Fred Wilson posts that Union Square Ventures has turned its front webpage into a blog. Although Infectious Greed has some mixed feelings on the subject as to putting a blog on the front page, I think it’s a great thing for small organizations. Aside from blog hype, etc., I suspect most people click by the blah, blah, blah on the front pages of many small org. websites anyway, especially venture capital websites. Why not make information on the main page fresh like a newsletter? So long as people can find out what you are about and who you are in one-click, I say just optimize the web flow to the audience. What will be interesting to see will be how Fred Wilson divides his posts between the firm’s blog and his personal blog. The division will probably be far from representative of a typical corporate blogger, but I see it as a small test case of a prominent blogger moving to an organizational blog. We haven’t seen many cases like this as to whether the shift can be successful. For Fred, it may be business as usual (as I suspect it will be), but who knows. For one thing, cross-posting in Web 2.0 is a pain in the neck. That’s going to have some impact I’m sure on either the author or reader base. Make sure to check out Brad Burham’s rationale for the switch to a blog.
eBay/PRTM Benchmarking Study On Internet Software Industry
Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath (PRTM), my alma mater in terms of the management consulting industry, has just released a benchmarking study done jointly with eBay. The study, authored by Director Joe Lo, focuses on uncovering the best product development practices within the internet software industry, and the study is purported to be the first of its kind – it contains a good amount of numerical and factual information about the sector and a functional area within that sector. Note that the internet software industry consists of companies like Yahoo!, Google, and eBay.
Some of the key findings which strike a chord close to me (being involved in the Web 2.0 space):
- Best-in-class (BIC) companies spend on average 5% more time in the concept/requirements phase and 5% less time in the test/rollout phase compared to worst-in-class (WIC) companies
- Internet software companies have a tremendous advantage in that they can simply launch new products or features on the website and see how customers react. The companies can track page-views, click-throughs, etc. This is tracking actual usage. If the product does well, invest more. If it doesn’t, pull it from the site.
- BICs have development cycles of eight weeks, while WICs take 22. Note that eBay has an R&D process that enables the company to launch 80 projects per "release train" (think of the train leaving the station as one release) with 26 trains per year.
- The study goes further to illuminate that shortening the cycle time has other positive effects not immediately obvious – defects decline by 25%, and worker productivity increases 20%.
The report by Joe Lo is a very nice piece of work. Check it out here (registration required).
So how is your company going to change towards becoming best-in-class? One doesn’t always need a change management consulting firm to accomplish change, but a company still needs that capability and fortitude to improve itself.
Interesting Post On CEO Compensation At Startups
Liquidity Event: Potentially First Market Price for Blog Network Being Set
Via Steve Rubel. Weblogs, Inc. is being sold to AOL.
A Problem With Debunking Myths
I don’t know if folks saw the article, "In Heeding Health Warnings, Memory Can Be Tricky" in the NY Times (use BugMeNot if want to bypass compulsory registration), but there is some interesting organizational behavior-like research alluded to there as done by Dr. Ian Skurnik in the marketing department at the University of Toronto. Here’s a passage from the article:
"You notice that your grandmother has been taking useless medical
treatments, and you’re worried," he said. "You tell her, ‘You know,
Granny, shark cartilage doesn’t help your arthritis.’ You tell her three times to make sure she understands, and she seems to."He
continued, "But a few days later you talk to her again and find the
warnings have had precisely the opposite effect of what you intended."
This common problem arises, Dr. Skurnik said, because in laying down a
memory trace, the human brain seems to encode the memory of the claim
separately from its context – who said it, when and other particulars,
including the important fact that the claim is not true.
While the article is about heath topics, the implications are actually more general. The basic gist (without capturing all of the necessary pre-conditions with rigor) is along the lines of this:
When you tell someone not to believe a myth, in the short-run that works to help him/her remember. In the long-run, the opposite effect can [likely] occur. The person ends up thinking the myth is true.
I find this to be an important thing to be aware of because I touch on both marketing and management consulting. Marketing tends to involve trying to be catchy, stand out, gain top of mind awareness, etc. True consulting is oriented towards having empathy and about helping a client in the long-run. When debunking myths, is seems as though there can be competing effects if one is not focused on both near-term and long-term effects (and the pre-conditions as to when things can backfire).
So is there a problem with debunking myths? Yes … if a person does not remember the context of the situation. Read more of the article to get some tips on how to get people to remember the right thing.
Did TypePad Lose One Month of My Posts?
All of August 6 to October 2 gone? Not good. What is going on? I had two private weblogs as well that were lost?
Update (10/5/05): OK. Colleen (at Six Apart) was very responsive and pointed out to me an outage where part of the data disk was lost. Was concerned as I visited a number of other TypePad blogs and saw no issues while mine was down. Looks like most of my stuff has been recovered, but I may still have to chase some residual errors down (even after republishing all files in a site rebuild).
Update (10/6/05): Steve begins with "S". Now I understand a little bit more about what went on from this post.
Taking Stock Of What Has Happened In Business Blogging
Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek Online’s Blogspotting has a post entitled, "The business blog backlash is nigh". I think there are some important developments and non-developments in business blogging to take stock of and to adjust forecasts on what happens to business blogging going-forward. My perception of what has happened in the past nine months on business blogging (focused on pieces relevant to lower mid- to large-biz sector):
- Few CEO blogs from Fortune 1000 companies have emerged
- Some of the PR firms have been the leaders in embracing and evangelizing blogging
- Business blogging touted by media as business trend to watch in 2005
- A few of the big, blue-chip companies like Dell and FedEx have more or less deflected the blogosphere with respect to mini-crises to and megaphone complaints by the most prominent bloggers in the blogosphere
- Media companies appear to be the ones most active in embracing or acknowledging blogging (e.g., BusinessWeek, Newsweek)
- At least 1-2 major books on business blogging will be released in the next two quarters
- Mostly tech companies have introduced business blogging (e.g., IBM, Adobe) in 2005
Probably other areas I’m missing. What’s the catalyst for things to tip to the next phase? Are there any drivers for things to tip? Or is business blogging just something that will grow steadily? Any public releases on ROI in the business sector that the layperson (versus bloggers) can chant back?