Musings of a VC in NYC

2012: The Year That Movements Go Mainstream?

I returned from ten days of skiing with my family last night. I'm on mountain time and plan to stay there until the new year. Staying up late and sleeping late seems to be a good way to bring in the New Year. But even so, my version of sleeping late is getting up at 8am. My family's version of sleeping late is getting up at noon. That leaves a fair bit of time to read and think.

And so that's what I did this morning. And here is what I am reading and thinking about:

1) Ron Paul is likely to win the Iowa Republican Caucus. Newt Gingrich says "I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American." Maybe Paul's win in Iowa is the moment when Paul's ideas and the Tea Party movement go mainstream.

2) Occupy's organizers are building their own social network. The idea of a distributed social net that is not controlled by any company or institution has been around for a while. Identica and Diaspora have not taken off. Can a movement make it happen? I think it has a better chance because networks need people in them.

3) Reddit's users want to target a Senator after their successful attack on GoDaddy. The Reddit community can marshall a lot of activity when they want to. Last year's Rally To Restore Sanity was largely catalyzed by the Reddit community. If they do go after a Senator with that kind of intensity, it will have an impact.

4) Wired says that 2011 was the year that IP trumped Civil Liberties. It sure feels that way to me. Beware the backlash.

5) Twitter reports a Massachusetts DA's subpeona to its users. The money quote from that post: "Never declare war on the young," said Harvey Silverglate, a noted civil libertarian, told the Boston Herald in reference to the less-than-tech-savvy wording of the subpoena. "They'll outlast you. They'll outthink you. They'll outdo you... That may be the lesson the DA's office is about to learn."

Back in the spring of this year I told the folks at Techcrunch Disrupt that I thought the next big thing was "cultural revolution" fomented by the fact that roughly a billion people all over the world are connected directly to each other. I'm still not entirely sure how to invest in this megatrend, but it sure feels like it is upon us.

occupyweb.org

Regular readers know that I've been thinking a lot about #occupywallstreet which I think is an example of the cultural revolutions I talked about on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. 

My friend Dave Winer has built a beautiful web service that allows all of us to easily follow this movement in a river of images. He calls it occupyweb.org.

Check it out.

Community Moderation

I'm sure the AVC community has noticed a bit more comment spam slipping in. That's for a number of reasons. As the number of comments rises across multiple threads every day, it takes me longer to get through them all. One of the many reasons I read every comment is that I am also the moderator and I delete and report all comment spam, as well as very infrequently I'll delete an entirely inappropriate comment. It is also true that as the Disqus network has increased in size and reach, it has become a bigger target for comment spammers. Even if you filter out 99.9% of all comment spam, if enough comes at you, that 0.1% starts to amount to a real number.

I've made a small change in the AVC Disqus moderation settings. If enough people flag a comment (by clicking on the little red flag that comes up when you hover below a comment), that comment will no longer appear in the thread. I will still see the comment when I moderate the thread and I can reinstate it or delete and report it as spam. This puts the power of moderation into the hands of the community which is something I should have done a long time ago. I'm not going to say how many flags will do this. I don't want anyone gaming the system.

I do not want the community flagging comments you don't agree with. This is a community open to all voices, even when they express ideas that aren't popular. In particular, comments that hate on me personally should not be moderated. I can take the heat. I want the heat. I'd like to remain the only person who can moderate "entirely inappropriate comments." So if that kind of comment gets flagged off the thread, I will put it back.

Finally, I also do have the ablity to make certain community members moderators with the same powers I have. There are a few, not very many, who I would bestow this right onto. Shana and William come to mind in particular. If you would like to have mod powers and you think you've earned them, let me know in this thread and I will respond to the request in this thread. I will also report on this blog who I've given these powers to. I reserve the right to revoke them at any time.

I've leveraged the power of this community for so many things over the years, it is ironic that it has taken me so long to leverage the power of the community to keep the bar clean.

Real Names (cont)

Disqus Ranks

The community here at AVC has been a testing ground for a new feature that Disqus will be rolling out throughout its network shortly. They call it Disqus Ranks. Anyone who has been in the AVC comments in the past two or three months has seen pieces of the Ranks service coming together.

Here is how it works:

1) the blogger and/or publisher uses a nice new tool provided by Disqus to score each community member. it looks like this (note that I will in all likelihood change these settings over time):

2) the blogger and/or publisher can turn on "ranks" in the comment threads. these ranks appear in the header of each comment. this is what we have been seeing here at AVC for the past few months.

3) the blogger and/or publisher can create custom ranks for the community using a range of conditions and metrics. these include absolute leaderboard position or any of the individual items being measure (shown above).

4) i did that yesterday. and i messed it up. i somehow made everyone "welcome back stranger" for most of the day yesterday. sorry about that. the folks at Disqus helped me fix it yesterday afternoon and now we have what I set up working. that is:

me - Bartender

top 10 - The Entourage

top 50 - The Gang

top 100 - The Regulars

top 250 - The Semi-Regulars

top 1000 - Familiar Face

top 2000 - Welcome Back Stranger

first comment - Newcomer

I'd like everyone's feedback on these names and the scores associated with them. I'd also like suggestions for other ranks. We can assign names to all kinds of behavior, first to comment, spam reporting, liking, replying, etc.

You can see that I've been working with a bar theme. I've always seen the AVC community as Cheers, a place people come hang out, have fun, talk about stuff, make and maintain friendships. So for now anyway, I'm going with that.

I think that's it. Let's disqus.

UPDATE: I've been playing around with Ranks as people are discussing them and giving me ideas. When I update the Ranks, they go away for a few minutes and the new ones come back. So you may not see them from time to time. Also, I added a new Rank called instigator for those community members who start conversations. Disqus makes me an instigator. I will try to get the bartender handle back but it is gone for now.

Feature Friday: Disqus Ranks

AVC community regular RichardF suggested a while back that I do Feature Fridays. I'm not sure I can do it consistently week after week, but I'm doing it this week because we have a new feature to disqus.

Disqus has launched "ranks" here at AVC. It is not available across the entire Disqus Blog Network yet. They are giving it a spin here at AVC to get some feedback.

If you look at many of the comments, you'll see a little black "badge" next to the commenters' names. That badge means they are a community regular and that Disqus has been able to give them a community rank. I am fairly certain (but not positive) that these ranks are community specific, meaning they only apply to your activity here at AVC.

There has already been some discussion of the algorithm used to calculate these ranks. Fernando saw the ranks in yesterday's comment thread and did some number crunching. Disqus CEO Daniel Ha replied with some information on what data is used in the ranks algorithm:

We're using a few different signals for ranks right now, including visiting frequency, post, replies, likes, reciprocation of those things, being the first to comment in a thread... etc. 

We're playing with the balancing to see what feels right, but I figured the AVC community wouldn't mind playing around with some unpolished features! We're listening to any feedback you guys may have.

So the Disqus team is watching and listening to what we think. Disqus away!

A Word From Your Sponsor

Many of you know this but I thought it was worth addressing again since I get tweets like this one a lot.

@fredwilson - I'm just curious why someone as financial successful as you has advertising on their blog? Extra cash? Does it go to an NPO?

The answer to that last bit, "does it go to a non-profit organization?" is yes.

Both the Gotham Gal and I take all the revenue we get from running display ads on our blogs and advertising in our feeds and run it through our family foundation where it ends up in the hands of any number of deserving non-profit organizations. It turns out to be a meaningful sum of money each year and it can do a lot of good in the right hands.

Just one of many reasons that blogging is a force for good in the world.

The "Fred Wilson School Of Blogging"

Tom Anderson, the Tom we were all friends with on MySpace, wrote a guest post on TechCrunch suggesting that there is a "Fred Wilson School Of Blogging." I'm not sure about a "school" but I do have some points of view and Tom mentions some of them.

Here's how I do it:

1) Have a long form blog on a domain that you own and that is permanent. Like Anil Dash says in the comments to Tom's post, this is about compiling a set of work that is substantial. Anil says:

Based on the past dozen years that I've been writing it, I expect that my blog will in some ways be one of the most significant things I create in my life.

I'm 100% with Anil on this. People ask me when I am going to write a book and I laugh at that suggestion. AVC is more than a book will ever be. It is live, it is deep (in terms of total posts), it keeps going, evolving, and ends when I end.

2) Have a short form blog an a different domain that you own and is permanent. Mine is at fredwilson.vc and hosted on Tumblr. This is where I put the things that fill out the story but don't belong on a long form blog.

3) Participate actively in the social distribution platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Build profiles, followers, and credibility in these communities. I use Twitter for broadcast to a wide group, I use Facebook for friends and family, and I'm still trying to figure out how to use Google+. These distribution platforms are great for getting your work out there but I don't personally want to use them as the place where my work is hosted.

4) Build community on your domains. In the case of my longform blog, Disqus is the tool I chose and after that decision, our firm invested in the company. I've seen and used all the various community tools out there and I believe Disqus is the best at building community on long form blogs. In terms of community on short form blogging, I think Tumblr has done the best job and that is why it is growing like a weed right now.

5) Engage everywhere. That means on Hacker News, other blog communities/comments, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. This takes a lot of time. Too much time. But I get so much value back from doing it that I make the time.

The most important part is to engage. The second most important part is own your online presence. Marco Arment has a great post on this point. He says:

If you care about your online presence, you must own it.

So if there is a "Fred Wilson School Of Blogging" this is it. It works for me and it can work for you if you are willing to invest the time and energy.

Disqussing Disqus

Yesterday our portfolio company Disqus announced a bunch of numbers including the fact that they had raised $10mm to fund their rapid growth. The AVC community is powered by Disqus and we are big fans of the company here. So I'm pretty sure many of you already saw the news and are happy for the Company. For those that did not see the news, click on that link above. For those who would rather get a brief summary, here's what they announced:

- Disqus is four years old this week

- Disqus communities are viewed each month by almost 500mm users worldwide.

- Over 750,000 blog communities have adopted Disqus

- 35mm commenters actively participate in these communities

- The company grew 5x across all its core metrics in the past year

- 75% of blogs that use a third party comment system use Disqus

- All of this was achieved by just 16 people, but they hope to increase that number in the coming months

If you are interested in working for a rapidly growing category leader, here is their jobs page.

In other news, Disqus released some new features, one of which I discovered in the comments to yesterday's post. If you mention other people in a Disqus comment by typing @ then his or her Disqus name, mentioned people will be notified via email or Twitter. I saw a number of people using this yesterday. Let's do this as much as we can around here. It will make the disqussions even more lively.

A Month Of Traffic To AVC

It's 5am and I've got to catch an early flight to Toronto and will spend the day on the road, returning around 8pm. So I don't have much time to blog today. 

I thought I'd share what a month of traffic to AVC looks like. Monthly visits to AVC average 300k and page views average 400k, but how you get there is always fascinating to me. It's not 10k visits per day every day. Far from it.

Some days are slow with 5k visits or less. Some days are big, like yesterday, with almost 20k visits. In fact there are very few days where the daily visits are near the average. Blogging traffic depends on lot on the post that day and how it reverberates around the social web.