Web X.0

Nominate outbrain for Mashable's Open Awards, part II

2008-11-19T22:18:19-05:00

So - outbrain has been nominated as one of the top-10 finalists in the best blog plugins category. Cool!

Now we need your help to get nominated as the winner... So take a minute to fill your email and hit the 'Vote Now >>' button below. Thanks!!

Magnes Sisters handbags

2008-11-19T12:24:59-05:00

Disclosure: I'm highly biased on the subject on multiple levels...

The Magnes Sisters are three sisters (surprise..) who design wonderful handbags. They are among the nicest entrepreneurs I've ever met + they are passionate about creating a wonderfully designed and crafted product. Their bags are in the moderate price range - $150 - 350 - but offer probably the best value you can find for a nice handbag.

If you're not part of the handbag-ing 1/2 of the population - believe me - a Magnes Sisters handbag is a *perfect* gift for a special occasion.

I'm far from being a fashion expert (especially on woman's accessories..), but here are a few comments I picked up from this site:

"Love these girls and love these bags - they are amazing, well made and very cool!" - Sari from Brooklyn, February 13, 2007.
"These handbags are terrific, every detail is figured out, they are worth every penny." - Anne from NY, NY, February 14, 2007.
"I own a gorgeous red on red Magnes Sisters Bag and I have more people stopping me and asking me about it than you can ever imagine!!! It is roomy and classy -- a perfect bag." - Lisa from NJ, February 14, 2007.
"Such classy bags, perfectly finished, and goes equally with a relaxed jeans look or a dress! Wait till you open one and see every detail inside... amazing:) Love them!" - Jennifer from NYC from US, February 14, 2007.

Go here to read more. If you own a Magnes handbag and have any feedback, please submit a comment below. Magnes Sister handbags are sold at Nordstrom's and hundreds of other stores (a full list is on their site).

If you're in the NY area tomorrow (Thursday, November 20th 2008), you can meet the sisters (and buy a bag!) at a special event they are doing before the holidays. Full details are below (click the invite for a full size version):

Nominate outbrain for Mashable's Open Web Awards

2008-11-14T20:34:14-05:00

If you have a minute, and like what we're doing at outbrain - then please help us get to the next stage of Mashable's Open Web Awards - we need as many nominations as we can get.

All you need to do is fill your email address below, and hit the "Submit" button. Thanks!!

Cosmic VC

2008-11-13T08:23:00-05:00

Charlie Federman - a VC and a friend - has recently launched a new and excellent blog about VC's, startups, etc.

One post I couldn't agree more with:

"Try as you may, but no young company, founded with a growth oriented DNA, that I remember, has ever slashed their expenses to victory. Many companies appropriately encouraged to slash budgets find themselves with now unproven markets, or a value proposition which has not yet resonated. Nevertheless, if a company has momentum, this environment presents an incredibly capital efficient time to garner market share as distribution, R&D and customer acquisition expenses are in a deep downward spiral."

As bad as things are today, it's important to keep in mind that there will be big big winners in 2010-12, and those winners are being incubated right now. The smart companies are going to figure out how to provide clients with great value in a down market. They're going to have massive access to great talent and cheap office space. They're going to have the full attention span of their potential clients.

VC's that are panicking out of investments today are probably missing out on the companies facing the best opportunities in nearly a decade.

Publishing - the only metric that matters

2008-11-12T13:21:14-05:00

Publishers (and bloggers specifically) tend to measure their business on two parameters:

Page views
Ad revenues

These are fine metrics, but I believe that they are derivatives of a much more fundamental metric which, if ignored, could be devastating to a publisher's business. Lets call this metric the "Reader's Goodwill Pot".

Lets assume an imaginary pot into which imaginary goodwill points can be deposited, and from which imaginary goodwill points can be depleted. Sort of like a bank account for goodwill. Now, as a publisher/blogger, imagine you are running this kind of 'goodwill account' with your audience of readers.

When you post great content you are adding points into the pot. When you provide your reader with a great user experience you are adding points to this pot.

If you build a big enough goodwill pot, with a big enough audience, then you can dip into that pot occasionally, take some points away and put them in your pocket. That is also usually known as advertising.

As a publisher, with every pixel you put on your site (or ink on paper, or frame on screen, etc), with every piece of content you produce, with every ad you take on your site - this is the single most important metric you should obsess over. Am I putting goodwill points into my piggy bank, or am I taking some away?

Great publishers understand that the need to keep this balance is far more important than the need to track any of the other metrics - PV's and revenues, for example - in isolation.

As we hit a recession, I suspect many more bloggers and traditional publishers are going to ignore this metric and will try squeezing the lemon as much as possible by cutting on the content and the user experience, and at the same time trying to maximize the number of ads that interrupt the readers. Publishers ignoring the 'Reader's Goodwill Pot' will not survive, not because of the bad macro economy, but rather because they failed to understand the micro economy of publishing.

{Image CC by: Nieve44/La Luz . Thanks!}

Bluefin Tuna

2008-09-19T18:20:38-04:00

My fellow outbrainer, John LoGioco, has just launched a site focused on the Bluefin Tuna and ways to help save it.

You are most likely to bump into a Bluefin on your plate of sushi. As demand for sushi exploded globally, this magnificent fish has become dangerously close to vanishing from the face of the earth. Over 90% of the Bluefin's population are already gone, and within a few years it is likely become forever extinct if we don't stop over-fishing it.

There is one simple way you can help in saving this fish:

When you eat sushi, ask which dishes include Bluefin Tuna and simply avoid them.

Here are a few more helpful links if you're interested in the subject:

John's SaveTheBluefin.com website. You can register as a member here.You can also help us spread the word by putting the SaveTheBluefin badge on your blog (you can see the badge on the left-hand rail of this page). Grab the badges here.
Tag-A-Giant is committed to reversing the decline of northern Bluefin tuna populations by supporting the scientific research necessary to develop innovative and effective policy and conservation initiatives. You can support Tag-A-Giant with a donation here.
Professor Barbara Block's blog focused on the efforts around tagging and saving of the Bluefins.

Favorite podcasts, part 3

2008-08-10T02:08:22-04:00

TED Talks has to be my all-time favorite podcast. Here's an excellent talk by Robert Lang on origami... wow...:

TED Talks are generally so good, you can hardly go wrong. But as a service to Webx0 readers, here are a few that I particularly liked:

Point your iTunes here to subscribe to TED's video feed.

An alternative Plan B for Microsoft

2008-06-15T00:45:52-04:00

Yahoo remind me of the famous saying about the Palestinians:

"They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"

After playing a hand of cards they didn't have with Microsoft, they have now essentially committed harkiri by becoming a node within Google's business. Why would any advertiser now bid on Yahoo's platform? I can't find a single reason, and I doubt advertisers will either (not that they had many reasons before...). I agree with Michael Arrington - Yahoo totally screwed this up, and their search business is pretty much dead.

Now everyone seems obsessed with Microsoft's next acquisition target. I'd like to offer Ballmer my 2c on a potential alternative to the $50B acquisitions they're looking to make. It's called the 200% rev-share program.

But first, a little background:
Online advertising is a strange business. While the advertisers are the ones paying for everything, acquiring advertisers is a secondary concern for an ad network. A distant second. The #1 key to making an ad network work is the publisher side. Even though the publishers are being paid, it's much more difficult to win publishers than it is to win paying advertisers. The reason is pretty simple: Ad space is binary, while advertising budgets are not. A publisher has to make a binary decision on who gets to sell certain ad space. Whoever they choose becomes the de-facto exclusive "owner" of that ad space. Publishers cannot take risks on that kind of exclusive deal, and therefore they all choose the leader who has proven to monetize best - Google in the case of text/search ads.

Advertisers, even though they are the ones paying the bills, are much easier to obtain because their choice on how to distribute their budget is not binary by nature. They can put some money on Google, some on MSN, some on Quigo, etc. Advertisers will generally follow the distribution. He who has publisher real estate will eventually get the advertisers. The other direction is far from guaranteed (see Miva, LookSmart, etc, etc).

A much better plan B for spending those $50B is by seriously upping the rev-share paid out to publishers. And I'm not talking about upping it from 60/40 (about what Google pays out), to 70/30. My suggestion would be to go for a 200 / -100 rev-share with publishers. Take those $50B and use them subsidize the publisher earn-outs for the next couple of years.

Publishers are dying to have an alternative to Google for monetization. The trouble is that no one has been able to naturally monetize better than Google. And that gap is widening by the minute. This game cannot be won in a dog chase.

The only way to get back into the game is by locking publisher distribution, and the only way to do that is by out-paying Google, even if that means doing it artificially via subsidizing the rev-share and not though higher yield.

Microsoft should offer a 200% rev-share to all publishers (and search sites, etc) for next couple of years until every publisher in the world is talking about how much better monetization is with MSN than it is with Google. When that happens, critical mass of distribution will occur, attracting massive advertising $$'s, allowing Microsoft to *slowly* throttle down the revenue split to under the 100% mark.

This isn't too crazy... If anything, I'd go for a 300% or 400% rev-share and completely nail this down. Google can obviously react to this and raise rev-share splits as well. But for Google this is the *only* revenue source and it would be awfully painful to turn that into a money loser. Microsot can still afford to do this while Windows and Office are still the cash cows that they are. In addition, some of these publisher subsidies will be offset by the improved monetization of MSN's own properties.

This is one of those unique moments where it can really be said that it's now or never.

HopStop.com

2008-04-21T20:25:56-04:00

This morning HopStop.com announced an angel investment by a group that I am part of. I am joining HopStop's board of directors. Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks broke the news here.

A couple of months ago, waaay before the investment opportunity even came up, I was interviewed by Eze over at VC Cafe. His last question was "What are 5 sites you can't do without?", and HopStop was on my short list. HopStop is my car replacement in the past couple of years. I use it on average 3-4 times per day and cannot imagine how I got around the city without it. If you live in NY, or plan to come for a visit, you should absolutely head over to HopStop and start planning your public commutes from place to place. (BTW - if you're even considering using Google Transit, take my word on this one - HopStop is 10x better and much more accurate and useful).

HopStop has done a great job of building a wonderful service on a shoestring. It has been integrated on sites like TimeOut, Corcoran, and Halstead. Now were looking to add many more partners to use HopStop for powering their "How to get here?" directions/mapping pages. HopStop's free API is available here for any site to embed. If you are a local site in one of these metro areas - NY/NJ, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston or Chicago - HopStop is the *best* directions service for your users, and it is absolutely free for you.

I can go on and on about how much I like the site, but I'm not objective... head over to NBC's local NY channel to watch a great item about HopStop from a couple of days ago.

Looking for the best product person in NYC

2008-04-13T09:56:00-04:00

We're looking for a great product person to head product management over at outbrain. The timing for joining us couldn't be any better - We have a huge and growing distribution network, we've recently closed a $5M A-round with top-tier VC's, and we have a great little team in which each person has a huge impact.

I'm looking for someone for our NY office who can be hands-on in spec'ing a web product and can work with our engineers in Israel to create the best blog ratings & recommendations service out there. In the long term, I'd like this person to be able to hire and manage our PM team. The title would be Director or VP of PM. Any experience with online advertising products is more than welcome.

If you're a *great* product person at any of the following companies, the timing now is PERFECT to switch over to a well-funded startup with lots of upside... (note: the folks that joined us at a similar stage at my previous company - Quigo - did fairly well... ;-)

Are you at Google watching the value of your stock dropping ~40% in the past few months?
Are you (or - were you...) with DoubleClick pissed at how Google is treating you?
Are you at Microsoft fed up with all the committees you need to get through to launch every small feature?
Are you at Yahoo? (enough said... ;-)

If you're at any of these companies, now is the time to jump ship. Drop me a note to: galai [at] outbrain [dot] com