Last week was the start of Spring...you know here in NYC we welcomed Spring with some snow, some pollen and a large batch of watery eyes and runny noses. When Benadryl no longer works, it's time to take yourself to the allergist for some testing.

NY-based ZocDoc has just announced that they have added allergists to the lineup of doctors and specialists you can book online. The list now includes: allergists, primary care doctors, dentists, dermatologists, OBGYN, ENT and orthopedic surgeons. Assuming their business model is still the same, all of the listed doctors pay a fee to ZocDoc when an appointment is made except for primary care doctors.

Apparently booking an allergist appointment can take up to three weeks. The real benefit of ZocDoc is that everyone wins... the doctor wins because he/she can fill up their openings, the patient wins because they can get in straight away and ZocDoc wins because they get paid on completed visits.

Check out my real world review of ZocDoc when I attempted to go to the dentist.

From seven miles above the planet, everything looks possible. I flew into Austin, Texas on a 737 full of Internet geeks at about ten in the morning the day before the convention started.

By the end of the second day it felt like my eyes had disunited, never looking at the same thing at the same time, seeing more things than most people, but seeing none of them too distinctly. The frenetic pace was enjoyable and exhausting, like all the best things in life.

Holding the sunshine in my hand, walking up my shadow towards the hotel to bang out an Interwebs edit for a couple hours, then back into the streets to meet up with some of my favorite people.

“That’s a conundrum” we constantly cried out in warm alarm, but nothing ever was.

Just after dawn, I woke up and fell briefly back to sleep. I had a dream that a bull came charging in at full speed, leaped across a small canal in the middle of an old Spanish street, then leapt headfirst into group of seated friends on the stone steps of a library. Justin Day was there, and he was uninjured. Several people died. The bull was huge, at least twice the size of a reality-based bull. I saw him charging from at least a quarter mile away, but I didn’t say anything until the last second.

I learned a lot about the processes of investing in web tech from the Angelsoft crew, something I honestly wasn’t that interested in before, and now am enthralled. Bottom line is to just make something useful and amazing by yourself first, then use investors to grow up.

Hung out with @schlomo, an old videoblogger friend from SF who could no more make an enemy or be distrustful than he could transform himself into a purple coyote with biscuits for feet. He’s one of those rarities you meet, talk for 15 solid minutes, and you’re friends for the rest of your life.

Don’t cook it down to the masses. Don’t hold back. Put as much of yourself into every project as possible. I was happy to hear and see that virtue from so many others this week. It’s the only way to live.

 I enjoyed last night’s panel on Power and Impact of New Media: Coping with the Economic Crisis at the Harvard Business School Club of New York. My notes follow. 

Biographies of the panel participants:

Harris Diamond is CEO of Constituency Management Group (Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE: IPG.). The group includes IPG companies in the areas of public relations, public affairs, sports and entertainment marketing, corporate/brand identity and experiential marketing, including Jack Morton Worldwide, GolinHarris, FutureBrand, Octagon, DeVries Public Relations, MWW Group and Rogers & Cowan. He also serves as the CEO of IPG’s Weber Shandwick Worldwide, a public relations industry leader. Regarded as one of the industry’s great experts in corporate and industry positioning, Mr. Diamond has counseled Fortune 500 companies that were undergoing profound changes or facing intense public scrutiny. While specializing in crisis and change management, he also provides ongoing strategic communications counsel to an array of clients, including several industry and trade associations.

Mr. Diamond is a member of the Board of Directors of the not-for-profits, Business for Diplomatic Action and the Ronald McDonald House of New York. He is also on the Board of Councilors of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, and is the former Chairman of the Council of Public Relations Firms, the U.S. trade association for public relations agencies.

Previously, Mr. Diamond served as a political campaign consultant working on U.S. gubernatorial and senatorial campaigns, and advising foreign governments and political parties. He has held senior positions in the public sector. Mr. Diamond holds both MBA and JD degrees, and is a member of the New York State Bar.

Amy Binder is CEO of the New York City-based RF|Binder Partners, Inc., one of the companies of the Ruder Finn Group. RF|Binder Partners has a reputation for research-based strategic counsel and creating a symbiotic approach across communications channels. Among the firm’s major clients are Bank of America, L.L. Bean, Citibank, Dunkin’ Brands, Eli Lilly and Company, Reebok, and Staples.

Ms. Binder brings 25+ years of experience developing corporate reputation and branding programs. For the five years leading to the formation of RF|Binder Partners, Ms. Binder, as President of Ruder Finn Americas, was responsible for growing the firm’s work with Fortune 100 corporations as well as entrepreneurial start-ups which were developing new business models as a result of the Internet, new technologies and the dynamic business environment. Before joining the Ruder Finn Group, Ms. Binder was Director of Communications for the City of New Rochelle where she focused primarily on community based programming and economic development initiatives. She left there to form the Ruder Finn Group’s Urban Marketing division and worked for corporations involved with community relations including American Can, and for cities around the country.

Amy Binder started her career as a freelance photographer primarily handling corporate assignments. She studied at Rhode Island School of Design and the Center of the Eye in Aspen, Colorado. She has two published books of her work.

Ms. Binder is a board member of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business E-Business Initiative, The Institute for Public Relations and the Media Advisory Council for Brown University, as well as a member of The Arthur W. Paige Society. She received her A.B. with Honors from Brown University and her M.B.A. from the Graduate School Of Business, Columbia University.

Lex Suvanto is the Managing Director, Strategy and Operations, at The Abernathy MacGregor Group. At Abernathy, Mr. Suvanto provides strategic counsel on corporate communications, financial public relations and investor relations. He has particular expertise in strategic planning for communications, supporting complex media and investor outreach programs, and speechwriting. Mr. Suvanto also serves as an operational leader of the firm’s marketing and strategic planning activities.

Lex Suvanto has extensive experience working for media, entertainment and Internet companies. Selected client experience includes Comcast, Viacom, Sony, THQ, Take Two Interactive, IAC, Gemstar/TV Guide, AOL, CBS, Blockbuster, Quadrangle, DivX and RealNetworks. Mr. Suvanto has helped a number of media companies transition to the public markets, having worked on Viacom’s split from CBS, Discovery Communications’ split from DHC, IAC’s spin-off of HSN, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree and Interval, and Blockbuster’s spin-off from Viacom. He also has significant M&A experience having worked on recent deals such as CBS’s acquisition of CNET, Viacom’s acquisition of DreamWorks, the merger of RealNetwork’s and MTV’s online music properties, Sony’s (and private equity) acquisition of MGM, Quadrangle’s acquisition of several media companies, Comcast’s acquisition of various cable and internet properties, and Gemstar’s sale to Macrovision. He also has significant experience working with Web 2.0 companies both public and private to devise strategic positioning and raise visibility.

Before graduate school, Mr. Suvanto spent five years working in business development at Hearst Magazines, where he worked as part of an executive team launching new consumer publications which included titles such as ESPN Magazineand SmartMoney.

Mr. Suvanto has an honors degree in Economics from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He serves on the board of the Urban Video Game Academy and provides pro bono communications support to various non-profit organizations. 

Moderator
Justin Fox is the Business and Economics Columnist for Time magazine and writes the Curious Capitalist blog at Time.com. Before joining Time in January 2007, Fox spent more than a decade at sister publication Fortune, where he covered a wide variety of topics related to economics, finance, and international business. In 2000 and 2001, he was the magazine’s Europe Editor, based in London. Before joining Fortune, Fox worked at several newspapers, among them American Banker and The Birmingham News. He has a B.A. in International Affairs from Princeton University.

Fox is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. His book, The Myth of the Rational Market, will be published by HarperCollins in June.

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Justin: This panel started with a very different focus, just on new media.  We asked last week, in light of recent events: do we need a new focus?

Lex: This crisis initially caused old media to re-emerge as the most credible source.  Everyone turned to Wall St. Journal, etc.  At the same time, there’s tremendous hype around Twitter.  Ebay recently tweeted its analyst meetings and last three quarters of earnings.  (How do you squeeze safe-harbor statements into 140 characters?)  An issue that I struggle with: is this just a new vehicle replacing the old?

Three sources of info about a company: what the company says, the research analysts say, and the media say.  Arguably the first source is the least credible.  Now we have a 4^th source: social media (your peers).  And many people paying attention only to that 4^th source. 

Does this change something fundamentally about how a company talks about itself?

Amy: Historically you could talk to a group on a party line phone, or in the town square.  Then the media became the only way to group-communicate.  Now, we’re going back to the old model. 

JP Morgan now has a button on their site where they correct miscommunication about themselves. 

Obama was a model: he said, I’m not going to allow media to publish misinformation about me. 

Harris: I have 5000 employees but my kids say that on Facebook it says I have no friends.  The web allows misinformed people to roll up into a force that has a voice. 

Example with AIG: the bonus story came out several months ago, and then again in Dec., and then again in Jan.  But only now has it become a big story.  The Web created a furor via the amount of people who got in touch with politicians, old media, etc.  Politicians saw this,  seized on it.  “We’re not going to see an eruption like this that often.”  (Teten: I’m forced to disagree with that statement.) The web empowers people to create movements that can shape public policy/perception of companies.  That can be dangerous. 

The web also allows companies to better engage with people. 

Social media have destroyed ability of old media to become news vehicles, because they can’t keep up with the new information flow; they become commentary vehicles. 

Justin: How is the AIG furor different than past media frenzies?

Harris: it’s different both in nature and scale.  Reasons:

-          Democratic administration

-          Business that can’t communicate the way it used to

Amy: Youtube et al. make TV more engaging, because people can see again a video any time.  It used to be if there was a bad TV story, it would fade quickly, because TV is an evanescent medium.  Now, anyone can see a video at any time. 

Lex: We had a situation with a large services company, which was a few months from bankruptcy.  All 800 Managing Directors were leaking information onto chat rooms.  In the past, you could keep this information more quiet, maybe just in the Wall St. Journal.  Past conventional wisdom if a journalist asked ‘comment on rumors about bankruptcy’: say, “We don’t comment on rumors.”

However, in this case, the CEO said, “Well, let’s talk about what bankruptcy would look like.”   He had to address what everyone knew.

Harris: US Attorney General says, If you give comforting facts to the media, and then file for bankruptcy not long after, you may have violated securities laws.  Regulation has not caught up with the consequences of this transparency.  Problem: if you talk about bankruptcy, customers/suppliers will immediately stop doing business with you, and the problem becomes self-fulfilling.  

Transparency has costs, can be dangerous.  It can trigger events. 

Amy: We cant ignore this anymore. 

Harris: AIG is over as an entity.  Insurance is about trust, and they don’t have it. 

Lex: we had a case: some class action lawyers were on facebook.  They were trying to get $ from a university.  They had made a facebook page to discuss an issue that the particular university had, in order to collect participants in the class action.  Lawyers went to university and committed “Facebook blackmail”: give us what you want, or we’ll keep doing this.  We decided to use a completely different channel to respond. 

Harris: we own a very small % of Facebook. (which is equivalent of 4^th biggest country in world, with 175m people.)

Wikipedia has a rule: no PR firm can put input into Wikipedia.  UK had major controversy over this, because many PR firms were doing this.  However, part of the job of  a PR firm is to correct misinformation about us.

Q: What should company do with employees who want to participate online?

Amy: Much easier for consumer products co. to address this.  Dunkin Donuts has rules on this.  Much more complicated for an investment bank. 

Lex: you have to monitor the online sources that are monitoring you.

Harris: As of end of February, 31% of companies in finance industry have something on their websites about the finance crisis.  69% don’t.  Shouldn’t more of them engage?

Lex: I heard someone say, “Websites are so 90s”. 

Teten: We’re moving from ‘mark to market’ to ‘mark to media’ accounting.  How do you advise a distressed company on how to respond all the buzz about their problems?

Harris: we used to get periodic emails from SEC saying, “Do you know any of these people?”  We would hope that no one we knew was on that list, and definitely no employees.  We get fewer of these messages now, because the SEC can’t keep up with the deluge of information. 

With a blogger, you have a little more time to react to his opinion, because at least initially, only one lone blogger might raise an issue.  With the Wall St Journal you have to respond that day.  Everything is on trigger mode now. 

Someone asked me, how come CEOs aren’t coming forward with solutions?  The reason is that senior business figures are scared that if they do that, someone will pull out skeletons in their closet.  Have you noticed how the number of CEOs on the TV news shows have plummeted?

Q: When is the media going to report positive stories?

Fox: All the optimists have been discredited. 

Harris: You can’t minimize the amount of skepticism about there.  People don’t believe what they might have used to believe. 

Lex: You can leak news that moves stock (like Citi releasing news that it had made $ in first two months of 2009), and then have 4 days to submit an 8-K.

Harris: Online will have biggest amount of influence on stock prices.  In old world, Obama’s comment about ‘bitter’ voters would not have been picked up.  Nothing is private anymore. 

Amy: You move public opinion by reach & frequency.  Nothing has reach & frequency like online. 

Harris: More & more companies are emulating Clinton/Carville ‘war room’ concept in order to respond to media.

Lex: The amount of non-consensus information in the market has exploded, which means volatility has gone up.  Millions of people think they know about a company, but really don’t. 

Harris: People think they’re entitled to influence on companies….are they?

Can you imagine GE today fighting the battle of the Hudson River?  It’s unimaginable.  They’d have to deal with hundreds of good government groups. 

Q: How big a problem are imposters?  E.g., a rival posts negative information about you.

Harris: I’ve always held: A statement that is unanswered is accepted and believed as true. 

NYC-based coupon service 8coupons launched the NYC Money Map this week. The Money Map displays deals near the area you search on. It's pretty interesting as they display deals they sourced, user-contributed deals, and sponsored deals. I assume they will use the sponsored deals as their way of generating revenue from the map.

If they can get the word out to the local communities in NYC, then the businesses could load up the map with deal listings. This should reduce 8coupons foot cost by reducing the hours and cost to go from business to business looking for deals to post. 8coupons readers can also submit deals they find as they travel around the city. While I am normally not a fan of point systems, it could work very well here. For every deal a user submits they get x points and after they collect y points, they get a free voucher for lunch at one of the sponsored locations. The map also has customization capabilities to find things like Broadway shows, lunch coupons, etc. They could easily do custom maps for pizza chains, etc. -- lots of growth options. 

Here's an example of the Money Map:

As the Web TV continues to grow and develop, the first annaul industry awards to recognize outstanding achievement for shows produced originally for broadband distribution, The Streamy Awards, have been announced. For Your Imagination, web video producers and distirbutors, is proud to announce that in the category of "Best Writing in a Comedy Web Series" are nominated "Break a Leg" writers Yuri and Vlad Baranovsky. The selection of the Streamy Awards nominees is presiding by The International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV), an independent non-profit organization whose membership is comprised of leaders in the field of web television, web video and the digital entertainment industry. For Your Imagination's CEO Paul Kontonis was invited to be a founding member of the IAWTV. The Streamy Awards will be held on March 28th at the Writer's Guild Theatre in Los Angelese, California.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

From an emailed press release, NYConvergence has learned that New York-based online video platform company Magnify.net has partnered with online retailer Zappos.com to power Zappos' "BoxBreak" video-fest at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, beginning Friday, March 13th. The online videos will be uploaded by the Zappos community, capturing the emotion felt by recipients of Zappos boxes as they open their packages.

[Editor's Note: NYConvergence currently uses Magnify to power its video channel.]

Previous:

> Magnify Partners with NYMag.com

> Magnify.net Partners with BlogHer

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

Last night, a few hundred members of the NY Video 2.0 meetup attended the group’s first 2009 event, a series of presentations at the largest theater in New World Stages located in Manhattan’s Midtown neighborhood.  

At 7 PM on the dot, we were directed into the theater and the presentations began.  They were:

• AttracTV: We were shown how the company creates widgets which can be attached to live broadcasts, allowing users to do everything from find more information about a participant (in this case, a golfer) to order a pizza.
• Feedroom: The company demonstrated their new video platform which enables people with disabilities to browse video on government Web sites.
• Miro 2.0: This non-profit has created a browser interface with channels for users to organize their online video content.  Users can even view content from Hulu, but since this is a browser interface, they don’t expect to have the same problems as Boxee.
• PortalVideo:  Their technology helps editors build films around text-based scripts.
• thePlatform: This Comcast-owned company makes it easier for businesses to manage their video content.

Afterwards, we were invited to talk with companies which were hiring and surprisingly, there were quite a few.  

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

The New York Tech Meetup took up residency last night in its new home, the Haft Auditorium at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.  The presentations began a little late to give late attendees a chance to settle in and a number griped about the lack of wi-fi or cellular receptioni, but most people NYConvergence spoke with were glad to be out of the more cramped conditions of the IAC building's lobby.

The meetup began with the briefest of introductions, which included the unveiling of the new NY Tech Meetup Web site by Subtle Disruption, and then we were off.

The presentations were as follows:

• FourSquare: From one of the co-creators of Dodgeball, the mobile, social-networking service aims to improve upon that service by rewarding participants for going to certain venues and suggesting activities to their friends.
• Enjoysthin.gs: This Web site allows you to compare bookmarked images as well as connect with friends to discuss bookmarked items.
• Tigerbow: This servuce lets you send physical gifts to your friends via whatever account they have on a social network like Facebook.
• ProCompare: Use this service to get reviews on IT products from IT professionals and share your thoughts with other community members.

During a break at this point, MTV's Matthew Knell told us about the upcoming Social Media for Change (SM4C) event in NYC on April 3, a representative of the Learning Annex talked about their upcoming Pitch Fest for companies looking to secure venture capital, and NYSIA's Howard Greenstein informed us that the Social Media Club has an event coming up a the Roger Smith Hotel.

• Speaklike: This company's Web site allows you to access to pay-as-you go translating services for Web pages, e-mails, and even Twitter messages. 
• Kindling: Created by Arc90, the Web-based program is a platform for users to create, share, and vote on ideas. 
• Drop.io: This streaming service allows you to share information instantaneously via the Web through a browser interface. 

The final presentation was Professor Panos Ipeirotis from NYU talking about the EconoMining project which involves researching the other forces at work when consumers are deciding to order online.

Late last week I was contacted by Drop.io co-founder Sam Lessin to check out their newest launch. Today their updated file sharing platform went live -- you can read about the updates on ArsTechnica and on the Drop.io blog. The basic idea is that files you upload are available to people you've shared the "file drop" with instantly along with the ability to chat on any file drop.

As I was sitting in the barber chair this morning reading the various posts on the launch, one thing appeared to be missing from every post. The missing piece in all of the posts is that Drop.io's business model is based on upgrades. For drop.io, more drops is really meaningless except for a stat to share with the media. The key is getting people to either pay to upgrade the size of their file drops or get companies into their "manager" program which is also fee-based.

I am curious as to whether today's updates will push people into either paid option listed above. The more I thought about it on the subway, I couldn't find a solution that pointed to yes. The new features will certainly be used which is great for overall system usage.

When you offer a freemium model, the key should always be to push users into the paid options. Conversion is of utmost importance. Unlike most services, Drop.io isn't showing ads to their free users making those accounts completely free of revenue.

I am sure that Sam has a plan with regards to pushing people into upgrades that will generate revenue for the company. I am sharing my thoughts here because getting users moved into paid plans is a question I am often asked. I continue to believe that if you are offering a freemium model, you need to offer as little as possible to keep people using the service for free while always trying to push them to upgrade. At the same time, you should always give your free customers a taste of what's available behind the pay wall.