October 20, 2003

Above Ryze?

Imagine the power of Ryze with 40 million participating members.

My company, Monster Worldwide, is launching an online networking community, Monster Networking, the beginning of next year. I know about as many details as is in the press release but I think the potential is incredible. Monster has 40 million job seeker accounts and thousands of recruiters all on Monster with the purpose of advancing their careers and/or business.

Monster Networking is an online community where professionals across all industries and levels can exchange information about jobs, offer expertise and help others achieve their goals.

Monster will serve as the host in this community, fostering introductions between members and encouraging them to share career advice, cultivate long-term professional relationships, and support each other's goals. Proprietary matching technology will allow Monster to proactively initiate introductions between participating members as well as promote relevant career opportunities based on criteria in a member's professional profile. Member profiles will include skills, occupation, employment history, schools attended, titles, interests, and geographic location.

October 16, 2003

VeriSign Says Adios to .net and .com

Not sure what this all means, but I am sure there will be much commentary: VeriSign exits '.net', '.com' domains - 2003-10-16 - Washington Business Journal

October 10, 2003

Micropayments, Blogs and Content

Rick Bruner has a much more thought-out response to the micro-payment issue that I only gave a few seconds thought to below.Micropayments: An Open Letter to Tony Pierce, Clay Shirky and PayPal

October 09, 2003

Kelsey Group Conference Digital Directories & Interactive Local Media

I'll be attending the Kelsey Group'sDigital Directories & Interactive Local Media in Alexandria, VA October 22-24. Looks like there are some great panelists and speakers. Hopefully, see you there!

Blogger Con: Webcast

Video of BloggerCon! Blogger Con: Webcast

October 08, 2003

Debbie Weil's Top 20 definitions of blogging.

Paid Subscription Blogging, Part 1 -- A Catch-22

Pay to read a blog? Vin Crosbie entertains the thought with commentary from Rick Bruner.

I don't know -- to me blogs aren't content, but pieces of conversations. The more involved in those conversations a blog is, the more valuable the blog. If you pay for access to blogs, you limit the number of participants who can enter the conversation, thus making them less valuable.

Business Blogs are really a new form of marketing or PR. They are a way to engage with a customer base to grow a customer base and keep that customer base engaged with your business.

For the most part, the business blog isn't a business ends, but a means to more business.

October 07, 2003

The New Communities

Great column by Sean Carton in ClickZ about communities and their potential in marketing:The New Communities

October 02, 2003

If Spam Dies, is Email Still Broken?

My email inbox at work is a nightmare. I was embarrassingly showing a co-worker the depths of my inbox. August 22, 2002 was the last email I had. Sorry, whoever you are. I have 84 un-read messages. That's not to say they haven't been read because I know they all have been. Un-read is my way of telling myself, "do this." Not a great system.

SPAM isn't the problem. It's just the volume of legitimate email. David Gelernter in the Weekly Standard has a great write-up on my email overload problem (okay, yours too) and offers some possible solutions. (via Many2Many)

Sheer volume has turned email into an unreliable medium. Spam to the side, there is already too much (honest, legitimate) email for people to manage, and so they overlook messages or forget to answer them, in consequence of which conversations peter out into nothing--and no one is quite sure why, or what to do next. Excessive email volume is a fact of life and is never going away. The threat--which is guaranteed to force a massive retreat from this spiffy new medium within a few years unless we solve it--is the growing opacity of email, the Black Hole problem. If you haven't encountered it yet . . . just wait. Spam makes it worse, but it was a problem before spam and will remain long after spam is cured.

Here's how it works. You get an email (maybe longer or more complicated than average, or from someone you don't know); you have no time to respond right now, but you mean to answer--but other emails stack up, and you answer those first--but you still plan to reply--but more emails keep arriving. . . . Meanwhile the sender is wondering: Is he ignoring me on purpose? (I'll cross him off my list and forget about it.) Did he mean to reply, but has since forgotten? (Resend my message.) Or does he still mean to reply and just hasn't gotten around to it? (Don't get mad or resend.) All three possibilities are real, and happen all the time.

As volume rises, more email conversations trail off into nothing for unknown reasons, the medium is devalued further, and the problem gets worse--people set even less store by a mail message, send one out on even less provocation, volume rises, more email conversations trail off into nothing for unknown reasons, the medium is devalued even further.

Rush Limbaugh confirms this point.

:-(

Today is a sad day indeed because I just confirmed one of my favorite lunch spots, Chipotle, is a big calorie fest. This report shows their burritos have more calories than 2 quarter pounders with cheese!! And I thought this was a healthy alternative! I guess the only saving grace is I get chicken burritos, light on sour cream and cheese.