Steve Woda’s Blog – Page 26 – … Ecommerce, Internet Security, Economics, and Entrepreneurship

Facebook, Executives, College Students and Love

On December 9, 2007

In Facebook, Social Networking, Steve Woda

I was recently invited to join a professional colleague’s Facebook network. Up until then, I had strictly used LinkedIn as my only social network primarily because a) I have always found LinkedIn to be very useful for business, and b) I perceived Facebook as a playground for college kids.

Well I was wrong. Facebook is awesome, and many of my professional colleagues were way ahead of me in discovering the network’s value. Its utility becomes very powerful as your network multiplies and matures. To be quite honest, I now view LinkedIn as a great place to view a professional profile or resume, but that is about it. Facebook provides a scalable method for communicating with your professional network. The bottom-line is that I am learning to love Facebook.

Since we are talking about Facebook, I thought you might also enjoy this article about the Facebook phenomenon.

"For college students, if it’s Facebook, it’s love | Reuters"

For the Facebook generation, love now comes with a drop-down menu.

With profiles on the Facebook social networking site (www.facebook.com/) almost de rigueur on college campuses, students can define their relationship status with menu choices ranging from "married" to that perennial favorite, "It’s complicated."

"It’s complicated" could also describe the emotional calculations people in their late teens and early 20s make as they decide whether their relationships are what they call "Facebook-worthy." MORE >>

My Social Network Profiles:
Facebook >>
LinkedIn >>
deli.cio.us Bookmarks >>

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-09

By golf

On December 9, 2007

In Bookmarks

Happy Holiday for European Web Shops? – eMarketer
Retail e-commerce continues to grow in the largest Western European economies. 160.6 million European Internet users visited online retail sites in the month of October 2007. This article provides a number of other interesting facts about European ecommerce.
eBay Watch: PayPal Offers Storefront Widget

This week PayPal released a new Web widget that lets you embed a virtual storefront onto your blog or any Web site that uses HTML code. The PayPal Storefront Widget allow you to list products, set prices and start selling in an online storefront format. This Widget has real utility, and so you will want to check it out.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-08

By golf

On December 8, 2007

In Bookmarks

Should eBay CEO Meg Whitman Step Down?

Henry Blodget writes in Silicon Alley Insider that eBay CEO Meg Whitman is "one of the Valley’s most celebrated and admired executives" but thinks it is becoming increasingly clear that Whitman is not the right person for the job. In this blog post, Ina asks the hard questions.
Consumer Reports Warns of Counterfeit Items on Sites Like eBay

A Consumer Reports press statement on the problem of counterfeit items said consumers should be suspicious of third-party websites that offer deep discounts for products that are usually pricey. eBay has become a Market for Lemons in a number of product categories (Tiffany products is just one of many examples), and so this is not surprising.

Core Capital Invests in $20M Round for NextPoint

By golf

On December 5, 2007

In Core Capital, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested in a number communications infrastructure companies particularly focused on the IP and VoIP, announced its participation in a $20 million round of funding for Gaithersburg, MD-based NextPoint™ Networks, Inc.

According to the investment announcement , NextPoint will be the result of the recently announced merger between NexTone Communications Inc., a software-centric session border controller and session management provider, and Reef Point Systems, Inc., a mobile access universal convergence gateway provider. In addition to Core Capital, other investors in this round include the round lead investor, One Equity Partners, the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), as well as American Capital Strategies (NASDAQ:ACAS), Jerusalem Venture Partners, Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE) and Summerhill Venture Partners.

The eMarket for Lemons and The University of Maryland

By golf

On December 5, 2007

In buySAFE, eBay, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Web/Tech

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to a few hundred business school students at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Michael Beveridge, buySAFE’s VP of Business Intelligence, joined me in speaking at the invitation of Professors Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Peter Weiss, and Mingfeng Lin. The students had previously read "buySAFE – Creating and Profiting From the Bonded Seller Advantage", a case study on buySAFE authored by Wharton professor, Dr. Eric Clemons. Here is the presentation that Michael and I shared with the students… "eMarket for Lemons – The Economics of an Evolving eCommerce Marketplace".

As always, it was a terrific experience for me. The students were extremely prepared, and they had definitely done their homework on buySAFE, information asymmetry, and the ecommerce marketplace in general. If you ever want to get an excellent sense of how well your marketing efforts are working or how well you are educating the market about your solution, I highly recommend inviting a couple hundred college students to study your product or service and let them give you feedback. I loved it!

Turning the Risk Discount Into a Trust Premium

By golf

On December 1, 2007

In Uncategorized

This link contains a link to the presentation “Building Buyer Confidence” presented by Steve Woda, founder and senior vice president of strategy, buySAFE, for the MIVA Small Business Conference 2006, 29 August – 1 September 2006, p. 30

Steve Woda’s del.icio.us Links & Bookmarks

By golf

On November 14, 2007

In Uncategorized

The following is a list of recent articles that I have read or websites that I have found interesting. I hope this linkroll is helpful for you as well.

A Few Interesting, Recent eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Articles

By golf

On November 13, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Steve Woda, Venture Capital, Web/Tech

Good morning everyone! If you know me well, you know that I am a voracious reader of anything and everything that I believe is interesting or useful either personally or professionally. My colleagues will attest to the fact that their Inbox usually has at least one article that I have recent found that might be useful for them or buySAFE. 🙂

Today, I have been catching-up on my reading list, and I thought I would share with you a few articles that I found interesting. Hopefully, you will some of the info interesting as well.

Steve

What is RSS and Why Do You Need It?

By golf

On November 11, 2007

In Uncategorized

Receive New Articles via Email
To receive new articles in your email inbox, enter your email address below and click the Submit button.

What is that Funny Icon?
The icon that looks like a volume button is actually a link to the page where you can subscribe to a blog’s ‘feed’ via an RSS Feed Reader or Email.

It was originally designed in orange, but as you will notice, some blogs get creative.

What is an RSS Feed?
Click To Watch The Video Below That Explains RSS Feeds in Plain English. The video is the masterful work of The Common Craft Show. Please visit their site for more DIY and Instruction in Plain English.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU&rel=1]

How Do I Subscribe To The Feed?
1. If you have a feed reader (see below if not) and you want to subscribe, just click the icon.

2. If you want to get the feed via email, just type your email address in the text box near the icon designated for email subscriptions.

What is Feedburner?
“Feedburner is best known for its Atom-to-RSS conversion: you give it an Atom feed URL (e.g. the one you have in a Blogger site), and you get a URL that contains the up-to-date RSS version of it. FeedBurner actually can convert from and to any version of RSS or Atom.” (Wikipedia)

In plain English: You tell Feedburner your blog’s web address (URL) and it creates a feed for you to advertise on your site. It also allows people to subscribe to your feed, and helps you manage the way that feed is received by your subscribers.

What RSS Feed Readers Do You Recommend?
iGoogle
MyYahoo
Bloglines
MyAOL
NewsGator
NetVibes
Wizz Reader for Firefox

And many, many more…

What Happens When I Subscribe via Email?
1. You will need to approve the subscription to the feed by responding to the email that was just sent to your inbox.

2. You will begin to receive either headlines, excerpts, or entire posts in the form of a standard email. Emails will arrive at a rate dependent on frequency of blog posts and frequency of RSS delivery (normally same day).

3. You always have the option to unsubscribe or change the subscription to a RSS News Reader so as to keep the articles out of your already cluttered inbox.

Why Is It On This Blog?
By clicking on the icon and adding this blog as one of your blog feeds, you will be able to browse through our headlines, ensuring you never miss an article.

Google is an advertising cheapskate!

By golf

On October 29, 2007

In eBay, eCommerce, Google, Marketing, Microsoft, Venture Capital, Web/Tech, WOMMA, Yahoo!

What is the most valuable brand in the world? Google is the number one brand in the world with an estimated value of $66 billion according consulting firm Millward Brown Optimor.
This got me thinking… How did Google become the most valuable brand in the world in just a short nine years? As the Founder of a consumer-focused internet company, I find this question very interesting. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Google must spend billions of dollars in advertising every year to accomplish such an impressive feat.

Well after a bit of research, one thing becomes clear… Google is an advertising cheapskate!