Bay Area tech employment on the rise

Every day this week I have received an e-mail and phone call from Bay Area technology companies looking for a technical product manager. Some companies I have never heard of, others have a market capitalization in the billions. I would love to say they heard of me through my weblog, but most found me on Monster or some similar service. These companies just signed some big deals, more are coming, and they need to hire people quickly to support the new business.

The Bay Area economy is picking up and many companies just can’t hire fast enough. Referral bonuses are back. Employees are less afraid of being laid-off. Interesting times ahead.

Society of the Underemployed

As an economics nerd I have a lot of thoughts about weblogs and theories of incentive. Weblogs share some social and economic motivations with the world of open source software yet I struggle to quantify the economic effects on an individual publisher level.

The key overlooked metric of the blogosphere is the society of the underemployed. People with full-time jobs and a paycheck who rather be doing something else on a full or part-time basis utilize weblog tools in an attempt to gain notoriety or possibly a new job. Weblogs are the karaoke night of online journalism where many participants are singing the same song and everyone dreams of their moment in the spotlight. Weblogs have found their way into the cubicles and bedrooms of America as individuals long to be heard and recognized where no such recognition exists before.

During the boom years of the late 1990s employees could be selective about their employers and companies made huge efforts to attract employees and keep turnover as low as possible. An employee defined his or her work environment, hours, and was free to pursue whatever career path entered his or her mind. The boom years came crashing down and quality minds scrambled for work. Dreams were forgotten and bright minds took jobs at Starbucks, happy to pay the bills but creatively dormant. In 2001 Pyra struggled to stay alive and Mena Trott crafted her very own “Winner” ribbon before starting work on Movable Type with Ben. People wanted to keep their dreams alive but reality was closing in.

Along came the world of weblogs. Individuals publishing personal experience for peer review and archived for the world to see. Cubicle dwellers had an outlet, a way to be discovered and appreciated, and a way to dream of a way out of their less than ideal world of collecting a paycheck but little else. Even writing about a cheese sandwich is a welcome distraction from an unsatisfying job.

Eventually weblogs evolved into more than cheese sandwiches and short posts. Free hosted services such as Blogger’s BlogSpot allowed anyone to get started in the world of weblogs and created a tool boom similar to Web-based e-mail and instant messaging before it. Corporate distractions were now more serious. Link blogs evolved into excerpts and then posts. Weblog authors now had to differentiate themselves based on content. Passionate and underemployed individuals were ready to step up and share their areas of expertise with the world.

Weblogs have led to many hires based on reputation gained in ways previously not possible. Local journalism, political analysis, and stock selections are served up by individuals with full-time jobs unrelated to their weblogs. Companies are now able to tap into this large community of the underemployed and utilize a small portion of their time for free. Market research is widely available without the need for expensive focus group testing. All enabled by a network of people contributing to an online world throughout their day. Companies who get it right are able to benefit from the efforts of eager participants in exchange for the chance of fame and/or recognition. Start-ups are especially likely to get it right since they need all the help they can get. Companies should learn how to better utilize the society of the underemployed, gain goodwill, and increase loyalty.

Forrester Research on search loyalty

Charlene Li authored a new paper on search engine user loyalty and posted a summary on her weblog. The $50 six-page paper cites extensive customer survey data. Some interesting findings:

  • MSN gained substantial share as the default browser home page. (Internet Explorer no doubt)
  • MSN has a slight lead in toolbar users. (related to Messenger installs?)
  • Almost half of all toolbar users also use another toolbar.

Charlene concludes that customers are becoming more sophisticated and specialized search companies will take away market share from Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Feedster is mentioned as a player in the RSS specialty.

Omidyar Network invests in Feedster

Feedster announced funding from Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network,

Scott Rafer told me on Monday that the Omidyar Network had a good understanding of his approach to life and business from reading his weblog. A good business case for blogging about more than just your startup. Omidyar Network is interested in enabling the public. Feedster seeks validation as it continues to pursue venture capital funding, but the Omidyar Network is known for investing in social ideas and non-profits (Creative Commons, voting intiatives). Feedster is currently the only live search player without venture capital funding.

I know little about the world of venture capitalists, but it is always interesting how dollar amounts or board of director placements are never announced. If someone gives you five dollars you can issue a press release and feel your business model has been validated. If you have a good enough product the VCs call you and you work out a relationship and partnerships. Pitching to VCs has been described as bend over and grease up but I think it would be interesting to gather ideas from intelligent business people even if it never resulted in immediate millions.

Programming Summit at Sun

Sun Microsystems hosted a programming summit yesterday with many big names in programming in attendance. Tim Bray has a good write-up about the day, the process putting together the event, and some of the outcomes.

Groovy
James Stachan
Java
Graham Hamilton
Gilad Bracha
Martin Buchholz
Parrot
Dan Sugalski
Perl
Larry Wall
Python
Guido van Rossum
Samuele Pedroni
Sean McGrath

Good to see so many major coders in one spot to share ideas. Tim predicts “that as time goes by, more and more of the code written in the Java ecosystem won’t be in Java. This is a good thing.”

Edward Tufte lecture tonight at Stanford

Edward Tufte photograph

Edward Tufte is giving a lecture at Stanford tonight at 7:30 p.m. about his new book Beautiful Evidence. Tufte will discuss the theory of analytical design and methods for displaying eviidence. He will display the design decisions for reporting tools such as the Columbia shuttle investigation.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is on my Christmas list and I have been wanting to learn more of Professor Tufte’s methods for years. If you would like a ride to or from the event I will be driving from San Mateo and returning to San Francisco.

Live search traffic comparison

Which company is the number one player in live search in terms of total traffic and user share?

Live search Hitwise statistics December 2004

The above chart plots total market share Feedster, Technorati, and PubSub over the past month compared to all sites as calculated by Hitwise. Feedster and Technorati jostle for the top position while PubSub is way below. I expected to see a clear winner and was surprised at the results.

WSJ on weblog marketing intelligence

Vauhini Vara of the Wall Street Journal writes about how marketers increasingly turn to weblogs for marketing data. The article mentions Volkswagen utilizing reporting tools from Techdirt to keep informed of “items that appear on blogs and message boards, as well as in mainstream news outlets.” Sony hired Intelliseek to find out how its customers compared its new digital Walkman to Apple’s iPod.

Karen Rizzo, director of marketing for Kryptonite, mentions how rapidly their product’s reputation fell apart online when a message in an online bicycle forum spread across the online world.

I expect to see more automated reporting tools in this space to help companies deal with the influx of data regarding their products. I already know of companies hiring consultants to interpret Technorati’s results, and it is only a matter of time before companies develop market intelligence tools to tap into this readily available information.