The Inbox Could See New Life This Year

Fred Wilson: Social Networking Vs. Email

(I was writing this as a comment at his blog, but it became long enough that I decided to make a blog post out of it.)

Social networking has surpassed email, search and is doing great in the news department. Those three were just three of the biggest web activities before these social networks came along. That is really something. (Email, Search, News)

But don't count out the inbox. I'd say location, random connections and the inbox are the three big things to look for this year. There is some interesting stuff going on in the inbox territory, I just have not had the time to figure out who the leader there is.

The inbox will rebound. That is not to say it will take back its lead. China was once the leading country on the planet.

Curiously Twitter might lead the revival of the information graph. But not the Twitter of today. (Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem)

The email inside Facebook is still Facebook. It is not email. Only people in your network can email you, for the most part, and do. And they do so rarely.

I don't mind being on mailing lists as long as they have a one click unsubscribe option at the bottom of each email they send out. If I am going to delete without reading anyway, why bother sending it to me? But then those dictators in Nigeria just seem to need 0.1% to respond, and that keeps them in business. So.

Even in social networking I don't believe Facebook has the final word. I have a feeling we will see a swing from the we to the me in a few years. (The Next Big Thing In Social Networking)

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Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying

Fred Wilson: We Are Hiring At Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures: We Are Hiring

Intra-Portfolio Evangelist. Now that is a title that could work for me. I could argue I have already been doing that for USV for free. I believe Vint Cerf is Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. (Vint Cerf, Craig Mundie, Steve Wozniak)

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My LinkedIn Page. (Email: paramendra at gmail dot com)

..... the successful candidates will spend a couple of years with us and then move on to a start up.... the GM of the USV Network will focus primarily on supporting our portfolio of 28 web services companies. ....... Because of our focused approach, many of our portfolio companies face similar challenges as they work to create and sustain user engagement, recruit talent, build relationships with partners, or design, code, and operate web services at scale. So it's no surprise that our portfolio companies are learning from each other. We have tried to facilitate that learning by hosting meetups and mailing lists, but we believe that we can do so much more. .......build on our early work to create a useful and sustainable connection between the portfolio companies. Think of it as a community manager for the USV portfolio. The community is small, and private, but populated by people and companies who are having a big impact on the web...... Build on the current platform of mailing lists and meetups by identifying and implementing social tools and services that create value for USV portfolio companies.....Identifying best practices in areas like social media, search, and online marketing and sharing those in the network.....Helping the portfolio companies recruit and hire great employees.....Organizing events like the annual portfolio company CEO summit...... Fostering connection online and offline between the functional disciplines (marketing, sales, finance, etc) in each portfolio company....... Strong interpersonal skills ..... Proven ability to foster communication and cooperation among diverse individuals online and offline...... Hands on experience with light weight tools such as Wikis, mailing lists, etc...... Several years of management experience in flat, matrix, or loosely coupled organizations...... At Union Square Ventures, we basically do two things. We try to make the best investments we can and then we do everything we can to help our portfolio companies succeed....... At the end of the day, we will hire two people who will help us make investments and support the portfolio. If you think your skills would be a better fit in a slightly different alignment, feel free to make that point....... very important to us that the candidates for these positions share our conviction about the transformational potential of the web......be prepared to forcefully defend thoughtful positions on potential investments, but to also consider carefully the positions of others and to be intellectually honest and open to persuasion....... "net native" .....

Ideally, I would do one year, but I could do two. But two would be max.

Vision and group dynamics are my major strengths.

I got myself elected student body president at the number one liberal arts college in the (Bible Belt) South within six months of landing as an international student. When I landed I could not have told you the cultural differences between Kentucky and California. I spoke so fast, people asked me if I was from New York. One friend who voted for me later told me, "I did not understand a word you said, but you sounded so excited I figured you might do something, so I voted for you." They had to change the constitution so I could run as a freshman.

In 1999 I was one of the founding members of Chaitime.com that raised 25 million dollars before it succumbed to the nuclear winter. We were trying to be the premier South Asian online community. We had offices in Philadelphia, Toronto, London, Mumbai.

There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon forest could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. What happened in Nepal in April 2006, January-February 2007, and February 2008, and more recently in February 2009 were political cyclones. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. In April 2006, over a period of 19 days, about eight million people out of the country's 27 million came out into the streets to shut the country down completely to force a dictator out.

And I see things. I got vision.

I am a Net Native.

• I don't live in America. I live on the Net. I am a Netizen. America is Europe, the Internet is America. I said that over a decade ago. 
• I did Nobel Peace Prize quality work a few years back for the democracy and social justice movements in Nepal. I did my work entirely online. Nepal is the poorest country outside of Africa. 
• I am the second richest farmer in my neighborhood on Farmville. Was the richest. A few weeks back someone with more XP than me befriended me, but he has a few weeks at best. 
• I am more than a Net Native. I am a Net Entrepreneur. I don't want to just live online. Online is where work is. After USV it is a startup for me, my own startup. 
• I am one of the top 100 people in NYC on Twitter. 
• I am all over social media. (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, Tumblr, Blog: Netizen)
• I was early on Geocities. I was also early on Hotmail, Flickr, LinkedIn, Friendster, Gmail, Wave, among the other obvious names. 

"If you think your skills would be a better fit in a slightly different alignment, feel free to make that point."

I think I am a great fit for the Intra-Portfolio Evangelist position. Other than what you have already mentioned, and what you have mentioned does cover what I am about to say, but I'd like to go ahead and specify nevertheless.

I want to make a case that Twitter needs to go public before Facebook, and it needs to do so this year, earlier the better. I have a few ideas on how FourSquare can cement its number one position in the location space. I think it is very important USV get into Chatroulette early and help it cement its number one position in the random connections space. And I want to help find the next FourSquare, just be on the lookout.

I hope this is not a salary only job. I hope you can add elements that give it an entrepreneurial feel. I am assuming there is a decent six figure salary, but that there is also some kind of a performance-based percentage cut of sorts. I'd be eager to suggest something on that pertaining to Twitter. And I hope you are not too rigid on office hours. Working long hours is second nature to me. But this job feels pretty citywide to me, and also bi-coastal. And I expect to be reading a ton of books on the clock in preparation for some specific projects I have in mind. A Kindle as a business expense item?

I am excited. What can I say? I feel like Bill Clinton when he was applying for colleges. The dude applied to just one school. Georgetown was in DC, it was a good school, and it had a strong foreign service program. I hope you hire me. Summer is absolutely beautiful in New York.

This video is from 2005.


LinkedIn tells me all five USV people are circle two to me: Fred Wilson (3 shared connections), Brad Burnham (2), Albert Wenger (4), Eric Friedman (2), and Andrew Parker (5 shared connections). Looking forward to bringing all of them into circle one.