Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Caught this blog entry on LinkedIn!  Still growing! ================================= 200 Of Reid Hoffman's Closest Friends. Tonight was yet another sold out social networking event -- it was IBD Network's Under The Radar. The CEOs of LinkedIn, Spoke, ZeroDegrees and VisiblePath all presented their businesses. Esther Dyson of Release 1.0, Pradeep Tagare from Intel Capital and I were on a panel to discuss their respective business models. Based upon what I heard this evening, here is how I would sum up the different companies' business models. LinkedIn -- subscription (eventually) service to input and manage one's own contacts to search for connections. Spoke -- deeply integrated enterprise solution extracting contact data from enterprise applications (e.g. Outlook, Notes, etc.) to establish and leverage connections. ZeroDegrees -- Outlook plugin and related service to input, manage, prioritize and search connections. VisiblePath -- social networking software engine for prioritizing and understanding connections for integration into traditional enterprise software applications (SFA, CRM, etc.). If you're thinking that they all sound pretty similar, I'm with you. These companies have way more in common than not. After the companies presented, the panel and audience voted on what they believed was the most interesting business. The audience preferred the model described by Ben Smith of Spoke, while the panel collectively preferred the business described by Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. Interestingly, both Spoke and LinkedIn announced at the event that they had recently come to terms on financings -- Spoke wouldn't yet say from whom they were raising money, LinkedIn announced that it will be funded by Sequoia -- whereas ZeroDegrees and VisiblePath remain angel funded. One thing that did surprise me tonight was the percentage of the audience who were users of LinkedIn. By show of hands, the LinkedIn members outnumbered the Friendster members by over 2 to 1. It looked like two-thirds or more of the audience had signed up to LinkedIn. Those are pretty surprising numbers. Of course I don't think there is another audience in the country that could replicate those statistics, but it tells you that the Bay Area entrepreneur community has bought into social networking on some level (either that or Reid had packed the audience with a couple hundred of his closest friends). It will be interesting to see how that scales beyond the Bay Area. [VentureBlog] 2:33:03 PM     Boy - I need to reconnect with you at some point - I know we only met for a few minutes at BloggerCon, but the more I read the more I'm happy we actually met - and at some point I'll send you the photos I took of you (God its been months! - Can't seem to overcome the technical difficulty that the filenames are all a string of digits  - so to scroll through and find the right photos is a pain....)  There must be a solution! Thanks again, Carve Out A Life. Carve Out A Life An unusual residual from reading this book about re-imagining business has struck me ... that is, re-imagining a life. Carving out a life that fits you. A life that fits you exactly. A life tailored to you -- as if -- it were your life. I worry we are all living a life someone else thinks we should be living. Take an inventory of all the things you have going on in your life. Decide which really matter and which really don't. It can be a little shocking. Like cleaning out closets, when you are done, you wonder, why was I keeping all that crap around here anyway? I've had the added pleasure of helping clean out old clothes and stuff of my parents after they were gone and it makes it painfully clear how much stuff just doesn't matter. Are we lost in a swamp of stuff and a swirl of little pieces of paper and a wind that blows us here and there and everywhere for no good reason? There's just no doubt that we're all dying. And still, every day we put off real and authentic relationships with living human beings and choose other silly busy work, to get through our days instead. Perhaps its just too frightening to look others straight in the eye. Maybe we will find that truth I mentioned, right there in their deep regard, that we are all dying. The only people left who seem to know how to enjoy the liveliness of a day are children. When I'm with my son, there is no shying away from rolling down a green summer grassy hill, or throwing yourself into a cold lake, or letting ice cream melt and drip all over your face. They do not hold back. We still think someone's watching. We think someone's deciding if we're pretty or handsome enough. We think someone's deciding if our car is cool enough. We think someone's deciding whether or not to be our friend based on whether our house, apartment, mansion, or hut is good enough. No one is watching. They are too busy dying. [Halley's Comment] 2:00:40 PM     Hi Halley, Just thought I'd point out that you are a mother...;-) Sorry you removed the comments from your page - so I'll comment on my page.  You are the kind of mother that ispired the MILF page - but probably far from the mothers that populate the video clips. Keep on steath discoing...   Leading MILF Economic Indicators. Leading MILF Economic Indicators Nice to know you're in the hottest new demographic. All you business majors and MBA's won't want to miss this post by Baccus about where money in the new economy is really being made. The darnest thing is a nice gentleman once tried to make me believe the "M" in MILF stood for Mature Women. Funny I don't remember Maturewomen being one word. He was adamant. He could not admit that the "M" stood for Mom. Funny, it must have been an edible, I mean, Oedipal thing. [Halley's Comment] 1:51:26 PM     Don't have a cow--you can have Heifer.org!. This season's first holiday miracle just happened--my catalog from Heifer International (online at www.heifer.org.) The miracle is that I am thrilled to see it. I remember how pleased my mom was when she discovered this way to give her present-showered grandkids the gift of helping poor families. She didn't have to hit malls, wrap packages, or spend a lot to give an unforgettably special present. My kids were old enough to be thrilled by the idea. OK, I admit it, I'm also smiling at this photo of a little boy holding a baby duck in his hands (it's bigger in my catalog). Go check them out--and you'll be smiling too. "Passing on the Gift" is a key component of Heifer International's program. Participants give offspring of their livestock to others, in an ever-widening circle of hope. Here, a woman in India passes on a goat in a ceremonial setting. Photo credit: Darcy Kiefel Copyright: Heifer International Just $10 lets you give a share of a goat. ...$20 buys a flock of baby chicks. ...or, for that special someone, $25 buys a share in a water buffalo. Each price represents "the complete livestock gift of a quality animal, technical assistance, and training," says my catalog. [Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar?] 1:32:10 PM

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