Anthony's comments

Brilliant, simply brilliant. Good use of affinity networks.
on A Better Way to Buy a Car

StartUpHire.com is a brilliant concept that will hopefully achieve escape velocity in an important niche for high-value recruiting services at a time that recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is experiencing an influx of new entrants. Most of the new RPO entrants have offshore operations, where the subtleties of U.S. business are not always apparent. StartUpHire.com could serve as one-stop RPO service for ALL of a startup’s recruiting and human-resource-management needs throughout an organization’s lifecycle. By beating everybody else to human-resource-outsourcing (HRO) clients, StartUpHire.com can find itself in the enviable position of an incumbent. StartUpHire.com can supply additional HRO services and retain its clients indefinitely by performing all HRO functions as passionately as the early-stage recruiting ones. StartUpHire.com can bring special expertise to finding, screening and handling startup-oriented people, who are a breed apart from run-of-the-mill talent. Startup people can be extremely valuable to young organizations but not always to established corporations. On a personal note, I find startup people do not always fit into old line organizations because of our tendency to come in and immediately want to change things, shake things up. Work is often too much of a passion for startup people. Conventional career paths do not reward or recognize the qualities of good startup people, which include a willingness to take risks, contribute more than is expected and to rebound quickly from setbacks. I’ve been pushing HireAstartupGuy.com – with uninspiring results, so it is great to see StartUpHire.com coming into this neglected (and potentially highly profitable) vertical. Go get ’em!
on Need a job, try StartUpHire

The global social media revolution will not occur until non-computer-owning people in developing economies become involved—through their mobile devices. The general release of .tel today provides new opportunities for startups to address that previously neglected demographic. It has been forecast that within three years, if cellular carriers adopt .tel tools, then over a billion social networking IDs will be created for mobile device subscribers. See: <a target='_blank' href=' http://ecommercetimes.com/story/Social-Media-Revolution-Will-Be-Tel-evised-66510.html '>["http://ecommerc...</a>
on Social media is here to stay... Now what?

Interview conducted by Jehan Ara of P@SHA from March 2009 at Confiz, covered their new product lines. New products include an SMS social networking platform for cellular carriers. <a target='_blank' href=' http://webstudio.ciopakistan.com/2009/03/in-the-line-of-wire-ep-13-confiz-solutions/ '>["http://webstudi...</a>
on Confiz Solutions

I am just waiting for a president to pull up in a stretched hybrid. On 20s.
on Obama inauguration - No. 5 most watched event

An alternate business model would be to pick up where Customize Google leaves off, by allowing users to customize search UIs, privacy settings and search preferences. A glimmer of how this could begin is provided by Customize Google, a Firefox add-on that allows users to add search-ranking numbers to the left side of the page, quickly pull up results in other engines, and more controversially, to block ads from Google. One player to watch is Amazon’s A9 service. They started out with Microsoft Live search feeds, which they appear to have discontinued in favor of OpenSearch.org that Amazon created to serve both A9 and other third-party search clients. OpenSearch opens possibilities for allowing users to save viewing preferences in their search client and to combine search with bookmarking, shopping preferences and shopping comparisons. Thinking about where Amazon could take A9 and OpenSearch.org can provide models for competitors to consider. It also suggests possible buyers for SearchMe and other emerging search companies as coming from shopping and auction sites such as EBay. Other search models have been suggested from the direct search side of the industry by players such as Marchex, Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling. Last time I checked, Schilling’s sites received more page views than YouTube. Automating content feeds onto Schilling’s properties or Marchex’s creates more of a two-step search process. In the library science field, this used to be referred to as a category catalog. Before they automated, the engineering societies’ shared library in New York City was one of the few libraries in the U.S. to use a category catalog instead of a traditional one-step library catalog. Rather than take us back to the days of Yahoo index and forcing users to laboriously drill down to an exact search result, the direct search model could be integrated with a browser-based licensed keyword system. In the football example that Ezra uses here, ‘football’ typed into a search engine would open to a more formalized results page that would encourage higher conversion rates. It would be a branded mini-portal. Chaining organic and paid search would allow users to find their way back to the search results because of the branding component, e.g., Football.com. Even without a browser-based keyword licensing system, bulked-up direct search sites using UGC feeds could still perform well within traditional Google-based search results, as Marchex has achieved with <a target='_blank' href=' http://www.90210.net/ '>["http://www.9021...</a> in search results for the zip code 90210. As we move closer to semantic search, hybrid direct/organic search models will become more popular and persuasive. As panelists on Vator.TV have emphasized, we are still in early days for search.
on Google vs visual search, Searchme

There are plenty of news aggregation websites that are powered by UGC and that do not depress the search rankings of the content the cover, nor do they replace URLs of ‘covered content’ with their own URL, as Zimbio does. Buzzfeed.com is one that I like. Other people will have their own favorites. Zimbio is a black-hat SEO’s dream. Zimbio’s automated importation of content, which is then framed and given a Zimbio URL, violates the terms of service of many of the sites that Zimbio takes content from. The fact that Zimbio did not willingly take down my content when I asked them (and then lied to me about what Zimbio was doing) gives Zimbio a different image than the one portrayed by their CEO below. Anyone who cares about their search rankings, content integrity and content-ownership rights should care about Zimbio.
on Zimbio, an interactive magazine

Uno mas: <a target='_blank' href=' http://twitturly.com/ '>["http://twitturl...</a> tracks what URLs people are talking about as they post to Twitter.
on 10 tools for listening in social media

It is important to understand what Zimbio is doing because of the impact these practices could have on companies seeking to connect with customers using organic (unpaid) search. If Zimbio or a similar company can automate content piracy, they can quickly achieve greater search-results prominence than the content as it originally appeared. It appears that Zimbio’s automation is achieved by taking news feeds from Google, Yahoo and Topix and automatically posting the feed info (article title, description and URL) to the Zimbio site. When a feed-link is clicked on within Zimbio, it opens to the original content—but within a Zimbio frame. The viewer can then navigate within the pirated website, but with the Zimbio frame and URL retained. Search results for the pirated content are achieved with the Zimbio URL, not the originating URL. It also appears that members of the Zimbio community can manually post links to copyrighted content outside of Zimbio, which is then rendered inside the Zimbio frame when a Zimbio site user accesses that link. Vator’s content may have been pulled into Zimbio by this second method. The content posted by Zimbio from my primary publisher came in through the automated feeds, which Zimbio automatically categorized according to a topic schema that incorrectly posted my news material on the IT industry under a Zimbio category for a professional U.S. football player who has the same name. Erroneous categorization didn’t dampen Zimbio’s ability to achieve higher search rankings for that material than several of the websites where the original content appeared. Accessing content through feeds and manual linking, Zimbio achieves search-results prominence and thereby draws visitors into the Zimbio site, where ads greet viewers on pages where feed info and links appear. Three years ago, a similar feed-driven content management system was pulling content from numerous U.S. news sources and posting it onto a Pakistani news portal that was shut down with the help of the Pakistan Software Export Board. This is the first time I’ve seen such a sophisticated operation in the U.S. Zimbio responded with three points: 1. Stating that they could not find anything in my publisher’s terms of service that prohibits framing. 2. Interpreting permission to reproduce the headline of any article as covering their activity. “The link is really all that's on our site, with the exception of the byline and that fragmented sentence,” said a representative of Zimbio. 3. Finding three instances of another party using a frame from the same publisher, but with a ‘remove frame’ button and with the content apparently originating from an image search, not a traditional web search. Because other parties retrieve and show images (as thumbnails) with the full-page context of those images shown below a frame (as in a Google image search) Zimbio argued that it was acceptable for Zimbio to frame entire websites—while denying that anything except the links appeared on Zimbio. Zimbio calls the framed pages ‘pilot’ pages. Perhaps ‘pirate’ would be a better name. Even though they have agreed to stop the piracy from the publisher whose website was the subject of my original complaint, there does not appear to be anything in place to block Zimbio from taking content from other publications where my content appears—including Vator.TV. The technology employed by Zimbio could easily be reproduced by other parties, including those seeking to achieve search-results-prominence in only a small number of keyword categories. Zimbio or parties using Zimbio’s methods could offer blackhat-SEO services in niche markets that would be difficult to detect until the damage had been done. Zimbio’s platform is easy to use and free. Third parties would not need to develop their own platform for black-hat SEO. They could simply use the manual-linking service on Zimbio to import content from other websites, as was done with Vator.TV, and then supplement that content with automated news feeds. This makes the development of a proposed service such as PiracyScan all the more relevant for companies seeking to prevent black-hat SEO attacks against the primary keywords that customers use to find those companies on Google/Yahoo/Live/Ask.
on Zimbio, an interactive magazine

In email exchanges over the last two days, the Zimbio team has denied any wrongdoing. How will other people react when they find their content wrapped in a Zimbio frame and presented with a Zimbio URL? Let’s ask Bambi Francisco, whose interview originally posted on November 13, 2008 on Vator News now appears as Zimbio content, with a Zimbio frame on the left side of the screen and a Zimbio URL above: Full URL on Zimbio: <a target='_blank' href=' http://www.zimbio.com/pilot?ID=1_EcVE0xYXx&ZURL=%2FWooMe%2Fnews%2F1_EcVE0xYXx%2Fvator%2Bstory%2BTila%2BTequila%2Bushers%2Breality%2BTV&URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vator.tv%2Fnews%2Fshow%2F2008-11-13-tila-tequila-ushers-in-reality-tv-on-woome '>["http://www.zimb...</a> Here is the TinyURL for that Vator News content on Zimbio: <a target='_blank' href=' http://tinyurl.com/6hlaxh '>["http://tinyurl....</a> Navigating around from that November 13 interview doesn’t appear to shed the Zimbio frame or Zimbio’s URLs. For example, someone could navigate to Bambi Franciso’s profile page on Vator.TV and become confused into thinking that she is somehow connected to Zimbio. Perhaps someone at Vator TV could make an inquiry over at CBS Marketwatch, whose content also appears on Zimbio with a big frame and a Zimbio URL, as in this example from November 25, 2008: Full URL on Zimbio: <a target='_blank' href=' http://www.zimbio.com/pilot?ID=jGYg20fFilI&ZURL=/Work+N+Play/news&URL=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.com%2Fnews%2Furl%3Fsa%3DT%26ct%3Dus%2F6-0%26fd%3DR%26url%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketwatch.com%2Fnews%2Fstory%2Fh-p-helps-push-tech-stocks%2Fstory.aspx%253Fguid%253D%25257B1C2EDF0B-CE22-4083-8EDA-DE6F67AB7E20%25257D%26cid%3D1274386433%26ei%3DfvwsSfGcJKqi9gThipAL%26usg%3DAFQjCNEK5nj0zXOpNjVZ3wYxzq_bbWF8OA '>["http://www.zimb...</a> Here is the TinyURL for that CBS Marketwatch content on Zimbio: <a target='_blank' href=' http://tinyurl.com/55ha2x '>["http://tinyurl....</a>
on Zimbio, an interactive magazine

Zimbio’s pitch on Vator.TV is misleading because it only states that links are being posted on Zimbio to third-party content. It neglects to inform potential investors that Zimbio is reproducing third-party content in total, in many cases, and is doing so in violation of copyrights and licensing agreements. Zimbio points to the need for a new business that can defend against the practices of companies like Zimbio. This new proposed startup could achieve profitability by splitting punitive damage awards with content owners who find that their content has been reproduced without their permission. Having just sent Zimbio a cease-and-desist request, I’m ready to be the first customer of such a startup. I’ll even contribute the domains PiracyScan.com and PiracyScanner.com to this effort. How did Zimbio achieve fantastic traffic growth without spending tons of money? In my cease-and-desist request, I noted that it appears that Zimbio has a content management system that scours the Web for content and then reproduces that content on Zimbio. They do so in a manner that attracts high rankings in organic search results. Zimbio then posts ads on landing pages for stolen content. I’m unclear as to the scope and effectiveness of Zimbio’s automated content ‘management’ capabilities. However, it is clear that such theft of content effectively depresses the search rankings of legitimately licensed content and diverts viewers to websites where stolen content has been posted. There are plenty of opportunities for new businesses to make money—without hurting others.
on Zimbio, an interactive magazine

Robert Scoble said that he doesn’t judge himself by who follows him (or how many), but rather by who he follows. The best use of social media, especially from a brand management perspective, is to provide a means of listening. If we are in the room to listen, does it matter who or how many people follow us? Why not follow people who have different interests from your own, so it becomes irrelevant whether they follow you back? The very top ranked twitterati post only once or twice a day. This is because most Twitter users are not power users and are not using sorting tools of any kind. If a poster opens a hose, that person may find themselves unfollowed. It’s ironic that many Twitter users find that they gain followers when they take a break from posting—and lose followers when they post. Don’t be afraid to block people with inappropriate avatars, aliases, or content. About 5-10% of the people who I follow do not allow their postings to be seen publicly and do not allow new followers without permission. Guy Kawasaki is a good person to follow because he mixes helpful information with occasional personal details, allowing readers to gain a sense of him as a whole person. Scoble is harder to follow because ‘the force is strong with him’ and so is the content hose. One industry wag remarked, “the problem is not Scoble, the problem is unfiltered Scoble.” Ann P. Mitchell (no relation) commented that some people use Twitter as a one-to-many instant messaging service rather than as a microblog. She didn’t say this, but others may find that to do so makes one’s tweets less relevant and the poster harder to follow. I recommend following both Scoble and Kawasaki. However, not everyone in the Twatrix (the Twitter matrix) agrees: “I'm a thought leader. My strategy is to follow everyone and then not read any of their tweets. Also LINKS! Here are links to some links.” RT @mayja There’s nothing to see in my tweets: <a target='_blank' href=' http://twitter.com/aem76us '>["http://twitter....</a>
on Guy Kawasaki on how to be Web famous

The merging of the address bar and search bar gives Google too much control over navigation. It separates companies and website operators from their website addresses and brands. Companies spend heavily to establish and maintain brands. Google has just imposed itself between consumers and businesses. Direct navigation has now become proprietary search, whereby Google uses its discretion to filter out web addresses and domains that it deems less relevant. I object and I hope others do too.
on Google's press event for Chrome

FundFindr gets my vote, in part because of their relevance to the stock exchange and rough-and-tumble angel environment in Vancouver, BC. It’s a different investment environment in BC, fed by mining money and us former HKers with more optimism than common sense. On the downside, there is some brand confusion in play here. They are pitching with a dot-tv domain, (as if the company were a media play) but with a dot-com listed on their company profile. If they are confused about who they are, investors and entrepreneurs will be too.
on Entrepreneur matchmaking sites

Brand confusion in play here, with a dot-tv domain being promoted (as if the company were a media play) but with a dot-com listed on their company profile. If they are confused about who they are, investors and entrepreneurs will be too. On the upside, FundFindr seems well suited to the rough and tumble world of Canadian angels and VCs. Think Vancouver Stock Exchange.
on Venture dating made easier

Cost for advertisers for 1,000 page views (CPMs) at MySpace have been 13 cents.
on Next-gen Web analytics, beyond pageviews

Some day I’d like to see Bambi step outside the role of neutral interviewer and launch into a coaching session. That day is now. Being a cheerleader has its limits, both in terms of entertainment value and personal integrity. On numerous occasions, it would have been priceless to have someone cut me off mid-pitch and say: “You are most probably going to fail and this is why…” Then the conversation could be resumed in two weeks. Do you learn more from looking at mistakes or successes? Mistakes have a lot to teach us, especially when they are pointed out in a clear and non-threatening manner.
on Part I: Bridging Hollywood and Silicon Valley

Impressive track record! Great client list. Better than trying to do this in-house.
on The leader in advanced social networking communities

Would MomJunction gain traction by offering discount coupons for products and services, which would build its network and provide a bonus to registered site users? They could also offer product samples. I like MomJunction because it is the ultimate in early-stage brand building and brand recognition for young consumers.
on MomJunction

The big M&A news out of India is the Government of India’s (GOI’s) upcoming liberalization of reserve capital requirements for Indian companies to make international acquisitions. The GOI is encouraging the acquisition of Western companies that have not gained cost-effective access to global talent pools. The acquisition plus globalization (G+A) business model will allow Indian companies to profit directly from the efficiencies of globalization, rather than simply serving as contractors for Western multinationals. U.S. investment banks and private equity funds could adopt a similar strategy, scouting for U.S. companies that have globalized only under high-priced arrangements or have not globalized so at all. There are plenty of opportunities for taking marginally profitable companies and flipping them under a G+A business model.
on India saw smaller, fewer VC deals

Microsoft would be better served by going upstream and acquiring traffic directly, on the ‘buy the Internet’ model of Kevin Ham, rather than trying to buy into downstream consumption. Microsoft could start by acquiring Seattle-based Marchex, which operates thousands of subject-specific and location-specific portals that sport a mix of imported content and relevant ads. The two companies are located practically next door and have compatible corporate cultures.
on Vator exclusive: Googol CEO memo: "They're on the run"