Lijit

Here at Lijit, there are quite a few things we take seriously. For example, we take customer service seriously. We monitor twitter and other services to make sure that our users are happy. We take search technology seriously, constantly looking for ways to improve our value to publishers.

But, there is something that might be taken even more seriously here at Lijit.

Sushi.

Thats right. Lucious fish on savory rice balls.

Luckily, Colorado has fantastic sushi restaurants (yes we know we are land locked. Ever hear of these things called planes? They can carry fish, thank you very much.)

But, its just not enough for us at Lijit.

We want to be known as the Greatest Sushi Eaters of All Time.

So we have decided to sponsor the first ever:

2008 Boulder Sushi Regurge Open

You read that right.

The rules are simple, and as follows:

1. You must eat sushi, not that pansy sashimi crap.
2. You may order your own sushi.
3. There is a $25 entry fee that will go to the establishment (that still doesnt know what they are hosting)
4. You will pay $1 for each piece of sushi you eat into the pot.
5. Top three finishers split the pot. (60% to the winner; 30% to second place; 10% to third)
6. You may heckle, but not touch other participants.
7. No bathroom breaks.
8. The final three will order sushi for the person to their left.
9. You are out if you dont eat sushi fast enough.
10. You are out if you throw up.
11. You are out if you dont recognize the greatness that is Micah.
12. The tie breaker will be desserts.

And we are throwing the guantlet to a few folks:

Brad Feld: Perhaps you should invest in some preparation for a beat down.

EventVue: Can you register the beat down you are going to get?

David Cohen: Maybe the Techstars teams will think you are still cool.

FlingItGirl: You can Fling It, but can you Bring It? (Oh, its been broughten!)

Danny Newman: Did you invent the loss too?

StickerGiant: Make a sticker that sucks as bad as your sushi eating skills.

Andrew Hyde: Here’s an idea. Why not start Startup AndrewCantEatSushi?

Me.dium: Why are all the little dudes in my sidebar going to YouCantEatSushi.com?

Bruce Wyman: Your loss will be a piece of art.

Intense Debate: Lets discuss how bad your sushi eating skills are.

Techstars 2008: I hope you can eat sushi better than…well thats just mean.

Jeremy Tanner: You might have jokes, but you dont have sushi eating skills.

Of course, all are welcome to show up, although most will leave disappointed.

We plan to live blog, UStream, Tweet and Social Media/Web 2.0 the heck out of the event.

We may make fun of many things, but we dont joke about sushi.

Its ON!

(Time and Date to be announced. If you want to participate leave a comment. No animals were hurt in the production of this blog post, but man, there will be some fish dying!)

For the past 15 years or so, I have coached youth lacrosse. Usually eigth graders, sometimes younger, but always about the time when growth spurts occur. In fact, every year there is a kid that shuffles, limps or hops when he runs because of the pain, the growing pains, in his legs.

The nice thing is that as soon as it passes, the kid is usually a much better player, and often truly excels at the sport.

Startups are often the same way. Yesterday, we were written up in TechCrunch. The focus of the article was: Lijit was slow, they figured it out, and now they are growing quickly again, landing a great partnership. Just like the lacrosse kids. We experienced growing pains, learned from them, and have begun to grow even more quickly because of them.

We also learnedhow our product worked with larger networks. Like the TechCrunch article said, we increased b5media’s overall pageviews by 1.5%, and that was with two search boxes and a below the fold placement.

But that wasnt the only interesting statistic. Approximately 23% of all clicks on a search results page went to a site other than the original publication. Meaning that 23% of the clicks were cross-promotional in nature. This was a great discovery since one of the core values of Lijit is helping readers discover new content. In essence, 23% of the readers searching across the b5media network were finding sites that they may have never known existed, driving additional readership and pageviews.

Our learnings were simple: 1) search is hard to do well; 2) search has to be fast; and 3) search has to be relevant to be useful. As we continue to innovate our product, we are finding new and interesting successes and challenges, and we while we hope that our growth continues at the same rate, we are ultra focused on ensuring both speed and relevance.

Interestingly enough, we arent the only startup that has faced rapid growth and scaling issues because of it:

Hopefully, we all learn a few lessons along the way…

And, if you are a publisher network looking to drive some additional page views and cross promotional traffic, please drop me a line at micah [at] lijit [dot] com. I promise to hook you up!

Part of startup life is that a different part of the company gets the focus at different times. For a few months Dan has had the Monkey riding around on his back while we scale the Lijit infrastructure to deliver the service everybody is signing up for (faster then we imagined). Last week we released our new software platform on our new hardware (200 servers) in our new data center (12 racks) and everything is running Sweeeeet!

Just this morning the monkey left Dan’s office, grabbed a banana in the kitchen and started sending emails from Micah’s desk. He seems to be trying to “help” Micah fill up all that infrastructure with even more publishers !

Zach is officially known as a “Systems Architect” around the office, but unofficially known as the guy who makes sure that Mike doesn’t go crazy. Our CEO, Todd Vernon, wooed Zach for a while before he was able to talk him into jumping aboard. Rumor has it that the sweet office in downtown Boulder sealed the deal for him. There is much to learn about Zach and the following questions are only the beginning of our lesson…

• What is your Lijit contribution?

I come to Lijit with about 13 years of practical systems, network and security experience across environments large and small. I hope to make a positive impact especially in the production network, as Lijit has significant performance and security demands there. I also want to help make the production and office systems more manageable, so that over time people find it easier to get their jobs done, and developers and IT folk wake up to fewer surprises in the data center.

• What is your least favorite word and why?

Performant, because it transforms a real verb into a fake adjective in order to shorten the three syllable phrase “performs well” into a three syllable word that makes one sound like an EMC salesperson, and EMC sales people give me the willies.

• What sound or noise do you love and why?

I have a new drum set, and the kick drum sounds like a howitzer. I love that.

• What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt and why?

Cosmology. If you’re a cosmologist, you can never fully understand your own profession, but nobody could reasonably expect you to anyway, so it’s OK. I just read an article asserting that in the future, the universe will be expanding so rapidly that light from its farthest recesses will never be able to reach observers on Earth, and Earthicans may perceive our by then bloated galaxy as the extent of the universe. So the job should only get easier with time.

• Something you’re guilty of…

I introduced my father to Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2, knowing that he would become addicted to it, potentially destabilizing his job and family life. It worked, and I smile inside every time I think about it. For so many years he mocked me for spending my allowance on video games. Who’s laughing now?

Like a few others, Zach started his blog when he was hired here. He says he wants to have a place to test the Lijit widget (likely story!) but he hasn’t actually posted anything yet. Perhaps when he sees all the traffic I’m pushing his way, he’ll be inspired to write something. I mean, since he’s already demonstrated his wit with the above answers, there are really no acceptable excuses. Zach, thanks for playing along; we can’t wait to see more from you!

At Lijit, we are constantly developing and testing new features for the product, the search results and the re-search box.

Recently, we have begun to explore the concept of including Flickr thumbnails within the search results themselves. Pretty cool idea, right?

What we cant come to a final decision on is exactly where the thumbnails should be placed. So, we are asking our users for feedback.

Here are the choices:

Here are the thumbnails on the LEFT (click the picture to expand):

Here are the thumbnails on the RIGHT (click the picture to expand):

And, here is a quick poll to help us figure this out. The cool thing about this quiz, is you can cut and paste it onto your blog, and share it with your friends. Check it out and thanks for the help!

Last month, Eric Olson and Frank Gruber brought TECH cocktail to Boulder. Lijit was more than happy to help sponsor the event. While they were in town, the guys stopped by our offices to say hello and Frank wanted an official tour. Watch to see what happens as we cruise around the Lijit offices…

We are excited to be attending the CSIA (Colorado Software and Internet Association) DEMOgala next Thursday, October 11, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Denver. This gathering will mark the third annual celebration of technology innovation in Colorado and Lijit is one of 40 different companies that will be participating in the Innovation Showcase. (Hmmm….first the BCBR IQ award and now this…) We are honored to have been chosen since there will be many familiar faces from the neighborhood including madKast, Me.dium, Villij, and EventVue.

In addition to letting us show off our service, the DEMOgala will also be presenting four different tracks of sessions (educational, trends, business and creation), impressive Keynote speakers (one of which is Brad Feld, an investor of ours), and lots of opportunity to connect with others working locally in the same sandbox.

If you’re interested in new technology and how it’s shaping Colorado, this is one event not to miss.