You gotta love social networks. I especially LOVE facebook. Unlike Linkedin its very useful to me. I just connected with Oliver Marks, whose blog you should read. Its a real world, deep in the trenches perspective from Sony. He’s been there and going through it. Head over to grab a feed. He’s just starting so cut him some slack on the frequency of posting.

Facebook rules.

If you have not read Jason Calacanis’s post on “How to save money running a startup” – you should. Its a good read. Mostly money saving tips for software / internet startups alone. I know more entrepreneurs who do a much better job of saving money when they are not funded yet.

I was struck by post 11 as was Jennifer but for different reasons:

11. Fire people who are not workaholics. Come on folks, this is startup
life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into
it–go work at the post office or starbucks if you’re not into it you
want balance in your life. For realz.

Not sure I agree with this 100%.

The passion, zest and commitment for the “idea” or “goal” or “mission” drops about 10% for every new person you add to the team.

What I mean by that is that your #1 employee (outside of founders) is 10% less committed to the idea than you (since it was not theirs) and the #2 hire is 10% less committed than #1 and so on. In all the startups I have started (4) this is a hard fact you have to face. Before you get all upset about that %, realize its a rough number.

Which is why Paul Graham’s piece is true about large companies. Employee #383 is looking for a paycheck and a job NOT to change the world.

Second point: Read Om Malik’s “What the past three months have taught me“. If you are an obsessive compulsive type realize this is where you are headed.

I dont advocate perfect balance. That usually is not possible as a startup founder. But killing yourself doing a startup is so NOT worth it.

Mathew Ingram has a good piece on media consumption and the digital generation (its from a piece from New York Times). There’s a great quote he excerpted – “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

Funny that this is becoming important now. This morning I was reading a great piece by my friend Ann Handley and although she’s on my feed list, since I get so many feeds (800 at last count) I star her posts to read, but never go back. Last night when I was catching up it was so awesome to read.

So I went back to my Google reader and deleted 700 feeds (NYtimes, CNN, MSNBC, SJMercury, News.COM, Techcrunch, TechMeme – all gone).

I just dont have time unfortunately.

I gave up television a few years ago for lack of time – I would only watch Jon Stewart anyway.

Then I gave up going to news websites. Focused all my effort on blog reading. Now I dont have enough time for that. Now I am trimming down my twitter following (I follow about 1500 people so by the end of this month I plan to be at less than 700 – only the people I have met and know personally, else I dont plan on following just for the sake of it.).

What’s taking the time? Commenting and keeping up with friends like Ann, Aaron, Bill etc. Which is all the more reason FriendFeed is becoming more important to me.

Most blogs including mine make it extremely hard to comment, which explains one reason why only 1% of your audience comments. If most blogs ask for your email address, website or blog anyway, why cant we make it easier to comment?

My ideal solution is to get the comment feature working in my Google reader. So when I am reading something, I can just comment right there instead of clicking on that post, going to the blog site, then entering my information (for the 1000000th time) and then taking care of the captch stuff.

If you can comment directly from Google Reader (or any other reader) you know that the person’s authenticated and you dont need the captcha stuff.

Google Reader team can you please add that feature?

1. People make parody videos of your content

2. People create fake versions of the “original fake version”

3. Your misspelled name creates a cottage industry of domains looking get some direct traffic

4. There are alter-egos created in your behalf

5. People claim your mention of their sandbox makes everything they worked for to build “watered down”

Rohit Bhargava’s new book “Personality Not Included” hits the shelves in 2 days. I have read the first chapter – so I technically cannot give you a book review, but first my basic philosophy of buying/reading books is:

a) Quick Read: can I read “most” it in 1 or 2 sittings – I am somewhat patient – (3 hours qualifies one sitting for me)?

b) Actionable: can I put something from the book to use within 3 hours? – i.e does it have a lot of examples or is it just theory?

c) Insightful: do I mark up more than 30 pages with post-it notes?

I read about 3 books a month (that’s a good month); and regardless of the Kindle- its not changed.

The basic premise of this book is about giving your brand a “personality”.

“Personality is the unique, authentic, and talkable soul of your brand that people can get passionate about.”

It certainly looks like a book that has a lot of examples, not just theory. so criteria (b) above is satisfied. The book starts off with the Apple Nano story, so its draws your right into an example and without going into a ton of theory.

Looking at the Table of contents, its about 300 pages, but about 80 pages are guides, tools and research, so criteria (a) above also seems very plausible.

I have to read the book to tell you if its insightful, but knowing Rohit and having heard him speak, I will definitely give him the benefit of doubt.

Side note, future book writers, should follow his path to engaging audiences and readers early. He’s paid his dues, provided an awesome venue for participation, been genuinely engaged and done a great job of building momentum for the book – over 50% pre ordered – which is apparently unusual for a first time book writer.

I’ll let you know more after I read it.

Updated with photo from Eric

I had a chance to meet some folks I have only talked to on Twitter. Last night thanks to Ryan and Jennifer, who organized a TweetUp, I met a great group of folks at Nola’s in Palo Alto.

We were joined by Eric Gonzalez, Lingling (Eric’s wife), Ryan Kuder, Jennifer Leggio, Joel Postman, Rachel Luxemburg, Chris Asad, Leora Zellman, Martin Mckeay and Randy Ksar.

The thought that struck me when I was driving back late last night is “How much we seems to be meeting more face to face given that there are more options available to meet via the Internet”. Even though I have met and connected with these folks on twitter, facebook etc. it was still a great thrill to meet for drinks and talk for a while. The number of events I have been attending thanks to being more connected on social networks has increased not decreased.

At Nola’s between 6pm and 830 pm you would have seen 10 of us laughing, talking, tweeting (well more of that than anything else).

Here’s what I learned:
1. When you meet someone face to face you tend to listen more intently. Ryan is apparently a mini celebrity (of Yahoo layoff fame). I have been talking to him for a few days, but had NO idea he was “the guy”.

2. There’s always opportunity to talk shop but it does not feel that way. If you are looking to go to these events purely to justify “doing business” – forget it. If you go with the intent of meeting people, networking and having fun and then business happens – awesome.

3. Much as we tend to be “hyper connected” we still rely on the “old” means of connecting. Everyone (save me) had a business card. Ryan actually made on by hand (so he’s getting there). I personally hate business cards. In fact I usually make it a point to clearly pronounce my name and let people Google me. My website has my phone, email, etc. So why bother with business cards?

The other thing that was great was its was a good group of people and we were open (meaning we bashed a lot of people that were not there and did not have any expectations coming into the meeting.

Eric’s probably got some photos from the event. Please post a link in the comments, Eric?

You have to pay for content like this. I wish Marc would put a donate to Stanford Children’s hospital paypal button next to his blog post.

I highly recommend you read this at least 2-3 times. I have read it once, but too tried to read it too quickly, which is a shame.

Bill Johnston of Forum One hosted an excellent Unconference on Mobile communities. The venue was the Sheraton Palo Alto. You can read more about the unconference at the wiki. Great event overall since I met some really wonderful people. Here’s what I remember as my top takeaways:

1. SMS & voice is the least common denominator for all cell phones. Since 90+% of all phones currently in use are not smart phones, both Utterz (Simeon) and 3jam (Cathy) were focused on services that support every phone user. If you are aiming for the iPhone camera or SDK, realize is a small (but growing) market.

2. SAP (Mark, Pratima) and HP (Jamie) were all very interested in Enterprise applications for Mobile communities – internally. They seemed to universally agree that this market was about 3-5 years out for mobile. There are a few plays in the “security” space, but limited was their impression.

3. Alta Partners (Robert) questioned that even though the ringtone market is large (apparently over $5 Billion currently) is it going the way of the Berkeley toaster screen saver? – we all seemed to be dating ourselves.

4. YouTube (Tim) had some great information to share about localization – they are doing it in 10+ regions and in EACH region they negotiate with EVERY record label / music company to get rights to include their music in videos uploaded to their site so they dont get sued. If they did not do this, they would get sued by local providers if their users uploaded movies that included any copyrighted music.

5. MobiHand (David) talks about how they are spending more time with developers of mobile software asking questions and details on their “revenue” model. Unlike the web, mobile advertising is still very small, so even though there is a lot of interest in mobile marketing, very little advertising is being done.

6. You have to understand the dynamic of the local market before you decide a business model. Nokia (Niklas) had a great comment, that in North America the carriers had all the control, in Europe it was shared 50-50 between the carrier and the handset maker, in Japan, carriers again rule whereas in other parts of Asia, the handset makers pretty much call the shots.

7. There is no “global strategy” for UI, usage and development of communities. AOL (Erin) had a great comment about the 3 most important factors that went into consideration for distribution of mobile content – user behavior in the country, carrier control and handset capability. E.g. Users in Korea spend an hour each day using their mobile while traveling – to watch video, play games etc.

8. Cyworld (Catherine) is a great example of mobile in Korea. About 30+ Million users are on the site to “dress up” their virtual home, buy gifts and create “mini-homes, mini-me” (sic) etc. Users spend hours and days on the mobile doing this when they use mass transit (they commute via train, bus, etc) to work / school. This is very different from the usage in the Americas she noted.

9. Utterz (Simeon) showed us some really cool demo’s of how users are leveraging their solution for group chat, conferencing and multi user messaging. In mobile, voice is still the killer application!

10. I also learned from 3Jam (Cathy) that you dont really need a short code (a 5-6 digit code that you have to purchase from each carrier to allow you to receive SMS messages) for services to work. If you get a “regular” – 10 digit phone number you can well use that as a code – the long code. That way you dont rely on the carrier or have to deal with multiple carriers to get your application to work.

It was awesome to catch up with old friends Sylvia (Edmunds), Chris (Conversation Group) and Jim (Forumone). Overall a great event. Kudos to Zoe, Bill, Heather and Jim. Thanks.

One of my favorite analysts and a great friend Rachel Happe invited me to an event hosted by Jane of SixApart. This was a mixer and positioned as an open discussion.

I really admire and like Anil Dash, and having met him several times, already have a very favorable opinion of the company.

The discussion started at about 6pm with several folks from the senior team at SixApart including David Tokheim, Andrew Anker, Mark Simmons and Michael Sippey. Jane Anderson was our very gracious host. Besides these folks we were joined by Molly from BounceBall and Sean from CNET and another analyst from IDC Mary.

Top 3 observations from our meeting.

1. It really matters that your senior folks in the management team are “real people” wanting to have a authentic discussion instead of hiding behind large resumes and inflated backgrounds. These folks were eager to ask questions, challenge and even question some assumptions they had made of the maturity of blogging, social media and collaboration.

2. Your office space tells a lot about your culture and values. Wide open spaces with lots of room for free discussion (I personally prefer this to “fake privacy” that cubes give you). Another thing that struck me was their use of the walls as “brainstorm space”. Essentially pasting up both pages (for UI design) and post-it sticky notes.

3. Being a good host means a lot more than catering good food – it means making it easy for conversation to happen, asking questions when you already know most of the answers, introducing everyone to the discussion so you know they feel comfortable and most importantly – willing to learn.

I thought SixApart team (especially Jane) did an absolutely awesome job. Kudos. They now have a convert. I promised Anil I am moving to SixApart since I am personally very tired of my blog platform.

While they cannot convert each customer one-at-a-time like they did with me, they have a fan who is more than happy to say awesome things about their people – and oh yeah, their products are good too.

If you are an entrepreneur looking to start a company, this is one very good company to steal ideas, culture and values from.