Tony Wright dot com

So I’m diving back into blogging.

My longest stint as a blogger was for a few months while Brian Fioca and I were working on Jobby. My blogging efforts there were pretty pragmatic and business-centric. My reasons were limited to communicating to users (to let them know that we were frantically responding to their feature requests) and gunning for press/attention with a bit of blatant link-baiting (which turned out to be quite a bit easier than I’d imagined).

Once we sold to Jobster, there was already an army of Jobster bloggers filling these roles. Jason (CEO) and Phil (CTO) were both active bloggers, and we also had an official jobseeker blog to communicate with our users. And, of course, we had just purchased recruiting.com which, at that time, was a blog about recruiting.

I was out of reasons to blog. I didn’t feel didactic and certainly didn’t feel like talking about Web 2.0 (which, apparantly, I should add to my resume).

So what prompts the return?

• First of all, I find myself far away from the people that I’ve spent the last decade with. I’m not sure how many of them want to keep tabs on me and what I’m thinking about/working on, but here’s an opportunity for them to do so if they do.
• Second of all, I find myself having some things to write about. Ideas about design, user experience, customer service, running a web business, and more. You’ll see some of these in the coming weeks.
• And third, there have been some recent goings-on at Jobster that I’d like to add my voice to.
• Fourth, as I interact with other geeks from other startups, I realize I have something to offer. I’ve had a few email exchanges with folks who have told me that I was damn helpful. Wow. How cool is it that I could just type something, and help someone with their business? Andy Sack, who started Judy’s Book, says about blogging, “The more you put in, the more you get out.” I’d like to see if I can get this feedback loop by putting some in.
• Finally, I’ve got a project that I’m working on (on the side– not plans to have this interfere with my work at Jobster) that I’d like to start talking about.

So, welcome back to my brain (but don’t get tooooo comfortable).

In the web 2.0 world, user-generated content is king. Blogs, Forums, YouTube, Flickr– all have armies of users who are giving away content (some of which is actually compelling).

Regardless of the poor signal-to-noise ratio in user-generated content, it’s certainly turning marketing on its ear. It’s no longer what you (or your high-priced advertising firm) say about your product or company– it’s what the masses say. And the masses are sometimes not very nice.

Amazon was the one of the pioneers of user generated content with their user reviews. From what I understand, several of their major manufacturers were upset by negative reviews by users and wanted them removed. Amazon held firm, and the sanctity of their user-reviews was preserved. Amazon knew that the instant they started editing and removing negative reviews would be the instant that people would cease to value the content.

Jobster is just starting to dabble in the user-generated content game. It’s a natural evolution– job seekers want the security of having a deep understanding of a potential workplace… Which is something you simply can’t get from a job interview and a 15 minute tour of the facility. So, with the At product, users can record their impressions about a particular workplace through a nifty question and answer interface.

Some of the people in the company are horrified. They are envisioning the day where a user says awful things about the work environment at one of our top clients. I’d be scared, too. Our clients pay us a lot of money to provide them with a tremendous service, and might well feel a sense of outrage if they see a former employee bashing them in a public forum on our site.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that you simply can’t put the genie back in the bottle. It’s only getting easier to express your opinion on the Internet. Honest discussion about what it’s like to work at a particular business is valuable information– if Jobster doesn’t succeed at creating a hub where such information can be posted and viewed, someone else will. If none of the major jobs players creates the hub, the expression will find an outlet on blogs, in discussion forums, or elsewhere.

So how do we deal with a negative comment when it comes to our attention? I should lead with the fact that firm policy has not been set here. I’m just thinking out loud. But, I think the first thing that you must do is set some editorial guidelines. No personal attacks on individuals. No obscenities.

Assuming a negative comment gets through these (relatively lax) guidelines, your best bet is to encourage contrarian viewpoints. If someone bashes your book on Amazon.com, encourage your fans to post there and the detractors voice will diminish in a sea of supporters. Similarly, if a company gets clobbered in our At offering, surely you have a sea of happy employees you could encourage to get the truth out there? If you don’t have a sea of happy employees, I’d probably suggest adjusting your work environment.

The great thing about Jobster customers is that they all necessarily have a sea of happy employees. Jobster’s core product is predicated on using the power of networking and referrals to find new employees. If you have a lousy environment, Jobster simply wouldn’t work.

One of the things that always strikes me about the jobs space is that most people think it’s decidedly unsexy when compared to the other “Web 2.0″ stuff that’s going on. It isn’t photosharing, it isn’t social bookmarking, and it isn’t an AJAX-infested online office suite, so why would someone want to be involved?

I myself got involved in the jobs space because I saw a business need that wasn’t being well-served… In short, I didn’t do it because I loved the recruiting/human resources game or because it was an exciting technical challenge, but because I felt that I could create a great product that people would buy. There are business-geeks and webtech-geeks… And I’m certainly a little of both. But it was definitely my inner business geek that drove me into this industry.

But, in my first few days at Jobster, my opinion on the sexiness of the jobs space is starting to change… And yours should too. Below are a few random points to consider:

• Jason Goldberg, our CEO (who is just a year older than I am), is a finalist of for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Here’s the press release. Jason said in the meeting the other day that honor wasn’t for him, but rather for Jobster as a whole.
• As I’ve been ramping up, the Jobster .com development team has been wrapping up our next release. One of our VPs suggested to one of the team members that he should take a day or two off because he’d been working so hard. His response was that he’d rather dive into something new to keep his momentum. People here just plain love their jobs.
• In a management meeting yesterday, Jason said that Jobster was heavily discussed at a recruiting conference. During a presentation to hundreds of recruiters, a speaker asked people to raise their hand if they hadn’t heard of Jobster. Not a single hand went up. For a product that has barely existed for 12 months, that’s downright amazing. Jobster is turning the industry on its ear. You can’t get sexier than that.
• Everyone here is scary smart. Huge swaths of the team come from the technology companies that are considered by many to be where the dream jobs are. Think about that for a minute… People are leaving places like Amazon and Microsoft to go work in the jobs space.
• Jobster is generating lots of revenue. Where many Web 2.0 companies struggle with revenue-models, customers are tripping over themselves to buy our product. The sweet curve of sales growth is pretty darn sexy, especially when stock options are involved.

So, scoff at the jobs space if you like. But changing an industry that is measured in the tens of billions of dollars is pretty darn sexy if you ask me.