Life: Magical and Realistic

New Ventures - Old Venture

I am currently advising two interesting new start-ups, and wanted to chronicle the experience here since they are both very different, and yet face many of the same challenges.  Along the way I am also learning a lot about two completely different industries, in two different parts of the world.  One is based in Brasil, in Sao Paulo, and the other in New York City.  Since they are both just in the initial stages, I won't call out their names as of yet, but wanted to put words to the experience so I (and maybe others) can learn from our efforts.

I have time right now to work with these guys as I was laid off from my job at LiveJournal in San Francisco at the beginning of the year.  The "Global Economic Meltdown" was the apparent culprit, but it was a good gig while it lasted.  I met some very talented people at LJ, and hope they continue to do well as they struggle forward with their product.  I also learned a lot about LiveJournal, a product I knew next to nothing about when I started, and now feel I know just slightly better.

The gig suited me perfectly:  a mix of product, community engagement, editorial, policy, and customer care.  I leveraged all the work I had done at Yahoo!, and everything I had learned afterwards, and threw it all together to lead those areas I had responsibility for.  We were able to bring certain areas of the site and the mindset around it into the 2000's, although there was still a lot of work to be done when I was laid off.  The U.S. team, led by Matt B., was extremely competent -- I think that if the crisis had not devalued the Ruble (LJ is owned by a Russian holding company), the work we were doing would have taken LJ from being a niche, fan-fic oriented "alternative" blogging/journaling site to a more mainstream-alternative (how is that for an oxymoron) site with some interesting international possibilities.  As it was, we were able to put a good amount of grease on the wheels, so it should coast for a few years just based on the work done by the entire US team in the 8 months Matt was at the helm.

But now, aside from consutling on these new projects (which I will describe in later posts), I am spending a lot more time with my family and friends, which, during the Spring in Santa Cruz, is not a bad thing at all.  Oh, and I promise to get back out in the ocean, and try to actually get surfing a lot more, and when not doing all of those, get back to writing reviews for the movies I am once again able to see.

Yahoo! Flickr Spam Rant

I love Flickr as much as the next Web 2.0 guy, but I am just a bit annoyed with the marketing spam that I received from then the other day.  Here is a copy of the email:

Hi <me>

Your Flickr Pro account expired on . You have 1453 photos
but you're now only seeing the last 200!

Perhaps you'd like to renew your Pro account?

You'll even get 3 months free for purchasing before 30
September 2008!

You can learn more here:

http://flickr.com/yay/comeback/3mo/

The Flickreenos

******************************

***************************************
Please do not reply to this message. This is a service
email related to your use of Flickr. To learn more about
Flickr's use of personal information please read our
Privacy Policy. Flickr is located at Flickr c/o Yahoo!, 701
First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.

Go to Privacy Policy:
http://flickr.com/privacy_policy.gne

OK, here is the thing... note the message on the bottom:

"This is a service email related to your use of Flickr."

Now, how is advising me to upgrade to a Pro Account, and providing me a link (which redirects here http://www.flickr.com/upgrade/) a "service announcement" and therefore something I MUST get from Yahoo!?  There are some laws regarding CANSPAM that specifically say you cannot hide a marketing message behind a "service announcement"."  I even went to Yahoo! marketing communications section of my account and could only find reference to Yahoo! Photos, a product they no longer even have!

So, I took the next logical step and hope everyone will join me (if you got something like this).

Go here:

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

fill out a complaint, and hope that Yahoo! learns its lesson.  I mean, I know they are suffering because of the Microsoft takeover attempt (which, as a shareholder, I voted against), but that doesn't mean they need to stoop to creepy, marketing spam.  Who is in charge of policy there now anyway?  Bozo the home renovator?

sheesh.

Your online presence

I used to work as the privacy guy at Yahoo!, and was generally pretty concerned about my privacy.  I am a very private person, or I should say, I used to be.  A friend of mine introduced me to Twitter, and here I am writing this blog, so I can't say that I am that private a guy anymore.  But I do control my online presence, and what I say here and there, as I would in any open dialog in a restaurant, where I am surrounded by strangers.  Surrounded by strangers who somehow know my name and can google me, but you get the idea.

And I recommend you control your online persona too.  Because, you know, we all have heard stories about "that Facebook picture" someone saw and laughed about as it was emailed around the school/office/you name it, or something a boss read that made "someone" lose their job.  And so on and so forth.  But it all seems a bit unreal, kind of unlikely in fact.  Or so I thought, until today.

I have been emailing with the nice folks at an email marketing company.  Yesterday, I had to get an email answered right away, but as it turns out the person I was dealing with was not available (which is a whole other rant, for another day), so I emailed with someone else, who was very nice and seemed very professional.  Since I like to put a face to a name, I googled her, to see if there were a LinkedIn profile, or something like that, so I could see who I was dealing with.  Her LinkedIn profile did not have a photo, but I noticed her college, Hope College, and had realized there was another link on the search results page that included the words Hope College and her name, and that there might be a photo there.  So I went back and took a look.  Plus, to be honest, at this point I was just curious.

The second link had a photo of her and her sister, and their names.  Most of the other links on the search results page were irrelevant, but there was one link to a TV show called "Amazing Race," which I had never heard of... could this be the same person?  Was I emailing with an actress?  It seemed unlikely, but I followed the link, and sure enough, it was her!  (I deduced this as she was on this TV show with her sister - you guessed it, the one from the second link I described above). 

I was still intrigued, so I checked out some of the other links, including one to Naked Wiki, and the subcategory Mooning.  And there was the following entry:

During The Amazing Race 8 (Family Edition), <name redacted> mooned the Linz family, whose car was driving next to theirs. The mooning was obscured by pixelization.

I had to laugh!  At that point, I figured I knew just a little bit too much about this stranger, in fact, some things more intimate than I know about my real world friends.  Not that any of it was bad, or even something I might not do myself.  But it changes the whole way I would ever deal with her, and it kind of reflects on the company (in a way I didn't even expect, to be honest).   I am sure within the company or her group, none of this is a big deal.  But the degrees of separation between me and her are enormous, and yet I feel I know her quite well.  Weird.

I am not sure where this story is going, or why I even wrote it, aside to provide a real life cautionary tale to all of you out there who go around mooning people on TV shows.  It may just come back and bite you in the ass.

The internet devolution

When facebook started out, in its geeky yet cool way of connecting college kids to one another, I stood up and paid attention. Sure, we had seen the Friendsters of the world come and go, but here, I think, was a truly novel concept: a walled social networking site that informed you about the goings on at your school. I think back to my college days, with no internet, barely computers, and just your face to face social scene and think "wow", what a difference a facebook would have made. A yearbook come to life, and, better yet, a record of that time (which, granted for me, remains foggy....).

And then they moved to including high schools. Even better, I think! And so fun, in an era of adolescence where it really does matter how one feels that day, how it would be cool to poke someone you don't know, to flirt, to organize, and all in the safety of your own school zone.

And the capitalist in me is thinking - wow, you have these kids, this perfect demographic to advertise to... this is gonna be huge! You can follow these guys through life, give linkedin.com a run for its money, etc.

Then it opened up to everyone. Now all the fun "poking" and "throwing sheep" around on the site is suddenly open from just kids to my 54 year old uncle, and he can tell my mom about my wild weekend pics, and ... well, so what, it is still really just for the kids, right?

But then facebook is open to the general search world, and profiles can show up in search results. Hmmm.. now my 4 year old profile of when I was in college can be seen by my boss - since I am now in the real world, and not in college anymore. Not so cool, Facebook. Some older members even start deleting their profiles (is that even really possible?), or making it all very private, or maybe now I have 4000 friends and family members who can poke, superpoke, or tell me to download the newest, coolest facebook app that I just need to use!

And the newer users, those excluded from the "cool" college site, now get to wander into this formerly exclusive world of mine, and they find a world that can't quite figure out.... Seems like friendster, but on some kind of weird college vibe, still talking about poking, and being in class, and so on... And I keep having random people ask to be my friend, but they are in high school, or are really old, or are really young. And the newest, coolest apps don't work on my Mac. And do I really care how my friends are "feeling" today? That so and so can't wait to get a massage? That my friend in London is "psyched for the weekend"? Have they all reverted to being 18-22 year olds, instead of serious professionals? Have they swallowed a collective amount of Koolaid and are in some nether world where "contemplating my touch Ipod" is somehow important?

Facebook, you have come a long way. You are valued by "the market" at some ridiculous billion dollar mark. And you keep opening up the tent, letting more people in.... But my guess is, your active users are leaving once they realize they can never be kids again, and that by using your site they are simply acting like the kids they once were, or wanted to be.

And it is frankly a bit pathetic.  Or maybe I am just old!