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Searching for a ‘killer app’ is usually futile

As soon as I read the title of Techcrunch’s Microsoft About to Open Surface For Developers in Search For Killer App I thought, uh-oh, that doesn’t bode well for them.  They have been publicly working on Surface for over a year now and this announcement simply tells me they haven’t found a good application [...]

October 27th, 2008 | Category: Innovation, Mobile, Networking | Leave a comment

Awesome presentation from Tara Hunt on building social capital

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I particularly like the lists on pages 125-6 – “10 commandments of receiving feedback” and pages 175-6 “10 things you can do to create amazing customer experiences”.

Thanks to Nnamdi for the pointer – you come up with a lot of great stuff!

Update: Just pre-ordered Tara’s [...]

July 16th, 2008 | Category: Consumer Internet, Networking, Social networks, Social software | 8 comments

World of Warcraft is the new golf

From Lord Putnam’s keynote address at the Virtual Worlds Forum in Kings Cross, London which is going on over the next couple of days:

“people are saying World of Warcraft is the new golf for technology focused networkers”

I love it. The parallels are legion – the addiction, the time [...]

October 24th, 2007 | Category: Networking, Virtual Worlds | 18 comments

Social media and the strength of weak ties

I was leafing through a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point yesterday and came across this passage:

when it comes to finding out about new jobs – or, for that matter, new information, or new ideas – “weak ties” [with people] are always more important than strong ties.

To explain – weak [...]

October 5th, 2007 | Category: Blogging, Facebook, Networking, Social networks | 6 comments

OpenCoffee Meetup buzzing

And not just from the caffeine….

I thought Saul‘s meetup was excellent.  Great atmosphere and some great people.  I got way more out of it than I thought I would – and that isn’t meant to sound like I went in with low expectations.  I didn’t.

I’m looking forward to the next one.

As [...]

March 1st, 2007 | Category: London, Networking | Leave a comment

Musings on what makes a community succeed

Now that there are many established and vibrant web communities out there it is interesting to try and understand what it is that makes them successful. There are many aspects to this, but one that isn’t discussed very often is the behavioural norms of the members.

People hang out in communities (online and offline) [...]

February 1st, 2007 | Category: Consumer Internet, Networking, Social networks | 5 comments

Library House mediatech 2.006

   

I want to thank the folks at LibraryHouse for putting on a great conference today.  The things I liked about it were, in no particular order:

It was buzzy – London feels like a good place to be an entrepreneur right now and events like this are an important part of [...]

November 30th, 2006 | Category: Blogging, Entrepreneurs, IPTV, Library House, Networking, Open Source, Venture Capital | 2 comments

Some thoughts on networking

 

As a VC networking is a large part of what I do, and a couple of things have got me thinking recently.

Firstly this blog has already had a big impact on my network.  Secondly I read Christian Mayaud’s posts on high performance networking - a bit long, but worth reading if networking [...]

November 21st, 2006 | Category: Blogging, Networking, Social networks, Venture Capital | 6 comments

Face to face meetings – the way to unlock value in social networks?

The inspiration for this came from Thomas Power – Chairman and Founder of Ecademy.  A key value driver there is the large number of face to face meetings they organise between members.

Meetings are good because they encourage loyalty and you can charge for them.  They are a bit old school and are difficult [...]

August 22nd, 2006 | Category: Networking, Social networks, Web2.0 | 6 comments