I was honored to be chosen as a member of the Silicon Valley 100. The Silicon 100 is a group of folks that my friend Auren Hoffman put together. As covered in yesterday’s Newsweek article, The Connected Get More Connected, the members of the Silicon 100 receive new products and, if they like them, the idea is that they will produce favorable reviews and tell their friends to check out the products. Viral marketing at its finest. But wait you say! Is this really cost-effective for companies? Do these 100 people really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?
There are definitely skeptics out there. Dan Gilmor calls it “oddly creepy.” As another blog from a Business 2.0 writer pointed out: “I like the sweet irony of this - the first product being offered is a shitter! What Crap!” Why the fuss? Well the most salient comments have been a) this won’t work and b) the folks in the Silicon 100 need to disclose that they are getting these products for free.
Note: If you just want to read about the kick-ass toilet, go to the "Enough Toilet Talk" section.
Why the Silicon 100 works: Connectors matter. I don’t really consider myself a “connector”, but apparently Auren does J The group is made of people from Silicon Valley such as: Marc Andreessen, Tim Draper, Stewart Alsop, Aileen Lee, Igor Sill, Bill Gurley, Ron Conway, Heidi Roizen, Katie Mitic, Pat House, Rusty Rueff, Hooman, Trevor Hewitt, Sean Parker, Ross Mayfield, Brad Templeton, and Joi Ito. There are several other “connector” marketing groups around, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of that targets Silicon Valley exclusively.
For those new to the theory on how groups like this work it goes like this. Our “social network” is made up of the web of the people we know. Interesting stuff can travel through our social networks. Viruses, ideas, power, products, and a whole lot more. The most famous example is the Six Degrees of Separation, also more popularly known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Six degrees means that you can reach anyone in the world in at most “six” hops. For example, 4 hops is the shortest route I have to Kevin Bacon. I went to school with a guy named Ryan Cummins. Ryan was a stunt double for Colin Farrell in that amazing movie SWAT. Colin Farrell was in a movie with Tom Gury. Tom Gury was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon. So the Oracle says I have a Bacon number of 4 (at least that’s the shortest path I know).
Not so long ago, discussion and interest in social networks was relegated to academics and researchers. While the idea of “networking” was pervasive throughout business and society, the underlying structure, benefits, and processes surrounding a person’s network or network of people was still unclear. Using data on network characteristics, the benefits of the design of social networks was first investigated by a paper called “The Strength of Weak Ties,” written in 1973 by my mentor Mark Granovetter. Mark found that weak ties (to those outside a person’s normal clique) held a surprising importance to many network functions such as finding a job or new information.
It is only in the past couple of years that this field has taken off, popularized by books such as Linked, The Tipping Point, and Six Degrees. Also, recent companies/services like Friendster, Orkut, MySpace, and Spoke have tried to monetize these theories by creating online communities and services based on your network of friends or contacts. New research has attempted to glean more information on the type and make-up of the global social network. What has been found is that social networks tend to be scale-free in nature, meaning that the majority of people know a relatively small number of people, but that there are individuals called “hubs” in the network that have an abnormally large number of relationships. That’s what connectors like the people in the Silicon 100 are, “hubs” in the network. The argument that they are an insular group is untrue. They are the people in the global social network that have a tremendous number of relationships. More importantly, they have a diverse network. If you can imagine social networks as a bunch of little clusters of people that know each other, and the paths to people that the Silicon 100 are being lit up, you would find that these people touch a inordinate amount of the little clusters in the network.
Okay, I’ve bored you with enough theory. Let’s see some hard numbers.
The Economics: All in, the first Silicon 100 customer must have paid at least $10k to send out its product when you include COGS, shipping, and Auren’s fee. I did a little digging on Google and the search word “toilet” gets around 780 ad clicks per day. The average cost-per-click (CPC) is $0.42. So, in the very simplest model, using the $10k cost assumption, for the same amount of exposure the group of 100 people would each have to get around 238 people interested enough to go to the company’s website. I think that’s pretty realistic, don’t you? Even if it was just for laughs, I sent the website to at least 30 of my friends. I can't track clicks-throughs to Brondell, but this post had 391 hits yesterday. If any of these folks decide to visit they will be far more qualified that just a Google adwords click since it comes from a trusted source.
I still don’t buy into this idea….well it made the front page of Slashdot and you are reading this blog aren’t you? More people will read articles about cool toilets than ever before. The company has the mindshare it’s looking for in the right demo.
Let’s get to the more interesting “crap.” The Brondell Swash! (NOTE: If you haven’t figured it out, I got this s**t for free) Ross Mayfield and Joi Ito politely decided to pass on this first Silicon 100 product, but I couldn’t resist.
This is a serious toilet (or more accurately toilet seat). It has a front and rear water wash, a warm air dryer, a remote control, a heater, and best of all, an emergency siren for those large movements. The fancy toilet has been a craze in Japan for some years and apparently Brondell thinks that it might catch on in the US as well. One problem, the price point is a little high for most. $900 for the model they sent us. However, I’m sure the Brondell is geared at the higher end of the market anyways. Again, a reason the Silicon 100 works especially well since the group is targeted at a higher-end social network.
Why this thing rocks:
What they could do better:
Tips for Installation:
Want to try it out? Feel free to shoot me an email. I may start a toilet timeshare.
Hilarious amount of detail at the end there, Zaw ....
Posted by: Chris Mah | January 28, 2005 at 02:12 PM
Hey Wayne. The chain is interesting, certainly speaks to the diversity of these networks :)
Posted by: Zaw Thet | January 25, 2005 at 10:59 AM