I’ve been reading a massive amount of coverage about Yahoo shutting down Buzz (competition to digg.com), AltaVista / AllTheWeb (competition to google.com) and del.icio.us. There is far, far more coverage and opinions presented over at www.techmeme.com

I don’t really want to harp on Yahoo!’s woes, they messed up when they didn’t shuffle all that mess to Microsoft and in business sometimes arrogance trumps your business opportunities. That’s just a part of it all so you can’t feel too bad for Yahoo.

However, these moves have two problems:

1) Lack of faith in management

2) Lack of adoption of new technologies by developers

We can ignore #1 since that’s a backwards looking aspect. People that made the mistakes of purchasing these properties for millions or billions of dollars are long gone.

You can’t quite ignore #2. When your development excitement dies, you die. Look at Windows Mobile for example, it had been so neglected that poor Microsoft had to give it the ol’ yeller treatment behind the shed and come out with the device that is modeled after it’s second most popular consumer electronics product after Xbox – Zune! If you’ve seen all the AT&T commercials (and are a marketing freak that pays attention to those things) you’ve noticed that even the Zune penis monster is back in the commercial as a little green or purple beast:

As we learned in Super Bad, people don’t forget.

And like developers haven’t forgotten about Microsoft’s mobile woes, they will not forget about Yahoo’s either. Microsoft, despite a relatively decent platform and truckloads of money, is not having much success drawing people to develop for them. Not because the platform sucks. Not just because their app store is reportedly stiffing developers and reporting that many won’t be paid until sometime in late January… I can go on but you get the picture.

After the Kin apocalypse and the Microsoft mobile resurrection, many who would likely be ecstatic to develop for the new platform that is so closely tied to the most successful software product of all time.. will likely stay on the sidelines.

Two Sides To This Story

Sometimes you have to admit to yourself (and your shareholders) that some of your investments aren’t all you’ve expected them to be. Lord knows we all have our own share of failures.

However, this is where honesty helps more than bravado. You don’t just take an axe to the leg and start chopping. You explain why it’s necessary. You admit the mistakes that you’ve made that eventually lead to the end result of having the product line killed.

You will never, ever, see the above happen. Ever. Never ever. Because organizations ran by VC and shareholders that overpower the management have a secret handshake agreement that absolutely prohibits honesty.

Being honest about f’ing up not only gets you fired, it makes sure you never work again. It also opens up a stream of class action lawsuits from angry shareholders and scumbag lawyers that make the new managements job of rebuilding the company even more difficult.

Lesson

Communication matters.

Honest communication matters even more.

Transparency matters even more.

Once you lose control of what you are building, and you do so with other people’s money, makes you both more risk averse (“I don’t want to be the one to burn this building down”) and less innovative (“Can’t we just buy something that looks like what we want instead of building it?”)

But let’s say that you can’t do any of the above for whatever reason. Can’t be honest cause you’ll get sued. Can’t be transparent because people will call you on your BS and point out everything you’re doing wrong. Can’t “un-VC-yourself”. Let’s say all of those are dead ends, what now?

Only one thing: Put your head down and focus on what you’re good at – and focus on being the best you can possibly be at the thing that people value about you or your organization the most. In a fast paced technology world where hype is at times more valued than common sense, consider the fundamentals and perhaps even allow to be passed by once in a while. If your foundation is strong, you can experiment – if not, it’s just a gamble (and a dumb one at that).

Let me first admit that I thank my lucky stars that I am nearly never the hiring manager for any roles at Own Web Now. In order for me to make you an offer, you need to come really highly recommended and report directly to me. I think in the past 2 years I’ve hired the grand total of two of such people, both of whom many of you have talked to. Everyone else gets hired through the proper channels and the purpose of this blog post is to familiarize you with the process that will most likely lead to you getting hired. This post is meant for the job seekers only/

For what it’s worth, what finally cracked the camels back was Karl SmbBooks.com picking on me while I was putting on about 5 fires on a Monday afternoon, none of which I needed to fight. I am hiring a person to give Karl sh%% on Mondays.

Understand the Employer

First, understand that the very reason you are looking at an ad, instead of getting in on a friends recommendation, is that company could not find a suitable candidate through other social means. It costs a lot less money to search for job roles than to put up an ad, filter for responses and criteria, wait for a week – not to mention double the cost of putting up an ad.

Second, understand that there are generally over 100 people that will apply for any given job, most of whom are completely unqualified. In the first pass the objective is not to find the shining star but to filter out the collection of unemployed people that are on the street for a reason. That may sound harsh but it is something that you control, not the employer. If you color your resume pink, your resume will not be read. If you didn’t include a cover page, your resume will not be read. Remember that the people reviewing your qualification to work are looking to mitigate risk, not introduce it! If you don’t follow proper channels, you don’t get considered. If you don’t follow the proper business etiquette, you don’t get considered. Why? Because you are being hired to work in a business as a professional.

Final and most important factor: This is a sales job. Deal with it. If you want a job in the private sector you need to come to terms that you are asking people for money and you need to focus on answering the question of why I should give you money instead of a few hundred other people. AIDA. Attention, Interest, Decision, Action. In every minute that you are talking to a potential hiring manager you need to be closing. You need to be asking more questions than the person hiring you.

What can I do for you?

Which one of my job responsibilities so far did you find most appealing? Let me tell you how I can implement them to help you!

What is the first task I will be responsible for?

How do I make more money with your company?

There is nothing more awkward than a job interview where the candidate doesn’t have any questions. Ever notice how when people interview you keep on asking open ended questions, ask you about your skills, your responsibilities, your goals? The idea is to get you to start talking so you can immediately showcase yourself as someone that can handle not being micromanaged to death. This tells the employer if you are the kind of a person that is going to seek out problems to fix and be able to handle them, or if you are the person that is going to wait around to be told what to do and when.

Unfortunately for you, if you aren’t an extroverted go getter, you will be working at a fast food joint. The world of business is far too competitive to settle and if your job description can be boiled down to a bullet point / Karl’s Checklist, your job will be done in a third world country.

Who do I want to hire….

My ideal employee is Vanilla Ice. Why?

“If there was a problem,

yo – I’ll solve it.”

It’s really as simple as that. You know all of those Dilbert terms people tack on at the bottom of a job description?

Self Motivated. Self Starter. Ability to work on multiple tasks. Great communicator a plus.

Those are not empty words meant to fill out a job posting. Those have a real meaning. Your job, regardless of who you are trying to work for, is to reduce the problems and hassle. Not to introduce them. Sell me on the fact that you are not going to be an issue. Tell me that you can handle your life so it doesn’t interfere with your job.

I have a handful of people that I can give a task or a problem and never hear about it. They find the resources, they put together a solution, they contact the client and explain the issue, they get their s@#$ done.

Who do I not want to hire….

Now, some of these may seem obvious. All the more reason to take the stuff I’ve written so far to heart and put yourself as far away from the rest of the unemployed masses. Let’s play a game, shall we? Tell me what’s wrong with this resume:

If you guessed “This moron didn’t even take the time to look at the resume template and put in their name on their resume” you’ve guessed correctly. Congratulations!

This could be just a rookie mistake, however, it shows me that you lack attention to detail. And since your “Functional Role” is that of a Project Manager or IT Manager, you’d lead my company towards a disaster. No, thanks.

Other reasons why you don’t get a followup….

The email address you applied from belongs to your current employer. Not only does this put all kinds of legal questions in my mind, it shows me that you have no loyalty. Why should I bother investing in training and motivating you if you’re already telling me that you’re willing to use company resources for private matters.

The resume did not contain a cover letter. The cover letter is your opportunity to sell me on giving you a call. If you do not have a cover letter I am assuming you don’t actually want this job, you’re just applying for it because it seemed to fit your qualifications and the salary could sustain you. I am going to let you in on a little secret. You are not going to walk off the street into an executive position. You are going to have to put in the time, effort and show true passion for the job and for the company in order for the people whose money is at stake to trust you with the direction. That takes a lot of trust. That takes a lot of effort. That takes a lot of dedication. You showed none, resume deleted.

You decided to call me, fax me, IM me or go through any means other than those specified on the job application. To some this may mean you are driven, dedicated and ambitious. Not to me. This world is full of overambitious jackasses who feel the rules do not apply to them – they do. By being “special” you are identifying yourself as someone that cannot follow the rules.

The resume was pink, red or otherwise lacking proper business sense. I love German Shepherds. Not in a way that only a Bama fan loves a farm animal, but in a sense that I’ve grown up around them and consider them to be a great companion. But when I am putting a business proposal I don’t happen to put a picture of my dog front and center on the proposal. I also don’t paint it blue. Things that work on myspace do not work in the work space.

Finally, and most importantly….. ALWAYS BE CLOSING. ALWAYS:

You are being hired by a growing company in a competitive field that has customers in over 140 countries, over 40 data centers that has a huge global expansion scheduled for 2009 and multiple projects with huge expansion commitment on 3 continents.

You think we got here on the account of sitting back, sipping Mojito’s and relying on the kindness of strangers? If you want to hang here, pardon the expression, you need to be a hustler. I am talking to you for a reason: Do you want the job? 

Just so that we are clear: If I’m talking to you, I am interested. Sell me. Here is someone that did it right:

Dear Mr. Mazek,
Thanks so much for getting back with me so quickly. I am quite familiar with social networking sites. I use Myspace and Facebook daily and have blogged on them before. I just signed up for a Twitter as well. I have a XXXX major and XXXX minor from XXXX University which perfectly correlates with this position.  My communication skills are top notch and my computer skills are quite advanced.  I am interested in hearing more about the position and your organization.  Please let me know if you need anymore information from me.

Sincerely,
XXXXXXX
Cell: XXXXX

What is this person doing? C L O S I N G. Here are my features. Here are my skills. Here is my education. I am interested. My number is here. Call me and give me your money!

Could this person have simply answered an innocent follow-up question without stating all the reasons why they fit the role?

Could this person have done so without making it easy for me to contact them?

Could this person have omitted proper business salutation and gotten straight to the point?

It’s the little things that separate professionals from the unemployed. In order to be trusted with business you have to show that you would run it and manage it as if it was your own money on the line.

A little bit of motivation…

Despite what you may feel about corporations and hiring practices, you should understand that in the private sector you are not simply an employee, you are an investment that corporation makes in its staff. Corporation whose goal it is to make money by providing superior service, whose employees are proud of what they deliver and are constantly striving to move that company forward. Those employees understand that the more successful company gets, the more successful they get, and the closer they get to their dream job.

If, on the other hand, you look at this as a game of numbers and a fight to be won or lost, you won’t go far. If you don’t take care of the house, the house won’t take care of you. You’ll just be angry and depressed with each passing day in which you are not getting your way and aren’t doing anything constructive to get to it.

It’s a tough economy in a tight market and only the best are still around and fighting while most are stuck trying to figure out how to meet payroll numbers. If you want to play in this market, as opposed to being the next job to be chopped and sent to India, you need to step your game up and show some leadership.

Got a few angry emails regarding my last post, mostly asking if I was selling out:

“So you’re taking all the stuff you do and making it commercial?”

Not sure how that came through the message but no, actually, quite the opposite. Instead of letting traditional marketing dictate how we run our company and dealing with its money drain and eventual failure, we are going to use the practices that made this blog (and conversely the SBS Show, Vladfire, Vladcast) so popular and worthwhile to so many people.

I am trying to take some aspects of the work I already do on the individual basis, pack it up and offer it up at ownwebnow.com for anyone that cares to learn from it, good or bad. As these discussions are business in nature and so closely tied to the business of Own Web Now, I would think that it would be selling out Vladville to post them here.

On the other hand, I consider this to be a model for how things should be done in this space. I have always had an open IM invitation for all my partners, I have always had a direct dial in number and an extension that is published, I have been blogging for a while. The only difference now is that we’re actually going to showcase some of that activity beyond me <-> partner and hopefully invite more people into the conversation, pick up the feedback which always improves the product which improves sales and improves Timmy’s college fund Consider the opposite, which is the traditional community development in this space: 1) Turn off all the extensions except for sales 2) Put up a forum and hope users will support one another out of desperation 3) When the users get critical do some damage control and close up the forum thread and move on. Doesn’t sound like fun. So instead of opening up the doors and saying “Why don’t y’all just build a community for us” we’re actually going onto the court with the ball and asking for others to play along.

Ok, things are starting to get interesting in the online Office suite game, we’re moving past the AJAXified web pages straight into fully interactive stuff. Check it out, available now: www.acrobat.com; Tagline “Work. Together. Anywhere”

Sarah has a great writeup of it here.

What’s in it? Word processor, files, data sharing and desktop sharing for online meetings / collaboration. Not quite a play on Zoho or Google Apps or even Microsoft Office Live – but definitely a level above it. Leading with the premium product (desktop sharing for web meetings) is definitely gutsy.

Still a beta, but well worth the look.

One of the nicest things about the MVP Summit, and one of the reasons I pay so much and urge so many of you to go to the big industry events, is that you can surround yourself with people who are far (far, far) wiser and more experienced than you. In a surrounding where you are not being weighted down by the idiots you have to deal with for a paycheck you can’t help but elevate your game and start seeing things in a whole new light.

One of the things I have been thinking about over the past few days has been the balancing of the equation that contains trust, influence, reputation, authority and credibility. Number of techmeme headlines had been swirling around my head for weeks as bloggers start to realize that they are not the center of the world.

But this is not about bloggers, it is an important lesson for everyone that brings themselves online, whether willingly through social networks or unwillingly through the better search engine indexing of public records.

You can’t hide. But you can try to understand how the information is consumed online.

The fundamental lie to the Web 2.0 world is that it is not based on knowledge and credentials, it is based on the size of your personal network. It’s not what you know, it’s how many people it appears know you. It’s all about the size, baby. Those with the size and apparent large roster of buddies use it to talk about those connections and project the appearance of equality with their subjects. And the pile grows. They refer back to how so-and-so did-something-something because of them. It infers influence. Jump on the bandwagon as often as possible, love everything everyone else loves. It will grow your network of people interested in the seemingly everything you are interested in. Talk about yourself and how you’ve previously talked about it. To the casual observer, it seems like you have some authority over the subject. Traffic begets traffic, pretty pictures illustrate credibility, authority, makes you feel like you can trust them because the herd does too.

Then you meet them and realize… my god, this person is complete and total charlatan that is obviously out of place.

The bottom line is, knowledge and credentials still matter. Not in the makebelief world of Web 2.0, but in the real world where you make your money, feed your family, grow as a human being and hopefully cause change that improves you and things around you.

My whole point is that you should not get discouraged from what you do just because you’re an apparent peon and you don’t have a billion contacts on Facebook. You should not abandon hope just because your events are packed with hundreds of people lined up to take your picture. The big picture is far larger than that.

Trust is something earned, not something percieved.
Everyone fact-checks, nobody will take things on blind faith. (Web 2.0 religion opportunity?
You have no influence over anyone. Don’t lie to yourself.

What makes you reputable, notable, perhaps even influential is NOT an internal quality that you posses. It is an external, subjective opinion of people who choose to follow you, who believe that you make sense and can be honest and human.

Web 2.0 is not so unlike the Real World 1.0, though it is easier to lie in, reality is all that actually matters/counts. Don’t get lost in the clouds. (sorry, sorry, I know, bad pun)

I’m going to try to explain Twitter to Susan, in a public way, because I feel she needs to be on it moreso than anyone else I know. But you know the fable of CPAs and technology so here is my attempt:

Twitter is Instant Messaging that is neither instant nor interruption driven.

I am not saying that it’s not a giant waste of time, I am not saying that less than 1e^-500 of what you will see on there is worth while. I am saying that it is a useful communications medium with people who have embraced it. Right now I am shaming Tim Barrett for just learning what it means to be rickrolled, I am trying to setup a vegetarian dinner with Vijay, I am trying to see if Josh will bump up BlogOrlando towards the weekend and I am wondering how long till Dave buys a telescoping camera lens for his iPhone.

So why does this matter? It matters because among billions of worthless conversations, Twitter allows you to use a medium that isolates a few of them that are worth having with people that have chosen to conduct them in such a way. If I send Dave an email, I’m likely at the bottom of his list of mails to review. Vijay will probably hide from his business email for weeks. Josh’s blog had 12 comments on it within minutes of the post.

Really, it’s just a matter of cutting through.

And I for one would like to see Susan on it. Susan, twittering, will make most newsgroups and Yahoo groups obsolete. Will Susan be able to overcome her inner-CPA’s take on technology. Tune in at 11 for details.

For everyone else.. look at it as the secret twin language. The cool people (if there are any in whoever you follow) are in, so if you want to be in you have to conform. Or be a rebel. I am not a guidance counselor, I’m just trying to offer up a perspective.

I am not exactly “beloved” for my opinion of my IT brotherin, the antisocial and borderline sociopath behavior that comes as a result of spending fourty hours a week staring at the monitor and conducting more than half of the “conversations” over the wire instead of face to face or even voice. I don’t mean to sound like I am judging here, I am very much in this crowd as I have previously texted and even IMed people that were just a few feet away from me. This type of communication, and lack of need for a social experience, explains why most communication written by IT staffers sounds like the fire & brimstone from some relatively mellow individuals. It explains why people tend to hang out by themselves at IT conferences, why they never grow significantly when they go into a consulting (people service) business, why IT culture in general tends to be skeptical and introverted.

It also explains why services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Friendfeed, and thousand other services happen to be so successful: Introductions are easy, you can enter a conversation at any point and end it whenever you get distracted by the next thing.

Now Sarah started this whole fire, but Larry Dignan flared it up by trying to figure out the value in the conversation. That is very, very, easy to figure out: there is no value to the extended conversations happening outside of the source (blog post, conference). Here is the basis of my argument: translate the conversation into an actual human interaction – people talk all the time. Can you be in every person-to-person exchange, at all times, in all the subjects that interest you? No. Sure, the Web 2.0 makes it easy, but the expense of being involved in all the conversations is usually far higher than the benefit, which can be reduced to simply the personal satisfaction of having a discussion. There is a value in having something thoughtful to say (blogging, to external audience) and direct exchange of ideas by people who are interested in what you have to say (comments, from the external audience to you). You’re providing something valuable, and in return you are getting something valuable back, that you may not have considered.

That is the value of conversations: the exchange of ideas.

As for trying to interact with angry villagers with pitchforks out in the streets (Twitter), or time investment equivalent of NSA’s wiretap program (FriendFeed)… if thats the extent you need to go to in order to get attention its probably a good indication that your life/work are not fulfilling enough so it might be a better idea to invest in those, instead of the poor online substitutes for them.

Ok, so I said that the day I meet a decent twitter client I will actually blog about it. This day has come. For the past week or so, I have been using TwitterFox extension for Firefox and I must admit I like it quite a bit. I use FireFox as my main browsing and development platform (Greasemonkey, nuff said) and now I can use it to keep up with twitter.com friends as well. 

Twitter: The Worlds Biggest Waste

There is absolutely no way to rationalize twitter. It is a spectacular waste of time, it is unreliable, it is annoying and impressively useless. But I have started to use it more as I’ve gotten progressively more busy and trying to fit 20 hours of work into 6 comes with certain sacrifices – no IM on the work PC, no b/s newsgroups, no forums, basically getting work done means having to give up all the social stuff that makes working in IT so much fun. I know, woe is me, but soon enough you’ll all get your monkey and we’ll hire enough staff to deal with the rest and allow me to spend more time on freeones. Umm, freeones.

[ continuing roughly 20 minutes later ] Oh, right, twitter.com. Ok, so here is what I like about it. It is like a permanently-offline instant messenger client. My Mac at work is used primarily for social business, and I hit it up once a day, between 1-2 PM, and clear through all the mail, instant messages, etc. It is what I use to let people know I am indeed alive. Now, Audium generally has anywhere from 50-80 tabs of IMs that got collected overnight, and three out of four people are not online. This is where twitter serves a purpose. I can see what everyone is up to without looking at their status on MSN messenger. People tend to be just as open on twitter.com as they are on IM, except there is no expectation of instant response (or a response at all) so its a very good way to see what everyone is up to. It also has a lot of content that you would otherwise not see anywhere else, since all the cool kids are using it. For example, keeping up with WordPress development, Seth Godin’s thoughts… clear, concise. I can continue redneck jokes with Tim Barrett for hanging out at Fox & Hound (Tim runs the Vladville PR department). And then there is Robert Scoble and 18,000 worthless updates a day on the flavor of his farts.

So you take the good with the bad, and TwitterFox lets me stay tuned without the hassle. (I dumped the Vista sidebar widget because it crashed and fell apart so often).

If you’d like to follow me, I’m http://www.twitter.com/vladmazek but I also syndicate the updates on www.vladville.com (look at the right hand side, under Newsletter)

Integrity matters. Humble pie is tasty.

For close to a decade, Internet used to be an awesome place for deceitful sociopaths. That kind of environment, full of anonymity and unaccountability, is a great breeding ground for some spectacular outright shameful lies marketing strategies. But as Ashley Dupree found out this week, there is no hiding on the Internet from who you are. Especially if you are being judged on the daily basis by your customers, business partners, employers or politicians.

Over the past two years I saw two of my friends outright destroy their online identities because they did not want their personal, private, life to interfere with their work. They also get the double handicap for being girls (likely inbox full of “I’d tap that”) and dealing with the juvenile male Internet. The first girl worked in the public sector in charge of bringing businesses into the local economy to build up the job market. Unfortunately for her, she is an Irish catholic republican and makes Peter from the Family Guy look like a saint. She had to blow up her entire blog because her personality virtually guaranteed she would never be able to make it in the public eye. The other friend is an extroverted party girl that works in the software industry. She blew up her Facebook profile because even though the minxy chick at a social event gets you all sorts of contacts, it does not translate well into corporate promotions based on black and white out of context notes backed by the spite of office politics.

The sad thing is, what guarantees corporate climb makes you a total bitch that nobody wants to hang out with. What makes you a macho man party animal translates into a stack of sexual harassment lawsuits.

This is nothing new. People in the spotlight were always judged, always quoted out of context, always had their private lives violated and everything ever done used against them at the most inopportune times.

What is new is that the social Internet is putting everyone and everything into the spotlight. Everyone you ever encountered becomes a viable, relevant, reference. I had the privilege of growing up in South Florida and going to the high school in the hood (I know, hard to believe) so by the time I got to the University of Florida I got calls from Miami Herald about my former classmates doing everything from homicide to serial jewelry robberies (Go Dragons, Class of ’07, release date of ’22). Everyone, everywhere, and at any time in the past becomes a quotable reflection of your character and how you life your life.

So if you want to live and work in this century you have to come to terms with who you are and how you represent yourself. You can’t hang on to your secret personality and change clothes in the telephone booth. You have to let go of your inner sociopath, put away that second personality you’ve got going on, stop changing your clothes in the telephone booth and just be who you are. If you are going to be judged, be judged for who you really are.

It doesn’t matter if you’re fucking the governor or if the global network of computers is fucking you, the age of deceit and dishonesty is coming to an end. Embrace fame, and yourself. Remember, you’re selling yourself all the time to everyone.

The latest issue of Time (March 17) questions whether we’ll soon see the end of commercial software installed on the PC in favor of web-based apps that do pretty much the same thing. Except for free and without the associated complexity.

I have discussed the web vs. LOB app issues in business use extensively and I believe that the trend to the web will continue. Simply because it cuts costs. Not just in the purchase price of the software but also the maintenance, patching, upgrading and migrating from one version to the next. Not to mention a full time person (or a support contract from an IT solution provider) to keep it all together.

Home market is a different story. While at work you create documents, print invoices, email extensively and manage appointments and calendars, your home life might be a little different. Editing pictures. Producing video. Webcam with friends and family. All very bandwidth intense applications, where having 10,000 fonts makes a huge difference. Has anyone sent you a business memo written in Windings? Now have you ever plucked a funky font for a flyer or a party announcement?

Web applications are great for business which needs the bare minimums to get the job done. For home use, I expect something to compensate for my lack of skill, even if I need to throw the processing power of a small server at it to make it look good.

I don’t think that the home / end user market is going to be as driven to the web apps as they will to the sub-$100 commercial software. Go to your local Best Buy, the most successful electronics dealer in America, and compare the square footage they dedicate to boxed software when compared to the flat screen TVs. They wouldn’t dedicate that much space to something that didn’t sell.

For the sake of the argument, here is what Anita Hamilton offered as the paid software vs. free software alternatives:

What do you think?