We’ve had an amazing year here at FirstRain. Over the course of just the last year, we’ve launched an intuitive new Web app interface, elegant iPad and mobile apps, and then our powerful new Enterprise Customer Intelligence System for end-to-end, company-wide intelligence integration.
And now today is another big day at FirstRain—but it’s also a big day for the social enterprise platforms like Chatter, Yammer and Jive because now, for the very first time, Twitter is useful for B2B professionals.
For some time now, media and brand monitoring solutions like Radian6 have been tapping into Twitter so that companies can see what their customers are saying. If United Airlines loses your luggage and you gripe about it on Twitter, United can see that. But solutions that provide consumer tweet monitoring are hopeless if you are a B2B professional trying to find useful and breaking industry news in Twitter about specific companies, products or business lines.
We’ve now solved that problem, and are announcing FirstTweets today. This is the world’s first solution for extracting business-relevant Twitter Intelligence. FirstTweets™ is a part of our FirstRain Enterprise Customer Intelligence System. It is a technology breakthrough that solves the Twitter problem for business executives: how to get business value and intelligence out of the 250 million tweets that Twitter produces daily.
Our analysis shows that more than 99.9% of all Twitter is non-relevant to business professionals, making it effectively impossible to get to the still more than 200,000 tweets per day of daily business intelligence buried inside.
Now, by using FirstRain’s patented semantic analytics, our system provides the ability to easily and effectively access the business intelligence hidden within the Twitter stream. FirstTweets™ collects and organizes real time industry and customer-specific information to uncover revenue opportunities, including customer developments, industry trends, news, market analysis, emerging themes and so much more.
This intelligence is then be easily integrated into different workflows, including iPads and other mobile devices, CRM systems,social enterprise platforms like Chatter, Jive, Yammer and SharePoint, or any workflow that works best for sales and marketing teams.
FirstTweets™ will be available to all users this Wednesday and will be included for FirstRain subscribers. It’s another exciting innovation by FirstRain, and I look forward to hearing what you think.
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Social networking is the topic du jour. Facebook is going public at a gazillion dollar valuation; Jive market cap jumped 30% in the past few weeks because their charismatic CEO, Tony Zingale, got Barrons to say they are Facebook for the enterprise.
And no question, companies are deploying enterprise collaboration platforms fast, trying to keep up with the need for information sharing. One customer – a CIO – told me “we don’t know why but we’re going to do it anyway!”.
Given all this frenzy I was pleased to see a sensible report published last week on the business case for ESN – Enterprise Social Networks – written by Charlene Li and published by Altimeter. It’s full of advice on how to think about your deployment and your ROI.
We see a smorgasbord of options at our customers – some have SFDC (Salesforce CRM and sometimes Chatter), some have SFDC and Jive, some have Microsoft and Yammer, some have 3 or 4 around the globe – you name it, we see the mix. Some departments like one, some like the other, sometimes global likes one and the US likes another. It’s definitely a challenge. We have the advantage that because of our architecture we can easily integrate our customer intelligence into all, but I feel for the IT teams trying to administer so many choices.
This chart is the answer to “what is your primary enterprise networking solution?” across 77 companies who could only answer one.
Source: Altimeter report Making the Case for Enterprise Social Networks Feb 2012But as the Altimeter report explains – workflow is the key issue. ESNs do encourage sharing – critical when you have a global sales team working on a global customer. They do capture knowledge, especially tribal knowledge about how the customer’s requirements are developing and how the market is impacting them. We get feedback all the time that our customer intelligence, integrated into Chatter and Jive, helps the sales team be smarter about what’s happening in their customer’s market.
The 3rd value an ESN brings is helping your sales team take action because they can find solutions faster by collaborating, then of course in the end an ESN is empowering when it is working well because your sales team has a voice (although what sales team doesn’t!).
Enterprise collaboration is on a roll right now. It’s good to see analysts helping IT teams cut through the chatter (pun intended) and evaluate the business value of their choices.
There is a world of difference between news aggregators like Google News, Moreover and Meltwaterand a true customer intelligence system like FirstRain. All have the ability to deliver some news from the Web but the similarity ends there. Keyword-based news is OK if you want a simple cut of everything, but they are absolutely insufficient if you want your enterprise sales team to drive revenue by deeply understanding their customer’s business.
An enterprise customer intelligence system like FirstRain:
1. Uses semantic analysis to categorize all content (Web, social media, etc.) to a high degree of specificity—well beyond the specificity possible with keywords. For example: Using analytics, FirstRain can track and filter on topics as specific as “Diabetic Nephropathy”, “Enterprise Telecom Services Market” and “Solar Energy Farms Capacity Expansion”, which means the sales team will receive customer intelligence with a much higher degree of relevance than any other solution.
2. Searches the global Web, identifying and extracting only business-focused content (including news, press releases, company Web sites, government filings, industry sources, blogs and much more), while filtering out the consumer, entertainment and other noisy content routinely delivered by Google Alerts and news aggregators. This filtering has many layers to it—at the source, content and model levels—to ensure that only high quality business content makes it through to the end user.
3. Prioritizes all content using multi-factoral algorithms that push the most significant intelligence to the top (based on the user’s own workflow at the time), then de-duplicating it so you only see each important development once, all greatly improving the relevancy of the intelligence each user sees. This saves time and money for enterprise sales and customer marketing teams, eliminating the hours spent combing through search results (and often still missing key developments), and reducing it to seconds reviewing only the most important developments impacting their customers and their customers’ business
4. Delivers this highly personalized content wherever and however the team needs it: on their iPad, iPhone, Android device, directly into the social enterprise portal or CRM, or simply via a daily email intelligence brief. FirstRain’s apps allow the sales and marketing team to collaborate using this powerful customer intelligence database quickly and easily from any device, at any time, all integrated into their own daily workflow.
The patented technology that goes into the creation of this enterprise customer intelligence system is the result of years of algorithm development, customer collaboration and fine tuning—and it’s why most vendors of basic Web content can’t match it. But it’s these differentiators that are helping FirstRain deliver our users the kind of customer intelligence that actually grows and renews revenue in their businesses.
The most exciting development in the Enterprise today is not, as Salesforce and Jive would have you believe, “social networking for business” but the not-so-stealthy explosion of the iPad as a productivity tool.
We see dramatic deployments every day, especially into the enterprise sales and customer marketing teams which are the teams we work with most often. Eric Lal of ZDNet keeps a site updated with iPad pilots — often documenting large company decisions we have already seen on the ground — thousands at a time!
Even big blue IBM may now have one of the largest Apple and iPad deployments in the world. As an Apple fan it’s terrific to see the corporate world finally seeing the light. Even my own R&D team (for a long time PC-based nerds) are adopting a mix of Apple in with their PCs, iPads (of course for development) and iPhones in with Android phones (which after all you can hack and play with so much more easily than an iPhone).
I also agree with Peter O’Neill at Forrester that many market researchers are falling behind in their methodology and not including broad enough sources of corporate deployment. They have a PC bias and may be missing the rapid growth of BYOD (bring-your-own-device) policies at companies large and small. BYOD is not only popular but in the end it’s cheaper. Cisco pioneered this policy 5 years ago, showing that it was, in the end, cheaper for IT to support. And while IT departments still worry about data security, I was convinced this was solved the day my Symantec customer told me in 2011 that he could now work officially work on the iPad (Symantec is the most paranoid company on security – appropriately so given that it’s their business).
There are two major waves happening for enterprise sales teams right now: social collaboration (yes I don’t think Salesforce and Jive are wrong) and the iPad. And the FirstRain customer intelligence system is right at the intersection of the two – with our sizzling hot iPad app and integration into the top collaboration portals. We have customers deploying in all of them: Jive, Salesforce, Microsoft and Quad (Cisco) and in every case enterprise sales reps also have iPads (either their own or company issue) so they can stay on top of their major customers wherever they are.
And I hope I never have to use a PC again… although this is a false hope since my husband is the lone hold out in our family because he is an electronics designer and needs the high end tools which will probably never be on Apple (sigh).
Image from AllThingsDigital
It’s always interesting, as we begin to approach the end of another year, to think about how far technology has taken us once again. With the holidays right around the corner, I’m confident that more people than ever will be hoping for an iPad2 in their stockings. Since the new release of the iPad2 in March of 2011, Apple’s iPad sales have rocketed over the sales of any other tablet device. As a result (or perhaps vice-versa), people are shifting their behaviors when it comes to reading and consuming information. Maybe people are feeling compelled to help the environment and go green (saving trees is a great thing!). Perhaps more people are taking advantage of awesome applications like our very ownFirstRain, which helps deliver news in a faster, more efficient way than ever before (in fact have you tried our FirstRain iPad app?). Or maybe people just feel compelled to keep up with the pace of modern technology—the iPad is a perfect, modern example of how amazing technology can be.
In the morning, I ride San Francisco’s Caltrain from the city down the Peninsula to our FirstRain office in San Mateo. I can’t remember the last time I saw a rider reading the actual newspaper—and I take the Caltrain every day. The typical Caltrain passenger behavior (and we’re talking about mostly Silicon Valley employees) is coffee in one hand and iPad in the other. For the few not lucky enough to have a new iPad, you have people like me who scan news on their iPhone (although thankfully I am able to access news using the FirstRain iPhone app!) Either way, I’d say 8 out of 10 Caltrain riders definitely use technology to access the news they may have been receiving years ago from printed versions. I feel badly for the guy who stands at the end of the station trying to sell newspapers! This shift in behavior is not limited to just business professionals. Last week Mashable.com published a video portraying a 1-year old baby using an iPad. When handed a magazine, this adorable baby girl began to press the non-existent buttons, not turn the pages. She resorted to her only knowledge of how to “read,” that is: how to read using technology. Is this a sign of what’s to come for the next generation? Will turning the physical pages in books, and magazines become ancient history? Was there a generation that mourned the physical satisfaction of pressing cuneiform into clay tablets, or decried the loss of reading an elegant scroll?
Last week, here at the FirstRain office, we had our own conversation about the lack of reading print media in today’s society. Ryan Warren, our VP of Marketing, noticed and commented on the fact that I printed out a colleague’s blog to read over, instead of just editing and reading it on my laptop. I tend to focus better on what I’m reading when I print out a physical version (Facebook & Twitter are not floating around in the background this way). Proof that printing out someone’s paper to edit is becoming less common, he asked if this was something I did normally. What if I’ve been the only person out there who still prints out things to read?
So I decided to investigate. I sent out an email survey to a network of friends, all millennials, all in my age bracket, mostly young business professionals and a few graduate students, asking them all if they preferred reading text online rather than printing out and reading a hard copy. I wasn’t surprised by most of the responses. 90% of those who answered preferred to read online. Some preferred to read online only when the length of the reading material was limited to four pages or less. Others preferred to read online if it was reading for pleasure rather than reading for business or school. And sure enough, some opted to read online because it was “greener.” One friend said it was easier to “stay organized while having everything in one place” on their laptop. I was quite impressed with the reasoning behind each of their answers. Am I the only person still printing!? Don’t get me wrong, I read articles online every day and I don’t buy physical paper newspapers. I use our FirstRain apps and use the Web to access the news. Yet, sometimes, I still chose to print things out in order to help me focus… even though I suppose this makes me old fashioned. Maybe when I finally purchase an iPad, I’ll give up my old habits. I’m really curious to see what lies ahead for future generations and how they’ll consume the media of tomorrow. Will the baby with the iPad write this same blog post, wondering how many people still prefer touch interfaces instead of just having it plugged directly into their brain?
I had hoped that my second blog post for FirstRain wouldn’t, once again, be about Google (you’d think that we’d all be sick of hearing about Google 24×7? And we may be, but sick in that ‘I-still-must-tune-in-and-see-what-is-happening-kind of way’ …). Still, I found myself captivated by their announcement this summer that they would phase out a major program called Google Labs by the end of September. And as we’re now approaching that shutdown date, it’s gotten me thinking again about this interesting decision.
For the most part, I’ve always been quite impressed by Google. I am a long term Gmail user (Gmail has its own Labs, as does Google Maps) and I am still a firm advocate that Google+ will eventually be big (especially after seeing all the complaints of Facebook’s new design on my Facebook newsfeed the past two weeks). Google has launched so many winning products over the years that I was shocked to hear that such a successful and interesting part of Google was to be phased out.
For those unfamiliar with Google Labs, it was a playground for users who are interested in trying Google prototypes and providing feedback directly to Google Engineers. It allowed the public to freely experiment with pre-released Android apps, Google Maps experiments, Google Search betas and much more. Although, not all of these prototypes prove to be effective, it is still a nice way to get the public involved in ‘designing’ and evaluating some of Google’s most popular ideas.
So exactly why has Google decided to pull the plug on this program, when it seemed so many people (albeit, adventurous tech people) were benefiting from it? According to Bill Coughran, Google’s Senior VP for Research and Systems Infrastructure, Google is now beginning to prioritize their product efforts more strictly. And although some of their biggest products had started in Google Labs, they’re now focusing much more of their efforts into dominating the products already in progress, such as Google+. Google has decided that ultimately there are too many ‘small’ projects and they want to channel the company’s focus on the larger and, *cough*, more lucrative options. By simplifying and focusing Google’s product line, Coughran said, more “extraordinary opportunities are ahead”.
The Google Labs decision is more than just phasing out a neat program, however. The last few years were spent testing potential golden projects. And they did this successfully. Google beat out competitors like AOL and Yahoo in numerous departments such as search, smartphones and Email (does anyone use AOL for email anymore?). And Google Labs has significantly helped develop some of these platforms. But the need is no longer necessary as the trial period is officially over. What’s interesting is what a signpost this is for where Google is in their lifecycle as a company. Instead of the fun, pioneering tech startup playing in many sandboxes, looking for ideas and doing no evil, they’ve now evolved into a focused and mature company that—for the most part—knows its market, where the money is, and is coalescing around key products like Search, Gmail and Google+.
Now that the deadline is upon us, I was curious to check out the status of Google Labs, especially since I haven’t come across much recent news about the Google Labs termination. If you go to GoogeLabs.com, they inform users directly (no sugarcoating) that the Google Lab’s program is being phased out. Also, it is obvious that many of the experiments have been visibly shut down.
Not all of Google Labs’ programs will completely disappear. Google claims that they will be integrating some of their better prototypes into many of their already existing experiments but the actual “Labs” name will be retired. The real question for Google now, is how they can retain the spirit of Google labs—that open sense of valued community feedback in a beat environment, now that their flagship vehicle for those values has been lost.
Living in Silicon Valley, running a software company with big ambitions I hear the question a lot. Is this another tech bubble? Isn’t is going to burst again?
The short answer is no.
Pundits covering tech tend to confuse valuation with long term value. We may well be in a valuation bubble but unlike the 2000 tech bubble the companies in question have deep, sustainable revenue models.
There are certainly some high valuations – per Fred Wilson’s view of frothy valuations in April – and these are driven by investor demand. As Father Guido Sarducci so wisely said in the 5 minute university, Economics is about supply and demand. When a few companies have sky high valuations in the public and private markets VCs are chasing good ideas with too much money again and so the early stage and later stage valuations may be getting silly for most companies, but some will be worth it.
Valuation is very different than long term value. Technology, and in particular software, is where long term sustainable value is being built. And when I say long term I am thinking hundreds of years. Marc Andreesen wrote very eloquently about this in the WSJ on Saturday in his essay Why Software Is Eating the World. We are at the beginning of a long era in which technology will reshape every aspect of our lives in ways we are just now beginning to see.
Just as the Industrial Revolution developed over more than 150 years in the 18th and 19th centuries and reshaped machines, industry, transport and the very nature of where people chose to live and work, technology is now reshaping the way we communicate, are entertained, where we live and work and shop and it is rewiring our kids brains for a new world. I’ve believed this for 20 years and the ups and downs of the tech world over that period have done nothing to dissuade me from that belief because technology is steadily, consistently and dramatically changing our lives. (Want to get some perspective on the 150 year change last time around – spend a day in Ironbridge in Shropshire, England.)
It’s happening right now because the pieces are now in place. As Marc writes “Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.”
The cost structure is right, the technology base is ready. In FirstRain’s case we have built a highly disruptive technology that changes the way business people use the web for their critical decision making. As Roger McNamee says in his thought provoking talk “Everything is Changing”, Google’s approach to indexing has peaked. People want apps designed for their specific need (he cites his investments like Facebook and Yelp), not one app for all needs, and they want it on their device of choice – which is a smartphone or an iPad. In our case the business need is even more specific than that. Our users want a business web app so they can tap into the breadth, currency and power of the web as a data source, but they want it tailored to their specific business and role, and they want it in a cost effective way.
Marc and Roger are just two rockstars in Silicon Valley but most people here agree with them (and not just because we are all drinking the same Kool-Aid). Yes we are dealing with some higher valuations, maybe that is a bubble, but the long term value being built in technology is real, and software is where it’s at. And what makes it even better is it a continuously exciting place to build a career, or even a company.
Over the past few weeks the blogosphere has been buzzing with predictions on the impact of Google+ in the business world, adding to the growing focus on the benefits of social media for business. Currently, most businesses use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as tools to promote their brands and many are now asking whether Google+ will become the next big player in the world of social media marketing. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about adding yet another social media tool to one’s marketing arsenal when we’re still discovering how to use the ones we already have. And yes, it may be too early to start casting Justin Timberlake for a Google+ movie, but I think it’s a safe bet that—sooner or later—this platform is going to be BIG. The days where people say “Facebook me” may be coming to an end sooner than you may think, to be replaced by people asking you to join their “circle.”
For the rock-dwellers this last month, Google+ is the newest social network on the scene. Introduced by Google in late June, it combines the ideas of Twitter, Facebook and Skype into one jumbo social media sandwich. Already, Google+ has reported 25 million users during the last month. Of course, this number is small in comparison to the hundreds of millions of users on Facebook or Twitter, but the trend is significant. So what exactly is making Google+ gain traction so quickly? There have been plenty of other social networks (including platforms launched by Google, remember Google Buzz or Google Wave? No? me either) that haven’t even come close to attracting as many users as Google+. Intrigued and curious to see what this fuss was all about, I searched around and asked a co-worker to send me an invite to their Google+ circle.
And guess what? It turns out that Google+ seems to live up to its hype. Not only does it remind me of the social platforms I already use, but it has removed the kinks that I couldn’t stand and made the platform simpler, better and overall, more fun. For example, Facebook is known for having mega problems within their privacy system. I find their privacy control settings confusing and almost impossible to understand, consequently I am not sure what information I am sharing with the public. Google+ on the other hand, had privacy and filter settings that I found relatively easy to use. I enjoyed being able to see what a person sees when each one clicked on my profile. I could also reduce the chance of a person seeing an embarrassing picture of me (note to my employer: there are no embarrassing pictures of me on the internet …) by restricting what information could be shared within specific circles.
Another major problem I have had with Facebook is the overwhelming amount of noise on the site. Like most people, I am not interested in half the information other users are sharing with me. Google+ allowed me to filter information I read, received and shared. In many ways, it’s similar to the way FirstRain helps its users. FirstRain filters out the junk in the consumer Web for busy professionals the same way Google+ gets rid of the noise of social media. As a result, I didn’t feel as if I was wasting my time scrolling through unnecessary information such as what people ate for breakfast. Potentially, Google+ will enable me to establish a circle solely for business acquaintances and share information that only relates to my company.
There are other appealing features as well, such as their ability to microblog more than either the 140-character Twitter limit or the 400-character Facebook limit. Plus, by combining Google+ with Gmail & YouTube, you get an enormous social media powerhouse, allowing business professionals to access all aspects of social media at once, without having to change websites and without having to rely on multiple platforms.
Although, ultimately, the jury is still out on success and Google+ and what it means for Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, my advice to businesses is that it’s a good time now to become familiar with the Google+ interface and begin thinking about integrating Google+ into future marketing strategies. Business pages are currently prohibited from the site, because according to Google, they want to wait until they can implement it right. And since it’s likely to be a few months before they’re ready, business marketers like us have been given the gift of time to formulate a Google+ game plan … and hopefully one that lives up to the all the excitement.
One of the most rewarding aspects of being a CEO is when you can see the hard work put in by you and your team really paying off.
For the last several weeks, everyone here at FirstRain has been putting in long hours in order to launch the next phase of FirstRain intelligence solutions to market, and so now I am extremely delighted to announce the release of the third generation of the FirstRain Web Application and our new FirstRain mobile apps for iPhone and Android (now available in the iTunes App Store and the Android Marketplace) today.
This important new release represents the third major step forward in FirstRain solution development, and provides our customers a truly unique and effective, role-based way of monitoring the critical developments impacting their business, industry, customers or competitors. In addition to these workflow enhancements and the new mobile apps, we’ve also now optimized FirstRain for use on tablet devices, all of which means that critical business intelligence can now be delivered to any place or time our customers most need to see it: whether it’s over their morning coffee, at their desk, on their company portal or out on the road.
The product also has also had a bit of a make-over, with a fresh-new look and a streamlined design which our non-professional-searcher customers will find even easier to navigate—making it simple to get in, find what you need, and get on with your work.
All in all, we think it’s a big step forward in an already great product, and seeing this really sharp new iteration of FirstRain come to life has been extremely gratifying for me and everyone involved. And for all of you who are FirstRain customers, try out the new role-based monitor setup, download the new mobile apps, and please, let us know what you think!
The underlying way in which FirstRain adds such value to our customers is our unique ability to extract only high-quality Business Web content from the consumer internet, and then deliver it up to folks who need it to make decisions about their company, their industry, their products, their competitors, etc.
But one thing we’ve focused on a bit less is delivering information about the actual practice of certain roles. In other words, rather than the content a sales executive needs to succeed in their job (which we currently do very well), it’s the content that’s ABOUT being a sales professional: the tools they use, the best practices in the space today, the emerging trends, the industry changes, the major purchases, etc. If you’re a sales enablement, operations or support professional, or a manager looking to successfully lead your team to exceed their goals, this information is of great interest.
And it turns out, FirstRain is is pretty good at finding this stuff too! Of course, our friends at Selling Power have been providing leading edge information about sales sucess for many years via Selling Power magazine, SellingPower.com, their conferences, custom publications, and more. So when we sat down to chat about this challenge a couple of months ago it seemed natural to team up!
Monday (June 20) at the Selling Power Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston, MA, Selling Power CEO Gerhard Gschwandtner and I had a chance to discuss the challenge now facing Sales people as they struggle to find useful information on Sales 2.0 issues using Google and other consumer search tools:
And as I mentioned in the video, we’re very happy to announce a new collaboration between FirstRain and Selling Power, delivering new Sales 2.0 “Hot Topics”, powered by FirstRain, right to the home page of SellingPower.com. Included are topics such as CRM & Sales Enablement, and Sales Management & Compensation, and each features high-quality Business Web content found by FirstRain and delivered in real time to SellingPower.com readers.
It’s yet another example of the power FirstRain can deliver Sales, Marketing, Finance and other business professionals, and it’s great to be able to do offer it in collaboration with our friends at Selling Power. For us it’s a bit of an experiment, so check it out and let me know what you think!
