DISQUS

Want to give you big props for being the first of the Web 2.0 thought leaders to acknowledge the poor job done by the industry to reach out to business.

In a speech at the Communitech Conference in Waterloo, I pounded the table on the fact that business is aware of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, etc. but has NO CLUE on how to incorporate them. The blame for that lies at the feet of the tech industry which became too absorbed in jumping from tool to tool without remembering to educate business.

I've created a very successful business by connecting small-cap public companies with their shareholders and potential shareholders using many of these tools. Come by and have a look.

I encourage all of you to do the same and find an industry that can benefit from utilizing these tools.

Regards,
George

Want to give you big props for being the first of the Web 2.0 thought leaders to acknowledge the poor job done by the industry to reach out to business.

In a speech at the Communitech Conference in Waterloo, I pounded the table on the fact that business is aware of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, etc. but has NO CLUE on how to incorporate them. The blame for that lies at the feet of the tech industry which became too absorbed in jumping from tool to tool without remembering to educate business.

I've created a very successful business by connecting small-cap public companies with their shareholders and potential shareholders using many of these tools. Come by and have a look.

I encourage all of you to do the same and find an industry that can benefit from utilizing these tools.

Regards,
George

Zack, great post as usual. As the founder of the largest online investor relations community, I can tell you that verifying the identify of somebody has little to do with the quality of an electronic shareholder forum.

In fact, it significantly degrades the quality of a forum for two reasons. First, actual investors may be nervous about participating for fears of looking "stupid" and somebody knowing who they actually are.

Second, it prevents prospective investors in the due diligence phase from participating.

The factor that differentiates a great investor relations forum from Yahoo Finance is enforcement of rules of conduct. Yahoo Finance is a disaster due to spam, profanity, pumping, dumping, etc.

Yes, you can clean that up by forcing participants to identify themselves but you lose too many legitimate investors that do not wish to do so.

AGORACOM has achieved its incredible success by listing 6 specific rules of conduct, enforcing them and even empowering members to enforce them via a reputation system.

Result? Maximum participation and minimum noise. Once you take away the spam, profanity and nonsense, the only people that stick around are those truly interested in the company.

Conclusion - The Broadridge solution may give some companies comfort but it will never develop into a truly effective communications tool.

As you said, social networks want to be free. As long as they are free of clutter, they'll flourish.

Regards,
George

Phil, sorry to hear about the Twitter problems but this is a great example of top-notch communications with your user base. It may seem like no big deal but I can't tell you how many sites fail to communicate in a timely fashion.

Regard,
George

Sorry, should have mentioned this earlier but TSE is now the TSX. All press releases have TSX in them. TSE is the old name and could be confused with Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Great job gents. Any chance the TSX Venture will be added as well?

One major problem in the web sector was the focus on "cool" over "real" for the last 4 years. Far too many investments were made in apps that had little to no chance of generating revenue, let alone become a business. Check the TechCrunch Death Pool for confirmation.

Blame for this falls primarily on VC's making these investments and blogs such as TC that glorified them. The combination created a toxic ecosystem that spiraled downwards as entrepreneurs, taking their cues from the "smart" money and blogs, focused their efforts on cool, rather than using Web 2.0 to create utility for business and people.

I know this first hand b/c I created a company with 7-digit revenues and VERY healthy profits that bored most VC's because it was used by a gazillion people sharing a gazillion files. Never mind that it didn't have to be, nor was it ever intended to be, it just came down to the fact "real" wasn't sexy enough for VC's looking for a major score.

I was frustrated - but my biz intuition told me VC's were going to crumble under their own need for speed. More than just lip service, I've been pounding the table for 3 years that time and talent was being wasted on diminishing returns. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and others had their spaces pretty locked up. Sure, incumbents go down ... but did we need to fund 50 separate video companies? Especially when none of the incumbents had figured out how to make money in the first place. Yet, VC's wanted to find the next successor. Dumb.

You say one result is that entrepreneurs will now learn to build with less. I say, they'll be forced to grow up and build real solutions now that they know being the next Zuckerberg/Hurley is not as important as putting their time into creating something people will actually pay for. Getting paid ... how radical:

http://blog.agoracom.com/2009/01/11/2-web-20-co...

Better late than never - but we wouldn't be here if VC's and bloggers had done their jobs.

Regards,
George

This may be the most power housed Mesh ever. Good job guys. A sign of the respect Mesh is garnering within the industry. Very proud to be a part of it.

Roger, your ideas are sensible and need to be implemented. However, the fact of the matter is that politicians make decisions and primarily make them in the interest of being re-elected next term.

As such, how much confidence do you have in their implementing the right solutions?

If your answer is "low confidence" than we need to start planning for profiting from what may very well be a $USD falling off the cliff.

As we've discussed in comments back in early 2008, I'd love to save the whole world but that doesn't look like it is going to happen right now. The best we can do is profit from the impending catastrophe and change the world when it is ready to accept its medicine.

Regards,
George

Regards,
George

Boys, I can't tell you how disappointed I am that I am in NYC for a conference we committed to sponsoring at the beginning of the year. I believe this is the start of something great. Techcrunch helped destroy the ecosystem by constantly reporting on ridiculous "cool" companies, as opposed to real start-ups with a real plan. You are now filling a void the entire market needed.

You may be starting out in Toronto but this has the potential to spread throughout North America over the next couple of years. To this end, you can count on AGORACOM support for future events.

Regards,
George

Congratulations, Mathew. Kudos to Globe for recognizing your achievements in this space and putting you at the the helm.

Though I follow a number of bloggers, you are one of my "must read" bloggers due to the great info and insight you provide into the world of Web 2.0. As such, I'm excited about watching you implement many of those technologies at the Globe.

The key to community? Given our success, I hope I'm qualified enough to offer you my key ingredient - close interaction between the provider and its members. You need to really get involved with your contributors and give them that personal connection that keeps them coming back.

If you'd ever like to pick my brain, give me a buzz anytime. If you'd like to sit down and think about partnerships, I'd love that too.

Go get 'em. You are going to do great things.

Regards,
George

Mathew, I smell a serious opportunity. I saw the void in the small-cap world and my efforts have paid huge dividends. We need a Canadian version of Huffington and I don't think it is going to come from any of the major media brands.

Given internet usage in Canada http://tinyurl.com/63nny5 a US type experience is nay and current economic conditions will only hasten it.

We should chat.

GT

Yet another example of an out of touch / bored / Silicon Valley / Web 2.0 / elitist techie that does not have the faintest clue about the masses who, for the most part, neither fully understand blogging, nor understand a thing about Twitter ... yet.

Regards,
The Greek

When Twitter first started out, it was pitched as a social tool for people (teens) that wanted the world to know what they were doing (having coffee, going to the movies, etc.). As such, I thought it was an utterly useless tool. In fact, if that remained its purpose, I'm confident it would be joining the deadpool today.

However, Twitter has now unexpectedly turned into a business, PR and intelligence tool for many verticals. Yes, I'm sure a lot of kids are still using it (and you can sell ads beside their tweets) but its big revenue future lies in its business/PR/intelligence uses and charging a subscription fee (i.e. $5/month or $50/year) to commercial users. I know I would pay it.

I'm not sure how you would describe "commercial users" but I'm certain the number of following and followers is a good initial filter.

Twitter has a lot of possibilities and advertising will add a nice bump - but the sooner they start thinking about Twitter as a business tool and adding some extra features to create a true offering, as well as, creating verticals (i.e. small-cap stocks) the faster it can become a real business itself.

The Greek

p.s. We are generating 7-digit revenues and profits by using Web 2.0 tools to create a real business offering for the small-cap stock world. As such, I know the possibilities.

p.s.s. Fred, if you would like to discuss our business model further, kindly EM me.

Mathew, great post. When Twitter first started out, it was pitched as a social tool for people (teens) that wanted the world to know what they were doing (having coffee, going to the movies, etc.). As such, I thought it was an utterly useless tool. In fact, if that remained its purposes, I'm confident it would be joining the deadpool today.

However, Twitter has now unexpectedly turned into a business, PR and intelligence tool for many verticals. Yes, I'm sure a lot of kids are still using it (and you can sell ads beside their tweets) but its big revenue future lies in its business/PR/intelligence uses and charging a subscription fee (i.e. $5/month or $50/year) to commercial users. I know I would pay it.

I'm not sure how you would describe "commercial users" but I'm certain the number of following and followers is a good initial filter.

Twitter has a lot of possibilities and advertising will add a nice bump - but the sooner they start thinking about Twitter as a business tool (and adding some extra features to create a true offering), the faster it can become a real business itself.

The Greek

This clown was giving out his Twitter URL while "holding on" in the middle of Ike. A little flare is nice but he should be on "news anchors gone wild".

George

KK, there is no difference in shorting Yahoo or Citigroup. Someone decides to short and the price goes lower, while somebody decides to buy at the lower price.

If the target company has poor fundamentals, the short wins. If the target company has good fundamentals, the long investor wins.

Simple as that.

George

Mathew, can't agree with you more. I friggin' love these ads. Brilliant. "I have so many cars I get stuck in my own traffic" Priceless and a great connect with Joe public.

From a biz point of view, I think the "what is next" angle is brilliant. They spend 95% of the time entertaining and 5% of the time teasing about what is next. Brilliant.

Finally, I love the fact that Arrington and the SV Geeks are spinning....as if they would have ever gone out and bought MSFT products in their lifetime.

Blatchford stated:

"The thing that I know, as all the editors I have had also know, is what I didn't get to confide or write or commit to paper, because someone else had the good sense to put on the brakes."

It is unfortunate that her "brakes" didn't get to her before this post. History will judge this as one of her worst pieces ever.

George

Mathew, broken record time for me again. Twitter is yet another "cool" tool created by bored tech geeks that the masses are never going to embrace. Not because they don't understand it - because it doesn't add any further value to an already over connected world via e-mail, SMS, IM, cell phones and Facebook.

I've been using it since Mesh 2008 and see value in following about 30-40 people that are relevant to my business (You, Kedrosky, Evans, etc.) but shoot me if I follow 200 people, let alone 2,000.

Still too much emphasis on "cool" and not enough on utility in the Web 2.0 world.

George

Our success at AGORACOM came from turning financial discussion forums (far worse than blog comments) on their head by handing moderation control back to the members.

A reputation system (votes by other members + site activity) determines the ranking of every member on the site. The higher the ranking, the greater authority to delete posts and even terminate members.

As such, we now have hundreds of highly-ranked and trusted members providing moderation on the site.

It has served to eliminate 95% of the noise and increase quality by several magnitudes.

I would guess that a similar system would work very well for blog comments.

Regards,
George

Mathew, thank-you very much for the coverage you gave to both Eric Jackson and our community initiative on Agoracom.

It's a shame the Icahn deal was announced just minutes after we announced the launch of our "Plan B" community, as this would have been one hell of a fun week on the site.

The worst part is the "resolution" was such a weak one. If we were all going to lose out on a juicy week of battling and positioning, they could have at least given us something of equal value! :-)

In any event, thanks for putting the spotlight on a fellow Canuck. I wish we could have really spread our wings and delivered for you.

Regards,
George

Mathew, love the post. Silicon Valley has turned into the tech version of Beverly Hills 90210. Integrity and ingenuity are gone, replaced by bling and poularity contests and stunts. Hence, why VC's are losing their shirts and IPO's have dried up.

Great work. Canada rocks!

George

Krishnan, freedom of speech absolutely gives each one of us the right to insult others. We just have to live with the consequences.

In this case (and this video) I think Loren was foolish and out of line - but I fully support his right to do so.

Regards,
George

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Immature and tasteless behavior might be popular with cocooned techies that climb over themselves to stroke Feldman in hopes of becoming part of the Feldman/Arrington/Calcanis trifecta - but he sacrificed the mass market.

I wonder how amusing he would have found "Tech Kyka"...not very considering his reaction to Guy Kawasaki for stating he learned to sell from his Jewish friends in the jewelry industry - which is actually a hat tip if you ask me. If a guy told me he learned the best restaurant management techniques from his Greek friends, I'd be fine with that. It's commerce, it's a good thing.

The good news, according to him, is that he doesn't care what anybody thinks as long as clients supposedly keep paying him to provide consulting work.

I personally doubt that. The guy thrives on attention and clearly has aspirations of grandeur that won't be fulfilled outside of the comedy circuit. The only place that might accept his brand of whatever he does.

Yes, I do agree that his content should be accessible from anywhere, at anytime. Just don't expect corporate America to help push distribution for him on their dime.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.