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Mesh Top 10 List – Managing Community Online

Posted by AGORACOM at 10:14 PM on Monday, April 6th, 2009

Earlier today, I was very proud to announce that I had been invited to speak in a panel discussion at Mesh, Canada’s premier web conference. My panel is called Managing Community Online and is described as follows:

How do you develop and foster a community on the web? What strategies
work best when you are trying to both encourage and support a community
and business objectives? These and other questions will be tackled by this
group of online community pros.

The panel includes some people that have made a career out of creating and cultivating community – not an easy thing to do in a world full of intense competition.  As such, both attendees and myself are sure to learn some valuable lessons.  The place will be packed so get there early! (Assume my opinion is horribly conflicted).

For my part, I’ve taken the liberty of posting my personal Top 10 List of Do’s and Dont’s for developing and fostering an online community. I’ll cover some of these on Wednesday but doubt I’ll be able to get through all of them as I listen to my smarter fellow panelists.  Enjoy:

1. Figure Out A Biz Model or Die.

  • What Does Your Space Need? Find It and Fill It.
  • Adsense Will Not Suffice
  • Find Paying Customers. Focus On Business Not Individual Subscriptions.  SaaS, Data, etc.
  • Making Money Isn’t Selling Out. You Need It Before You Can Change The World

2. Position Yourself As A Premium Site – Focus On Content, Not “Cool”
3. Recruit Members/Leaders To Create Great Content and Traffic. Poach Weak Competitors. Dog eats dog.
4. Customer Service, Customer Service. Customer Service. 24/7/365 for clients AND members.
5. Hire Developers That Understand Your Business, Not Just Code. Hat Tip To Our Developers.
6. Knock On Local Doors – A Lot Of Them – And Business Will Come.
7. Attend and Network At Conferences Attended By Your Customer Base.
8. Search Engine Marketing – CPC CPC CPC CPC
9. Don’t Launch A Major Upgrade Without Input From Key Members
10. Don’t Add Features Without A Reason. “Feature Creep” Will Kill You.

…OK and 1 Bonus

11. Don’t Pitch Technology To Clients, Pitch The Business Result!

There you have it. If you are serious about building a community that will survive long into the future, then take this list seriously.

Regards,
George

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Speaking at Mesh ’09 – Canada’s Leading Web Conference

Posted by AGORACOM at 2:58 PM on Monday, April 6th, 2009

I’m proud to once again announce that I’ve been invited to speak at Mesh ’09, Canada’s leading Web Conference, being held at the MaRS Centre in Toronto on April 7th & 8th.

I will participate in the panel discussion called “Managing Community Online”, which will also include other very successful web entrepreneurs who have made a career out of creating, managing, and monetizing online communities.

In my experience, online financial communities are more passionate and vibrant than any other kind of community because they deal with people’s financial well-being. As such, our experiences in building a successful community should be extremely beneficial to those in attendance. I’m grateful to our entire community for helping AGORACOM get noticed and to the Mesh team for inviting me to participate.

I attended the inaugural Mesh Conference as a Web 2.0 rookie but was anxious to learn about the space, sort out the useful tools from the trendy ones and apply them to help create a sustainable business model. Given the incredible knowledge I gained at Mesh, it’s only fitting that I give back to the conference and help others build great communities of the future.

On March 3rd, 2009, AGORACOM reported 2008 traffic results that included:

• 1.31 million unique visitors
• 7.9 million visits
• 96 million page views

Mesh is the result of event organizers believing that Toronto deserved to have a world-class conference where people with an enthusiasm for the Web could talk about how it is affecting the media, marketing, business and society as a whole.  My hat goes off to the following gentlemen for making Mesh a reality:

The panel discussion on “Managing Community Online” is on April 8th and is scheduled to begin at 4:10 pm. To view or download the Mesh schedule click here.

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Posted in AGORACOM News And Events, AGORACOM Presentations, All Recent Posts, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 1 Comment »

Bank Stocks Could Skyrocket “100% Within Hours” On March 12th

Posted by AGORACOM at 11:39 PM on Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Traders take note.  According to John Najarian from CNBC Fast Money, financial stocks could skyrocket 100% “within hours” if mark-to-market accounting rules are relaxed at a House financial services subcommittee hearing.  Najarian is not one to make such statements likely, so it is worth reading the exact quote:

“if the government relaxes mark-to-market for 12 to 18 months you could
see financials move 100% in a matter of hours.”  And he went on to say, “In
fact, I hope you’ll replay the soundbite because if the government relaxes
mark-to-market accounting a number of banks stocks will be unbelievable
values at these levels.”

Here is the CNBC Fast Money clip on the subject, including a call on which financial stock would most benefit.  For his money, Najarian suggests a higher risk play – long the Financial Bull 3x ETF FAS (take a look at the 6-month chart).

Hat-tip to Howard Lindzon of Stock Twits

UPDATE:  Citigroup Up 30% Since Blog Alert, Bank Of America Up 50%

Regards,
George

Posted in All Recent Posts, US Economy, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 11 Comments »

AGORACOM Hits 1.31 Million Unique Visitors For Full Year 2008

Posted by AGORACOM at 10:10 AM on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Back on October 10th, we announced AGORACOM traffic results for the first full-year since the launch of our small-cap, wiki-powered “Investor Controlled Discussion Forums” on October 5, 2007.

Today, I am very pleased to announce our traffic results for the full year 2008.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, this snapshot from our Google analytics is worth several million

[PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGE, CLEAR GRAPH]

AGORACOM Traffic FY 2008

Suffice it to say, we are once again ecstatic with the results.  This is especially true given the state of the markets in Q4 2008.  We attribute much of this success to practicing what we preach. Specifically, when times are tough and your competitors are running for cover, crank up the marketing.  AGORACOM did just that with the launch of TV ads on Bloomberg, CNBC and BNN , as well as, the addition of Peter Grandich.

ELECTRONIC SHAREHOLDER FORUMS WILL REPLACE TRADITIONAL IR DEPARTMENTS AND IRO’S

To this end, we will continue to re-invest back into the success of our community, clients and members.  Look for significant news from AGORACOM on the mobile and international fronts shortly.  We’re building for the long-term here folks.  There is no stopping the web/mobile trend as the sole source of investor relations, investor collaboration and market information.  Investors are demanding it, loving it and we are going to continue delivering.  Electronic shareholder forums are going to replace traditional investor relations departments and IRO’s.  We’ve got a foothold and we’re not letting go.

CLIENTS AND MEMBERS THAT BELIEVED

I want to thank all of our great clients and members that believed in our model and breathed unbelievable life into this paradigm shifting platform. Without them, this would be one hell of an application with no users. A special thanks goes out to all HUB Leaders that abandoned their former communities at Stockhouse, Raging Bull, Yahoo Finance and others in hopes of a better experience. I’m glad our promises to you have been fulfilled.  Thank-You!

REPUTATION AND RANKING SYSTEM

When we created our community by combining UGC, Wiki and reputation based tools, we set out to destroy the stock discussion forum status quo that we have all come to hate over the past 10 years thanks to unrelenting spam, profanity, stock bashing, stock hyping and the unacceptable. Many thought it could not be done because we could neither change habits nor unseat the incumbents. We not only knew we could, we knew investors wanted us to.  All they needed was a solution that focused on quality over quantity.

Now, more than lip service, the following numbers speak for themselves:

THE TALE OF THE TAPE

(Figures for January 1, 2008 – December 31, 2008. All figures reported by Google Analytics)

  • Unique Visitors 1,311,797
  • Visits 7,936,725 (so close to 8 million…)
  • Page Views 95,958,206
  • Pages Per Visit 12.09
  • Avg Time On Site 9:19
  • Number Of Countries/Territories 207
  • Top 10 (Canada, USA, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Australia, Sweden, Mexico, Switzerland)

The numbers look even better when you consider

  • We built our model on quality vs quantity. As such, this is pure discussion. No spam, flaming and bickering traffic.
  • We are only focusing on small-cap and micro-cap stocks …for now.

THE STATUS QUO IS CRUMBLING

(more…)

Posted in AGORACOM News And Events, AGORACOM Traffic, All Recent Posts, Online Investor Relations, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 12 Comments »

Congratulations To New Google Canada Boss (and Our Friend) Jonathan Lister

Posted by AGORACOM at 12:55 AM on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

A New Sheriff Is In Town

A New Sheriff Is In Town

Google Canada has a new sheriff in town and it is non other than our friend, Jonathan Lister.  Thanks to my Globe and Mail (Business) Twitter feed, I was alerted to the story Google Canada’s New Boss Eyes Growth.

The appointment truly could not have gone to a better guy. I first began working with Jonathan when he headed up customer service for a web hosting company owned by a friend of mine. To this day, it is still the best customer service experience Agoracom has ever had.

As such, it was no surprise to see Jonathan get scooped away by AOL Canada, where we watched him flourish and move up the ranks at a pretty rapid pace.  Before long, I received a call from Jonathan telling me he was moving on to head up AOL Europe.

Today, he is Google Canada’s new boss. Google is lucky to have him and we look forward to watching him take their Canadian operations to another level. The way Jonathan moves up the ranks, Sergey and Larry may want to keep looking over their shoulder 🙂

Congratulations and good luck Jonathan!

Regards,
George

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AGORACOM Interview: Electronic Shareholder Forums and Online Investor Relations

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:39 PM on Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Pleased to announce we just completed this interview with Zack Miller (former Seeking Alpha guy) of New Rules Of Investing. Great discussion concerning online investor relations, electronic shareholder forums and the future of investor relations.

I was also labeled as “indefatigable” in his intro, which was a really nice touch – after I looked up the definition 🙂

The information contained in the interview is well worth the 5 minutes. Moreover, when you’re done, have a look at Zack’s other interviews and articles. Great stuff if you want to be on the cutting edge of the future of investing.

Regards,
George

Posted in AGORACOM In The Press, AGORACOM News And Events, All Recent Posts, Online Investor Relations, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | Comments Off on AGORACOM Interview: Electronic Shareholder Forums and Online Investor Relations

Small-Cap CEO Lesson: Web 2.0 Coverage Of Plane Crash Beats CNN and Major Media

Posted by AGORACOM at 4:27 PM on Thursday, January 15th, 2009

The following photo came from a passenger on a ferry that was sent to pick up passengers from the US Airways plane in the Hudson River (click to see full sized image).

“Jkrums” used his mobile phone to take the picture, then post it via Twitter, where it was then sent around the web like wildfire.  In the meantime, all CNN could do was provide aerial footage from helicopters.

If you’re a small-cap CEO that still doesn’t believe in the power and speed of Web 2.0, you’re more doomed than the passengers of this flight – who all got off safely thank goodness.

Regards,
George

Posted in All Recent Posts, Small-Cap CEO Lessons, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 1 Comment »

2 Web 2.0 Companies That Each Make More Money Than YouTube, Twitter AND Facebook Combined

Posted by AGORACOM at 2:27 PM on Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Fortune Magazine recently published Web 2.0 Is So Over, Welcome to Web 3.0 , to which I call bullshit. On the one hand, the premise that many Web 2.0 companies have failed for lack of a business plan is absolutely true. I’ve been banging the table on this since the first Mesh Conference, on Twitter , TechCrunch (Web 2.0’s most destructive blog) and GigaOm.

But for Fortune to go the next step and say these are representative of Web 2.0 business models is utter bullshit and, quite frankly, lazy journalism. Yes, YouTube / Facebook / Twitter may be the most popular members of the Web 2.0 class – but pinning the Web 2.0 business outlook on them is akin to pinning the future of a high-school class on its most popular jocks….and I’m sick of it.

For some reason, Web 2.0 bloggers (i.e. Techcrunch) and writers (i.e. Jessi Hempel) insist on using traffic as a measure of success. Folks, if a million people use your services but refuse to give you a dollar, you don’t have a business – you have a hobby. Fortune and Techcrunch still don’t realize this – it’s as if they weren’t around for dot-bomb and are still star struck by Super Bowl money-burners.

2 COMPANIES THAT MAKE MORE MONEY THAN YOUTUBE, TWITTER AND FACEBOOK COMBINED

The fact of the matter is that if you took a minute to look past the popularity contest, you would actually find thriving Web 2.0 companies like Freshbooks and AGORACOM that have used Web 2.0 technology to deliver value-added services that customers are – gasp! – actually willing to pay for. No, we don’t have a zillion users viewing a gazillion pages and posting a gigazillion number of messages/photos – but we each make more money than YouTube, Twitter and Facebook combined.

TECHCRUNCH START-UP COVERAGE DESTROYED THE WEB 2.0 ECOSYSTEM

I don’t expect Freshbooks and AGORACOM to get more overall coverage than popular Web 2.0 sites – but when it comes to discussion about business models, we deserve our props and so do other real Web 2.0 companies that we don’t know about. Not just for notoriety reasons but as an example of what other Web 2.0 entrepreneurs should be doing.

Why?

The Techcrunch glamorization of cool but useless Web 2.0 companies has inflicted significant damage on the entire ecosystem by encouraging the development of free mass-market “me too” technology. In dot-bomb, companies were selling $1 bills for 90 cents. Today, they just offer stuff for free and don’t even bother asking for money. They may be burning through significantly less money – but the result is the same. For what it’s worth, it was more fun watching companies burn through $100 million in 6 months than the slow agonizing death of today’s money-less losers.

Covering companies that have taken the time to cultivate and succeed from real business plans, on the other hand, would have inspired many others to go this route – and we wouldn’t be reading articles titled “Web 2.0 Is So Over”.

If the bloggers and journalists can’t do their jobs, maybe you can. I’d love to hear about other Web 2.0 companies generating real revenues ( > $500,000) and real profits from real customers.

UPDATE: Mark Evans has jumped into the fray with a great post that also refers to this post.  You can read my comment and why I believe this needs to become a topic at the upcoming Mesh Conference.

UPDATE #2: Chris Anderson, Editor-In-Chief of Wired, posted a story on this very subject to the Wall Street Journal. Clearly, we are at a tipping point in the world of online business models.  Glad to see it after pounding the table on this subject for 3 years now.

Regards,
George

Posted in All Recent Posts, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 6 Comments »

AGORACOM Is 1 of only 13 Finance Content Providers To Every Blackberry Device On The Planet

Posted by AGORACOM at 12:41 PM on Thursday, January 8th, 2009

On my recent family trip to Disney, I couldn’t help but notice the enormous amount of people using their phones in long line-ups to snap photos, shoot small video clips and communicate with their friends via E-Mail, SMS and MMS. In addition, a large number of parents were using their smartphones to surf the web as they waited for their kids to complete rides.

Ironically enough, this drove me to use my Blackberry to post this comment via AGORACOM Twitter.

As a result, I have to conclude that 2009 will be the tipping point for mobile surfing and communications.  I know most early adopters have been doing this for years but I’ve always said we need the masses to participate for any tool or app to really gain big traction.

AGORACOM COMES LOADED ON EVERY BLACKBERRY DEVICE

Consequently, look for AGORACOM to significantly advance its mobile efforts in Q1.  I say “advance” rather than “launch” because we’ve had a pretty good mobile profile for a couple of years now.  Specifically, AGORACOM is the exclusive provider of small-cap content to every Blackberry device on the planet and 1 of only 13 Blackberry financial content partners.

Here is the official list of financial content providers to the Blackberry Finance Channel.  It obviously does not look as good on the web because it’s built for mobile – but you get the picture.  If you want to view it on your mobile browser, it is a long URL, so I’ve created a shortened version that you can easily punch in:  http://tinyurl.com/BlackberryFinance

HERE IS HOW TO GET IT ON YOUR BLACKBERRY, IPHONE OR ANY SMARTPHONE

The same thing goes for the AGORACOM Small-Cap Center on Blackberry.  If you want the true view on your mobile, use the following URL - http://agoracom.com/rim/index.html – and make sure to bookmark it!

Look for substantially bigger mobile news out of AGORACOM later this quarter.

Regards,
George

Posted in AGORACOM Mobile, AGORACOM News And Events, All Recent Posts, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 4 Comments »

Small-Cap CEO Lesson: Online Video Time Jumps 40% In 1 Year

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:58 PM on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

You’re a small-cap CEO and looking for a way to tell your story to investors beyond text.  I have always maintained that video is the best new online investor relations tool because of its personal touch (CEO speaking to investors) and demonstration abilities (new product, factory, etc.).

However, until a couple of years ago, video was nearly impossible to execute for all but the most savvy small-cap companies due to the lack of cheap channels such as YouTube.  Moreover, online video usage was in its infancy with a limited number of users.

ONLINE VIDEO IS NOW ON

Today? Welcome to the ubiquitous  world of online video.  According to this NewTeeVee report, the amount of time U.S. Internet users spend watching video is up an impressive 40 percent year over year. Specifically, watchers tuned in for 273.1 minutes of online video in the month of November 2008, up from 195 minutes.  Some other interesting stats include:

  • 77 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
  • The number of video viewers was up 6% to 146 million.
  • 97 million viewers watched 5.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (52.3 videos per viewer).
  • The duration of the average online video was 3.1 minutes.

HOW DOES THIS IMPACT YOUR INVESTOR RELATIONS?

Buy a good digital video camera and make video part of your IR program.  The connection created to your shareholders will be invaluable.  Meetings, executive addresses, new products, new facilities.  If it’s something you want investors to know about, shoot it and share it.  AGORACOM’s video strategy is already in full swing, just click on any of the logos above to see just some of our syndication.

Regards,
George

Posted in All Recent Posts, Online Investor Relations, Web 2.0, 3.0, ... | 1 Comment »

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