Exciting New Year 2005

Become.com beta

The beta test is going well. We are making a lot of progress and implementing a lot of improvements. Most people that I talk to think that we are developing another comparison shopping site but what we are really developing is a new search engine. A search engine for shopping-related information. Still, it is flattering to be written up by many search engine experts out there like Search Engine Watch and Jason Dowdell who writes for Webpronews. In some ways it is a lot of pressure because we need to develop something that is even better than mySimon. We are getting ready to launch the site to the public next month so there is a ton of work to do. This is certainly a very exciting time for us as we are developing the next generation search engine technology.

On Blog

I have been using Bloglines for a while and I must say that I am pretty happy with it. It is so convenient to read all of my favorite blogs through one RSS reader. This morning I have added RSS and "subscribe to Bloglines" button to my blog to make it easy for readers to subscribe to my blog. Also, I have added a comments field so that people could leave comments on my postings. Some of my favorite blog sites are John Battelle's Searchblog, Search Engine Watch Blog, and Tom Foremski's Silicon Valley Watcher.

All employee meeting

We had an all employee meeting this morning. Beginning this year we decided to have a birthday celebration over donuts once a month for people who have birthdays that month. I then talked to the team about current status of Become and vision and plans for 2005. We have many exciting new projects and plans for this year. I emphasized how important it is for us as a start-up to build a strong foundation for growth. A great culture, values, teamwork, and vision. I quoted President Ronald Reagan where he called America "hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair" and encouraged everyone to have the same characteristics.