Posted: March 25th, 2009 | No Comments »
While some of you might not have too much sympathy for Jake DeSantis who resigned from AIG, I think that we should all feel sorry for ourselves that talent is definitely draining away from solving the complex, intricate problems we have before us.
On the one hand, I’m incensed that ex-Countrywide executives who caused the problems are able to participate in the solution for additional personal gain. But I also turned to my husband yesterday and said, “Why in the hell is Edward Liddy still working at AIG? Why doesn’t he just say ‘Screw it. YOU people try to solve this problem’ and walk away?” He’s got these idiot Congressmen judging him who can’t even figure out their own taxes. Does anyone realize that he was ASKED to take this job by Treasury Sec’y Paulson? “Six months ago, I came out of retirement to help my country,” Liddy said at yesterday’s House Financial Services subcommittee hearing in Washington. If we’re going to make a scapegoat of someone innocent, we should at least pick someone who was there when the crime occurred.
I have limited sympathy for this guy who wrote the AIG letter above, because I am *sure* in his career he was overpaid, and the money that he says he earned for AIG was enabled by a machine *he knew* was overpriced, overcomplicated, and under-financed. But, we should be careful when John Q Public thinks he knows how best to run these companies, lest we end up driving away people who really do. I certainly don’t want Senators with “wide stances” in charge of maximizing the value during the wind down of a complex financial derivative product company. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
Posted: March 24th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Noticed in facebook, lots of people have ‘registered’ themselves on wefollow. they’re trying to start a tag-based directory.
My tweets, trying to stay industry or expo-relevant are tagged under #consumer #socialmedia #video: http://twitter.com/daphnekwon
Also, to cut the clutter of ridiculous spam Tweets, here is ExecTweets, created by Federated Media, powered by Microsoft
http://www.exectweets.com/about/
Note, I’m not followed by exectweets, so you know it must be good. 
Posted: March 20th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
iMedia’s Sean Egen followed up on a WSJ story about the New Info Shopper. I thought I’d follow up his question: “You might be a New Info Shopper if….”
…you wished the display computers at the Best Buy store were connected so you could surf the web before you bought
…you look at a magazine ad and wish you could click on the URL at the bottom
…you actually thought the Facebook Beacon about what your friends bought was interesting, not the ultimate symbol of privacy being invaded
…you’d buy your second choice item on Amazon because it had customer reviews, rather than your first choice that no one reviewed
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/22354.asp##
Posted: March 9th, 2009 | No Comments »
There are probably many tools out there, but if @mattcutts is using bit.ly, then it’s probably on the better side. When you’re signed in, you get your shortened url (e.g., http://bit.ly/10UdcG). I can now track when someone clicks on that short URL. I can see weird stuff like from what country, but I can also see useful stats like what site you clicked from (twitter, blogger, facebook). I can also see if someone else copied the URL into their own Tweet as well. Movie trailers seem to get picked up pretty well by others!
Posted: March 4th, 2009 | No Comments »
if you see a lot of crazy unrelated things and ads on my site, i’m testing pluck on demand. more later.
Update: So far the note to myself is that I think Pluck thinks i’m an ultra-conservative right-winger because I wrote about Sarah Palin months ago. Doesn’t seem to be able to discern the substance of my post. I’m sure this post today is also going to contribute to Pluck’s perception of me! I have to stop saying Sarah Palin. Whoops.
Update: Pluck is getting better because my posts are more directed. I like the articles it is surfacing, even clicked on one.
Posted: October 22nd, 2008 | No Comments »
I’ve been through two of these, like many of my fellow serial entrepreneurs. Once when the bubble burst around my ‘convergence’ company, Oxygen Media, and now again with my current company, Expo Communications. We’re in a period of high revenue growth, so it isn’t easy to distinguish what is critical spending and what is not. But you should be motivated thinking that your competitors – whether they compete for your customers, users or funders – may be acting faster and more decisively than you are right now. Here were some tasks that I’ve found effective for long-term strengthening:
1) Build Staff 2.0. You never have a second chance to make a first impression. Unless there’s a crash. Then, you totally can. Here are some thoughts about how to build Staff 2.0:
a. Be very skeptical of keeping headcount that is not directly attached to revenue, or in evidenced growth areas. There is no time to be investing ahead of success when success just got a lot riskier. It’s called right-sizing and it will save your company and the jobs that it should support.
b. Start with a blank org chart. Build an org chart with no names of people…just titles and functions. It helps you think less emotionally about who you’d like to keep and more about who the company needs.
c. Do it all at once. I can’t stress this enough. Doing it in a thousand cuts is demoralizing, painful, and will result in losing the staff you need to keep. Work very hard at shaping your target org, then create it in a humane but decisive process.
2) Support the resulting Staff 2.0. Your staff is far from stupid. They know why you made those changes. They silently questioned why that guy over there was writing copy all day. They might have liked that guy and thought he was talented, but deep down they didn’t think he was contributing to the company like they were. After your restructuring, bring Staff 2.0 together, and give them the positive news: this team is the team that you believe will bring the company to the promised land.
3) Extend your payables. Why are you paying on time when no one is paying you on time? You will pay…just a little later. The amount of working capital you will free up that first 30 days will amaze you.
4) Change old policies. This action may not save a lot of money, but it can start a culture of frugality that will benefit the company for years. Tighten the travel policy, and start tracking vacation days. Overhead contracts should be now treated as variable. Cancel all contracts you can terminate, and negotiate new terms with either existing or new vendors – HVAC, cleaning, legal, consultants, etc. Put new cost controls in place, such as additional approvals for discretionary spending.
5) Exude a positive attitude. Be transparent in all these changes and answer all questions about the health of the company, additional staff reductions. This is where your prior planning can help you answer decisively, clearly, and immediately. Having a plan can help you communicate with a level of certainty that you probably don’t really have, but that your staff will crave.
As you make your plans, target a material amount to reduce – try to find over 25% of existing costs. You don’t have to make all the cuts, but forcing yourself to identify potential reductions is the first step toward honestly evaluating whether you need to make them.
Posted: October 20th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I don’t like Sarah Palin’s politics. But I have refrained from publicly bashing her. Having witnessed the ignorant carnage left after the Clinton effort, I resolved not to sacrifice short-term potshots for the long-term gain of women in politics.
What is dawning on me now is that I think I actually owe Sarah Palin a debt of gratitude for moving the “woman-as-president” movement forward in a way that Hillary Clinton was never going to. Sarah has opened my eyes to the missing link between past female candidates and the Presidential office:
You have to be a hottie.
I have always looked to the Democrats for eventually placing the first woman into the White House, mostly because there are more women to choose from in that party. But the women to choose from, unfortunately, are women of accomplishment, women of intellect, women of leadership. They are not, by and large, women who got ahead because they were hot. Not Geraldine Ferraro, not Hillary Clinton.
I realize now that America needs its celebrities, like it needs its air. And female celebrities, bar none, are beautiful. Geena Davis, the last woman anywhere near the Presidency, was clearly hot. It hit me between the eyes when I read the NYTimes quote above from a Palin rally. I realized Palin broke through despite her lack of qualifications and turned this former truck driver a feminist. He doesn’t even know he is.
A problem we will face is that women who are hot can find easier successes in America than going into politics. Political success is hard and grueling, and makes you intensely vulnerable. Hot women don’t have to suffer that and they aren’t by definition stupid…so why would they subject themselves to that path?
Sarah Palin has demonstrated to me that political women truly can ignite parties that are ruined, evoke love from the angry, and unite those who feel isolated. I’ve never seen it before from a woman in politics, but I hope to see it again soon (in another Party). And I also hope that other women, women who hope to see a female president in their lifetime, can refrain from attacking her, and instead simply disagree with her. There is language that can allow you to express your preference without belittling along the way…an example from someone who is responsible for a lot of damage to her public persona:
“I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she’s powerful. Her politics aren’t my politics. But you can see that she’s a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she’s had a huge impact.”
Posted: October 10th, 2008 | No Comments »
There’s a lot written about the
Sequoia “world is ending” meeting, with presentations by Sequoia professionals Mike Moritz, Eric Upin, Michael Partner. At the very least, this presentation helps clarify the task at hand during this very complex environment.
Here’s the actual presentation, thanks much to Fred Wilson’s blog where I found the link first.
The presentation is MUCH better than any of the writeups, as it provides context to the comments.
SlideShare Link
Posted: August 19th, 2008 | 4 Comments »
I recently spent time with 8 women who were old enough to remember Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10. All were professionals, from Google to Goldman Sachs. Amazingly, only one woman other than myself was on Facebook. No surprise, she was also the CEO of an internet company.
Some were on Linkedin, but seemed to dismiss it as a job tool, not a social network. Regarding FB, privacy seemed to be the loudest concern. “But can’t everyone see it?” was the main objection. The next objection was “Who would want to see it?”. They derided needing to know if their co-worker was now a fan of Michael Phelps, or poking their old college boyfriend.
My description of “completely remapping the social neural network in my brain” didn’t seem to move them much. Transforming my social connections into a movement that I can observe instead of single points that I have to directly contact didn’t resonate. Weakening the isolation that accompanies privacy in favor of participating in a self-selected, partially unintentional social dialogue was baffling.
That said, my group is a strong, fearless bunch of girls, always up for new things (as long as someone else is doing it, too). I’ve set up a ‘secret’ and more public group for them to join, and am sitting back as a few are entering. I’ve been peppering them with advice, which I thought I would list here for those of you who need some courage.
Rules for being 40 on Facebook.
1) Get a picture up. Immediately. Pictures are part of the way the web is becoming personal, less anonymous. Having one up shows that you’re willing to show the person behind the action.
2) Don’t stress over your profile. Profiles are boring and people only look at it once, anyway. Put a few fun things so you don’t seem uptight, but don’t go crazy filling everything out. If you’re over 30, take off your birthyear.
3) Join your school and work networks. Joining networks helps people find you to friend you. The location network you joined when you signed up is lame…it basically lets FB geotarget ads to you, but is too large to be of any use. Go to “settings” in the upper right corner > account settings> networks. Search for your undergrad/grad schools, and the company you work for.
4) Become a fan. Type in a person, politician, cause, even a product or restaurant name in the search box, and then select “Pages” in the tabs. This gives you the ‘official’ brand pages of which you can “Become a Fan”. These show up on your profile. Check out the page first, make sure it seems legit. Michael Phelps has 995,000 fans, and In-n-Out burger has 28,000.
5) Join some groups. Anyone on FB can start a group. I started a group for people who used to work at Oxygen Media back in the day (pre-NBC). To find a group to join, type an interest into the search box, then select “groups” in the tabs. Joining a group shows up on your profile, and is a way to make a statement, without really making a statement. Two that I want to join but don’t have the guts are: “I went to public school….bitch!” and “Zero Population Growth”.
6) Friend Farm. Look at me, I’ve coined a phrase. Everytime you make a friend, go to their friend list and see if there’s anyone you want to friend off it. No one will know you found them by poaching off your friends’ list.
7) Lastly, after you’ve done everything, go prune your personal newsfeed. Almost everything you do in FB is broadcast in your newsfeed, which will show up on all your friends’ newsfeeds. Because FB is a robot, it often sounds like English is its second language, and something like “Daphne Kwon is no longer single” is just embarrassing. Hit your name in the top menu bar. Mouse over any news item you don’t want broadcast, and you’ll see a little “edit” button on the right pop up. Click it and select “delete”.
After a while, when you have time, check out all the fine-tuning under “Settings” in the upper right under account settings and privacy settings. Don’t over do it on the restrictions…. You didn’t go join FB to be private! Take a little risk for a while, let yourself ‘out there’ and see what happens. Who knows. Maybe some day you’ll ask me about Twitter.
Posted: August 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
We partnered with shop.org in helping consumers tell the real story about how the economy is affecting them. These were all shot by our community themselves, in their homes and in their words, and sent to us after we posted the question.
Beware you might find this depressing…our editors asked next time if we can ask a more cheery question like “How did it feel when you found out the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real?” But look closely and you can also spot the resilient, optimistic nature of the American consumer. We’ll be back.
