anymore :-)

List generated by input from Doug Rush, Sean Murphy, Debi Jones and myself. I will also post this on my blog http://typaldos.blogspot.com.

websites:
www.ryze.com
www.friendster.com
http://www.livejournal.com
www.ecademy.com
www.meetup.com
www.classmates.com
www.reunion.com
www.Huminity.com
www.Ringo.com
www.PayDemocracy.com
www.linkedin.com

software:
www0Degrees.com
www.Spoke.com
the one that is being done at Stanford but I can't remember the name
www.Accolo.com
www.Plaxo.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)
www.GoodContacts.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)
www.Accucard.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)

I am planning on launching a site myself as soon as I have some seed funding. It would be quite different than the existing sites/software in that it uses networking as a tool to accomplish a purpose, rather than just being a networking tool all by its lonesome. Some of these sites are the equivalent of trying to turn a communication tool into a purpose, which is the equivalent of having a network built around the phone system. The phone is a tool for all kinds of purposeful activities, but not a goal in and of itself.

On my website I have a presentation on "The Future of Professional Guilds" and I welcome any feedback. Also, there are a few slides which compare many of the sites/software listed below against each other and against my "12 Principles of Civilization" http://www.typaldos.com/12principles.htm.

"The Future of Professional Guilds" presentation can be found by going to this webpage and selecting it from the table:
http://www.typaldos.com/events.htm
or by going directly to
The presentation.

The slides that do the comparisons are slides 37-40.

2003-07-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

I'm considering setting up another blog, for personal blogging. Of course, how personal can it be since it's public and anyone can read it! The biggest downside is that I will then have two blogs to maintain, rather than just one, and just the one is a pain in the ***. Once I get into the rhythm of publishing on this blog, I will reconsider having two blogs. I define "rhythm of blogging" is making at least two posts/week.

When I re-read my blog (and I'm probably the only person that reads it at all!) I keep finding grammatical errors. I can't decide if I should fix them or not. If I become a perfectionist about blogging then the time-sink of maintaining it will become unreasonable.

SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup formed to create the SPM Knowledge Center

Here's some news about SPM (Software Product Marketing eGroup). We have formed a sub-egroup called SPM Knowledge Sharing to figure out the requirements, and then mechanism, to allow all SPM members to post their works: presentations, whitepapers, working documents, etc. The goal is to share knowledge amongst each other, and also give the now nearly 4,000 SPM members a public place to publish their best works. By doing so the member's Googlization factor will increase. I currently publish my works on my website Typaldos.com but creating and maintaining a website is even more trouble than blogging. So many SPM members don't have a website. Of course, they can start a blog too, and we will be encouraging that, but a directory where all the quality (I hope) works of SPM members can be found would raise the visibility of all members, and of SPM. We are going to call it the SPM Knowledge Center. Anyone is welcome to join the SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup as long as you are also a member of SPM itself. Since it is free to become a member of SPM, that isn't much of a barrier, but it helps to weed out the riff-raff. To join SPM go to to the SPM website and follow the links for "job seekers".

Right now we are working on the requirements for the Knowledge Sharing technology. Here's what I have posted to the egroup as a straw person
___________________________________________________________

From: "Cynthia Typaldos"
Date: Wed Jul 2, 2003 12:07 pm
Subject: SPM Knowledge Sharing Group Kickoff

Hi Everyone,

25 people have signed up for the SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup. [note - there are now 29 people.]

To kick things off, I have included my original email about the purpose of this endeavor below. Please re-read it to refresh your memory.

The first topic we will discuss is the REQUIREMENTS of the SPM Knowledge Center. I will create a straw proposal right now, and let's have a dialogue. I plan to post the highlights of our discussion on my blog at http://typaldos.blogspot.com.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF THE SPM KNOWLEDGE CENTER - REV 1
no central authority (e.g. no bottlenecks)
peer review for contribution reputation (does NOT have to be very sophisticated)
member can update/replace/remove/manage all of his/her contributions easily
and without needing help from anyone else
must start with a good structure
search capability
members receive full credit for their contribution(s)
uses free or sponsored software/website tools

Goal is to agree on the requirements by Friday July 11th. Then we will discuss possible implementations.

To read the rest of this email please go to the message in the egroup. Anyone can read the messages but only members can post.
___________________________________________________________

2003-06-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

I had bronchitis from my trip, probably due to the 30 hours being in a plane. I'm fine now.

2003-06-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

I'm home now (in Silicon Valley) from Bs. Aires. Arrived yesterday late morning. Getting to and from Argentina is truly the travel trip from hell. It takes 22 hours door-to-door. Most people don't realize it but Bs. Aires is 2 time zones further east than New York City, in fact South America is not even under North America.

Coming back involved an hour + drive out to the Ezieza Airport, hanging around for 3 hours, a 9 1/2 hour flight to Miami that arrives at 5am Miami time (4am Bs. Aires time). 2+ hours of passport control, customs exams, and security procedures, then finally a 5 1/2 hour flight from Miami to SF. [During daylight savings time Bs. Aires is 4 hours ahead of SF, during standard time they are 5 hours ahead]. For the first time in my life I had a little argument with he random person sitting next to me. He insisted on sticking his feet on my side under the chair in front of me. This of course left me no place to put my own feet unless I wanted to intertwine them with his, which I did not. I asked him to please keep his feet on his side and he started to argue with me. I just told him I was not going to argue and we both shut up and endured each other's silence for 5 hours.

Unfortunately I caught a cold, a sinus infection, pneumonia or SARS (I'm not sure which) in Bs. Aires and I couldn't even visit my ill friend for the last 3 days. As explained below, I idled away my time in internet cafes and made international phone calls. Everything is dirt cheap for Americans in Argentina -- even I, jobless for 20 months, felt quite comfortable spending money. For example, a dinner at a very nice restaurant for 3, no wine but with dessert, cost $33 TOTAL including tip.

The Argentines make beautiful clothes and there are thousands of shops all over Bs. Aires. Given their terrible economy, I'm not sure who the heck is buying the stuff though. When I first started going to Argentina 20 years ago I was obviously "the American visitor" because all of the women wore dresses or skirts, even to do grocery shopping! It was like the 50s were here. I was wearing casual clothes and comfortable shoes and really stood out. Now, I was mistaken many times as an Argentine. For a day I had laryngitis and couldn't speak so I was able to keep up the charade (my Spanish is awful but it gets me by).

Update on my friend -- I went to Argentina urgently to be with my friend of 25 years before she went in for brain surgery, and to visit with her afterwards in the hospital. She is recovering well, but for those of you who have had a friend or family member of colleague with a brain tumor, you know that this is a very, very serious problem. Her diagnosis is the same as that of Dan Case, former CEO of Hambrecht and Quist and the brother of Steve Case, founder of AOL and Chairman of AOL Time Warner. I remember very clearly when Dan announced he had a malignant brain tumor as it seemed so senseless and uncommon. I now know a lot about brain tumors, and the kind that my friend has in particular -- Glioblastoma. Dan and Steve set up a fund called ABC2 and today I spoke with the Executive Director John Reher. He was very kind and helpful. John mentioned that although glioblastomas are not a common disease, there seem to be more of them in middle-aged Silicon Valley male executives but they don't know why. Actually, from my studies, doctors don't know what causes any of the brain tumors. Along with helping my friend plot and execute a treatment path I am also hoping to find another Latin American person with this disease so she has someone to talk to (in Spanish) who is going through the same process.

Here's a wonderful quote from Dan Case "If there's one lesson I got from this,'' he said, "it's much more than we have to fix brain cancer, it's that people are amazing if you just give them a chance to be kind.''

2003-06-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

I'm in an Internet Cafe in Bs. Aires, Argentina. I've been trying to blog for several hours but the Blogger site was out of commission. I just read on their homepage that new software will be available soon. I sure hope it is more robust than the current software. I know some of the other blogging sites/tools are better than Blogger but this seems like the least painful way to keep track of what Google is doing with blogging.

I've been in Argentina almost one week, will be returning home (Silicon Valley) in a couple days. Unfortunately I had to miss the Planetwork Conference due to this emergency trip. I was scheduled to give a talk yesterday, Saturday, titled Professional Guilds on the Web (note: the title of my talk changed but due to this emergency I was not able to notify the conference organizers, that´s why the title on the conference site is "Web Communities and Social Software"). I wish I could have been at the conference -- there are (it is still in session thru Sunday then a special software meeting tomorrow) many interesting presentations, people, and ideas. Jan Hauser, one of the authors of the Augmented Social Networks [ASN] whitepaper, gave my presentation for me. I know he did a good job because he and I have been in continuous discussion over the last year about the concepts.

When I return home I will put my presentation on my website. By the way, I have now finally updated my website to contain many of my presentations, whitepapers, etc. I will soon add a lot more information about the products developed by my previous company, RealCommunities. Unfortunately, due to the economic meltdown, I had to sell RealCommunities prematurely to another software company called Mongoose Technology.

Full title and link to the ASN whitepaper:
THE AUGMENTED SOCIAL NETWORK:
BUILDING IDENTITY AND TRUST INTO THE NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET
A Link Tank Report
by Ken Jordan, Jan Hauser, and Steven Foster

One big problem with these Internet Cafes in Argentina is everyone smokes. The air inside is oppressive. In fact both the indoor and outdoor air is so polluted that yesterday when I woke up I could not speak at all! I had laryngitis for the very first time in my life. I´m better today and hope tomorrow to be fully recovered. This Cafe is in the center of the city, open 24 hours, and very active. There are 40 or so workstations, good performance, and lots of people here. About half or more are all kids playing multi-user games. Actually right now I think I am the only adult in the whole cafe! The kids are all about 12-16 years old, all boys. It's 4pm Bs. Aires time -- 4 hours ahead of CA time during PDT, 5 hours ahead during PST.

On a personal note - I came to Argentina urgently as my very best friend for the last 25 years was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. I got here just a few hours before the operation. I've seen her every day since as the hospital. She is doing extremely well -- she was in intensive care for only 2 days and is now in a regular hospital room. On Tuesday she will go home. Unfortunately I have to leave on Monday -- I was able to get a pretty good last minute e-fare from United for $670 but the dates are very rigid when I can travel. Also, I need to return home to continue my quest for revenue-producing activities.

Dang this stupid Blogger tool. I see now it has decided to ignore all of the paragraph and new line feed control characters. They are still here in the edit area, but the display is just one big blobby blog.

I can't take the smoke in here anymore, or the horrible TV noise where they must be watching a sports event, hard to say what since I can only hear it not see it. Lots of announcer frenzy and loud noises.

Just one last point -- go here to see Jay Fienberg's blog of "my" talk as given by Jan.
The Future of Professional Guilds Part I
The Future of Professional Guilds Part II
my comments (at the bottom of this page)

2003-05-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

My response to a comment in SPM Discussion about bell curve vs power law.

I'm the one that posted the article about the bell curve. The article did not say that the bell curve doesn't apply, it just said that it doesn't apply in some situations, in networks in particular. It's very clear that the bell curve does NOT apply to internet traffic at nodes, not only by analysis, which has been done ad naseum, but even just thinking about it rationally. The internet consists of a few very, very large nodes and gazillions of small nodes, such as my blog (typaldos.blogspot.com). [Please excuse the use of technical terms e.g. "gazillions" and the blatant self-promotion of my blog.]

Here is more info: http://www.tjm.org/articles/msg00018.html

The most interesting thing about this topic is when I searched for a credible source of info most of the stuff that came up at the top in a Google search were blogs! Something has gone terribly wrong with Google's reputation system when what an individual says, and a bunch of his/her friends point to, ends up at the top of the stack over a research paper from an academic institution. I finally gave up trying to find one, although I know they exist because I took a class on Networks at Stanford in the winter and this was one of the covered topics.

Google is in trouble...now wonder they bought Blogger...they need to separate out the riff-raff from the raff-riff.

2003-05-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

I'm finally returning to my blog. It's just one more darn thing to keep updated.

I've been working on my website...it was pathetically out-of-date. Now it's nearly up-to-date but my design skills are terrible. Especially my choice of colors. However, it's still better than Bud Uglly Design. My favorite Uglly Design on their site is Rev 2.0.

Anyway, I've actually got something to say. But first I'd better save what I already wrote since this darn Blogger software isn't very stable.

OK, save complete.

So here's tonight's story on the Typaldos Blog --
Topic: Senior Management Women in Venture-Backed Startups.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Jennifer Pittman for an article in the Silicon Valley Business Journal titled "Women-led startups get smaller share of shrinking funds". The SV Business Journal decided to write a story around the latest numbers from "Alternative Investor, an umbrella data and analysis organization of San Francisco-based VentureOne Corp. and Wellesley, Mass.-based Asset Alternatives. The group tabulates venture capital deals with women-led companies every six months."

The numbers for women founders and members of the senior management team have gone down in the last few years, not just in quantity which of course is too be expected given the economic downturn, but also in percentages. The calculation is kind of dumb anyway...if there is just one woman on the senior management that counts. Of course the one lone woman is typically the VP of HR -- certainly a very important position in any company, the employees make or break a company's success, but not a line position. Sometimes the lone woman is the CFO. Anyway, the study shows the following statistics for women founders:

Amount of Money Raised by Companies with a woman founder (as a percentage of the total amount of money raised that year), in the IT industry.
1997 3.48%
1998 5.56%
1999 6.36%
2000 7.58%
2001 7.36%
2002 4.69%

A downward trend to be sure.

I mentioned some other related issues during the interview, most of which didn't get into the article. Here are my follow-up emails to the reporter:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding the Forum for Women Entreprenuers
I originally sent this email to the FWE CEO.

From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 1:09 PM
To: Susan Hailey
Subject: has FWE been successful?

Now is the time to do a very honest appraisal on whether FWE has been successful.

The purpose of this appraisal would be to figure out if the approaches tried in the past are the ones to keep doing in the future. It's all been a big experiment, and like any experiment, it needs a quantitative analysis of the results.

Running programs is not a measure of success. It's a tool for creating success. Measurements of success could be (over the time frame that FWE has been active):
% improvement in funding to women entrepreneurs
% improvement in viable public companies where a woman was one of the founders
% improvement in number of women on viable VC-backed companies
% of women in management in VC-backed companies

I run a very large job board for hi-tech marketing professionals, and I still see start-up company after company where the entire management team is ALL MEN (OK, maybe the token women is the HR VP). And the same seems to be true in hi-tech public companies despite the tired PR recycling of Carly Fiorina, Carol Bartz, and Judy Estrin.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email dialogue with Margaret Heffernan

From: Margaret Heffernan [mailto:margaret_heffernan@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 8:17 AM
To: cynthia@typaldos.com
Subject: Re: your article in Fast Company

Dear Cynthia,

You are absolutely right - women do not need to be "fixed"; the world in which they are forced to operate is what is broken. And many men know it, as well as women.

Thanks for taking the time to write.

Best wishes

Margaret

******************************
Margaret Heffernan

From: "Cynthia Typaldos"
Reply-To:
To:
Subject: your article in Fast Company
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 08:59:13 -0700

Dear Margaret,

I was just at a FWE (Forum for Women Entrepreneurs www.fwe.org) event last night here in Silicon Valley. FWE has a new CEO, Susan Hailey. and the meeting was held to introduce Susan to some of the members. Susan gave a short talk, and then asked for input and questions. My input to Susan was to
change FWE from an organization that tries to "fix us" to an organization that tries to "fix the system". I'm tired of being told how to speak, dress, act, etc. I'm a 51-year old confident women, with science and business degrees from UC Berkeley and MIT. What I need is for the barriers be recognized, challenged and destroyed, not new underground tunneling methods. If I have to tunnel I can't be myself.

Thanks so much for writing that article. The men won't like it, and the "let's just get along" women won't like it either. But you're right and it's time that someone had the ovaries to say so.

Cynthia
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Study on discrimination at MIT against women faculty members
This is the complete study along with MIT's reaction and action to address the issue of discrimination against female faculty members. I was very impressed at the honest and candor and seriousness that MIT took toward the study.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the same topic, but a completely different situation, I just got invited to a "private" meeting to discuss social software and its implications to society. (In case you've been under a rock, web communities/collaboration have been reinvented by the people that didn't get it a couple years ago, and annointed a new name so that they can all claim to be pioneers.) I'll post the people invited to this event if I get permission from the organizer, and if I update my blog again this year :-) There are 47 people invited, 2 of them being women. That's a lousy 4.2%. When I asked the organizer about the nearly complete absence of women, his response was "I thought about that, but its tough in a geeks' world." I'm not faulting the organizer at all, he picked the people he thought would be appropriate, and that's how the cookie crumbled.

Well, enough whining, at least for tonight.

Wait, one last whine. This blogging thing coupled with keeping my dang website updated coupled with running SPM, is an enormous time sink. Am I better off by doing this? Is the world better off?

2003-03-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

The article about SPM eGroup was published in the New York Times on Sunday 3/9/03. Best place to find it is on our homepage.

I also put together an essay on "Strength of Weak Ties" and how SPM has implemented the theory in a very practical manner. See also the "About" section of SPM for more context.

I am now researching the best way for SPM to become a legal entity. We seem to be a combination of not-for-profit (the verticals), for-profit (the corporate that creates the software and processes and either francises them to the verticals or sells these services directly, and limited liability partnership (for the consulting practice). I been looking into Daniel Pink's "Free Agent Nation" to get ideas.

2003-03-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

Blogger sure isn't very robust software. I just wrote a few paragraphs, tried to "post and publish" and it crashed. I should learn to save my work more often, maybe even type it somewhere else and cut and paste.

Just a couple interesting notes today.

Got an introduction to Valdis Krebs by Jan Hauser. Valdes has written some terrific articles about social networks on the web. We've exchanged emails and may meet at the upcoming March 23rd conference in SF called "Culture and KM".

Blog of Cynthia Typaldos

article in NYTimes: ThinkEquity Starts Web Log to Gather Ideas

article in CNN - Tools to ease Web collaboration

DonationPal | SPM Jobs

article: Wiki's gaining momentum

article: The Rise of a New News Network By Om Malik, January 04, 2005 Business 2.0

blog/net articles by David Kirkpatrick at Fortune

2004 Social Media - Best and Worst

Dilbert develops a social networking site

Dog Blogs

more on buzz marketing...

Happy Holidays from Dogster

Ben Franklin on professional recommendations

The 'Blog' Revolution Sweeps Across China

Ohmynews - citizen journalism in South Korea

article about Wikipedia in NYTimes re: Bush/Kerry

November 10, 2004

Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History

20 reasons why you shouldn't post your picture on the internet

article: online feuds a big headache

Presidential Guidester - Choose wisely on Election Day!

good article on open access

WSJ giving up on subscriptions?

Extra! Wall Street Journal gives away Web content

Amazon adding community features - shared photos

Amazing list of weblog tools

PoliticalFriendster

article: Evite takes on Zagat, RedHerring, 10/13/04

Wikipedia users are defining politics - Bigger than Jesus

WSJ to open up all online content? (for a week....)

Buy.com buys social networking site Metails.com

Business Week article about revenue threats to content providers

article - "Investors flock to Web Networking Sites", Wash Post, 10/13/04

"From Pull to Point: How to Save The Economist and The Journal from Irrelevance", John Battelle, 10/11/04

RE: [webcommunities] Yelp - local recommendations thru friends

article: Neopets gambling controversy

my latest bio

Passion, Expertise, Experience

Blogs are boring

Incompetent people cannot recognize their own incompetence

Blogging at the Demo Nat'l Convention

ProfGuilds/ResumeBlog Presentations

BOB - the Big Orange Bee

My Career is My Business - Presentation

Honesty Online Higher than Offline

RealCommunities Business Model

Microsoft Talent Scout Blogs

Internet-based Techniques for Recruiters

Googling for Candidates

Guerrilla Job Posting Strategies

Conversations with Microsoft Senior Talent Scout – Rev 2.18.04

Notes from my conversation with the Microsoft Senior Talent Scout, 2/16/04

Notes/Input from the Microsoft Sr. Talent Scout from group meeting with ProfGuilds on 2/16/04

Make your small URL H*U*G*E !!!

My Business Networking Predictions for 2004

My Career is MY Business

Social Networking Sites = More Work for Me! Am I a Luddite?

Pageview Counter

Academic Articles and Books on Professional Guilds and Open Innovation

Career/Job Websites and Social Networking Business Model

Professional Guilds – using the ResumeBlog™ to “Hang out your Shingle”

Social Networking Sites and Software

Subject: The Future of SPM - pls read

The Purpose of the SPM ResumeBlog:

Blog eats blog

Make your small URL HUG*E !!!

Professional Guilds –
using the ResumeBlog™ to “Hang out your Shingle”