The last session was a debate about the "Technorati 100", how it's a caste system, good old boys network, broken in numerous ways (latency, reliability), etc.
The most salient point from a (semantic) Web 2.0 perspective came from Danah Boyd who reminded women that the way they network (few, deeply personal) vs. how men network (many, more surface) is not accounted for in the semantic meaning of a link.
I wrote about this back in February coming off of BloggerCon III and couldn't agree more; links do NOT mean approval or disapproval, nor do they embed the strength of feeling either way. This will change... but until it does... everyone would benefit by understanding the current implementation.
Update: A couple of things...
First, apologies to Danah in advance if using her full name in the title was unwanted (it's generally considered bad form to use someone's full name due to the Google rank implications -- I was typing quickly while rushing off to live blog and was not thinking... my bad).
Second, Ryan King drops by and mentions VoteLinks, a microformat standard for adding more semantic meaning to links. This is a step in the right direction, but the vocabulary isn't rich enough (though it does have simplicity to its favor). I'll be very interested to see where Mary Hodder goes with her 20+ factors for links (which she mentioned at BlogHer); Mary, do you have the first 20 available for review/feedback?
Conference: BlogHer 2005 Location: Santa Clara, CA - Techmart Session: Fund, Build, Sell Date: July 30, 2005 Time: 130PM PT
Moderators: Mary Hodder, Denise Howell, and Patricia Nakache
Mary: Started a company recently. Am getting angel funding. Blogging has helped me quite a bit; people have seen and read me for a while. Even if they don't know me, seeing me talk about technology issues for years has helped me get funding. Tools I'm using include a 3 page summary document and a one page spreadsheet around the model; PowerPoints didn't work for me. If you're thinking about starting a company; do it. It's scary, but even failure brings credibility. One thing I've found that works is asking the people who I'm pitching for advice; they'll tell me if they want to participate (financially) or not. Think about how to divide up the introductions you get; some might be funders, others might be advisors -- having advisors means leveraging their credibility.
Denise: Lawyer with the firm Reed Smith; one of the 20 biggest law firms in the country. I'm on this panel because lawyers can really help you move your business along, including connecting you to people who can fund your business. What we hope to do today is familiarize you with the conventional ways that funding happens... and then take that a step further, understand how blogging could help you.
Patricia: I'm with Trinity Ventures; we're a classic fund with $1B in management. My focus is on business and consumer services, particularly leveraged by technology.
Audience (Canter): How about those who have taken venture funding and will never do it again?
Audience: What's the difference between angels and venture?
Patricia: Angel funding is from individuals. Venture funding is from institutional investors. Venture funds are purely profit driven; we (and our investors) seek 5-10x returns on our investment.
Mary: On a practical level, the requirements for what you have to do... I mentioned 3-4 pages of documentation; that wouldn't be enough for Patricia, but it's right for Angels... The angel funders write me a check, informally, based on a conversation and my reputation. Venture is more formal.
Audience (Rafer): Might want to talk about amounts of money...
Mary: Right... I'm trying to raise $350K, and in small amounts. Patricia can talk to this, but if someone is going to give you an amount of money, in the millions, they have to do a significant amount of due diligence.
Patricia: It's in part due diligence, but also about the ongoing engagement with the company. Most VC's take board seats and pride themselves on actually helping the company; so you can only have so many investments. Angel is great for getting your business off the ground, usually a few hundred thousand. Venture is usually $2-10MM
Audience: Do angels get paid back?
Patricia: Angels get a percentage of the company like other investors; they're just earlier in.
Audience: But you talk in rounds...
Patricia: A company could have multiple rounds of financing. What typically tends to happen is a new lead investor is sought to set the market price. Your existing investors usually participate in it. As the owner, you're always giving up a piece of your company. So you want to be cash concious.
Audience: So does that mean if you have 3 rounds you've given up 30%?
Patricia: A typical series A round is $4-5MM dollars in trade for 30-50% of your company.
Audience (Canter): You should talk about 51%, and taking over the company and kicking out the founders...
Audience: I've had the same experience; so I'd never choose to take venture funding again.
Patricia: The only thing I can say is to check references of both the firm and the person who's going to sit on the board. You need to know if it's going to be a good relationship.
Denise: Your dollars go a lot further now than they used to. Mary's an example of this.
Mary: The stuff that I'm building right now would take 5-10 times as much money a few years ago. You're trying to create a certain amount of technology and build up a community; if you do that, you can prove an increase in valuation for the money you spent, which allows you to take more money (in subsequent rounds) for less of your company
Audience (Canter): Every round, higher valuation
Mary: Right.
Audience: You can bootstrap today; we've been building a product and consulting all the while, flowing the consulting money into the product.
Audience: Mary's building technology. You guys aren't going to fund someone who's not funding a product. I'm building a media company; nothing I read indicates that anyone wants to fund those things. It's not clear that women are going to be building technology companies, vs. using technology to build companies. So where's the money?
Mary: I'm finding that across angel investors, there's a wide variety o thing that people are interested in. Part of it is in figuring out which investors are funding in your area. Patricia's web site lists the companies that they've funded, which would help you evaluate fit.
Patricia: Two questions... one is where is the money for women. Has been abysmal, not getting any better. Only 4-5% of companies funded in 2003 had female CEOs. As for media vs technology, I think what Mary said is dead on. It doesn't have to be technology, but there have to be other assets.
Audience: I don't come from a CS background and I wasn't the VP of Shockwave. Women come with a big disadvantage. I'd love to have money to get a break. It's not just money, it's also mentors. It's easy for men.
Audience: There are investor groups that are focused on women.
Denise: There's a lot of money looking to be invested right now; lots of opportunity for investment in new ideas and new people (who might not have done it before).
Mary: I get things in going to tech conferences that most of the men who attend don't. I think there are huge opportunities for women developing technology right now. Technology development is not just about writing code; there's a social component. If the technology doesn't interact socially, it's not going to succeed.
Audience (Kalyia): I have an earned income non-profit focused on social software; networking audiences together. It's a different approach to building a company; I'm not going to get anyone a return on their investment. IntegrativeActivism.net
Audience (Adina): Comment first. What I heard you say was that you deserve an investment, not what you were doing to earn it. My question is.. in hearing pitches from men & women, are there differences, and if so, are there mentoring resources available.
Mary: In the beginning, I was terrified about asking for money. People don't talk about how much they make. Talking about how much you need, etc, is hard and weird.
Patricia: I hate to generalize, but... there's a tendency for women to sell less, and you really have to sell yourself as a leader and why your product/idea is great. On average, women want more of a conversation, whereas most venture people speak powerpoint... that's an unfortunate thing, but powerpoint is great for making sure you get your points across, because your access is limited.
Audience (Heather): I'm looking for angel funding. I have friends & family, we have an attorney we picked because we thought he had great contacts. But the question is, who are the angels who have the money.
Mary: One thing to do is to look at other companies in your space who have been successful; who were their angels. And, of those who were successful, how many of them made money and could invest. You can also build an advisory board to help you do introductions
Audience: How much do you give an advisor
Mary: I was told if had 10MM shares, you should give an advisor 3500. That's a grant, not vesting.
Audience (Marc): People, soft, sensitivity, unique insights, Web 2.0. These are not male things
Audience (Scott): Your advisor numbers are off by about an order of magnitude. Put them on a vesting schedule; that way you can kick them out if they aren't contributing.
Audience (me): Tell them what the legal requirements are for being an Angel
Audience: There's also a Band of Angels, Angel Forums, etc
Patricia: An angel is someone with a $1MM in liquid assets; only these people are "qualified" to make "risky investments"
Denise: If the blogging is working both your funding and marketing in a cost productive way, building on top of open source infrastructure is a great way to keep you ahead with a minimum of funding.
Conference: BlogHer 2005 Location: Santa Clara, CA - Techmart Session: Advanced Tools Date: July 30, 2005 Time: 11:15AM
Moderators: George Oates, Alexandra Samuel, Marnie Webb
Alexandra... does introductions... solicits favorite web sites and topics from the audience...
Marnie: I've had 18 gallons of coffee this morning. First, what blogging platform do you use? How many of you use RSS? Okay. We also have candy. The way that we talked about approaching this is how do I get started writing and how do I get other content (that I make someplace else, or someone else makes) into my blog. The two tools that are important are APIs and RSS. We won't focus on what RSS is, but how to use it; RSS is what allows me to listen to others (another person, a persistent search, etc).
Marnie: Why are you here?
Audience: How to get RSS on my blog?
Audience: Using tags?
Audience: Reblog?
Audience: Using Radio Userland for several blogs, want to bring them all together?
Audience: Looking to combine blogs with wikis, following comments more effecively online?
Audiencce: Currently on TypePad domain, want to move to my own; want to do podcasting, moblogging and video blogging. How do I bring it all together?
Audience: Moblogging?
Audience: Avoiding porn spam?
Audience: Moving to a new URL?
Audience: Using a local desktop client?
Audience: Switching identities seamlessly?
[Minor chaos so far for this season. The TechMart, which I call the Low Tech Mart, is showing its true colors... WiFi not available to the panel, which makes it hard to show off advanced tools]
Alexandra: Del.icio.us is the worlds most unintuitive URL. If you're not using Delcious now (or another social bookmarking site), you should start now. Instead of having your bookmarks stored on your own computer, you store them on a website where you can share them with other people. More importantly for our purposes... you can pull those links back into your blog.
Alexandra: The joy of tagging is that you can have the same bookmark stored under multiple tags. This rocks because you can get an RSS feed for each tag. [Navigates to her site] All of the items on this page have been automatically added based on people who have tagged their post "powerblogher". To aggregate an RSS feed into your page means that you need to play a bit with the code; you don't need to learn how to code, just copy and paste the code into your page. We'll show you more about this later. Reminder: before you dive into this, make sure you've backed up your blog, template, etc.
Audience: There are tools that will automate the creation of this.
Audience: You're relying on the categorization and spelling of others, could be spam or porn
George: Right
Alexandra: You can aggregate in misspellings too. If you're worried about others, just integrate the pages you've tagged. The big thing is using the work you've done in tagging/bookmarking as an input into your blog.
Alexandra: Three tools in your toolkit. One is bookmarking. Second is reading RSS feeds (including tags). And the third tool is allowing you to aggregate RSS feeds and republish them on your blog. You can track a lot of tags by using an RSS reader.
George: Delicious is one tool; there are 18+ social bookmarking tools
Audience (Rafer): The social bookmarking sites are putting synonym engines in place, correlating misspellings, etc. Probably not an issue in a year.
Audience: You mentioned 18 social bookmarking sites; so that means 100 in a year. Isn't that a problem, because it's not a shared space.
Audience: Get used to it. It's been a long time since there was one place to see all new things.
Alexandra: Tagsonomy.com (site for discussing social bookmarking/tagging issues, limitations, etc)
Marnie: Flickr stole tagging from Delicious, but did it differently. On Flickr, everyone tags their own items (e.g., their own photos); with Delcious, everyone tags the same item (e.g., a public web page).
[More WiFi problems for panelists]
Marnie: On Flickr, you can make a "badge", which associates a tag, image size and orientation; Flickr will feed you all incoming images that meet your criteria.
Audience: Is this HTML code?
Marnie: Yea, it's a script
Audience: How do we actually get RSS in?
George: FeedDigest.com (used to be RSSDigest.com). There are also a plethora of plugins for Wordpress et al.
Audience (Mena - SixApart): We're launching a solution for TypePad next week to inline RSS (i.e., subscrbe to RSS Feeds from your Blog) that won't require playing with script.
Audience: I want to take the first post from 10 different feeds to create one feed.
Alexndra: Feedwordpress is another reblogging solution.
Audience (Canter and JD): Ourmedia.org will store all your audio, video, photos for free
Audience (Charlene Li): Can you just show the tag clouds and show how you use it
Marnie: We don't actually call them tag clouds; just what is popular at a given time.
Alexandra: This isn't the newest coolest thing; you can integrate a Flickr photo stream that allows people to email a photo and have it show up on your blog. Very powerful for getting non-techies to use technology in an easy way to integrate online and offline communities.
Audience(Kalyia): Single-sign on for digital identity is cool
Audience: Is there a site that compares all the blogging tools
George: We'll put it on our site
Audience: Is there a way to go into a photo stream and remove offending results for the email-a-photo scenario?
Marnie: No, you need to only invite people you trust
Audience (Charlene): Other tools, MSN Spaces and Yahoo 360 allow you to moderate photos
Audience: Question for setting up the email account for the photo streaming; is that a feature of Flickr.
Marnie: You need to tell Flickr where your blog is. Then in "Your Account", there's a specific email address for your account
Audience: Is there a way to use FeedDigest that still works from an SEO perspective
Alexandra: [Long statement about reblogging and stealing people's content]
Audience (Rafer):
Audience: Be aware that copyright law has not caught up with Feeds. Be sure you know what copyright others have on their Feeds. Items in the US are considered copyrighted from the moment they are created.
Audience: That's right. And, lots of people using Creative Commons license have a 'non-commercial' clause.
Audience: Atom vs. RSS
Audience: Atom is API + Syndication Feed, RSS is only a syndication Feed
Audience: Request... on your advanced tools, when you do the comparison tools for blogging, can you also compare it to collaboration tools like Wiki's
George: Sure
Audience (Charlene): It's also message boards, etc; it's about community voices
Audience (Niall): People might also want to use stat trackers (FeedBurner, SyndicateIQ, SiteMeter).
Audience: There's something called Feedshake that allows you to select a bunch of feeds, specify a keyword, and it will automatically create a mash-up feed of all the selected feeds that match your keyword.
George: What I'm looking for is when I can use APIs as easily as I can now publish on the web thanks to blogs.
Audience (Charlene): You're talking about widgets, right...
George: Yea, that's what's interesting about speculating what Yahoo is doing with Konfabulator
Audience (JD): If we have other cool tools, can we add them to your page?
Does anyone (especially the good folks at FeedBurner and Pheedo...) have a definitive guide to how the various RSS Services report user/subscriber counts via their user-agent string?
With some agents, it's pretty obvious; Yahoo FeedSeeker, Bloglines and NewsGator all report via "Users" or "Subscribers".
With some, it would appear obvious, but it's broken; "TribeASS" (I ain't making it up folks) reports "%d" users... Hey guys, at least use an unsigned int for my vast subscriber counts, alright? (Laugh.)
With still others, it's entirely unclear. For example, I see "Apple Syndication/38" in my logs; does that mean that it's the 38th process instance running on their server, or, are there 38 people who subscribe to my blog via Apple's Tiger RSS implementation, or??
Any and all help appreciated; if a list doesn't exist, I'm happy to compile all comments into a list to be shared. If it exists, I'd be happy with a pointer... and if a log analyzer exists to extract, trend and render this data... well, that'd be just peachy.
Thanks!
UPDATE: Dick Costolo, CEO FeedBurner, bails me out in the comments (reposted here): "Hey Tony, we've got this. In fact, we just posted yesterday on our blog that it's on our list to open up our user-agent db with ALL the parameters from the list so that others can make any additions, corrections or criticisms that they'd like. I'll kick start the process by noting that in the apple syndication bot, "38" is just a static string, it's the same for everybody. Probably a final build number or something. Anyway, we'll make this public as soon as possible. Also in the list will be web-based readers that have multiple users but don't report them. There's more data in the db than you'll get from analyzing logs, (eg, does or doesn't support Atom1.0, does or doesn't support images, etc)."
That's what I get for not getting through all 800 posts yesterday! Dick, this is great news, thank you!
Michael, right on. This is at the heart of OpenReviews, structured blogging and micro-formats; you clearly see the potential (and have articulated it better than most)!
While I certainly can't speak to Amazon, I do know that a fair bit smaller site is working on implementing exactly what you've described for their members (and by extension of the implementation, the web at large). I can't say more than that right now for the sake of a couple of personal and professional relationships, but I hold high hopes for these folks to get it right, and shine a light down the path for the rest of us.
Michael, do you think it could work for a health site too?
Just a quick reminder that I'll be at the BlogHer conference this Saturday, July 30th, in Santa Clara, where I'll be live blogging and drinking on Yahoo!'s dime (unfortunately, in that order).
I'd also be remiss not to note and congratulate all of the organizers on their sold out (+ wait list) status; that's fantastic!
Just a quick tip of the hat to Marc Canter, who, despite running ragged with the GoingOn launch (and subsequent response), gave me some useful information on the subject of open source CMS solutions (yes, you guessed it, Drupal).
Drupal does look like it could be a solid approach, but ultimately we don't need a rendering solution (we're actually using XSL + CSS), and moving to PHP isn't at the top of our list. This is still TBD, however, as the CMS workflow and social goodies (forums, groups, etc) would all be nice extras to get "for free".
Anyway, my thanks again to Marc and everyone else who has lent their support, encouragement and expertise over the last couple of weeks!
As promised at the Factory Tour, Google's Personalized Home Page (aka MyGoogle) now supports RSS (and Atom) Feeds.
Here's a screen shot:
You'll notice, on the left hand side, the option to "Create a New Section"; here, you specify the RSS Feed URL... and away you go.
With no OPML support to upload a bunch of RSS Feeds at once, and a UI that is, for all intents and purposes identical to MyYahoo, this won't be the interface for the hungry information consumer.
It is, however, yet another step forward in pushing Feeds mainstream... despite cries to the contrary from various naysayers.
"Cheaper... or P4P: The days of $3000 job listings, $500 car listings, etc is over, regardless of how many media types and how much room (#1, above) I want to use. Those who lack the cost structure (i.e., newspapers) and fortitude to compete at free, low or pay-for-performance price points will suffer. "
In January of this year, I wrote about the coming disruption in classifieds, particularly around employment/recruitment. A couple of points:
"Imagine an open database of these listings that you can search... and the ability to subscribe to a Feed containing continuously updated search results... Rather than paying hundreds of dollars to list a job (house, car, etc) at Monster, CareerBuilder or HotJobs, employers (i.e., companies, recruiters, etc) can simply publish their openings (for free) as Feeds and immediately make them available to a worldwide audience, who can conveniently subscribe to them directly (or via the aforementioned searchable aggregated database)."
I'm very encouraged by this move by Yahoo/HotJobs. They are the clear laggard of the top 3 recruitment sites, and are the only ones who are (currently) well positioned for a marketplace that will move to a CPC/CPA model in the future. (To put it another way, they may have just announced their willingness to take the market there, to the chagrin of Monster and CareerBuilder.)
Moreover, their focus on building their internals as platform components/layers (as seems to be clear from their integration of "Yahoo 360's social networking" into My Web 2.0) means that we should expected continued integration and (drum roll) "synergy" between various pieces of Yahoo's network...
Scoble's got a link to PressDisplay, an AJAX interface that allows you to pan around a scan of a newspaper.
Now that I'm back working at a tiny start-up where building great product requires overcoming huge hurdles, I want to be careful about commenting on other people's work. (Believe me, we're going to be iterating like crazy based on user feedback, as I know we won't nail it all at the get go.) But, I've gotta say, this whole thing seems generally ill conceived.
It assumes that the problem with reading the paper online is the paging metaphor at the individual page level, and seems to largely ignore the progress (yes, there has been some) that online news sites have made in making news more accessible online.
Paid Content had an interesting riff this weekend on the effect that AJAX might have on online advertising, vis-a-vis the ability to measure AJAX app usage, and, it's "paradigm shift' (had to, sorry) away from the standard stateless web-page metaphor.
I'm playing with all manner of UI widgets as we work through the (re)design of Healthdash (and envision at least an early take on how we can make health search easier), and this very thing has been top of mind. We can certainly instrument the UI widgets with reporting hooks... but that doesn't speak to the potential advertising impact.
More interesting, perhaps, is flipping this around. Will the fear of losing advertising dollars slow the deployment of AJAX in scenarios where it would clearly benefit the user? And, stretching a bit, is there a point at which a UI becomes so frictionless (and differentiated from standard web page models) that a publisher/vendor can make the move from ad supported to user subscription? The latter scenario seems unlikely, and begs the former...
UPDATE: Catching up on my feeds, and low and behold, there's a post from Jason Calacanis at Weblogs Inc on why he's not using AJAX. Ad related. (Wish I'd written this yesterday, LOL.)
Jeff's got a great write-up on the MySpace acquisition by News Corp (Murdoch), with pointers to all of the usual (smart) suspects.
There's an interesting comment by someone named "hunter" in the SiliconBeat comments asserting that MySpace was partially popular because it wasn't created/owned by mass media.
That's interesting (and if true, spells trouble for Murdoch, who couldn't be any more mass media if he tried). I suspect, however, that it's not true. MySpace created a hip-enough place-to-be, but I attribute that more to the local/indie musicians that are part of the 'community', rather than who owns the company. And, of course, that whole viral friends-beget-friends 'thang.
The only real question is... is it durable? Will people grow out of it? Will 'fresh blood' find its way in... or will they strike out to establish their own place to-be-seen on the web? TBD...
Since you're already indulging me... a quick note of congratulations to Pamela on the birth of her first, a beautiful baby boy!
Now, I hate to spoil that sentiment... but I just gotta note that I find it interesting that Pamela Parker Caird (PPC), who writes for ClickZ on interactive marketing'esq topics, would name her son Callum Parker Caird (CPC). Ha! ;-)
Oh come on, you knew I'd eventually find a way to spam you with advertising via RSS, right? Well, hopefully getting yourself and/or a friend get a great job with a cool start-up will make it a bit less painful. (Besides, my emerging product roadmap looks like a poster-child for Web 2.0, so this is totally relevant!)
I've got three critical spots to fill on my team (one each product management, content management and usability/design); notice I didn't list specific titles... I'm looking for people who can be senior contributors now and who can scale as our revenue justfies growing the team.
If you or a friend is a fit, please email me at moreinfo AT buzzhit dot com.
Here's the intro boiler stuff that makes HR happy: HealthLine is the fastest and easiest way to find, understand and manage information about consumer health. Five years in development, and created in collaboration with 1,100 physician specialists, the company's patented HealthMap search platform is powered by an unparalleled medical taxonomy that encompasses nearly one million medical terms and synonyms. Using state-of-the art medical informatics, these terms are matched and compared to the diverse ways in which they are used within the context of human medical conditions to provide much more relevant and precise results than broad, horizontal search engines. The company's health search portal, www.healthdash.com, addresses the needs of the more than 100 million health information seekers by delivering more relevant search results, empowering them to better manage and ultimately make more informed healthcare decisions. Healthdash's patented contextual search-mapping process is also used to enable major healthcare providers such as Merck, PacifiCare, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to deliver critical resources and tools to both consumers and members. Currently in Emeryville, company will relocate to SF during midsummer.
User Experience/Usability/Graphic Design position:
In this role, you will work closely with usability-driven product managers, Web developers and engineers to both refine the user interface and define the visual appearance of the Healthdash web site. Specific responsibilities will include:
Collaborate with product managers and engineers to problem-solve usability and interaction design problems in the creation of wireframes;
Create visual designs to address product, marketing and business needs;
Gain customer perspective through observation of usability testing;
Create prototypes for usability testing, business development, etc.;
Prepare production-ready design elements;
Ensure design consistency throughout the Healthdash site (and in offline materials.
Required Skills and Qualifications:
4+ years of user interface and design experience for respected consumer Web sites or consumer software applications;
Understanding and experience designing in a user-centered design process;
Ability to grasp and visually create the subtleties of a marketing “voice”;
Track-record of on-time, on-budget project delivery, comfortable in a fast-paced, deadline-rich environment;
Strong verbal communication skills;
Great eye for detail;
Able to design out-of-the-box solutions to complex user interaction and design problems;
Ability to work independently as well as in cross-functional groups;
Must have solid understanding of current web technologies (html, dhtml, css);
Samples of online work (where you were the primary designer) will be required;
A “trial run” on a paid freelance project or two will likely also be a requirement.
Content Management position:
The position will bear primary responsibility for managing the identification, acquisition, review, editing, search engine optimization and publishing (to the Web) of high value consumer-oriented medical articles and other content. Specific responsibilities will include:
Building (with substantial internal assistance) and managing a network of high-quality freelance medical editors, physician article authors and physician content reviewers; ¨ Developing (with internal assistance) and managing the process of creating, reviewing, editing, search engine optimizing and publishing Web content;
Monitoring and reporting on free search engine referrals from Healthdash-published content; ¨ Analyzing and understanding search, traffic, advertising and medical trends in order to prioritize content for acquisition, creation, etc.;
Identifying third-party sources of medical content (for acquisition, partnership, etc.);
Working with Biz Dev to strike relationships for third-party content. Required Skills and
Qualifications:
Strong verbal communication skills;
Substantial editorial or journalistic experience;
Prior experience with production of Web content;
Outstanding organizational ability;
Strong analytical skills;
Strong management skills and experience managing teams of people;
Experience managing a large network of geographically-dispersed freelance writers or editors is ideal;
Experience with Search Engine Optimization is a plus;
A medical credential would be ideal.
Product Management position:
The position will bear primary responsibility for providing product management leadership across the company’s web site and core platform technologies. Specifically, this will include:
Refining and owning a compelling product vision for our website (with emphasis on usability) and core platform technologies (i.e., search, personalization, etc) based on consumer and competitive research;
Evangelizing the website product vision through the organization;
Developing compelling and detailed product requirements in close collaboration with engineering leaders;
Facilitating the prioritization of technology initiatives, using approaches as quantitative and objective as possible;
Day-to-day facilitation and leadership of project teams, including schedule management;
Cross-functional collaboration to assure smooth development and launch of features.
Required Skills and Qualifications
Web 2.0 mentality, including experience with APIs and open source tools/platforms (including Lucene)
4+ years of product management experience required;
Full-lifecycle product management experience with a heavily visited Web service or content website;
Track-record of on-time, on-budget project delivery;
Well alright, I'm feeling a bit healthier tonight, so time to dish on my new gig.
I had a running joke with new acquaintances that asked me about my plans for my consultancy, that really, it was just a poor man's EIR (entreprenuer in residence). Consulting gave me the opportunity to investigate new technologies & business models, and meet some great new folks... all with the intent of finding something that reasonated deeply with me at a personal level, much in the way that working in educational software did back in '95 (10 year itch?); if you've never taken an educational title out to 6th graders at a pilot site, I totally recommend it. ;-)
At the same time, I wanted something that was at the intersection of all the consulting I've done, namely: search, advertising and social media/software. And, while I talked with several of the big dogs, I knew in my heart that I really wanted to help build a company in addition to building a product/service. Call me crazy, but why not double the pain? :)
So, long story short, just as I was heading off for Maui, a good friend (thanks John!!) referred me to a recruiter looking for someone to head up Product for a start-up focused on "health search"; that is, helping consumers easily find, understand and manage health information online.
Being a start-up, it fulfills my desire to help build a company; getting a solid round from VantagePoint makes it a bit less painful. Being search, advertising funded (there's currently ~$600MM in online health advertising, expected to grow 2-3x near term), with some interesting social software possibilities fulfills the desire to play in those spaces. And, helping people get piece of mind when they or someone they love has a medical condition... well, that just feels good inside.
Anyway, the company is HealthLine.com. And yes, what's currently online is a shadow of what we plan to release later this year and over time.
Obviously, my blogging will be impacted by all of this... there are time and competitive issues to consider. But I hope to continue to offer my $0.02 on what's going on online, as well as a healthy dash (sorry, couldn't resist) of what we're up to. I hope you'll stick around to share the ride.
Just a quick heads-up lest you think I've fallen out of love for this whole blogging thing... ;-)
I'm still here, still reading, and still planning to publish. Unfortuantely, a confluence of events, including my annual summer Flu (ugh), likely due to too many conferences, and more interestingly, a ton of interviewing that has led to my joining a very cool (and dare I say, "noble") start-up... the "requires" relocation to SF (in order to preserve my sanity).
Needless to say, life's a crazy mess right now, but I'm looking forward to sharing more with you on all of these matters "soon". Thanks for sticking with me!
Analysis of online business and technology trends, including: Search and Directory, Digital Media, Social Networking, RSS, and E-commerce. Written by buzzhit!'sTony Gentile.
