It's come to this. You've been tasked by your company or have enlisted an agency to create a viral video/campaign. However, you probably don't know what a viral campaign even looks like in the first place. There is a good reason for this: No campaign is actually viral in the first place.

Viral campaigns are actually just campaigns that are done well, resonate with their target audience and cross over to mainstream appeal. A viral campaign can cost as much as a million dollarsor be shot in someone's backyard for $50. It's all about the message, idea, and product you are trying to sell.

1. Try to Be Cool. Nothing looks worse then a corporation trying desperately to get d0wn with the youth. If you aren't cool, don't try to be. Otherwise you will end up looking incredibly stupid and out of touch. A recent example of of cool advertising is this Nissan Cube Commercial. Or you can really go for the gold by appealing to the girls from 1999: The Frosty Posse

2. Appeal to the Wrong Demographic. You can create the coolest thing since sliced bread. A campaign that is lauded by anyone that sees it (until they see what demographic you were going for). However, if it doesn't mean anything if the campaign doesn't connect with your product's main audience. You mean white paper jokes don't appeal to 8-12 year olds? Go figure.

3. Fail to Seed Properly. Seeding a campaign is no longer just an option. You best have all your ducks in a row pre-launch. Otherwise no one is going to see your campaign much less care about it. This is why utilizing PR outreach and social bookmarking becomes so important. Getting your message in front of the right people is becoming nearly as important as the message in this noise filled world.

4. Don't Integrate Your Message. You can't actually move product without having your content live everywhere. It needs to be a fully realized campaign with multiple heads in order to get the most bang for your buck. Just throwing a micro-site into the mix and calling it a day won't cut it.

5. Try to Make Something Viral. Want something to go viral desperately? It probably won't. Going viral usually is the result of either quality or unintentional hilarity/re-purposing. If you can't create or have someone create something from your campaignyou probably aren't going to go viral.

6. Play it Safe. Piss someone off. Be controversial. Be ridiculous. You can't have viral success if you are unwilling to cross a few lines and make a few people feel uncomfortable. That's just the nature of the beast.

7. Don't Make it Easy to Share or Remix. If you don't provide the tools to tie your campaign to social media, you will fail before you even begin. Take advantage of the rapid sharing/editing capabilities of social users. Do most of the work for them and enjoy the bump.

8. Remember: Funny>Smart. As a general rule of thumb, this is something to definitely keep in mind. The theory of relativity isn't going to gain as much traction as something that is incredibly funny. Ask Dane Cook (or Raaaaaandy).

9. Fail to use Auto-Tune. Name something from the past 6 months that has gone viral in the past that hasn't utilized some manner of auto-tune. Like it or not T-Pain owns the world right now.

10. Set Out to Create a Viral Campaign. Guess what? You won't. The chances of you actually creating a bona fide viral campaign are less then one percent. So concentrate on creating great work, pleasing your clients and being the best at what you do. If you get a viral hit? Fantastic, that just means you can keep doing the job you love.

Since Georges Doriot got the ball rolling in 1946, the venture business has remained a straightforward proposition. Invest long-term and earn a return for your limited partners. There have been structural changes, mostly involving VCs edging out of early-stage investment to focus on big bang later-stage deals. But venture investors have generally avoided the financial adventurism common to Wall Streeters.

Except, in one important respect: Many of the limited partners that fattened venture funds are the same pension funds, endowments and other institutions that in recent years levered up, piled into hedge and private equity funds, and otherwise made a big problem even bigger.

In turn, venture capitalists in recent years plowed much of that money into Web 2.0 companies, such as YouTube and Facebook Now that the economic crunch is affecting online advertising, these investments are no longer seen as can't-lose deals. It's time to pull out!

I wrote this to my email list on Saturday the 27th of 2008. Two days before the single largest drop in the history of the stock market.

Now, I promised myself I was retired from blogging to focus on my email newsletter, but I'm getting pounded with so many requests for this essay that I'm giving up and posting it here. This does not mean my retirement from blogging is off, this means I'm posting this so I don't have to respond to hundreds of emails asking for a copy. If you want future missives like this signup for Jason's List: Jason's List signup.

For background, the goal of this post was not to spread fear, but rather inspire folks at startup companies to get focused and to save as many as possible from hitting the wall. Myself? We'll I funded Mahalo for the long-term and while the market down turn isn't good for anyone, we're largely immune from it because we are building on a five year plan that we're only 18 months into.

Doesn't mean I'm not hyper focused, I am. I'm just not panicking. Great entrepreneurs build value and market-share in down markets. They go to work seven days a week and the breakout when other folks check out.

Location: CalaCompound, Brentwood, CA
Monday, September 27th, 5:15PM PST.
Word Count: 3,283
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Republishing rights: Please do not reprint

(The) Startup Depression

Since stock market gyrations and the elections seem to be making
everyone rightfully nauseous and depressed, I thought I would take
this email to discuss the biggest ramifications of these challenging
times: depression.

It's my believe that the economic downturn will be much worse than it
is today, and that 50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently
operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working
on them) within the next 18 months.

Make a list of every Web 2.0 startup to raise an A or B round and
cross 80% of them off the list, because they will not make it to their
next round of funding or profitability.

Now, I could be totally wrong. No one can guess or time the markets
perfectly. However, planning for the worst is a virtuous idea, so I
encourage you to read on.

Everyone I talk to is feeling confused, paralyzed and anxiousmany
are in full-blown depression. People are scared, and they should be.
This could be the start of a very difficult time for our country and
the rest of the world.

In this email, we'll focus on the entrepreneurial and startup
depression and economic downturns/depressionsand how you can deal
with them.

Some background to get us started

Few things in the world are as exhilarating as starting a new company.
Metaphors abound, and we've all heard them: starting a company is like
having a baby, falling in love, and running a marathon. Few folks,
however, want to continue the metaphor when things go bad at a
startup. If they did, we would be having discussions about running a
startup being like divorcing your spouse, collapsing from exhaustion
in the 20th mile of the marathon, orGod forbidlosing a child.

Metaphors swing both ways.

Anxiety and depression from a failed, or failing, startup can be
intenseeven debilitating. When outside factors such as markets or
buildings collapsing are added to the mix, I've seen great
entrepreneurs just fold.

Now, I've never folded, and I don't say that as some badge of courage.
No, sometimes it's really, really stupid to keep fighting. Most
consider it especially stupid to fight when you know you're going to
lose. I don't.

The result of never folding is that I've had my ass kicked pretty bad.
Multiple times.

Depending on your DNA, getting your ass kicked is either complete
torture or deviantly rewarding. Truth be told, I like getting my ass
kicked because it makes me angry, motivated and focused. If I look
back on the couple of moments of success I've been lucky enough to
have in my life, they all seem to come after a good ass-kicking.

The darkest hour isin factright before the dawn.

Brief Disclaimer

I'd be lying if I said I understood the complexities of depression or
depressions. I'm not a psychologist nor am I an economist. I've never
suffered from clinical depression and I didn't live through the last
depression. However, I do have a BA in Psychology, have read many
books about the psychology of happiness, and I've felt the sting of
the last huge correction (2000-2002).

Consider these one (hu)man's notes on entrepreneurial depression and
anxiety. They are worth the price you've paid for them, but I hope
they are helpful to youespecially if you're suffering right now. If
you are suffering from depression or anxiety, go see a professional.

Really, it's the best thing to do. Feel free to print this out and
bring it with you and ask your newfound therapist what they think of
my observations and advice. Then email me back what they said I'm
curious where my thoughts rank.

Kurnit's Three Reasons Why Companies Fail

Scott Kurnit of the Mining Company (aka About.com) told me there are
three reasons why a business will fail: it's a bad idea, bad execution
or outside factors. If you examine your business with these three
filters right now, you can baseline where you're at: one, two or three
strikes.

His theory correlates well with the attribution theory in psychology.
The theory concerns itself with how an individual attributes the
things that happen to them (or others). For example, if you were
pulled over by a cop for speeding, you can attribute that to number of
factors, both internal and external.

Some folks might internalize the event and curse themselves for being
reckless: I should have known better! Others might blame an external
source, such as the cop or the bankrupt city they work for: Gosh darn
Los Angeles cops! They're just trying to balance the budget by
harassing us!

Kurnit's theory, as told to me, mentions two internal factors (bad
idea and execution) and one external (outside factors). When faced
with massive market uncertainty, like we are today, it's a virtuous
idea to assess each of these factors.

Right now, every single one of us has HUGE outside factors we must
consider. The market collapse is going to make the next couple of
years impossible and frustrating for many entrepreneurs. Even the
great companies - like Google, Microsoft and Apple - are going to hit
hard times.

One of the most important philosophical minds of our time summed it up
best: I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the
bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't
my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? Yogi
Berra.

Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning

John Brockman, my dear friend and agent (if I ever get around to
writing a book), handed me one of the most important books of my life:
Authentic Happiness by Marty Seligman. That book led me to the most
important book of my life: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor
Frankl.

Frankl was a psychologist and Holocaust survivor.

He studied how people react to horrible circumstances that are beyond
their control. He studied why some people give up and others carry on.
While few of us can understand the level of suffering of people during
the Holocaust, Nanking or the Killing Fields, Frankl put his theories
forward so that we could carry them into our daily lives.

Logotherapy was what Frankl called his theories, and their major
tenants are that we choose how to find meaning in our circumstances
and that our experiences all have meaning.

My interpretation of Frankl is that you actually get to choose how you
feel about your circumstances.

The Worst Year of my life

It's still hard for me to talk about it seven years laterand I'm not
going to talk about it in too much detail right now. In the early
months of 2001, I watched my first business, Silicon Alley Reporter,
crash from 70 employees to 12. The $20m offer I'd received to buy the
business was a distant memory, as was the $11.6m in revenue we had in
2000.

Money was evaporating from the bank account, dotcoms were going bust
and wethe dotcom kidswent from visionaries to charlatans
overnight. I went from hosting multi-million dollar conferences, doing
Charlie Rose guest spots and being featured in a 6,000 word article in
the New Yorker to not being able to meet payroll.

Many folks said I was lucky with Silicon Alley Reporter, while others
said I was fraud who had finally been found out. I was broke, no one
cared about my work, and my life really sucked.

and that was just the start.

Then, the stock market crashed and the accounting scandals set in.
Enron, Adelpia, Worldcom, and Arthur Andersen made the fallout from
the dotcom bust look like nothing.

and that was still just the start.

While lying in bed listening to the radio, I heard that a private
pilot in a small plane had accidentally crashed into the World Trade
Center. Then, I watched the second one hit. Then, I watched them come
down.

To say things went from bad to worse would be a gross understatement.
As I started in disbelief with my fellow New Yorkers, I wondered where
my brother, a NYC Firefighter, was. Then it hit me: he was probably
dead.

Due to a simple twist of fate, he wasn't deadbut many of his friends
were. It was at that time I really took a deep look inside and found
meaning in what happened that day and what happened to me when my
first business collapsed.

In my mind, I was being tested. Horrible things happen in life and I
was faced with several at the same time. From that point forward, my
goal was to not only get back to the level I was at when I was at the
top of my game, but to exceed it.

My goal was to be truly happy every day doing what I loved: running a
startup company. A year later, we started Weblogs, Inc., and 18 months
after that, we sold it. The darkest hour became the dawn, and it was
glorious.

If you're failing right now, and if you're suffering, you need to take
Kurnit's test. You need to access where you're at and you need to
fight on. You can give up, sure, but the truth is that when you give
up, you have to live with that fact for the rest of your life. For me,
living with having given up in tough times is a much worse fate than
certain failure.

If you fail, then by definition you have tried. But if you give up,
you didn't.

Step One: How are you executing

It's fairly easy to tell how well you're executing, so let's tackle
that up front. First, take a look at your plan and see where you are
in executing against it. Are you ahead, behind or on schedule? Second,
you can have everyone in your organization rank your product and its
various features on a scale of one to ten. Third, you have an outsider
rank your product and features.

If you're executing at an seven or eight or above, then you know
you're doing well, but could be doing a little bit better. If you're
executing under a seven, your problems could be execution-based. You
just may not be delivering the goods. If you were a restaurant, the
analogy would be that you've got the right ingredients and product,
but you're just not preparing them well. This means you need to focus
on making the product better.

Another way to get a handle on how you're executing is to take your
product and put it up against your two top competitors and do the
one-to-ten rating process. Rate yourself and your competitors on the
top 10 features of all three offerings. How many are you winning? If
you're winning more than three, you're ahead of the game. If you're
three or behind, then you're average or losing.

Execution is the easiest thing to fix, and you can do it one of two
ways: get the people in your organization to perform at a higher
level, or get higher-level folks into your organization.

It really is that simple: folks can either step up or step out.

Step Two: How good is your idea

Determining if you have the right idea is a little more complicated
since most great businesses do not finish where they start. Google
started as a search engine but bought Applied Semantics in order to
create their real business: text-based advertising.

Microsoft started by building programming software (Altair Basic), but
went on to make it's business in operating systems, Microsoft Office
and servers.

If you're idea is wrong, it really doesn't matter. What matters is if
the original ideas allows you to evolve into your big idea.

In order to evolve, you must think like Darwin. Ask yourself: have you
adapted to your market? Have your customers asked you for something
different than you're currently providing? Have you given it to them?
After you give them what they want, can you anticipate what they'll
ask for next? Are those items following a theme?

At Silicon Alley Reporter, we started with a magazine and people loved
it. However, they wanted to get more frequent updates and asked us to
make it weekly. We reflected on this ask and came back with
something they didn't even know they wanted: the Silicon Alley Daily
email newsletter. 40,000 folks subscribed to it in the first year and
it was a much more usable product than the magazine or the requested
weekly print newsletter that we passed on doing.

The market will tell you what it wants. You just have to really
listen. Clearly, there was a market for the DEMO conference since it's
being going on for years. However, they never listened to the ask of
the market: let the companies be selected based on merit, not their
ability to pay almost $20,000. Yes, I know it's a self-serving
example, but those are the best ones.

When Mike Arrington and I founded the TechCrunch50 event, we didn't
think it would grow to be 2-3x as large as DEMO after only one
yearbut it did. The market had MASSIVE pent up demand for a
merit-based show and we tapped it. We evolved DEMO's business model,
not our own.

Now, I'm left asking myself, if I was trying to evolve TechCrunch50,
what would I do?

Another example from personal experience with start up evolution has
been with Mahalo. When we started, we were just doing hand-curated
links. The pages had very little actual content on them. In our user
lab, folks told us they loved the links, but they kept asking for more
content.

We studied the situation and realized that we could evolve and help
our customers more by writing more content on each page. To do this,
we studied what were the 10-15 things people wanted to know when they
did a searchthen we put them on the page. Doing this drove our
traffic from 300k monthly users last year to 4.6m uniques in August (a
record month).

Bottom line: Your first idea is rarely your best.

The first step in a journey is never the best either! Most folks hit
their stride two hours into the marathon. Don't be afraid to nuke your
first idea and run with your secondor third, forth or fifth.

Evolution is the revolution.

Step Three: Outside Factors

Outside factors are the toughest to deal with because, by definition,
they are outside of your control. Despite our deepest wishes, we can't
reverse the housing bubble, put the Towers back up or reverse the
accounting scandals.

All we can do is deal with outside factors, and knowing how to deal
with them is critical.

When the market is in the middle of correcting, as I believe it is
currently doing, people tend to underestimate everything including:

a) how bad it will be
b) how quickly it will get worse
c) how long it will take to recover

Chances are the market will get worse and that will happen sooner
rather than later. Watching folks on CNBC last month talking about a
two or three quarters of down market was just sad. It takes just as
long to clean up a mess as it does to make ittypically longer.

The housing mess took two or three years to develop (2004-2006). It
will take three years to unravel (2008-2010) from what I can see.
We're gonna be dealing with a bad market for at least two years.

10 Specific things you can do

Since the outside market is out of your control, the best you can do
is focus your energy inward. Here are some things you can do after
you've assessed where you company is at.

1. Execute better: This is fairly simple, as I describe above. Rank
yourself and your performance and improve it.

2. Grow the talent you have: When the market is down, it's a great
time to get your team educated and to the next level. Invest in
training and education of your top people, because they are the ones
who will lead your company through this mess.

3. Firing the average people: Again, it's totally politically
incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or
average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is
critical. You wouldn't put a good swimmer in a relay, would you?
Don't have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with
the great.

4. Cut spending every where you can: Recurring costs like
connectivity, phones, rent and insurance are things that you can
easily cut. Go to each of your providers and ask for 20% relief
immediately or you're leaving. Most, not all, will give it to you.

5. Find a revenue stream and ride it: If you don't have a revenue
stream right now, you'd better find one on Monday. Seriously, by the
end of the day. Once you find this revenue stream, ride it. Put at
least 25% of your effort into bringing in revenue.

6. Focus on your profitable clients: If you have revenue, start
focusing on which clients are most profitable. Take them to lunch and
figure out how you can over-service them and sell them another product
(or more of your current product). You're gonna want to protect these
accounts because the folks reading Point Five are going to be calling
them!

7. Make your top ten 10% better: Look at the top ten aspects of your
business and come up with a plan to make each 10% better in the next
30 days. Ask everyone in your company to make suggestions for the 10%
better program and execute on the ones that will provide the most bang
for the buck. Sometimes, there are things you can do today that will
make something 10% better for freeyou just haven't brainstormed
enough.

8. Hold an optional off-site breakfast meeting on a Sunday and see who
shows up: If folks don't show up for you to grow/save the company on a
Sunday for a two hour breakfast, they probably aren't going to step up
when the sh#$%t really hits the fan. You need to know who the real
killers on your team are and you need to get close with them now.
Again, it's fine to have 9-5ers on your teamif you're the Post
Office. You can't have them at a startup company. Note: if you reading
this and saying I'm anti-family, save it. Folks don't have to work at
startups and some of the hardest working folks I've met have families
and figure out how to balance things.

9. Build marketshare: One of the best things to do in the down market
is build marketshare. Look for competitors that are going out of
business and buy them or just steal their clients and talent (i.e.
pick them up).

10. Raise money: I know I said above most folks won't be able to raise
money in the down market, but that's not because the money isn't out
thereclearly it is. The issue is that the big money out there
doesn't want to fund small ideas that are in the death spiral. Build a
plan based on revenue and taking market share and folks will consider
funding you.

What ideas do you have for winning in a down market?

How do you stay inspired in bad times?

Send me your response and if you would like it quoted in a follow up
email, attributed or not.

all the best

Jason

Let's see... here's Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates quoted in a story out of the World Economic Forum in 2004. Yes, four long years ago -- an eternity on the Web. From the story, talking about Google: "'They kicked our butts,' (Gates) said, while promising a better next-generation Internet search engine from Microsoft, due as early as next year." No next-generation search engine from Microsoft appeared in 2005.

Later in 2004, a Microsoft researcher both promised a Google-beating search engine and, at the same time, downplayed its importance. From a story that ran then:

One Microsoft technologist said web search technology will be a big money maker for Google and others in the short term but he predicted the party won't last long. Speaking before about 100 gathered for the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., Eric Brill, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, said the "monetization" model of web search technology is at risk. Brill's comments come on the heels of Google's highly successful IPO last month and bullish Wall Street reports this week that sent Google shares soaring to a high of $127.

"There's tons and tons of money to be made," said Brill. He acknowledged that Microsoft is intent on playing catch up with its own web search engine later this year yet projected that both companies could hit a fiscal wall.

Some of those promises might have come out of early-2000s research -- after Microsoft specifically targeted the development of search and contextual advertising technologies. A 2003 report says Microsoft tripled its staff to go after search. In November 2003, the company told reporters it was coming out with a new search product to compete with Google. What happened there?

In 2005, Microsoft launched a "Search Technology Center" in Beijing. You'd think maybe the Chinese might have some fresh ideas about how to beat Google -- but apparently not. Otherwise Microsoft wouldn't be so desperate to buy Yahoo.

In January of this year, Microsoft even went out and bought an enterprise search outfit called Fast Search for $1.2 billion. Just last week -- last week! -- a Microsoft exec demonstrated "next-generation search" based on Fast Search at Gates' annual CEO Summit.

If Microsoft has been investing heavily in search-related research since 2003, thinking it had a major search product in 2004, founded a new search center in China in 2005 -- why would its next-generation search demo be based on a company it bought five months ago?

Even if Microsoft has internally developed whiz-bang cool search technology, the company has failed to widely deploy it or use it to win traffic and advertisers. The more Microsoft seems to desire Yahoo's search business, the more search seems like Microsoft's supreme screw-up.

Well, maybe its second worst screw-up, after Vista.

But, as much as the tech world tries to treat them as special, we don't believe startups are special. They aren't born out of big bang moments where the laws that govern other businesses don't apply.

From the moment they go live, startups are as real as any other business. They are governed by the same set of market forces and economic precepts that wrap around every other company, new or old.

At the atomic level, all businesses need to generate revenue to pay their bills, grow their business, and stay in business. The sooner they find themselves in the black, the better chance they'll have to survive. Call it a business survival instinct businesses have to feed themselves or they'll die.

Suggesting startups specifically tech startups don't need to look for revenue opportunities now is akin to spoiling a child and shielding them from the outside world: They're far less prepared when they eventually have to leave the house for the first time.

A poorly run startup is a poorly run business. A wonderfully run startup is a wonderfully run business. I don't believe there are many great startups that are bad businesses. Maybe less than 1%. If the business is bad the startup is bad. A great idea, maybe, but a great business, no.

So if you start something up, start a business, don't start a startup.

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not CBS News stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

Simple and to the point. And here's the Rules Of Engagement:

People who want to post comments on CBSNews.com are going to have to follow our rules. We know that not all forums are like that, but this one is.

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As Scott says, Legalese be gone. And they know Godwin's Law to boot!

Peerless Faucet instructions
Franois Beausoleil writes: I just bought a Peerless faucet, and they have instructions on how to uninstall your existing one. (Viewable at FaucetCoach.com.)

All instructions for installing new faucets have the same first step: Remove the old faucet.' Well, we at Peerless thought it was about time someone provided some instructions for that too. Good luck to you, and may all your coupling nuts turn freely.

A couple of steps later:

... But first, put a towel or pillow under your back before you lie down. You'll thank us tomorrow morningTa-da. Your pop-up is popped-out.

And again:

... Have you banged your knuckles on the pipes yet? If so, congratulations. Get out from under the sink, apply a bandage and move on.

And the best piece yet:

Try to remove the faucetIn a best-case scenario, the faucet will come right out. In a could-be-better-case scenario, the faucet will just sort of snicker at you. ...

I didn't bang my knuckles, but I had fun reading these instructions. Took me three hours to remove/replace my faucet, but that wasn't the instructions' fault :)

Be like Mailer
Advice from a photographer features a bunch of great tips for any creative pro. One that stood out

24. Go to the Times today, and read the Norman Mailer Obit. Try to create your life to be half as interesting as his life. If you do that, you'll be fine.

Here's a link to Mailer's obit: Norman Mailer, Towering Writer With a Matching Ego, Dies at 84.

Have an interesting link, story, or screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Contact svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

As you, dear readers, probably know, I'm actually not to hip to Jaiku and much more a fan of Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/cote/). That said, Jaiku is more featureful than Twitter, which can be both good and bad depending on where you fall on the question of simplicity. I'm not quite one to buy into the simplicity is a panacea of software/service success that I may seem to be: complexity is plenty good when it works. However, it's usually safer to err on the side of simplicity rather than complexity.

Features vs. People

In the case of Twitter vs. Jaiku, I think the simplicity works. Each time I've tried to use Jaiku, the sheer number of things I can do makes me think too much. With Twitter, I can easily satisfy that reflex to produce content when I'm bored or excited.

Vastly more important than the question of features and simplicity is the content, the people, in the system. If there was the same pack of Web 2.0 groupies, RedMonk people, and other folks I know in Jaiku or Pownce, I'm sure I'd use and like those platforms. In my case, at least, the raw differentiator for Twitter vs. Jaiku and Pownce are the people in it, pretty much end of story. All the features in the world, like threaded conversations, don't mean much to me if there's no content/people filling those features.

Social Lock-in

Interestingly, there's a certain amount of lock-in around that kind hooking up your social graph in social networks like Jaiku, Twitter, Pownce, and Facebook. Theoretically, you could you easily leave one social network for another. But getting all your buddies to migrate may be more of a hassle than it's worth. That collective laziness effectively locks you into the service. I bet there's some whiz-bang sweet spot graph you could draw here based on number of buddies in the system, feature set, and lock-in potential.

I'm no numbers person, but I'd wager there's a going rate for the number of connections in social networks with lock-in factored in: figuring out how much Google paid for Jaiku and how many connections are in there would be an interesting number to play around with.

Why does lock-in matter? Well, what else is worth paying for but a URL-full of eye-balls and ad-clickers? On the web, there're few things CREAMier than attention lock-in, much as I may personally detest it.

Why Buy Jaiku

I'm not a good Google tea-leaf reader, but I'd guess they're just looking for raw hits but also to acquire the pool of people and connections in Jaiku. In each case, there's plenty of space to sell ads of some sort, fueling Google's prime revenue stream.

Nothing against Jaiku, really, but honestly, I'm bit flumixed as to why Google would buy Jaiku over Twitter: I find Twitter the much better of the two for the people and simplicity reasons mentioned above. Maybe they don't want to acquire from the same team twice (many Twitter folks were at Blogger.com)? Or maybe Twitter had a bad case of the we're worth $40 billion-itous. Or maybe Twitter didn't seem nerdy enough for Google?

Passing the Ball

Another interesting angle is looking at one of Google's past acquisitions along these lines: Dodgeball. While Dodgeball was based around broadcasting your current location to your friends, it was actually quite widely used, at least in circles I run in.

Google seems to have not done too well with that asset; indeed, as I recall the original Dodgeball founders left saying that Google wasn't giving them enough support. Dodgeball would have been a great platform and service to build a Jaiku or Twitter-like platform on-top of, and yet Dodgeball went through a tragically stalled-by-acquisition phase that I'm not sure it ever recovered from. Dodgeball was quickly eclipsed by Jaiku and Twitter, and it'd suck for Jaiku to get hit by that ball this go-around.

Technorati Tags: ads, attention, content, google, jaiku, m&a, microblogging, pownce, sms, twitter

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