This post titled “Networking Without Walls or Boundaries” gives some insight as to how to network yourself online. It’s weird- there really aren’t boundaries to what you can do online. For instance, there are interesting bloggers all over the world that you can develop relationships with. With VOIP services like Skype, it is easier than ever to build your rolodex internationally.

Though many people have been blogging about the “Blogging for Dollars” cover story of the most recent business 2.0 magazine, I thought “The Smartest Companies to Start Now” was just as fascinating (if not more so). The B2Day mentioned the article in this post and goes on to mention the obvious (in my opinion), “Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s what you do with them that counts.”

Two of the ideas that jumped out at me were The eBay of Product Placement and the Social Marketplace (for complete list, click here). 

• The Social Marketplace- Pretty simple concept- merge social networking and online marketplaces where people buy and sell their own content. Maybe…if only eBay and Myspace were combined (that’s kinda the idea in concept I think). Jim Breyer of Accel Partners is willing to give $10 Million for a 10 person team to build a prototype of the site.
• The eBay of Product Placement- The idea is the create an online auction site to sell product placement for Hollywood studios. To me, if successful, this idea can knock one out of the ballpark. What happens if consumers stop paying attention to traditional advertisements and advertisers stop paying for them? Where do the ad dollars go? Product placement will be king. Product placement has been around for years, but it’s not easy for advertisers to participate. I think an auction site like this could be what makes it easy for small advertisers to get mainstream exposure for their product at a reasonable price point. Whoever makes it efficient for corporations and small businesses alike to get their product inside a television show or hit blockbuster movie will have a huge leg up as a 1st mover in the race to capitalize on product placement. Roger Lee of Battery Ventures is willing to give $6 Million to get a site running within 18 months. Entrepreneurs out there- if I was contemplating starting a business, this is certainly the venture I would pursue!

You’ve got to be kidding me. RadioShack laid off 400 people by, well, sending an E-MAIL! Thankfully, I’ve never personally experienced a lay-off before, but I can only imagine what that does to someone’s confidence. To make matters worse, imagine you learned that your boss didn’t even have time to tell you personally. Senior Managers out there: have some respect and at least speak to soon to be ex-employees face to face when your corporation scales back its workforce. If something like that happened at the company I work for, it’s likely I would follow those given the boot right out the door in the search of a new job. Time will tell how RadioShack’s employees handle the news of their co-workers being let go via e-mail. 

RadioShack is going to be hard-pressed to stop bloggers from blowing this story up with their chatter…I wouldn’t want to be RadioShack’s PR Director right now.

Web Design Resources has a great podcast with Tim O’Reilly, who is almost always referenced when speaking about Web 2.0.

“Fail fast, scale fast” is something you Web 2.0 developers reading this know a bit about.

For those of you interesting in learning more from Tim O’Reilly, there is a great interview here or you can check his web page here.

I’ve touched on the subject before here and here, but an interesting post on Mike’s Points called “Blogging beyond your richest dreams” brings me to the subject of reasons to blog again. I definitely find myself in Mike’s camp on a couple of points:

• “I blog because it makes me think more“- blogging allows me to write and brainstorm about subjects that I find interesting relating to business and technology (among other things).
• “I blog because I learn more about my profession”- I have a very entrepreneurial mind and I’m always thinking of new business ideas. I’m truly interested in almost every topic related to business- from HR to Public Relations to marketing. Blogging (and reading other blogs) is certainly a great way to learn quickly from knowledgeable people!
• “I blog for on-the-job training“- No doubt you’ve heard many people say it- business is all about who you know. Blogging is a great way to build relationships with great people. Besides, becoming a skilled writer never hurt anyone, did it?

Why do you blog? For the money? the fame? the collaboration? the relationships? the vast knowledge base to tap into? the “love of the blog”? to keep track of your personal thoughts? or maybe you just want to cause controversy? Whatever the reason, the blogosphere welcomes people with all types of motivations. Blog on!

I got to thinking a little more about what I learned by watching the Startup Success 2006 video and came across this post on the SportsLizard Entrepreneur Blog that says,

It also seems to me that you don’t need hardly any money at all to grow your business. That means that as a YE, you and I and everyone else can market our companies effectively with a telephone, a computer, an email account, some word processing software, and some business cards. You don’t need to spend a ton of money to promote your business.

While PARTLY true, I think people think this viral marketing thing is too easy. Getting free press and generating a buzz is not simple or cheap. Before anything, you need a great product for people to talk about. IMAGINE if Vonage had spent the millions of dollars they spend on online advertising every month on their product to avoid some of the customer complaints they have experienced. In my opinion, there is no point to trying to grow a business without a great product. Afterall, customers are not going to spread the word about a crappy product.

There are “hidden” costs associated with generating buzz, even if they are not the traditional advertising costs that many people think of. Those costs are often included in a companies Public Relations budget– that includes recruiting talented and connected PR employees and/or paying an established Public Relations Agency. For instance, I can only imagine Google’s head PR Director is making some serious cash. I’ve never seen a paid advertisement from them, yet everywhere you go, it seems someone is talking about Google. Someone has to speak to the press, engage bloggers, and satisfy disgruntled customers. Talented and passionate employees that fill those roles are extremely valuable to businesses. I’m no expert, but there is much more to growing a business than many think.

This post is a couple weeks old, but I doubt ALL you entrepreneurs out there have seen it, so take a look if you are looking for tips and tricks to success. There are some great blogs such as Small Business Branding and Steve Pavlina’s Blog on the list of resources.

Here’s 10 interesting small business blogs to take a look at if you’re interested. It’s even got a video summarizing each blog. Personally- I’d rather just read about them, but the choice is yours!

The Google-eBay partnership that was announced today is certainly big news in online advertising. eBay has a ton of international traffic to monetize and it gives Google a great way to build a massive amount of inventory that foreign advertisers are interested in. Google is going to dominate internet advertising if it continues to strike deals such as those with myspace and eBay international. If they strike enough of these deals, small advertisers won’t even have to think about advertising somewhere else because Google will control all the inventory available on other sites. It’s too bad Yahoo! or Microsoft couldn’t wrap this one up. Everyone always wants to hate the big giant (google in this case), but there is a reason they are able to strike these deals- they have loads of cash and they are VERY good at optimizing text link advertisements with AdSense. How long until Google’s next ad deal?

In an e-mail interview published on gapingvoid, Seth Godin answered a series of questions. The response to one really caught my attention. When asked what motivates him to increase his workload, Seth answered by saying this:

ANSWER: It’s not a workload! Look, there are 8 million millionaires in the USA. Why do these people go to work every day? Why not downsize appropriately and just sit on the beach? Because they’re too smart. They realize that the purpose of living isn’t to bake in the sun until you die. I write and speak and experiment because that’s what I do. I’m thrilled to have the chance to do it every day. Any day I’m not thrilled, I’ll stop.

As a result of the transparency of blogging, a lot of people have realized, almost as an aside, that people do what they love to do. It’s just now you get to see it on your screen. Sometimes those things appear to have no financial incentives (raising goldfish) and sometimes they do. But let’s be clear… unless you work for Goldman Sachs or are selling drugs on a street corner in Topeka, you’re almost certainly not in this, whatever this is, for the money.

Most of the time, for most people, in most industries, it’s not REALLY about the money.

It still puzzles me that more people don’t get this point. The vast majority of people that are extremely financially successful are truly passionate about what they do. My advice? Find something you are passionate about- the rest will take care of itself.

Regarding career field placement (which should align with passion), where you end is often times different than where you start. Entering college, I wanted to be a computer programmer. Advanced calculus, physics, and chemistry classes quickly changed my mind. I then turned toward construction management only to abandon that for business administration. I interned for Tim Reha at Venture All Stars, now working on New Media Synergy, who gave me a taste of the small business environment. It was largely thanks to that exposure that I knew I wanted to be involved with a small and upcoming internet company. Thankfully, Tim clued me into Zillow and I ended up with a job after hounding our recruiter for an interview for a couple weeks (thanks for finally giving in Annie!). Zillow is still hiring- so CLICK HERE if you’re interesting in joining us! Now, my background is a mix of technology and business, which is great given that I work at a web company on the business side. It took me awhile to determine my true passions and goals, but once I did, my whole mindset changed. Success is so much easier with passion!

This post got me thinking about a possible myspace magazine that was mentioned in an Adage article. I’ve certainly bashed myspace before, but this might not turn out to be a bashing because a print edition of myspace just might work. It begs the question- will you read a myspace magazine if they come out with one?

The more I think about this, the more I think…it could very well be a hit with myspace users. The adage article mentions that “The editorial mix would likely cover standout MySpace members and their interests, from music to their social scenes.” I see the potential to get users even more engaged than they already are if there was the opportunity to become famous for doing so. The only downside I see is having it turn into something similar to all the crappy tabloids out there that just dig up the latest dirt on celebrities. I’m not endorsing this idea, but I’m kind of surprised there hasn’t been a magazine that digs up dirt on myspace members and publishes it for newsstands.

Afterall, even though most of the content of Business 2.0, Fortune, and Entrepreneur is all available online, I still choose to subscribe to the magazines because I prefer reading them on paper rather than spend even more time on my computer. I spend enough time on the computer as it is. Myspace on paper? I can see numerous possibilities…do you?

The Web 2.0 Conference is taking place November 7-9 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It looks to have a great selection of influential speakers including Kevin Rose from digg, Jeff Bezos from Amazon, John Batelle, and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook.

The most interesting topic that I see on the conference topic list? Defining Web 3.0: What’s Next?

See all the details about the conference HERE.

Well, I received a very thoughtful e-mail from Marie, so the tickets are now given away. In respect for not sharing personal information, I won’t give any details about what her e-mail contained. I would like to say that I really wish I had more tickets to give out- I got some wonderful e-mails and am sorry I can’t accomodate everyone. Special thanks to Robert Scoble for helping spread the word!

I’m a huge Red Hot Chili Peppers fan (can’t even tell you how many times I’ve listened to their newest album), and I bought tickets to the Fresno show a little prematurely a couple months ago. Turns out I couldn’t make it down to Cali from the great Pacific Northwest. I tried using StubHub and Craigslist to sell my tickets. So, given the show is tomorrow, I’m going to see if viral marketing can work its magic!

Here’s the trigger: you can get 4 tickets for (almost) FREE! I don’t want any money out of this, but I would strongly urge whoever I award the tickets to contribute something (time or money) to your favorite charity.

The tickets are PDF e-tickets and were sent to me via e-mail from Ticketmaster, so I will forward them to the person that sends me the most inspirational e-mail by 12 pm PST tomorrow morning!

How to participate & get 4 free tickets:

Send an e-mail to freetickets@drewmeyersinsights.com with 2 sentences explaining why I should award you these tickets. Remember, my goal is to award these to someone who will give their time or money to charity.

Hopefully this amazing Web 2.0 world can help me turn the $250 I spent into a contribution to charity. Good Luck!

UPDATED: It just dawned on my that some of you looking for tickets may not want to wait until 12:00 tomorrow to find out if you will be awarded these 4 tickets or not. I reserve the right to end the “contest” before 12 tomorrow if I receive a particularly inspiring e-mail from someone. Of course, I will then write a quick blog post mentioning that the tickets are no longer available.

The most recent Business 2.0 magazine’s cover story was “Blogging for Dollars” that I feel will bring even more entrepreneurs into the blogging space. Feel free to read the online version if you aren’t a subscriber. There are already massive amounts of people entering the blogging space without a business 2.0 article mentioning the blogging millionaires like Michael Arrington and John Battelle. The article seems to paint a rosy picture for young entrepreneurs- start posting often with useful information in a certain niche, put adsense on your blog, and watch the money come in. It would be super interesting to see the figures of how many additional blogs are started in the next 2-3 months because of that article (if you have a way to do that, please do and share with everyone).

My prediction? Lots of entrepreneuers will enter the market to try to make some money…and give up. If people think blogging is an easy and quick way to make some money, they will have a very tough road ahead of them. It takes time and persistance, something many people are short on, to build a blog audience. Especially given the increasing numbers of people starting up blogs every single day, bloggers will have a difficult time distinguising themselves from the thousands of other new blogs popping up. The blogosphere has been doubling every 6 months according to the most recent “State of the Blogosphere” report. Does anyone know if, internet-wide, the number of blog readers or the total time readers are spending reading blogs is also doubling every 6 months? Afterall, it really doesn’t matter how many blogs there are. Monetization of blogs comes through a blog’s audience, so if the audience is not growing, profits won’t grow either.

For those of you interested in what it takes to succeed with a startup company, make sure to check out this great video on Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

• Startup Success 2006 or Full Screen Edition at Google Video

This is just a random find that I happened to come across- but it’s worth a look for a quick laugh.

I woke up early and can’t go back to sleep, so I guess I’ll finish my thoughts on a very interesting subject- the possible blogging/social networking merger. Blogging and social networking certainly have similarities- they involve connecting people with each other in a large way. I’ve had this topic in a draft form for a couple days, but Fred Wilson’s “Adding Community to the Comments” post at A VC prompted me to finish my thoughts. The post talked about how mybloglog has enabled comment integration to your MBL community page so that a blogger can identify who is commenting on their blog. The MBL integration allows you to quickly go check that person’s own mbl community page and find out more about them. Check here to find out the sites that are already using the new functionality. In the comments of this post, Eric from MyBlogLog says the following- 

“We are not trying to be the center of your community — that’s what your blog is for. We’re trying to find ways to bring you and your readers closer together. Step one is making everyone aware of each other; step two can be any of the three services you mention — discovery, personaliztion or communication.”

I can certainly see blogs becoming online profiles for MANY, many people. I’m certain this blog will become mine with time. Ridding myself of my myspace account completely would be great (I’ve got a long way to go to convert all myspace friends to blog friends). I would much rather have someone find my blog than look me up on myspace. I can’t remember the last time I had a meaningful dialogue on a social networking site. Blogs actually incite conversation on relevant, meaningful, & interesting topics (see this blog or this blog or this blog). Social networking sites are just a directory lookup in a sense. Yes, there are wall comments and private messages, but how often do you get past the “How’s life questions” only to hear back “Same ol, same ol” or “Great, how are you doing?” reponse? That brings me to the final point– Why not merge the best of both worlds? Directory lookup AND great, intelligent conversation. It seems mybloglog is well on its way to doing just that and I’m looking forward to the transition!

Eric, if you’re reading this- I would love to use MBL’s new functionality too!

I have to strongly disagree with this post written by Paul Drago on Ethos Planning (and no, I’m not just being controversial). Paul gives 4 main points to support his argument that Niche Social Networking will Fail:

1. Free flow of information- information can still be free in a niche site in my opinion.
2. User base will thin out- I would argue this point is actually in favor of niche social networks winning out. Yes, users will thin out and yes, they will leave Myspace (it’s more a matter of when than if in my opinion). Where are they going to go? Niche social networks. If they remain small, the right advertisers will be very willing to pay a lot of money to get in front of a niche group of users. Niche sites will probably start integrating e-commerce into their sites for additional revenue.
3. People are firmly entrenched with Myspace and Facebook- He even says, “I’ve seen signs of “MySpace” burn out,” which confirms my own observations and thoughts. People are tired of the myspace SPAM. Ultimately, the more users a company controls, the more prone to SPAM and hacking they will become. Look at Microsoft vs Apple. You hardly ever hear about hackers targeting Apple. Why bother to hack Apple since Microsoft controls 90%+ of desktop machines? I won’t say anything bad about facebook because I firmly believe in their model. To me, they should not be grouped with myspace because they do serve niches by catering to certain college campuses.
4. Why create a whole new site when you can just create a myspace/facebook group?- Myspace groups are crap. Enough said. They provide only a snippet of the interaction that niche sites can.
5. Employers use Google- Yes, employers use and will continue to use Google. I don’t think anyone thinks “Drunks and Sluts Social Space” is the type of niche site that would work. I’m talking about sites that cater to groups like University of Washington students (facebook), high school sports (Takkle), and business professionals (linkedin). Employers are not going to mind those types of sites. To me, this is actually another negative for myspace- that’s where employers are finding the crap. They are more likely to see someone that belongs to the “Drunks and Sluts Social Space” myspace group than to find a niche social network they are part of.

Finally, I would say there is a huge opportunity for anyone that can centralize everything in one place for the user, much as Paul says. I think facebook has its eyes on achieving that goal. Sites like Ziki and MyBlogLog are also attempting that same challenge. Who will be the ultimate winner? The jury is still out on that one.

Just a quick mention that I found this morning- it appears Facebook has sold Microsoft the rights to sell ads on Facebook using Microsoft’s Adcenter. WOW- do Facebook’s biz guys ever stop working?