Author: Steve Shu

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Top Business School To Put MBAs Through Blogging Bootcamp

The Michigan Business School has a very cool, innovative project course aimed at helping a small enterprise increase Internet visibility through blogging (no more calling MBAs a bunch of blaggards!). Bud Gibson at The Community Engine posts:

In a nutshell, our plan is to divide the students up into five or six
teams of five people. Then the fun starts. Each team blogs about the
industry the company is in. They learn who the blog opinion leaders are
for that industry. They learn how to track the company’s products and
competitors in the blogosphere using tools like technorati, pubsub, del.icio.us, and flickr
tags. They’re graded on making effective blog posts with a portion of
the grade being decided based on getting themselves noticed and cited
by opinion leaders. The blogging efforts will be completely open for
all to see, so competition will be based on how well the team does its
research, networks, and crafts its message.

I would imagine that for a project that spans only a few months that the results could be overly sensitive to the amount of offline networking that the MBAs do, perhaps tending to make things a bit of a free-for-all. Perhaps to control for things on the downside, the competition should also be based on whether any backlash occurs. This is something that the MBA would have to live with if they were a permanent employee of the client company. Visibility is a nice goal, but perhaps not the only goal. In any case, Michigan sounds like it has ingredients for an awesome course. Will be great to hear how this goes.

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Free Version of Software For Small Blogging Communities

According to Stefan Wiskemann, 21Publish will introduce a free version of its software for small blogging communities.

Although the details of the pricing plan and the version of the software have not been announced yet, the currently available 21Publish platform has a number of unique
features ranging from secure intranet, comment tracking
(unique for those that post comments across blogs), and an administrative "workbench" covering all bloggers
within the community. As a number of readers have enjoyed my post about the value of MBAs working with non-profits, perhaps this will serve as a good opportunity for non-profits.

In the interest of disclosure, I am a consultant to 21Publish.

Steve Shu

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Does del.icio.us Have A Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious Mary Poppins Competitive Barrier To Entry Advantage?

I recently posted about the "live business case in the making" surrounding del.icio.us and del.irio.us. I wasn’t aware of the following site before, but it could be useful for analyzing whether there are other investment opportunities or barrier to entry plays. If you follow the link here, you can see why I might coin it a "Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious competitive advantage" for del.icio.us.

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Client Versus Customer

I ran across this highly referenced web page (via del.icio.us) on consulting. Although the writeup looks to be more oriented towards IT consulting as opposed to management consulting, one thing kind of jumped out at me. The web page indicates:

Have "customers", not "clients"
This is a minor semantic point, but one I’ve stuck with for
many years. A "client" implies that the consultant is superior,
while "customer" suggests that the consultant is beholden.

Mostly out of habit, I think I use the term "client", especially in the presence of my, umm, err, client/customer. It has everything to do with respect for my client. It in no way has to do with being superior to other people.

Perhaps the author and I are both wrong. The dictionary says that the two words are the same, and I imagine or hope that there is formality in the use of the term "client" when perhaps none is conveyed.

Steve Shu

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New York City Stunned By Seth Godin’s “Blogging Iceberg”

Blogosphere news. Seth Godin, internet marketing mastermind, coordinates one of the biggest stunts the blogosphere has ever seen. In Seth’s words, it was remarkable. Motivated by Jeffrey Henning’s influential article, "The Blogging Iceberg", Seth Godin gathered loyal blog followers on a barge financed by buddies at the venture capital firm Flatiron Partners. SAP Ventures also participated in the deal/stunt as Jeff Nolan convinced German headquarters to "loosen up a bit". In any case, the barge appeared in New York City Harbour towing a giant
iceberg. Corporate bloggers always in the know (like Om Malik, Steve Rubel, Dave Sifry, and Scott Raefer [the last two ’cause they’re watching all the blogs with their fancy proprietary databases – not because they’re smart or anything]) were expecting it, but most said Seth’s stunt was lame. Seth Godin, an adventurer
and millionaire businessman (that he obtained via click fraud schemes before it "became cool"), had been promoting his scheme to tow a blogging iceberg from Antarctica for quite
some time using subliminal blog messaging techniques conceived by Microsoft’s uber blogger Robert Scoble and encoded in the byzantine structures of del.icio.us page views. Who would have ever thought Robert would have a good idea? He just posts a lot of boring stuff. Anyway, Seth had apparently succeeded using Robert’s techniques. Seth said that he was going
to carve the berg into small ice cubes and attach leftover prophylactic noses from his latest book promotion deal, which he would sell to the
public for ten cents each. These well-traveled cubes, fresh from the
pure waters of Antarctica, were promised to improve the flavor of any "Purple Cow" milk they cooled. Slowly the iceberg made its way into the harbor. Bloggers provided exciting blow-by-blow coverage of the
scene with Flickr photos and MP3 podcasts of the cheering bloggers and waves smashing against the shore. Tom Peters was on the scene, but the only words he could get out of his mouth were the repeated words "wow … wow … wow … Seth, I’ve finally found it …". Only when the berg was well into the harbor was Seth’s secret
revealed. It started to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving
cream that the berg was really made of washed away, uncovering the
white plastic sheets beneath and the #17 scam it really was.

Steve Shu

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This post has been cross-posted to The CIO Weblog

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Del.icio.us vs. Del.irio.us … Are You Dizzy Yet?

An interesting business and technology case study live in the making. To bring people up to speed:

  • Del.icio.us (pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarks manager that just secured some seed funding (cryptic post)… I liken it to having a free intelligent, sortable, distributable database for managing one’s bookmarks. Proprietary software and free. Pretty easy to use. Quick to sign up and configure your browser (< 2 minutes). I started to use just yesterday although I have known about it for some time.
  • Rumors are that the funding involves a prominent venture capital blogger (not confirmed, so I won’t be specific here).
  • For those not as adventuresome but perhaps curious, a good del.icio.us screencast demo (with audio) is here. You can watch about 2 minutes of it and get the gist.
  • Now I catch wind of a free and open source clone … del.irio.us via this great post at Bubble Generation. Here’s a quick snip of the post:

… If you don’t know, del.irio.us is the perfect example of
hypercommoditization – it’s a total (open-source) clone of del.icio.us.
A shameless clone – it rips off del.icio.us down to the font sizes, and
adds a few bits of it’s own …

… there are no entry or imitation barriers until it’s too late – until your network is already
the biggest. This is happening all over again – dot com 2.0s are
failing to build entry or imitation barriers, and are getting
hyperimitated – in every space, we see one innovator, and a huuuge wave
of imitation (networking, tag servers…etc) …

  • Jeff Nolan (VC at SAP) now has an interesting $0.02 on the developments too. Basically, do we collectively allow copycat type of behavior? Will the market see this as fair? Fairness is something that should not be underestimated (think about the ultimatum game, "The Wisdom of Crowds," etc.). But is fairness the right frame? By the language some people are using, it seems that fairness may need to be a consideration. Dollars and subscribers talk in this sector.

It would be interesting to take a snapshot of the current subscriber base of each of these companies and how it develops over time. At any rate, if the VC I know (through reputation only) is involved, there will be barriers to entry built up for del.icio.us down the road. I cannot say about del.irio.us. I am only learning about them now.

Steve Shu

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Update (3/31/05):

Screenshot of del.icio.us (click to enlarge) versus screenshot of del.irio.us (click to enlarge)

Delicious_2

Delirious_2

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