Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Weblogs/Blogging (Page 7 of 22)

Look Who Made the ‘Top 100 Analyst Blogs’ Again

Aw, shucks — I owe it to all of you out there, my valued, loyal readers….sigh, sniff.  Seriously, I don’t do this for glory, and Lord knows not for dollars. But it’s fun getting recognized like this, and it’s at least my second time, so I guess I should blog about it. Top100analystblogs
This rating system was devised by Jonny Bentwood, a really smart analyst relations exec with Edelman PR in the UK. [He must be smart if he keeps including me, right?] And I seriously do believe that Edelman is the leading PR firm in the world, because they keep showing that they "get" new media better than any other firm out there in my view.

I got a kick out of seeing my friend Jeremiah Owyang, out in the Bay Area, get the #1 ranking.  His Web Strategy blog has always been great, and this is the first Top 100 ranking since he became a senior analyst at Forrester, focusing in social media. They were very lucky to snag Jeremiah, and his blog is now naturally seeing rapid new growth in readership and influence. He’s also one of my favorite "follows" on Twitter.  The man is a social media maniac! And, yes, that is a good thing… 🙂 His research and analysis just keep getting better and better.

Jonny Bentwood (I love the way he spells Jonny) compiles his Top 100 Analyst Blogs ranking from an analyst blog directory published by Tekrati, run by Barbara French out in NorCal.  That directory starts here (with the "A" listings), and is quite comprehensive. [My two blogs are listed under "G" for the name of my company.] Barbara has an accomplished background in analyst relations, and has built an impressive business over the years, with one heck of a great web presence. She blogs regularly, too — of course.

Having been a freelance analyst and writer for some time, and having done analyst relations for at least one of the startups where I’ve headed marketing, I have a great affinity towards this profession — actually, for both sides of the fence. And blogging, I believe, has been a real boon to it, especially benefiting the customers, the users, of the research and analysis. And I know Barbara agrees with me on that.

I just want to say thanks again to my readers, seriously. It makes all the effort worthwhile just to get the emails that float in, out of the blue, from time to time, thanking me for my blog. (Just got one yesterday, from a smart young guy in San Diego who’s a fellow surfer and Surfrider Foundation supporter and heads a cool, new online travel business called Travature.)  I always welcome your thoughts about my blog, whether in the comments or by emailing me at graeme (at) thickins (dot) com. I really do appreciate hearing from you.  Cheers!

 

Don’t Believe Everything You Read on TechCrunch

Especially the comments. Though donning your skeptic’s hat ain’t a bad idea when reading the posts, either. For example, is a startup written about on TechCrunch any better, or worthy of your time, than one that isn’t? Scoldingdontbelieve
They all start from ground zero; some just have money and influence, or a friend on the staff. I found it interesting when a key TechCrunch writer recently quit, saying he didn’t think he could write about "one more f**king startup." Thank you, because I don’t know how many more I can read about, either. (And the quantity is even worse on Mashable.) But I digress…

This post was mainly inspired by the drivel that runs through a lot of the comments. It’s reader beware, folks, as many of you know. What really irks me are negative comments from people who make up an identity to anonymously take a shot a one of their competitors. There must be a way for a site with open comments to make people verify who they really are (and out them, if necessary), or to at least police such comments better. Sometimes, readers do — but it’s not their job, now is it?

I saw such a comment on this recent TechCrunch post: Amazon Web Services Goes Down, Takes Many Startup Sites With It — #8, to be specific (which I won’t give more play by repeating here). First of all, the post itself was overly dramatic to begin with, leading many to comment (most of them constructively) that this really wasn’t as big a deal as the writer was making it out to be. And more than one implied "you get what you pay for."  In other words, this occurrence is one reason why bootstrapping a startup may not always the best when you’re a web company — meaning, risking your customers’ experience with only a "three nines" service. But the cheap shot #8 guy takes, out of the blue, is a direct attack on an alternative to Amazon’s service, which is a much more robust offering. The comment offered nothing to the discussion — just a cheap shot. In fact, when at least one other commenter asked later for more information from the guy, he was nowhere to be found.

Now, maybe I wouldn’t take such issue to this if the competitor he was talking about wasn’t one that I know — Nirvanix, which just so happened to be one of my top picks of the presenting companies at the recent DEMO ’08 conference. But I decided to ask Nirvanix’ CEO, Patrick Harr, whom I had met at DEMO, what this guy was talking about. Here’s what he said, in his very responsive email back to me:

"There is no customer registrant under that name, nor beta customer with that name that has ever tested our SDN service. In fact, [the situation is] quite
the opposite. Our service is very stable. We consistently maintain 100%
uptime at 2.5 to 3X greater performance than Amazon. Just as important,
our architecture of distributed geo nodes with 99.999% data availability would
not have allowed this type of outage.
Net, net — the comment must have been from a competitor."

Or a disgruntled somebody-or-other. Harr also told me that DEMO went very well for Nirvanix, and that the firm "just won a big Fortune 10 company, and another Fortune 100 is almost signed." In fairness, the firm seems to be targeting large enterprises much more than it is startups — so one would expect its uptime would have to be better than Amazon’s.

[Too bad Harr couldn’t have been as responsive as he was to me in commenting directly on TechCrunch. That is, responding quickly to comment #8 in particular. The lesson for companies, especially if you’re a startup seeking to make inroads against big-name competition, is simple and clear: you’d better have somebody monitoring key blogs on a daily, ongoing basis!]

If you’d like a second take on Amazon Web Services’ downtime problems, here’s an article from the AP via Business Week: Amazon’s Cloud Storage Hiccups.

Another interesting thing about TechCrunch commenters is how often they go after the writers themselves — accusing them of a certain stupidlty limited view of the world. These writers get accused regularly of all sorts of improprieties, as they sit and type away there from their cloistered little Silicon Valley digs. Case in point: commenter #14 here. "Bad journalism," the man says. Does what they do even fit into the category of journalism?  Well, there are those who would argue that one pretty hard. Yet, alas, that’s a topic for another post…  But the fact remains: be skeptical when reading traditional media, and even moreso with blogs — and especially with open comments on either.

Some of the Great People I Met at DEMO ’08

Time for my traditional waltz through the business card stack from the DEMO conference last week in Palm Desert. Besides, I need something to do on the plane home. I always meet so many interesting people at these events, and this one was certainly no exception.  The mood is so upbeat at DEMO, the energy level so high!  I mean, 77 companies launching, and probably a half a dozen people in attendance from each firm on average (counting a PR rep and many times an investor or board member or two) — all higher than a kite, ready to tell anyone who’ll listen about their red-hot new company! Demostagebanner
On top of that, a press contingent of about 80 is wandering about, not to speak of a whole slew of VCs, angels, and corporate investors and biz dev people. I collect a lot of business cards from these folks, even though I’m quite busy most of the time, attending every session — nose to the Macbook and/or iPhone blogging or Twittering.

Before I get to the new folks I met, here are some of the folks I ran into again whom I already knew or had met previously (alphabetically by last name):
– Stewart Alsop, VC, Alsop-Louie Partners (and the original founder of DEMO)
– Renee Blodgett, Blodgett Communications (for SpeakLike and Toktumi)
– Gary Bolles, now CEO of new startup Xigi.biz
– Katie Boehret, Technology Reporter, Wall Street Journal
– Kevin Dorren. now Chairman, HubDub
– Dan Farber, VP Editorial, ZDnet
– Mike Garity, VP, Network World Conferences
– Dan Gillmor, Journalist, Author, Angel Investor (one is Seesmic)
– Paula Gould, PEG PR (for Delver)
– Shel Israel, Blogger/Author, now FastCompany’s Global Neighbourhood TV guy
– Steve Larsen, CEO, Krugle
– Erica Lee, StrategicLee (for DEMO)
– Walt Mossberg, Technology Reporter, Wall Street Journal
– Rafe Needleman, Editor, CNet, and Chief Blogger, Webware.com
– Keith Shaw, Editor, Network World
– Chris Shipley, Executive Producer, DEMO
– Becky Sniffen, MC2 Communications (for DEMO)
– Brian Solis, Founder, Future-Works PR
– Don Thorson, now VP Marketing, Ribbit

Demopatio

The pix on this page are just a couple random shots. Here’s my complete DEMO ’08 Flickr set.

And now for the new people I met — at least those I got a business card from (again alphabetically by last name):
– Liad Agmon, CEO, Delver
– Michael Bogart, The Bogart Group (who does the production of DEMO)
– Bill Bryant, Board Advisor for both Blist and Liquid Planner
– Terra Carmichael, SutherlandGold Group PR
– Jinnan Cai, Cofounder/VP-Prod Dev, Buska (Perth, Australia)
– Gerry Caulfield, Lead Technology Engineer, Buska (Perth, Australia)
– Kirk Chen, Cofounder/Product Architect, iLeonardo
– Matt Clark, AE, Lotus PR (for Catalyst Web)
– Sanford Cohen, CEO, SpeakLike
– Mike Dever, CEO, YouChoose.net
– Nigel Eccles, Chief News Junkie, HubDub (Edinburgh, Scotland)
– Quentin Hardy, Silicon Valley Bureau Manager, Forbes
– Patrick Harr, CEO, Nirvanix
– Linda Huang, VP Marketing & Sales, Santrum
– Ryo Koyama, CEO, Yoics
– Miiko Mentz, Future-Works PR (for HubDub)
– Melinda Meggyesy, Online Community Manager, LiquidPlanner
– Dave Merkel, VP Products, Mandiant
– Yannis Papakonstantinou, Cofounder, App2You.com
– Stephanie Rice, Sr AE, Ruder Finn West
– Michelle Schafer, Acct Supervisor, Merritt Group PR (for Mandiant)
– Robert Schettino, Marketing, iVideoSongs.com
– Dan Seyer, VP Product Management, Ribbit
– Carnet Williams, CEO, SproutBuilder.com

Once again, it was great meeting all of you!  I thought it was a particularly good DEMO, and I was excited about the quality of the startups presenting.  I hope to hear again from you folks I met at the event. Stay in touch!  For more, see this index page of my coverage of DEMO 08 on this blog, and even more on Twitter, plus my DEMO 08 photo set on Flickr.

Marc Orchant – We Mourn a Big Loss

UPDATE (12/10/07): I am extremely sorry to report the passing of Marc Orchant yesterday. Marc was a friend and inspiration to so many people. How is it he could make anyone he talked to feel like the most important person in the world? What a smile, what an upbeat person! I will really miss him. My sincere condolences to Sue and the family. When I try to understand this, I’m reminded of what Joe Gibbs said recently when he learned of the passing of Sean Taylor: “The way I’m going to deal with it is, God tells us that it will take a thousand years for us to begin to understand heaven.” Rest in peace, brother.

UPDATE (12/9/07): Oliver Starr (who, by the way, is no longer affiliated with Blognation) is regularly posting updates on Marc Orchant’s condition. The family is getting an enormous outpouring of well wishes and support, which just shows what an impact Marc has had on so many people. Keep praying.

ORIGINAL POST (12/3/07): (Note: photo is from a group shot I took at DEMOfall, September 2007.) I was really floored this afternoon to learn, via my Twin Cities buddy Steve Borsch, that our close friend Marc Orchant suffered a massive coronary yesterday. Marcorchant2
Horrible, totally unexpected news. Steve told me it was reported earlier today by Oliver Starr, Marc’s blogging colleague at Blognation, via this post. According to Oliver, Marc is in critical condition at a hospital in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Marc is one of my closest and best blogger friends, and just a great, great guy. He’s been a real inspiration to me, and one of the most helpful, positive, fun-loving guys you could ever want to know. I pray for his recovery, and I send my best to his wife, Sue, and the kids.  He’s too young for this!  Marc, we love you and we need you back, buddy!

So, What Have I Been Up to Lately?

Glad you asked. Would you believe I launched another blog? That’s right, I’m a glutton for punishment. It’s actually a blog for my business.  (So, I guess that means this one becomes my personal blog)  The new blog is the first online wrinkle for a new practice of my consulting firm (GT&A Strategic Marketing), which I call NewMediaWise — so that’s where you’ll find it.
Its purpose is to explore the new world of marketing that’s being enabled by social media tools and technologies. Nmwscreenshot
Design of the site is by Geise Design. Randy and I have worked together much in the past, including when we did interim gigs together for the launch of BestBuy.com back in 2000. Randy’s a real master at web site design and development, and is particularly adept at ExpressionEngine™, an amazing platform behind many great sites (such as PaidContent.org and iLounge). I’m looking forward to getting the rest of the site built out.  Meantime, I’ll be blogging there about all things new media and marketing related. Here at Tech~Surf~Blog, I’ll continue to write about all kinds of other topics, including my coverage of tech conferences…and, of course, a little surfing from time to time.  If you’re interested in new media and marketing, I hope you’ll get a chance to check out the new blog and become a reader there as well.

What else have I been up to?  Well, I was quoted twice in the media in the past week or so — first in a business article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and then in an article on "The Business of Blogs" in the December 2007 issue of Twin Cities Business magazine (but that site doesn’t yet feature the current issue at the time of this posting).  So, its been a busy November so far.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all, and now bring on December!

UPDATE (the day after Thanksgiving): Oh, I almost forgot another thing: Tech~Surf~Blog was named one of "Top 100 Analyst Blogs" by Techobabble 2.0 (a blog written by an Edelman PR exec in the UK) . Can ya beat that?
 

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