Dear Oprah,

Thanks for keeping my nannies tied up for an hour but I’m glad you’re going off the air too. Maybe now they’ll finally go get my son from his nap before the end of your program. As a work-from-home mom & PR pro, I have to rely on the nanny to get some work done and soon that will be possible. And do me a favor, kill off O magazine too. I’m sick of clients asking to get their stuff in it. You clearly pick favorites.

Thanks,
Tracy

Gregory D’Alesandre

For those of you that read my last piece, I attended Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference in Los Angeles.  And while the action was flying on stage by day, it was sizzling by night.  In both cases, the tweets were non-stop. Apparently, all 140 characters are still geeks at heart.

The first night there was conference-sponsored “cocktail” party at the Kodak theater lobby and then an informal after-party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel across the street.  The cocktail party surprised everyone by being a cash bar, literally as their credit card machine was broken.  They did furnish a few bits of cheese, crackers and a pile of hummus.  The somewhat sparsely attended event did give me an opportunity to meet a Google Wave celebrity, Dr. Wave aka Gregory D’Alesandre.  As I had just gotten an invite to Wave over the weekend and I actually watched the entire 90 minute video, I am a huge fan.  I’m so glad he turned out to be a really nice, down-to-earth guy but unfortunately he wasn’t able to help me with my puzzle pieces problem in Wave.  (It has since fixed itself, very strange.)  D’Alesandre had come all the way from Australia for a 20 minute speaking opportunity on a panel, though I think he had other business in the States as well.

The after-party was considerably smaller and more informal but equally interesting. There I met the CEO of Mobile Matters, Andrew DellaPietra.  The company is using text messaging to raise money for non-profits, a cool and worthwhile idea.  I also wound up in a long chat with Scott Porad, the CTO of I Can Has Cheezburger.  He revealed that he fell into the job and it turned out to be the right thing at the right time for him.  Porad has a had good run with a few other successful companies and is a funny guy to boot. I still don’t get the name of the company, though. I’m sure my cat could speak proper sentences, if he were to talk.

The next day, I wound up having lunch with Adrian Dayton, another panelist from the conference.  Dayton is the author of Social Media for Lawyers: Twitter Edition and spoke on the legal panel.  A very enterprising young man, he has built a niche for himself training lawyers on how to use Twitter and other forms of social media for their businesses.  One word of advice, watch out, you can be sued for libel from things you say on Twitter. By the way, he actually traveled all the way from Buffalo, New York for his 20 minute panel.

Ben Parr

That night was the hot Mashable party at the Hwood hosted by Ben Parr and it was a packed house! The line out the door was long and restless, even just moments after the conference let out.  The place was filled with techies, geeks and a few hotties.  Scantily clad @avflox, a sex columnist, was there posing for pics in a bright red mini-dress with Ben Parr.  It was so cold that night that Flox was wearing a fur jacket over her dress to keep warm, even inside.

Around the room, schmoozing it up was Shira Lazar

Shira Lazar

who had spoken that day on a panel about being an Internet celebrity; Mark Jeffrey who had spoken on a panel about publishing; Mike Prasad, CEO of girl gamer and a panelist on branding representing Kogi BBQ and members of the Tech Zulu team (Amanda Cooling, Efren Toscano and Josh Highland.)

As I headed down the stairs, I ran into Ando Pashalyan, the COO of MyPangea.  He stepped in to greet me with a kiss on the cheek, however he ended up biting me (hard) instead.  I almost kneed him in the groin but he let go just in time to keep his testicles. Apparently, he was extremely drunk, so I threaded my way across the crowded, dark room to escape his clutches though he did follow me saying he wanted to make babies with me.  (By the way, I only know who it was that assaulted me, because he gave me his card only seconds before he became a vampire.)  Luckily I ran into Michael Pilla, general counsel for PriceGrabber.com, a friend, who scared off Pashalyan.  Through Pilla I met the lovely and talented director of marketing and communications at Whrrl, Heather Meeker. She

Dave Mathews

and I live in the same part of Los Angeles, not that common in these parts.  She was hanging out with Dave Mathews from PeopleBrowsr, a social media measurement tool.

It was still early but the Hwood party was set to close down at 9 pm, so we all headed to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for the Windows 7 party, which was another packed house complete with line.  Unfortunately, this party was outside by the pool and it was actually a cold night in Los Angeles.  AV Flox’s fur coat didn’t seem so out-of-place now.

Derek Thomas

Huddled around one of the strategically placed gas heaters, I ran into Derek Thomas from the Los Angeles Weekly.  I met Thomas the day before when I scrutinized his twitter name, then @DerekThomasxxx, and a small group of us decided he sounded like a porn star.  So, as always I asked, “Do you really read your email? Is that the best way to reach you?” And the surprising answer, “Yes.” In fact, I met several journalists at the conference and none of them wanted pitches by tweet.  They all still wanted pitches by email.

Andrew Nystrom, of the Los Angeles Times, said, “Don’t pitch me at all! I don’t write much.” He gets pitches all the time, however, he actually does the social media for the Times, not writes about it.  Michelle Thatcher, formerly of CNet, lamented the plight of the media during the recession while trying warm up by the heaters.  The Windows team did supply an open bar but you could only order from one of two floating waitresses.  By the time our drinks came, we were all fast friends and it was the end of the night.  The 140 conference was officially over and it felt like over the course of two days, I met at least 140 characters.

• 30 July 2010 : Friday’s 5 • 30 July 2010
• 29 July 2010 : Twitter is one big, fat inside joke between 100 million people
• 28 July 2010 : Your Copy Sucks: Punctuation Ruins Lives
• 27 July 2010 : Do You ‘Crunch Proud?’
• 26 July 2010 : What the Old Spice Guy Videos Lacked: Real Messaging

The conference, which took place at the Kodak Theater (also home to the Academy Awards and the American Idol finals), was sponsored mainly by Kodak, along with Devries Public Relations, RealPlayer SP, Bing, Virgin America and a few other lesser known names.  Twitterati Jeffrey Hayzlett, chief marketing officer of Kodak, was one of the big presenters and was giving away their new video camera, the ill-named—his words, not mine—Zi8 pocket camera.  I saw it at their booth and it looked really cool.  Sadly, I was not one of the winners and could not convince them to give me one for review in this column.

After the very brief opening presentation, each speaker had only 15 minutes to speak, panels of 3 people got 20 minutes.  It was a fast and furious two days and here is what I took away from the show besides a T-shirt, Kodak’s social media tips guide and a new bag.

Right now, Twitter is what the Web was when I began doing PR for it in 1995. Everything is new, hence newsworthy. David Saranga, (who’s also got his own Wikipedia entry) an Israeli diplomat, discussed how he set up the first press conference on Twitter.  The Israeli consulate in New York was using it for press conferences before our government did it. Now, of course, you’ll have a harder time getting press for an event like that and by next year, not at all.  Saranga also discussed how you need to do a fusion of old and new media to multiply your message, a great take-away no matter what the next thing will be.

Next lesson: Celebrities watch out, the studios are out to depersonalize you.  The studios (film and TV) want to control the message but the panel thought it best to let the celebrities talk for themselves.  Not surprising since they all represented celebrities (Ben Stiller, Ryan Seacrest and Ashton Kutcher.)  They said that, “like how Tivo changed the way TV is watched, Twitter is changing radio.”  Radio is getting audience acquisition on the Web, through Twitter and the panel encouraged others to make Twitter part of their radio shows.

Then, a funny bit from Billy Bush, co-host of Access Hollywood, “No TUI—Twitter Under the Influence.” Hmmm, I wonder what he’s been tweeting? I must remember to add him to my follow list.

Twitter loves moms and moms love Twitter. Just ask Punky Brewster. Soleil Moon Frye went to the Web looking for mom mentors and found Twitter. Twitter found her too; she now has over a million people following her.  By her own admission, “I tweet often.” Megan Calhoun said that Twitter humanizes a brand.  Perhaps that is why Moon Frye tweets since she clearly links to her store, Little Seeds, from her twitter page.

When the comedy panel took the stage they just rapped about anything. They didn’t have anything to say about Twitter except each one mentioned how much they used it to promote their shows and stuff.  Out of the three on the panel, only one didn’t use it to promote at all.  I did hear a good joke though, “I got HIV. Fortunately, I got to pull 4 more tiles out of the bag.” They also read their especially rude tweets from their Twitter streams.

Scott Porad, chief technology officer of I Can Has Cheezburger, went over his 7 tips for Twitter, which included one that I’ve never heard before.  He recommends using one of the basic Twitter backgrounds that come on Twitter, claiming the ones people make for themselves can be distracting and can dilute your message.  He practices what he preaches using the basic blue cloud background for himself.

On day two, there were two speakers that got up and just blatantly pitched their products.  We all felt like we had stepped into a late night infomercial complete with fliers being handed out in the audience.  The tweets flying around during those few minutes were harsh—including mine.  It was almost as bad as when a China “expert” hijacked the stage, but he was only on for about 5 minutes.  Luckily the rest of the speakers all had something to say even if was just repeating some of what others had said before them.

C.C. Chapman, founder of marketing agency The Advance Guard, is very excited about Twitter. His take, “Brands can say, ‘yeah, we hear you…we can’t fix that but we hear you.’” He thinks that even if a company can’t fix a problem just being there to listen is enough. Also, “People want brands that are fun.”  Ultimately, though, he says it’s not about the tools (i.e. Twitter) but the message is more important than the medium, and on this we can all agree.

From the small business panel I learned that conversations are moving away from blogs and onto Twitter. Business blogs don’t get comments so Twitter seems a better choice for interaction.  The panel was encouraging social media marketers to target small businesses as, “there is a bottomless pit of interest among small businesses.”

Mariel Hemmingway, Academy Award-nominated actress, was there on an oddly-peopled panel that included Vroman’s bookstore.  (She does have a new cookbook out.) Though it truly got interesting when the panel started to discuss hate tweets.  “I want to kill the haters.  Block ‘em, spam ‘em, and grind them into the ground,” said Hemmingway. Who, by the way, looks great! And she even took the time to meet up with reporters and answer questions, including mine.  (Comedian Kevin Pollak, who was there the day before, was not so friendly.)

Last but not least, the best panel of them all: the porn panel! This one consisted of the Joanna Angel, founder of burningangel.com (a Suicide Girls knockoff site); Kelly Shibari,  a plus-sized adult performer (her words, not mine) and Brian Gross, a guy that used to do PR for Vivid Entertainment. Somehow Gross actually said, without a trace of irony, “messaging the audience.”  They were mostly talking about “breaking down the wall between porn star and real person.” Sometimes Angel will even just tweet about making a sandwich.  But I’m not sure that’s how she got more than 17,000 followers.  Then again, I just checked her twitter stream and the only f*cking (her word, not mine) she did was with the settings on her computer.

Other tidbits from day two: 92% of China is using Twitter, Facebook is better for publicizing events and the Twitter/X-box integration seems to be just a novelty.

Stay tuned…for my follow-up act: I Think I Met 140 Characters.  There we’ll cover the 140 parties and all the twitterati.

When I first began doing public relations, I was not at all comfortable on the phone pitching. Those were the days before email. We would fax out releases and were expected to follow-up every fax with a call. Those first stiff, wooden calls would be painful to listen to now. With time, I got better at the pitching and was soon very comfortable, so comfy that I let down my guard and even flirted.

But here’s the funny thing. I wasn’t always flirting. Most of the time, I was just pitching but it didn’t always come across that way. Once, I managed to score a lunch with a reporter from Rolling Stone, only to realize later that he may have been confusing our working lunch with a date. (I knew my client’s product wasn’t that great, but I guess I overestimated my pitching skills.) While that was a bit awkward, I did continue to call and pitch him products after we met for lunch. I never did act on his lunch flirtations so it wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. He never did write about that client and I’m not sure I ever did get a hit with him, however, we both kept our reputations intact.

Another time, I developed a full-on, reciprocal phone flirtation with a reporter. He worked at CMP’s ComputerLife magazine (now defunct). At the time, ComputerLife was both in print and online on America Online. The great thing about that, is that his column had a photo so I even knew what he looked like. I pitched and flirted with him for months, scoring several hits for clients when we decided to actually meet. He lived in San Francisco and I am based in Los Angeles but I decided to take the leap and fly up for the weekend (a risky proposition because if you don’t get along, you’re stuck there for 2 days). While it wasn’t a Love Connection, we still both had a decent weekend and decided to go back to a business relationship. Luckily, we were both adult enough to handle it respectfully afterward and we both continued to work together well.

So, would I advocate this move for everyone? Well, I have heard of some publicists marrying reporters that they have met on the job. And I have also heard horror stories of situations going bad. I think it probably depends on the two people involved. Also, if you are planning on going further than flirtation, you probably want to discuss the possibility of it not working out with the person beforehand. Discuss how you might handle things if one or the other does not want to continue the relationship. I am not embarrassed easily so I could handle it when things didn’t work out.

One last thing, I don’t advocate selling yourself just to get a story. There’s another word for that and it ain’t publicist.

What do you think? Is it okay to flirt with or date reporters that you are pitching?

• 30 July 2010 : Friday’s 5 • 30 July 2010
• 29 July 2010 : Twitter is one big, fat inside joke between 100 million people
• 28 July 2010 : Your Copy Sucks: Punctuation Ruins Lives
• 27 July 2010 : Do You ‘Crunch Proud?’
• 26 July 2010 : What the Old Spice Guy Videos Lacked: Real Messaging

Alexia Tsotsis (LA Weekly) and Tony Adam (Yahoo!)

It was bound to happen one of these days: one night but two events that I wanted to attend. You know the old saying, “When it rains, it pours.” Well, lately it seems to be pouring networking events. In Los Angeles, this can spell disaster since distances between places can be huge. But luck was on my side and both events were in Santa Monica and only 5 blocks from each other.

The first event, the Digital Family Summit was due to start at 5 pm, while the second event, MarketingProfs Tweet-up, was starting at 6:30. The MarketingProfs had a distinct advantage in that it was a free event and as a thrifty Jewish publicist, I can’t resist free. As an added bonus, I had seen on Facebook that day that Peter Shankman of HARO fame was going to attend and I had to meet him.

Running on Jewish standard time, I arrived at the Digital Family Summit at 6 pm, pretty good timing for me. The event was held at the Wokano restaurant in Santa Monica and was somewhat pricey at $50. However, there were several discount codes that could get you in for $30. It event was co-hosted by Women in Technology International (WITI) and I was greeted at the entrance by David Leighton, the president of WITI. Ironically, the president of WITI is a man but he does have long hair if that’s any consolation and he made a great host.

So what did your $50 (or $30) get you? Well, the place had a good showing of digital media executives with actual jobs, appetizers, including sushi, and Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, was there taping his show “This Week in Start-ups” from the venue. There was a stage set-up on the patio for him to do the talk show which was streaming on the Internet in real time. His guests were Peter Hirshberg, CEO, The Conversation Group; and Mike Jones, chief operating officer of MySpace. Deciding that I could watch that from the Internet later and headed out to my next event.

Since I had valeted my car at the restaurant, I actually walked to the next event at the Bodega Wine Bar, a very un-LA thing to do. Slightly out of breath, I spotted my prey from across the room. Shankman is a very recognizable figure from all his Internet activities and if you still didn’t get it, he was wearing a HARO patch on his blazer — like a country club sport coat. Being the seasoned PR exec that I am, I walked right up to him and introduced myself.

Shankman was in Los Angeles speaking at 140 The Twitter Conference that we couldn’t get press access to earlier in the week. In fact, most of the MarketingProfs were coming from the conference that day and while they were not tweeting it up there, they were still not the friendliest folks. Shankman, on the other hand, was great. He chatted me up and allowed me to take a pic with him, like the true groupie I am.

He even showed me his Poken. Poken is a technology that utilizes Near Field Communication to allow the exchange of online social networking data between two keychain accessories. (Wikipedia) He’s so into Poken, he’s an investor! I had also heard that Serena Ehrlich @serena (formerly from BusinessWire but now with Startup Army) was going to be there but I never saw her.

As I was leaving, I told Shankman that I was heading back to the Digital Family Summit. (I had heard that he may be attending that one as well.) He asked me who was there, I mentioned Calacanis and asked him if they were friendly.

“We’re friendly in the same way that God and the Devil are friends,” he slyly responded.

Yes, but which is which? (I should mention that I have never met Jason Calacanis, and now probably never will.) Instead of coming over to DFS, Shankman met up with an old friend from college and departed with her, while I headed back to Wokano.

I had only been gone an hour and when I returned the sun had set and the show was over. But the networking was still in full swing. Many of my old agency bosses were there including Michael Terpin of Social Radius (@michaelterpin) and Tony Winders from ValueClick (@tonywinders) who is one of the founders of the Digital Family Summit. I also got to meet the tech/social media writer from the LA Weekly, Alexia Tsotsis (@alexiatsotsis), and as luck would have it, I had retweeted her that day. By the way, she’s not reading any of your emails and she doesn’t take pitches. Though, if you tweet her something appropriate, she may check it out.

The next day, I saw on Ehrlich’s Facebook page that I managed to miss her at both events. Like me, she made it out to both places. So you can try to be everywhere but still miss some people. I guess that’s where social media fills the gap. I’ve never even met Serena but we’re still “friends” on Facebook. On Facebook, you never have to worry about your aching feet or getting mugged in Santa Monica either, but it’s sure nice meeting people in person and you might even get Poken-ed.

[Editor's Note: Any opinions and 'groupie-ism' expressed by the author are her own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of PRBreakfastClub.com or any of the other writers or contributors.]

• 30 July 2010 : Friday’s 5 • 30 July 2010
• 29 July 2010 : Twitter is one big, fat inside joke between 100 million people
• 28 July 2010 : Your Copy Sucks: Punctuation Ruins Lives
• 27 July 2010 : Do You ‘Crunch Proud?’
• 26 July 2010 : What the Old Spice Guy Videos Lacked: Real Messaging

When I arrived, a couple of civilians were trying to get into the club but were stopped because they didn’t have tickets. I immediately felt cool as I waved my “ticket,” a downloaded piece of paper that I’d purchased online that morning, at the security guard and breezed right in.

Twestival Local is actually a charity event that was taking place at venues all over the country to raise money for locally chosen charities over the weekend of September 10. The tickets were $20 or $50 or more if you wanted to be generous. They also had tickets on sale for $12 and $15 on the day of the event. As far as I could tell, there was no difference in the price of the tickets except for the amount of your tax deduction at the end of the year.

The event started at 6 p.m. but I didn’t get there until a more happening time of 8:15. Since it was supposed to run until midnight, this seemed to be perfect time to arrive. Strangely, considering the hype, the event was not packed or even close to it. When I arrived there was a really lame stand-up comedian bombing on stage, which was odd because there was a huge dance floor in front of him and people standing around to watch him. Much further back, from a booth, a heckler was giving him a run for his money but the comedian couldn’t even hear him. He just kept yelling, “What?”

Then I noticed what made this event really different. As I looked across the dance floor, I saw more than half the crowd standing around and twittering from their phones. They were in the presence of actual people, but the allure of Twitter was too great. Above the dance floor were two large screens that were broadcasting tweets about the Twestival and people were watching the screens for their tweet and taking pictures of the screens too.

“Wow,” I thought. “Are these guys geekier than we were?”

And then I noticed the retro punker next to me. He introduced himself to me: @Mickey_77. Really, no name, just a twitter handle. Then I asked him what he did.

“Alternative model.”

What’s an alternative model, you’re asking? Well, he’s pretty much paid to look like a punker. It was already his style but now he’s getting paid to model like that. What does an alternative model look like? Well, he had longish, shaggy, jet black hair (teased up in the back), silver rings on every finger, wearing all black with a big skull & crossbones on his shirt, and a low slung silver studded belt I think I had in the ’80s. He was a really nice guy and so when he walked away I found myself glad that there is one less person on unemployment. Plus, his ghostly pallor reminded me of the tech geeks of the past.

One of the attractions at the event was an area with old Atari consoles set up to play. I sat down and met another of the new tech generation. Josh Highland looked as though he too could have been an alternative model with his large black earrings and fully tattooed arm but he was actually a web designer. He had come in from the Inland Empire where he declared their Twestival to be lame. One upside to this new crowd: when I gave him my Twitter name, he immediately signed up as a follower. Instant networking. We were both trying to boost our twitter followings but he is much more serious about it than I am. He told me that if he gets 20,000 twitter followers, he will get a “sizable tattoo of the twitter ‘Fail Whale.’” He even has a Web site promoting it.

Why 20,000? “When I picked 20k, it would have placed me in the top 100 Twitter users. Since then that number has changed due to twitter’s popularity.”

When I asked him what he thought of the guy that was going to name his kid Batman if he got 500,000 Facebook fans, he said, “Getting a tattoo is one thing, that’s my body. Naming a kid is a whole different level. Besides, my wife would never go for it!”

No matter how long it takes, when he reaches that goal, he’s in the tattoo shop. His current following is 3,764.

My last stop was a trip to the Girl Gamer pavilion where I met the lovely Alexandra Mokh, co-founder and community director for Girl Gamer. They set up a nice corner of the room with the perfect techie treats: mini candy bars and tortilla chips. But their clan of women was definitely throwing off the usual ratio of men to women. Besides girl gamers that looked like models (such as Alexandra herself), there were also booth babes. And they weren’t there working, they were networking! Who knew that booth babes have business cards? By the way, they are officially called “promotional models” not to be confused with “alternative models.”

Actually though, if you could get past everyone tweeting, most of the people were pretty friendly. There was only a small crowd that stood around exclusively tweeting. So, maybe the geek factor is still there but just more fashionable and/or anti-social than before.
All photos by Tracy Bagatelle-Black

Check out all of today's posts

• Is That a Press Release in Your Pocket...
• Christina’s Coffee Talk: Stephanie Smirnov (Part 2)
• From the Left: Tats and Twitter–LA Twestival ‘09

November 15, 1995, was the launch of The Palace, an online virtual world (think Second Life) that was downloadable from the Internet. The Palace was big enough to get the backing of Time Warner, Softbank, and Intel.

I sat down with Mark Jeffrey, the founder of The Palace, and discussed how social networking has changed since the beginnings of the Internet. After selling The Palace, Jeffrey went on to found and sell Zero Degrees (an early social networking site) and is now the CTO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine.

“Back in the early days of the Internet, there wasn’t enough bandwidth to support programs like The Palace,” said Jeffrey. Back then, we were working at the lightning fast speed of a 14.4 modem!  [Editor's Note: To put this in perspective -- on a 14.4 modem it would take around 10 minutes to download a 1MB file (a reasonable PowerPoint file with nearly no bells and whistles).  A hi-res headshot that we now send around without a second thought could have taken 30 minutes or more on each end.] The Palace software needed to be downloaded and acted like its own type of browser to the Internet. As participants in a visual chat environment, users could customize everything from their avatar to their environment. While in The Palace, friends could trade props they made and talk online. And it was uncensored as well, without the ubiquitous porn chicks of today.

However, similar to today’s social networking woes, no one knew how to monetize it. There were attempts at using it for branding purposes, creating specialized environments such as the House of Blues room (think fan page) and distributing branded props (think flair and Facebook gifts). In this way, early social networking was not that much different than Facebook today.

Jeffrey’s take on virtual worlds now: “The only way to make money is to sell virtual items, create a monetary system. That is working well. Though branding may have some value, advertising (virtual billboards) doesn’t work in virtual worlds.”

When Intel took over The Palace, they came up with a monetization plan that was drastically different than any social network now. Their idea was to make it into a virtual chat browser separate from the Web and sell it as software. Netscape was the World Wide Web browser of choice and The Palace would be the chat browser of choice.

Adds Jeffrey, “If you bought a PC in 1996, chances are it came with The Palace already loaded. The Palace was bundled with Intel machines as a way to get more demand for Intel chips.” Ultimately, this strategy failed and in 1998 The Palace was sold to Communities.com and Jeffrey moved on.

In January 2003, even before LinkedIn was launched, Jeffrey formed ZeroDegrees, Inc., with Jas Dhillon and by August the site launched.

“We envisioned ZeroDegrees as a professional networking site but it took us 6 months to build and by that time, LinkedIn had launched.”

According to USA Today, “Thanks to its roots in Southern California, ZeroDegrees first caught on with entertainment executives and their counterparts in the defense and aerospace industry.” Also, ZeroDegrees had the competitive advantage of being one of the first to sync to popular e-mail and contact programs such as Outlook and ACT! and there were even privacy controls in place.

By the time of its sale to Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp. (owners of Match.com, TicketMaster, and Expedia), the site had 218,000 people signed up, which was considered a good number at the time.

“We believe that investing now in the next generation of these services, such as Zero Degrees – is a smart bet to place,” said Dan Marriott, senior vice president of the IAC Interactive Development Group in a press release when they bought it.

These words from the USA Today article about its purchase in 2004 sound as if they could be spoken today:

“The excitement over so-called social software sites has created a mini-replay of the dot-com boom as Silicon Valley venture capitalists have poured tens of millions of dollars into funding the most high-profile of these sites. There’s even talk of IPOs, despite the absence of proven business models for generating sales, and the fact that most sites caution they are still in preliminary testing mode.”

So really, has social networking evolved much from its roots?

Now Jeffrey is involved with yet another social media start-up, Mahalo.com, which is backed by Sequoia, Elon Musk (Paypal), Newscorp, CBS, Burda Media, Mark Cuban, Ted Leonsis, and others. Mahalo (the word for thank you in Hawaiian) is a human powered search engine that employs human editors to review websites and write search engine results pages that include text listings, photos, and video. Its goal is to improve search results by eliminating search spam.

According to Wikipedia, “[the site’s founder Jason] Calacanis has said that algorithmic search engines, like Google and Yahoo, suffer from manipulation by search engine optimization practitioners. Mahalo’s reliance on human editors is intended to avoid this problem, producing search results that are more relevant to the user.”

From its initial launch, Mahalo has evolved. The editors of the search engine are considered members of the “Mahalo Community,” effectively creating a social media experience. And with the addition of MahaloAnswers in December 2008, it developed a sort of social media network. But Mahalo distinguishes itself from other social media networks by offering monetary compensation for contributions to the Mahalo Community and even has its own form of currency, “Mahalo Dollars,” that can be traded or even cashed in for real money at 75% of the value.

With all his experience behind him, I asked Jeffrey, what do you think of the Web 2.0?

“I love Twitter. You can’t market without it.”

Jeffrey can be found several social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, though he feels that Twitter and Facebook are the two main players. His advice to them is, “You need to make some money in the next few years.” And he would know.

Tracy Bagatelle-Black

Tracy Bagatelle Black is principal at Bagatelle Black Public Relations. A seasoned PR executive based in Los Angeles, she has been working in Internet public relations for as long as the Internet has been commercially viable. As a freelance writer she has been published in The Net, Websight, America Online, California Computer News, and most recently, the Gannett News Service. Her lame attempt at a social media blog is just getting up and running. You can find her on twitter or LinkedIn.