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IanHendry

Listed below are comments made by IanHendry between Monday, 12th May 2008 and Thursday, 23rd July 2009.

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The spinning of Spinvox 11:28am on 23 Jul 2009 I've always struggled a little with Spinvox, as the text based messages don't pick up on the emotion in a voicemail, which helps you prioritise and prepare.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
Facebook's founder - too late to cash in? 08:09am on 15 Oct 2008 @stublake13... When you found your own business it is your baby. It's a reflection of yourself and there is no difference between your own view and that of the company you own. My views remain consistent and I stand by them regardless of what hat I am wearing.

Perhaps this fact is at the root of Zuckerberg's problems. He still wishes to bring the baby up himself and in his image, although also wishes to trade as a $15Bn internet goliath at the same time. I don't think the two are compatible unless you have entrepeurialism in your genes. By contract, I think Mr Zuckerberg is a geek who got lucky rather than an entrepreneur. Unlike the business savvy Google co-founders, he has raised the money but hadn't shown he can do anything clever with it (e.g. identify a revenue model!).

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Facebook's founder - too late to cash in? 08:21am on 13 Oct 2008
I love this piece Rory. Although knocking social networks and everything Web 2.0 seems a fashion that has started to overwhelm in the last week, it is entirely fair to be asking Zuckerberg and others or trade on massive valuations exactly how they can be justified.

There is indeed a direct link to current over-inflated valuations and all that was happening 8 - 10 years ago during the Dot Com boom. I read some of the interviews with the German papers and Zuckerberg was happy to say that revenue is "not important" and the focus is on growth. This has exactly the same ring as the Dot Com Boom which, lets remember, burst when the markets met some turbulence overall and everyone realised that the crazy valuations being promoted by so-called "analysts" were the Emperor's New Clothes.

Any business without a plan of how to really benefit its customers while making money is NOT a business. Facebook is fun but has dubious value; it's "customers" pay nothing and have proven in their switch from MySpace that they are fickle. This is a $15Bn valuation on a house of cards.

As founder of a UK-based business focused social networking with a solid business model and revenues, I look forward to a clear out of the space when reality hits the people who fund most of our rivals.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Can LinkedIn win from losers? 08:39am on 07 Oct 2008
I see LinkedIn used for two things: reconnecting with former colleagues and research on people at companies that are targets of sales/marketing campaigns.

The first of these is nice, but I know these people already of course. It's not doing much to help me meet people I don't know who might need what it is I do. And as big as my network is (300+) I don't expect many of the people in it to spend much time helping me find new customers.

The second of these purposes is useful, but to those using the information more than those submitting it. And what use is in influx of unemployed financial services workers in this?

LinkedIn is really missing a trick by not providing more tools to help broker valuable new connections. In fact, it advises you don't accept invitations from people you don't know. That doesn't seem like business networking to me.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
My so-called digital life 1:23pm on 12 May 2008 The announcements from MySpace, Facebook and now Google are broadly to be welcomed. They will help facilitate the next wave of social networking, which will see specialist, more focused sites providing much more relevent content for users (which will also benefit advertisers, who beyond capital funds will be paying for such sites to prosper).

Whereas today you would need to register your details, build a profile and build a new contact network with you on each site that interests you, this will make it easier for you to take those common elements around with you to each new site.

I think fears that you may not be able to delete yourself from such sites are unfounded, as your details will only go to sites your authorise and you can go back to those sites to delete any additional information you left there, as of now.

In my mind, however, what would be better still is that 'independent' sites hold and manage your identity and friends lists, plus provide a list of all the sites you have authorised this information be extended to. I know OpenID innovators like ClickPass (http://www.clickpass.com) are working on such things. And I believe it wouldn't be hard for Google with iGoogle, effectively becoming a point of entry and aggregrator to all the web's other social networking sites. Maybe Friend Connect just greases the wheels for a bigger announcement yet to come...?

Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

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