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New Comm Biz

New media strategies for business

What’s your DBQ?October 15 2008

The Douche Bag Quotient.

A while back I first started to hear my friends Justin Foster , John Hardesty (John created the logo) and Sam Swenson using DBQ as a term for those people you know who are real douche bags but don’t realize they are douche bags.

Douche bags seem to gravitate towards social media. It’s probably because of the opportunity for shameless self-aggrandizing. Kommon Kraft even has a great video explanation of the New Media Douchebag.

The other day I was thinking about what is it that causes someone to be a douche bag? The thought came to me while trying to manage my ever growing Twitter account. At times it can be seem overwhelming to even follow just 1200 1300+ people (which is nothing compared to the Twitterati). So I started thinking about being a little more picky as to who I’d follow.

And right then it struck me: who was I to judg

Entrepreneurs! Start Your Engines!October 10 2008

At the end of the worst financial week the World has ever seen, bankers and stockbrokers may be ready to jump out windows, but I’m feeling rather optimistic today.

Barring a complete meltdown of society (some may argue we are already witnessing that) the coming months are going to be a great time to start a business.

If you already have your own business, Brad Feld has two amazing posts that demonstrate why he’s  been a successful entrepreneur, Angel investor and VC: Fear is the Mind Killer and OK Entrepreneurs, Time to Step Up.

Starting a Real Business

When I say start a business, I mean a real business. Something with a revenue plan. Something that scales as the revenue comes in. Something that is built on the premise of what VC’s are telling their portfolio companies  (Sequoia  Benchmark

2.0 ThinkingSeptember 26 2008

There is a lot of talk out there in the Value of Web 2.0/Social Media companies.  Being an EIR at Highway 12 Ventures I’ve had the opportunity to discuss this in great detail with a lot of VC’s who are questioning how many social networks and ad monitized sites can you have?

Web 2.0 is a functionality.
Web 2.0 is a toolset that allows the person to person communication that we call Social Media.

How Much Value Has the Telephone Created?

When the phone was invented how many phone manufacturers could the market support? What eventually happened was the telephone was adapted into other business models. Other new services sprang up to support these businesses until the point that the phone is ubiquitous. Yet still, more than 150 years later we see constant innovation around the telephone and the basic functionality that it enabled.

• Telesales
• Customer Support
• Conference Calls
• Mobile Phones

Applying 2.0 Thinking

Web 2.0 will lay out the same way.  Yes at first we become ena

Random Thoughts 09/17/2008September 17 2008

• A Jukebox on MySpace That Takes Aim at Apple - NYTimes.com

  I have always said that MySpace was missing a huge opportunity in not launching a more robust music service. I’m skeptical that this will be THAT solution, but I’m hoping it is. Jen and I already listen to a lot of music off MySpace. If this is done right it could be a major competitor to not just iTunes but Pandora and Last.FM

  tags: MySpace, Music, iTunes, Amazon, NCB

• MediaPost Publications - LinkedIn To Launch Its Own Ad Network - 09/15/2008

  Seriously, who’s not launching an ad network these days? I can’t decide if this is a genuine attempt to capture more revenue or an attempt of the un-acquired to make themselves more attractive to acquirers.

  tags: LinkedIn, NCB, ad network

Web 2.0, Venture Capital and MeSeptember 4 2008

Today my two worlds collide.

I’ve always had two slightly different (but overlapping) worlds I live in.  One is the Online Social Media/Marketing world that most of you reading this blog are familiar with. The other is as an evangelist for the Boise tech scene, which I cover on my TechBoise blog.

About 18 months ago I started TechBoise to fill a gap I saw here.  That has lead me along a wonderful path where I have met some of the smartest and best people. It has been a truly humbling experience.

Shortly after starting TechBoise and getting out to meet people I got an email.  Mark Solon of Highway 12 Ventures liked what I was doing and wanted to meet with me.  I’d worked with enough start-ups to know that VC’s typically don’t email people out of the blue.

Highway 12 and Mark were different though.  This is the most accessible, engaged firm I’ve ever met. Mark has been a great mentor to me.  He has gone out of his way to support TechBoise, make introductions for me, listen t