plaxoed!

today is my first day of work at plaxo.

as many people have guessed, i’ve been interviewing for the past month. when i accepted the job at google, i thought i’d be able to escape the hectic interviewing process for a while - at least 2 or 3 years. but as life would have it, i only escaped for 2 weeks :O

after i was let go, i went around networking with a lot of people. along the way, i met jeremy zawodny, robert scoble, david sifry, joyce park, russell beattieand many others. they were all extremely supportive of helping me find a new job - thanks for all your support. they’ve also been responsible for helping me find and explore a bunch of awesome opportunities.

additionally, as the news broke of what had happened to me, recruiters started contacting me. this was a very unique experience; while most job seekers have to go to great lengths to get a foot in the door, i was being aggressively pursued. in this regard, i would have to say that i was extremely - and unexpectedly - blessed. God really does provide in difficult times.

then came the interviews! while interviewing these past few weeks, i’ve learned a lot about different corporate cultures. i used to evaluate the job environment just by gut feel; now i know to ask very specific questions regarding how open the company is, how it likes to communicate and what the corporate dynamics are like. i’ve always thought of interviewing as a two way street, both the employer and potential employee checking for the optimal fit. now, i realize that interviewing can serve as a deep thin-slice of a company. in other words, checking a company’s website gives you a broad overview while going through an interview loop with a company gives you an opportunity to get in-depth knowledge.

anyways, enough commentary and on to the results! as most people expected, i interviewed with the big tech companies: microsoft, yahoo and amazon. i also interviewed or chatted with a ton of start-ups (including places like technorati, filangy, etc.). in the end, i was looking for a very specific mix of attributes that would constitute the perfect job for me. the company had to have:

• commitment and transparency to customers
• a passion for revolutionizing the end-user experience
• an open environment where people are free to be different and fosters creative expression
• the ability to be nimble, ship solutions quickly, and adjust to market changes
• extremely talented people and cohesive, productive teams
• awesome mentorship opportunities

after getting quite a few offers, i sat down to consider my options. in the end, plaxo had everything i was looking for and more. as a bonus, they fully support my blogging activities as well - they recognize the power of keeping the door open to the community through blogs.

i’m super excited to be at plaxo. for those who are wondering, the HR orientation presentation was approximately 5 minutes. now that’s efficiency :D

a microsoftie was inspired to write a remix of jay-z’s song “99 problems” in light of events that have happened to me. not all of the song is completely accurate, but i would say it’s definitely entertaining :)

it looks like google is winning, publishers are losing and users are too ignorant to care. i’ve read quite a few opinions on this feature in the past few days (since setting up a pubsub for the term - which, by the way, is an awesome service) and it looks like, in general, publishers are up in arms and users don’t really know what the problem is. since it has been made quite clear that google doesn’t care about what publishers want, it seems that the battle is over. even scoble has resigned on this one. once again, google’s mindshare - or rather mindlock - on users will win out and people will just take what’s given to them.

of course, as a user, i actually like the feature. but i recognize the danger in giving a tool that kind of control and it just gives me a bad gut feel.

the next logical step? MSN should immediately add smart tags into their toolbar - they wouldn’t even have to write it, it’s probably sitting around in some old, archived repository. then, when the user navigates to google.com and is about to attempt a search, the MSN icon on the toolbar should begin to blink and animate, begging users to click on it. when they do, it imperceptibly changes google’s search page so that queries are actually directed to MSN search. additionally, they could even release a “security update” to IE that prevents google from blocking the smart tags like publishers are blocking autolinks.

those who don’t believe in the slippery slope arguments are really blinded by the brand. we’re not at the top of that slope, we’re already more than halfway down!

as i was going to bed, i noticed that jeremy and others had posted about the launch of Yahoo Search Developer Network (YSDN). note the striking resemblance in name to MSDN - i’m sure that isn’t a coincidence. yahoo is really taking the lead here by not just providing web apis (which google has had for a while now), but in really creating a developer community. a good chunk of YSDN is focused on getting the word out about user developed apps, connecting people together through mailing lists and having people share expertise through a community wiki.

it seems that yahoo is clearly imitating microsoft in creating an ecosystem for developers; aside from fueling the creation of new and innovative user experiences, the emergence of a developer community enhances platform stickiness.

after all, if you build it, they will come.