Kosmix Blog

Dear prospective Kosmix employees:

Hi! We're excited that you are interested in working at Kosmix. In order to better prepare yourself for the battery of interview questions coming your way, we've prepared a sample list of questions that all of us had to answer. If you ace the test below, we might give you a job offer just on the basis of being a great fit (actually, wait until our lawyers sign off on that before you set that in stone).

Enjoy!

· Do you enjoy a competitive game of ping pong?
· Are you able to function effectively while Nerf pellets bounce off your (hopefully rather bulbous) head?
· Do you commit to bringing edible items back for your office mates (at great personal risk from Customs) when on overseas trips?
· Do you enjoy being lectured about wine twice a year?
· Do you use the phrases "upsell", "a-ha moment", "algos" and "higher order bit" significantly more than you should?
· Are you willing to spend several nights obsessing over your Halloween costume?
· If your costume ends up sucking - are you willing to take endless ribbing about the same?
· Do you have a MySpace profile with, ahem, entertaining photos (trick question, beware)?
· Can you deal with an expensive espresso machine that can bake lasagna and schedule meetings but not produce a decent espresso?
· Are you a connoisseur of fine ping pong paddles? Better still, are you willing to buy your own in an effort to one-up your office mates?
- Do you have a history of peering suspiciously into canned food drive bins? (Don't answer that).
· Do you recycle? Or at least pretend to?
· Are you okay with an office that is heavy on iPhones and light on Blackberrys?

Send your answers to jobs@kosmix.com.

If you aren't a fan of "The Office", NBC's hit sitcom about a regional paper company's branch in Scranton, PA - skip this post.

Here at Kosmix, we are fans of consumer web technologies of myriad forms. Like most other industry watchers, we've been fascinated by the transformation of the phrase "social network" from a dry, academic, ivory tower concept to a live system used daily by millions of ordinary people. We've watched the rise of MySpace, the sale of Bebo, and Facebook's staggering valuations (whether you believe if they are real is a separate matter). We've been amused as we saw the whole thing taken too far: social networks for dogs and cats, social networks for people over the age of 110, social networks for the recently undead (okay, the last two may not be real).

But here is something you haven't heard of yet: "The Dunder Mifflin Infinity Social Network". For those who joined the party late, Infinity is the paper merchant's rather late, rather overdue effort at creating a website to peddle - what else - paper.

Yes, its true. Tonight's episode of "The Office" has Ryan admitting to the entire branch that the new social networking features "haven't worked out so well" but that it would be pretty amazing to have a "virtual paper merchant that you could use with your buddies".

What's next? A social network for leprechauns who don't like to wear green?

As always, we wait with our fingers crossed.

We've recently seen a notable surge in the number of Kosmix bloggers - its hard to gauge why, but sometimes we do know how to accept a gift without questioning it (a blog is an eternal record of thoughts, opinions and expressions; in other words, we wait patiently until an opportunity arises to make fun of the blog's author).

Here are some posts by Kosmixers that you might enjoy:

If you've tired of the Silicon Valley echo chamber and have a burning desire to learn about commodity corn, look no further. We've got you covered: http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/open-source-seeds/

If you are like us and can't get enough of what the echo chamber is discussing, here is an interesting take on network effects of cloud computing: http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/04/a-herald-of-rev.html

Okay, we admit it, we love linking to blog posts that link to other blog posts about search. Read about Squidoo versus Hubpages and one Kosmixer's take here: http://rembrance.blogspot.com/2008/04/less-is-more.html

We have a few more to share, but we'll try to keep this format fresh and make you want more.

By: Karen Song

Today, we happened to be at a YIPEE mixer with a friend and there was a raffle drawing for business cards that attendees had dropped into the bucket. Alas, neither of us had a business card to drop, but when I opened my purse at least 7 dropped out. 7 business cards I had attained at yesterday’s Web 2.0 Expo without realizing it. I joked that I could have considerably increased my odds of getting the prized manicure by impersonating a few business developers and marketers.

As I sipped my Shirley Temple, it occurred to me how representative this overflowing purse of business cards really was to the world of Web 2.0—how easy it was to make connections and how random the Valley was. In other parts of the world, meeting strangers can mean gleaning through the weirdos of the planet; but in the Valley, everyone is weird, weird in their beliefs about technologically driven social change and obsessed with making a faster, better, smaller world a mere mouse click away.

Lights, camera, action. The stage was set for information overload. In fact the whole Expo was. Keynote speakers compared Web 2.0 to the industrial revolution, encouraging consumers to direct their “cognitive surplus” towards generating content. Crowds of people streamed through the showcase, clapping their hands for the next installment of Web 2.0 rockstars.

I was in geek heaven. And perhaps a tad out of my comfort zone. Buzzwords, phrases teeming with self-aggrandizing ambition thundered in my ears. I needed to be doing more. It was like a religion, a cult. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t go home and watch mindless television, I had to go home and post on wikipedia and obsess about why Pluto wasn’t a planet. I had to go home and be an innovator. The edgy men in their late twenties hunched over their laptops suddenly became the wave of the future. A wave I had to surf.

Disoriented and overwhelmed, I stumbled into a room called the “Blogger’s Lounge,” thinking I could find some kind of solace amongst the writers at the conference. Alas, a haggard looking man in a plaid shirt suddenly leapt out of his seat and made a scene. “NO I AM NOT OKAY!” He screamed before mumbling to himself rather crazily. A security guard kindly suggested I move myself out of the doorway for my own safety instead of standing their open-mouthed and gaping.
While they called in reinforcements, I decided to leave. But before I could…

“Karen Song! Is that really you?!”

A friend from Stanford intercepted me. He was a business developer for Ustream, a site that broadcast live streams alongside user chat, and he happened to be presenting for his company in the lounge. He made room for me at a table where I picked up a copy of “We Are Smarter Than Me,” a book on crowd-sourcing.

It was nice to see a familiar face in the crowd. But I saw several others that day. Another friend happened to be working for TellMe, a blackberry voice service that looked up directions, weather, and restaurants when you asked. He seemed excited and rushed over with a warm hug as soon as he singled me out from the throngs of anonymity flocking to his showcase.

By day’s end, I was more excited than agitated. The exchange of ideas, the exposure to what was out there, was quite refreshing. And ultimately I decided that I was finding more familiar ground in what I had originally perceived to be unfamiliar territory.

Scott Berkun, who spoke on “The Myths of Innovation” conveyed that real innovation wasn’t necessarily about the blue sky territory but solving problems. Edison wasn’t the first to invent the lightbulb, but he was the first to worry about the power supply. Gutenberg wasn’t necessarily looking to “democratize information” but simply to print a better book.

That’s what true innovators are about—not pumping themselves up with fancy terms or allusions of social instigation, but enacting real change through fixing concrete problems. I had to admire that. And I ultimately decided that although I was distracted by the hype, I could admire the larger vision of this convention.

But I had more to smile about. Before I left the Web 2.0 Conference, I met a kindly Indian man named Mukesh Ahuja from Yugma.

“You work at Kosmix!” He exclaimed. “I know Sesh! His son goes to the same school as mine! Tell him and Venky I say hi!” He warmly pressed his business card into my hand.

That’s when I decided to say goodbye.