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I went by the New York City Web 2.0 Expo yesterday. I caught up with friends and met people I only knew through email. To be honest, it had a very different vibe than the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year. Perhaps it was an east coast thing or maybe the news from Wall Street was on the back of everyone’s mind.

I hope the lines for free food is not a sign of things to come.

I was most interested in looking at social networking companies and I visited with Awareness Networks, HIveLive, Jive Software, OneSite, Oribius, Pringo, and Sparta Social Networks. We talked about price (upfront costs, monthly and yearly costs, licensing fees, hosting and maintenance fees, storage fees, usage fees, etc) and the SaaS model. While this model is compeling, I always worry about who owns the content if I chose to part ways with my vendor. I also asked about the role that data mining and CRM is playing in social networking. As I have written before, I think data mining is powerful selling tool to convince management that is slow to embrace social networking.

My sense from talking to companies is that CRM and web analytics will play a more integrated role in social networking’s future, but that we are not at that point in the adoption curve. It certainly wasn’t a feature that companies stressed in our conversations.

I also talked to folks at Brickfish, a social media advertising platform. It made me think of Atlanta based Vitrue, which is using social media to extend the brand. I was interested in hearing how you sometimes need to seed a site with legitimate user generated content to attract others to create their own. No one wants to be the first to show up at a party.

In addition, I talked with Twing, a search engine dedicated to online communities and forums. Traditional search engine results don’t always accurately reflect conversation threads because these discussions generally link to each other, not other websites. In other words, without link love there is no love potion to drive search results higher.

Anyway I head back to Atlanta today. There was just too little time to digest all the sessions and visit all the companies I wanted to see.

Finally, for those who haven’t noticed, I have changed the Photo of the Week sidebar to Bernaise Source Photos. I will be highlighting photos from various events I attend because we can’t live by words alone.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking; Social Networks; Web 2.0 Expo; Twing; Brickfish; Vitrue; Awareness Networks; HiveLive; Jive Software; OneSite; Oribius; Pringo; Sparta Social Networks;

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MFG.com’s A.J. Sweat and Mitch Free

In my search for Atlanta based Web 2.0 companies I came across MFG.com; it is the match.com for connecting suppliers with buyers in manufacturing, and it’s proving to be one of Atlanta’s notable high tech success stories.

It’s a social network, but don’t expect members to “poke” one another. Their needs are not California cool or Atlanta hot. Instead the company is focused on the 300 processes that fabricate, mold, cast, extrude, forge, and stamp.

MFG.com is an online marketplace servicing the global manufacturing community. Its platform simplifies the complex process of sourcing and selling manufacturing services. The technology connects buyers with suppliers of manufacturing services while directing the collaboration, quoting, due diligence and analysis processes.

MFG.com consolidates the once-fragmented world of custom manufacturing into a more efficient marketplace, enabling products to be sourced and built more easily, quickly, inexpensively, and at higher quality levels.

An Early Inspiration

MFG.com’s founder and CEO Mitch Free began his career as a machinist on a factory floor. An early inspiration for MFG.com came from Lendingtree.com’s tagline ( “When banks compete, you win.”) Free recognized that this same philosophy could be applied to manufacturing.

With operations reaching internationally, Free is succeeding where past B2B marketplace sites and software developers (VerticalNet, PurchasePro, and FreeMarkets) failed. Many other so-called B2B companies rose and fell spectacularly during the dot com bubble meltdown.

This I know first hand. I bought VerticalNet on March 10, 2000 at its peak. The next trading day, the Nasdaq bubble began bursting many a retirement plan.

Today approximately 180,000 companies around the world have registered.

What is the secret of their success? Delivering value is one reason; Web 2.0 is another. Where Web 1.0 was static and about controlling the environment, Web 2.0 is dynamic and about engaging customers internationally to build a better online experience.

Mitch recognized the power of community to drive transactions. Search engines can’t do it. Nor can directories, which need user lists to work. With Web 2.0, content generates the circulation, and community creates efficiencies.

While the adoption curve may take longer with communities, the connections are stickier. With the MFG.com community, Free sees an opportunity for people to interact, collaborate, negotiate and leverage collective intelligence.

The process takes time. Manufacturing in general has been slower to embrace the Internet. And suppliers in particular are not accustomed to transparency. The shift in control puts prospects and customers in charge.

To help extend the power of the community, MFGX.com was created under AJ Sweatt’s direction. The goal is to facilitate discussion and let users voice their opinions. Unlike other companies, MFG.com is not concerned about negative comments. The community is self-policing, and Free would much rather be aware of what is being said than discourage negative feedback.

With MFGX.com, users create their own profile to network with peers, build their reputation, promote their company, find employment (or employees), and buy and sell things.

Why MFG.com

MFG.com is interesting on many fronts for me. One is its commitment to Atlanta.

Despite his company’s success, Mitch had considered heading to the west coast, particularly given Atlanta’s attitude toward web 2.0 and its adoption rate. He decided to stay recognizing that he would be trading one set of problems for another — finding developers and scarcity of resources for the West Coast’s hyper competitive environment.

MFG.com is embracing Web 2.0, a technology that runs counter to its industry’s prevailing culture, and its understanding of negative comments is unusual for many companies in general and Atlanta corporate culture in particular.

I am particularly interested in what MFG.com is looking to do in its next stage of development. In fact, it was through my conversation with Mitch Free and reading MoneyBall that I have begun to understand how data can be used to sell social media. Social networks generate immense amounts of data, which in turn can spur new services and transform companies. In other words, social media is not a cost center.

That’s what Free is doing. Buyers and suppliers are always looking for new information. Their transactions generate data. Free is mining that data and helping MFG.com create a new generation of services.

One service is predictive cost modeling. Based on data about parts ordered, MFG.com can help suppliers and buyers predict the cost of products with similar features and how much to charge.

While I know far less about drill bits than digital ones, I appreciate how MFG.com has embraced Web 2.0 and applied it to new areas. Its success is a valuable lesson for any company who questions the power of community to drive innovation.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: MFG.com; MFGX.com; Atlanta; Mitch Free; Web 2.0; Manufacturing; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;

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WorkLight, Unisfair, and Velingo are among the approximately 15 to 20 Israelis companies that are expected to attend a unique Web 2.0 conference this September 24 and 25 in Atlanta. It’s called “Empowering the Connected Enterprise,” and it will bring together some of the most innovative Web 2.0 Israeli companies with some of the biggest names in American business.

The American Israel Chamber of Commerce is organizing the event. Their goal is to spur investment by helping Israeli companies gain a foothold in the United States and for American companies to benefit from Israeli expertise in Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is clearly on everyone’s minds these days. I am heading to New York in a week to attend Web 2.0 Expo. The AICC conference is part of an effort to better understand how web 2.0 technologies can transform business and facilitate communication and collaboration between the enterprise and its customers, vendors, and employees.

IBM is sponsoring the event. I recently spoke with David Boloker, IBM Software Group’s CTO, Emerging Internet Technology. He is one of the speakers and organizers of the conference. Dave is a futurist and strategist. He spends about a third of his time talking and working with venture backed companies and is greatly involved with Web 2.0 initiatives.

Dave was part of the team that brought Java into IBM and helped it flourish. Now he spends a lot of his time working on AJAX and next-generation collaborative systems.

Part of the challenge is defining what exactly is Web 2.0. Especially from 2003 to 2006, the hype around Web 2.0 made it a perfect case study for the Gartner hype cycle. Starting in 2005-2006, Boloker began to see a change; he began noticing that these tools could do more and were getting easier to use. User Interfaces were getting advanced while still supporting pure Ajax.

Boloker breaks Web 2.0 into 4 categories — standards, rendering, social interaction/social networks, mashups/content – to better understand what Web 2.0 can do and how it is evolving.

We have developed standards/defacto standards like Atom & RSS that allow syndicated content to be read across different browsers or viewers. Today, we are better at rendering so it easer to see content (static or streaming ) and read files of almost any type all within the Web container. Social networks now can use APIs to engage members & businesses to extend their reach, create profiles, and interact. We are now able to easily import, combine, and repurpose content across many different contexts from business to consumer.

In fact Boloker thinks we may actually be at Web 2.5. We are moving from the desktop to mobile applications. We are taking advantage of the long tail where more money can be made in narrow market niches.

In his position at IBM, Boloker works with many startup companies including Israeli companies. According to the AICCSE, Israel is one of the world’s most dynamic sources for high tech companies and has produced over 4,000 startups in the past few years. Outside of the US and Canada, Israel has more companies publicly traded on the US exchanges than any other country.

And what are some of the Israeli companies that are driving this innovation? Some companies expected to attend are:

WorkLight provides Web 2.0-style access to corporate data that reside in enterprise applications. With WorkLight, employees themselves define how information they need is aggregated and presented, regardless of the source.

Unisfair powers the world’s virtual events and virtual business environments. Virtual events and business environments are used for marketing, recruiting and training purposes.

Velingo developed a new and unique Social Search technology. Unlike other technologies that need user interaction (tagging for example), Velingo community knowledge is totally transparent, which dramatically enhances search.

PLYMedia has developed an interactive Web-based platform (BubblePly) that lets users create their own pop-up videos by inserting comic-style speech and thought bubbles.

KENSHOO SEARCH™, is an end-to-end SEM platform, which automates the process of building and optimizing cross channel search campaigns.

These companies are a cross section of Israel’s web 2.0 companies. Their services are increasingly in demand in Atlanta, which currently lacks a strong web 2.0 presence.

If successful, AICC Vice Chairman Lorin Coles wants this conference to not only help make introductions and attract investments; he hopes it will change perceptions and help put Atlanta on the map as a high tech alternative to Silicon Valley and New York.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: IBM AICC; American Israel Chamber of Commerce; David Boloker; WorkLight; Unisfair; PLYMedia; Kenshoo;

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I was up early here in San Francisco thanks to the benefits of jet lag. My body said 8:00 AM when the clock read 5:00 AM. (Ahh to have jet lag every day.)

If you are such a company or are just in town, please send me an email - dangtech2000 AT yahoo DOT com. It would be great to hear from you.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Expo; Blogging Platform; Social Networking Platform;

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Over the last few months, I’ve written several postings on companies including blip.tv, meebo, and slide that were profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine’s 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2007.  The purpose was to look at how Web 2.0 companies are using social media to market and publicize themselves and their initiatives.  My interviews have confirmed what I believed was the case all along:  The old rules don’t apply.

Dan Greenfield : Earlier this year, Bebo  got a big boost from Business 2.0 who said the winners will invent new ways to tap into what the Web brings to the party: instant feedback, instant analysis, and the collective wisdom of a billion users.  How is Bebo tapping into web 2.0 to market and publicize itself?

Joanna Shields: Bebo is a social media company, so participation in campaigns and initiatives, along with growth in membership, spring forth organically from the Bebo user base.  Users naturally promote the site by inviting friends through email or blogging about their Bebo experience.

Greenfield: What has new/social media allowed you to do that traditional media could not in promoting Bebo? 

Shields:  Our audience is online.  Bebo’s growth is through word of mouth and email from friends.  Before social media, growth like this would be incredibly difficult to achieve without serious investment in promotion and marketing. The Bebo site is our best marketing asset.  Our growth has been by word of mouth and driven by the community – for the network to be ‘real’ and not manufactured this is the only truly effective means of marketing. 

Greenfield : What is the strategy behind your blog ? Is it achieving its objective?

Shields: There is no official ‘Bebo’ blog, though there is a Bebo team blog and many on the Bebo team have their own. Sometimes they address programs or product upgrades, and sometimes they just talk about personal interests. Rather than thinking of Bebo as a single community, we like to think of it as a network of communities that connect people with real friends, colleagues and other individuals with similar interests. As a result, having a single communication to all users doesn’t fit.

Greenfield : It has been said that with new/social media, the product is the marketing.  Is that the case with Bebo?

Shields: We started Bebo with the goal to become the best way to connect, be inspired and discover your passions in life – by interacting with your friends and other Bebo users who share similar views.  We don’t subvert our users with push marketing they don’t want to be a part of.  Users actively engage with the brands by accepting them into their profile.  The interaction with profile skins, email skins, photos, blogs, comments, quizzes, music playlists, whiteboard art and video sharing creates an on-going relationship between the user and marketer at many levels. 

Greenfield : How do you differentiate yourself in the social networking space?

Shields: The Bebo environment has a bit less mass market clutter than some of the others, and tends to promote a higher level of engagement than other social networking sites.  Beboers often spend a lot of time working on their profiles, their spaces, their thoughts and their creative output.  We are always busy giving them the tools and the environment to take their individual uniqueness and celebrate it.  Beboers are also generally less interested in racking up endless numbers of “friends” or contacts.  They interact frequently with their real world friends on Bebo as an extension of their day, and like to connect with new people who share their values or have something else in common.  In addition, Bebo is a place where people can discover their passions and get discovered by others – whatever they may be.  It’s a place where an unknown author can get a book deal, where an unsigned band can get its big break, and where a talented designer can get noticed.

Greenfield : Any changes planned in the near future to market Bebo?

Shields: We are continually forming new partnerships and offering new tools to help fill the needs our user-base has expressed. We’ve recently added mobile capabilities, have partnered with the creators of LonelyGirl15 to create original Bebo content in KateModern, a series that the community can impact through comment and recommendation. Each time a new tool is added, our user base responds positively and they tell their friends.  This is how we’ve always done it, and it works.  Look for some exciting new partnerships ahead.

Greenfield :  Thank you Joanna.

————————–

This past June, Bebo announced partnerships with Apple and Yahoo!  With the Apple deal, Bebo users will be able to buy music directly from the profiles of any musician who has a Bebo profile and whose music is available on iTunes.  The Yahoo! deal makes Yahoo search available to Bebo users and has fueled acquisition rumors.

Bebo, along with FaceBook and MySpace, demonstrates the power of web 2.0 to create social networks.  Each is taking a different approach to attract users, build communities, and ultimately enlist advertisers. Unlike MySpace, Bebo limits its use of banner ads and none appear on a user’s page.  Its preference is engagement marketing efforts like the launch last month of several new widgets around photo effects, gossip, celebrities and entertainment.  In true Web 2.0 fashion, they did not issue a press release.  Noted only on their blog, the new widgets were based on user suggestions and requests.  Rather than banner ads, Bebo is relying on users to spread the word through the use of these features.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Business 2.0 Magazine; Bebo; Web 2.0 Companies; New Media; Social Networking; MySpace; Facebook; Joanna Shields;

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From “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” by Claire Nouvian/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Today I am looking at how Slide uses new media to tell their story and market to their customers.  It is part of a select group of postings on companies including blip.tv and meebo that were profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2007. 

Slide has developed to tool to create customizable and easily assembled slide shows of photos that can be embedded in a blog or a MySpace page, sent out in an RSS feed, or streamed to a desktop as a screensaver. 

I posed the following questions to Max Levchin founder of Slide and co-founder of PayPal.  Max has also dabbled in producing movies.  He was one of the executive producers of Thank You for Smoking.

Dan Greenfield: Slide just got a big boost from Business 2.0 who said the winners will reinvent new ways to tap into what the Web brings to the party: instant feedback, instant analysis, and the collective wisdom of a billion users.  How is Slide tapping into web 2.0?

Levchin: The “cascade of influence” is occasionally inverted — even some of the most powerful stories start from within.  These days, Google Alerts weighs all sources equally, and A-list bloggers get pre-briefed on companies’ most sensitive news. When we have a story to tell, we ask ourselves, “where should this start?” Sometimes the answer is “with the people,” sometimes “with the Journal.”

Greenfield: With new media, isn’t PR, marketing and word of mouth all the same thing?

Levchin: Not quite, though there certainly is some blur. Word-of-mouth is so last century; “word of mouse” is the new law of marketing — people pushing products and services onto their friends because the value to an individual improves as others join in. That’s the very best (and cheapest) kind of marketing.  

Greenfield: I noticed that much of the press coverage featured on your website is mainstream media New York Times, Business Week, Reuters, Fortune, etc.  How is new media validating your company?

Levchin: The absolute best possible way they can — hundreds of thousands of bloggers, ultra-popular and not, are using our products on their pages today. This is about as strong of an endorsement as we could ask for.

Greenfield: What is the strategy behind your company’s blog?  Is it achieving its objective?

Levchin: Our serves two main purposes: 1) it’s an informal way to disseminate relevant company information — new product features, customer service issues, etc. — to our users, and 2) it gives our users more of a feel for who we are, the people behind the company; they can also leave comments and get comments back from us in a public forum.

Greenfield: How does your company’s size and product lend itself to new media marketing?

Levchin: The causality is inverted here: it is because of our viral growth that we’ve been able to maintain a relatively small engineering-heavy staff and the obsessive focus on the overall product and consumer value.

Levchin: Focus on delivering value to the consumer. Everything else will fall into place at the right time.

Greenfield:  Thank you Max.

 ————

While I suspect Word of Mouth Marketing advocates may take issue with Max’s tongue in cheek contention, word of mouse is a powerful tool in a Web 2.0 marketing arsenal.  As Max points at a recent Red Herring conference, widgets help companies like Slide leverage blogs, web pages and social networks to attract new users.  With widgets, the product is the marketing, which is a distinguishing characteristic of web 2.0 companies.  Slide’s widget allows users to upload and share their pictures and content. 

Another characteristic of web 2.0 companies is their ability to tap into users’ need for individual expression.  Slide’s widget is highly customizable.  Slide gives users a great deal of flexibility in how they present their slide show.  Slide’s blog is a perfect, inexpensive vehicle to engage customers, solicit direct user feedback and introduce new features to spur further usage and adoption. 

So with a track record for success and a viable business model, the question remains whether Max is scripting another PayPal blockbuster?

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Business 2.0 Magazine; Slide; Marketing; New Media; PayPal; Slide; Max Levchin;

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Today I am looking at how meebo uses new media to tell their story and market to their customers.  It is second in a series of postings on companies profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2007. 

Meebo lets users manage multiple instant-messaging services from one site. Meebo’s killer app is a widget that places an IM window on one’s blog or webpage.

What is “Password” in Tagalog or Russian?

One of the first things that struck me about meebo was its global reach.  On their home page you can download their template in one of dozens of languages and through meebo map  you can check out an approximation of where IMs have been sent or received through meebo over the past 15 minutes.

The map shows approximately where IMs have been sent or received through meebo over the past 15 minute slice. Lighter dots represent areas with low IM activitiy (even a single IM!) and red dots show areas with lots of IMs

That’s cool and in the spirit of web 2.0, meebo users from around the world have volunteered to post translations for free – an incredibly valuable service offered by users that meebo does not have the resources to do themselves.

No surprise that  blogs play an important role in meebo’s communications and strategy.  In addition to mainstream press, they also reached out to Om Malik and Mark Jen when they launched.  Their blog is used to announce products, and more importantly to stay close to their users.  And their users reward them with mentions about meebo on 60 to 70 blogs each day.   Reflecting its informal style, their CEO Seth Sternberg wrote several postings to chronicle the company’s efforts to get funding and why they chose Sequoia Capital for at least part of their funding. 

Today, meebo is enjoying strong growth.  As of today on a daily basis, there are 1 million logins, 100 million messages sent, and 10,000 new users sign up.

Again like most web 2.0 companies, the product is the marketing. Product developers – the folks that design the product features — also play an important marketing role.  Every meebo subscriber downloads a widget to his or her blog or website to use the service.  Dan believes this is more word of mouth than viral (“there is no natural invite mechanism, but that is under consideration”).  The growing popularity of the widget on other sites helps facilitate further adoption.  It has created an interesting user base – including KBXX a Houston hip hop station and hundreds of librarians who use the service to field reference questions from the public.

How does meebo retain its existing customer base and grow its business by reaching a wider population?   To date, meebo has not used advertising and doesn’t envision using it any time soon.  They have relied on word of mouth efforts, blogs and user-generated content to generate their organic growth, but reaching a wider audience may require using more mainstream media. 

Let me get back to you. 

Technorati Tags: Business 2.0 Magazine; Meebo; Marketing; New Media;

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Last month’s issue of Business 2.0 Magazine featured 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2007.  The featured companies not only reveal how new media is creating new services, products and business models;  they also serve as a point of departure to understand how companies are using new media to tell their story and market to their customers.

As the editors said in their introduction to the story – “the losers are likely to be those companies that try to make money by pouring old-media wine into the new Web bottles. The winners will be the players that invent new ways to tap into what the Web brings to the party: instant feedback, instant analysis, and the collective wisdom of a billion users.”

I reached out to several of the featured companies to get their perspective on new media’s impact on their marketing efforts.

In no particular order, I will begin with blip.tv. Blip.tv has built a platform for syndicating serialized online shows and provides producers with software, ads, and distribution to websites and blogs. According to Dina Kaplan, co-founder/COO of blip.tv, the company is taking advantage of the explosion of user generated content and the growth of broadband.  Blip.tv is not only a destination in its own right.  It is also a syndicator — providing tools for its users to deliver their video content over the Internet. As a web 2.0 company, it is tapping into the universe of users for its content.  That is why their relationship to their users is so critical.

So how does blip.tv tell its story, create a brand and build a customer base using new media?  They only have a handful of employees.  And to date, there is no official marketing department.

It will also be interesting to see how the blip.tv brand will be impacted by the success of individual series created by their users.  Will it focus on the blip.tv brand or the individual programs?    More traditional networks like NBC must grapple with the same issue.  For its viewers, is it about Must See TV on NBC or programs like Friends?  But how will new media impact the equation?  Will there be brand loyalty and how critical is the blip.tv brand?   It will also be interesting to see how their deals like those with  CNN Exchange impact their brand as other media properties license their software.

For her part, Dina wrote me that for more than a year now  “we have been focused on building up the brands of our shows.  And that will always be really important to us, even to the point that we do press directly for our shows: whether it is Goodnight Burbank, Unleashed or Winning Hearts, which is about the peacekeeping effort in Afghanistan.

“We are increasingly seeing the value of our own brand, however, and how that can be helpful to the shows.  There is value to blip.tv being considered, as we have been called, the HBO to YouTube’s America’s Funniest Home Videos.  So if we can leverage that to help promote, market and monetize our shows at a higher rate, that’s a win for everyone in the blip.tv family: us, our shows, and all of our distribution partners.  In the end, it is their show, and their brand, and they should have as much freedom as possible to build it as they see fit.”

Next up in my examination of some of Business 2.0 Magazine featured startups will be meebo.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Business 2.0 Magazine; blip.tv; Marketing; New Media; Goodnight Burbank; Unleashed; Winning Hearts;

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