Through one of my new favorite “social discovery” services LetsLunch.com, I had the pleasure of lunch with Sarah Lacy. She brought me her latest book Brilliant Crazy Cocky, a tome to the universal entrepreneurial spirit in six countries she surveyed last year. I read most of it over the weekend (and recommend it highly).

One point Sarah made at lunch (and I’ve always wanted to hear) is the inherent contradiction that startup incubators weren’t the best places for entrepreneurial companies, and therefore, entrepreneurs themselves. The most overt supporting evidence is that even the most visible incubators haven’t launched billion dollar companies. The assumption Sarah makes, and chronicles in her book, is entrepreneurs thrive best in the “wild” where they work within distinct, even foreboding parameters, financial and institutional, that require creative thinking and networking to reach next levels.

Incubators provide a nominal financial safety net and prescribe a blanket strategic system for building a startup, and this fosters a kind of groupthink. For example, ever been to a tech conference like Web 2.0 and baffled by how little you learn listening to tech pundits who haven’t applied their practices to a real business? I learn more from real estate technology conferences about how to implement practical solutions. Incubators tend to be run (and overrun) by younger technophiles, and there may be a gap between the products they build and the users they serve because the institutional connections to the real world business or industry may be lacking. In earlier eras, MBA programs have been criticized for inculcating academic business cultures to 20-somethings that were similarly pragmatic only to the point of getting into McKinsey or Goldman.

And now we see similar arguments about how college education is overpriced based on the perceived return of investment on the cachet of an Ivy League degree versus the real life return. Over the weekend, Sarah discusses how Peter Thiel believes college education has become overvalued due to the trade off problem of a huge student debt burden for the implied earning potential value of a name brand degree. Pursuing a Stanford degree and getting into Y-Combinator are prestigious, but if it instills an attitude of entitlement and creates an environment in which hard work becomes secondary to playing the “game”, then the goal of contributing meaningfully to society might get diluted. Peter Thiel’s proposed solution is to bypass the four year college process by offering smart kids $100,000 over two years to start companies. Throw them into the “wild”.

Yes, these are three examples on the value of their particular brand of education – the MBA, the incubator, and the Ivy League degree – but it all points to the larger picture that education in today’s world, where everything is changing much faster than any textbook re-edit, needs to also adapt just as quickly to be relevant. I think Sarah and Peter are on to something with their concept that baptism by fire may be the best educational route for young entrepreneurs.

from: http://bit.ly/4Bv7NE

The chronicles of Tiger continue daily with the Mistress countdowns and porn star exposés that are contributing to the collapsing public opinion of a global sports icon. The financial impact hits whole industries – the PGA, Tiger’s sponsors, and the TV networks all relied on Tiger as the drawing card.

This is a case of tipping point media. Mass media will only jump on sensational stories when they’re credible. Once that happens, the social media takes over with the notorious confessionals by otherwise un-famous people. That’s probably one reason why Tiger practiced tight media control… it’s easy to quash one-off rumors when there isn’t a bandwagon of story pursuers. Tiger’s surprise announcement of “transgressions” after the car crash positioned him as fair game for all media.

Tiger is a defining moment in celebrity reputation management. Celebrities will now have to think very carefully about doing questionable things with other people because they have a media mouthpiece – themselves, and a reason to use it for attracting attention.

Google Maps now displays traffic on city arterials:

More amazing is the crowdsourcing technique Google is using to capture congestion data:

When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you’re moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.

This is brilliant. Now all you need are geo-located Google/Twitter feeds for drivers to explain why they are stuck in traffic.

From Craig Newmark’s blog, Gavin Newsom is introducing social media to San Francisco civics, and creating a Zappos-like Twitter channel @SF311 to support non-emergency city nuisances like potholes and trash.

RecoverySF.org is set up for citizens to discuss the local issues related to the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed by Congress, also known as the Stimulus Plan. It’s positioned as a bulletin board to solicit citizen opinion.

@SF311 is simply representative of the Twitter feed that we believe will soon replace telephone support for local community services. It’s a great example of using Twitter for asynchronous / real time support and a testament to the utility of Cotweet, an enterprise application that allows multiple city support personnel to reply to requests into @SF311.

Gavin Newsom is taking a page from Barack’s playbook in adopting new social media ideas that could eventually build him a following for his run for California governor.

Zappos has become iconic as THE enterprise that embraces social media – it occupies a singular position that no other company seems to be able to touch so far. And it’s surprising that we haven’t heard of any other company that hasn’t institutionalized social media as an important facet of their organization. Social media is generally being recognized as innovating business disciplines from marketing to business networking to HR. Why aren’t more companies, particularly in the service industries, getting all their employees to social network with their client bases?

At Domus Consulting, we’re fortunate and honored to work with companies who want to infuse the culture of social media into their organizations. We call it Zappos-izing the company. The process of training every employee in a company on how to use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for networking and communication purposes will yield four results:

1. Internally, it will facilitate online social interaction across the enterprise with no departmental or geographical borders, and transcend the office siloes that naturally inhibit information flow.
2. Externally, it will make the enterprise’s relationships and dealings with their client base more transparent by using the public conversational pipes of social media.
3. It will create more business opportunities by connecting the enterprise “network” with other forming networks within client and partner organizations. As any Twitterer knows, it’s much easier to have a conversation with someone else on Twitter when you don’t need to schedule an appointment with their gatekeeper.
4. It will change the corporate culture because the social media is…well, fun. People in general are at first reluctant to join social networks because it seems scary to open themselves up to the world. Once they dive in, they realize the water is fine, and most enjoy the interaction and the networking opportunities they bring. Many become fanatical. The feeling of belonging elevates company spirit.

Just result #4 is a good reason to implement a management edict to attend training webinar sessions.

Daniel McCarthy, CEO of NCI, a publishing / local advertising company with a business based on nurturing local client relationships, saw the social media opportunity and embarked on Project Massive Network, with the mission of getting NCI employees AND their clients onto the social media. In the spirit of transparency, he has even opened up the webinars we’re doing together with NCI to show the methodology. Dan will be chronicling the Project on his blog Viral Housing Fix; the first installment is up. You’ll also be able to follow the progress with #NCI, the Twitter hashtag system that allows participants to comment and Q&A about the Project.

BreakingSFNews.com, BreakingLANews.com and BreakingNYCNews.com broadcast what is happening in each city in real time through a survey of local Twitter feeds and contributions from Twitterers who add tweets to the scrolling news feed using a specific #hashtag system.

The Advent of the Breaking News websites

We’re just beginning to see the development of “breaking news” sites that chronicle and monitor the Tweets and other conversations on a topical or geographical level. MuckRack, apparently launched yesterday, aggregates the Twitter feeds of prominent mainstream media journalists.

Genesis of Breaking News on a Hyperlocal Level

My company, Domus Consulting Group adopted the mission to provide regular folks who happen to be hubs of their community a way to gather their community into compelling online applications like BreakingSFNews. We were early advocates of Twitter and clearly understood how the micro-blogging (aka micro-networking) platforms can tie communities together in a big virtual neighborhood. We also recognized that Twitter’s unique function to facilitate citizen breaking news was compelling (just listen to the buzz today).

The Transparent Development Process

We don’t develop applications in stealth. We develop in iteration by explaining in this blog our concepts, create prototypes as necessary, listen to feedback, and improve the product or service. The chronology for develop BreakingSFNews is literally detailed from this blog’s timeline:

4/10/2009: Real Time Local Advertising – A New Business Model

4/05/2009: BreakingShoppingNews.com: Twitter for Local Advertising

1/10/2009: The New Web 2.5 Opportunity: Creating Media Hubs

12/10/2008: “Breaking News” is a Mass Media Play

12/04/2008: Incorporating Breaking News into Websites and Make Them Compelling Reads

The Give it Away Business Model

We developed the breaking news template that BreakingSFNews is built upon with the intent of giving it away free. We’ve discussed that sharing website development with the people is a new model for spurring adoption of a new marketing paradigm; Ning for DIY social network creation fits into this paradigm. We believe empowering individuals by providing them with plug and play web applications will become more common because it “shares the wealth” and will somewhat disrupt the old VC-based method of stealth website development (why try to build a “monopoly” web property when it can be replicated and given away free in the future?)

A lot of our consulting work so far has been in real estate and in media/advertising, industries that rely on hyperlocal networking for business. We’ve developed hyperlocal Breaking News sites so companies and individuals can tie their communities together with very little financial risk. We even develop the business model behind Breaking News (in progress) so it minimizes business risk as well. And we’ll fully disclose and share all new business models for the benefit of those who adopt Breaking News sites.

Why We Believe Hyperlocal Breaking News is Compelling – it’s in Local Advertising

We discussed this one week ago. Simply put, there is now a void in where local merchants can advertise. They are pulling out of print publications, Yellow Pages and Penny Savers, and can’t figure out how to reach their customer base online. With hyperlocal breaking news sites, local merchants can address their community using Twitter to publish their “daily deals”. Yesterday’s NY Times provided anecdotes on how effective this kind of “advertising” can be. As friend Roberta Murphy put it, “in a Breaking News site, the local merchants aren’t pushing obnoxious ads any more, they are sharing their deals and inviting conversation”. And guess what? It’s free!

(Caveat: Of course, local merchants will need to understand the protocols of social media so they don’t spam and generally act uncouth…)

Everybody is looking for a deal these days; the hope is Breaking News sites will connect local merchants with consumers on the watch for deals.

How You Can Participate

As discussed, the Breaking News template is free to use for anybody interested in building a Breaking News site for their city, i.e. OCBreakingNews.com, SantaBarbaraBreakingNews.com, etc. It literally took me only three hours to set up each of the Breaking News sites, and we teach how to do this.

Join us for a free webinar next Wednesday, April 22 at 10:30pdt/1:30edt and we’ll explain the methodology to get a Breaking News city site up and running. Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/526096234.

President Obama staged an 80-minute interactive town hall meeting this morning at 11:30 EDT. In the span of an hour or so, he received 92,000 questions online, from which 3.6 million votes were cast voting up/down those questions.

Idea: his administration should create a “White House Connect” application based on a white label Google Friend or Facebook Connect type system. White House Connect could be set up as a governmental social network, that could be extended on national, state and local levels.

Benefits of an Obama Induced Online Society

President Obama has the opportunity to push American society online, with the following benefits to his wired administration:

1. Easier to broadcast messages to a tech savvy media and public, constituents who likely comprise a hotbed of Obama supporters.
2. Engages the public and gives them a feeling of connectedness with his administration.
3. Positions Obama as a populist president using a variety of media, from Jay Leno, to the internet, to communicate his messages as a “real” person, not somebody isolated in an inner sanctum.

In a similar vein, the South Korean government pushed its citizens after the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis to adopt broadband and the Internet, and became a global Internet powerhouse.

LinkedIn was never very transparent. Although they offered up a LinkedIn API to developers in June, 2007, I can’t name one developer-based LinkedIn API built application (I can name partners like NY Times), while I can point to hundreds of Facebook and Twitter apps. (Google LinkedIn API for confirmation). I’m not a developer, but I’m guessing LinkedIn keeps its user data too close to the vest. Without access to the user data (think of the automated CRM and social graph analytics possibilities), LinkedIn just doesn’t have anything else to offer a developer.

LinkedIn Groups made LinkedIn a more communal experience and extended its utility beyond being an online resume. Here’s one more way LinkedIn’s obsession with proprietary data will hurt its user base (I received this email today from a LinkedIn group organizer):

LinkedIn Groups

• Group: Social Media Marketing
• Subject: New policy changes at LinkedIn are negatively affecting your Social Media Marketing group! Speak up for us!

“Hello, everyone – I am using a new feature on LinkedIn to contact you about something very important to all of us – social networking. I’m sure you joined in order to find information and resources, get feedback and network with other people interested in Social Media Marketing. But LinkedIn has just made some policy changes that have severely restricted what group managers can do and makes the functionality of this group much more limited.

What they have done:

1. Taken away my ability to send you the monthly email newsletter that I have produced in the past. I can no longer access the group’s email list.
2. Taken away my ability to send you individual welcome letters or direct correspondence. I can’t even view who is a member of this group, it is limited to seeing only 500, not the entire 15,000+.
3. Forced advertising onto profile and other pages – but the group managers do not profit. There is no revenue share. I don’t make a dime from any of the work I put into LinkedIn.
4. By disabling the email list download, I now have ZERO visibility into group performance reports that I used to have through my email management system. I can’t tell how many people are unsubscribing, how many undeliverable emails there are, etc. etc. LinkedIn has NO reporting capabilities whatsoever.

They claim they had to do this because some unscrupulous managers were building lists for spam. Their response is penalize all the legitimate group managers for the actions of a few bad apples. There are far better ways to deal with this issue. I pride myself in moderating and managing this group to the best of my ability. For almost a year, we have grown at 25% a month. LinkedIn overall has grown almost at much. The fact is, it is groups like ours that makes LinkedIn successful. But now they are biting the hand that feeds them. My ability to interact and network with you as individual members has been completely hamstrung. This is the only way to reach you individually. I URGE YOU TO TAKE ACTION AND VOICE YOUR OPINION. Ask them to rescind this heavy-handed and totally unnecessary tactic. Send an email directly to the Founder, Chairman and CEO of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. You can send an in-mail from his personal page: http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1213&authToken=gzEL&authType=NAME_SEARCH&locale=en_US&srchindex=1&goback=.psr_*1_*1_Reid_Hoffman_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_Y_us_94901_*1_*1_*2_*2_*2_Y_Y_*1_Relevance#h274-147 Thanks for taking the time and for participating in Social Media Marketing. Let’s keep growing and improving it, and that means growing and improving LinkedIn, too.

Cheers, Mike Crosson Moderator

Having a social media presence attracts opportunities. Twitter in particular has introduced me to many people with common, shared business interests – they come out of the blue and we become close friends very quickly based on our business compatibility. Many “social media experts” promote consulting, or how to get rich quick schemes based on social media. I’m surprised to see very few leverage their experience and their social media influence to develop businesses not based on social media advice.

So… I’ve started a Mortgage and Refinance services business. I’ve been involved in the real estate industry for over 6 years as an entrepreneur, business owner and consultant. For the past 2 1/2 years, I’ve authored the Transparent Real Estate blog, and chronicled how the real estate industry should adopt the social media and make the business of real estate less murky and more transparent.

I have five reasons for starting a mortgage business:

1. Make the mortgage and refi procurement process completely transparent. I have always professed that finding and closing on a mortgage should be as transparent as buying any off the shelf product with a fixed price tag. Most consumers have no clue about the various fees (some are junk fees like “doc prep”), even hidden fees that have given the mortgage industry a somewhat treacherous reputation.
2. Provide professional, experienced service. The barriers to entry to become licensed as a mortgage broker or loan officer are fairly low, and timely service is sometimes lacking. Frankly, it’s not that simple to get a loan in this recession, and that’s where expertise and service becomes the key satisfaction determinant.
3. Create a new sales and marketing paradigm. Leveraging the lessons of 2.0, we will strive to educate the consumer about the mortgage procurement process. And we won’t contact the consumer unless they ask us to. We won’t have an email marketing campaign or aggressively spam in any way. We’ll endeavor to change the hard sell culture.
4. Launch of a revolutionary Wholesale Mortgage Rate Engine. Almost all consumers don’t realize there are wholesale loan rates. Through consulting, we advised on the development of RateWindow, a revolutionary Wholesale Mortgage Rate Engine that launched this month. Finally every rate can be fully disclosed to the consumer. We wholeheartedly base our quote system on RateWindow; standard quote engines like Bankrate and Lending Tree don’t provide wholesale quotes and sell your contact info as leads to anybody who wants to buy them.
5. Help consumers purchase a home. I believe the next 24 months will be the best opportunity to purchase a home in America because this recession will eventually bottom out.

If you are researching mortgages and refis, please visit our Wholesale Mortgage Rate Engine at http://mortgagetransparent.com/ratewindow.

Earlier this month, Jeremiah Owyang compiled a unique list of “sponsored conversations” that are taking root as the social media and advertising become intertwined. Up to now, that intersection has taken the traditional form of banner ads on blog sites. Not revolutionary.

WSJ’s Technology blog reports how Disney has hired @SavvyAuntie (Melanie Notkin) to Twitter publicize the 70th Anniversary Edition of Pinocchio.

Sean Corcoran, an analyst at Forrester Research, blogged about the new trends in “conversation marketing” and said the two most important conditions were transparency and authenticity.

“Both the marketer and the blogger must make it absolutely clear to the reader community that they are reading paid content,” he wrote. “The blogger should have complete freedom to write in their own voice — even if the content they write about the brand is negative.”

When asked why she thought Disney wanted her participation, Ms. Notkin said, “My brand is the right niche for them.” Her site has always been a “family brand” without any profane language or a political tone, she said.

There can be a broader corporate strategy behind hiring “hubs” who are appropriate to delivering a marketing message and buzz around products. It can be extended across a national stage. For example, a real estate brokerage may want to develop a Twitter-based recruitment campaign by hiring its most well known Twittering agents across America to explain why they like working at the brokerage. TV networks can promote new fall shows by showcasing the actors’ Twitter feeds and hiring celebrity following bloggers to generate buzz.

All done in the spirit of transparency and authenticity that @SavvyAuntie displayed with her Disney Pinocchio promotion: