Saturday, February 15, 2014

Salebarn 3.0 ... the highest quality social networking technology for free markets

Friendships matter far more than technology.  Good friends push their friends to become better. The highest QUALITY social network technology is about eliminating the wasted effort and misunderstanding in human networking.

Discovering and nurturing content-driven talent is the foundation of any organization, business, club, association, social network ... people who "bring something to the table," who share valuable content are the basis of why a network of networks matters.  To address the need for a network of people who understand the importance of interlinkages between various networks of experts and afficianodos and tribes of marketers who cater to those networks, Salebarn.com is creating a new program to recruit co-founders ... in many ways this program is similar to those used in different organizations such as Edward D Jones or Gawker.   Co-founders are in business for themselves; the Salebarn.com network infrastructure owned by independent businesses means that they are not by themselves.  
THE STRUCTURE of the SALEBARN.COM NETWORK
Games are fun to play, but they depend upon rules so that the players can enjoy playing the game together.  The rules should recognize that the players will, at times, be very competitive and will aggressively attack new opportunities in ways that other players find threatening. Humans are gregarious; they crave interaction and they value fairness, but competition is the essence of free markets.  It is unrealistic to expect that all of the players are going play the game with the same strategy.   It is unrealistic to expect that there will never be disagreements among the players -- the structure of the network must strive to accelerate the negotiation process that is used to hammer out the disagreements among the competitive players, so that those players can offer the best alternatives, best choices, best prices to the bidders, sellers, buyers and others who get information from the Salebarn.com network.

Recruited co-founders will become owners of the Salebarn.com network by transacting business via the network and paying a very modest and nominal fee to cover their services.  Any profits generated by the network will be reinvested within 12 months; if the network buys any assets, the debts incurred from purchasing those assets will be paid off as soon as practical.   Recruited founders will Salebarn.com as a social media posting tool; they can post as little or as often as they'd like; determining which social media networks to use and timing of their message (e.g. items for sale) so that they optimize the sweet spot of their marketing, analytical and relationship-tuning processes. 
Co-founders will report to their site lead and take direction and advice.

Co-founders will abide by standards to which all Gawker employees and contractors abide.

Attempts to "game" the numbers by nefarious, unethical, or needlessly impolitic behavior (bot nets, false reports, or republishing without linking, in respective example) will result in the termination of a Recruit's contract, at our discretion.
The goal is to discover and train new talent and to pair that talent so that co-founders can build long-term relationships, not to momentarily mine cheap traffic with a rotating pool of collaborators and competitors [to keep the saw sharp].

This opportunity will not be for everyone.  It is anticipated that fewer than 1 in 10, maybe even fewer than 1 in 100, of the co-founders will decide to be involved on a full-time basis over the long-term ... many will decide that there are more optimal career paths and better opportunities elsewhere ... the goal should be to encourage those co-founders to move quickly through the process of discerning their optimal career path and developing their independent business or profession.
FATBAQ (FREQUENTLY-ANTICIPATED-TO-BE-ASKED QUESTIONS)
Q. How many recruited co-founders will you bring on?
A. We're going to start recruiting 25 per day; we'll will try that for four weeks or 20 days (500 recruits total) and then re-evaluate ... we believe that we will need 100 co-founders in order to ensure success in the initial phase of this effort.
Q. How do I become a co-founder?
A. Attend auctioneering college, join NAA, join your State Auctioneer Association ... participate in those organizations, build friendships and partnerships, work at developing a viable going concern.
Q. What happens if a co-founder [or if Salebarn.com] decides that the co-founder is not sufficiently interested to make the relationship successful?
A. We realize that situations and commitments crop up unexpectantly, but if the co-founder goes six weeks without any action, Salebarn.com will give them three "inactivity warnings" ... if there is no response, Salebarn.com will shut down their subsite and recruit another co-founder to fill a niche similar to theirs.
Q. What is a Site Lead? 
A.   Salebarn will have a limited number of top-level sites such as ... Livestock.salebarn.com ... Firearms.salebarn.com ... Equipment.salebarn.com ... a Site Lead is a co-founder who has made a larger upfront investment and has taken leadership for a top-level Site. 
Q. How will the Salebarn.com CONSTITUTION be developed?
A. In a Constitutional Convention ... we will propose a Constitution, then we'll talk about it, then the co-founders that wish to participate will ratify the Constitution.
Q. How will Salebarn.com discourage bad or lazy attempts at marketing or "traffic whoring"?
A. Salebarn.com will be governed by its co-founders according to its Constitution.  The entire governing process will be extremely transparent.
Q. Can a co-founders sub-site feature JUNK ... such as pornography, copyrighted materials, trojans, unfounded slander, pictures of pigs with poop on their balls, 1,000-word posts with only the word "abortion" pasted within, Nick Denton photoshops, or…
A. Nope.  INSTANT termination of the relationship with very limited rights of appeal.  If you choose to behave like an idiot and do not honor the standards of the Salebarn.com community, you do not belong in the Salebarn.com universe.
Q. What's the most important thing to remember?
A. This list of questions is too long already ... we are just getting started with rev 3.0, but we have been having a conversation with a huge mountain of stone for a long time.  QUALITY is what is left when you remove the waste -- delivering quality is like sculpting the statue that is hidden within a block of stone.  Salebarn 3.0 is about delivering quality in social networking technology for free markets.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Choices abound in the world of social media -- look around, try other networks, be patient as they grow, get ready to GO ELSEWHERE.


Facebook's ONLY positive attribute now is its LARGE base of users; and that LARGE base of users attracts others who want the shared content of the users. 

Facebook is still benefiting from the work done five to ten years ago by people, like Jeff Hammerbacher, et al, who built the original "crashwhale-free" infrastructure ... FB ate Twitter's lunch by being reliable at a time when a lot of people were joining social networks and communicating via smartphones (i.e. a BIGGER, safer, friendlier, more reliable network than MySpace or Friendster ever had a prayer of having). 



Facebook has probably taken its market share for granted.  The arrogance of huge success is always difficult to avoid.  The earnest dweebiness of Facebook was cute five years ago, but now it's more than a little old.  The analogy is far from perfect, but it is sort of like how KMart and Sears ran out of gas in the 70s.  Eventually [maybe already], the day will arrive when that large base of users will eventually realize that there are places other than a shabby old KMart/Sears staffed by lame idiots and clueless asshholes who want to dick with the users because they can. 


The quantity and QUALITY of the connectedness possible within a social network matters.   For that reason, social media preference is stickier than beer preference.  It's all about networking ... but social media preference probably not permanent, because there are still different ways to network.   There will always be something better that comes along, but who knows what that might be.  What we know is that Facebook is showing its age.  Facebook's grip on the market relative to any other player might look overwhelming, but it is not so overwhelming when we consider the class of "anything BUT Facebook."  It is quite clear that people want choice.