Ampers & Dot

The subtitle for this post is: “And other stupid ideas for the startup community”. Boy, I hope people kept reading to this subtitle or you’re really going to get the wrong idea about my blog…

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ll well know that I’m a pretty severe skeptic of the current start-up landscape. The supply well outweighs the demand in a way only the dot-commy boomers can relate to. But, as much as I like to throw my opinions around, I’m also an early adopter who loves new tech and new ideas, so I’m naturally fascinated with new startups.

Last night I attended PopSignal, along with 400 other of Boston’s techy/new media types for an open bar, free food and pretty solid networking. All in all, the event was well done and not remotely as shady as you’d expect considering it was held at Tequila Rain, one of the sleaziest bars near Fenway.

The event was targeted for Boston’s tech people to share ideas and make connections to help get startups going (or at least that’s the interpretation I’ve come up with). So naturally, throughout the night I constantly found myself having the same conversation over and over again: here’s an idea for a startup, what do you think?

Well, as a natural skeptic of the area, here’s what I think: what value does your company add. You’ve got a funny name? Good work. Cool logo? Great. What does your company do that brings value to the end user. This should be the number one question for all startups. Value.

During the night I got into a discussion with the guys from a WPI startup caleed MessageSling. They’re making a free (ad-supported) voicemail-to-text (either text, email, or whatnot) service that, as you might imagine, sends your voicemail to you in a readable format. Seeing as that while talking to them I had two voicemails on my phone that I couldn’t listen to because it was too loud and busy, I remember telling them that their company “adds value”.

To me, there are a ridiculous amount of startups out there, or as Compete’s Max Freiert said: “too much noise”. The VCs are throwing money at anything that moves and has a funny name, which is making anyone with an idea think they can game the market. But what we’re going to see, and I think this will be relatively soon, is the cream rising to the top (or is it bottom… I don’t do much dairy so this analogy is lost on me).

As explained in this venn diagram I just created on MS Paint, there are a lot of VC funded startups, few of which add value (and you can also note that there are a few valuable startups that never receive funding… I can’t name any, but obviously they’re out there).

The purple area represents all of the startups that are getting funding that don’t really do anything valuable. Yeah, that’s a lot. No, this isn’t remotely based on anything by my healthy skepticism, but it’s likely pretty accurate.

This post isn’t meant to discourage the startup community by any means, if anything it should jazz you up that your startup does something valuable. Because if you have a startup, the first person you need to convince of your idea is you. So ask yourself now: what value does my company bring.

Lastly, during the conversation with the MessageSling guys I said that if your company has value then the money will come, to which one of them responded “yeah, but you’ve got to keep the doors long enough for that to happen”. The way I see it, if you are making something worthwhile then someone will be knocking at your door soon enough. If you build value, the money will come.

Although I guess good ideas that don’t work is where the little light blue sliver fits in to my arbitrary diagram…

Oh, and Ken George at The Conversation - please note the horridly poor job of brevity for this post…

Ok, I’ve ranted long enough. What do you think?

As this ridiculous story goes, the URL “Pizza.com” recently sold for $2.6 million - the concept behind the domain investment being that when someone wants a pizza they can just put in “pizza.com” and find an easy slice. And yes, as we’re talking about domain names today I’ve finally decided to link to a story on slashdot - hoping someone will finally get my domain name.

Let me just start off by saying that these people overpaid by about $2.6 million. That’s my stance on this. This was a stupid, stupid move. This seems like an amazingly year 2000 move. I mean, after I heard that Pizza.com sold for that chunk, I expected to read that Britney Spears did something respectable, or that Ross and Rachel were finally getting together… ok, sorry for those.

So let me tell you why I think this was such a stupid investment.

SEO
Frankly, I’m not sure if the person who just ponied up over two and a half million bucks has even heard of Search Engine Optimization, but I can only assume that they haven’t. First off, if you want your site to come up in google when people search for pizza, then for a whole lot less than $2.6 million, I know a good source that could help market your website and improve your search results.

It’s almost as if this person thought that this was actually 2000 and (some) people still used AOL keywords. Or if there weren’t even a search engine market in general- like people just type in random URLs looking for things. In fact, people do search. Google first, then Yahoo, then… well, it really doesn’t matter. People are searching for what they want. And searching for pizza isn’t going to get you pizza.com unless the content behind it is SEOd correctly.

Content

What in the world could the Pizza.com website possibly contain that makes it that valuable? Phone numbers to local pizza places? Google maps does that. Menus to local pizza places? Grubhub or DiningOut do that. All the information on how to make pizza? There are numerous cooking sites out there. The history of pizza? Wikipedia, I guess, but who cares?

My argument here is that there isn’t anything that Pizza.com could host that could be worth that investment. If I want pizza, I will a) go to the website of my favorite chain for delivery (btw, I ordered online from Dominos last weekend and then tracked my cheesy bread through the process. It was life alteringly cool.) b) search for local pizza spots or c) go to Nino’s on Charles St and have a $2 slice in 2 minutes. I won’t go to pizza.com.

Web 2.0 Naming
Here’s where my argument gets fun, as it’s a new twist on one I’ve discussed before: in a world where startup companies have silly names- having a direct and simple URL is no longer relevant. Startups these days have ridiculous names - read my linked post to know my thoughts on this, but what’s important here is that the name doesn’t matter, the content of your site does.

So let’s say that the idea behind pizza.com is awesome. Let’s say it’s actually a functional and cool idea. How about a site that has all localized pizza info, with coupons, delivery and hours, prices and menus, a built in IM system for ordering… and so on. If the idea is that good- why does the name even matter? If the functionality of the site is that good, people will come to it anyway. Quality first, name second. This has to be killing the domain-estate market these days. In a world with Bebos, Yahoos, and Flickrs.

Incidentally, I recently read a funny comment (though I have no idea where) of some news site discussing Twitter- and the first commenter said something like “How can we take the service seriously with a name like ‘twitter’?” and the first response was “yeah, and what about that thing called ‘google’?”

If you site has content or value, then name it whatever the hell you want and it won’t matter. But if all you have is a domain name, then how are you going to become profitable. And more importantly, if all you have is Pizza.com, then how are you going to get your $2.6m back?

Today’s a short one, but I wanted to take a moment to honor a great site in history (and apparently present): Hotornot.com

Disclaimer: I haven’t been to hotornot.com since 2001, including to write this post- could someone please go there, find me some funny links, and email them to me.  Thanks.  Ok, let’s get going.

I read this article on Hot or Not’s recent acquisition for $20M the other day and after my initial reaction of “Hot or not is still around!?”, I got to thinking about the site.  For those unfamiliar, HotorNot.com is a site where people post pictures of themselves for others to rate if they are “hot” or… you guessed it, “not”.  It’s an amazingly simple concept, which took the web by storm in its early years.

I remember finding HotorNot.com not long after its creation back around 2000 (oh way back when…) and looking at it between classes at school, with friends, laughing at all the silly people who were insecure enough to need to know if they were indeed as “hot” as they thought.  As you can only imagine, this provided hours of fun…

Well the kicker of all this is that it is delightfully “web 2.0″, as far back as 2000.  That’s right, I’m going to talk seriously about the term web 2.0.  Didn’t see that coming, did you?

The fundamental groundwork for a “web 2.0″ site: user creation and interactivity.  HotorNot: users create pages, viewers vote on them.  HotorNot, which also received HUGE funding and survived the dot-com boom, found the market of profitability in interactivity very early on.  Back then it was strange to have such a large site created entirely by users- this was basically unheard of.  Plus, it was free, pulling in all income from advertising through banners and popups.  Again, a very standard practice today, but HotorNot was way ahead of its time.

The web is moving towards even more interactivity and user creation, which helps me understand how HotorNot can still be kicking funding around eight years later.

So here’s what I want to know: What’s out there now that is ahead of its time?  What sites are out there right now that will survive the next burst? Who will be able to keep a user base, or an operational model, while the others blend together and fade away?  What do you think?

And yes, if I knew the answer to this I’d probably be doing a lot more investing…  In the meantime I’ll keep watching VCs to see where the money goes- and the trends will reveal themselves.  All we have to do is wait.  And to kill time- I think I’m going to go check out hotornot.com

I’ve been working on a fun CES post aiming to discuss the cool gadgetry flowing out of the Vegas Convention Center, but something caught my attention that I just had to write about immediately… Xerox’s new logo. So what is a Web 2.0 log? Is it an interactive logo? A logo that accepts comments? Or has its own RSS feed? The answer is that a Web 2.0 logo is a catchy term that some design person used to make an easy sale…

After 40+ years, Xerox retired it’s 8bit logo in favor of a sleeker looking version (read the corporate ra-ra here on the NYT). Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Xerox changing their logo- I mean, the old one seemed to imply that using their copiers would result in some lossy version that would skew your image… that really need to die a long time ago. So first off, great job on getting rid of that, 38 years too late. But here’s what I think is funny about all this, wrapped up in a quote from the NYT article

Simon Williams, president of the consulting firm Sterling Brands, said he thought the new logo was a home run. “Xerox just isn’t an old, fusty copier company anymore, but I’ll bet it is often still seen that way,” he said. “The lower-case name will be less intimidating, more about dialog than about being authoritative. And the logoptic” — meaning the ball — “adds energy, youthfulness and dynamism.”

That’s just amazing. Doesn’t that rounded ball look youthful and dynamic!?

In all fairness though: that’s how marketing works. You’ve got execs who have spent so long working up to their senior position that they’ve become too far out of touch with their actual consumers. All it takes is one good ad guy (think of Mad Men) and your company has a new logo that gets described as “less intimidating”.

But here’s where this story gets fun: Mashable’s commentary on the new logo. First off, I’m not knocking Mashable- I think they do a great job of breaking down the story and explaining that Xerox is reinventing themselves to show they do much more than make copiers. That’s fine.

What’s less fine is their overuse of “Web 2.0″. Although it’s correctly used a few times in the article, the entire piece gives off the idea that a logo can be “web 2.0″. What is that? Curved edges? Or fewer vowels? How about pastels, or clean edges? You’ve heard me rant about this before: here and here.

(Un)fortunately, someone beat me to the punchline of all this - a commenter on the Mashable post linked this page of “Web2logos” which I find hilarious. There really are design companies making a killing right now because no one wants to be left behind in the old web, but the problem arises that a new logo does not mean new features.

And that’s the point. It seems to me that all companies are realizing that interactivity is the new “must-have”. But it seems more often than not, companies aren’t sure how to adapt to an interactive model (either through lack of resources, lack of understanding, or lack of an applicable product), so instead they put up this falsified image that they are in-touch, through means such as a new logo.

In short: I like new logos, I like Xerox (they make nice copies!) and I actually think they were due for a makeover. But I’d also like to see them use this as a spring-board to promote their new features and show people what really sets them apart from their competitors- not just rely on a logo to get Redbull-drinking teenagers interested in toner cartridges.

In the end thoguh, I just really hope we never see a social networking component to copy machines… (”Xerox is… jammed in section R36″ or “Current Mood: sad, low on ink.”).

**UPDATE** Thanks, Drew for the comment on the xbox 360 logo similarities…

First off- @J - great idea about the “Recent Comments”. I actually already set it up last week, but never activated it because it seemed to clutter my sidebar. But I finally fixed my sidebar code to keep all the fonts and bullets the same size (and now &. looking), so I thought it would be nice to through them in there. Looks good (Also, please notice the retooled comment bar between posts, which highlights the comments a little more too, encouraging you to add something), I think and it makes it seem like there’s a good community here.

Which brings me to my actual topic today: Building communication through blogs. Because as much as I like the idea of people just reading my ideas on things, I’m enjoying this blog because people are writing back. Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine (great blog!) recently had an amazing anecdote which explains his theory behind blogs

“When I was in London, I sat with folks from the BBC in an afternoon devoted to blogging, and the woman next to me was troubled, bearing weight on her shoulders from having to fill her blog and manage her blog. To her, the blog was a thing, a beast that needed to be fed, a never-ending sheet of blank paper. I turned to her and said she should see past the blog. It’s not a show with a rundown that, without feeding, turns into dead air. Indeed, if you look at it that way, you’ll probably write crappy blog posts. I’ve said before that if I think I need to write a post just because I haven’t written one, I inevitably come out with something forced and bad. Instead, I blog when I find something interesting that I’ve seen and I think, ‘I have to tell my friends about that.’ You’re the friends. So yes, I said, it’s just a conversation. And reading — hearing what others are saying — is every bit as important as writing. It was as if scales were lifted from her eyes and weight from her back: She’s just talking with people.”

I thought that was just awesome advice. I’ve always spoken out against “posting for the sake of posting”. If you are thinking about posting on your blog simply because you haven’t recently, then something has gone wrong. Furthermore, if you are sitting at your computer trying to think of something to write about then you’ve really gone down the wrong path. The way I see this blog is that throughout my day I’m learning some really cool things about social media, technology, gadgets (although that’s more on my own time…), and other general nerdery. I think these things are fun and I want to pass along what I’ve learned.

But the catch 22 in the BuzzMachine quote is that to really have an online conversation through your blog, you need a community. But the best way to build a community is through writing great posts on your blog… (this is, by the way, the problem I help solve for a living). The difficulty in starting a blog is there there is no real community behind it yet. Without a real community there will be no comments and a blog without comments is basically a newsletter.

So I definitely need to take this time to thank my valiant readers, but even more so- thanks to my commenters. You’ve brought up some good points and it’s made me want to keep writing. Like J said in a comment earlier “Wow. You are seriously pushing the boundaries of being a Web 1.99 site. If you start implementing user-suggested ideas . . . you may have to bump your version number.”

Well it’s time to start pushing the boundaries more. Which reminds me - Drew, expect an entire post dedicated to your Jason Kelly link and a post about the WinMo add-ons you finally set up- that’ll be fun too.

I’ll make this a little more web 1.999ish and address J’s other comments from today: I’ve already addressed the new “recent comments” section, but as for timestamps on posts- won’t happen. I worked way too hard to take them out of my template to put them back in. My original thought was that I don’t want people knowing that I post late at night, like a nerd or something, but I also just don’t like the way it looks (AND- you’re spot on: it takes away the pressure of posting more often…)

So keep those comments coming and if you’re just lurking- well that’s ok, but at least give me a shout out hello or something. To encourage more comments I’m going to try to remember to end each post with a question from now on- this way, if no one responds, then I’ll just have to ask more interesting questions, or write more interesting posts… starting off, I’ll try to keep the questions related to the day’s post.

Today’s question:

Are you now or have you ever been an active commenter (more than once or twice) on any other blogs? If so, which ones? If not, why? And why yes for this one? What about online forums?

PS- From now on I’ll also try to make the questions less Job-Interview sounding.

First off: no, I’m not avoiding the Facebook debate, I just keep coming across other topics that I really want to address- to get the blog up and running… then I’ll go after Facebook. But, one thing I won’t do again is end a column with “and tomorrow: facebook”.

Today I’m tackling Web 2.0. I think this is a fun topic as it will help lay some groundwork for future rants, for those of you who don’t actually know me and haven’t heard me joke about “web 2.0″ already.

So the goal for today’s post is to explain what “Web 2.0″ actually is, why the overuse of the term bothers me, and cite some examples of improper (or poor) usage.

1. What is “Web 2.0″?

There are numerous definitions out there that detail specifics (O’Reilly invented the term… so his description is probably best) (disclaimer: do not follow the previous links unless you are prepared to have your brain melt a little), but to bring the term down to its simplest form: User Input.

In the old web (1.0), companies created websites for users to visit. You could access pages, read information, watch videos, and even play some games. In Web 2.0 you can create (facebook) and comment (blogs) on pages, write information (wikis), create your own videos (youtube), interact with others in games.

This diagram from Valleywag.com is the best breakdown of how it works:

And there you go. That’s all. No 40 minute videos, no complex diagrams. It’s just user input. To put it simply: Web 2.0 is a two way street of experience.

2. Why the overuse bothers me

It’s trendy and annoying, and when it’s used in improper context it sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me (similar to adding the suffix “wise” onto anything, such as “It’s looking nice out, weather-wise”, “I’d say this team is very strong, talent-wise”, or “yeah she’s ok, looks-wise”).

So first off- the trendy part. “Web 2.0″ is like the late 1990’s “dot com”. You couldn’t launch a company or website in 2007 without throwing in a “it’s a web 2.0 site!”, the way you couldn’t launch a company in ‘99 without saying “newcompany.COM“.

The only reason this really gets to me, is that it draws yet another parallel to a looming bubble burst… people are so caught up in the hype of things, that money is being thrown around because the term Web 2.0 was used.

Truth be told- I think this is probably a good thing… in the long run. Enough companies will fail, which will force the real new ideas to rise to the surface. Funding will be more difficult to find, but as the mega web companies start scooping up the little guys for below cost, real change will start to develop online and the users will truly benefit from the cool, functional, new line of internet. (But this is an entirely different argument for another day.)

The annoying aspect of it- is that it’s just the latest buzzword. It’s not that I like it any less than other buzz words, but in a few years saying “web 2.0″ is going to be like saying “radical” or “tubular”.

3. Some examples of “web 2.0″ gone wrong.

This is actually how today’s post came to be- While researching LexisNexis survey’s for a client this weekend, I came across a release from this summer: LexisNexis Releases Survey on Information Professionals Use of Web 2.0

Here’s a great quote: “With Web 2.0 it’s no surprise that information professionals are very in-tune; nearly four in ten access Weblogs at least weekly (39%), and more than a third access wikis (34%).”

If you read the entire article, you’ll see that they never actually define what “web 2.0″ means, which ultimately gives that quote zero context of the term. Also- these results came from only 107 Information Professionals (of 1500 who were emailed), and only 92% visit news websites regularly… What type of “Information Professional” doesn’t access news websites?

Moving on- how about purchasing your very own “Web 2.0 Looking- Website“! Give your site that “web 2.0″ look, without any of the web 2.0 functionality! (That is a pretty cool template though…)

True story: I once had a client (at an old job) say they were working on a “Web 2.0ey” button set for their company’s homepage. Turns out they meant “rounded edges”.

Last week, I posted about the Web 2.0 sounding names - Andrew Woolridge has a great satire (hit refresh on his page for more fun)
*UPDATE* - apparently this link has gone down… I can only assume that the hoards of traffic my site sent over (both of you) crashed his server…

And this could go on for a while.
Finally- For an actual example of a mega-load of Web 2.0 sites - check out this listing

That’s all I’ve got for today. If you have any other examples of bad web 2.0 use, or questions, or want to debate me- comment below. So please say something, because without comments, this is only a web 1.0 site… ugh…

But check back tomorrow when I address Facebook! . . . whoops. Don’t hold me to that.

Look, I’ll admit it: I like the big shot tech bloggers. I enjoy WSJ’s Mossberg and Pogue from the NYT so much that I’ve even added them to my blog roll (trade links, guys? No? Oh… ok- that’s cool).

If you’re not already reading these sites, now’s a good time to start. They both have the ability to write about complicated and geeky things in a way anyone can understand, and more impressively, anyone can find interesting. This brings me to the point of today’s post: quality blogging with relevant content.

Yesterday I wrote about the millions of tech blogs out there, the justification of adding another one, and why I hope mine is different. Plus, a few posts ago I wrote about this blog’s name (which it’s fair to point out as completely unoriginal), being difficult to decipher and thus fairly useless.

Well yesterday Pogue wrote an exceptional piece about “Seussical-Sounding Web Site Names”, which was both poignant and hilarious. In the post, Pogue breaks down inane naming of web sites and start-ups and how the new trend is to have a “Web 2.0”ish sounding website.

As mentioned a few times already, I hate the overuse of the term Web 2.0 (as does Pogue, I think), and the fact that “Web 2.0” can now describe a name of a website is just another sign of the times.

Pogue writes, “But here’s a little wakeup call: People will learn to love your site’s wacky name only if they fall in love with the site itself. Google and Yahoo became household nutty names only because everyone loved their services. They did not succeed because they had silly names.”

Now I realize that I have a long road ahead of me before AmpersandDot becomes a household name or anything… but I’m going to take this advice and aim to make my blog popular as a result of it being something worthwhile and relevant.

To circle back to the beginning here- there are millions of tech blogs out there. How many of them actually have fresh content? How many have a unique viewpoint (or as I joke, the most unique)? I mean, Pogue and Mossberg are popular because they’re good. They get their audience, write well, and call it like it is. Sure, it’s not like they always have brand new material, but when they write about things that are already well covered; they do it with a new opinion.

So that’s my goal: a new viewpoint that is interesting enough to read… And regardless of my relevance, I’ll also help you find fun links that you’ll enjoy reading or playing with.

And I promise, starting this weekend there will actually be some material too- not just more self-indulgent and self-referential diatribes.

I’ll be tackling Facebook this week- get ready.