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It’s an interesting morning here in Silicon Valley as we wake up to discover some updates in the startup world. Sure, people coming and going are nothing new or surprising, but within the influence metric space, there’s a lot of discussion going on about whether it’s good or bad or even relevant for companies to figure out and use. At the forefront of these conversations are the evangelists — these are the people who will go out into the world and praise the name of these startups and help show you the light as to why you want to use them. Today, there are two influence metric giants out in the world: Klout and Kred. And while they are both great, they each have different news to share.

Porter Gale joins Kred as Chief Evangelist and Advisor

One of the best marketers in Silicon Valley has just joined up with Kred as their Chief Evangelist. Porter Gale, probably best known recently for being the Chief Marketing Officer of tech-friendly Virgin America airlines, will be the startup’s lead advisor on their new Kred Stars and Kred Leaders program. Basically, she’s going to be their evangelist who will help educate and help marketing executives while also developing advocacy programs with the community. It’s a very smart hire and something that I think plays well to Mrs. Gale’s strengths.

When asked about her thoughts about Kred, Mrs. Gale responded:

Kred is an essential marketing metric for brands that want to build and tend to close, trusting relationships with their audience.  Kred’s community-based approach creates unprecedented opportunities to identify influencers and reach the small close networks of people that share their interests.

Kred is an off-shoot product created by PeopleBrowsr, a social analytics startup with offices here in San Francisco. Kred measures influence in online communities within specific interests. A competitor to Klout, rather than ranking influence based on scores from 1-100, they offer it from 1-1,000 and claim to be the only influence measurement based on 1,000 days of social data.

Congratulations Porter!

Klout lacks a bit of influence with the departure of Megan Berry

Also announced today, Klout’s Senior Marketing Manager (and perhaps the main person people receive responses from online), Megan Berry, announced that she was giving up her post and moving on to found her very own startup, LiftFive in New York City. In her blog post, Ms. Berry states that with her startup, she’ll be helping other companies grow communities and to get the amazing products from these startups into the hands of the right people. LiftFive seems to be gearing up to help startups gain traction. And for Ms. Berry to use her skills from Mobclix and Klout, two well-known and successful startups, it seems that LiftFive will be something worth checking out.

Of course, Ms. Berry’s departure from Klout leaves a hole in the startup for someone to come in and take her place. For the past several years, she’s been one of the main personalities that people who had questions, comments or complaints about the service turned to. It was under her watch that the Klout Perks program started off and eventually hit its stride – with partnerships with large brands like Nike, FOX,  Disney and even Virgin America (probably even working with Porter Gale! What a twist!). And one of her lasting legacies will certainly be the Klout Squad program, which the service established last year to help gather more feedback to better adapt their offerings.

But all is not lost, as the Klout marketing team has grown over the years and there are going to be some great people to take over these programs and help move Klout forward. But it’s probably safe to say that the service lost one of their biggest evangelists.

Good luck to you Megan!

Photo credit: Porter Gale by Kred. Megan Berry by Ken Yeung

Last Tuesday, at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, Face.com decided to throw a party. Why? It wasn’t to launch a new product. No, it was actually a celebration designed to help the team let loose and also have some fun with their close friends and family. At this event, there was no pitching or press there to hear about the product — it was an evening designed to be jovial and to relax after months of hard work in developing a new product for the service.

Yes, Face.com had completed a new product. Called Klik, this is Face.com’s camera application that uses facial recognition to help you quickly tag your friends in real-time. No longer will you need to take a photo, then upload it to Facebook, and then tag your friends. This app will have your friend’s name appear next to their photo instantly before or after you snap it! An example of what image is rendered appears above – you can see clearly that the names are embedded right on the photo to help you associate who is who. But that’s not all…while the main benefit from using Klik is its facial recognition software, the application also includes filters, very much like Instagram, PicPlz, Streamzoo, Hipstamatic, and many others. And what would a photo application be without its social component? You can post the photos to Facebook, Twitter, or even on the Klik public page. Okay, so it’s another photo-sharing application, BUT this time it’s with facial recognition – don’t forget your friends ever again.

So now we have a photo application that can tag all of our friends in real-time, what’s the one thing we can do to celebrate and really give it a test? Why, throw a party! And that’s what Face.com did…they flew in their entire team to San Francisco to celebrate, had specialty-made themed drinks, and had an amazing band called Feedbomb on stage to perform. And this isn’t any normal band…Feedbomb is comprised of some of the most talented individuals in Silicon Valley, mostly former Facebook employees, but still talented people in the tech community: Randi Zuckerberg, Chris Pan, Robert Johnson, Sean Chaffin, Andy Barton, and David Ebersman

And boy do the Face.com people know how to throw an event! People like Chris Tolles (CEO of Topix), Bear Kittay, Joe Braidwood (CEO of SwiftKey), Shervin Pishevar (Managing director of Menlo Ventures), Sarah Austin (Pop17), Hermione Way (The Next Web), Owen Thomas (Daily Dot), Justin Kan (Justin.TV), Sol Lipman (AOL), and many more!

And now here are the photos from the evening:

Presenting tonight’s musical artists: Feedbomb

The Next Web’s Hermione Way and Randi Zuckerberg

Facebook’s Program Manager, Chris Pan

Throughout the evening, Face.com had iPads live-streaming to televisions around the room & tagging people using Klik

At one point, Face.com’s CEO got on stage & performed with Feedbomb — he’s the one with the tambourine

Not to be outdone, Daily Dot’s Owen Thomas was serenaded by Randi Zuckerberg during Katy Perry’s “Hot & Cold”

AOL’s Sol Lipman, Marie Domingo, and David Speiser

Chris Pan, Face.com’s Gil Hirsch, Shervin Pishevar, and Justin Kan

More photos of the evening, including Feedbomb’s performance from the evening can be found on my Flickr photostream by clicking here.

Photo credit: Heroshot photo taken by Gregg Delman. All other photos shown here taken by Ken Yeung.

Well someone had to have done it. Nearly every time I’m looking at my Facebook News Feed, someone is posting one of the newest memes to crawl through the Interwebs. From “Shit White People Say” to “Shit Vegans Say” to even “Shit [enter location] Says“, a whole lot of these spin-offs are coming out of nowhere! And often times they’re funny and maybe even eye-opening, but for those of us in the tech community, we now have one of our very own: Shit Silicon Valley Says

Directed, filmed, and starring the incredible tandem duo of Tom Conrad (CTO of Pandora) and Kate Imbach (VP of Marketing at 8tracks), this 1:46 video takes you through the seedy underbelly of the tech community to give you a really great taste of just what we’re talking about. From poking fun at product ideas to terminology to even describing startups as clones of other startups (e.g. “it’s like Pandora for cats!”), there’s lots of great humor to be had just by watching it. It’s so popular that, as of this writing, the video has received over 600,000 views along on YouTube, not to mention coverage on sites like LaughingSquid.

If you’re in the technology scene, you have definitely got to see this video and see how many of these statements you hear on a daily basis and even how many YOU make. It might just surprise you.

I haven’t posted to the site for a while. Not because nothing has struck my interest, but because I’ve been searching for a job. That’s a full-time job in itself, you know. It occurred to me this morning – it’s also worthy of a series of blog posts, because as much as I see from recruiters, I don’t see much out there from job seekers. None of us want to “poison the pool” so to speak … perhaps say the wrong thing in such a public forum as a blog. But I think we should.

I started looking for a job in June, thinking I wanted to transplant from Cincinnati, OH to San Francisco. It’s a big jump. It was really difficult and I wasn’t able to give anyone a definite date for my move. After all, I didn’t want to move unless I had a job. Unfortunately, no one wanted to pay to relocate me. I did have an interview in July, when I was in the Bay Area for something else. That’s a red flag right there — they didn’t even want to pay to fly me out for an interview.

At some point I realized I needed to commit to moving out here and I did it. I set the date. Then in September, I loaded up a new BMW and drove it 3,000 miles across the country. But I still didn’t have a job. I crashed with a girlfriend for a month and was still living off a minuscule retainer I had coming from my consulting business.

I’m an instructional designer, social marketer, and above all, a kick-ass trainer. I’ve gotten to know myself and my strengths pretty well over the last 6 mos of job shopping. So I’ve learned what I want in a job – what my top desires are, and I’m learning that I don’t like to “settle.”

I can’t even tell you how many recruiters I’ve talked to and interviews I’ve had. The hope and heartbreak involved in all of this has been nothing less than the world’s tallest emotional roller coaster. Companies may or may not mean to, but they truly play with your emotions. It’s hard. It’s a time full of rejection and loss of confidence. Why does your best friend get called for the same job for which you were overlooked? What isn’t popping on your resume? Yet, you can’t afford resume writing services (especially when paying exorbitant San Francisco rent) and trying to make car payments and just … survive.

I’ve gotten to the point where I really feel that a lot of companies have very little respect for the job seeker and what they go through on a daily basis. The obsessive checking of email, the lying to current jobs in order to commit to an inconvenient all-day interview (you can only do that so many times), obsessive checking of LinkedIn, the lack of response after interviews … even the amazingly slow process involved in getting hired. I had one job want to “rapidly” hire me and it still took seven interviews over two months. Then there is the “cancelling” the current position after interviewing someone multiple times. As the job seeker, you start to lose trust in a lot of companies. You start to see, if you dig deep enough, where they have ethics problems, just in how they treat their potential employees. I had one position send me an email telling me the job was cancelled and then offer me a position the next day. “Oops,” they said, “we meant to send that to the other applicants.”

I’ll spend the next few days or weeks relaying some of my overall experiences as I continue through this job search. Only recently, my heart was broken by a “sorta rejection” from what I saw as my dream job. I just want other people out there to know they aren’t alone. We all go through this, and it’s never easy.

Cheers!

__

Michelle is a recent, wide-eyed transplant to the San Francisco Bay area. She still runs Write Technology, where she specializes in training, social learning strategy, and social marketing. Michelle is the executive editor of My Wine Education and recently started steps towards becoming a sommelier just for the hell of it. Michelle also blogs at Total Learner, where she intends to wax poetic on what should be and what isn’t within the field of learning. Oh, and she’s looking for a “real” job so feel free to reach out.

Note: Technology press releases should be sent to michelle[at]writetech[dot]net.

By Liana Burtsava

Trendy Lime Holiday Soirée at “Harlot” in San Francisco

It’s that time of year again – holiday dinners, holiday spirit and, of course, holiday parties! Trendy Lime is excited to be entertaining its global fans with a tri-continental series of Holiday parties this year—in Brazil, Europe, and the place where it all began– San Francisco, at our beloved Harlot club.
Please join us at Harlot on December 20, 7-11 pm, to enjoy this festive event. The highlight of the party: 10 amazing prizes from our sponsors handed out by Santa Claus and his lovely Elves. So be sure to get your raffle ticket at the door:
•    Main prize: two $250 vouchers towards your adventure experience with Zozi.com
•    Two sets of sparkly jewelry from Chic Gems
•    Two 14-day passes to the elite Bay Club Financial District
•    Two beauty baskets from Jurlique, organic care from Australia
•    Voucher from CocoVine,1673 Haight Str. for Coco-Luxe delicacies and Blue Bottle Coffee
•    Delicious dinner for two @ Morac Lounge

Program:
Presents raffle handed out by Santa & Elves.
Complimentary appetizers courtesy Morac Lounge.
Photo shoot by Sergei Krasii Photography and Julie Blaustein Photography

Admission:
Complimentary with password sent through Eventbrite. Please RSVP at http://holidaysoireesf.eventbrite.com

General Sponsor:
Our Holiday Soiree is kindly supported by Royse Law Firm, integrated legal solutions for domestic and international clients including start-ups.

Partners:
Zozi.com
Bay Club Financial District
Morac Lounge
cocoVine @ 1673 Haight Street
ChicGems
Jurlique

Media Partners:
Graffiti PR
Eclectic a la Mode
Bub.Blicio.us
Sergei Krasii Photography
Julie Blaustein Photography

Trendy Lime:
TrendyLime.com is a social network of 4,000+ international influencers and producer of upscale social and networking events. We enjoy a track-record of 40 sold out events on Fashion, Technology, and Professional Networking in the most exquisite venues of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, and Vienna. Our Mission is to provide unique event experience for the most discerning guests, while supporting good cause initiatives and charities and collaborating with local businesses.” Ourr diverse and international team is comprised of experts in Marketing, Branding, Event Planning, Fashion, and Travel.  We also enjoy the support of our advisors, followers, and evangelists. Past Trendy Lime sponsors and clients include: HP, Intel, Bay Club, Red Bull, Bloomingdales, jetBlue Airways

Contact:
For inquiries, please contact Liana Burtsava at liana@trendylime.com. Information on Trendy Lime events at www.trendylime.com