Jun 25 2008

How to Part Company with a Smile

No matter how well your startup company does, sooner or later you're going to be faced with the fact that someone has to go.  It may be a disgruntled co-founder or it may be the intern that looked great on paper but turned into a disaster when they walked into the office.

While parting company is a tough thing to do, there are definitely better and worse ways to go about it.  There's an art to ending a corporate romance on a positive note, and it starts with looking past the moment of departure and into the future.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Unlike the big corporate machine where everyone is expected to fit in, a startup company is a perpetually chaotic, anxiety-inducing roller coaster of emotion that fits very few people real well.  Chances are the person you are sitting across from is just not a fit for any startup company, let alone yours.

A great way to set the stage is to explain how well you understand the incredible challenges of being in a startup company and that it’s very difficult for anyone to maintain their footing in this environment.  This isn’t about you patronizing your co-workers – it’s about recognizing the fact that there are often very good reasons the fit just isn’t right and using those reasons as a platform for departure.

In many cases the person you’re sitting across from has had to endure a lot of sacrifices just to be able to contribute at all.  Even if they didn’t work out as an employee, it’s a good idea to recognize and appreciate the sacrifices they have made up until this point.  Those sacrifices were part of their contribution.

Leave the Door Open

Although today you may feel like you can’t possibly get this person out of the door fast enough, always be sure to leave that door open for them to return.  This may sound ridiculous, since the last thing on your mind right now is ever seeing this person in your office again.

Yet your corporate life is very long, and it extends down many roads.  The gal that just walked out of your office today may be the key customer that hires you a few years from now.  It may be the person that was a bad fit in the formative stages of your company but is exactly who you need three years from now.  It never pays to be short-sighted when winding up any relationship, no matter how tenuous at the time.

Leaving the door open also shows a gesture of good faith.  If people know that they might have to deal with each other again in the future they’re a lot less likely to spew fire and brimstone today.  You may find that a few years from now, after you’ve both forgotten a about what brought you to this departure, that there’s a much better opportunity to re-connect.

Send People off with Dignity

There’s a big difference between just terminating someone and terminating someone with dignity.  No matter what the situation is, everyone deserves to be shown the door without being crucified in front of their peers.

Aside from the fundamental respect of another human being, you’re also setting an example for how you will treat the rest of the organization.  If all of your employees watch a person get humiliated in front of their peers the first thing that you’ve instilled in everyone else is that they will be treated the same way.  That kind of fear is incredibly unhealthy in any organization.  (Unless you are a pirate, in which case you’ll probably be just fine.)

Instead, go out of your way to make sure that this person’s departure ends on a positive and supportive note.  Even if the rest of the organization dreaded their existence, it’s important for you to be the bigger person and show that everyone will come and go with dignity at your company.

Think About the Ripple Effect

A departure affects more than just one employee.  It creates a ripple effect through the entire organization that’s impossible to ignore.  If you think that an employee walking out the door takes their drama with them, you’re dead wrong.

The gory details of what you’ve said, how the employee responded, and every moment thereafter will be repeated in infinite detail inside and outside of your organization.  Think of the termination event like a video clip on YouTube that is about to get re-broadcast endlessly. 

A simple, positive parting isn’t worth gossiping about.  There’s no story.  But an ugly and bitter battle is something that will keep lots of people talking for a long time, all at your expense.  When it comes to parting, creating as little drama as possible is absolutely critical.

Look at the Big Picture

Every time you let someone go you’re changing the face of the company and setting the tone by which it treats its people.  If you can use this opportunity to show that you’re supportive and respectful of the people leaving your company, you’ll make both the people that work there now and the people that will work for you in the future far more comfortable with living in your world.

no comments   |  tags: | posted in General

Jun 23 2008

Judge Sets Facebook Hearing to ‘Private’

Kicking the public out of a courtroom is an option that should be used rarely and extremely judiciously, which is what makes U.S. District Judge James Ware’s decision Monday disappointing.

Ware shuttered the doors to a San Jose, Calif., hearing pitting Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, probably the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, against Harvard University classmates who claim Zuckerberg stole ideas and source code from a similar venture called ConnectU. Ware took this extraordinary step without notice, without a formal request from either side, and without even specifying why it was necessary.

This is at odds with the law of the land–it views courtroom closings as extraordinary events–which is why CNET News.com is evaluating whether to file papers seeking access. Not only should the courtroom not have been closed, but any audio recording or transcript of the proceedings should be released.

It is long-established precedent in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is binding in San Jose, that two requirements be met before the public can be barred. First, the public and the press must be given “a reasonable opportunity to state their objections.” Second, the “reasons supporting closure must be articulated.”

Those requirements were conspicuously absent from Monday’s hearing. Neither side formally asked Ware to bar the public. When he asked if there were objections — and representatives of three different news organizations asked the hearing be delayed to give us a reasonable opportunity to raise them–Ware dismissed the idea. He said only that booting out everyone but the lawyers would be “beneficial” (for whom?).

No less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court described the presumptive First Amendment right to access court proceedings thusly: “The presumption may be overcome only by an overriding interest based on findings that closure is essential to preserve higher values, and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest. The interest is to be articulated along with findings specific enough that a reviewing court can determine whether the closure order was properly entered.”

Ware certainly has experience dealing with complicated technology cases. He showed he was sensitive to civil liberties in his response to the Justice Department’s demands to Google. He’s presided over spam lawsuits, the RealNetworks case, and the Sex.com lawsuit.

In this case, Facebook got the courtroom closing it wanted, apparently without even having to ask the judge for it. The likely reason for the closure is that ConnectU recently learned of the existence of instant messaging logs from Zuckerberg’s computer dating back many years. Facebook attorney Neel Chatterjee of the Orrick law firm has been insistent on keeping these and scores of other documents confidential–the phrase “under seal” now appears no fewer than 234 times in the official court docket.

No doubt Chatterjee is zealously protecting Zuckerberg’s interests. But it is unusual for any attorney to claim that so many documents are highly confidential, which prompted ConnectU to request that the judge “limit materials filed under seal.” In that and continued public access to proceedings in this case, satisfying the appearance of justice demands no less.

CNET News

no comments   |  tags: | posted in Legal, News, Social Networking

Jun 23 2008

Facebook Platinum membership. How much would you pay?

Milton Friedman once told that Free Market Principles depend on, well, nothing being free. (Well, it was some old bloke who looked like Milton Friedman. College. Whatever.)

But the Facebooks of this world seem resolute in refusing to believe that people might decide that if it cost nothing then it can’t have been worth anything.

So, and it pains me to utter these words, but what would happen if Facebook led the charging?

What if they created normal, ordinary membership, then, you know, a gradation of colors? Like credit card companies. Where platinum stands for ‘person living far beyond their means, but still earning money so they’ll make the minimum payments and, hey, you never know, their stock options might kick in.’

(Credit: egg (TM))

And Black for ‘I may not pay my bill on time, but why should I have to? I’m richer than you’.

Wouldn’t that be more real world rather than Real World?

The status benefits would, naturally, have to be of a kind that Facebookers would really appreciate.

So what if you paid $100 a year for Facebook Green?

That would guarantee you Friend Status with one Division One college athlete, a secondary actor/actress in an independent movie and the Senior Manager of a significant financial institution.

If you coughed up, say, the $400 a year to be Facebook Gold, they would guarantee you could be Friends with two B-list movie and TV stars (which would include Luke Wilson, but not Owen. Cokie Roberts, but not Julia), one retired sports hero, one current sports hero and the Senior Vice-President of a significant financial institution.

For the $1000 a year of Facebook Platinum, you could, firstly, CHOOSE your friends. (Oh, didn’t we mention when you joined? We choose your Friends in Green and Gold.)

You would also get all of the Gold privileges. PLUS two A-list movie and TV stars, three current sports heroes (convicted felons would be excluded, but those yet to stand trial are still capable of experiencing Friendship), three Senior members of your chosen political party, and most importantly, all the members of your two favorite bands (the only exclusions here, for obvious reasons, would be the members of Metallica and Simon and Garfunkel).

The $20,000 Facebook Black. Well, what would you expect? All of the Facebook Platinum privileges, of course.

But, in addition, the precious and rare commodity of Lifetime Friendship with Jon Voight, Joe Lieberman, Keith Olbermann, John Lydon and Lindsay Lohan; the guarantee of one business deal with your favorite financial institution (Bear Stearns, for example); the ability to record a song with your favorite Friended band or singer (yes, you and Mariah Carey. Or Mary Carey, if you prefer her singing); your favorite Friended product would release a special personalized version of the product featuring your name (wouldn’t everyone want a can of Heineken Bryan?); and, most prized, your own personalized Werewolves, Friends For Sale and PimpFights, designed by the good folks at Marvel.

Wouldn’t these status levels be a truer reflection of society? Surely you separate your friends into various levels: Drinks Friends, Dinner Friends, Drunk Friends, Friends You Want Something From, Friends Who Want Something From You And You Like That.

In addition, this new and exciting revenue stream would take some pressure away from the need to monetize through advertising.

It’s a win-win, as really good friends would say to each other.

CNET News

no comments   |  tags: | posted in Social Networking

Jun 23 2008

Facebook overtakes MySpace globally

New figures from metrics firm comScore show that, in May, the battle of the social-networking sites may have gained a new front-runner: Facebook appears to have surpassed long-time rival MySpace in worldwide unique visitors for the first time. ComScore representatives said that Facebook’s lead began in April, when the site passed MySpace by a hair, and widened in May.

Facebook, according to comScore, pulled in 123.9 million unique visitors in the month of May, beating MySpace’s 114.6 million, and 50.6 billion page views, compared to MySpace’s 45.4 billion.

It has been a slow but steady upward climb for Facebook, founded by then-Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. The site was initially restricted to members with email addresses from a handful of elite universities, before gradually expanding to the general public and becoming a genuine Silicon Valley sensation when it kick-started the developer platform craze last year.

It was a very different story for MySpace, which was founded in 2003 and achieved mass-market success in a relatively short time by gearing itself toward independent bands and their fans.

MySpace, owned by News Corp since 2005, nevertheless remains far ahead of Facebook in the US, where both companies are based. The same comScore figures found that MySpace has 73.7 million unique visitors in the US versus Facebook’s 35.6 million, and that neither site grew much in the past month. Other number-crunching firms show similar results: a Compete.com graph of the two, for example, shows MySpace’s US traffic shrinking slightly while Facebook’s is growing steadily, but not astronomically.

This appears to confirm the common wisdom that Facebook’s present growth is largely overseas. And that, of course, assumes that the numbers are accurate–online metrics firms, comScore included, have been subject to plenty of scrutiny on behalf of web companies and ad firms. Additionally, some of MySpace’s overseas traffic does not come from the MySpace.com domain; its Chinese-language site, for example, is MySpace.cn. ComScore representatives, however, have said that its assessment of MySpace’s traffic encompassed all the site’s domains.

In January, Facebook unveiled plans to provide translated versions of the site, something that MySpace has done since 2006 after first launching separate versions of the site for other English-speaking countries, such as the UK and Australia. There are now 29 localized versions of MySpace, and the company has office space in 20 different countries. MySpace representatives have explained in the past that their aim is to build communities centered on regional culture, not to simply expand the same networking tool worldwide.

But the Facebook strategy appears to be working, too. Figures released by comScore earlier this week concerning Facebook’s growth in France suggest that the translated sites are having some positive effects in building international audiences. On Thursday, Chinese and Russian versions of the site debuted, bringing the translation offering to around 20 languages.

Overseas challenges.
Still, even a fast-growing site like Facebook faces issues abroad. Advertising dollars–typically stronger in the US than overseas–still aren’t rolling in on social networks in the way many expected them to, and last month Facebook took out a $100 million loan to keep pace with growth. MySpace, meanwhile, has just rolled out a site redesign that aims to make it more appealing to both users and advertisers.

In addition, there’s the fact that, while MySpace might be Facebook’s chief rival in the US, there are plenty of other social networks with big followings in different pockets of the globe, posing local competition. Orkut, run by Google, has a lock on Brazil and also a big portion of the market in India. Hi5 is popular in Latin America. Friendster, long past popularity in the US, has nevertheless gained a sizeable following in several Asian countries.

Facebook continues to work on image issues. The independently run company, its valuation pegged at a jaw-dropping $15 billion after an investment from Microsoft, has also been boosting its executive team to lift its reputation from a Palo Alto start-up to legitimate international corporation. This spring, the company recruited Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, to join its roster in a similar capacity, as a policy-focused PR tsar.

CNET News

no comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Social Networking

Jun 23 2008

ICANN Considers New Top Level Domains

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is getting ready to vote later this week to open up the Internet naming convention to allow more options.

On Thursday at its meeting in Paris, ICANN, the not-for-profit organization charged with overseeing the Internet’s naming scheme, will vote on a proposal that would allow companies to purchase new generic top-level domains ending in almost anything they want. So instead of being limited to .com, .org or .co.uk as the last letters of their Web addresses, companies or organizations could add their company name to the end of their URL. For example, eBay could become .ebay or Intel could be .intel. Even cities could name their Web sites .newyork or .berlin.

But the new names, which could be ready in 2009, won’t come cheap. As a result, it’s unlikely that individuals will be able to take advantage of the new naming conventions to create more personalized Web sites. The exact price to register these new names isn’t yet known, but some experts predict it could cost about $50,000 to register a new domain name.

The high price is also likely to deter cybersquatters. ICANN is expected to give priority to companies or organizations with trademarked names.

The new addressing scheme should alleviate fears that ICANN will run out of addresses. The organization estimated last year that only 17 percent of the original 4 billion network addresses remained available. And it predicted that it would run out of new addresses within the next five years.

Paul Twomey, the CEO of ICANN, told the BBC that allowing the new naming conventions would create new “real estate” on the Internet.

“It’s a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet,” he said.

If the proposal is accepted by ICANN’s board then almost any extension that is 64 characters or less could be used. My colleague at ZDNet.co.uk points out that this means that the .xxx domain extension, which has been proposed for the adult entertainment industry could be used. ICANN rejected the .xxx application in 2007.

CNET News

no comments   |  tags: | posted in General

Jun 23 2008

Disney sells Movies.com to Comcast’s Fandango

Fandango, the movie-ticketing company owned by Comcast since 2007, announced on Monday that it has acquired Movies.com, a movie news and reviews aggregator. Movies.com had previously been owned by Disney’s Walt Disney Internet Group.

Financial details were not disclosed.

The aim of the acquisition is to provide a one-stop movie hub for the Web, executives said.

“We are pleased to expand our rich-entertainment reach through this strategic addition of Movies.com,” Chuck Davis, CEO of Fandango, said in a statement. The ticketing site currently sells admission to 15,000 theaters in the United States. “We’ll be able to leverage our combined assets to offer millions of new moviegoers the best movie-related information available on the Web.”

CNET News

no comments | posted in General, Internet Marketing, News

Jun 23 2008

InterActiveCorp launches ad network, including brands it’s ditching

InterActiveCorp mogul Barry Diller may be getting rid of brands like Ticketmaster, LendingTree, and HSN, but he still wants to sell ads on them.

The sprawling media company announced Monday that it will launch an ad network to handle inventory across all its brands, such as Evite and Citysearch, as well as the ones that Diller and his executive team are opting to spin off into separate publicly traded companies.

“Maybe we’re not brothers and sisters, but we’re cousins,” IAC Advertising Solutions president Rich Stalzer told AdAge about the companies it will spin off. The AdAge article also reported that IAC currently serves only a small percentage of its own ad inventory, outsourcing the rest.

IAC’s new ad strategy focuses on targeting consumers in nine “cubes”: youth (18 to 34 years old), men, women, “affluents,” parents, active shoppers, active travelers, homeowners, and sports fans. More cubes are on the way. But of particular priority to IAC is the “affluents” niche, which can draw in far higher click-through rates because of those consumers’ likelihood to spend larger amounts of money.

For once, IAC’s arguably scattershot and unfocused array of retail and media brands could be helping it move forward.

That’s because there are many ways that IAC could identify Web users as “affluents” (or anything else, for that matter) through the sheer variety of properties the conglomerate owns, as well as the ones that it is spinning off.

“We’re in a unique position in that we can corroborate multiple kinds of data,” Stalzer explained in a release, “including declared information users offer about themselves; transactional, online purchasing activity; and inferred, such as what they do offline like attend concerts or go on dates, from the diverse portfolio of IAC sites to more precisely identify users as part of a particular audience segment.”

Someone who makes pricey purchases at the company’s Gifts.com, for example, or who repeatedly queries Citysearch for restaurants of the Jean-Georges and Nobu variety, could be classified under the high-income “cube.”

And Diller, well known as a yacht aficionado, is even more deeply connected to the luxury-brand market than your average CEO: He’s married to fashion legend Diane von Furstenberg.

CNET News

no comments | posted in Internet Marketing

Jun 22 2008

If You Do Anything In Your Business, you’re doing too much

As a business owner, it is tempting to wear many hats at one time and take care of all the departments by yourself with some help from employees. Speak to any successful businessman and he is likely to tell you that this is a mis-step which you should avoid. Of course, this does not mean that you can delegate everything within your business to others….it just means that you need to MANAGE more and DO less.

As a business owner, it is quite easy to fall into the trap of taking on more and more work for the following reasons:

1) You can do it better than most people in the business

2) Delegation takes a lot more time than actually doing it

3) Cost saving in man-hours as you are doing most of the work yourself

4) It is a matter of habit

The fall-out of this attitude can be listed as follows:

1) Too many items in your TO-DO list leaving you harried most of the times

2) Too little time for pro-active business management activities

3) Employees do not learn nor take on added responsibilities

4) Results in stilted growth of the business

5) Creates a poor impression on customers ( imagine a customer always getting to speak to the business owner for support, billing and account managing issues)

Agreed that this is a vicious circle but luckily it is not one that you cannot get out from. If you have already realized that you are doing too much in your business which in turn is creating the problems listed above, then it is time for some change. Here are some suggestions on what you can do to reduce your micro-management activities and focus on the BUSINESS.

1) Delegate smartly. I have seen many business owners delegating to their juniors…some of them do it well and some of them….well they end up delegating their own work to the employees as well. Smart delegation means explaining your employee what you need to get done, defining the goal well and giving helpful suggestions on how the task can be completed. If you give broad instructions (Let’s work towards increasing sales), you are unlikely to see any results and suffer from wasted man hours.

2) Departmentalize clearly. As a growing business, you need to ensure that you have clear departments which can handle the growth as it happens. Making departments with clear demarcation of duties is likely to help you grow lot faster than your competition. Review each department’s progress, their problems and recruit good people to lead these efforts ( I know this is easier said than done, but there is really no other way out) .

3) Direct more. As a business owner, i feel the most important thing I do is direct my team. In measurable terms. Giving timely feedback and responses to employees, showing them the direction in which the business needs to go and tackling overall issues of managing the business.

4) Put in systems. Automation is the next best thing since sliced bread. I am serious, I mean it. You can now take mundane tasks and automate it. You can even take complicated tasks and automate them intelligently! Not only does this reduce the time you need to do some pieces of work , it helps mitigate the risks you face when an employee leaves. Automating accounting, HR, Customer service and sales are just some of the things which help you grow well. The initial costs may be high, but automation tends to pay for itself with 12 to 24 months of implementation.

So the next time you catch yourself doing multiple tasks in the business, stop right there…and delegate it to the right person.

no comments   |  tags: | posted in General, The Lazy Business Owner

Jun 22 2008

Some Tips to Not Be a Slave to E-mail

There was a time when I would wait anxiously for my email client to download my emails every few minutes and add to the list of unread emails in my inbox. With a bit of self analysis, i realized that not only did it cause me un-necessary stress, I got little else done in those moments (and after them) when I would wait for the email to download and then start replying them right away. A few tips from my personal experiences are likely to help you get the better of the EMAIL MONSTER!

1) Set a time to check your email. No one is expecting you to answer an email as soon as you get it. I now check my emails three times a day (that accordingly to some people is also a bit much) but when i check email, i ensure that I am dedicated to responding to them as well. Not only am I able to do more during work hours, the quality of my email responses are lot better than before.

2) Organize. And then organize some more. With such wonderful tools like Windows Mail, and Microsoft Outlook available to you, make it a habit to organize your emails into proper boxes with the right message rules. Not only does this reduce the clutter in your inbox, it lets you get to the important emails faster.

3) Avoid creating email chains. His really has to do with he style of answering emails but avoid creating chains wherever possible. You can also use the phone to sort out simple issues rather than create a flurry of emails which go back and forth. Also try and delegate email tasks to those who are directly responsible for the work rather than micro-manage on email.

4) Long emails are not only tedious to read, they are largely ineffective. In order to get compact and to –the –point responses to your emails, you need to write smaller emails yourself. Remember, emails are not good tools to communicate emotion so keep it simple!

5) Use a spam controller. I am a person who does not believe in overdosing on software, but with spam overtaking mailboxes across the world, it has become essential for regular email users to use a spam controlling tool. You can download from the various tools available online and use the one which suits you best. Junk email costs businesses billions of dollars every year so do remember it is taking away some of your precious time as well.

6) Nothing is more productive than going back to an inbox with no un-read emails. It is like entering a clean room, which you like to keep clean on an ongoing basis. Avoid leaving un-read emails in the inbox as that is going to reduce your productivity and usually keep you behind with your responses.

7) Archive if not delete. Non-critical emails should be sent off to the Deleted Items as soon as you are done with them and you might like to create an archive of important emails for record keeping. If you are checking emails on both a handheld as well as a desktop, then don’t think twice before deleting emails on the handheld…they are only likely to eat up the limited space on the hard disk.

I guess I can go on and on about increasing your productivity and not being a slave to email..try the tips I have mentioned above and I am sure you will find yourself on the path of email-nirvana!

no comments   |  tags: | posted in General, The Lazy Business Owner

Jun 21 2008

Can MyYearbook Take on Facebook?

As if there weren’t already enough social networks, MyYearbook has been showing spectacular growth, growing over 384 percent year-over-year according to the most recent Hitwise data. MyYearbook targets high school students. Next we’ll be hearing about the elementary school social network experiencing spectacular growth.

Eric Eldon has posted the rumor that MyYearbook is working on raising a large round of capital. This wouldn’t be surprising given there growth over the past year. They still have a long way to go, commanding less than 1.5 percent of the social network market currently. It’s a great start though and at this pace, the company may be able to secure a fairly sizable chunk of the market.

While I’m not sure if college students will continue logging in once they graduate, the company will at least have a large piece of the high school market. Then again Facebook and MySpace have both done a great job on that portion of the market. Apparently there’s still space for one more though.

no comments   |  tags: , | posted in Social Networking