Blogger enterprise edition?

IDG reports on some possible future product direction for Blogger. Nothing terribly exciting we could not have guessed on our own, but Google does confirm they are dedicating resources to a possibly entry into Blogger for corporations.

Google is also weighing whether to develop an enterprise version of Blogger that would be tailored for workplace use, as opposed to individual consumer use, Stone said. It’s something we’re always thinking about, something we have a few people thinking about and looking into. It’s definitely being researched he said.

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FeedBurner introduces paid statistics package

FeedBurner announced Total Stats PRO, its premium statistics package, offering per-item statistics and referrer reports among other features. The new service is an up-sell from the company’s standard statistics offering starting at $5 a month. I do not use FeedBurner but I signed up for a trial account so I could review their new features.

FeedBurner tracks the each item through the use of a web bug. The web bug is the URL of the feed with a parameter of g with a numeric value equal to what I am guessing is the post identifier in the FeedBurner database. Example: http://feeds.feedburner.com/FeedName?g=XXX

I have thought about the web bug approach to tracking feeds on an individual item basis but it really doesn’t work. When you load a site in your feed aggregator it loads every item but you may not actually view every item or even mark it as read. If you publish your most recent 15 posts every time a user loads the feed your web bugs will load 15 times even if the user only views the first item. What you need is the ability to determine a per-item focus. There may be no way to capture the statistics from users viewing a feed while not connected to the Internet without the assistance of desktop aggregator developers.

FeedBurner tracks the referral URL of each 302 redirect they serve and makes this data available to its premium subscribers. They promote this feature as a way to track who is republishing your feeds, a feature that may cause copyright advocates to open their wallet. This feature only functions if the site republishing a feed uses link attribution and ignores the feedburner:origLink element within the feed pointing to the item’s permalink.

I wonder if publishers utilizing FeedBurner would like to be able to publicize they are a Pro customer on their site graphics or if they would rather not disclose their tracking levels.

If hosted services such as TypePad or Blogware are not already thinking about how to integrate more statistics into their own interface the idea that some of their users are now paying an extra $5 a month for an outside service may be enough motivation to get the job done.

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WordPress 1.5.1 released

WordPress 1.5.1 is now available for download. The new version features extended pings, better Atom output, and much better handling of international character sets.

I helped with some bugs that were fixed within a matter of days. If you are a developer who loves open source, WordPress is written in PHP and has an active community that really cares about their tools. They really do need the ability to export, and I might write that in Atom.

The New York Times including blogs as a regular feature

Next Monday The New York Times will introduce a new Business Day section with a regular feature about the world of blogs written by David Carr.

On Mondays, Business Day will focus on media and marketing news, with technology included as it relates to those industries. David Carr will write a column on new media; the world of blogs will be covered as a regular feature.

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Underpants gnomes

Underpants gnomes

The second season of South Park contained a hilarious take on startup business models. I reference the clip all the time but some people have no idea what I am talking about. So here is a clip of the underpants gnomes.

  1. Collect underpants
  2. ?
  3. Profit

Many startups are currently in phase 1: the collect underpants mode. The companies have a business plan but to most users it seems like a big question mark.

I classify Technorati as still in phase 1 — collect posts and links — with phase 2 gradually coming into public view.

Grokker visualizes Yahoo! Search using Java applet

Groxis, a data visualization company, converted its Grokker desktop software to a Java applet and is demonstrating the ability of its software using Yahoo! search results and advertisements.

I tested it out with an ego search of course. I am able to see generalizations of how Yahoo! search users might view me based on the size of circles. You can adjust the starting date and number of search results through the tools on the bottom of your screen.

Overall a very clever way to show off what Grokker’s technology can do for other data sets.

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Nominations for the Open Media 100

AlwaysOn Network is working with Technorati to create a list of 100 top individuals who are leveraging the power of communities online to accomplish great things. The list is branded as the “Open Media 100” but has nothing to do with the Open Media Network.

The list will not be ranked, but will include 100 individuals in the categories of pioneers, tool smiths, trendsetters, practitioners, and enablers. I am pretty sure members of the Open Media 100 need to publish a weblog and that requirement excludes people like Ward Cunningham or John Doerr. I think Dave Sifry and Joi Ito belong on the list regardless of the potential conflict of interest.

You can submit your nominees for the list by tagging your post(s) with “” for up to five individuals per category. The trendsetters and practitioners categories will probably be the most controversial so be sure to make your voice heard.

I just found out from AlwaysOn that individuals do not need to publish a weblog to make the Open Media 100 list.

Paul Graham business tips

Paul Graham

Last night I saw Paul Graham speak at PARC about how to sell a startup. Eventually the text of the speech should be posted to Paul’s site. Paul sold ViaWeb to Yahoo! in 1998 to create Yahoo! Stores. Paul believes startups should be created and quickly sold for profit. Below are some tips shared by Paul last night.

  • The most powerful motivator is the fear of loss.
  • Startups get bought for one of two reasons: revenues or strategic purpose.
  • You have to convince people at big companies that not buying you would be a big mistake, either as a competitor or being bought by a big competitor.
  • Structure your business for multiple acquirers.
  • Think about what big companies should be doing but are not doing very well.
  • An early buyout is more like a hiring bonus. The acquirer picks up talent and some good ideas.
  • Hire people who are willing to move when acquired.
  • You should only be willing to lose control of your destiny for money upfront. It is not smart sell your company for stock in another non-public company.
  • “The way to get users is to make something really good and then be sure people find out about it.”
  • With most big companies you could hand over your source code and your business plan and they still would not be a threat to you.

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Danny Shader on entrepreneurship

Danny Shader

Yesterday I attended the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar to hear Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and corporate coach to startups such as Google, interview Danny Shader, CEO of Good Technology. Stanford posted a video of the seminar.

Danny Shader has an interesting background including companies such as GO Corporation, Collabra Software, Netscape, and Amazon.com. Danny was an entrepreneur-in-residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital before joining Good Technology. Bill Campbell was an economics major and a former football coach before his highly successful software career.

Good Technology originally developed audio hardware for the Handspring Visor and has changed business direction a few times before settling on creating enterprise software for wireless messaging. Good bet on mobile technology eventually moving towards common platforms such as Microsoft, Palm, and Symbian. Bill Campbell mentioned the introduction of the Treo 600 helped save the company when manufacturers did not believe users wanted a keyboard on their phone.

Good created their own sales force and landed some big accounts early on. Good is proud of the service they provide and invested a lot of money fixing bugs and implementing feature requests from large accounts early on. This process was very costly in the short-term but helped the company build a solid product and a good reputation.

Danny mentioned he is still learning, thanks in part to the great mentors he has been exposed to over the years such as Bill Campbell. He realizes now that he did not hire senior enough people early in the company’s history. As a first-time CEO Danny was able to rely on the credibility and reputation of his board members when he was building the company and creating new strategic partnerships. Every CEO in the world needs someone they can talk to and learn from while still feeling like a safe harbor.

Danny shared some interesting business tips.

  • Keep employees happy by giving them something they believe in.
  • Hire high integrity people and keep them informed on company direction, including downfalls.
  • Get people in the company to recognize they are involved in something bigger than an individual and his financial gains: they might actually change the way the world works.
  • Build your own intellectual property portfolio so you can trade.
  • Don’t charge for upgrades in a service environment. Encourage your customers to upgrade and therefore stay with your product and remain happy. Running old software with bugs and less features makes customers unhappy and looking around for other options.

Next week Tim Draper, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will speak to the class.

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