Wednesday January 12th at 1PM Eastern Time, I'll be doing a live chat with Inc. Magazine readers and viewers.  Anyone is welcome to join -- just tune in at http://www.inc.com/live for the event.

A few topics I'll probably be covering:

- How and why Andy and I started inDinero
- The current product roadmap and what we have planned for 2011
- The many challenges we've faced since founding the company

If you have any specific questions you'd like me to answer, feel free to just shoot me an email at ceo@indinero.com.

See you there!

Lately, I've been getting a lot of requests to be added on Linkedin or Facebook. From now on, I've decided to take my insider network a bit more seriously. Unless I know who you are, I do not feel comfortable adding you on either network. Matter of fact, if I have no more than a superficial relationship with the people on either of these networks, I'll begin to remove them.

Some may see this as cruel, but I see it as being practical because I care about who has access to my connections. I care about who I associate with, whether they be friends or business partners. My mentors have suggested that I never add anyone who only wants me in their linkedin network just for the sake of having me on their linkedin network -- there's no way for me to tell if the person is taking advantage of the superficial relationship or is just obsessed with numbers.

As for Facebook, I've begun to realize that adding people for the sake of just adding people creates noise. When I log into Facebook, I don't care if Joe and Jane broke up or if Jake changed his interests or status because I'm not actually friends with them. Why should I have to sort through their notifications when all I care about is what my friend Scoble is up to?

For those who don't personally know me but would like to follow me in some way, add me on Twitter. Enough said!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

As you probably know, I'll be headed to the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam in two weeks to speak about the future of web. And no, I do not know what on earth I'll be talking about. If you have any ideas, please email me!

I know that I promised to cut back on my conference going, but I figured that I'd get to visit the Netherlands for my first time, hang out with friends I met at Harvard, and learn how to speak in front of 750 people. It's over my spring break, so no class cutting required!

Anyhow, if you feel like dragging yourself out to Amsterdam to learn about the future of web and network with cool people like Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, Leah Culver, and ME, then totally sign up!

See you there!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. She's totally overrated and you all know it.

I'm sitting in a panel moderated by Guy Kawasaki and he wanted the panel to be women only, which got me to think about the different type of women entrepreneurs there are.

Firstly, many women entrepreneurs I meet seem to run a business geared towards other women. Most of the women on this panel had businesses that target women. This isn't a problem at all. If anything, it can be a smart thing. My mom, for example, makes clothing for women not just because she knows that business best, but because it makes more money than men's clothing does.

Whenever I'm introduced to a female entrepreneur, it's almost as if I'm expected to make friends with them. I don't make friends with many women in business and tech for some reason, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with this. To the guys: just because you're a guy doesn't mean you'll automatically click with other guy entrepreneurs! Same thing applies to girls. When I meet a new girl, I see if they fit into the following categories. If they do, fine. If not, better. Personally, I dislike the idea of girls who fit into cookie cutter categories, but there are so few of us who can truly be considered unique. Here are the stereotypical categories that I commonly see:

1) The geeks: I meet many girls who are incredibly friendly, but they're geeks. They spend the majority of their time working, working, and working. I find it hard to click with the hardcore female geeks because they don't believe in fashion or partying. You may not see many of these girls because they're so incredibly sheltered.

2) The blogger chicks: These girls may or may not have a functional business, but they sure know how to write! They often attract overly obsessed and sketchy guys. I can safely say that these are the girls you're probably most exposed to. Such blogger chicks include the likes of ijustine.

3) The suits: For some reason, men in suits have an intimidating vibe behind them. They don't know jack about technology, but they sure know how to talk. Women in suits can be no different. Meg Whitman, for example, was CEO of eBay.com and is probably incapable of installing a simple PHP script. She's 100% the business type and she does a great job at this, but you don't see a sense of fun or girliness in this type of girl.

So you ask, where do I fit in? Where do my favorite women entrepreneurs fit in? From what people tell me, I can fit into one of these or all of these. Back in computer camp days (yes I used to be a total dork) I would definitely place myself as a geek. Last year when I had no company in the works, I was a blogger chick. Now, I'm seeing myself more and more as all of the above. The girls I generally click with fit into multiple categories. The hardcore geeks have no social life. The absolute hardcore blogger chicks have no aspiration to have a career. The suits come off as being too elitist.

Let's look at a real life example: Patricia Handschiegel. I have so much respect for her as a female entrepreneur because she's a hard worker, yet she's fun and enthusiastic about managing a good work/life balance. Cheers to her recent sale of StyleDiary.net! If only there were more entrepreneurs like her out in the world...

The absolute biggest problem for female entrepreneurs is perception. The above categories can apply to guys to some extent. The popular stereotypes are guy geeks, surfer dudes, and elitist men. In the media, you mainly see the stereotypes. For girls, you mainly hear only about blogger chicks. For guys, you see all of the above categories. If the fun and brilliant female entrepreneurs got some more exposure, we would definitely see more women entrepreneurs out there.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

Everybody has been talking about TED this week. My question is, why does everybody care so much?

To be honest, I haven't put so much thought into this until recently. I always thought of TED as a great conference for brilliant people to exchange ideas and help each other, but I didn't know that everybody in the valley has been talking about it. Just a few hours ago, I was reading an article on Business Week by Sarah Lacy titled, "Why I'm Fed Up with TED." I'm sure this Sarah person is an incredibly kind and awesome person, but the many articles are telling me that people want to go to TED mainly for the status symbol. Sure, it's a resume builder, but it's as if everybody lost sight of what being part of TED is supposed to be about. Perhaps its my ignorance of this "status symbol" that got me into TED in the first place?

I wanted to go to college early not because it would make me look good. Matter of fact, it was a terrible decision for my social life and for my future as a "normal" college student. Going to college early means that I would have to transfer into another college as a junior, but most colleges have a much lower admission rate for transfer students. I went to college early for other reasons: to be in an open environment where students were actually motivated to learn. Kids here don't care so much about looking good. They want to learn, regardless of the grades they receive. I feel as if TED is similar in this regard. They actively seek members who want to inspire each other with brilliant ideas. They're TEDsters because they want to help each other and help the world more than they want to help themselves.

This does NOT mean that people who aren't part of TED are dumb. It simply means that they have an extremely limited number of spots and they want to attract quality attendees who think less about status and more about the core reasons for being a TEDster.

Just think about. What are your true reasons for wanting to go to TED? One reader suggested, "would TED matter if you couldn't wear nametags?"

I love speaking out about companies who've done wrong. I've done it with companies such as Serverbeach and Comcast, and plenty more. I'd say about 50% of the time, I receive a response from the company. When I hear from a company official, there's a 99% chance that my issue will be resolved and that my service will either be reimbursed and/or improved. Here's a list of my top three examples of companies doing the RIGHT thing to satisfy their customers:

So lets take bad service company #1: Serverbeach.

On the morning of October 20th, my ServerBeach services went offline. The reasons are beyond me and irrelevant to this topic. The company had a service level agreement that promised reimbursement for my services if there was any downtime. I blogged about my complaints, and I received an email from company officials within an hour. Since then, the company has provided me over $100 in reimbursement and my servers have stayed online since. I'll call this success and forgive ServerBeach for that mishap.

Lets make bad service company #2 Comcast.

Just a few days ago, my comcast service was shut off. The service has always been buggy, and their customer support was slow and non-existent at super late hours. Of course, I blogged about it. Within 24 hours, a company official contacted me to help address the situation. A customer rep called, my service was put back online, and my co-founder (who's using this comcast service) claims that our cable speeds have gone way up! I'll call this too a success. Yet again, it shouldn't take my bitching to fix the problems.

Last, but not least, I'll give my final award to Jajah.

Back in December, I was trying to make an outgoing call to my mom when all of a sudden my Jajah service cut off. Ended up that my account was out of funds, so I tried to make payment with a new credit card. It didn't work, so I blogged about it. Within two hours of posting my complaint, the director of marketing gave me access to a company account and fixed the issue by the next morning. Talk about good customer support! Why can't all companies be this good?

I've wrote negative reviews about plenty of other companies who never got back to me. Take for example United - I blogged about them a few days ago and no company representative has contacted me. I complain about AT&T quite often and they're yet to make me happy for the hours of my time they've wasted. I once wrote about how oDesk is better than Elance, but amazingly enough, Elance company officials invited me to their office for (beer) and pizza! It was surprising, yet amazing. Again, why can't all companies be that way?

I'm sure there are plenty of other companies I can add to this list. But for now, the three I mentioned deserve some praise for actually taking care of customer complaints.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Oy vei... firstly, eBay had been getting a lot of crap lately from angry sellers. Why?

Buyers can leave negative feedback for sellers. Sellers cannot leave negative feedback for buyers. Many sellers are outraged, showing their comments on auctionbytes. Sellers don't seem to hate the fee changes, but they absolutely despise the feedback rule. In another video, Kipp Knight and John Donahoe speak about eBay from Washington. They both speak like robots, but in person, they're as normal as can be.

And although all of the sellers are going ape-sh*t about this, I can look at things from eBay's perspective. I wanted to start a company that would be a marketplace to buy and sell services, and it would have many similarities to eBay. However, every minute change made to the system would result in major ramifications. For a site of eBay's scale, the problems are only multiplied. No matter what you do, some sellers will be unhappy. It's fact, it's nature, and it's something that eBay has been dealing with since the day it was launched.

This change represents the first of many by the new CEO, John Donahoe. It took me a long time to make the mental connection: but basically, I had lunch with the guy back in July! I was in Boston, looking for a place to eat lunch at the eBay LIVE conference. I didn't know anybody, but this very friendly guy asked me to sit down with him. We chatted, talked about many topics that had absolutely nothing to do with eBay, and wished each other well. Ends up that the guy (at the time) was the President of eBay Marketplaces! I honestly had no clue until the end of lunch, at which point I asked him what he did. Wow, I'm pathetic. But in any event, I'll advocate for him: He's interested in his users, he wants to learn about the issues they're facing with eBay, and figure out creative solutions to them. That's one of the most important assets that a CEO can have. Although he may sound like a robot and (somewhat fake) in his public speeches, he's nothing like it in person.

I'll try to contact him and get a follow-up on this. On another note, 10 minutes before meeting John, I also ran into the President of Stubhub. Purely accidental, I promise! We were on the escalator and we said hey whats up blah blah blah. Anyway, more to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Word in the blogosphere is that T-Mobile is blocking Twitter for all customers... and of course, the customers aren't happy. Firstly, what could have caused this?

T-Mobile CLAIMS that Twitter isn't an authorized third party service, as noted below:

"T-Mobile would like to bring to your attention that the Terms and Conditions of service, to which you agreed at activation, indicate “… some Services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming. We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to Service, cancel or suspend Service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion.” Therefore, T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation.”

Some believe that T-Mobile considers Twitter a small startup, and that's the reason why they're blocking the service. Sounds more like a cover-up for the truth.
However, my original thought was that Twitter caused a substantial traffic load. The passionate Twitter users would post an update of where they are and what they're doing every half hour. These passionate users are friends with hundreds of other Twitter users, so there are so many messages going back and forth. Over the course of several months, it has been adding up, and T-Mobile wants to save money from this overload.

So what does this mean to the company?

1) Bad: Passionate Twitter users aren't only go leave T-Mobile in favor of a better service, but they'll also make word known in the blogosphere that T-Mobile is anti third party services. There's an exponential negative effect here because T-Mobile loses customers while those customers prevent prospective customers from signing up with them. All of this for just a few cents saved from less traffic?

2) Maybe it was a good move, for all we know. Maybe there was some deep security threat, or the price of allowing Twitter users on the network was too high. Beats me.

Either way, it's important for big companies to keep in mind that any change they make, no matter how *minor* it may seem, may potentially hold a significant impact for the company, or more importantly, customer loyalty.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

As you might have already read, BlogNation really got dicked over today when the US editor Oliver Starr posted a public letter of resignation on the front page of the blog he was resigning from. It talked about how the CEO of BlogNation, Sam Sethi, wasn't paying his people anything.

The validity of his claims are irrelevant. He's gone, the world now thinks that Sam Sethi is a terrible CEO and shady person to do business with. What's Sam Sethi to do?

1) First off, Mr. CEO needs to take a stand. He needs to openly discuss the situation at hand and either make a full blown apology that discusses in detail why he hasn't paid, or deny it in its entirety and possibly provide proof that he did in fact pay and that Oliver Starr is just trying to screw him over. Either way, Mr. CEO needs to say something to the world, or else people will take his silence as a guilty confession.

2) Mr. CEO needs to make sure the other editors are happy. Discuss openly with the other editors what happened and how to assure that such a thing won't happen again. If they too start posting open letters of resignation, BlogNation might as well just pull the plug.

3) Or the best of the solutions... PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES AS YOU PROMISED!!!

On another note, after TechCrunch posted Oliver Starr's letter, an editor from BlogNation China posted a comment:

Ladies and gentlemen –

1. We express our concern about Oliver deciding to air his own concerns on blognation.

2. Readers may wish to note that reports about blognation on TechCrunch may contain bias. It most certainly is not the “neutral point of view” that we expect from the Wikipedia.

3. As part of the blognation team we are experiencing difficultings in launching and in being with a new startup. Our determination to establish the brand and to aim for victory after victory, however, remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.

4. Quite a bit of content on blognation (and blognation China at that) are unique, as we have good roots in our community. We grow with the community.

5. Please rest assured that blognation (and in particular blognation China) will continue to provide you with news every day of the week like we have been doing for the past two months.

I do realize that some of you have different opinions. We will respect each other’s opinions knowing that responsible freedom of speech is a good thing.

Your support is appreciated.

Best regards,
David Feng
Editor, blognation China
http://cn.blognation.com

I'm sure you've already found some flaws in the above comment. This David Feng is giving the absolute lamest excuses for Mr. CEO's problems. TechCrunch readers are definitely biased, but the post itself didn't have so much. Just cause you're a startup doesn't excuse you from paying employees you've promised to pay. If they were under an equity agreement or barter, that's different.

Unfortunately for Oliver, I'm not sure if there's much legal recourse for him. He didn't sign a contract with his employee which leaves him utterly screwed. I'm sure he'll learn for next time. as for Mr. CEO, best of luck.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

I was surfing through PayPerPost.com after reading about how bloggers who make money from the site lost their Google PageRank! I clicked to check out one of the featured members' blogs, and I laughed at my discovery...

I was sent to a website called texas-sweetie.blogspot.com, a blog written by a pregnant Texan woman trying to make money on her blog by taking on PayPerPost advertising opportunities. Only problem being, most of her blog posts are clearly advertisements that she's paid to post, so who the hell would want to regularly follow her "writing?" Below is a sample of her daily writing:

... Chemises are mostly on sale now that saves you a couple bucks when you buy one or more. Check out the website.You will find sexy costumes,sexy clothes,plus size lingerie and many more. You can also pick a sexy gift set for her under $25. Go shop now and let the woman you love be feel even more sexier and beautiful...

Wow, I'm now more compelled than ever to buy myself a chemise... but not really!!!

What's even funnier is, the blog posts on her front page that ARENT advertisements talk about PayPerPost. Observe:

Strange as it is,PPP suddenly got exciting with a lot of opps coming out minutes ago and then quickly got quiet. I don't understand.They seem to give all the opps at once then if you are slow,you end up grabbing one or two opps.

Luckily,I learned how to be fast so I can have few opps to post. I am just hoping that all of my newly posted entries are gonna get auto approved as it my only way to now that I am doing well in my blogging. Still pretty sleepy here but it's ok. Me and my baby are gonna be fine because God is taking care of us.Happy Friday morning everyone!

Hah, no way! So you're basically admitting that the entire purpose of your blog is to make money through PayPerPost opportunities, eh? I'll give her a little credit for trying so desperately hard to make money for her baby, but seriously - blogs like this represent what PayPerPost is. I've seen other blogs who do a way better job at doing "social advertising," but how is this one woman able to get away with such bad writing?

I guess Michael Arrington and Nick Denton aren't far off when they say PayPerPost has some serious problems... As a disclosure, I signed up for PayPerPost to see what it was like and how it worked, but never would I accept money to write positively about a company... When companies send me something, they do so full knowing that I might just call their product/service lame.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.