The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘hotel’

Later this week, thousands of ironic t-shirts will be arriving in Austin for the 16th annual South By Southwest Interactive festival.

At about this time, it’s traditional for tech publications to publish handy guides to “surviving SXSWi” – packed with useful advice that’s basically interchangeable with that for any other festival since the beginning of time.

“Drink plenty of water!” “Prepare for some late nights!” “Plan ahead to make sure you don’t miss anything!” “Pack sturdy shoes!” “Always use a condom!”. Useful advice for SXSWi, certainly, but also applicable for Oktoberfest, Glastonbury, Woodstock and the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (although for the latter, replace ’shoes’ with ’sandals’ and ‘condom’ with ’sprig of silphium’).

This year, though, I decided to use my experience of past SXSWi’s to produce something more useful. A very specific and completely foolproof guide on surviving this year’s event. And here it is…

Tip One: Don’t go to South by Southwest Interactive.

I’m serious. It sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. The idea that SXSWi is a conference – or even a festival – for people doing interesting and useful things in technology is a fallacy. In reality, it’s just a non-stop orgy of bullshit fanboyism – a chance for people with stickers on their laptops to go and add more stickers to their laptops; an opportunity for sweaty dorks in Diggnation t-shirts to line up for two hours in the hope of getting Alex Albrecht to – I dunno – sign their laptop, I suppose, or maybe give them another freaking sticker. Even the parties – which are basically the only reason to go – are horrible: the free bars runs out too soon, and they’re always rammed with the kind of people who you could be forgiven for assuming have never been inside licenced premises before.

“But Pure Volume at 2am is pretty awesome!”

No it isn’t. You were just drunk. You’d lined up for three months to get in with your stupid plastic entry tag and you had to convince yourself that the experience was worthwhile because the only alternative was to kill yourself. Free vodka Red Bulls are not worth the hassle. Take your lead from the pros: buy a couple of bottles of vodka and a case of Red Bull and host your own party in your hotel room. Except you can’t, can you? Because you’re sharing with your friend Dan and he has to be up early for the “Google Hackathon”.

“But we’re launching a new app, and it’s going to be awesome.”

No it isn’t. But I completely understand why you think it will be. With all those fanboys in one place, where better than ‘South by’ to launch your awesome new location-based app?

Two years ago, Twitter was the undisputed hit of the festival. Everyone was using it – to find parties, to silently heckle panels, to do all the things that one can do with Twitter. Last year those same people were so desperate to find the new Twitter that they mistakenly handed that crown to Foursquare on the basis that a relatively small number of Web 2.0 scenesters used it to find out where their friends were partying. And yet, despite that auspicious start, and a shit-ton of publicity since, Foursquare has failed to capture the imagination of even most early adopters, particularly those outside of San Francisco and New York. Foursquare was resolutely not last year’s Twitter. Last year’s Twitter was Twitter.

That won’t, however, stop a billion start-ups blowing their entire launch budget on flying their whole team – armed with sacks of flyers and amusing stick-on bugs and branded candy and more fucking stickers – to Texas, confident in the knowledge that their app (with its stupid cutesy name) will be the hit of the festival. It won’t be. It will just be yet another location-based app sloshing about in a sea of location-based apps that may be temporarily useful while a thousand early adopters are crammed into an area of less than one square mile. The moment the festival is over, you’ll be dead.

Instead, this year’s hot location-based app will be… Twitter. You’re welcome. Call me Nostradamus.

Last year, while in Austin, I wrote a column for the Guardian talking about the awfulness of the event, saying..

“None of this is surprising, of course, as it all fits neatly into what social media has taught us – that the moment a service or community gets too big, too mainstream or too commercialised, the early adopters declare it “over” and move on to the next cool, niche thing. And it’s why I really hope that next year one or two of those early adopters will organise – and I mean that in the loosest sense – a user-generated unofficial fringe conference to sit alongside the main event. Ideally it will be a bit nerdier and more businessy, and a lot more fun, than SXSW and will have plenty of space for unofficial “core conversations” and a great product launch or two.”

Sadly, unless it’s a very well kept secret, there’s no such rival event and this year’s SXSWi will be more of the same bullshit. And for that reason, I’m totally serious when I say that you shouldn’t go. Instead – while your rivals are distracted in Texas, pissing their money up the wall and ejaculating over their laptop stickers during yet another Evan Williams keynote – you should use the time instead to stay at home and work on building your start-up.

Your liver will thank you, your investors will thank you, and most importantly so will millions of real-world users who really want you to create something new and innovative rather than being sucked into the hype and churning our just a better, prettier Twitter-meets-Gowalla clone for the approbation of your peers.

Yeah?

Yeah.

I’m moderating the “Unsexy & Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype” panel on Saturday at 3:30pm in Hilton A/B.

See you in Austin.

(Photo of Gary Vaynerchuk and Kathy Sierra by Randy Stewart)

Later this week, thousands of ironic t-shirts will be arriving in Austin for the 16th annual South By Southwest Interactive festival.

At about this time, it’s traditional for tech publications to publish handy guides to “surviving SXSWi” – packed with useful advice that’s basically interchangeable with that for any other festival since the beginning of time.

“Drink plenty of water!” “Prepare for some late nights!” “Plan ahead to make sure you don’t miss anything!” “Pack sturdy shoes!” “Always use a condom!”. Useful advice for SXSWi, certainly, but also applicable for Oktoberfest, Glastonbury, Woodstock and the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (although for the latter, replace ’shoes’ with ’sandals’ and ‘condom’ with ’sprig of silphium’).

This year, though, I decided to use my experience of past SXSWi’s to produce something more useful. A very specific and completely foolproof guide on surviving this year’s event. And here it is…

Tip One: Don’t go to South by Southwest Interactive.

I’m serious. It sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. The idea that SXSWi is a conference – or even a festival – for people doing interesting and useful things in technology is a fallacy. In reality, it’s just a non-stop orgy of bullshit fanboyism – a chance for people with stickers on their laptops to go and add more stickers to their laptops; an opportunity for sweaty dorks in Diggnation t-shirts to line up for two hours in the hope of getting Alex Albrecht to – I dunno – sign their laptop, I suppose, or maybe give them another freaking sticker. Even the parties – which are basically the only reason to go – are horrible: the free bars runs out too soon, and they’re always rammed with the kind of people who you could be forgiven for assuming have never been inside licenced premises before.

“But Pure Volume at 2am is pretty awesome!”

No it isn’t. You were just drunk. You’d lined up for three months to get in with your stupid plastic entry tag and you had to convince yourself that the experience was worthwhile because the only alternative was to kill yourself. Free vodka Red Bulls are not worth the hassle. Take your lead from the pros: buy a couple of bottles of vodka and a case of Red Bull and host your own party in your hotel room. Except you can’t, can you? Because you’re sharing with your friend Dan and he has to be up early for the “Google Hackathon”.

“But we’re launching a new app, and it’s going to be awesome.”

No it isn’t. But I completely understand why you think it will be. With all those fanboys in one place, where better than ‘South by’ to launch your awesome new location-based app?

Two years ago, Twitter was the undisputed hit of the festival. Everyone was using it – to find parties, to silently heckle panels, to do all the things that one can do with Twitter. Last year those same people were so desperate to find the new Twitter that they mistakenly handed that crown to Foursquare on the basis that a relatively small number of Web 2.0 scenesters used it to find out where their friends were partying. And yet, despite that auspicious start, and a shit-ton of publicity since, Foursquare has failed to capture the imagination of even most early adopters, particularly those outside of San Francisco and New York. Foursquare was resolutely not last year’s Twitter. Last year’s Twitter was Twitter.

That won’t, however, stop a billion start-ups blowing their entire launch budget on flying their whole team – armed with sacks of flyers and amusing stick-on bugs and branded candy and more fucking stickers – to Texas, confident in the knowledge that their app (with its stupid cutesy name) will be the hit of the festival. It won’t be. It will just be yet another location-based app sloshing about in a sea of location-based apps that may be temporarily useful while a thousand early adopters are crammed into an area of less than one square mile. The moment the festival is over, you’ll be dead.

Instead, this year’s hot location-based app will be… Twitter. You’re welcome. Call me Nostradamus.

Last year, while in Austin, I wrote a column for the Guardian talking about the awfulness of the event, saying..

“None of this is surprising, of course, as it all fits neatly into what social media has taught us – that the moment a service or community gets too big, too mainstream or too commercialised, the early adopters declare it “over” and move on to the next cool, niche thing. And it’s why I really hope that next year one or two of those early adopters will organise – and I mean that in the loosest sense – a user-generated unofficial fringe conference to sit alongside the main event. Ideally it will be a bit nerdier and more businessy, and a lot more fun, than SXSW and will have plenty of space for unofficial “core conversations” and a great product launch or two.”

Sadly, unless it’s a very well kept secret, there’s no such rival event and this year’s SXSWi will be more of the same bullshit. And for that reason, I’m totally serious when I say that you shouldn’t go. Instead – while your rivals are distracted in Texas, pissing their money up the wall and ejaculating over their laptop stickers during yet another Evan Williams keynote – you should use the time instead to stay at home and work on building your start-up.

Your liver will thank you, your investors will thank you, and most importantly so will millions of real-world users who really want you to create something new and innovative rather than being sucked into the hype and churning our just a better, prettier Twitter-meets-Gowalla clone for the approbation of your peers.

Yeah?

Yeah.

I’m moderating the “Unsexy & Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype” panel on Saturday at 3:30pm in Hilton A/B.

See you in Austin.

(Photo of Gary Vaynerchuk and Kathy Sierra by Randy Stewart)

It has been suggested that the album is dead. That’s a bit hasty, I think; such an established musical tool can only be detonated when both the patron and the artist turn the key. What people are seeing is that the patrons (i.e

Here is the original:
In a world of tracks, Pink Floyd fights for the album

It has been suggested that the album is dead. That’s a bit hasty, I think; such an established musical tool can only be detonated when both the patron and the artist turn the key

See original here:
In a world of tracks, Pink Floyd fights for the album

Just so you know, I’m not making light of warfare — it’s just that virtual training like this, while valuable, does remind one simultaneously of Modern Warfare and Ender’s Game . Of course, as this article notes , the current generation of potential soldiers has grown up in a digital age and expects a little Xbox with their ammo box

See the original post here:
360-degree virtual combat room is like Iraq: The Arcade Game

This time last week, prompted by Luke Wroblewski’s research, I asked you to suggest Mad Lib style sign-up text for your favourite websites. By way of encouragement, I promised to dig around my hotel room and find some kind of prizes; a signed copy of my eBay-auction-winning book, a TechCrunch tshirt, a little bottle of shampoo – stuff like that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the quality of the prizes on offer, the competition was flooded with entries. Over 30 of them in fact, almost all of which were from people who had actually understood the entry requirements. Some had even got within a mile of being funny. Well done, them.

And so to the winners, in reverse order of funniness…

For effort alone, third prize goes to Tommy Vallier for this suggestion for LinkedIn:

Hello! My name is ____ and I’d like to join LinkedIn. My email address is ____, my website is ____, I have an RSS feed at ____ and I am on twitter as @____. I’m interested in ____, ____, ____ and expertise requests.

I am currently employed as ____ at ____ and as ____ at ____. Before that I was employed as a ____ at ____ and prior to that I did ____ for ____.

I went to school at ____ where I received a ____ in ____ and also at ____ where I received a ____.

Because I worked with ____, ____, ____ and ____ at various points in my life, I’d like to be connected to them – even though I hardly speak with them anymore. Oh, and connect me with ____, too, as they’re my current boss and I don’t want to look unprofessional.

In the last short while I’ve worked with ____ and ____, so please send them a message telling them I’ve signed up and ask them to give me recommendations for the ____ I did for them. I’d like give my own to ____ for ____.

I want to join a group devoted to ____ – because that’s what I currently do, and ____ because that’s what everyone thinks I should be doing. Have me join a ____ group too, because everyone else is doing it.

I think that’s everything about me. Please let me know when you’ve found me a new career.

Thanks.

Second prize, largely thanks to the dig at Yahoo!, goes to ‘Laura’ for her Flickr sign-up suggestion…

I feel dark inside, like this photo of a ______ with an emphasis on the shadow(s).  This is the only reason I would conceivably have a Yahoo ID, and it is __________.  Please make my password an anagram of Ansel Adams or ________.

And last, but the exact opposite of least, the winner. An entry that understood the spirit of the competition, right down to the use of punctuation as comedy timing. For that, and for masterful use of tautology, take a bow Matt Shaw. You win first prize for your proposed sign-up text for DeviantArt…

My name is __________. I feel the dark powers compel me to join this site, to post my angstily-drawn pictures of half-naked ________s and faeries, all of which are elaborate metaphors for the constant state of _________ in which I perpetually, endlessly, forever find myself. I don’t expect you to understand; no one understands. Please make my password “unicorns”.

Kudos Matt, Laura and Tommy. Assuming the email addresses you used when you commented are genuine, you’ll be genning an email from me in the next day or two to make prize arrangements.

Shit My Dad Says, the Twitter phenomenon with over 1.2 million followers, and more notably, a TV pilot in the works, has taken his act to the new hot (or at least, controversial) social network, Google Buzz.

Now, before you get too excited, you’ll note that all this account is doing is importing the Shit My Dad Says tweets into Buzz. In fact, because the account doesn’t tweet all that regularly (I suppose creator Justin Halpern is busy trying to write dialogue for William Shatner, who will star in the show), there are only five total tweet imported so far since February 10, when the account was started. Still, there’s a lot of activity on those five tweets, with dozens of Buzz users liking and commenting on the blurbs.

There’s no way of knowing if this account is an official one since anyone can import any public Twitter account into their Buzz steam, but even if fake, the creator did a nice job recreating Justin’s father. For example, his profile says that the one thing he can’t find on Google is “my pants.” And his hometown is shown on a Google Map as somewhere just outside Columbus, Ohio. The About Me section reads the same as the Twitter bio, “I’m 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says.”

The most interesting thing about this account may be its level of engagement. If I were on the Buzz team, I might point out that even though this account is doing nothing beyond importing tweets, there’s clearly a huge demand to have conversations about these tweets — something which is much easier to do on Buzz then on Twitter. Of course, some brands are already understanding this.

Also note that the account name is technically “sh1tmydadsays,” because Google won’t allow swear word in Gmail addresses.

[thanks Louis]

I read something the other day that argued that Netflix has not a chance in hell of becoming “this century’s HBO.” Netflix may be popular, but don’t expect it to achieve the type of penetration and success of the cable channel.

Read the original:
FIOS the first to get HBO Go

As you know, today is Valentine’s Day. As such, I thought it was the perfect time to write a love sonnet for my new favorite company: Expedia.com. Actually, I’ll do the opposite.

Seeing as it’s a long weekend in the United States (President’s Day is on Monday), I decided I was going to set up a little trip to get away with the girl I’m seeing. A few weeks ago, I set up all the plans for what I thought would be a nice, relaxing weekend. It’s actually been anything but relaxing. My mistake? Using Expedia to book it.

After a few hours of driving, we pulled into our destination yesterday and attempted to check-in to the hotel. Problem 1: they’ve never heard of us. My name is nowhere to be found in their reservation system. Problem 2: they were completely booked. Problem 3: even if there was a cancellation, there was a waiting list for a room because apparently, Expedia had done this exact thing to no fewer than four other couples — just at this hotel alone.

So what happened?

Well, it took me a couple hours to get a straight answer out of anyone, but apparently, the system that Expedia uses to book reservation with its partner hotels is a mixture of antiquated and just completely fucked up. Because it would be too much of a hassle, and more importantly, cost too much money, Expedia has an automated system for communicating with its partners. Sometimes this is done with an email, sometimes this is done with a fax. Yes, a fax.

In my case, Expedia’s system apparently faxed the reservation to the hotel I booked. It then claims it got a confirmation back that my hotel room was all set and ready for my arrival. The only problem? According to the hotel, not only did they not receive the fax, but obviously they never sent the confirmation back. And why would they? It turns out all their rooms had already been booked before I attempted to book mine through Expedia. Of course, according to Expedia, there were plenty of rooms available when I booked — I even had many room options to choose from.

The icing on the Valentine’s Day cake though was my subsequent six calls to and from Expedia. For the first one, after waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I was told that according to their system, my reservation was indeed confirmed. I knew this would be Expedia’s stance because I received an email from Expedia a few days prior stating that it was confirmed.

After I made it very clear to the poor girl (poor, both for having to face my wrath, and working for this awful company) that there was definitely no room under my name at my supposedly booked hotel, she didn’t seem too clear about what to do. I was demanding a full refund (obviously) and demanding that they book me another room in the city and pay for that. She put me on hold so she could talk to her manager.

When she came back on 15 minutes later, she wanted to make sure I booked the room correctly in the first place. I demanded to speak to her superior. This guy was great (that’s sarcasm). Not only was he trying to convince me that this wasn’t Expedia’s fault, but he wasn’t sure they’d be able to reimburse me for the room that they had never actually booked for me, and that I clearly wasn’t going to be staying in. He said he’d have to call me back.

Meanwhile, I get a call from another Expedia agent whom the hotel had apparently called because again, this had happened a number of times just this day for the same hotel with Expedia. He wanted to let me know that the hotel was overbooked and my reservation wouldn’t be honored. Thanks buddy.

The other agent finally calls me back. Good news: he thinks he can refund what I paid for the hotel that I’m not staying at, but wants to make sure I want another room booked for me in the city. If so, they might take some of the refund to pay for that. At this point I start really yelling. On the street. With a lot of children around.

After a solid five minutes of verbal abuse from me including no shortage of swear words, he sees my point. But he still has to call his supervisor to okay any kind of deal he can cut. He needs to call me back again, but assures me that when he does, he’ll have another room for me and the refund in my account.

He calls me back. The good news: the refund has been processed. The bad news: there are no other rooms in the city that Expedia can book for me. Not one.

Further, if I am able to find my own room outside of Expedia, the company can’t do anything for me in terms of reimbursement. He is only authorized to offer me a $100 gift certificate to use for a future Expedia purchase. If there is anything in the world I want less at this point, I can’t think of it. I’m certainly never going to book another trip through this site again.

Hearing me still upset, he suggests that maybe if I book a more expensive place, Expedia can make up the difference. That’s a ridiculous proposal for a number of reasons, but the best is that there is no way I’m going to be able to find a hotel nicer than the one I had thought I had booked to stay at on Valentine’s Day weekend. The only options were going to be shittier ones — and those are probably taken too. So maybe Expedia was trying to trick me into paying me negative $500, I’m not sure.

At this point we’re almost 2 hours into my little romantic getaway so I ask for his supervisor’s number, his supervisor’s email, my reference number, anything he can give me. I hang up the phone.

I tried calling them. It’s a switchboard. No one seems clear as to who I should talk to.

So I write this now from my quaint (used kindly) little motel that I had to book myself, at a ridiculous rate because it was so last-minute on a busy weekend, with my own money. Never in my life have I had an experience as bad as I just did with an online company. This includes Comcast and AT&T. Expedia just made them look like models of business perfection.

Expedia, which was founded as a division of Microsoft in 1995, was later spun-off into its own company in the IPO-happy days of 1999. Ticketmaster then bought it in 2001, and eventually, it became a company under the IAC conglomerate. IAC spun it off again in 2005 as Expedia, Inc, which also includes the sites Hotels.com, TripAdvisor, HotWire, and others. In other words, the company’s history has been a mess.

Despite being an industry bicycle (everyone has had a ride), Expedia still manages to make $3 billion in revenues a year — undoubtedly helped by cases like mine where they try to make you pay for places you can’t even stay at because they can’t seem to figure out how to properly do a confirmation. Well, except if that confirmation is with one of their never-ending chain of superiors who needs to confirm a Kleenex in case an employee sneezes.

And so ends my love story about Expedia. I write this now both because it’s a nice Valentine’s Day tale, but also as a warning to anyone using the service. A simple Google search yields results that show I’m hardly alone in my experience. In fact, the number of hate sites specifically about Expedia is quite impressive.

There are far too many other competent companies out there that do the same thing, including a number of startups. Kayak is the one you hear about the most, unfortunately, they have a deal to offer up Expedia results first. Feel free to leave your favorite travel startups in the comments, I’d really like to know the best alternatives.

I also write this because even if Barry Diller (Chairman) or some other higher-up sees this post and offers me a full reimbursement of my trip, I’m not accepting it at this point. They may not have ruined my Valentine’s Day, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Dearest Expedia,

Happy Valentine’s Day.

It’s over.

Love,

MG

Up next in our series of tech interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week: Gina Bianchini, the CEO of social networking service Ning.

Ning has never had the press attention of Facebook and Twitter. But there are 41 million registered users on Ning, and Gina says that 92 million people a month worldwide visit Ning sites.

We spoke at length in the interview about how the world sees Ning, and how Ning defines itself. Anyone can easily create a Ning social network, cobranded or white labelled. 2.5 million of them have been created so far.

In some ways Ning networks are competitive to Facebook Pages (here’s the TechCrunch Facebook page). Both allow for a presence inside of a social network. And when faced with a choice, most may choose Facebook simply because it has so many hundreds of millions of users to help word spread virally.

Gina doesn’t see it this way. She notes that Facebook pages have limited features and are locked within Facebook itself. Ning allows for deep social experiences around brands and things. Instead of the product competing with Facebook (and Twitter, etc.), she sees Ning as the center of an ecosystem that includes all of these products. A fascinating excerpt from the interview:

MA: One place I personally think you do compete with Facebook is company pages. Companies set up a profile to get fans, and it’s not just their friends but they promote it, they put it on their advertisements. They also might do that with Ning whether it’s the Ning network or the domain mount and make it look all their own. They might do both but it seems like there’s a clear direct competition between Ning networks and Facebook pages. Agree, disagree, how do you see that?

GB: Absolutely disagree. I love the fact that there should be this perceived horserace, where one person wins and one person loses, and that’s just not how it’s working today. And what’s really cool is the fact…

MA: Do you see people doing both?

GB: Yeah, absolutely.

MA: That’s why you don’t think there’s competition?

GB: That’s why we can actually integrate with Twitter and use Twitter as a distribution channel. And basically send people very fluidly to Ning and then people are publishing from Ning into Twitter really effectively. And so what I think actually is happening , and we’re seeing this especially among people who are artists, and people who started in 2005 and 2006 with a myspace page, which is they basically look at it and they say, “ok, Facebook, myspace, Twitter, phenomenal for distribution. That is the place where I can put up a fan page and within a few hours I can have a million followers.” The same thing is true for twitter. So if you basically look at the people who have over a million followers, they are getting increasingly sophisticated in terms of understanding that those are phenomenal, but very lightweight distribution channels.

What they’re realizing and I think where the market is going is the sophistication around, where you’re sending people and where the destination is, whether that was originally a blog, or whether that was originally a website is actually becoming a rich immersive social experience.

MA: And now you’re talking about Ning?

GB: And now I’m talking about Ning.

MA: And a Facebook page isn’t as rich and immersive social experience.

GB: That’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to give people away within Facebook to say, “I’m a fan of Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy” or “I love Adidas.” I think that’s fantastic, but it’s very lightweight. It’s good that it’s lightweight because it means that people have a way to thread all of these ways that they want to interact with brands, with celebrities, with artists, with things that they truly care about. But I think where the market is going and where you’ll see more and more people do interesting things, is where is the hub, where are they sending people. And that is Ning.

For example, Soleil Moon Frye has 1.4 million Twitter followers and just launched a Ning network two days ago. And her excitement about it is that she can allow and enable the people following her on Twitter, primarily moms and young moms who have the same messy wonderful life as a mother that she does. That she gives them an opportunity to really dive deeper into what she cares about and what she’s passionate about, and really building that out as a small but very powerful lifestyle brand for moms.

And in fact Gina doesn’t think any of these companies – Facebook, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn – really compete with each other. “Each one of them has gotten really comfortable and more narrowly focused on the thing they do better than anybody else,” she says later in the interview:

MA: (drawing diagram off camera) What you’re saying is that Ning is sort of the center. And you’ve got Facebook and Twitter and myspace. So that’s a good way of thinking about it. Do you think that Facebook, Twitter and myspace think about it that way?

GB: I don’t think they see us as a competitor. Here’s what I think is happening in the market. And this is not rainbows and sunshine saying this – what’s really interesting is that all of these companies were basically founded in 2005, 2006, 2007, and what’s actually happened is that each one of them has gotten really comfortable and more narrowly focused on the thing they do better than anybody else. Facebook with Facebook light is actually going more in the direction of connecting you with the people you have strong relationships with your real identity, with status messages, and with photo sharing. And they do that better than anybody else.

Twitter – and they had that year where, is Twitter a competitor or are they not – you can see in the past 6 months is that while there’s some overlap, it’s not a horserace, they’re not actually competing head to head where Facebook wins and Twitter loses. So Twitter’s about news and real time events.

You’ve seen the same thing with LinkedIn, where they’ve gotten really strong and have tremendous momentum by basically saying, “we own professional identity.” Professional identity has different characteristics than what you want to do with your friends on Facebook and that’s actually great. And then for us, interests and passions. If you look across the market, the thing that’s interesting is that none of these companies actually have a number two. And what gets confusing about it is, Facebook doesn’t have a number two. Twitter doesn’t have a number two. Linked In – you lived through that – all of the competitors are gone, and they are the dominant player. And in our case, we don’t really have anyone else who is creating unique social experiences as an online platform, and specifically an online social platform.

What’s confusing to a user of the market that wants to see the head to head horserace, zero sum game, Microsoft/Netscape situation, it’s not actually happening. It’s really actually a race for each one of these companies and services to get as much traction and deliver as much value to an individual with the thing that they do better than anybody else.

The full transcript is below.

Interview with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini

Michael Arrington: I’m here with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, hello Gina.

Gina Bianchini: Hi, how are you?

MA: Good. Thanks for joining the World Economic Forum in Davos to sit down and talk about Ning for a little bit. How do you like the hotel?

GB: I describe it as Swedish dorm room chic, and it’s pretty great actually.

MA: Even though there’s no internet access in all the internet executives’ rooms?

GB: It’s a little ironic.

MA: So everyone’s down here in the lobby working.

GB: I almost feel like that’s our purpose here in a way.

MA: It’s good for me because if I want to talk to you, I just go to the lobby and you’re on your computer and you can’t really hide when you only have internet access in one place.

GB: Absolutely.

MA: Is this your first World Economic forum?

GB: It is.

MA: And what do you think of the conference itself?

GB: It’s pretty amazing. It’s a little overwhelming actually because there are so many people from different walks of life doing so many interesting things, and it’s all packed within a small Swiss ski town, that’s it’s kind of hard to get your bearings. But it’s been wonderful. I really enjoyed our panel the first day.

MA: Yeah, you were on a panel with Evan Williams, Randi Zuckerberg, Owen VanNatta, and Reid Hoffman was there. I was there reporting on it; you guys talked about social networks. Do you feel like there’s a good amount of attention here to technology? It seems like there is.

GB: There absolutely is. It’s rare that you go to conferences that have a broad policy and political base, as well as being something that’s just technology focused, and I’ve had more people come up to me, trying to explore how to use social technologies to change the world, and I think that that is always a great conversation to have.

MA: Do you find that most people here are very familiar with Ning? New for some people? Is Ning part of the established set of technology companies that people here know about?

GB: I don’t think so. I think the thing that has actually been really surprising to me is how many people touch a Ning network from all walks of life. I had someone from a pretty large advertising agency say to me that their team in Brazil has been using Ning for basically three years.

MA: The advertising agency has a Ning presence.

GB: And even better, they’re using it for their internal team to coordinate. So I think the thing that’s been the most fun from my perspective is that we made the decision early on that we would share branding, that we weren’t going to be a service that was basically one size fits all, but that what we do, being a social platform for interests and passions, and really being about unique social experiences, that we needed to share the brand. And we needed to basically allow our network creators to put their brand first with Ning being a bit recessive. So we don’t have the same visibility that a Facebook or a Linked In or a Twitter has, but we actually think that for what we do, it’s absolutely critical that we give and we share brand identity, because what people are doing on Ning is creating unique contextual social experiences for the things that really matter to them. And so, that’s actually something that’s been fun for me, is to see all the different ways that people are using Ning today, and in some cases, they absolutely know it’s Ning, and in other cases, they don’t know it’s Ning. That’s not white label.

MA: You allow domain mapping which is very basic Ning – is there some footer that is any Ning branding at all?

GB: Yes, absolutely.

MA: We’ll talk about that in a little bit with your numbers. You’ve raised a lot of money; you’ve raised $119 million dollars now, and your last valuation was $750 million, is that right? (GB nods). And you count among your investors, Reid Hoffman, the founder of Linked In. And Marc Andreesen’s actually cofounder, but he’s also on the board of Facebook. Is it awkward at all, with Marc being on the board of Facebook and Reid being Linked In heavy? Is it at all awkward? Because they are both competitors, right?

GB: Not at all. No, and that’s actually why it’s ok. I think that this is the thing that has really been emerging in the last year, is the fact that different people – or I should say actually, the same people, are using different social technologies for different purposes. And I think at some level, the true story of the last few years has been that everybody’s been trying to figure out where they fit into the world and whether or not different people are competing directly. I thinks it’s an interesting evolution that I did not expect, and I don’t think any of us expected when we started, because there’s always the sense that it is a horse race, it’s not a zero sum game as it relates to social technologies, and in fact what’s happening, is that the same people are using Linked In for their professional identity; they’re using Facebook for connecting to people that they know in the real world, and have gone to school with, that are friends from the neighborhood. What Twitter is about is news and real time events in a way that is different from Facebook. And what we do is basically enable people to dive deeper and create rich social experiences for the topics and things that they truly care about. The aha moment that I had was that’s what actually makes us human beings, and what makes us people, and these different social technologies all work together really well.

For example, two weeks ago we launched Twitter integration, and we’ve seen a huge increase in terms of people sharing content from their Ning network.

MA: That’s both signing in and publishing back to Twitter?

GB: It’s just publishing to Twitter, and then people coming back with a shortened url. And what’s been great about that is that people love to be able to share on Twitter. They love to be able to share and then come back in, and we’re seeing that in the numbers. And I think we’ll shortly launch a similar integration using Facebook because it just makes sense, and it’s what people want. They want to have a very fluid relationship between Linked In, Twitter, Ning and the networks they belong to. And Facebook. And I think that’s something that from the inside, we all realize. Why for example, Reid Hoffman has been a great supporter of Ning, why Marc can sit on the board of Facebook and Ning, and why Marc is an investor in so many of the social technologies that exist, and I think that’s something that’s really fun about it right now.

MA: When you integrate with Facebook, will that be in the sense of signing in to your Ning account through Facebook and publish back to Facebook? Or more like what you’re doing with Twitter, and just publish back to Facebook?

GB: More like what we’re doing with Twitter for v1, and there’s no political strategy that says we should have Facebook connect or we shouldn’t have Facebook connect, it’s just a matter of we’re seeing what’s working and integrating rapidly from here.

MA: How about just from a user perspective and integrating the social graph and having your friends listed in one place? Is that something that you think there may be demand at Ning?

GB: Absolutely. It’s something that we’ll explore in the next few months as we move forward.

MA: One place I personally think you do compete with Facebook is company pages. Companies set up a profile to get fans, and it’s not just their friends but they promote it, they put it on their advertisements. They also might do that with Ning whether it’s the Ning network or the domain mount and make it look all their own. They might do both but it seems like there’s a clear direct competition between Ning networks and Facebook pages. Agree, disagree, how do you see that?

GB: Absolutely disagree. I love the fact that there should be this perceived horserace, where one person wins and one person loses, and that’s just not how it’s working today. And what’s really cool is the fact…

MA: Do you see people doing both?

GB: Yeah, absolutely.

MA: That’s why you don’t think there’s competition?

GB: That’s why we can actually integrate with Twitter and use Twitter as a distribution channel. And basically send people very fluidly to Ning and then people are publishing from Ning into Twitter really effectively. And so what I think actually is happening , and we’re seeing this especially among people who are artists, and people who started in 2005 and 2006 with a myspace page, which is they basically look at it and they say, “ok, Facebook, myspace, Twitter, phenomenal for distribution. That is the place where I can put up a fan page and within a few hours I can have a million followers.” The same thing is true for twitter. So if you basically look at the people who have over a million followers, they are getting increasingly sophisticated in terms of understanding that those are phenomenal, but very lightweight distribution channels.

What they’re realizing and I think where the market is going is the sophistication around, where you’re sending people and where the destination is, whether that was originally a blog, or whether that was originally a website is actually becoming a rich immersive social experience.

MA: And now you’re talking about Ning?

GB: And now I’m talking about Ning.

MA: And a Facebook page isn’t as rich and immersive social experience.

GB: That’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to give people away within Facebook to say, “I’m a fan of Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy” or “I love Adidas.” I think that’s fantastic, but it’s very lightweight. It’s good that it’s lightweight because it means that people have a way to thread all of these ways that they want to interact with brands, with celebrities, with artists, with things that they truly care about. But I think where the market is going and where you’ll see more and more people do interesting things, is where is the hub, where are they sending people. And that is Ning.

For example, Soleil Moon Frye has 1.4 million Twitter followers and just launched a Ning network two days ago. And her excitement about it is that she can allow and enable the people following her on Twitter, primarily moms and young moms who have the same messy wonderful life as a mother that she does. That she gives them an opportunity to really dive deeper into what she cares about and what she’s passionate about, and really building that out as a small but very powerful lifestyle brand for moms.

MA: How many international uniques are you tracking?

GB: On a global basis, by IP address that excludes bots, we have 92 million monthly uniques. And four months ago we had 70 million global uniques.

MA: Does that include the Ning networks that are domain mapping?

GB: Yes it does.

MA: So that’s a fourth of Facebook, something like that? But you don’t have the compressed footprint that Facebook has, or even Twitter, which is smaller than you. Why is that?

GB: Very simple reason: one size fits all social platforms are easier to get your head around because they have the overarching brand identity. When you’re on Facebook, you are on Facebook, and it is blue and white. And when you’re on Twitter, you are on Twitter. In our case, we took a different approach and we have a different strategy, which is for us to enable unique, immersive, very rich different social experiences around the things that people care about and really allow them to dive deeper, as I mentioned as that hub.

MA: So the things people care about get the press attention as opposed to Ning sometimes.

GB: Absolutely. For example, Linkin Park just launched their official website which is now a social experience on Ning. And that was 3 or 4 days ago. Because they realized that what their fans want is this social opportunity to say, “I love you on myspace, I love you on Twitter, I want to know what’s going on and what I should be paying attention to. But then I want a way to dive deeper into the Linkin Park experience.”

MA: (drawing diagram off camera) What you’re saying is that Ning is sort of the center. And you’ve got Facebook and Twitter and myspace. So that’s a good way of thinking about it. Do you think that Facebook, Twitter and myspace think about it that way?

GB: I don’t think they see us as a competitor. Here’s what I think is happening in the market. And this is not rainbows and sunshine saying this – what’s really interesting is that all of these companies were basically founded in 2005, 2006, 2007, and what’s actually happened is that each one of them has gotten really comfortable and more narrowly focused on the thing they do better than anybody else. Facebook with Facebook light is actually going more in the direction of connecting you with the people you have strong relationships with your real identity, with status messages, and with photo sharing. And they do that better than anybody else.

Twitter – and they had that year where, is Twitter a competitor or are they not – you can see in the past 6 months is that while there’s some overlap, it’s not a horserace, they’re not actually competing head to head where Facebook wins and Twitter loses. So Twitter’s about news and real time events.

You’ve seen the same thing with Linked In, where they’ve gotten really strong and have tremendous momentum by basically saying, “we own professional identity.” Professional identity has different characteristics than what you want to do with your friends on Facebook and that’s actually great. And then for us, interests and passions. If you look across the market, the thing that’s interesting is that none of these companies actually have a number two. And what gets confusing about it is, Facebook doesn’t have a number two. Twitter doesn’t have a number two. Linked In – you lived through that – all of the competitors are gone, and they are the dominant player. And in our case, we don’t really have anyone else who is creating unique social experiences as an online platform, and specifically an online social platform.

What’s confusing to a user of the market that wants to see the head to head horserace, zero sum game, Microsoft/Netscape situation, it’s not actually happening. It’s really actually a race for each one of these companies and services to get as much traction and deliver as much value to an individual with the thing that they do better than anybody else.

MA: Ok. Are you happy with your revenue model and how that’s going?

GB: Absolutely.

MA: How happy, like 9 out of 10?

GB: (laughs) We don’t talk about revenue. I’m happy to talk about the revenue streams that we have.

MA: It’s ads, it’s upsells right?

GB: It’s ads, it’s upsells, and premium features like virtual gifts which we launched in October that allow our network creators to make money from their networks. So when a member of the Lost Zombies Ning network which is 10,000 people who dress up as zombies and take pictures and videos and connect with each other in building this collaborative documentary . It’s lost zomies.com, check it out, it’s awesome. And what they’re doing with virtual gifts, is their members are giving them bloody chain saws, and when that transaction happens, we split the revenue 50/50 with the network creators. We think there are tremendous opportunities there.

MA: How many bloody chainsaws have been given?

GB: I don’t actually know specifically.

MA: Are the member of the group?

GB: I’m a member of Lost Zombies, I am.

MA: You should be like Tom from myspace, a member of every network.

GB: That’s a good idea, I like that.

MA: With a really ridiculous pose in some picture. So what is revenue? Are you profitable yet? Are you approaching profitability yet? Are you approaching the point where you could be profitable? Do you want to slow down growth?

GB: We’re really happy and so are our investors. It’s the benefit of being a private company, but it doesn’t make your job any easier.

MA: How many employees do you have?

GB: We have 166 employees.

MA: And you said you’re not going to talk about profitability.

GB: We’re not going to talk about revenue, profitability.

MA: Facebook does, they’re private.

GB: I know.

MA: Twitter doesn’t. Myspace doesn’t. Hint? Million a month? 10 million a month?

GB: We’re really happy with where we’re at and where we’re going.

MA: When you approach profitability will you announce that?

GB: Stay tuned.

MA: That’s at least something. I can drop that now. It think that’s it. How many registered users?

GB: We have 41 million registered users and we’re adding about a million registered users ever 12-13 days.

MA: And you’re not spending anything on marketing or you are? I’ve never seen anything.

GB: No, it’s primarily email. As we launched Twitter, and soon we’ll launch Facebook, those are actually great sources of new members coming in to and across the Ning networks. The good news/bad news of our model is that it’s incredibly productive and effective in terms of growth and exponential growth, but certainly we’ve made a different decision than other services in terms of really sharing that brand placement. And then allowing people to create really incredibly rich unique social experiences on Ning.

MA: Who goes public first? Zynga, Facebook, or Linked In? Personal opinion.

GB: I am not great at predicting timing but I think all of them are incredibly good businesses that are real. And the reality is that two or three years ago Zynga wasn’t in existence, but everybody was wondering, how are social technologies going to make money. I think the story of 2009 was that one size fits all…

MA: Bloody chainsaws, is how they’re going to make money.

GB…social platforms went mainstream. And I think the story of 2010, 2011, 2012 is social platforms become real businesses.

MA: You going to be going public you think? Is that your aim? Or have Andreeson get Facebook to buy you, some large competitor?

GB: We are very confident that we can be a large independent company.

MA: Thanks very much, enjoy the rest of the conference. I really appreciate it.

GB: Thank you so much.