Musings of a VC in NYC

Gawk.it

AVC community member Kevin Marshall is the consummate hacker. I can't count all the stuff Kevin has hacked on since I've known of him over the years. And I've tried many of them.

A few weeks ago, Kevin emailed me with his latest, gawk.it. Kevin described it this way:

I just hacked together the start of a simple system I wanted to
tell you about.  The idea is a system to let you search conversations
from around the web.

 So far I started with just the AVC comment board, and it's
super basic right now (going to improve it over the next few days) but
should already be functional (and useful for those of us interested in
the avc community).

Being able to search the AVC comments is probably the single most common request I get when we talk about the comments here. So I knew right away that Kevin was working on something where there was a real pain point.

But I wanted more than comment search. I replied back to Kevin:

What would be great is an integrated blog and comments search

Could you build that?

In classic hacker behavior, Kevin replied that he could and less than a day later, we had integrated blog and comment search. We then iterated on the UI/UX a bit and by this weekend, less than seven days after his initial email, gawk.it was live on AVC. It is live on GothamGal.com as well.

It's been running in the AVC search field on the upper right of this blog for a few days now. I know that a few folks have noticed it, but I want everyone to check it out.

I think the blog search part (which is the default result) works really well. I think the comment search (in the tab to the left) works OK but is getting better every day.

Give it a spin and let Kevin and me know what you think in the comments.

Disqus 2012 and The State of Online Commenting

So we've been running Disqus 2012 on and off here for the past month and in the middle of last week, I turned it on permanently. Many of you have left feedback in the comments and I've passed it onto the Disqus team.

But today I'd like to focus the comment discussion on Disqus 2012 so that we can collect even more meaningful feedback. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see that is not there.

And after you've done that, please take a minute and fill out Engagio's "State Of Social Conversations" survey. I just did it and it took me less than a couple minutes to complete. William plans to release the results at Blog World in NYC in early June. Since the community here is one of the most active, engaged, thoughtful and respectful of any on the web, I think we should make our opinions heard on this topic.

Finding Your Voice

Everyone has something to say, something to contribute, everyone can make a difference. And I believe the Internet is making it easier for all of us to find that voice, use it, and make that difference.

I am supporting evidence item number one in this case. I was 42 years old when I started blogging. I'd always had a lot to say. Just ask my mom about that. But I never really found the place and the way to get it all out. AVC became that thing and now I've got a platform to make a difference. I hope I'm using it well.

I have watched so many people find their voice on the Internet over the years and it warms my heart when they nail it. It happens all the time in the blog comments here at AVC. I'm not going to name names but you all know the stories and who they are.

It's also happened to the Gotham Gal. When she started blogging she was in the process of moving from being a full time mom back to the working world. And she wasn't sure how to make that transition. It was a struggle. Through her blog she has become a champion of the idea that you can be a mom and an impactful person in the world at the same time. She has also become a champion of women and women entrepreneurs. She has found her voice and her job. This blurb from her blog yesterday was proof postitive for me:

Be strong, be fierce and be tough.  Like raising money from someone who starts to hit on them or say how cute they are.  Come back with a sharp comeback or tell them to go fuck themselves and leave the room.  You wouldn't want their money anyway.

That's how she has always been in person. She gave me a piece of her mind the first time I met her. And she's been doing that to me it ever since. I love her for it. And I am absolutely certain that the women (and men) she works with love her for her "fierce" attitude too.

The Gotham Gal blog had a big part in making all of that come together for her. The back to back posts this week telling women to be fierce and how to make macaroons for passover represents a fairly unique media property but that's how she rolls and it's her voice.

Finding your voice doesn't just mean blogging by the way. I'm watching a good friend get involved at a high level in a big time political campaign and I can see how energizing it is for him. I'm watching my partner Brad finding a way to engage in advocacy that he has cared deeply about for years. I'm watching dozens of entrepreneurs start companies with a goal of changing the way the world works for the better.

But blogging can help achieve all of these voice finding exercises. You have to walk the walk and talk the talk. Blogging/commenting/social media is the talk part. And I encourage everyone out there to leverage the Internet as you find your voice, make an impact, and find your way in this world.

Je change de langue

A partir d'aujourd'hui, j'écrirai AVC en français.

L'apprentissage des langues est une nouvelle passion que j'ai découverte, et je commence avec le français. Une fois que j'aurai maîtrisé le français, je passerai à l'espagnol, puis je m'attèlerai à des langues asiatiques comme le japonais et le mandarin.

Ca m'aidera à apprendre les langues étrangères et ça devrait vous aider aussi. Parce que vous devrez bien apprendre ces langues si vous voulez lire AVC à l'avenir. 

S'il-vous-plaît, rédigez tous vos commentaires dans la langue du billet. Pas de triche.

Disqus 2012 and Disqus Labs

Our portfolio company Disqus has been building its next generation commenting system which they are calling Disqus 2012. They are getting ready to release it into beta and they are looking for bloggers who want to be beta testers for it.

Daniel wrote this on the Disqus blog yesterday:

Disqus 2012 is a fresh take on the Disqus system — both a bit of rearchitecting and a bit of reimagining. We think we can build a version of Disqus that fully resonates with our original purpose: build delightful discussion experiences for the participants.

If you are a blogger and would like to be a beta tester of Disqus 2012, then you should sign up to be a beta tester at Disqus Labs. You'll be asked to take a very short survey in order to join. I just did it. It took me less than three minutes.

Also, at Disqus labs, you'll see a cool real-time comments map that you can filter by domain and a forums like web app that was built on the Disqus API.

I have seen Disqus 2012 in action and it will be running here on AVC as soon as Daniel will let me have it. I am confident it will lead to a lot more engagement and activity. Which is saying something since we aren't lacking for any of that right now!

A Talk I Gave On Blogging

I was invited to talk to Gary and Christina's SVA Class a month or so ago. They asked me to talk about writing/blogging because one of the requirements for their class is that the students have to write and blog regularly.

They are blogging the entire class and here is the post on the class where I spoke. I found this soundcloud recording of my talk there and I thought I'd share it with all of you.

These were off the cuff remarks without any preparation. So they are stream of consciousness. But it does a nice job of capturing my views on blogging and why I blog.

My remarks are about 15 minutes and the Q&A is another 20 minutes.

Engagio Followup

Back in early December 2011, I wrote a blog post about Engagio, a new web service launched by our very own William Mougayar. For those who didn't read that post, Engagio is a service that aggregates your comment activity across many of the major social platforms and gives you a gmail style dashboard to see them and reply to them.

A lot has happened in the past 45 days since that post and I wanted to bring everyone up to speed on this project.

First, and most importantly, Engagio is now open to everyone. Every few days, I'd send an email to William saying "you have to open it up". And he'd reply, "we can't scale it yet". Now they think they can scale it, so it's open to everyone. If you didn't or couldn't check it out back then, you can now.

There are a bunch of new features, large and small. Most of them are pretty useful. A good example of that is social profiles. Here's Fake Grimlock's social profile, for example.

There is even a "fred wilson feature." At Disqus, the "fred wilson feature" was the ability to get an email for every comment and the ability to reply to the email and post it to the comment thread. At Engagio, the "fred wilson feature" is the ability to "mute a site." I get so many comments on AVC that my Engagio inbox is filled with them and I see nothing else. When I mute AVC, I see all my other commenting activity on the web, at Twitter, at Foursquare, at other blogs. This single feature has made Engagio way more useful to me. To "mute a site", you go to the Sites page via the left nav section, and click on the icon next to the site name.

Finally a disclosure. Engagio did a small seed round to given them runway to execute the "build the user base" stage of the business. My wife and I made a small angel investment in this round. I've been encouraging William to do this project since he first mentioned it to me in the fall. It seemed only right to encourage with both words and capital.

Please let William and me know what you think of the progress Engagio has made since it launched 45 days ago in the comments.

Blog Polls

Blog polling widgets have been around a long time. I've tried out a few of them on AVC over the years. And polling has never taken off as a major form of engagement on blogs (as has commenting, liking, tweeting). I'm curious why that is so.

I met with a young man named Max Yoder yesterday who has built yet another polling widget. He calls it Quipol. I figured I'd give it a test run with the AVC community. And let's get right to it with the question of the day:

Let me know what you think of Quipol and blog polling widgets in general in the comments.

Pseudonyms Drive Community

This will not be surprising to the AVC community but will certainly be a shock to the "real names" crowd. Disqus has shared some research they have done on three kinds of commenters; real names, pseudonyms, and anonymous commenters. Click on this link and check it out.

But if you are not going to do that, I will summarize the data:

- Pseudonyms lead to higher quality comments

- Pseudonyms are more engaged and active

Of course, nobody in the AVC community will be surprised. Kid Mercury, Fake Grimlock, JLM, LE, Panterosa, Prokofy, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. We have tons of pseudonyms in action here and they enrich and enliven the community.

Props to Disqus for putting out this data. There are so many misinformed and uninformed people working in social media, even at some of the top platform companies. Hopefully this will cause everyone to think a bit more before forcing the real names paradigm down our throats.

A 2011 Retrospective On The AVC Community

This isn't really my blog anymore. I still get to decide what the topic of the day is. But the conversation here at AVC is what makes this place special. So, here are the highlights of 2011 (based on disqus and google analytics from Jan 1 to Dec 31):

- Most liked comment: Seth Godin calling bullshit on my marketing post with the line that "marketing /= advertising". That was liked 208 times, 2.5x the second most liked comment this past year.

- Most repied to comment: Andy Swan asking the OWS crowd "What is the negative effect on you when another man earns much more money than you do?  Why do you care?  Why do you not applaud his success?" Andy is the Howard Roark of this community and thank god we have one.

- Most active thread: No surprise there. Occupying My Mind with 990 comments. I'm tempted to re-open the comment thread and post 1o more comments.

- Most liked community member: No surprise there either. Our very own robot dinosaur. Don't ever change grimster.

- Most popular community other than AVC: Mark Suster's blog followed by Gotham Gal's blog.

It was a great year here at AVC. 4.2mm visits, 58,000 comments, and untold insights, friendships, and chuckles.

Happy New Year Everyone!