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Why I'm Part of BlogOn
Something incredible is happening in the marketplace. Social media is the most rapidly emerging technology sector—-one with at least the same disruptive potential as the Web promised in the early and middle 90s. At BlogOn, we are presenting the case for social media, and the business models we believe will endure. We are demonstrating not just the tools but a look at how the world will be once the social media goes through the inevitable transitional wormhole.
I am so convinced of the power and promise of social media that I have joined two long-time colleagues to form Guidewire Group. My partners are Mike Sigal, a serial technology and media entrepreneur and Frank Kelcz, best known for launching Ziff-Davis’ media properties in Europe. We share a vision for a diversified media company that accelerates innovative technology into emerging markets. BlogOn is our first step and we are preparing for it with all the urgency and zeal required by a start up wishing to successfully deliver its first product to market. For me, this is a time of euphoria.
After more than 20 years of looking at start ups under the employ of global corporations, it is exhilarating to actually drink the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid and build some equity through inspiration and perspiration.
I hope this blog starts a conversation that continues onto the BlogOn stage, and then on and on. When we began this project a couple of months back 2.7 million were being tracked and by the time our speakers take to the stage, the number will have exceeded 3.2 million.
Simultaneously, 10s of millions of people are using social networking software to find jobs, deals, friends or dates. All of this has only just begun. The mainstream has not yet seen the tsunami forming on the changing sea, and I believe the best is yet to come....
Posted by Chris Shipley at 03:16 PM on June 25, 2004