Jackson Hole in January 2007


Jackson Hole at -22, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

Another photo to share ....MLK weekend was my annual college ski weekend.  We went to Jackson Hole for the first time.  A few comments about Jackson Hole and this trip:

  • Jackson Hole is a really cute town that's a pain in the ass to get to.
  • At -22 degrees, it's too friggin cold to ski.
  • This mountain is for experts. There's no easy way to get down the mountain.
  • This was our 6th trip -- always a fun time. It's interesting to see how the conversations change as time marches on....lots more talk about spouses and families than before. Middle age is here!

Looking forward to next year -- we're either going to return to Alta/Snowbird or go to Aspen. Remains to be seen. Look forward to it!

Upgrade at the hotel in Paris Las Vegas


Paris Hotel, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

I've recently uploaded some photos from the past month...and I thought I'd share some with you.

I took a trip with my dad to Las Vegas. I arrived a night before him and thus, got to stay at the Paris hotel (Priceline selected the hotel for me). When I arrived at the hotel, I had to wait in a long line to register. When I finally got to check in, I was friendly and pleasant to the woman behind the counter. She looked at my reservation and decided (for no reason other than my kindness) to upgrade me to the penthouse suites on the top floor of the hotel. It made my stay unique and really fun. I just regret not having 40 or 50 friends to invite over for a party....the room warranted a big party. As you can tell from the photo, it's classic las vegas design!  I have to say -- I enjoyed the Paris hotel....and won't soon forget this upgrade.

Tip 2 for creating a user generated content site

Let me summarize my first tip: focus and dominate a single niche category.
The headline of my second tip: use technology and human beings to increase the quality of content.

At Judy's Book, we used a completely automated process for user content generation.  We did this to insure maximum scalability. The problem is that we sacrificed content quality in the process. When I think about user generated content today, I always think about business processes for content generation. I think about how to use technology and management interfaces to maximize the use of human editors. These editors can be users or employees -- it doesn't matter. The important insight is that content quality is hard to achieve without some human touch -- and quality for readers is more important than scalability in the short run (and probably the long run). I know there are exceptions to this insight: Myspace and Craigslist are noteable. However, I'd say both of these companies have limited quality content and could certainly improve the reader experience and user retention by introducing a content editing process that leveraged editors in some way. Just my two cents based upon experience with managing a half million reviews of which a percentage don't add real value to users.
There are lots of other important ways to improving quality of user contributions -- but they will be the subject of another tip in the future. 

Halfway there....I turn 40 today

When I was in high school I swam competitively.  I swam the 100 yard backstroke. The strategy for winning that race consisted of 3 things:

  1. A strong start
  2. An excellent third lap
  3. Not dieing on the last 15 yards

So, today (and the next stage of life) is all about coming out of the second flip turn and having an excellent third lap. Need I say anymore?

Tip 1 for creating a user generated content site

I have a friend who is starting a UGC / social network site in the health space and he asked me to send him an email with my lessons learned from Judy's Book. I'll post it here for you all to read and comment on.

Keith,
Here's my advice...
1) Focus, focus, focus
Focus the network on a specific category. Health is way too broad. At Judy's Book, I wish we had just focused on restaurants. And for that matter, we should have started with Seattle restaurants. Restaurants as a category are the area where there is the intersection of consumer passion, review writing, and daily activity.  Let me be even more explicit on these points

  • consumer passion: people love to eat out. (period)
  • review writing: people consume restaurant reviews whether that be from Zagats or from the local newspaper or from their co-workers or friends. In fact, recommendations from friends is often a higher trusted source than a Zagats.
  • daily activity : this is critical. People eat out frequently and are often looking to try or willing to try new restaurants. Frequency of visits -- and the closer to a daily activity you can make your site the better off you'll be. Compare the restaurant activity to the activity of looking for a plumber or an architect. They're not even close in terms of frequency -- or monetization. Restaurants clearly are less monetizeable than plumbers and architects but they have the ability to gain consumer passion -- and for the kind of site I hoped Judy's Book would become, focusing on restaurants and consumer passion would have been the right decision in retrospect. Once we owned this market, we could have moved to other categories.

So -- in a nut shell, my first and strongest piece of advice is to focus, focus, focus. There is a reason that Amazon (big brand promise) started selling books and only books. It's the whole crossing the chasm thing....

Going back to Apple?

I just spent the weekend with friends in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They all work with technology and they all had apple laptops. I used to be an AVID apple user -- I still remember the unfortunate day when I gave up and converted to a PC.  Well, it appears Apple is back and here to stay -- and I'm considering switching back to the land I loved.
I asked my friend, Jay Haynes -- (CEO of earthscreen), to spec out the computer I should buy if I were to switch. This is what he said to me.

Mac Book Pro Laptop:
1x 2.33 Ghz
3 gigs RAM (not expandable)
200 gig drive (not expandable)
$3,623
Mac Pro Desktop
2x 2.66 Ghz
2 gigs RAM (expandable to 16 gigs)
250 gig drive (expandable to 4 750 gig drives)
$3,047
So you get more that 100% increase in speed and a hugely expandable system for almost $600 less!  And you can run OSX server and have a true Linux server in your house.

Blogknowledgement from Tech Crunch

For the longest time, I wondered when and if Judy's Book would get mentioned by Tech Crunch.  It's interesting -- our service isn't aimed at the Tech Crunch crowd. We're specifically aiming at a different more mainstream audience. Yet, I work in technology and am a fan of lots of the big bloggers -- Mike, John, Jason, Nick etc. So, I am pleased with Michael Arrington's (Tech Crunch) most recent post about Judy's Book and my blogging. It's encouraging. It'll even be more encouraging when Mike recognizes Judy's Book product as cool and important to consumers -- my hope is that comes sometime in Q2 when we relaunch the product.

Until then, I just want to thank Mike for noticing my blog -- and the hard work of the team here at Judy's Book to recognize weakness, and to take some bold steps in the hopes that the business works. Thanks for acknowledging the process.

PS I'm happy not to be in the deadpool -- and I have every intention of keeping Judy's Book far away from it.

Judy's Book Evolution: Avoiding quick sand and lay offs

This article about insider pages, one of our former direct competitors, illustrates the kind of press and organization upheaval that we avoided when we decided to make the strategic evolution from local reviews into local deals. 

The evolution we're undertaking isn't easy but it is becoming clearer and clearer that we're on a much better path to a sustainable business -- i.e revenue and profit than we were when we were simply a user generated yellow pages with reviews (community directory).  We will have a significantly revised site by the end of the first quarter. I'm looking forward to it....I hope you are too.

I want to be clear here -- I like what Stu McFarlan (sp?) and the folks at Insider Pages attempted to do.  In fact, I liked it so much that I competed with them (we started at the same time). Moreover, you should know that in some instances, Insider Pages out-executed us. They did a good job and are good smart people.  I wish they had succeeded. That said, the management at Insider Pages spent money much faster than us. And as my management team and I concluded -- there was not a realistic revenue model underlying the sites that we both were creating. Based upon this article in Tech Crunch, I'm assuming that this got them in organizational quick sand. Fortunately, we at Judy's Book are evolving to a happy, firmer, and hopefully more profitable place.

I'm going to write more about Insider Pages, Yelp, and some of the lessons that people and entrepreneurs can take away from watching our space. 

The difference between Apple and AOL

If you want to know the difference between the two companies ....just read this blog post from my friend Ryan describing how Apple actually responding in a responsible manner to a customer service debacle that had risen to the front page of Digg.  Compare this experience to the one of the poor guy who tried to cancel his AOL subscription and wasn't allowed to by the AOL service rep....and you'll know the difference (or at least one of the differences) between Apple and AOL.

I've been tagged....five things you don't know about me

  1. My first business was selling bubble yum in 5th grade for $0.25 per piece. A pack cost $0.25. I got called to the principal office.
  2. In an alternate life, I wish I were a professional basketball player and given that there's no Jewish basketball players since Ernie d....I wish I were a radio host -- yes, I know -- I'll start podcasting.
  3. I have recently become quite the fan of Texas Holdem poker and the UFC -- In fact, I think High Stakes Poker is one of the best t.v. shows out there.
  4. I hate meat loaf but love a good NY Sirloin ....almost as much as I love my spicy tuna rolls.
  5. My favorite summer was the summer of '87 when I biked across the country (from SF to Seattle to Providence, RI) with 3 college friends.

How's that?