Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

Live Blogging My Blog Reading Catch-up

Having just returned from 10 days away from the office on business and vacation, I'm left to catch up on several thousand blog posts.  So here are my notes as I blaze through them at a blistering pace, no doubt missing some good stuff, but hopefully enjoying the foam on the cappuccino (OK, I don't really know what that means either, but I was looking for something humorous).  Some of these may well be fodder for future posts, but in the meantime, some quick takes:

• 76% of wealthy people read blogs, one survey says (via Tim Wolters of Collective Intellect)
• Interesting way to prove my point that content doesn't want to be free: "Starting today all existing members, and anyone who joins Cambrian House from this point forward, will earn a share in the business. The more engaged they are as members, the more shares they will earn over time. Cambrian House measures participation with a Glory Point system. Points are awarded for a variety of actions such as editing a member profile, commenting on a member’s business idea, completing a task, or submitting code. Shares are awarded based on participation and can be cashed out at any time." (901am)
• comScore released a study and "determined that using cookies to determine web audience will on average overcount your audience by 2.5x.  That's right - 150% higher than it actually is." (Fred Wilson)
• a great argument from new friend and fellow podcaster Adam Weiss about why you should start out with cheap gear when first podcasting ... and maybe stick with it like he has! For another perspective, Scott Bourne advocates a $1000 portable digital recorder
• primer on how to communicate with angel investors as an entrepreneur
• Kami Huyse offers 8 meaningful measurements of social media
• Kudos to CustomScoop's Ian Muir who won a free trip to Microsoft's Mix07 conference by creating a winning design for REMIX07
• aside: I didn't read most blogs while on vacation, but did check in with Twitter periodically.  Guess my opinion of the service is changing...
• A great new marketing podcast is out with two talented podcasters at the mic: Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.  Spent 15 minutes of my blog reading time with this in the background and picked up a bunch of useful nuggets.
• Reading blogs could be good for your wallet.
• There's now a magazine covering the social media space.  Blogger & Podcaster magazine has debuted. I'll probably check it out, but it seems a little strange to have an old media pub to cover new media.  Though they say they deliver in paper, electronic, and podcast format.  Could be interesting.
• Paul Kedrosky has a good post on how we're getting lots more information around us but it isn't making the population more aware of facts.
• Nikon is promoting its D80 Digital SLR camera through a blogger relations program.  BL Ochman has all the details.  (I have the Canon EOS 30D myself and love it, but Josh Hallett -- who is a much better and more prolific photographer than I -- is a huge D80 fan.)
• So do I go to what will undoubtedly become the most overhyped conference of the year?  I'm a big fan of DEMO and this sounds like more fun, but... check out TechCrunch 20 for yourself and make your own call.  It ain't cheap, of course.

Google Blogsearch Tops Technorati ... Or Does It?

Hitwise reports that for the first time Google Blogsearch has generated more pages views in a week than Technorati.  So Technorati is now the second place blog search web site, right? 

Maybe, maybe not.  Mike Arrington over at TechCrunch points out that the comScore numbers disagree.  Unfortunately, the comScore numbers appear to be highly erratic and demand some sort of explanation from that web traffic monitoring firm.  Until they explain the wild swings in Technorati's numbers, one has to imagine it will just provide more fuel to the company's detractors.

Frankly, hearing that Google is now coming out on top in blog search isn't a great surprise.  In many respects, they were probably already the top search traffic driver to blogs, just through their regular results which numerous folks have pointed out tends to favor blogs pretty heavily.  Given the large mass of traffic that Google generates and the huge brand ID that it has, it would be no surprise that more people are turning to them for blog-specific search. 

One has to assume that Google could really slam the door on any debate simply by making blog search accessible from their home page, rather than through the "more" menu.

Of course, the real question is not so much what the traffic numbers are but what the greater business meaning is.  Mark Evans asks the insightful question, "What's Technorati's M&A future?"  I have felt for a while -- and think I wrote it somewhere but can't find it this morning -- that Technorati should leverage its position to make itself more distinctive.  Competing head-on with Google isn't the way to go.  So my view is they shouldn't worry about who gets more page views -- though it's hard for them to ignore the blog swarm on this topic today -- and instead focus on what will make them unique going forward. 

Blog monitoring and analysis is becoming increasingly sophisticated and Technorati has some role to play in that arena, but it may or may not be as a "straight" blog search engine.  My own company, CustomScoop, has provided enterprise blog monitoring services for the past several years, so I'm not really encouraging David Sifry to come be a competitor in that space, but realistically it's one he's probably already looking at. 

Our own efforts have recently gone beyond simple blog monitoring to include higher-level analysis in the form of BuzzPerception reports that detail tone and trends in the blogosphere as it relates to individual clients.  I would guess that's probably not the best fit with Technorati's mindset since it relies in part on human analysis and not purely technology.  But who knows?

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in 2007.

My New Gig

A little over 6 years ago, I co-founded CustomScoop.  Today, I am its CEO.

CustomScoop was the natural evolution of a site called PrimaryScoop (I called it a newsletter web site back then; today it would be called a blog).  I started by writing a daily newsletter about the presidential primary in NH, and it evolved into a bit of software (called CampaignScoop) that scraped political headlines from a few major web sites (sort of a political version of Google News or an early version of Memeorandum, albeit with much less sophistication).

At some point, it dawned on me that this little bit of code could become a company.  Having spent years as a consumer of traditional paper clipping services, I knew how slow, clunky, and unpredictable those services were.  In the political and crisis communication world that I inhabited, there had to be a fast, accurate substitute available.  Getting paper clips 3 weeks later and having unpredictable budgets (these services charge by the clip) wasn't a good solution.

Thus, CustomScoop was born.  Despite starting as the Internet bubble was bursting, CustomScoop was profitable from the start.  Over time, it has continued to thrive.

As CustomScoop evolved, so did I.  At first, I was the COO and subsequently took the title of Chief Innovation Officer.  As the company matured, I gradually took a less active role that allowed me to launch other companies and participate in the investment community as an angel investor.  While I will maintain those interests, I have decided to actively reengage in CustomScoop.

I believe the media monitoring and analysis industry has reached an inflection point.  The proliferation of blogs, the willingness of people to get news and information online, the ability to build better metrics, and the ever shrinking news cycles create a real opportunity.  Professionals need to be able to get fast, accurate information and act upon it.

We have a great team in place at CustomScoop and a lot of ideas as to how to better serve our customers.  We expect to have a flurry of product announcements in the coming weeks and we welcome the feedback of our customers and industry observers.

We plan to try to find ways for our clients to better deal with the vast flow of information available, to provide better tools for reporting and analysis, to make it even easier to distribute clip information to key stakeholders, to better understand blog conversations, and to have a broader suite of communications tools available at their fingertips.

I'm excited about these opportunities and my new role helping to grow CustomScoop to the next level.

Tags: CustomScoop, media monitoring, media analysis, media measurement, PR, public relations, blogs, competitive intelligence

CustomScoop Launches Blog

One of the companies that I founded, CustomScoop, today launched a group blog.  It's titled, appropriately if not creatively, the CustomScoop Blog.  It will provide information about the company and its products, but it will also serve as a resource for news and views related to the PR and media industries. 

I encourage you to check it out.

Tags: CustomScoop, PR, public relations, media monitoring, media measurement

Dynamics of Information

Brad Feld has a thoughtful post about what he calls the "dynamics of information."  Essentially, it is the notion of dealing with information overload:

It’s not just an issue of tuning the sources, or the filters, or what you pay attention to. Rather – it’s something much larger that takes into account the intersection of many of the technological themes - such as social networks, feeds, attention, user-generated content, identity, relevance, and a few other things tossed in for good measure.  And - because of our friend Mr. Broadband – it now includes audio and video in addition to text.

Brad's excited because he thinks there's a wave of innovation coming in this area. I agree.  I know it is an area that I have concentrated on a lot and have been giving much thought to in recent months.  It's also something that Robert Scoble, Om Malik, and Mike Arrington discussed on the TalkCrunch podcast over the weekend.

Brad has written about a startup called Lijit that deals with this very issue. And recently Monitor110 has gotten some positive press (and I'm very interested in watching this one because I have long believed that there is a serious play to be had in analyzing new media for Wall Street).

Tags: information overload, brad feld, lijit, monitor110, talkcrunch

BusinessWeek REALLY Doesn't Get It

Paul Kedrosky points out that BusinessWeek has corrected the Digg story -- because it called some offices "grungy" and they now say that is an incorrect description.  The made up $60 million figure from their dumbest cover story ever apparently doesn't matter.

Tags: BusinessWeek, Digg

VC's Prostitute Themselves at Keg Parties

The Wall Street Journal has a hilarious article about the lengths to which 40 and 50 year old venture capitalists will go to appear hip to young tech entrepreneurs -- including stories of one who showed up at a keg and pizza party in a white jacket. (via David Card/Jupiter Research)

Tags: vc

More on the Townhall.com Re-launch

Rafat Ali over at PaidContent.org weighs in on the re-launch of townhall.com and includes a round-up of some other coverage. It echoes a lot of what Jon and I discussed when I interviewed him at the end of last month.

Early Beats Late

Will Price shares some data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Financial that shows the performance of private equity funds. It shows that over the past 20 years, Early/Seed VC beats Later Stage VC with respective returns of 20.4% and 13.5%.

This does include the Bubble Era, so as Will points out "It will fascinating to watch if the rolling 20 year returns to early stage venture remain in the 20+% range."

I'm also curious as to how many dud funds there are in there pulling down the overall numbers (and conversely how many superstars are beefing it up). A median return number in each category would be a fascinating addition to weed out the best and the worst and explore the "norm."

Tags: vc, nvca, early stage vc, seed funding

Latest Online Reading List

• "Accidental Tech Entrepreneurs Turn Their Hobbies Into Livelihood" (InformationWeek) - explores how several entrepreneurs happened upon their first company
• "So Much Fanfare, So Few Hits" (BusinessWeek) - a look at Google's non-search products
• "VCs discuss the next big things" (Fortune) - a recap of Fortune's Brainstorm conference held in Aspen
• "Why Google is Doing Checkouts" (GigaOM) - perhaps the best analysis I've seen of Google's latest product launch
• "Is Meta Better?" (Fred Wilson) - a rundown on memetracker web sites and a discussion of whether user-selected content is better than editor-selected content (I hope to offer my own assessment in the near future on this same topic)

It's Not Just Scoble

Red Herring has a good article detailing how "A slew of executives have been leaving establishment companies like Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo to head up Internet startups."

The article talks about Jeff Housenhold, Gil Penchina, and Jordan Glazier of eBay. And Ellen Siminoff, Susan Choe, and Jim Brock of Yahoo. And Krishna Motukuri of Amazon.

The author draws an interesting conclusion: "But the startup CEOs may end up back at their former employers, and in some cases that’s the unspoken subtext; exit opportunities for Internet startups these days are all about acquisitions."

WSJ Meet NYT

Apparently the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times where channeling each other today. Or at least their headline writers were.

• WSJ: "Can 'The Long Tail Wag' the Dog?"
• NYT: "Tail is Wagging the Internet Dog"

The stories are different. The Journal piece is about summer reading and the lack of a breakout book for the beach. The Times focuses on a Slate.com story from two years ago that got a surge in traffic this week when it appeared on Digg.com.

In a related note, I'm about halfway through Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail" and will offer my thoughts on it as soon as I'm done.

Tags: long tail, chris anderson, new york times, wall street journal

Schmidt the Google Babysitter

John Battelle points to the Wall Street Journal story detailing the dispute between the Google founders and the guy they hired to renovate their personal 767. Oh yeah, and the dispute between Brin and Page over the size of their beds in their personal staterooms -- a dispute apparently refereed by CEO Schmidt. Wonder if he knew he was going to be a babysitter, too?

Tags: google, brin, page, schmidt

Blog Posts Worth Reading

I've been getting caught up on some old reading today. At the moment, I don't have time to expound on the ideas presented in the blog posts listed below, but I commend them to your reading. I may write more about some of them in the future, but I wanted to pass them along now in case circumstances keep me from saying more.

• "An Angel Investor is Not" (EnablingAngels)
• "Do CEO's Overcompensate for Their Strengths?" (Brad Feld)
• "Angel Capital: Do Tax Credits Work?" (Kauffman Foundation)
• "What's the Biggest Lie About Blogging?" (Ann Handley) [via Shel Israel]
• "The Value of the Demo" (David Beisel)
• "Is it Illegal to Describe the Sporting Event You're Watching?" (TechDirt)
• "65 VC & Angel Investor Blogs" (Andrew Fife)

Scoble Exit Creates Opportunity

Tom Foremski reports that Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft and moving to Silicon Valley to be part of Podtech.net.  Scoble has yet to confirm this on his own blog, but this news creates a serious opportunity for others within the Microsoft organziation to step up and grab the limelight.  Filling the void will be a challenge, but if the lessons of Scoble are learned, one or more other thought leaders at Microsoft could help themselves and the company.

Existing leaders within Microsoft may also have an opportunity to step up their activity and take more of a leadership role in the blogosphere.  One who comes to mind and would have instant credibility with bloggers is Ray Ozzie.  His blog posts since moving to Microsoft have been more on the vision level and he can't approach Scoble in terms of volume and breadth, but if he engages in more frequent, candid conversations it could go a long way toward maintaining credibility for the company in the blogosphere.

This certainly bears watching.