If you’re looking for me, I’m on PandaWhale.
I’m stashing many things there.
And reflecting.
It’s Twenty Ten and I’m hungry for something new to add to my steady diet of facebooking, linking in, and tweeting. (2009 was pretty much the year of Twitter for me, thanks to Tweetie 2.)
So I asked myself: On which service can I become a whale in 2010?
Whale, n. One of the biggest users of an Internet service, who together with other whales form its delicious nucleus. Whales are Malcolm Gladwell‘s “Connectors” and they are the foundation of any social network’s etiquette, memory, and wisdom.
Being a whale on a social network can be quite frustrating — Facebook stops us at 5000 connections at which point our iPhone app pretty much stops working; LinkedIn won’t tell people how many connections we have once we’re over 500; and Twitter displays a fail whale whenever they can’t handle the truth.
So why do people become whales? Whales are born, not made; whales cannot NOT whale. It’s in our nature. Plus, being a whale can be quite rewarding: you get a lot of social capital and are able to move among different groups of people to spread interesting thoughts and products. Bonus: Whales also feel inexplicably good when they introduce people who otherwise might never have met.
So where in 2010 will I be able to whale to my big pimpin’ heart’s content?
Of the 30something startups I know who are hiring, this weekend I got more than a dozen invitations from:
Yelp has been around for years, but its recent use of Facebook Connect has given it new life. Foursquare launched last year, but it has gotten really hot in the last month.
Even so, none of my connection counts on these services come close to my friends on Facebook (4997), LinkedIn (“500+” — really??), and Twitter (3838).
Side note: I’m also a fan of Gowalla (180 connections) but I haven’t gotten any new invites on there in a while. I wonder if users are intimidated by places with names like Death Star and Helms Deep.
Memo to all consumer Internet services: You get the behaviors you allow. Whales make it so.
Yes, this is the worst economy of my lifetime. I know plenty of great people who are looking for work, and I remind them not to lose hope. We’re clawing our way out of the recession one job at a time, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I do have some friends who are hiring — mostly for developer jobs, but as these companies grow, they’ll hire for other positions, too. I will try to keep this list up-to-date. But as heisenthought points out, everybody wants JavaScript developers, it seems.
Please at-reply me on Twitter if you’d like an introduction to any of these companies:
SayNow (Palo Alto, CA) — JavaScript and Ruby developers who like to rapidly prototype social applications
Gowalla (Austin, TX) — Ruby, JavaScript, and mobile developers
Foursquare (New York) — Excellent developers
Hypertable (Burlingame, CA) — Technically-minded salesperson
Quora (Palo Alto, CA) — Python developers
Asana (Palo Alto, CA) — designers, developers, and a businessperson
Plancast (San Francisco) — JavaScript and PHP developers
Payvment (San Francisco) — JavaScript and PHP developers
Apture (San Francisco) — JavaScript and Python developers
AppDiscover (Redwood City, CA) — iPhone and Android developers
Campfire Labs (San Francisco) — Javascript, Ruby, and Python developers, and systems engineers
Dolores Labs (San Francisco) — your guess is as good as mine
Sitepen (anywhere) — JavaScript developers, visual designers, and project managers
EcoFactor (San Carlos, CA) — Java developers
Manymoon (San Francisco) — Java and JavaScript developers
InTwig (Redwood City, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers
eFitPlan (San Francisco) — Java/PHP/Ruby developers who want to fuse the latest exercise science with computer science to provide personalized workouts and fitness coaching to the masses, for free
Breakthrough (Palo Alto, CA) — Ruby engineers, a Product Manager, and a Director of Sales, ideally with health care experience but not required
Palaran (Palo Alto, CA) — Search scientists, Systems engineers, Frontend hackers
Reputation Defender (Redwood City, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers
Truveo (San Francisco) — web developers and sysadmins
iSocket (San Mateo, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers
Ribbit (Mountain View, CA) — C++, Java, Flash, and mobile developers
Ustream (Mountain View, CA) — C++, PHP, Flash, JavaScript, and mobile developers
Blekko (Redwood Shores, CA) — Perl, C++, and JavaScript developers
Wolfram Alpha (San Mateo, CA) — everything
Lithium (Emeryville, CA) — a little bit of everything
Gaia (San Jose, CA) — PHP and Flash developers
Watercooler (Mountain View, CA) — JavaScript, PHP, and Flash developers
Playdom (Mountain View, CA) — JavaScript, PHP, and Flash developers
Sociable (San Francisco, CA) — Product manager
Liftium (San Francisco) — JavaScript and Ruby developers who want to on-ramp new publishers using Liftium’s ad technology
Chai Labs (Mountain View, CA) — Rock stars
Snooth (New York) — JavaScript and PHP developers, and salespeople
Yelp (San Francisco) — JavaScript, Python, and iPhone developers
Etsy (Brooklyn, NY) — The question is, what AREN’T they hiring right now?
Hunch (New York) — JavaScript and Python developers, and an analytically-driven blogger
Betfair (San Francisco) — a little bit of everything
Glitch (Canada) — ???
Trackville (Mountain View, CA) — ???
Kerosene and a Match (Orange County, CA) — ???
knx.to (Menlo Park, CA) — business development person
speedi.ly (Palo Alto, CA) — ???
AdCru (San Mateo, CA) — ???
Ellerdale (Menlo Park, CA) — ???
PandaWhale (Palo Alto, CA) — iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and CSS/JavaScript-on-mobile-Webkit developers
Career Resources (Redwood City, CA) — looking for temps
And of course Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zynga, Ning, Bing, and Silver Spring Networks are hiring too.
Favorite post of 2007:
Historical Financial Charts — Are You Invested In These Markets?
Favorite post of 2008:
Agency Costs and the Financial Crisis
Good times.
Today is Blog Action Day: Poverty. You can register here.
The main thing I want to say about poverty is that I’m disappointed that poverty has left the discourse now that John Edwards is no longer actively campaigning. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has said much about poverty, and I’m guessing it’s because it’s not a topic that will help them win the election in a few weeks. That makes me a sad panda. You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its poorest people. They aren’t represented much in our Congress because the poor cannot afford lobbyists. More than forty years ago Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty, and we still struggle today. We can end poverty in America and in the world if we have the will. When we do so, America and the world will be much better off.
At least Barack Obama inspires people. John McCain seems like more of a placeholder than an inspirer. Perhaps, if elected, Barack will take up the issue of poverty. He does seem to care more about what poor people go through. But George W. Bush has left him a lot of other messes to clean up as well. So we’ll see.