Software|McCombs

Last.fm

I'm going to take a slightly different approach from the other posts and simply write about new technology that I think is pretty cool.  Last.fm is a website that aggregates music play across the internet using interestingly-titled Audioscrobbler technology (the service was first available on audioscrobbler.com).  Part Friendster/Myspace, part Nielson Ratings, Last.Fm essentially tracks what music its registered users listen to on their computers via a plug in that works with Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc, tracks that users play through a user profile, tracks artist and song play across the network and links "similar artists" based on usage rather than editorial opinion.  You can search for your favorite band, see how many plays they have across the network, see which of their songs get the most play, see who their biggest fans are (by usage), see who has similar musical taste to yours (listed as your "neighbours") and add those folks as friends.

The value of this application to record companies and bands is pretty tremendous now that unit sales and radio play are such incomplete metrics.  Last.fm is especially useful as a buzz tracker for blog hype-driven new acts like the Arcade Fire, Bloc Party and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! whose success is difficult to capture in record sales, video rotation or conventional radio play.  There are a bunch of forums although the main community action seems to be based mostly in the charts and the "similar artists" lists.  For users, especially new music early adopters and obsessive music geeks, it's a clean, uncluttered (a la the Google school of UI design), unspoiled (so far there doesn't seem to be commercialized "placements" of songs or artists to ruin the party) and utterly engrossing community technology/site.  Like usenet newsgroups (rec.music.pavement anyone?), internet radio, blogs, Myspace, & podcasts before it, Last.fm is a cool usage of web-based technology for devout, adventurous listeners.
 
As a newish technology/website there are obviously some warts: the site is often slow or offline as the company presumably rushes to upgrade its infrastructure to handle the traffic and data crunching and the data integrity is reliant on properly tagged mp3, which most people don't know or care about much less maintain.  Plus, with no indication on what the technologies penetration level actually is, its hard to project how popular an artist or song is in absolute terms.  Still, it's awfully cool and engrossing (to me anyway).

I remember how exciting it was to surf through Friendster (oh summer of 2003, where have thou gone?), silently judging what people listed as their favorite music, movies and books.  With Last.fm I can check actual usage metrics and see who's listening to what and how often.  With Friendster, you can claim that you're into Sonic Youth or Neu! in an attempt to gain hipster brownie points but with Last.fm you can't hide your listening habits.  There needs to be a literary equivalent just to see how many people actually read Infinite Jest vs. how many people make the claim to appeal to the NPR/record store clerk set.

Mike Maples Call Debrief - Evolution of Enterprise Software

Hey all,

Hope everyone had a good turkey-day weekend.  Now that I've got through our Small Bus. presentation in Jim Nolen's class (highly recommended) I should have a bit more time to post.  The first thing I wanted to do is follow up with our call with Mike Maples.

We spoke with Mike a couple of weeks ago (11/9).  Mike had found our blog on the web.  As I mentioned in the initial announcement about the call, Mike recently moved from Austin to Silicon Valley, where he is testing the waters of the VC world.

The reason Mike contacted us was because he wants to maintain contact with the Austin entrepreneurial community -- especially software.  Mike feels that there is a lot of opportunity in applying "Web 2.0" concepts that are currently mainly showing up in consumer-facing software to enterprise software in a bottom-up approach that doesn't require the buy-in of the CIO.  He thinks that the commoditization of a lot of software functionality will accelerate this.

What Mike wants to do is simply stay in touch with Austin.  He wants to keep his finger on the pulse of what we're doing out here.

For all you software folks out there - this is a great opportunity to stay in touch with Silicon Valley and a very accomplished industry professional.  Mike gets down to Austin a lot.  He is interested in meeting up with those of us who are passionate about software and new ideas and discuss real opportunities.  If this is something that interests you - let me know.  But also - you should participate in this blog!  I think that the people who are really interested will be a self-selecting group, based on their involvement and engagement.  So select yourself!

So what do you all think about applying current consumer-facing web trends to enterprise software?  What ARE the opportunities in enterprise software right now?  One hot topic, for example, is the idea of using WIKIs for enterprise knowledge management.

I recently started a WIKI at www.jotspot.com for the Information Management Association.  It's AWESOME.  And it's FREE (or practically free).  It allows anyone to easily create pages, attach files, etc.  It's really added a lot of value and made it much easier for us to preserve institutional knowledge, especially in an environment where the entire organization turns over every 2 years!  Is thaat what Mike was talking about? 

Pluck Internships

Attention first years! Pluck is looking for three MBA students to join the team in January 2006. Get a head start on your internship, get paid, and get great experience as part of one of Austin's leading startups. Details about Pluck and positions are below.

If you're interested in being part of the Pluck team, send your resume to jobs@pluck.com

Please include the job title in the subject line.  Be sure to contact John Reed (@ McCombs) with questions, he's been part of the company since January '05 and is currently the product manager for Pluck's RSS readers.

About Pluck (www.pluck.com)
Pluck is an venture-backed ($10M from Austin Ventures & Mayfield) software company focused on next-generation Internet services for consumers and media companies - i.e. RSS, blogging, content syndication, community search, etc. Pluck has the most popular web-based RSS reader and is working with the Austin American-Statesman and other major publishers to develop their citizen journalism programs.

Located in downtown Austin, Pluck is an exciting startup with the most important components to new venture success: (1) great management, (2) great employees, (3) great investors, and (4) serious traction in a hot market.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT INTERN (www.pluck.com)
The business development team oversees all partner segmentation, recruitment, negotiation, and management. We are looking for a first year McCombs student to join our team in January on a part time basis. The goal for this position is to lead to a summer internship, work during the second year, and possible full-time employment.

Responsibilities/Requirements:

• Industry research and analysis - Strong web services business model understanding<
• Partner due diligence - 10-15 hrs/week availability (40 hrs/week during breaks if possible)
• Ecosystem/competitive monitoring - Sales, marketing and/or business development experience
• Program development/management - Publisher/media company background preferred

MARKETING INTERN - PUBLISHER SOLUTIONS (www.pluck.com)The marketing team at Pluck focuses on marketing strategy, positioning, product management, product marketing and demand generation. We are looking for a first year McCombs student to join our team in January on a part time basis (10-15 hours per week). The goal for this position is to lead to a summer internship, work during the second year, and possible full-time employment.

Responsibilities/Requirements:

• Search Engine Optimization Marketing programs - Strong understanding of online marketing techniques
• Marketing and product success measurement - Relevant coursework and/or experience in marketing
• Product marketing support - 10-15 hrs/week availability (40 hrs/week during breaks if possible)
• Segmentation research - Publisher/media company background preferred
• Assistance with event planning

MARKETING INTERN - SHADOWS.COM (www.shadows.com)
The Shadows Marketing Intern will assist the Shadows product and marketing teams on short-term and long-term projects to develop Shadows and promote the product to our growing customer base. We are looking for a first year McCombs student to join our team in January on a part time basis (10-15 hours per week). The goal for this position is to lead to a summer internship, work during the second year, and possible full-time employment.

• Competitive Research - investigate competitors using second-hand research including website analysis, press releases and online articles.
• Assist with marketing campaign activities support outbound marketing efforts by monitoring ads and related website activity. Interact with customers who have entered sweepstakes or provided information to Shadows as part of a campaign.
• Track user interactivity on shadows.com - support reporting of ongoing activity on the shadows.com website.
• Support documentation for product marketing processes - help create documents that can be used to improve product development and marketing initiatives.

We've added Indeed.com Job Listings via RSS

If you look in the right left column below the "Contributing Authors" section, you'll see two sections of job listings -- one for "Software Product Manager" and "Software Marketing Manager". 

These are RSS feeds directly from www.indeed.com, which is a cool information service that aggregates job listings from the web and allows you to search them.  You can save your searches as RSS feeds, which I've done here.  Granted, since the search is fairly basic the results aren't perfect.  For example, for the "Product Manager" feed, the search terms are "'Product Manager' Software MBA".  For the  most part, you get software product management jobs.  But a sprinkling of lists show up that just had those words in the description but may not be for software (i.e. maybe it's a non-software product management role but just happened to have the word software in it).

Still and all it's pretty cool.  Some of the cool listings on there right now:

• Amazon.com web services manager
• Product Manager - Intuit
• Marketing Manager - Oracle

Conference Call with Mike Maples (or, RO(b)I)

RO(b)I.  Return On Blogging Investment. :)

One of the goals of this blog was to create a virtual presence, community and networking opportunities.  A few days ago I received an email out of the blue from Mike Maples, who had found our blog.  Among many significant achievements in the software industry, Mike co-founded Motive, Inc (NASDAQ: MOTV) and ran product marketing at Tivoli.  He recently moved to Silican Valley from Austin  but wants to stay in touch with Austin.  Thus, Mike would like to meet (via phone...) some of the Software|McCombs bloggers.  Needless to say, we're very excited about the opportunity to meet Mike.

I have set up a conference call for this Wednesday at 11am.  In attendence will be Mike, John Reed (contributing author) and myself.  In addition, I am inviting the first two Software|McCombs bloggers/readers (must be members of IMA or ES) who email me to join us for the call.

Let's see who's reading... ;)

Microsoft Xbox 360 Marketing Positions

I know we've been talking about Microsoft a lot.

But these positions looked pretty cool.... they are industry hires, not necessarily MBA hires, so you may need previous marketing experience.  But still... pretty cool....

http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/articles/485952.aspx

If you are interested in being considered for any of these positions, please e-mail your resume to Heather at Heather.Hamilton@microsoft.com and include ‘Xbox’ in the subject line. 

Changing channels

As Kayvaan noted in previous posts, there are lots of changes afoot pushing, prodding, and driving established companies like Microsoft to change the way they do business. One question though: Why isn't anyone talking about the importance of sales channels?

Part of Microsoft/IBM/Novell/etc.'s historical success has arisen because of their influence over the sales channel. If you're a VAR or retailer with strong incentives (i.e. financial now and long-term) to put more effort into a given product (e.g. Windows, Office, etc.), why would you bother with a newer player that may have a technically "better" product?

You wouldn't. And by and large, the channels haven't bothered.

So what's different now? Add a few things together and you see significant changes for disruption to traditional channel-supported markets:

1. Broadband
2. Public betas
3. Open APIs
4. AJAX
5. Less integration (at least up front)
6. Faster development cycles
7. Increasingly technically saavy business and consumer users

Traditional software sales channels (i.e. shrinkwrapped software) are under major pressure - or soon will be (I doubt recent financials suggest shrinkwrap is "dead") - from light software applications that hit the market faster, allow many people to develop extensions/applications on the core product (e.g. search, maps), require less processing power/bandwidth/RAM . . . and provide users with more choice.

Traditional sales channels may matter less and less as core applications are web-enabled (esp. Office Live, OpenOffice?) and function as well as or better than full software suites. Increased application choice may reduce the power of the OS platform, if only because users can select non-bundled solutions to their varied application needs.

Although I'd love to spend some time discussing broader possible impacts on companies like Microsoft and complementary products/tech players. I'll finish with a few quick declarative thoughts.

• Make the application the platform. Open application APIs so users can develop new ways of using their data and tools. Google is doing it anyway, so change is-a-comin one way or the other.
• Accept pain now for long-term benefit. Existing full-featured shrink-wrapped apps will lose share to web-based versions. Accept some cannibalization and move where the market wants to be.
• PC makers will suffer as users use online apps, because they won't require continually greater processsing power and memory to handle larger and larger amounts of bundles OS and application code.

So no death knell prouncements, just a recognition that big change is on the way. Add content/data syndication to the mix, and it's a whole new world of challenge and opportunity.

Microsoft's Live Announcements

As you may know, Microsoft announced a number of interesting new products, services and visions yesterday including two new services called Windows Live and Office Live; an update portal homepage, www.live.com (formerly www.start.com), MSN adCenter, Microsoft Gadgets, Mojo, and Windows Live Messenger and Mail (previously Kahuna).

There's a whole lot to talk about here and I'd love to see more detailed analysis from our authors and readers about this.  But for the sake of expediency, I just wanted to post a good review of the announcement here for those interviewing with Microsoft tomorrow -- Read/WriteWeb has a great rundown here.

IMA/ES Web 2.0 Event Wrap-Up

Last night Information Management Association and Entrepreneur Society put on a panel entitled "McCombs Web 2.0 Panel".  I had the initial vision for the event and me and John Reed (contributing author) spearheaded the event.  The panelests were Alex Muse from M|Ventures (who just blogged about the event), Brian Oberkirch from Weblogs Work and Like It Matters (who posted an AWESOME clickstream for us to get started on our Web 2.0 education), Dave Panos from Pluck and Ben Brown from founder of Consumating.com and editor of Austinist (Ben also just blogged about the event).

First off, I'd like to sincerely thank all of our panelists for coming out.  I encourage everyone to check out their blogs and companies. 

I think the event was a success.  That being said, I think that "Web 2.0" is a tough concept to convey in one hour to people who may not now anything about it.  It was funny to see quite a few blank stares in the audience as our panelists held forth on "del.icio.us streams", "social bookmarking", etc.  I do think we did a pretty decent job of giving at least a little taste of what Web 2.0 is about. 

Here's my main takeaways from the event:

• Web 2.0 is not really a technology revolution.  Yes, AJAX, Ruby and open source software have made the capital and time costs of developing good web software lower -- BUT, it's more about how people are putting technologies together and internet has changed from a social/cultural perspective.  The internet is becoming more integrated into the fabric of our lives.  So Web 2.0 is, if anything, a revolution of ideas (?).  I like Ben Brown's example of how the big idea in "Web 1.0" companies was simply using the web as a better distribution channel to make it easier to order a tangible object --- but it was still about tangible objects (mainly), whereas "Web 2.0" ideas are much more about how to use the internet to create new ways to socialize, communicate, express yourself and exist on the web.
• The venture model for Web 2.0 is different than the dotcom model.  Now, people need a good idea first and VC's will give them a little money first to grow the idea and see if it works.
• The biggest impact of Web 2.0 right now may be on advertising and media.  Advertising in Web 2.0 has become much more targeted and effective because Web 2.0 is also all about better relevance.  Blogging has, to a certain extent, disintermediated conventional journalism.
• To a certain extent, I think that "Web 2.0" is simply a label for the phenomenon that can be described as "the internet grows up a little".  And also, as Brian mentioned, the whole concept of a "version" is a little misleading.  This is not a quantum process -- i.e. there's not discrete state of the web.  It's continuously evolving.  But I guess "Web 2.0" is just a handy label for it.  Because isn't it simply, to a certain extent, the internet just getting better at being truly integrated into our lives?
• Alex had some really interesting comments about the panel as well, as I mentioned.  He made an interesting comparison between Consumating and Pluck, for example.  The gist being that Pluck, although it is clearly creating and marketing "Web 2.0" tools, was built in somewhat more of a "Web 1.0" fashion, specifically with regards to the venture model.  Whereas Consumating was started in more of what Alex would call the "Web 2.0" style, with a very small capital outlay, doing something cool for a very, very small segment of users but doing it in a way that creates a lot of value for them.  His off-the-cuff guess of a valuation for Consumating is $1-9MM....  thoughts?

Again -- thanks to the Panelists and thanks to YOU who attended!

I encourage people to subscribe to this blog, read all the blogs mentioned in this post, check out Brian's clickstream, check out the WIKI that we creataed for the Web 2.0 event and START BLOGGING. :)  Remember, it's a great way to network.  A lot of corporate recruiters blog!