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oh my gosh, facebook is for families

February 20, 2009 by paulballen · 3 Comments
Filed under: Facebook, Facebook Applications, Families, Social Networking Watch, Uncategorized 

On Feb. 2nd, InsideFacebook reported that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55. 

In just the past 120 days, usage of Facebook by women over 55 has grown by an astonishing 175.3%.

Our team at FamilyLink.com is particularly excited as social networks attract older users because our mission is to connect families to each other using technology, and the glue that keeps most families (and extended families) together often happens to be the older female family members–moms and grandmas.

As they come into social networks in droves, a very large percentage of them do so with the primary purpose of communicating with their children and grandchildren–and not necessary just with their friends.

My mom started using Facebook actively just a few days after Christmas. During the holidays we had a big family discussion about how we could all keep in touch better. Everyone talked about their Blackberries, iPhones, Facebook and even Twitter. 

I am now friends on Facebook with my mom, my siblings, my 82-year old aunt, and dozens of cousins, children of cousins, nieces, nephews, and other extended family. And we all use We’re Related. In fact, the primary way we found each other was through this application.

Time Magazine published a “Nerd World” column this week titled “Facebook is for Old People” in which author Lev Grossman listed 10 reasons (all in jest) why older people love Facebook. Reason #7 was:

We have children. There is very little that old people enjoy more than forcing others to pay attention to pictures of their children. Facebook is the most efficient engine ever devised for this.

That’s pretty funny. But more based in reality than Grossman’s claim that old people want to force others to see pictures of their children is the fact that most older people care more about their family members than younger people do and they themselves want to continually see new family photos. 

Young people are busy with school, friends, and work. All of life is ahead of them, and they are optimistic about the future. It’s well known that college students phone home mainly when they are out of money. ;)

On the other hand, as we grow older, everything changes. What once was important in high school, college, and in our work years, no longer seems to matter so much. We have so many more memories to think about and we become more thoughtful about the past. As we age, watching children (and from what I hear, grandchildren) grow, and learn, and experience life, and staying in touch with our own remaining family members, becomes the most interesting and meaningful part of our own lives.

I think there is quantifiable evidence for this. While working at a previous company (from 1998-2002) my team discovered that the older people were the more times per month they logged into their private family web sites. It was pretty astonishing to see this hold true even for people up into their 80s. 

Because older people are flocking to Facebook, the We’re Related application (by FamilyLink.com) has jumped in the last few months to become the #2 most popular application on Facebook as measured by Weekly Active Users. For a few days, it was #1 in daily active users, but that number fluctates often as various apps experience occasional surges in traffic.

When we launched We’re Related in October 2007, we reached our first million users in 29 days, and our second million a few weeks later. We were surprised that our application spread so quickly, especially because Facebook had already clamped down on the “unlimited invites” that had helped the first successful apps reach millions of users in just weeks or months. Our cap was 20 invites per user per day, so Facebook users with a thousand friends couldn’t tell all of them about our app at once. And yet we still grew like crazy.

But what surprised us even more was our discovery that half of our first two million users were from Canada, and that 17 of our top 20 cities were in Canada. We teased our product manager (who is from Canada) about making this happen on purpose.

We discovered, through further investigation, that even though the US population is about 9.1 times greater than the population of Canada, at that time there were actually more women over age 55 in Canada using Facebook than here in the US.

Then it made sense. Older people, especially women, love the We’re Related application. In fact, it might be the primary reason they use Facebook — like it was for my mom.

We weren’t 100% sure why Facebook had more members 55+ in Canada than in the U.S. But this is our theory: since Facebook was originally for college students (first at Harvard, then at 60 Ivy League schools, then for all US colleges and universities) and then for US high school students, and only in September 2006 was opened to the general public, the perception was widespread in the U.S. was that Facebook was for young people only.

In fact, the famous NY Times article from June 7, 2007 titled “omg, my mom joined facebook” reflected a reality at the time in the U.S. that young people didn’t want older people (especially their moms) to see what they were doing online.

For some reason in Canada Facebook spread quickly to all ages. Maybe it hadn’t really taken off in Canadian universities. Maybe Facebook had launched in U.S. high schools but not in Canadian high schools. Or maybe Canadian youth don’t have as many things to hide from their parents. ;) 

Who knows? But whatever the reason, there were literally more men and women over 55 in Canada than in the US on Facebook.

When We’re Related launched, it became especially popular in Canada, probably because the large population of moms and grandmas embraced it and shared it.

We don’t know if our growth will continue at the current rate, but if it does we will have more than 50 million users by the end of this year. Not bad for an app that will turn 2 years old in October.

The challenge for us now, is to design a user experience that meets the widely varying needs of millions of families. Families come in all different shapes and sizes. 

We are anxious to create an experience that works for your family, that helps you stay in touch regularly with your siblings, parents, children, and extended family, in meaningful ways.

We would like to know what you want We’re Related to do for you and your family. How can we make it better?

Please comment on this blog about what features or design changes would lead you to use We’re Related regularly to keep in touch with your relatives.

We would really appreciate your suggestions.

Or, if you want to vote on each other’s ideas, please visit our customer feedback forum on Uservoice, where thousands of our active users are suggesting ideas and voting on them.

Please let us know what we can do for your family.

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Twitter’s Cosmic Powers

January 26, 2009 by paulballen · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Connect Magazine, Social Networking Watch 

I originally wrote this article for Connect Magazine’s December 2008 issue.

It’s been said that brevity is the soul of wit; it is also the soul of Twitter.

Twitter is the world’s most popular tool for “micro-blogging.” Every day, millions of people use Twitter to answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” As soon as they post a “tweet,” everyone who follows them can see what they are doing right now. It’s similar to updating your status in Facebook.

It’s called micro-blogging because you only have 140 characters per tweet. But you can pack a lot of info into 140 characters. Like Genie said to Jafar in the movie “Aladdin,” “Phenomenal cosmic powers … itty-bitty living space!”

Many people think Twitter is silly or a waste of time. But most of the people that I follow on Twitter are not posting what they just had for lunch or what they are watching on TV. Instead, they are smart people answering the question, “What did I just learn, read or think that is important to share?”

I don’t follow people on Twitter that post inane comments. But I do follow dozens of venture capitalists, employees at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Web 2.0 startup companies and even a congressman from Texas. By carefully selecting whom I follow on Twitter, I have chosen to tap into an information stream, a constant flow of ideas and links from hundreds of the smartest (and most vocal) people on earth.

Twitter recently passed Google Reader (with my carefully selected blogs) as my most important source of business information. Partly because of their brevity I can consume so many tweets quickly.

The keys to success with Twitter are: 1) Getting the right client software and, 2) Selecting the right people to follow.

I use Twitterific software on my iPhone and Twitterberry on my Blackberry. And of course, Twitter on the desktop.

From Twitter I learn about things going on in Silicon Valley and New York and elsewhere that people I follow are planning to attend. Last month I learned about a social advertising summit in New York City, and within a day was signed up for it. This event was crucial in shaping our current business strategy.

Twitter, which raised $15 million in venture capital in May, recently purchased a search engine that indexes the hundreds of millions of Twitter posts. It is a powerful way to find out what thousands of people are thinking about any topic.

And it’s not just about following the conversations; it’s about starting them as well.

If I post a tweet, the 300-plus people who follow me on Twitter can read it. But it also automatically updates my Facebook status, so my 800-plus Facebook friends can see it as well. Some people using Twitter have tens of thousands of followers. If they link to a Web site or make a comment or break a news story, imagine how quickly the news can spread.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/paulballen.

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The Power of LinkedIn and The Speed of Trust

September 19, 2008 by paulballen · 8 Comments
Filed under: Social Networking Watch 

Recently, my team identified 189 high-traffic web sites that we want to approach in the coming months with a very innovative partnership opportunity. We think we can increase their web site traffic and that our proposal makes a lot of sense.

But cold calling 189 these companies would likely be frustrating. Who would we ask for? How many calls would it take to find the right person, or to find a helpful person who could direct us to the right person?

And then, even if we found the right person to talk to, how interested could they possibly be in a startup company from Utah, even if we do have a few million monthly visitors to our web sites? In a phone conversation where we are hunting around for the right person to talk to, trying to catch them at a time when they are interested in hearing our proposal, well, the odds just aren’t good at all.

But then there’s the LinkedIn approach. Since I’ve been investing time regularly over since LinkedIn first launched in building a trusted network of connections, and since I’ve worked in so many companies over the years, and lectured, and taught, and blogged, and networked, and continually refreshed my loose social connections via LinkedIn, I happen to have a mind-boggling LinkedIn network.

My Network Stats show the following:

  • 139,600 Two Degrees Away
  • 986 Trusted Connections
  • 5,715,400 Three Degrees Away

Out of more than 25 million LinkedIn users, I can reach 20% of them through a friend of a friend. The success rate for me of LinkedIn requests has been probably greater than 90%. I never abuse the system. I carefully read profiles before sending requests. I carefully choose who to send the request through. And I always have a legitimate reason for contacting them that I sincerely think they will be interested in.

I’ve used last minute LinkedIn requests to get meetings in London with a top investment bank with less than 24 hours notice. I used it last week to make sure I got an invitation to attend the invitation-only Social Ad Summit in New York City. I’ve used it dozens of times with great results.

So recently I invited one of my (trusted) employees to login to my LinkedIn account, and to search for “marketing” or “business development” employees at the 189 web companies that we want to partner with in the not-too-distant future. Here’s what she found:

  • I have 3 1st Degree Connections
  • I have 31 2nd Degree Connections
  • I have 48 3rd Degree Connections

I actually have LinkedIn connections at almost every one of the 189 companies, but we were only looking for employees who had “marketing” or “business development” roles within the company.

She put all her findings into a spreadsheet, which I shrunk to 6-point font, and printed it out, so I can have it right by my computer and look at it every day. When we are ready to proceed, I’ll budget a bit of time every week to reach out via LinkedIn to some of these partners.

In the past week it has become apparent that FamilyLink.com, with our super popular We’re Related app on Facebook (5 million monthly active users and growing fast), is ready to reach out to brand advertisers and marketers who want to reach some of the families who are using our app.
I just searched for “media buyer” and “internet” on LinkedIn, and found that there are 390 matches that are within my network.

We think we can provide media buyers “the best way to reach families through social media.” Next week we’ll start using LinkedIn to reach the ones that really do seem most likely to be interested in placing relevant ads on social networks.

In the past, when I’ve tried to raise capital or advised others on raising capital, I’ve been amazed at how many thousands of people in the Venture Capital and Private Equity category are using LinkedIn. Since almost all angel and venture deals are done by referral, it makes a ton of sense for an entrepreneur to invest adequate time in building their LinkedIn network, and then when they are ready to find potential investors, to spend serious energy in reading the profiles of all the angel investor or VCs in their network. And then, to choose carefully who to send each request for a meeting through.

Stephen MR Covey wrote a best-selling book in 2006 called The Speed of Trust. I believe wholeheartedly in his premise that when there is trust, business can move at a very fast pace. But without trust, there can be infinite delays or gridlock.

LinkedIn is without a doubt the most powerful “Speed of Trust” tool ever invented in the history of the world, and I think modern entrepreneurs and business people who learn how to fully utilize its capabilities and help others in their network to benefit from it in appropriate ways, will find like I have that it it creates a wrinkle in time where all of a sudden you find yourself through some kind of invisible transference of good-will doing business with people you’ve never met before but that you feel that you have, because you’re friends of the same friend.

Does any of this make sense to you, LinkedIn user or not?

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In San Francisco for SnapSummit 2.0

March 25, 2008 by paulballen · 3 Comments
Filed under: Social Networking Watch 

I’m looking forward to hearing keynotes from Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook and Jim Benedetto, VP Technology at MySpace, as well as from 20 or so panelists who are succeeding with their social networking applications and investments. My last major dose of social networking content from industry insiders came at CES in January where I attended (and then bought mp3 recordings) of virtually every session on widgets and social networking. When I went to order my mp3 recordings, they just copied all the ones I wanted onto a thumb drive and gave them to me. It was the first conference where I have purchased the audio that way–very cool.

I am starting to see more and more how social networking will completely change the world of genealogy. Very few genealogists use social networks today, but that will change. One interesting fact that you can discover using Facebook Ads (www.facebook.com/ads) is that there are more people over 50 in Canada using Facebook than there are people over 50 in the U.S. using Facebook. Since genealogists tend to be older, the power of social networks won’t become evident to the 15+ million genealogists in the U.S. until more and more of them embrace social networks. But what they really need is a social network designed for genealogy.

FamilyLink.com is a close to launching our first feature that could make this social network essential for all serious genealogists. It’s a feature that has never been tried before on a massive scale. We are excited to roll it out.

What is interesting to me is that ever since last week when I blogged about 10% time, and as I have been contacting relatives and gathering information about my own ancestors, I now view everything that we are doing at FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords through the lens of "how will this help me and my family with our genealogy?"

Just this morning, as the sun is rising on "my city by the bay", I had two breakthrough ideas that I think could be implemented quite easily that would make my life so much easier. I want to find my ancestors and connect with my relatives who have already gathered so much information about them. A social networking concept that is becoming more popular but has not been applied to genealogy would really help me out. 

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Social Networking Strategy for Utah Companies

January 25, 2008 by paulballen · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Facebook, Social Networking Watch, Viral Marketing 

I recently organized a Facebook group called Utah CEOs with a Facebook Strategy. Now I wish I had named it better. It should be something like Utah Executives who Have or Want to Have a Social Networking Strategy. The first event had more than 30 attendees. One of them blogged a summary of the Facebook Strategy lunch that we held this week, and said it was very worthwhile.

If you want to join this group which already has 125 members so you can be notified when we schedule our next event, click here.

As we (at FamilyLink.com) increase our expertise in building applications and making them both viral and scalable (which has taken us months of effort and investment) we are planning to select some key strategic partners–companies who have content or services in the family space–and develop some co-branded applications with them. These applications can generate revenue and click-throughs for both our partners and our own web sites.

We will sign our first co-development deal next week and announce the application shortly thereafter. We believe this new application is unique and will spread to millions of Facebook users, and that is related to our business of connecting families. Our We’re Related application has had more than 2 million installs, and our next two applications are growing very, very quickly. Both should reach into the hundreds of thousands of installs within a month.

If you are interested in talking about partnering with us, please use the Contact Me form on my blog, and I’ll get back with you shortly.

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Facebook Strategy Lunch for Utah Executives

January 16, 2008 by paulballen · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Facebook, Social Networking Watch, Viral Marketing, Widgets 

I organized a Facebook Group for Utah CEOs who have a Facebook strategy or want to develop one. I wish I could change the name of the Facebook Group, but Facebook doesn’t allow that. I can see why. What if someone set up a group called “Mothers Against Drunk Driving” and got a million members, and then arbitrarily decided to change the name of the group to “We Love Beer.” The creator of a group can control a lot of things, but can’t change the name after people have joined it.

If I could change the group name I would broaden it to include any Utah Executive (not just CEOs) and also to broaden it to include Facebook, OpenSocial, and other major web sites such as Yahoo that are opening up their platforms to third-party developers.

At CES I heard a forecast that 1.2 billion people will be using social networks by 2012. On Wikipedia’s excellent list of social networks I count 26 that have nearly 10 million users already.

There are opportunities everywhere you look to build social networking applications or widgets that can spread throughout the web. And there are companies that can help you get started:

  • Widgetbox, a VC-funded company (Hummer Winblad), helps companies build and distribute widgets. They claim that 10% of the Facebook applications started as widgets that have migrated to Facebook. They announced last week a Bebo accelerator that can help a widget turn into a Bebo application. (Bebo is a massive social network that opened up last week to third party applications, just like Facebook.)
  • KickApps has raised $18 million to date. It provides widgets and social networking components for a fee. I spoke with a KickApps executive at CES. He said they charge for their applications and widgets based on page views/usage. So if you need a video player with social networking functionality built it for your web site, you don’t have to build it from scratch. It also appears that they can provide you with your own white label social network like Ning.
  • Ning allows anyone to quickly build their own social network on its platform. Founded by Marc Andreesen, Ning reached 100,000 social networks hosted back in September.
  • FBFactory.com claims to be the first company that exclusively builds Facebook apps for customers. They have a growing list of applications they have built.

    So, if you are a Utah Executive and you would like to learn more about how to develop a strategy that can help you reach the 1.2 billion people who are going to be using social networks in the next 4 years, and how to do it inexpensively and virally, sign up for this Facebook group, and plan on attending our lunch meeting next week in Provo.

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My New Personal Facebook Strategy

January 14, 2008 by paulballen · 7 Comments
Filed under: Facebook, MyFamily.com, Social Networking Watch 

I have been a serious user of social networks since joining LinkedIn several years ago–the fourth person in Utah to join, as I recall. My friend Michael Tanne, now CEO of Wink.com, turned me onto it. Of my 858 connections, I think I personally know about 98% of them. I have turned down a ton of connection requests because I really did want to be part of a trusted network. But I read that you should connect to a couple recruiters and a couple of the most networked people in the world, and I did, and it has dramatically expanded the reach of my own network. I am three degrees away from 3.74 million people. I use LinkedIn all the time to make contact with people from other companies.

I tried many other business social networks early on, including Ryze, Spoke, Xing, ZeroDegrees (first caught on with entertainment execs in So Calif) and Tribe.net but nothing had the ease of use of LinkedIn, so I’ve dropped them all except Xing, which is strong in Europe. Someday I’ll beef up my usage of that site.

I’m not a fan of MySpace, but have been active in Facebook for quite some time. I have about 300 Facebook friends, but probably 90% of them are just casual acquaintances, and the reality is that less than 10% of my actual close friends use Facebook. So how useful is it to me really? I’m married and have kids, so much social life is pretty much limited to work, family, church, and my kids’ school activities. The vast majority of Facebook apps are useless to someone like me. For business I rely on LinkedIn, and for family stuff, my own family and my wife’s family still use MyFamily.com, the social network for families which I helped build in 1998.

With all of that in mind, I’ve decided to dramatically change my usage strategy of Facebook. I’ve got 130 friend requests that are pending–almost all of them from people that I’ve never met. Many of those requests are from people in different countries. I am certain that many of them think I’m the Microsoft Paul Allen so they friend me. Or maybe they are entrepreneurs or members of the same Facebook groups that I belong to, and they just want to beef up their friend network.

During last week’s Robert Scoble controversy, where he was using the new Plaxo tool (in Alpha) to mine email addresses from his Facebook friends, I learned that he has about 5,000 Facebook friends, apparently the upper limit of what Facebook allows. I read recently that one person with more than 1,000 Facebook friends uses it to get a first hand glimpse of how Facebook apps spread, and who is using what apps. I got to thinking…maybe my Facebook connections can become as valuable to me for market research as I watch what they are doing and ask them questions using My Questions or other surveying/polling tools, and I’ll get a much better sense of what my own company can do in Facebook.

I see some serious downsides.

  • My newsfeed will become interesting mainly as market research, kind of my own mini zeitgeist, and not very satisfying in terms of keeping up with people that I really care about.
  • Reputation comes in large part by association–you are judged by the company you keep. So anyone who knows me and then clicks on any of my “friends” may assume certain things about them, based on what they know about me, and now, that trust by association will be almost completely lost. In fact, my own reputation, may be damaged.

I am quire worried about the reputation thing. Just last week a friend of mine told me should couldn’t believe I ever worked with so-and-so, who had tried to defraud her and take credit for her idea, and there was clear guilt by association. Thankfully I told her that I had met with him a couple of times and talked about doing something together but had such serious disgreements with him that we never actually worked together.

But the upsides are interesting also. I envision getting 5,000 friends like Scoble, with most of them being international entrepreneurs and older consumers. FamilyLink.com’s products and services are primarily of interest to family historians, who tend to be older, often over 50. Canada has more Facebook users over 50 than the U.S. does, with only about 1/9th of the population.

I’ll publish my blog into Facebook and attract more comments since I’ll have more readers. I highly value reader comments, and love to get 10-20 comments per post.

When I travel internationally, I often have very few good contacts in a given country, and it is hard to have a successful first trip when you don’t already have some kind of network there. I usually use LinkedIn to make some initial contacts and to set up some meetings, but now I may have some Facebook “friends” who may be willing to give me advice about where to stay, how to get around, and who to meet with.

For the last few days I’ve gone back and forth about the value of meeting new people through Facebook vs. the risk of a damaged reputation and the possibility of friends trusting people that aren’t trustworthy.

I’ve decided to go ahead and try an experiment. I’ll accept the 130 other friend requests that I have, and actively start seeking friends in countries that I’m planning to travel to this year. I’ll try to find a way to “warn” my own friends and acquaintances that I’m using Facebook in this way, and that they can’t instantly trust people in my friends list. I’ll also start using the new Friends List feature of Facebook, so I’ll have my own way of communicating instantly with all my real friends.

I was on the fence for several days. But I finally decided to go ahead and get a zillion Facebook friends when I realized that if this experience turns out badly, I can just reboot. I can delete my Facebook account and start over from scratch.

So, tell me what you think about my decision. I’m starting right now, and if you really think this is a bad idea, post a comment and tell me so, and maybe you’ll save me from a disaster. Or if you have any advice for me, please share it.

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CES 2008–for me, it’s about Facebook

January 8, 2008 by paulballen · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Facebook, Social Networking Watch 

I’m in Las Vegas for CES 2008. Last night on my drive from Provo I listened to some podcasts in the Stanford Entrepreneur Lecture Series. (You can download them for free from iTunes or from Stanford’s web site.) The most interesting was Mark Zuckerberg’s talk 2 years ago when Facebook had 5 million users and was still limited to authenticated college students and invited high school students. It was growing by 20,000 member per day, was generating $1 million per month in revenue, was cash flow positive, had taken money from Accel by then, and had more page views already than Google. Mark said the key metric he looked at most was the percentage of his users who used the service every day.

The most interesting moment was during the Q&A where a Stanford student asked if Mark (and Jim Breyer, a board member and VC who was also there) had thought about opening up Facebook (which Mark had been arguing was an online directory utility, not a social network) to other developers and turning it into a platform. Mark’s answer was immediately: yes, and if you have experience coding operating systems, etc, then come and help me do it.

So that was a long time ago, in internet years. Mark had just turned 21. This was 2 years before the May 2007 official launch of Facebook Platform, that Mark indicated that Facebook wanted to be open to third party development.

I also listened (for the second time) to Marissa Mayer’s lecture on nine ways that Google fosters innovation and creativity. She joined Google in 1998 and has managed its consumer search business for years. This is a fantastic lecture. She describes the 20% time at Google and how it works in practice. She indicated that in one recent six month period, 50% of the new products launched at Google resulted from employee 20% time. The most interesting moment for me was her description of a 3 am brainstorm session back in about 1999 when a bunch of developers were staying late to lend support to Harry, the sole guy in charge of running the 3-4 day web crawl updates using 500+ command line commands, and during a brainstorm at that time they came up with what is now Google Book Search–the idea of scanning all the books in the world. She describes the magical moment that it was for all of these early employees at Google, but then she indicated that Google continues to recruit people who want to change the world and that creative moments like this continue to happen every day or night at Google around the pool table as incredibly bright people try to imagine what Google could possibly do next.

So now I’m finalizing my plans for today using the excellent My CES online planning tool. It’s definitely the best online experience I’ve ever had looking for speakers, companies, exhibitors, and products that I want to learn about.

Facebook, it appears, has a booth at the Sands/Venetian, and they have about 20 employees registered to be here this week. This is a bit surprising since the major search engines and web sites don’t usually exhibit at CES, although they participate in keynotes and on panels. I’m very curious to see if this is really a booth or just a meeting room.

I’m hoping to meet up with some other Facebook developers and thought leaders today or tomorrow. Our first Facebook app We’re Related now has 2 million users (our press release announcing this should hit today.) Since our company’s mission is to creative innovative tools for connecting families, we intend to develop apps for other social networks and to create widgets that operate on major web sites (like Google and Yahoo) and on mobile devices, that will help family members communicate and share information with each other. Yahoo made a big annoucement yesterday at CES about Yahoo Life! which apparently will allow third-party developers to create widgets that can be utilized in the new combined search portal/social network platform that Yahoo is building by combining its key tools into one user experience. I don’t quite understand it all yet (I wish I had seen it in person), but my main interest is in figuring out how we can deliver utility to families who are using any major web site. The more open large companies are to third party development, the more likely we are to focus on creating value for their users rather than trying to build destination web sites ourselves.

Before I head over to the first keynote, I’m going to use LinkedIn to attempt contact with 6-8 people in the social networking industry that I hope to meet tonight or tomorrow at the show, and see how it goes. When I travel I can’t believe how useful LinkedIn is in getting last minute meetings set up.

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AlwaysOn Venture Summit West, Dec. 6-7

November 29, 2007 by paulballen · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Families, Genealogy, Social Networking Watch, Venture Capital, World Vital Records 

I missed the Stanford Summit (AlwaysOn) this July, but I am registered for the Venture Summit West coming up next week. I look forward to catching up with some friends on the VC side of things and comparing notes with some friends who are CEOs who will be at this conference. I usually attend the AlwaysOn Summit in July at Stanford, but I missed it this year, being in the intense startup mode still at WorldVitalRecords.com.

This will be a fun conference, partly because social networking is all the rage, and my company has launched a social network for genealogists, FamilyLink.com, that is getting increasing traction, but far more because our We’re Related Facebook application is getting serious traction, and even though we launched it later than I had hoped (5 months and 2 days after the Facebook Platform launch, which I blogged about), it has far surpassed our expectations.

Our strategy is to aggregate and provide genealogical databases to customers worldwide through our paid service, worldvitalrecords.com, and to attract millions of users through viral marketing, utilizing our own social network and building apps for other social networks. Both aspects of our strategy are now working.

WorldVitalRecords.com hits record traffic numbers every month and our subscriber numbers are really starting to climb. (The monthly option at $5.95 per month seems to have helped.)

For viral marketing, we love Facebook. But we also love the OpenSocial concept (which I have not yet blogged about) and providing our apps wherever users are. If we end up with apps and widgets on every major social web site, the big question is will our family users be able to interact seamlessly with each other and share family content and communications as easily as if they were all using the same dedicated social network? During the Social Networking 3.0 panel at the July Stanford Summit, I think the answer from the Facebook panelist sounded like a “probably” but from MySpace it seemed like a no. They were discussing how portable individual profiles would be on the social networks, and whether apps would be interactive with apps on other social networks. Of course social networks (like MySpace) probably want to “own” their customers, but I believe customers won’t allow for that, and will demand portability of profiles and interoperability of apps/widgets.

If you are going to Venture Summit West, and would like to meet up to discuss the future of online genealogy and family social networking (or social networking in general), drop me a line.

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Google Reader for Blackberry

September 13, 2007 by paulballen · 8 Comments
Filed under: Obituaries, Personal Knowledge Management, Social Networking Watch 

In my opinion, one of the most important things you can do to succeed in your chosen profession, is to invest time and effort into selecting the best blogs and news feeds in the world that will connect you with the thought leaders in your field. I agree with Tim Sanders that 80% of your time learning should be with the best books (source: Love is the Killer App), but then the 20% that is spent with media or online to stay current with breaking news and thought, should be the best sources anywhere.

When I taught internet marketing at BYU, I told the students that most of what I would teach them would be obsolete within months or years, but that if they learned how to find the most authoritative and helpful sources of new content, and develop a habit of studying that content regularly, that they could be world class marketers. Most people, I have found, do not invest the time upfront to create the flow of information that will help them the most.

I have been a huge fan of Google Reader for more than a year now, but several times I’ve looked for a download of Google Reader for the Blackberry, similar to what I downloaded for Google News.

But today, thankfully, I came across a blog post that simply says the mobile version of Google Reader is accessed simply by visiting www.google.com/reader/m/view.

I have a much better chance of staying current with my favorite feeds now that I have found this URL. It is now my #1 bookmark in my Google web browser.

Already this morning while walking around the house getting ready for work, I read a clip about Boston-based Eons.com (a social networking site for people over 50 that has raised more than $30 million in venture capital) laying off 1/3 to 1/2 of its staff (and possibly ditching the obits section), and a report by Leland Meitzler of last nights UGA Conference banquet — stuff I might have missed since I spend so little time at my desktop these days. I do almost all of my email on my blackberry, and now, I think, the vast majority of my Google Reader time will be on my blackberry.

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