I was a LinkedIn Spammer (or so they said)

Everyone has their own approach to social networks. Some folks won't make introductions, preferring to keep themselves at the center of the exchange. Others are happy to connect two people who can help each other. Likewise, on the professional online social nets, some equate connecting with the informal action of exchanging business cards while others feel such an act is more intimate, available only to close colleagues and partners.

My social net of choice is LinkedIn primarily because i use it as an evergreen address book to get updates from my connections rather than to really seek out those I don't know. Accordingly, and because a contact can't really do anything to your network without my explicit approval, I tend to approve most of the connection requests I receive. (With two exceptions - those who seem to be nothing more than LinkedIn Whores - "5000+ CONNECTIONS - MEET ME" - and those who spoof employment at Google in order to invite their "colleagues" to connect).

Since we all know about the "strength of weak ties" this strategy seems pragmatic. So this past Memorial Day weekend I took a step deeper into the LinkedIn World by uploading my address book and sending connection requests to about ~400 people whom i've met over the last seven years. These were folks already part of LinkedIn and represented about a third of the people from my address book that were already in the service and not connected to me.

Imagine my surprise when this action caused my account to be temporarily suspended. What did i do? How do i get out of jail? Was it some velocity tripwire? Did i need to upgrade to a premium account?

A little digging into their customer service department (via the help of a LinkedIn co-founder who has since left the company for his own start-up) got my account unbanned, but only after i acknowledged my misdeed via email - the equivalent of writing it on the blackboard 500 times after school.

What was my offense? Turns out if more than five people say they "don't know you" in response to an invite, you're blocked as a spammer. They wouldn't tell me if those strikes expire over time or not but they were clear that it wasn't a percentage of invites, but a fixed number. So although several hundred of the invitees accepted my solicitation, the few who didn't remember me got me banished to Reid Hoffman's purgatory.

Net effect - a tiny loss of goodwill and a more conservative approach in sending out invites - which i guess possibly slows their network effects, but they'd argue that LinkedIn is a Strong Tie service. Or at least the Weak Tie service is their Premium Version which charges to you connect with those who "don't know you" :)

My experience with Larry's helicopter

Some fun video of Larry Page taking a helicopter into Foo Camp this past weekend. Reminds me of a conversation I had with him a few years back after Larry choppered into an event i was attending. Paraphrasing:

Hunter: How do you know it's safe?
Larry: My pilot uses the Magnum P.I. theme for his ringtone.

:)

Cow goes Moo

Because who wouldn't want a "cow getting sucked into spaceship" lamp?

Via Lickable Design blog

Yipee-ki-yay YouTube

"Wait, put it back up"

Good NYTimes article about 20th Century Fox embracing mash-up culture for Die Hard 4 (after a slight pause).

The NYTimes LOVES second life

i've always been somewhat amazed by the coverage Second Life gets from the New York Times. Even back when i was there, John Markoff and others wrote generously detailed and balanced pieces for something which was just coming together. Since then the services has been featured in just about every section - no, seriously, SL has been in Travel, Escapes, the Magazine, etc in addition to the expected Business and Technology

This Sunday, after Friday's piece on MacArthur foundation coming into SL, is a story in the Arts section about how virtual worlds allow users to interact with TV in a deeper way.

What's that smell

I love NY - it was home. But there are certain streets in summer where you're constantly fighting the urge to check your shoes and make sure they aren't the cause of that foul smell in the air. Eventually you realize it's not the soles, but the soul of the city.

Every VC Firm Is Gonna Want One

Within three years, every VC firm will have an investment professional or EIR with a stint at Google. It's happening already with my friend Satya at Battery and Bret & Jim at Benchmark.

Who (and where) is next?

Ok, the last Dodgeball post (i almost promise)

Hornik's ventureblog closes the Dodgeball loop by adding the latest Venturecast to the outpouring of media attention which followed our game ;-)

If you haven't listened to venturecast before, it's basically dave and craig talking about technology related things, sometimes even with technology-related folks. Check it out.

[Mom, if you don't care about the other people being interviewed you can go directly to me by selecting "open" from the menu and selecting "hunter walk"]

Together we've sold millions of books

Had the chance last night to grab drinks with Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan). Smart, smart dudes. The two of them were definitely clicking on economics and philosophy to such a deep extent that I felt like the little kid wearing dad's suit when trying to contribute myself.

That being said, they are both gracious people and kept me involved in the conversation, plus Nassim ordered lots of great cheese.

Now adding "get Nassim's reading list" to my fantasy "For Sabbatical" plan.

iPhone's 12th button

there was much speculation on why the iPhone screen only had 11 buttons when there was space for 12. Well, the 12th button was just announced: YouTube!

Hillary gets viral video

She knows what she's doing: Sopranos parody

Post-Founder: Joel Jewitt and Palm

Joel Jewitt became a de facto mentor during grad school. Encompass, his latest start-up, had been purchased by Yahoo and we met as I wove my way through the big Y! recruiting process. We immediately hit it off and when, midway through my interviews, Joel left Yahoo, I took that as a sign and recused myself as well.

A few months later we almost worked together for a second time when Joel invited me into what would later become Good Technology. Although the timing wasn't right, we stayed in touch and still grab the occasional breakfast near his home in Woodside. Our conversations spanned New Yorker articles, meditation, The Selfish Gene and other deep thought items.

In addition to founding a number of companies, Joel was an early employee of what would later become Palm. My work at Second Life, Google, and YouTube has given me the chance to work with a number of notable founders but it also left me interested in what degree the early employees of these companies contributed to the overall success (I can only answer that for Second Life having been the first non-engineer on the team; the others I came in much later). So I'm looking to track down folks who were hired in the very early days and asking them about the experience. Joel was game for answering a few of these questions re: Palm.

Joel Jewitt, Early Palm Employee

> was it the idea or the people that attracted you to Palm

Bruce Dunlevie introduced me to Jeff and I liked him and the idea

> how did you first meet jeff and donna

Bruce Dunlevie intro to Jeff and two engineers, Ain MckEndrick and Art Lamb. We incubated Palm at Merrill Pickard Anderson and Eyre (now the Benchmark offices). Donna joined Palm when we moved to a new building (across from Lozano's brushless carwash in Los Altos, but usually we didn't have to tell people Los Altos, all we had to tell them was that it was across from Lozano's)

> what stage was the company at when you signed on

Jeff and Ain and Art had just incorporated, I wrote the first business plan

> what was your most meaningful contribution to Palm's success

I have three: (i) I created a spinner that we put on the wall that had on one half "Mother of All Markets" (which was John Sculley's view of the PDA market) and on the other half "Pipe Dream Driven by Greed" (which was Andy Grove's view of the PDA market), and we could spin it each day and see what our prospects were, (ii) I had a Brooks Brothers 15 1/2 - 35 shirt and we used its front pocket to determine when the Pilot design was "pocket sized", (iii) In 1996 we were trying to raise money but by then Sand Hill Rd had given up on PDA's (Apple Newton and GO/EO had failed). Our valuation was dropping and we were headed to a bad place in terms of needing money and no one wanting to bite the bullet and invest. I flew over to Stockholm and got Ericsson to give us a letter of intent to invest in the company as part of a project to build what would have been the first smartphone. The valuation in the letter of intent put a floor on our value and propped up our confidence, basically kept us above water until John Zakin from US Robotics swooped in and bought us (I still have the US Robotics shirt that he gave us at our deal party).

> when did you know it was going to be incredibly successful and/or did you ever have significant doubts about the company's prospects

It wasn't until the first developer's conference at the Javitz Center in NYC in 1997 that folks at Palm got the visceral feeling that it was going to be big. Jeff was always confident (at least relative to everyone else). In 1994 and 95 we all crossed a desert and Jeff was Moses.

> did you have any traditions or rituals that helped define the company's culture

Donna brought in some great best practices about creating solid culture, but the tradition I remember was that at 5:59PM all was quiet around the office, and then at 6PM all hell broke loose in most of the cubicles as we worked our way through Wolfenstein 3D and then DOOM and Duke Nukem (Ain McKendrick was the best at it.).

> when did you know it was time to leave

When we got bought I wasn't going to end up as a top level exec so I left to start another company (Adaptive Media).

Wah Wah Digital Agencies Cry About Second Life

Forbes has an article on how Second Life is an uncontrolled environment for brands looking to reach consumers.

1. Surprise! It's about users doing what they want. If you're the type of company who wants to be on YouTube but doesn't want users commenting on your videos, then don't even think about Second Life where you might see a topless furry. Sure there's only one topless furry for every 1,000 people but they're around.

Fair point: because second life is so visual and in many ways tough to use, the time and expense that a brand needs to expend to manage their presence is higher than they'd like to commit.

2. Wah Wah to digital agencies who cry about their failure in Second Life. Second Lifers don't want to drink your coffee, use your ATMs, stay in your hotel or buy your PC. Not unless you do something interesting and commit to the world. Seriously, I understand the fact you wasted your clients money might cause you to blame Second Life, but how about you set expectations clearly from the beginning, coach your clients and tell some of them that they shouldn't go into SL if they're not willing to experiment? And how about you come up with a better idea than a 3D replica of your company headquarters.

Update: Read about the good job that 1-800-Flowers is doing in SL.

And when there's virtual goods, there will be virtual lawyers

Some thoughts from the legal profession on how virtual land, goods, etc will be treated by real life courts.

Forget Tony, it's all about Journey

Journey guitarist Neal Schon weighs in with his own feelings about The Sopranos finale and "Don't Stop Believin'."

"I go, Wow that's pretty heavy, that's great. Good for us! Good for them, good for us!"

Sign of Impending Doom: Banana Twinkies are Back!

Did you know that Twinkies originally had banana cream but a banana shortage during World War II forced them to use vanilla? Well suffer no longer because banana twinkies are back.

What if it really was about virtual sneakers?

NYTimes has an article today about real-life brands in Second Life and whether they're seeing business results in terms of goods sold. But what if Second Life never drove meaningful real world transactions? Sure there might be some good branding spillover effect for, say, 1-800-Flowers. But what if their SL presence was more about selling digital goods - virtual flower bouquets? My bet is that the brands who are most successful here actually end up driving a mix of digital and physical goods sales.

Labor vs Capital video is live!

Last week the VCs played the Entrepreneurs in dodgeball. The San Jose Merc did a video podcast from the event. Watch billions of dollars of Capital get pounded by scrappy Labor. Fun stuff - thanks to everyone who came out.

Why one should hire great designers

PostReach developed a set of icons which are supposed to allow users to cast votes on specific areas without having to leave text comments. For example, that one with the heart means "It Touched My Heart."

Ok, I get the idea but were these really the designs they wanted to use? Lots of weird iconography - the one of the right is supposed to mean "great find!" but to me is "i want to be a priest!" (it's a cross on a chain, no?).

The worst is the one on the left - it means "Cool Stuff" but c'mon that's a steamy pile of dog poo, no?

Jack White, on Business

Jack White (of the White Stripes) spins some words of wisdom in today's NYTimes which apply to your business as easily as they apply to his band:

“Everything from your haircut to your clothes to the type of instrument you play to the melody of a song to the rhythm — they’re all tricks to get people to pay attention to the story."

Professional Content? Who wants that?

Among the Internet M&A buzz, Barron's this weekend takes the stance that many of the commonly named targets (CNet, TheKnot, WebMD) are actually not that interesting because "buyers want user-generated content, not paid-content creators."

Toys in the Attic

Mary Jane from Spiderman. Jeez, they didn't make action figures like this when I was a kid. But i guess at $129 and a limited edition of 2000 we should call it a "collectible."

Labor beats Capital

Wow, that was some amazing dodgeball and a great event. Labor beat Capital but there were plenty of cries for a rematch. Hornik and Craig taped a VentureCast from the arena so keep an eye out for that. The Merc also taped a video podcast which I expect will be here within a few days (or weeks?).

Oh, and here's a shot from Flickr

Second Life Parodied In the Onion

You know you've made it when the Onion pays attention.

Bruce Willis in Second Life

Die Hard 4 press conference in Second Life with Bruce Willis. As Information Week points out, where else can you have an avatar ask a movie star:

Who do you think would win a fight between JOHN MCCLANE AND OPTIMUS PRIME?

-or-

DO U GET TO KEEP ANY PROPS?? LIK A MUG OR A PLANE???

Ryan Sholin knows newspapers

Brilliant post by Ryan Sholin on the newspaper trade and what those in the industry need to recognize in order to save it (and themselves). [via Jeff Jarvis]

One of my favorite new friends this year is Rob Curley, self-described Internet nerd and VP Product at Washington Post. Anyone with any professional interest in online news needs to get to know him.

With folks like Rob and Ryan, there's hope for those of us who grew up with some newsprint on our fingers.

YouTube APIs at Google Developer Day