NY-based Dorthy (pronounced Dorothy) has announced the hire of About.com co-founder Jim Anderson as CTO. The company noted that Anderson has experience with artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning technologies.

Earlier this month, Dorthy founder and COO Jordan English Gross took me through the site. He asked me not to write about it yet and, as always, I've honored his request. The company describes the service as, "a new destination site that delivers the best content, communications, and connections around whatever you dream. The site reverses the search by filtering and focusing all the stuff available around your interests providing targeted information based on your distinct ideals and philosophies." I would say it's an interesting take on search. I will have a full review once permitted.

Gillian Reagan at the NY Observer posted a lengthy interview with Gross late in 2008 and has more information about the company including their $3 million venture capital funding. Reagan notes that Anderson was formerly on the Board of Directors of Dorthy.

Last weekend I spoke with Jed Alpert, Vice President of Marketing for NY-based WebCollage. WebCollage describes their service as, "a content exchange for manufacturers and their business partners". It's a service that would have been perfect when I was working with Target, Walmart, etc. to get our products onto their online websites.

The company was founded in 2000 and currently employs 100 people in NYC. Jed tells me that they enable brands to merchandise their products. We went through a number of examples of how the service works but basically brands enter their content into the WebCollage system either by manual input or by feeds and APIs.

From their ecommerce sites including Macy's (seen below) pull the content and incorporate the content into their sites. In the example below Macy's is selling Chanel perfumes and rather than just offering a simple page with price and size, WebCollage adds more content about the perfumes. It basically becomes a much richer consumer experience because brands can also incorporate video and audio along with photos and text.

Jed noted that many companies are seeing 6-20% lift in sales by leveraging the WebCollage platform. For sites that use a fully-injected model, they are seeing 12-20% lift in sales.

Another interesting component of the service is the ability to co-brand online ads. Here online ads can display a consumer brand and a merchant - this combination has been used in print ads and on tv for years.

WebCollage is yet another great example of NYC technology firms that might be unsexy as opposed to creating another twitter or iphone farting application but are creating real value for their customers, employees and the company as a whole.

Back at the nextNY October Community Conversation, David Kidder talked about the differences between being a satellite company and a planet company. We use the barnacle and the boat analogy, but the point is the same – there are companies that stand alone and have gravity, and there are those that exist by attaching themselves to other companies that have that gravity.

Obviously, it takes a lot longer to build your own boat than it does to attach yourself to someone else’s. As a result, the boat is ultimately worth more and more resilient – something that, as David stressed, is increasingly important in this kind of economic environment.

In other words, building on the Facebook platform is a great way to gain “easy” access to a lot of users and traffic, but it’s important to remember that ultimately Facebook “owns” those users. If Facebook blocks your application or launches another redesign which further downplays your visibility, will your business survive? Can your business stand alone outside of the traffic you take for granted?

The common element between Facebook and other “planets” like Google and Microsoft is that they’re building core value that stands alone and, where applicable, creating an ecosystem around that. Facebook has this influence because of the number of users it has, not technology – as it demonstrated by recently open-sourcing much of their platform.

For those of us trying to build new, sustainable businesses, I think it comes down to finding the right balance between being a boat and being a barnacle. If you focus solely on the long-term value, you will struggle with traction and attracting users. If you focus on solely on leveraging users that exist on other platforms without "converting" them along the way, you are at the mercy of the other boards.

With Notches, we're trying to build a boat - something unique that has built-in barriers to entry, is not easily duplicated, and an ecosystem that generates that gravity. At the same time, we recognize that we’re not going to build the boat overnight and the only way we can gain the traction to get to the point where we have gravity is by having a presence on the sites that do have a lot of users and traction today.

Cross-posted to the Notches Blog

NYConvergence ORIGINALThe meetup's first gathering of 2009 will be held at 6:30 PM on Tuesday, March 10, at New World Stages in Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood. It will feature web-video startups presenting demos of their products to industry peers and media...