Ross Mayfield
Chairman, President & Co-founder of Socialtext, a leading Enterprise Social Software provider. Previously VP of Marketing for a Fujitsu spinout and CEO of an enterprise risk management software company. Co-founded RateXchange (AMEX:RTX), the leading B2B commodity exchange for telecom, founded an ISP, a web-design company, and has served on a number of Advisory Boards of high tech startups. Mayfield is a former advisor to the Office of the President of Estonia and began his career in the non-profit sector. He is a noted blogger, industry expert, conference speaker. 
Our Santa story
Our family’s santa story ended up in a Canadian newspaper. Parents beware: it’s that time of year when ‘is Santa real?’ searches spike Santa Claus tries the slopes on Whistler mountain in Whistler, B.C. on Saturday Dec. 17, 2011. Parents beware: with just a few days left till Christmas, it might be wise to keep [...]
Protect the Internet Bill
Instead of constantly playing defense against congress, we should pass a Protect the Internet Bill. SOPA and PIPA are very dangerous symptoms of an underlying problem. Powerful embedded interests from the entertainment to the telecom lobby will continue to introduce legislation that threatens the net. Congress will continue to be driven by these interests and [...]
PageRank is Dead (The Rush to SocialRank)
Its so fun to write oversimplified posts about such-and-such is dead. Not because its true. At best you can point out something is broken and alternatives are rising fast. But I wonder how the people behind the aging technology and…
The Web is Back
This morning SlideShare launched a complete rewrite from Flash to HTML5, and a new mobile web app. You would think that as the world’s largest social content network, with 60M monthly unique visitors (you too can be unique) this would be a big deal. Here’s Liz Gannes from All Things Digital: SlideShare Does Biggest Redesign [...]
Brands in Google Plus
Google+ has captured the imagination of marketers. So much imagination that Google responded early saying Plus for Businesses is on the way: “Right now we’re very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience, but we have a great team…
Color
Wow that’s hot. Social networking, mobile, photo sharing. $41M raised before launch. Testing conventions, with damn good timing. But will this color fade to grey? Mobile social software application Color launched today. With more pre-launch funding by Sequoia et. al. than Flickr was bought for it is something to watch. Smart and accomplished team, which [...]
The Terror of the Internet in the Middle East
As we watch the most incredible of events unfold in the Middle East, we certainly don’t know how they will conclude and it may take longer to understand them. Social Media, nay, the Internet, didn’t cause the revolution in Egypt. They underlying cause is more likely ineffective and unjust totalitarian rule. We can dismiss how [...]
SlideShare Zipcasts for Real Time Collaboration
A long time ago Tim Oren scribbled this on a napkin to help explain a little of what he learned about collaboration. We put wikis in the top left, email in the bottom left and IM in the bottom right. He described that at the top right is a collaboration sweet spot, but a place [...]
A Letter from the Chairman
I co-founded Socialtext in 2002, and through eight-years of hard work pioneered the hottest category of Enterprise software. An old Estonian saying says “the work will show you the way.” And what has kept me going through this journey is great people and a continual source of new opportunities. As I’ve written before, startups always [...]
Distributed Talent, Beyond Silicon Valley
Om has a great post on Silicon Valley and the Talent Crunch. With angel funding booming and companies like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga growing like bad good talent and real estate are growing scarce again in the Valley. Yes, we cycle through boom and bust — but what I don’t understand is why we don’t learn [...]
