Jeff Nolan

My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. What started, in 2002, as a simple initiative to understand this thing called “blogs” that I kept hearing about has evolved into something much more significant. Home About Venture Chronicles About Venture Chronicles My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. What started, in 2002, as a simple initiative to understand this thing called “blogs” that I kept hearing about has evolved into something much more significant. Along the way to becoming a bona fide blogger I started to understand the implications of user generated content. At the time I was a venture capitalist for SAP, the enterprise software company, and in my travels in the enterprise software market it became evident that blogging would be a powerful communication channel for enterprises to use, what we now call social media, and a powerful information collection mechanism for bottom up corporate intelligence. Combined with search technology, social networking software, and wikis, I was witnessing the inception of an entirely new generation of knowledge management software. I am currently the VP Product Marketing for Get Satisfaction, the simple and effective way to build online communities that enable productive conversations between companies and their customers. Over 50,000 companies use Get Satisfaction to create a social support experience, build better products, realize SEO benefits, and take advantage of brand loyalty behaviors that results in strong word of mouth marketing experiences in the market. I can be reached at jnolan-at-gmail-dot-com.

Latest from Jeff Nolan

About that ‘Unbiased’ AdMob Android Graph We Keep Seeing…

James wrote something yesterday that included this graphic: What caught my attention, as was the intention of the graphic, was the Android traffic number climbing from effectively zero to more than 40% in just a year and a couple of months. Obviously this was the intention of the graphic (note the green color of the ...

Is Discouraging Investment a Good Idea for the Government Right Now?

There is a banking reform bill working through Congress… in case you hadn’t noticed. Fred Wilson points out, rightly so, that the banking reform does a lot more than just reform banking rules, it goes to the very heart of who can invest in non-banking activities and how. 1) Changing the definition of a “qualified ...

IT Expansion in China: Thoughts from My Recent Trip to the Mainland

Last week I wrote a post that covered many of the observation I made on my recent trip to mainland China. Given my background in IT, a natural area of interest for me was the build out of IT in China businesses that are not directly aligned with U.S. or European counterparts… in other words, ...

Pennsylvania School Spying Somehow Getting a Pass in the Media

The Pennsylvania case shows how even well-intentioned plans can go awry if officials fail to understand the technology and its potential consequences, privacy experts said. Compromising images from inside a student’s bedroom could fall into the hands of rogue school staff or otherwise be spread across the Internet, they said. [From Pa. school official defended ...

Revisiting the Viability of Wide-Scale Electric Vehicles [Greentech]

Over the weekend @Devahaz asked me for my thoughts on current status re a post I wrote over 2 years ago lamenting the optimistic projections of newly minted electric vehicle companies. I realize that I may be guilty of “not getting with the program” on this whole electric car business, but does anyone else scoff ...

YouTube and Prop 8: When the Government Backs a Horse in the Online Video Game…

There has been quite a bit of commentary about the decision by a Federal judge to allow video of the ongoing Prop 8 constitutionality trial to be posted on YouTube, a decision that has been stayed by the SCOTUS with a final decision due today. In the meantime, one message is clear: Banning the public ...

Google is Right: China is Not a Developing Country

Larry wrote this today and I think it pretty much sums up the situation for Google in China. Reading all of this laid out in a blog post can be summed up in one word: Wow. Now let’s look at how Google arrived at this big decision, which could result in a complete pullout. Why ...

Why is the Government Competing with Google, Yahoo and Navteq?

The Federal government, specifically the Federal Highway Administration, is spending $1.2 billion of your money to nationalize the 511 highway traffic reporting system, replicating what Yahoo, Google, Navteq, and others are already doing. This is a great example of the overreach that is endemic to the Federal government but what is really troubling about it ...

San Francisco Tries to Encourage More Entrepreneurship [Do or Do Not, There Is No Try]

This is the message that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is sending: “This legislation is trying to eliminate from the books the complete, unnecessary nickeling-and-diming of our business entrepreneurs during our worst economic recession since the Great Depression,” Chiu said. [From S.F.’s bid to wipe out some extra business fees] It sounds great until ...

Who Really Owns a Community?

Taunton Press is a respected publisher known for a family of publications beginning with “Fine” as in Fine Cooking, Fine Homebuilding, Fine Woodworking, and Fine Gardening, we well as series of hard bound books and a premium subscription online service. Each of their publications features an accompanying online component that includes videos, blogs, and most ...