Josh Dilworth

With the financial downturn prompting more than a little fear and navel gazing (some justified and some not), we’ve already seen Rafe and CNET begin chronicalling hirings and firings, while TechCrunch, not to be outdone, has started its very FuckedCompany-esque Layoff Tracker.

Today, ReadWrite launched their Jobwire site, which is pretty interesting (and was, by the way, instigated long before the beginning of the meltdown). They are looking at true hirings (there is a difference between “hiring” and “hired”), coupling that with a job board, and providing some depth and context and smarts around these comings and goings.

Plus, they are bringing on some heavy hitters as guest editors:

“Our first two core guest editors are former Financial Times reporter Tom Foremski of SiliconValleyWatcher and long-trusted media analyst Sam Whitmore of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey. These guys bring years of cutting edge knowledge and experience to the Jobwire and we’re very thankful for their participation.”

I was particularly excited, after checking out the beta site/mockups last night, that Jobwire uses hirings as a lens to look at the people behind the companies we all follow so closely — and as such I hope it blossoms into a veritable chronicle of the “who” behind “what” and the “why.”

Congrats to Marshall and RWW — I know the team is very proud of the new site, and this should be fun to watch. Not to mention that Jobwire is a dream come true for PR people looking for a place to talk about new hires as a measure of momentum and success, especially these days…

Just caught this thanks to Josh Baer — Austin is the #1 city in America in the “bang for your buck” category. In other news, our fair Texan city is also the top city for people “who read and contribute to blogs,” at 15%.

Rock on.

This is worth reading — a write-up of some of the fun we had pushing out the Twine screencast videos — and the new risk/reward dynamic, particularly when it comes to messaging and brand management.

Disclosure: Twine is a client.

A great piece from Nova Spivack on “interest networks” — a new category of software that is seeing a ton of momentum right now, from Twine and Friendfeed to Strands, SocialMedian, Popego, Zimesh, and more (and including stealth companies Primal Fusion and Quitera too).

Quoting Nova:

“At a time when social media fatigue is setting in, the news cycle is growing shorter and shorter, and the world is delivered to us in soundbytes and catchphrases, we crave substance. We go to great lengths in pursuit of substance. Interest networks solve this problem – they deliver substance.

So, what is an interest network?

In short, if a social network is about who you are interested in, an interest network is about what you are interested in. It’s the logical next step.”

I 100% second his point about substance in particular.

Twine comes out of beta tonight and it will be fun to see the service grow outside of the beta firewall.

Disclosure: Twine is a client.

I’m really excited for our panel on Friday — the overall goal is to have a wide-ranging conversation about how companies in alpha and beta today are making progress towards singularity principles of the more distant future. Don’t mind the current description on the website — instead, we’re foregoing ye olde startup dating game format in favor of a more faceted approach.

We have (with a nod towards’s Brockman’s original Digerati piece) a marketer, an academic, a journalist, and an entrepreneur on the panel (though most are multi-hyphenates). I’m grateful to have Chris Morrison of Venturebeat, Dag Kittlaus of Siri, and Tom Dietterich of Oregon State (and formerly of Strands and EMC’s Smart Desktop) onboard.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, and if you’ll be in San Jose on Friday or Saturday, I’d love to see you!

At last I can at least say a little about this company, which my wife can attest has me very excited/bullish.

Congrats to Dag, Adam and Tom on the first step of a long journey to commercialize technology that will, in my admittedly biased opinion, prove as important as that first ARPANET message from UCLA to SRI.

The company obviously isn’t able to say much more at this time (and for good reason) but we’re looking forward to opening up even more over the next 6-9 months. Stay tuned, folks, this is going to be fun.

Disclosure: Siri is a client.

Big news from GigaOm today — and a notable follow-up to my piece last week on the top 5 technology blogs and their respective business + talent strategies:

“We are going to use this new investment prudently, to enhance our technology platform and content offerings, add to our current portfolio of publications and expand our Events and Briefings businesses. We are in investing for the long-term — in ourselves.”

Note too some disclosures that are new:

• Carolyn Pritchard is now the managing editor of the network
• Syndication deal with CNNMoney.com (I missed this)
• Doubled the number of “visitors to our sites”

My wife just posted a very thoughtful piece on her blog, “Becoming Doctor Jones,” which is written for graduate students pursuing their Ph.D., and explores the various challenges (and corresponding strategies) that rise up along the way. A sort of Lifehacker for academics;)

The post is about networking and “good deeds”, which to many marketers, journalists and entrepreneuers come naturally as an extension of being passionate about your work. But Liz got me thinking about what it was like back when, fresh out of college, I didn’t know the first thing about “networking.”

There is no shortage of writing on this topic (Larry and Guy are my all-time favorites). But think that for me the turning point at which I became “good at networking” was exactly the point at which I stopped thinking of networking as “networking” and just started hanging out, having fun, and being myself.

But what does “being myself” really mean?

If we’re talking personal branding here, and personal benefit, let’s go the full nine yards and talk about the archetypes too. Me? I think I am some combination of The Caregiver and The Explorer, or at least I aspire to be. And there are a two others that are reliable indicators of good networkers in my mind — The Jester and The Creator.

I’m willing to bet that most successful networkers exhibit the qualities of these 4 archetypes in some combination. What they (The Creator, The Explorer, The Jester and The Caretaker) all have in common is a certain altruism, an awareness of the collective good — qualities that are the very foundation of and impetus for “networking” in the first place — that is, the idea that we are greater than the sum of our parts, if we can somehow manage to piece it all together correctly;)

Check out the 10/2 episode at about 6:58 in – he makes fun LBS and links it into the search for Osama – pretty funny;)

Disclosure: Moximity is a client.

The first 1/3 of panels have been announced, with the other 2/3 coming over the next few weeks. Congrats to everyone who has been accepted thus far!

We’ve also announced that Tony Hsieh (Zappos) will be giving the Opening Remarks and that Chris Anderson + Guy Kawasaki will be doing a Keynote Interview.

More soon!

Disclosure: SXSWi is a client.