Yesterday I appeared on Jason Calacanis’s web TV show, This Week in Start-ups.  You may already know Jason from his current gig as Founder of Mahalo and his successful start-up Weblogs, which AOL purchased. 

TWiT is a recent project by Jason and yesterday was Episode 8.  Last week his guest was a Microsoft exec discussing Bing.   

Our interview was focused on both my efforts at Yahoo as well my previous background in start-ups.  There were a few natural questions about the Local space like how we compare to Yelp and more broadly how Yahoo viewed Bing (short answer: it innovates and that’s good for industry).   We also touched on my experience as Founder and CEO of Covigna, an content mgmt start-up earlier in the decade (whew, time flies).   I enjoyed the few budding entrepreneurs who called in to ask questions.   People often ask me about working in a big company setting (I’ve spent time at AOL and Yahoo!) in comparison to start-ups.  Like I said on the show, entrepreneurship is a journey that might include various stops along the way.  It’s not a career path as much as it is a calling.  Besides that, you can find opportunity to innovate in big settings too.  Read more »

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If you’re an investor in Apple or just one of the many admirers of this iconic business, you may be closely following news about the health of Steve Jobs.  The cliché that people are a company’s greatest asset was literally demonstrated as this news surfaced — AAPL lost 5.7% of its value after his medical leave was announced.  Is this the beginning of the end for the company or just a period of transition during a time of continued leadership?  An opinion on the matter is vital to investors - should you be buying on unnecessary weakness or be gradually reducing your exposure?   To develop an informed opinion you’re going to have to do some diligence.

I’m going to offer an approach toward diligence that uses web connections to define key topics for your assessment.  Web connections are links between a story you’re following and the endless number of topics that exist in the world.  It may sound quite broad and unwieldy but there is a manageable structure we can put around the information possibilities.

Web connections allow us to explore these topics by the degree of their relatedness.  Think of it as swinging from vine to vine in a jungle of information.  You can build upon a topic of interest by knowing what else is connected to it rather than limit exploration by direct coverage of what you’re reading.”

What’s useful about these connections is they transcend the obvious information you will find collected in most articles or coverage about a story you’re following.   As I’ll explain later on, that’s not a knock on reporters but instead a natural limitation of what’s possible for any writer to cover in a single story.  Put another way, web connections extend our journey into and behind the story. Read more »

Filed under: Management, People, Search Technology, Web Apps, Web Connections | 1 Comment »

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The new year brings some management changes at Cisco. Charlie Giancarlo recently retired from the company to join tech buyout firm, Silver Lake Partners. Charlie spent 14 years at Cisco and was most recently the Chief Development Officer, effectively the #2 executive and possible successor to CEO, John Chambers.

I had the pleasure of meeting Charlie for the first time during his going-away event, where he chatted openly and generously with the rank-and-file. A Cisco employee carrying an iPhone was kind enough to snap a picture for me.

From the Cisco press release:

I’ve been at Cisco for a few months, working as a consultant and advising on new market strategy. We’re looking at whitespaces that might be considered non-traditional for the company but which leverage my background in the web, software and digital media.

Another senior executive, Dave Leonard, also transitioned recently (to start a clean-tech business). Dave has been the General Manager and top dog running the company’s $5bn cash cow switching business unit. I’ve been working for Dave and his group. It goes without saying that Cisco’s ability to branch out and experiment into new markets is in part due to domination in switching. So, new things you find the company successful with (TelePresence, etc.) are tied to this core even while there remains lots of potential for these existing businesses to pioneer new spaces too.

This is my third large company experience (AOL and Goldman Sachs are the other two places I’ve spent time). I’ve always found it somewhat impossible for a big company to send off a long-time employee or major contributor (such as a senior executive) in the right way despite their best attempts. The farewells, thank you’s and recognition don’t quite reflect the humanity of what is essentially a parting of ways between people. Life meets reality. Read more »

• Giancarlo to Leave Cisco
• Senior Executive Is Leaving Cisco Systems - NY Times

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Amazon’s share price rose 40% over a two-day period last week (its highest level since April 2000) after it released earnings. That’s a lot of volatility for a company which went public 11 years ago (May 1997). Volatility in the financial markets speaks to the degree of unpredictable change. Given the scale and apparent stability of Amazon’s core business, high levels of volatility are surprising. One explanation for the sudden price movement provided in the financial media has been the extent of shorts on the stock.
Those positions were naturally covered on news of positive earnings. But there’s a deeper issue at hand. Amazon is a highly innovative company in a highly innovation medium. It’s not lost on Jeff Bezos that e-tailing may not always be the biggest franchise opportunity for the company.

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I’m onsite this week at ad tech (the well-known technology meets interatcive marketing conference). Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners moderated a panel here entitled “Internet Economy: Start-ups, Bubbles and Buyouts.” Roger is known as one of the most versatile technology investors around and that made him a really good choice to manage this discussion.

The very last question from audience related to possible alternatives to Google. Roger provided some of his own take on the matter. He appeared very resolute that better techniques for organizing web content will surface to challenge Google. They way he looked at it, Google falls short when it comes to handling any type of user needs that don’t involve keywords (to paraphrase, “Google doesn’t work well when you give it a few words or a sentence”). His takeaway — editorial is a really important layer which explains the value of Wikipedia and other forms of aggregation that will emerge based on wiki and collaboration tools. Read more »

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Eric Schmidt headlined the Web 2.0 Expo today in San Francisco. He was queried in a punchy and intimate manner by the moderator, John Battelle, in an on-stage interview. John is no stranger to Google, of course. Though several books have been written about the company, John’s is the definitive work. Not your run of the mill corporate biography, John’s account is a more ambitious effort to bubble-up a level and put the company within an industry and societal perspective. He also follows the company via Searchblog http://battellemedia.com/ and is a mainstay of the Google ecosystem through editorial events like the Expo where he is often paired with the Google triumvirate.

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