Yet again, Facebook has demonstrated their utter lack of understanding for personal boundaries and any sense of appropriate privacy. One of the things you can do with Facebook Places that you can't with Foursquare, Gowalla, etc., is check your friends in.

Bad idea. Really bad idea. If I choose to tell the world where I am 24/7, that's my prerogative. I can even live with people tweeting things like "I'm at #BATHH with @ScottAllen @LaniAR @KateBuckJr & other cool peeps." But the idea of people creating structured, archived data about my location is just really unnerving. The potential for misuse is staggering.

I echo Laurie Ruettimann's sentiment:

More on what's wrong with Facebook Places at Social Media Today.

 

We're in the last lap of editing our research study on best practices of private equity and venture capital investors in originating new investments, which has a particular focus on use of social media.  We plan to publish this in a major private equity journal.

If you would like to review a copy of the 12,000-word report, please contact us.  We would greatly value your feedback.

(Image via Wikipedia)

We have another Founder Institute semester spooling up in NYC, and the early admissions deadline is August 15th, with final admissions on August 29th.  Our host will be local entrepreneur Gabe Zichermann, and the applicant pool so far looks very strong. 

If you are an early-stage entrepreneur, this is a very powerful way to upgrade the sophistication of your company and significantly increase your odds of success.  Among the noteable companies from the inaugural New York Founder Institute are Profitably, Simple.PR, and Plan.fm, and VIMOTA.  Complete list here.

Apply: http://www.founderinstitute.com/apply/24
Applications Due: 08/29/2010
Sessions: 09/07/2010 to 12/15/2010

I hope to see you there!

I'm in the midst of assembling the founding team for a new startup, and seeking a head of Engineering. I've attached details below.  I welcome suggestions!

Seeking Head of Engineering for AlphaCub, Internet Finance Startup, NY

We are seeking a Head of Engineering for the founding team of an internet finance startup, based in New York and soon Asia. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor, shape a new company's technology and culture from scratch, and create a significant company.

Our first product is DealSignals.com, an automated research and analysis engine focused on private companies, and specializing in working with private equity funds. Our technology is somewhat parallel to that developed by such firms as Alacra, Bloomberg, Capital IQ, Connotate, FirstRain, InfoNgen, SkyGrid, and ThomsonReuters; we particularly value experience from these and similar companies. We are also comparable to traditional investment banks. For more on our service and background, please see http://www.AlphaCub.com . The startup is led by David Teten, a serial entrepreneur.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

+ For each segment of our software platform, make buy/build/tweak decision.

+ Manage full product lifecycle including infrastructure, development, design, scalability and security.

+ Recruit and manage additional team members.

+ Research strengths and weaknesses of different data vendors we are considering.

+ Build hooks into APIs of major online networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)

+ Design and implement logic and scoring algorithms.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE

+ Over 2 years management and 5 years development experience.

+ Proven success in large scale, high transaction systems engineering.

+ Use of formal and agile development methodologies

+ Built complex, integrated, sanitized, normalized databases based on many messy data sources (linear, non-linear).

+ Passion about our startup's vision.

+ Highly motivated self-starter who has a track record of continuous self-improvement, high achievement, and aggressiveness.

+ Strong analytical and math skills. High attention to detail.

+ Have managed development teams over time, with hiring and firing responsibilities.

+ Familiar with machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), screen-scraping technologies, semantic web, and/or agent-based systems.

We also value:

+ Experience in social networks, online dating, and/or finance industry, particularly investment banking and private equity.

+ Built consumer-oriented web applications.

+ Belief in the Edward Tufte school of communication.

+ Strong writing experience. Value a high GPA in writing-dependent courses.

+ Strong verbal communication/sales skills. Experience in debate, public speaking, and acting is pertinent.

+ Familiarity with startup environment and networks with local business/ government related organizations

+ Fluency in languages other than English.

COMPENSATION

+ Primarily equity initially. We are currently self-funded and expect to raise outside capital in late 2010/early 2011.

HOW TO APPLY

Please include with your detailed resume:

+ Link to your LinkedIn profile (or other online identity).

+ Availability.

+ Writing sample

Please send resume and cover letter to Careers(@)Teten.com with "Head of Engineering" in the subject line. We prefer that you save your resume in Microsoft Word format with the name "Last Name-First Name-Year.doc", e.g., "Hayward-Tony-2010.doc".

(Image via Wikipedia)

One of the things that happens when you become slightly famous is that a whole lot of people want a little piece of your time. Sure, it may only be ten minutes, or even two, but multiply that by dozens, or even hundreds, of people, and pretty soon you're buried in a stack of email, voice mail, Twitter DMs, Facebook messages, and so on, most of which will take some time to reply to, and some of them maybe never.

That can be frustrating enough by itself - you want to help everyone and reply to every email in a timely fashion, but it's simply not possible, or at least not practical. Unfortunately, some people take offense at it, or attribute it to something other than simply information overload. They think you're either mad, rude or disorganized, when in reality, you're just very, very busy.

Social media can exacerbate this problem. Besides creating even more channels for people to demand your time, it also can create difficulty when you're publicly spending time in social media and people who are trying to communicate with you individually see that, as happened to Steve Rubel last night:

I can empathize with both sides of this. On the one hand, I totally empathize with Steven in this situation. The smiley face is a small amelioration of the fact that he's being called out on this issue over an 8-word Facebook post, which I'm sure took far less time than responding to her email would.

[NOTE: Karen's a friend of Steve's, not a client, and this post was clearly in fun, but still, it illustrates the point. What follows is stream of thought, not based on this specific example. I'm not accusing Steve of what I describe below, and I realized after the fact that it may have come across that way. Apologies to Steve & Karen for that - not my intention.]

On the other hand, if I were a paying customer of someone, waiting on work from them, it would be very frustrating for me to see them blogging, conversing on Twitter, posting extensively on Facebook, etc. As a service provider, I become pretty scarce in social media when I have clients waiting on work from me. While you're entitled to use your time as you see fit, and to continue to engage in marketing while you have client work due, I think being really "out there" in public social media is kind of rubbing it in their face.

Always keep in mind that your current customers are far more important relationships to your business than your social media fans and followers. Take care of your existing customers first and foremost, even if that means a brief hiatus from your social media channels.

Discovery.com reports that researchers at the University of Manchester have developed a mathematically optimal formula for the perfect handshake, based on 12 key measures, including vigor, eye contact and hand temperature.

"The human handshake is one of the most crucial elements of impression formation and is used as a source of information for making a judgment about another person," he said.

The researcher added he was surprised "that up until now there has not been a guide showing people how they should shake hands," which has been a traditional greeting and a key part of business deals for thousands of years.

Beattie's steps to the perfect handshake, for both men and women, are: use the right hand; a complete grip and a firm squeeze (but not too strong); a cool and dry palm; approximately three shakes, with a medium level of vigor, held for no longer than two to three seconds.

The handshake must also be executed with eye contact kept throughout and a good natural smile with an appropriate verbal statement.

While I do find this research interesting and moderately useful, I was particularly struck by the comment from someone who identified himself only as "Bubb Rubb":

It's no wonder that yet another study must be performed for something that we once thought was natural.  Way back when.... a boy learned a proper handshake from his father.  His father learned it from his father.  Things like manners, common courtesy and of all things since the Romans, the handshake, have gone by the wayside.  Pretty soon we will all need a shovel to find our collective bootstraps.

Along these lines, while it's not entirely scientific, we do have a sort of "formula" for the perfect virtual handshake, i.e., how to introduce yourself and make a good first impression in a forum or group. Again, it should come naturally. Unfortunately, it doesn't, as readily evidenced by spending any amount of time in discussion forums. And a little refresher helps keep you at the top of your game.

Image credit: thinkpanama

  My friends at Accolo have some very worthwhile webinars available for free on their site.  These are geared to hiring managers and recruiters.  You can watch these at your convenience:

The Inside Numbers on the Job Market and the Impending Hiring War

How to Conduct the Perfect Interview

Understanding your cost to hire.

Employment Screening, beware and be aware

Social Network Recruiting - Beyond Employee Referrals

Turn disgruntled applicants into raving fans!

Finding Top Performers

Guest post by Auren Hoffman

The Art of the Email Introduction
How to introduce two people so that they both benefit

Email introductions are a poorly-understand art and are often done too hastily without careful thought.  Making introductions the right way can be the best way to help two people and create a lot of value.  But doing it wrong can make one of the parties look bad and can alienate one or both parties from you.

Below are my tips on the best ways to make an email introduction between two people.

Before we go through the mechanics, let's first define your objectives as the introducer. Your goal should be to benefit both people you are introducing. Both parties should be happy you made the introduction, glad they met the other person, and thankful to you. You should not bother making an introduction if it will only benefit one of the parties. 

Now for the tips on the proper way to make introductions:

1. Take the time
Good introductions require careful thoughtful and preparation. Take the time to really think why both parties will benefit from each other and spell it out in an email.  Hasty introductions can have minimal or even negative impact.  I'm sure we've all been victims of hastily written email intros.  I recently got one that said "Auren/John - you two just HAVE to meet each other. You two take it from here." - I'd like to know who John is and why we should meet.

2. Ask for permission
A good way to start the introduction process is to first email the people and ask them for permission.  Make the case of why they should meet the other party and ask them if it would be ok for you to introduce the two.  Usually it will work well, but occasionally someone will say that they are too busy.  If that's the case, you just saved both friends a lot of trouble.

3. Make sure there is a quick follow up
You never want to make an introduction where both parties don't immediately respond to each other.  To prevent this from happening, make sure that the weight of your email encourages both people to quickly arrange a time to talk. 

4. Take the time of each person into account
Be clear in your email introduction what the next action for the two parties should be. Suggest whether they should meet for lunch, coffee, over the phone, or just exchange emails.  Often people should just have a quick phone call and you don't want to waste the time of one or both people by suggesting a lunch.   

Rarely introduce your friend to someone just because your friend wants to meet her.  There needs to be an exchange of value between the two people and both parties need to come away with more value than their time is worth. To find a worthwhile introduction, you may need to proactively suggest people who your friends might want to meet. 

5. Clearly give the location of each person
Location is one detail that is forgotten all too often but can save a lot of back and forth communication. If one person is in LA and the other is in NY, let them know.  If they are going to be the same city in two weeks, they can now meet in person. If they are going to arrange a call, they will now know what time zone they are in. 

6. Be sure to give their first and last name and a quick bio of the person
I often get intros from people to jim@company.com - so I know the first name of the person is "Jim" but don't know their last name and it makes it difficult to save the person's contact information.  And a quick bio will go a long way in giving context.

7. Mention if two people have met before
If you know the two parties have met before, even if only briefly, be sure to mention it in the introduction. Often people forget brief meetings so you can save them from embarrassment.

8. Include all necessary parties
If the people use their assistants, then copy the assistants of both parties if appropriate.

9. Only forward emails that make the originator look good
I can't tell you how many times I've been introduced to someone by an introducer who forwards me a semi-confidential email chain that I probably shouldn't see. Forward only positive emails and, if you have to, edit the email before forwarding to make both sides look good.  

10. Make intentions of your introduction clear
If you are introducing single people of different genders, make sure that the purpose of your introduction is clear and that there is no misunderstanding.  Being clear about whether the introduction is a business or a personal one will preclude embarrassing situations where people have misaligned intentions. 

As an introducer, your goal should be for both parties to be glad that you made the intro.  If only party one gets value from the meeting, you have failed. But when you succeed, you have the potential to massively increase the happiness of both people.

(Special thanks Michael Hsu for his help and edits.)

Auren Hoffman is the CEO of Rapleaf. Rapleaf helps B2C companies give their consumers a better experience by providing automated search services for each consumer. Re-published with permission. You can see more comments and leave your own on the original post at Summation.

For more ideas on effective email introductions, check out Chapter 13 of The Virtual Handshake (free download).