Oren Friedman pointed me at Vancouver based DabbleDB, an Enterprise 2.0 service provider that takes a big step in the right direction. DabbleDB officially looks to “combine the best of group spreadsheets, custom databases and intranet web applications, and provide a new way to manage and share your information on the web.” (7 minute demo provided)

DabbleDB’s groupware is ideal for project management. The typical customer would be an outward facing, web educated, small business. It delivers an alternative and competitive offering to the one offered by 37 Signals. As a matter of fact, both companies seem to be sharing a lot of DNA as pioneers of the new marketing generation. They are both fast acting, customer supportive, user centric, opinionated. But if 37 Signals are the cool party boys everybody wants to hang out with, then DabbleDB are your ideal study buddies. They don’t use simplicity as the dominant theme but instead offer more features and require a better prepared mindset. Both companies offerings are extremely intuitive compared to any in-house traditional alternative.

They offering itself consists of project management, contacts, calendar sharing and data collaboration. Everything is web based, but unlike many other web 2.0 enterprise aspiring services, DabbleDB actually provides Backup, SSL encryption and more advanced features - such that fit an IT educated business environment. Another interesting angle is the pricing one. DabbleDB does not offer a free option. Instead it offers 4 pricing packages, ranging from $10 per month Personal edition) to $150 per month (corporate edition, up to 60 users).

I watched the demo and test drove the free trial. I was definitely impressed. DabbleDB has a very friendly and easy to grasp service offering. it doesn’t use hip names or cool taglines, but it does what it says and well. The fusion between the new web 2.0 elements and the traditional IT practices seems to be one of the better ones I’ve seen.

I am left with 2 open questions:

1. It is really possible to gain enough customers without offering a free option?

2. Are “better IT educated” businesses ready to embrace hosted, web based services for project management and data collaboration?

I guess we’ll need to wait and see although my hunch is that the answer is “yes”. I see good things coming DabbleDB’s way which are also echoed in the press they are getting lately.

For more information visit the companies’ blogs - 37Signals and DabbleDB

[written using Zohowriter]

      

This post is about something completely different. Guy Kawasaki published an interview with Dr. Sandor Gardos, CEO and staff sexologist of MyPleasure, an online sex toys retailer. If for courtesy or for teasing purposes, Guy posted a heads up about the subject a day in advance. His promo spun an inevitable debate between commenters (myself included) about good taste, etiquette and dealing with semi-sexual content in the context of a respected blog. While most readers were supportive of the choice, some have criticized Guy’s dealing with “smut”. Others raised concerns about the content filtering preventive actions they now must perform and one reader simply announced “taking Guy off his list”. The interview itself is clean and interesting of course, but the whole debate got me thinking and spun this post.

So before I go into my view on “modern online parenting”, I have a confession to make. I never bought or used a sex toy in my life. As a matter of fact, I visited “good vibrations” in San Francisco once, took a walk around and didn’t purchase anything. This pretty much summarizes my experience with sex shops. Unfortunately, sex toys don’t turn me on. Many people love sex toys. Most people I know would feel awkward if they were to accidentally bump into me while entering a sex shop. Most people also have a very unique taste they don’t like to share. This is where online sex shops provide superb value for good people. One of liberation, anonymity and personalization.

Like most parents I have major concerns with the easy and distorted sexual exposure the Internet provides. I hate the thought of my son and his friends learning about sex from unrestricted online porn at a young age. Not because it’s satanic, but because it trashes the innocent fantasy with a sad circus. I do know, however, that my son as well as your kids WILL consume a lot of online porn. When I went through puberty the Internet was not an option. I still managed to put my hands on 2 issues of “Hustler” and on a 70s style VHS porn tape. I used to hide them under my bed and take them out when my parents were at work. I also managed, with a friends help, to hack a neighbors’ adult cable channel and watch it on my own TV at night. Like most teenage boys I had sex on my mind most of the time and like most teenage boys the last thing I was concerned with was my parents approving or disapproving. You think a net nanny would have stopped me?

Let’s face it, online sex is a part of modern reality. Your kids have access to the Internet and they WILL watch and share a lot of porn. No net nanny, sanctions or “policies” can stop the sexual curiosity of a young adult (thank god!). My opinion about content filtering services is that they take parents’ money for nothing. Even worse that that, they provide parents with the illusion that they can exclude them from the challenge of Internet age sex education.

So I do not intend to purchase any content filtering software. I will do my best to complete the information my kids gain access to with measures they can benefit from and trust. They need to learn about SDDs. They need to learn about the absurd and false pretense of porn. About the beauty of love. About the excitement of anticipation and about the importance of imagination. Building that bridge is where I personally believe parenting should focus on. It’s challenging and untrivial, so what. Forget about blocking content or artificial censoring - would that have stopped you?

[written using Zoho Writer]

      

Albert Lai, Bubbleshare’s CEO alerted me to review this new service and I gladly obliged. This review is impartial despite the “spoiler headline” (Albert…where do I send the invoice? ).

So why am I in bubblove?
1. Let’s start with the basics – bubblshare does what all the other photo album sharing do, but with fun and simplicity.

2. The bubble effects are really a cool way to personalize a slide show! I am not sure this is REALLY sustainable and not just novelty, but nonetheless the execution of the interface is flawless.

3. Setting up an account is simple and fast.

4. Sharing is easy – create album –> enter email –> share. Already got some rave responses on a cool slide show that took me but a few seconds to put together.

5. The bulk uploading process is smooth and you can opt for a handy email notification that lets you know uploading is finished. No impatient glazing at a slow moving progress bar. Cool!

6. Overall and again - smooth and clear interfaces – very slick. Changing photo order in thumbnail view….wow…very nice.

Love less:
1. The idea of uploading photos from my camera phone is a great bonus. Generating a unique code for the account seemed brilliant. I sent an MMS after reading the instructions, followed the instructions and it seems like my mms email is still MIA. When you send something there should be a ‘receving’ space on the other end. I searched under my account and myalbums…nothing. Maybe I missed something on the instructions, but I do know it’s first of all got to work.

2. Home page is too cluttered – looks like another mashable community / photo sharing / social application – bubble share’s corporate identity does not transpire well enough. No need to mention EVERY SINGLE feature, plugin, download etc. in the home page.

Overall, Bubleshare could easily have ended up being “yet another” photo album website, but they pass the “yawn test very well”. It is immaculate, spectacular and tangy and I left me impressed and, to be honest, also a bit surprised.

Once again, I really enjoy encountering companies that don’t necessarily invent a whole new concept but rather take an existing one, twist it, simplify and execute on it “web life” style.

Bottom line – Bubbleshare has now become my official photo album site.

      

In recent months Aner and I have reviewed several companies operating in the web 2.0 space. From mobile applications like Shozu to web services such as Zoho, We have been candid, not to say blunt. From rave reviews to cynical wrath, we told it like we saw it.

I have been surprised by the overwhelming positive (and consistent) feedback to our reviews. We are not the only bloggers in town, we are not the only customers on the block and yet they all take the time to write us back. Moreover, each time a senior manager within the organization does it personally. This definitely superseded my conservative expectations. Have we all not been victimized by the “thanks for your feedback, we are working on it” laconic response from the invisible PR guy? It got me thinking about one of the more important evolutions Web 2.0 is responsible for - the one of customer service and personal attention.

Direct, personal, fast, courteous, professional feedback as a customer service 101 practice? By top level executives? This is a new phenomenon that big multinationals still haven’t managed to grasp. And when they do make an attempt they usually kill it with the red tape. They hire a VP who builds departments that hire training consultants who help set up additional departments with 10-15 service reps, who in the end become the face to the external world. Sometimes organizations just outsource it all together. They justify it by defining customer service as “a competitive angle, too important, off core specialty that needs to be taken care by professionals”, but in reality their main goal is to get it out of their immediate attention and reduce overall cost. Customer service is the source of so many white lies, just like HR is (“our people are our real asset” is my favorite, but that’s for a different post).

So who is more sophisticated? A company that outsources customer service or one where the CEO, CTO etc. take a few hours of their time on a weekly basis and answer a few hundred emails, write feedback to posts etc.? Who knows their customers better?, who knows their product better?, who knows what the real issues are? The answer is obvious. Business intelligence and customer feedback come from the trenches and when you loose sight of them and turn into a paper or people pusher, then you loose your edge.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying a CEO responsible for 1,500 or 10,000 people would make best use of his/her time by answering 200 emails a week but how about 30? How about reviewing 100?. How about reading them personally and not having them summarized? There is no excuse, no matter how big the company is, to lose the direct sight of the customers, partners and in our case, blogsphere colleagues.

I believe the drift of customer service away from the core of the executives’ daily routine might be the related to the trivial, yet very ‘human’, misconception that customer service is “uncool”. That a CEO, CTO, CMO don’t need to deal with it because its beneath them, not fitting of their managerial status, three piece suite or six and sometimes seven figure pay check. “Why should I do something a $10/hour rep in the Phillipines or India can do??”. That is pure BS.

Web 2.0 brings a positive wind of change. I don’t care about bubble talk, but the new kids on the block know how to treat their customers and neighbors. I hope we all refrain from ‘growing out of it’. In fact, that may be the very key to success and growth. This is the key , knocking the ‘old fools’ off their lazy boy chairs while mumbling “How come they have such incredible retention rates….I’ll wait for the Monday report from the head of customer service to over to go over some data….”
Special thanks for the following executives who know their customers and gave me inspiration to write this post. Luckily, they are not alone, there are many others…:

Sridhar Vembu – Zoho’s CEO
John Crow – Director of Maketing, ThinkFree
Gibu Thomas – Sharpcast’s Founder and CEO
Andy Tiller – Shozu’s CTO

and Signal vs. Noise from 37Signals

      

[Proper Disclusure - this post was written using Zoho Writter]

Last week I wrote about online Spreadsheets. If you recall, the best and final round was between Google and Zoho and Google came up as the winner. When it comes to word processing though, Zoho Writer is my personal favorite , hands down. If I could use only one word to describe why it would be maturity. Zoho writer is simply a mature online word processor. Many vendors face a creativity block when it comes to migrating traditional desktop applications to the web. I noticed it with many spreadsheet applications that were simply mimicking excel. Zoho seems to have passed that hurdle long ago and this is all over the app - from the big feature through the “little things” that make the difference.

Let’s start with the overall feeling. Zoho Writer loads up quickly and makes you feel like you are using desktop software. You get oriented immediately with familiar looking toolbars on top and with an action dashboard on the left. The toolbars offer the exact blend of options required for editing a document in an online environment. From basic (alignment, bullets and numbering, spelling) to more advanced (insert functions, special characters , tables). The left hand dashboard offers easy navigation through shared documents, personalized templates and online storage. We talk a lot about the “offline problem” when web services are concerned. Zoho is well aware of the problem and offers back up options in a number of ways, from emailing to local saving of the file in a wide array of formats - Word, PDF, Text and HTML. They all work well and I really appreciated the PDF option.

Zoho has spiced Zoho Writer with the right dosage of web ingredients. You can easily post a document directly to a blog (Blogger, Live journal, TypePad and WordPress). Neat! You can create your own web templates very easily - just use “Save as template”, no need to go through the “xxx.dot” horror! You can also tag your document the “web 2.0″ way. Gil and I did experience a few hiccups until we figured how to use the sharing properly. The locking mechanism is not intuitive enough, Gil didn’t get the sharing invite to his Google account and we had to spend good 15 minutes before we figured it out. Note to Zoho - work on it!

Then come the little things that make the real difference. The overall user experience which is fantastic. Simple but not style free. The Spell checker that works so nicely. The autosaving you don’t need to remember. The emoticons, history, very functional bottom toolbar, right bland of AJAX….I’m sold!

Yes, Zoho Writer is my Word processor from now. I only wonder how the guys at Zoho plan to keep up with Google once their word processing is out (and it will be out). Zoho offers a full suite of online office apps which I haven’t checked yet - Planner, CRM, Chat, Calendar, Notes. Perhaps the answer is there. I am a little mind boggled by it all being provided for free, but I certainly hope the folks at Zoho have a plan. I’d really like them to stick around.

      

Coincidence strikes in mysterious ways. Less then 10 days after kicking off our reality web life experiment I had a serious fumble to recover. Yesterday evening (6:15PM to be precise) my laptop died. No warning signs, no heads up, no reaction time. It just went from totally vivrant to totally dead in less then a split second. “No reaction at all” dead, in case you wondered. Ironic as can be, this really caught me off guard. I was stressed with time, had 2 important documents to review-edit-send off, a presentation to finish and practice, some urgent emails to read and write and a post to finish. This is what I call a real life web based curve ball. I took over my wife’s computer and got friendly with it for the first time.

So here goes:
• Emails were not a problem of course. Gmail and Outlook Web Access (my corporate email) worked flawlessly and I didn’t feel like I’m compromising anything. Well, Outlook is better then Outlook Web Access but Gmail is better then both.
• I used Zoho Writer to go over and revise a 60 page word document with embedded graphics, tables and diagrams. Worked like a charm. I then used Zoho Spreadsheets to edit one data table and produce the result as a graph. Worked well with hardly, however few hiccups. I’m still a fan of Google Spreadsheets, but Zoho is definitely right there as well.
• Then came the PowerPoint presentation….I tried using ThinkFree as it was the only online PowerPoint application I could find. Wasn’t fun. First of all, PPT files are heavy and require too much upload time. On top of that there is no comparison when it comes to ease of use, functional richness and performance. Sorry to say, but presentation editing is much better on the desktop unless I find a totally different alternative (even though I am not a big fan of PowerPoint presentations to begin with. I have always been a fan of well summarized documents instead)
• Luckily for me, all my important materials were accessible on the web somehow. From my corporate web mail account, through Gmail and my web based drive (expect a dedicated review on that subject in the near future). It did prompt me to consider a better structured approach to web based back up, which I certainly intend to deal with.

I got rid of the post I started and wrote this new one instead. Mission accomplished. Laptop was fixed this morning. All systems are go.

      

As part of our web life reality series, we have opened a dedicated “Degardener” del.icio.us account (“degardener” of course is our del.icio.us username). The account is focused around web 2.0 companies. While launching this experiment we realized there is no comprehensive, updatable list of the web 2.0 sphere. This is where we will keep track, tag and provide quick comments on all the companies we test during our experiment. In time we hope this will become an invaluable web 2.0 knowledge base

Without further a due…add us to your del.icio.us network or just send us links of companies worth checking out.

      

So the first week of our web life reality experiment is over and the withdrawal symptoms are definitely not gone yet. You very quickly realize the fundamental differences between reviewing an application and using it, or perhaps more precisely actually depending on it. Never the less, and despite the shivers and shakes, so far web life has proven doable.

Gil and I are going through a rigorous selection and first time usage process with word processing, calendar management, spreadsheet manipulating, presentation sharing, you name it. The outcome so far ranges from real “Eurekas” to violent laptop shutdowns. Is the web ready to serve as a real desktop alternative? Well, after the first week we cannot predict yet. Some interim conclusions are making headway though.

Let’s start with spreadsheets. We’re all experiencing a lot of buzz lately, propelled mostly by Google and their recent launch of Google Spreadsheets. While the public discussion is not free of Googlebation, other solutions such as Zoho and iRows receive rave reviews and are considered by many to be much better. ThinkFree offers an online collaborative office suite, spreadsheets included…so many options, so little time, how can one choose???

Apparently the good old pony still has a trick or two left. After registering to all services I made an attempt to upload a heavy duty excel sheet to all. By heavy duty I mean one of those interactive business model spread sheets, where formulas, graphs and formats are embedded so deeply into one another, like a profound case of reheated spaghetti. Inseparable, indivisible. After all, with all due respect to simplicity and the rest of the web 2.0 rah rah, performance is still a key requirement when it comes to real life dependency. iRows got the boot right there. From separation of the different tabs to totally different sheets, through loss of formulas and errors in formatting – the spread sheet I got was not the spread sheet I uploaded. ThinkFree, Zoho and Google took the (really challenging) spread sheet like professionals and made it to the next round.

ThinkFree was eliminated next. ThinkFree is a Java based application, and while having tons of advantages it is not really what we came here to test – a pure web based service. We were left with Google and Zoho and here selection was not that trivial. Zoho sheet is a great application and a part of a bigger online office vision that so far puts together an impressive show. Zoho offers a much more comprehensive office experience then Google does - richer formatting, more user defined options, etc. However, when it came to editing a heavy spreadsheet Zoho was simply too slow. Google offers a much lighter and faster interface. And yeah, it is Google, integrated with my Gmail and with my search. Passing on it would be like passing on Robert De Niro for Taxi Driver.

So here it is. Google Spreadsheets rocks! A reliable, easy to use and comprehend application. It did take some time to switch from Excel to Google, but it felt like driving in a different country for the first time (and not England or Japan), no more. The sharing feature worked like a charm and Gil and I actually edited a few not so trivial sheets in real time for a real work need. The sharing is very intuitive and a chat box powers a real time conversation while editing. Nice! From a simplicity point of view, Google managed to collect the very basic useful features and lay them out on top of the web interface. Everything you need is at the top. If you can’t find it for the first time, try again, chances are it’s there.

The one caveat I could really notice was with the formatting. It seems like Google has not put the finishing touches there. No matter how hard I tried, I could not play with borders, colors, merging of cells and using different panes. Either Google doesn’t support it or I simply can’t tell where it is. Same difference. This is where the Beta concept sucks big time. You can’t finish off a spreadsheet this way. If this is not fixed and quickly, then regretfully I will need to retrack to good old Excel. I do trust Google to finish the job though. Sharing is enough of a use case to launch a service but the real need for online sharing is not really mission critical enough to trigger a desktop-to-web switch. For a first release, though, Google Spreadsheets has more then enough to make the qualifying cut. Their application is definitely usable. Let’s see how I speak in a few months time though, stay tuned!

Next week – Word Processing.

      

[For proper disclosure - I am co-founder of a company that enables extending of rich media to mobile phones. The service, which will launch soon, will involve some overlapping with Phone Sherpa. However, it is significantly different in purpose, technology, model and feature-set so I feel comfortable with my objective view of Phone Sherpa]

I bumped into Seattle based Phone Sherpa by coincidence. Phone Sherpa provides a web based service which let’s you create your own ringtones and wallpapers from your own personal content. The service is available internationally, is well localized (worked very well with my Israeli orange phone) and is supported by a wide array of mobile phones. As a matter of fact, it looks like all you need is support for MP3, SMS and Mobile Internet (WAP).

The ringtone editor is pretty advanced. It let’s you crop and equalize the media file you wish to “ring tone-ify” and review your findings before you actually send them to your phone. It did go through some hiccups on my Firefox, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Phone Sherpa. The Wallpaper editor supports cropping as well and also offers some visual affects. Nicely done.

There are a few shortcomings to the service though. The upload time is pretty long for an average song but I guess that’s inherent to such a web service. You do get sample credits , but very quickly you need to pull out your credit card, a task not so simple when you consider the young age of the target crowd. The credit plans themselves are not that cheap, although Phone sherpa does offer yearly and unlimited plans for the heavy users.

I am a very big believer in the power of personal content. Services like Phone Sherpa that let you extend and make use of your own content are making a nice step forward.

      

this is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now so here goes. I am putting the enterprise 2.0 question to the real life test. My own test, on my own premises. Reviews or occasional testing is not nearly enough to get what it really means to take your professional life online. It’s living the life that is necessary to tell whether web apps are really a better alternative then the local incumbents.

For the next 3 months, I will be using web applications only to do the following:

1. Email
2. Word processing
3. Spreadsheets
4. Calendar
5. Presentations
6. Blogging
7. Business and Social Networking

Anything derivative is included in the experiment as well (for example thesaurus or graphs). Unfortunately web based IM and VOIP are not good enough yet to be seriously considered. I will make an attempt to migrate there as well, but I can’t promise.

As an internet savvy prosumer, if I can’t survive on online applications alone, then web 2.0 is not ready for the enterprise. If I can, and more importantly if I never look back, then it’s time to consider some serious follow ons.

The rules of the experiment are pretty simple:

1. Timeframe - 3 months.
2. Trial and error - Up to 3 different web applications per use case before eventually sticking with one.
3. Using web applications only, but local storage is permitted.
3. Posting a tracking update every week in Degardener.

Feel free to point at interesting applications beyond the straight forward we all know. Good luck to me. Experiment is on…..now!

      

I see the idea of googlbation going mainstream. I know it’s kind of a strong word and I still like google but I like the fact more bloggers (and very respectable ones) are joining the ride.

For those who missed my original post - Googlebation - A disorder which causes victims to associate the utmost wisdom, wizardry and solid business foresight to any move Google makes. Physical effects of Googlebation include victim’s jaw to grossly expand, white froth to come out the side of their mouth, while mumbling…”did you see what Google just came out with…did you see…did you see!“.

… now I want to see something real interesting – an operating system, a browser, an alternative world wide web, one where you type GGG instead of WWW. For that call me at 2AM and get me out of bed. But the CL2… give me a break! it’s only a freaking calendar!

For the whole post>> http://www.degardener.com/2006/03/11/googlebation/

      

Cell phones have long become a shaping factor as far as Parent-Child relationship is concerned. The “first cell phone age” is constantly dropping (My 5 year old niece is “not speaking” to her mother for a week now because she refused her cellphone birthday wish). In most cases the parents pay the bill and enjoy the ability to always be within reach, a requirement in today’s over-scheduled, over-anonymous, sometimes evil environment.

Kids owning cell phones is also a source of many ongoing debates as we all know - the biggest one being about the phone bill size. Other issues usually involve child safety - from mobile bullying to call / surfing monitoring. Now there’s another option - actual mobile phone tracking.

Call me old fashioned, but I think parents and kids need to communicate and enact discipline in other ways. I am a big advocate of safety measures, of course, but does anyone really believe a trackable cell-phone would stop a 12 year old from growing up? Kids are smarter then their parents when it comes to making use of technology. They will very rapidly learn how to “accidentally forget” the phone at the school locker and hit a nearby party. They will also very quickly learn that turning off the phone and blaming the battery is a viable excuse. Etc. Etc.

Barry Levine of Newsfactor writes about the new phenomenon - tracking enabled cell phones. GPS (Global Positioning Service Enablement) at cell phones is old news. GPS chips are already built into all CDMA carriers in N. America - Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, US Cellular among others. The commercialization of 3rd party tracking services, however, is still in it’s infancy. Verizon and Cingular already offer some limitted parental controls - mostly dealing with the phone bill and 911 services.

Disney Mobile has announced plans to roll out a parent minded service during CTIA in April. Disney is operating on top of Sprint’s GPS enabled network. Apparently the service is now actually rolling out. In Barry’s words “Starting this month, Disney Mobile will roll out a family plan of cell phones that will offer a suite of features fashioned for the 11- to 15-year-old set, coupled with a generous helping of parental controls. The most controversial of these controls is what Disney Mobile calls Family Locator — a tool that pinpoints the phone’s position using GPS.”

Marguerite Reardon of Silicon.com offers an interesting analysis on Disney’s business opportunities. With 69% penetration among adults and 24% penetration among kids, plus on-going neglection of parental control have made this one a natural value proposition for MVNOs like Disney. Or in Marguerite’s words, “The Disney service was designed specifically for parents who want their kids to have mobile phones for safety and convenience reasons but are either afraid of what their kids might do with the phones or are concerned about getting surprised at the end of the month with a huge mobile phone bill.”

As a parent I am often terrified with the dangers today’s environment poses. I do know that kids lack the proper judgment and are easy targets for abuse. But I don’t believe in the effectiveness of automatic tracking. As a matter of fact, my fear is that some parents will lean on this service instead of on proper communication. then again, when it comes to parenting there are no clear distinctions between right and wrong. Who knows.

      

Mobile Mentalism reports the “Frankenstein’s monster of hype” – a rumored deal between Apple and RIM for the purpose of producing the Apple-Berry-Phone. iPhone rumors have become a daily routine by now, but an “AppleBerry” can definitely be an interesting twist to the plot. I never liked the ROKR – a clumzy, forced, time buying, relationship between the company with the best user interface and the company with the undeniable worst.

With RIM, Apple maybe initiating the first genuine line of converged phones. It certainly won’t be a straight forward approach.

While some may look at the difficult synergy between a consumer company (Apple) and a corporate one (RIM), I personally think it’s a perfect proposition focusing on the high-end, style minded, user. A proposition that would push both iPod and BlackBerry forward. Apple should not be playing the mid range and low end game. Regular mobile phones will be much better MP3 players for a much better price when it comes to that segment.

      

The basic concept of Guru-ism seems to be triggering a lot of emotional reactions and discussions. Fellow blogger compatriot, Uri Baruchin (and got a billboard push by Guy Kawasaki) and even I myself have touched on it at a point.

Oren Friedman sent me the following with a disclaimer (“I hope it’s not too aggressive for the blog”). Oren is my rational alter-ego. I like looking at certain things from a semi romantic perspective (“If it adds real value a business model shall be found”). Oren is a big believer in the basic sense of the business model. He first counter-analyzes whether there is an actual rational and sustainable story behind the flashes. We agree much more frequently then we disagree though, and one element we definitely share is basic resentment to Gurus and Guruism. We both still keep track of their activities of course…

What is it that keeps us so emotionally charged whenever gurus open their mouths? What is it that makes one a guru? And at the bottom line, how should we treat gurus? Is guruism the Industry’s version of projected relationship we have with our parents?

Anyway, Oren’s piece is as always enlightening and definitely not too aggressive. Here goes:
“For a while now I’ve been meaning to sit down and write a piece on Internet Gurus. You know who they are – the ones with the sexiest blogs, the ones who sit on industry panels, who get interviewed all the time, who sit on boards and who (sometimes) make investment decisions.

The archetypical Guru is someone who struck gold during the .COM (note the DOT) craze, and is now considered one of the “elders”. His (or her) opinions will most of the time be on the bleeding edge, putting down the conventional in favor of “new and exciting” ideas/methods/processes. He’ll have plenty of advice on how you should run your business, build your products and what not. And of course, everything is sugar coated with an icing of cliches. Smart and up to date, but nonetheless cliches. Oddly enough, if you were to actually present them with a business proposition which incorporates their innovative/radical/new ideas, chances are they’d turn you down (as investors).

You also have the “self proclaimed” experts. Typically you’ll see him/her writing columns in a magazine/newspaper; his opinion will be solicited whenever news breaks, etc. He has never actually DONE anything, but he is opinionated, and, well. seems to know a lot about everything. Think of the folks who regularly write @ Wired, PC Mag, etc. This expert kind of reminds me of those folks who peddle seminars/books about how to make the killer stock investment. You can’t help wondering, if they have all the know-how and know the secret of how to pick the right stocks, why are they sharing this with me, and how come they don’t already rule the world as the richest of the richest…

Anyhow, as I was putting my thoughts in order, it suddenly struck me that I could just as easily replace Internet Guru with Consultant, and my commentary would (IMHO) still be valid. That’s when serendipity really kicked in. I pulled out my worn copy of Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics, and revisited his chapter on “What Makes a Perfect Parent?“
When you read this section, simply replace “parenting experts” with “Guru” or “consultants“, “parent” with “entrepreneur” and “children” with “your business“:

My point?

Just because someone struck gold in the ’90s (many Gurus are one-hit-wonders), does not mean they know how to run your business, or are in a position to make any comments about it. Remember that successful enterprises (success defined not by how much money you raised, but by how much money you made), are driven by FACTS and by ANALYSES.

Consider Google (and I’m referring to Google the media/search company, not the Google Talk company) – its business is all about being informed, all about looking at market data, analyzing it, and coming up with better solutions and better business models. Yes, it is (was?) a very sexy company and a sexy story, but the secret for success was kick-ass technology coupled with an extremely diligent corporate culture, focused on results as a function of available facts/data. The same applies to eBay, and most (if not all) of the successful Internet ventures. Turns out that successful enterprises follow established processes and time-proven business strategies. What a surprise.

So don’t flip your business upside down just because a blog recommended it as the “business fad of the day”, don’t throw out everything they taught you at B-school (though a lot of it WAS junk), don’t get caught up in the self-embracing hype (”we’re so good, this is so good, the industry is so good, I mean, so and so said so, right?”). Remember – you, and only you, bear the responsibility for your business. Everyone else have their own agenda to promote.

When it comes down to it, there’s not much you can do with the Guru’s “advice”, other than feel that you’re left out in the cold and everyone else knows better. Just relax, and remember that the Guru would not give you the time of day if YOU were to approach them with the same clichés they are feeding you.

Many people got lucky in the 90’s. Yes, lucky. You can easily figure out who they were. You had the ones who actually did a great job of building sustainable companies (Checkpoint, Comverse, Amdocs, Cisco, Yahoo, eBay, even Amazon (so-so) and many others). Then again you had the ones who got lucky – they capitalized on the hype, they bought low and sold high, but have accumulated no tangible experience related to actually building and running a sustainable business. And when luck ran out, well, we all now how that hype ended…”

      

Francois pointed out San Francisco based Meetro for me and I liked them instantly. Apparently Meetro are getting a lot of buzz in Silicon Valley lately. No wonder. Their user centric, up-to-date style is indeed refreshing. While at first Meetro may look like “yet another unified IM”, they glue it all around a very effective use case that makes a lot of stand alone sense if done right - focusing on proximity with your buddies.

Or in their own words: “Technically speaking, Meetro is radius and proximity based software. Untechnically speaking, it finds like-minded people around you instantly. Wherever you are. So whether you’re in-town or out of town, Meetro gets you on the town with old friends or new acquaintances”

Location based IM? Filter your buddy list by proximity? That can make some IM use cases very effective if done properly!

Meetro is PC based, is 100% compatible with the 4 major IMs (MSN / Y! / AIM / ICQ) and has some compatability with Google, MySpace and Friendster. It also collects an independent profile with one very important piece of information - your actual address.

A little bit of backwind (currently ranked around 70,000 in Alexa) and some critical mass and Meetro can definitely take off above the noise.

It’s not like Meetro are free of adolescent flaws. The registration is a way too long, it took me 3 tries to finally download the software. Their compliance with MySpace and Google is not full. The viral features seems a bit too aggressive - if you’re not careful all your contacts will receive an invitation (spam) blast - but it seems like the Meetro folks are betting it on virality. Users are openly invited to join as Meetro agents and, in this case, it seems very proper.

Having a look at the website is worth the time. Open, opinionated, interesting, fun. Great blog with no corporate slogans. It’s clear they know what user centric really means. A bunch of young fellas who clearly enjoy what the do and that have managed to put together a serious offering.

I find it both Web 2.0 and Fun 2.0. I hope you do too.