Condor: v1

Alrighty, concept Condor is available for reading. I'm testing out this versioning option for the Group Pages. So you'll have to read about Condor from the Pages section of our Google group. We'll see how well this works, if it is cumbersome, I'll just go back to the way I've been doing it and put the content in the discussion pages.

Condor is so straightforward, it's short and sweet.

-john

Bison: Prelim SWOT; Put on Hold

The following is what I worked on while flying from Rhode Island to Atlanta(lay-over) last week. What I found was a narrow market for customers, which can be a bad thing.

Who are the customers again?

• bloggers, people who like to write, people who review things, etc...

Unfortunately, most of the people who get online do not create content.

A prelim-SWOT had me stuck on the externals: Opportunity and Threats.

BCNN Opportunity:

• create first blogging news service
• monetize user generated content

BCNN Threats:

• rate of adoption by customers (bloggers, etc...)
• copy cats

When I got home, I started to search for competitors who have already monetized blogs:

• About.com, though not a blog, pays all their "guides" rather handsomely to keep the content flowing; http://beaguide.about.com/compensation.htm
• a number of other pure-play blog who haven't hit the mainstream yet;
  
• http://payperpost.com/
• http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2005/05/08/gawker-blog-network-a-ni...
  

So it made me wonder -- does monetizing blogs make people more ready to leave their current blog service (blogger.com, wordpress.com) and sign up with the PayPerPosts of the world? It hasn't happened yet,
though these services were started in 2005, which means the Threat of a slow rate of adoption is real.

Now, that I've recorded my thoughts from last week, I can fast-forward to this week's thoughts.

I've been reading a bunch of Paul Graham's writings/lectures/info, both from Y Combinator's site, and his own website, http://paulgraham.com/, and the one thing that he stresses is to make something that people
want... http://paulgraham.com/start.html

I asked myself, do people really want to use a blogging news service? [unsure]

Do people really want to earn money from writing their blogs? Well, I have a blog and I never wanted to put Google's adsense on it... I've always thought advertising was rather annoying because it changes the aesthetics of a web page.

So I spent the past couple of days documenting my thoughts from last week, only to have my thoughts from this week slow my momentum for Bison; I'm shelving it for now based on the question of whether people would really want this service.

Next in line is Condor!

-john

Zenter Interview

Interviews with the founders of the latest Google acquired company, Zenter. The company was only started in January and was bought just recently. Here is a link to two separate interviews, one that is audio and the other is a transcript -- both have great content and provide inspiration. Did I mention that these guys are from Arizona?

http://www.grid7.com/archives/178_podcast-24-founders-of-zenter.html

-john

Bison: v3

If you didn't read the wrap-up to Bison v2, you might want to do so first, so that you can understand how Bison v3 came to exist. While on vacation, this is how Bison evolved...

What exactly is BCNN?

• BCNN stands for Blogging Community News Network
• it is a blogging service and social network

What is the purpose of BCNN?

• to promote blogging content as an alternative and legitimate form of
• daily news and opinion
• to be the source for "the news about the news"
• to compete against other online news sites for advertising dollars

Who are the customers?

• the blogging community, each individual blogger
• writers
• anyone creating user-generated content

What does BCNN provide the customers to compel them to switch from other blog services?

a) more opportunities b/c of

• shared revenue based on traffic to their blog/entries
• as part of the social network they can expand their readership base (audience)
• become part of a larger purpose "to build a news network" and "create a brand"

b) a better blogging experience

• full web server statistics for their blog/entries so the blogger knows more about thier audience
• more reader traffic because the social network allows for tagging of content (creation of a tag cloud), this allows for associations
• between blogs/entries which generates more readership traffic among BCNN blogs. The tagging of content lets BCNN offer readers the
• following scenario, "If you like this blog, we recommend the following other blogs..." Hence more traffic for bloggers.
• a blog book binding service to allow bloggers the option to offer their content in bound, book formats. Yes, this is possible and it
• will be an additional revenue source for the blogger
• ILP (maybe we keep, maybe not), if yes, it will allow for paid readership opportunities and more revenue.

The implementation plan for BCNN is pretty straightforward,

1. build the software
2. persuade bloggers to use our service with hopes of revenue opportunities. We'll target the more popular bloggers to become beta
3. testers by invitation...
4. As the network grows with content, we can turn on the news feature, such that we'll have a news page, akin to Google News, but all of the links and sections are user-generated, BCNN blogging content. We'll have algorithms to figure out which entries to post in which sections, Sports, Entertainment, Misc, etc... and we'll even have to figure out the order of listing, etc...
5. we hope to generate enough buzz such that regular news services will come to our bloggers for their "news about the news"

So, what do you guys think? Not only about v3, but if you think we should revisit a previous version also. Thanks.

-john

Bison: SWOT

Continuing where I left off for Bison v2...

I then did a preliminary SWOT of a combined scenario of A and C -- use a free blogging service to allow people to experience ILP and to
create buzz for it, then sell the ILP servers to companies for
integration within their own networks.

Strengths:
- unique security feature (ILP)
- ?

Weakness:
- ?

Opportunity:
- gain advertising revenue from aggregation of similar blogs
- sale of ILP servers

Threats:
- infosec firms
- copy cat firms

As you can see, there was nothing compelling in the SWOT that made Bison v2 (scenarios A & C) very appealing. The question kept coming to my mind about how we could sufficiently create buzz if bloggers have a low adoption rate for our free blog. What can we do to make our blogging service unique and useful enough for bloggers to try it, then like it, then create buzz, which we hope will sell ILP servers? Then it dawned on me.

Monetize the blog such that revenue sharing options can be
implemented. So now, the people who create the content can be paid for their work based on traffic to their blog entries. As I continued to
think about how this revenue sharing would work, Bison continued to evolve and scenario C was removed and what was left was a scenario A on steroids, the Blogging Community News Network (BCNN).

This is Bison v3 and I'll write about it in my next post.

Assessing Your Situation

Today is Aug 7th, and the deadline for InvestSouthwest is upon us. Thankfully we're not submitting anything ridiculously thrown together.

But the one that I'm quite interested about has a deadline of October 11 and I'd like to know which one of you (or if you know of any friends) would seriously consider doing this with me.

Visit http://www.ycombinator.com/ and read the Newseek and USA Today links on their page, and then read the "winter 2008 funding" link.

My wife is resigned to let me go because this is all I think about and she has not rejected my suggestion that we may have to sell our house if any idea is really good enough to require my full-time focus.

You may be saying that we haven't solidified an idea yet -- I agree, but once we do get one rock solid -- I'm going to submit it and I want to know who can ride this bus with me. Again, if you know of anyone who would be interested, please let me know. If you want, just email me directly.

Oh yeah, the main thing to remember is this: being in Silicon Valley and working with the ycombinator team (which have founded a lot of businesses we know, even slashdot.org) is the value of who they know and the introductions we can get.

Yes, I am trying to get the same introductions in Phoenix, having signed up for an entrepreneurial program that is jointly funded and run by a VC and ASU. But we're talking Phoenix here, which for start-up investments is not even in the top 5 cities.

Okay, please read and think about your options, your future, and your family. We're all not getting any younger, so the window of opportunity for this kind of stuff gets narrower as the months go by.

Thanks,
john

Bison: Marketing and Generating Money

While on vacation last week, I worked on trying to understand how we could get ILP as a software business to work. I looked at it from
these standpoints: marketing, scenarios on how Bison will generate
money, SWOT. This is the first of a few postings which will show how
Bison will continue to evolve into a version 3, called BCNN; I just
want you to understand how I got to version 3.

Here is an overview of some of my thoughts of Bison v2.

Marketing

What market needs does Bison meet?
- multi-level information sharing with stakeholders

What market condition will Bison exploit?
- Convergence of information makes it hard to control the message that stakeholders receive; the combinations of information sources,
distribution channels, and different stakeholders makes for
information distribution to be inefficient.

What market segment will Bison target?
- Bison will start with bloggers.

What makes Bison unique?
- Bison's ILP is the first engine to allow each person to control
their own message.

What advantage does Bison have?
- Bison's ILP can be integrated into many different communication
workflows: email, blogs, office documents, web documents.

Who are Bison's direct competitors?
- none found so far

Who are Bison's indirect competitors?
- software firms that
-- develop security related software for different classification
levels
-- develop versioning systems, ie) source code and documents
-- develop requirements management systems

How will Bison reach the market?
- We intend to "get the word out" by offering a free blogging service
with ILP. This will allow consumers to get a feel for ILP and create
buzz for the blog service, which will lead to more interest in ILP.

What future circumstances can "create" the market for Bison?
- More consumer security breaches and scares will make ILP more
inviting.
- More accidental information leaks, whether thru press releases,
blogs, etc...

What is the purpose of the business?
- (Then, as I continued, I got stuck on what exactly is Bison's
purpose.) To be the leader in information partitioning. Our focus is
to control the message behind the news. We are not an information
security company.

What business are you in?
- Software development for ??? (got stuck on this)

Scenarios on how to generate money
A) Bison as a web site destination for blogging
- user creates free blog at Bison
- Bison sells advertising
- as more ppl read the blogs, Bison generates more money

B) Bison as a web service providing ILP to other websites
- I started to step through this scenario using three entities: the
user, their website, and Bison
- I had difficulty understanding how the ILP service will be able to
provide the user with the list of groups tagged for sharing the
content. Where will this database of groups reside -- at their website
or on Bison?

C) Bison as a software server to be purchased and installed by other
companies.
- Bison will be a "commercial off the shelf" offering with licensing.

D) Bison as a monetized, social blogging network
- aggregate blogging content
- sell advertising
- share revenue with bloggers
- allow tagging of their own content and other people's content

(to be continued later, got to get ready for work)

-john