Mark Pincus Blog

Off to Wildflower Triathalon

my friends convinced me to try a tri. how could i pass up the 'burning man of triathalons'.  here's a link to wildflower for anyone who wants to tri next year.

next week i plan to do a deep dive on 'tags'. anyone who can point me to the best resources to start appreciated...

also, anyone who sees the business model for podcasts, ping me.

Idea Push Economy

it's becoming apparent that we are entering a new era in information consumption. we have gone from extreme pull with huge friction both in money and hassle around info consumption (remember nexis lexis and sweet talking the company librarian?); to the huge open pipe, where useful information was a needle in a haystack of noise; to the emerging market today of idea push, where white collar professionals (mostly smart vc's at this point) see networking benefit in pushing out their best ideas to bring in even more good stuff back in the form of deal flow and props for 'getting it'.

seems like we've moved from open source software to open source ideas and i think it's awesome. sure the cost is that we all start to feel like people can scarf up our best ideas before we can even completely get them straight but we can also iterate together way faster.

case in point is fred wilson's exciting new investment in del.icio.us. fred being one of the few humble vc's actually has no problem giving credit to jeff jarvis  for pointing him to the service and its importance.

it's been fun for me to start sharing some of the observations i've kept bottled up like a good entrepreneur should for months to see what flows back. already i've gotten great feedback and seen additional open source brain power cycles on my peopleweb and revolution of the ants concepts, and i get the feeling we're just at the tip of the iceberg of power we may all yet unleash together.

friendster tries classifieds

in a clear sign of the peopleweb coming, friendster has bought a site in the phillipines called pusit.com which has done a nice job of implementing a simiple UI for classifieds. what's interesting is that friendster is leveraging its member profiles to add trust to the listings. what's weird is that when you click through you have to login to friendster.  looks like the site has already gotten a lot of listings. this could represent a great way for friendster to build a business around its hugely non-US traffic.

Feedmap - Seeing our local blog world

i tried installing feedmap on my blog today. (i should be training for a triathalon but get easily sucked into the next blog widget.)  it's a cool idea to map my 'neighblogs' as they call them, or nearby bloggers. (starting to hate all the blog name spoofing.) anyway, my only gripe and the reason you dont see them here is that the site seems to be slow and seriously delayed my page serving.

anyone know of a blog that categorizes all blog tools out there with reviews? seems like a good idea. even better, someone should start a wiki to let us all contribute. ok, now i'm guessing this already exists on delicious and i'm the only one who doesnt know it:) also, can anyone recommend a good, easy, free wiki authoring site (pref with wysiwyg)? 

Tribe Turns on Open Profiles

if you click on my tribe profile, you'll see a glimpse of our new open profile architecture in action. the team has been working hard for many months on this and unfortunately my meager attempt at customizing something doesnt really show it off. it'll be fun to watch what all you uber hackers do with this and see the team reveal more of its power over time.

here's a few more creative open profiles too...elliot, gary, and pengrin.

1 Point for the Ants

i took american airlines to small claims court today. it was inspiring to see democracy in action.

background...my girlfriend and i showed up 70 minutes prior to our flight home from miami to sf on january 3rd. waited behind some old lady for so long that by the time we got to the counter it was less than 45 mintues to departure. the agent informed us that we would not be allowed on and would have to go standby for 'probably a few days' before returning home. after swearing so loud that she called the police, we realized our only option was to purchase full fare first class tickets for the next day. my poor girlfriend had to endure another whole day with my family (though we couldnt figure out how to get compensated for that).

in a true larry david moment, i decided to see what would happen if i took the airline to sf small claims court for damages (cost of new tickets and lost wages...err...oppty cost). first i gave american a chance to settle with me for less in the  form of a letter. they actually had the nerve to mail me back and thank my 'praise'. next step, sue em for the full $5k allowable.

well my day in court came today (took about 3 months), and it was fun. the judge actually has you state your case (from a real attorney table like on tv). you can even offer evidence, objections, rebuttals. if you ever wanted to play lawyer, try it. the judge seemed to push american to explain whether the flight was indeed oversold (motive to screw us) and whether they had publicly displayed the miami only rule that you must checkin 90 minutes prior (on their web site only).

i have to say it was amazing that american chose to waste someone's time to fight me on this rather than just pay the $2200 i had spent. what's even dumber is that it turned out they owed us $1100  anyway for unused tickets. so for an extra $1100 bucks they could have avoided it all. and now they're on the line for another $5k.

Bono is the New Pope

i've recently come to realize the extent that Bono is, more than just a talented rockstar, a true leader for our generation.  my first introduction was hearing his acceptance speach upon winning the TED prize. i was blown away by his inspiring plea to come together to save africa now and avoid what he called 'the holocaust of our time'.

not only is Bono funny, bright and articulate (even poetic) but he is a true leader. Bono has taken a tired and overwhelming message we've all grown numb to and turned it into something positive and actionable. his one campaign brilliantly says 'we dont want your money, we want your voice'.  he has realized that his goals will be accomplished by enlisting our voices to change US policy and that means billions.

what makes Bono stand out as a true leader is that he is helping us realize our own power.  after going to his concert this weekend, i felt the power Bono weilds, how he can use his pulpet to wake us up, to create activists. he asked us to hold up our cell phones (which lit the whole arena!) to show how much power we all weild. if 1 million of us call our congressmen, we can change US policy and history.

excerpts from his speach to TED which blew me away...

this is not about charity. this is about justice. we're all good at charity. justice is a tougher standard than charity. africa makes us question our commitment, because we would never allow this level of disaster to occur in america. this level of hemorraging of human life would not be allowed anywhere but africa. africa is in flames. we need a fire brigade...

i need your help.  6500 people dying a day may be africa's crisis but the fact it's not on our nightly news makes it our crisis...a whole continent dying.  we do not have to stand for this. forget the sixties. we can change the world.  this is the moment you were designed for. it is the flowering of the seeds planted in earlier generations. it is possible to change the world. why are we not pumping our fists into the air? probably because we'd have to admit we can do something about this and that's a pain in the ass. 

there are moments in history when the world redefines itself and this could be that time. we can change the future of the people who live on planet earth.  where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

history will remember our age for three things - the digital revolution, the war against terror and what we did or did not do to put out the fires in africa. some say we cant afford to. i say we cant afford not to.

i was so inspired by Bono's words that i decided at his concert i would visit africa this year to understand for myself what is going on there and find a way to get involved.  i have volunteered to help his one campaign figure out how to leverage social networking and community to help launch a social movement beyond just acquiring 1 million signatures.

there are great lessons in Bono's approach. rather than focus on what's wrong in our world, our government, our company, our family, we will accomplish more by working to make positive change. rather than building our own power, we will accomplish an exponentially greater impact by helping others unleash their own.  Bono mentions going to Glide Church and visiting Cecil Williams.  it reminds me of what Cecil always says on his sunday morning radio show, 'people who are about themselves make very small packages.'

i also found it ironic that Bono talks about meeting the Pope, because ever since hearing his TED speach, i've had this feeling that he is the Pope of our generation - the person with the power to unite us all.

i hope you all will listen to Bono's impassioned plea, visit one.org and get involved. the revolution of the ants will start with one leader who can prove that our voices will be heard and our actions will succeed.  i believe we are now ready for that leader and his name is Bono.

Tribe Hires a CEO

matt marshall reported on his silicon valley blog today that tribe has hired a new ceo and while i dont agree with his headline ("Silicon Valley shakeups continue: Tribe replaces Pincus"), he does accurately describe my reasoning for hiring a ceo.

It is similar to what happened at his previous company Support.com, where he left the CEO spot and went on to lead some key strategic deals for the company...Tribe is attempting to accelerate its growth. Pincus said it is clear that Tribe should continue its focus on "community listings," and that growth in the number of unique users and listings has been solid over the past year -- particularly in the Bay Area. It's just that Tribe needs to be taken to the next level, he said. "It has good signs, but we haven’t scaled it yet."...Regarding his stepping down, Pincus said: "I don't really enjoy being a day to day manager of people and projects," he said, "and it's not something I think I'm particularly good at..."

tribe will put out a formal release naming the new ceo and his background tomorrow.  i'm excited to get back to focusing on new ideas for tribe and beyond...and maybe do a little more flying and biking again.

Two New Investments

EVDB - the service, which is aimed at providing a more open way for people to find and publish all events, was launched at pc forum last month and recently backed by draper fisher. i think that evdb represents the right approach to a web service in that they aggregate all existing events from meetup (and hopefully tribe). then they enable people to tag them into whatever categories they want as well as publish their own. i particularly like the integration with ical which seems way underleveraged to date as an exciting way for groups to share calendars. i really dont get why evite hasnt turned themselves into a branded web service that could be found within friendster, myspace and tribe but that's another diatribe.

Merlin Securities - this new prime brokerage service was launched by my good friend aaron vermut with his dad, steve vermut. dad built bank of america's prime broker into a business that i understand was more profitable than starbucks. in addition to having great web interfaces and software, merlin represents a great opportunity to bet on the explosion of hedge funds, but more selling picks and shovels than digging.

Vertical Search Engines and Aggregators

last week, walt mossberg wrote about two new search services that focused deeply on a particular vertical segment. i wanted to share my own thoughts on this concept and the categories he highlights.

jobs - indeed.com - he points out that indeed is aggregating most big job sites. my first question is whether the most important driver for a job applicant is comprehensiveness. we hired a terrific office manager slash 10 other roles on craigslist. she said she chose craig because he offered 'the best' jobs. by this she meant the most relevant organic (created there) jobs for her search. in her case, this meant jobs from real people (hiring managers like me) and not from recruiters, or worse, staffing firms who she says will regularly bait and switch to harvest more resumes. i'd like to hear from people what the use case is for most comprehensive in jobs. seems to me that relevance (ie. not wasting time sifting through a lot of wrong results is more important).

if this search aggregation follows the path that the overall web serach took, the winner will be the 'google' of each space, meaning the company that shows me the 3 results that meet my criteria and not the 3000. anyone remember being impressed with alta vista that it searched the 'whole' web? anyone remember using alta vista to find anything quickly? no. it was a project.

Indeed's search results were often too vague. A search for "screenwriter" in California turned up postings for office assistants, movie producers and even someone to remove a computer virus -- but none for actual screenwriters.

people - ziggs - course i've been talking about the coming peopleweb and this sounds like one of the first aggregators out there, however, i dont get the business model. why would i pay $25 to be listed in their directory when i can get found on the web way more often in google? oh wait, they also will buy my name on google for $50 a year...lets see, if i got googled 100 times a week, and clicked on 10% of the time (which is high but i'm vain:) and it costs $0.10 per click, that would be $1 per month. whoa, high margin biz! i'd pay the folks at ziggs a lot just for the list of consumers who were that dumb and lazy! maybe they could call it the 'buy a bridge in brooklyn' list. also, how will anyone ever know to use this site? will it be so massively popular that a year from now we'll all be saying, 'hey, i'm going to go zigg that hottie'? if so, i'll eat my blog (and buy their customer list too:) maybe they should have called it 'shag.com'. at least i'd remember it and have more fun saying 'have you shagged me yet?'

and what's ironic is that people is the place you really do want comprehensiveness and relevance, but mossberg says...

And it seems to be aimed more at helping people and companies promote themselves than at providing comprehensive information. Ziggs search results provide only neutral or flattering biographies, not information that might warn you away from a person.

now here's what i dont get, when i 'zigged' myself it only shows me a 'mr mark pincus of pittsburgh'. if i google myself, i own the whole page. if this site is less comprehensive than google why would anyone ever use it?

one funny (to me) aside on this whole topic is that two yrs ago when i started playing with all this stuff, i bought my name on google (course now i could just pay $50 for it:). i described this as the ultimate web vanity plates. bonus is google tells you how many times you've been 'zigged', or i mean googled. jonathan abrams (who was found by ziggs but third on the list. wonder if he paid the $25?) outbid me on my name and put up an ad saying 'get the real scoop on pincus for $25). taught me a fast lesson about this new world where anyone can 'own' your name.

where will this all lead? how far are we from anti fan blogs where girls can 'out' players, employees can 'out' ruthless bosses? we already had fucked company. anyone want to launch fucked boyfriend or fucked boss or how about fucked vc? i'll sell you my domain, 'ratemyvc.com', which is a more polite version:)

all listings - oodle. this is a sight that didnt get featured by mossberg. it was just launched by craig donato and does a good job of aggregating all local listings for 3 cities to start with. my question is how will they get repeat traffic at a cost that allows them a profit with google ad sense? and what will happen when everyone becomes an aggregator, or worse, a standard emerges allowing all listings originators to publish their listings in whatever fashion they choose? what role will aggregators have when they have a disadvantage in traffic acquisition and no advantage in aggregating? this smart guy, jason dowdell, sees this as the beginning of a wave of vertical search players.