I’m looking forward to meeting local Seattle entrepeneurs and tech gurus tomorrow at Seattle MindCamp 4.0. The festivities begin at 10 am. See you there!
Where:
Tukwila Community Center
12424 42nd Ave. S
Tukwila, Washington 98168
Bubblegeneration put together a thoughtful analysis of Apple’s strategy to control the wireless industry with their iPhone. Scott Karp also added some great insights over at Publishing 2.0.
The real battle for control is between Verizon, which has hands down the best network, and Apple, which now has hands down the best handset. The tide will turn when die hard Verizon customers start switching in significant numbers to AT&T to get an iPhone. People like me, who stood firm on the network is more important principle, will crack under the pressure. There will come a tipping point, then, when the cost to Verizon of refusing Apple’s terms will be greater than losing customers to the iPhone.
He’s right — Apple is going to be in a great negotiation position when the tipping point comes. Unless another company can create a killer phone like the iPhone that works on Verizon’s network, Verizon will have to cave at some point.
My uncle, who’s an avid biker, sent me these photos the other day and I thought they were cool enough to share. Talk about some extreme biking.
They are from Victor Lucus Photography
It’s not secreat links bring traffic — directly and through search engine traffic. I just came across 27 great link building tips at Link Builders Union that is worth taking a look at. My favorite? Lucky Number 13.
13. Leverage Social Media
Easier said than done and it does take a network of friends to help you out when the time comes and you have something really great to push for the Digg and del.icio.us home pages. My quick advice is to check in with these sites every week or two and find stories you think are interesting and vote for them. If you show some activity your future votes and submissions will be looked on more favorable. Also, get a friend to start the process for you. My first encounter going popular was done without my prior knowledge!
Anyway, these sites are worth the effort. My last popular story picked up about 60 links and 30,000 extra visitors and a couple hundred new subscriptions to my RSS feed.
SEO is something every entrepreneur building a web business needs to think about. Though it was written a month ago, there’s a very interesting article over at SEOish that I just found. It’s worth reading for those interested in search engine optimization (SEO) and figuring out the best way to spend $100, $250, or $500. 7 experts in SEO give their thoughts –
There’s some great advice just waiting to be read – check it out!
I just found Arsebook.org via Stumbleupon. Many of you social networkers will realize it looks strikingly similar to Facebook, except its red and has a different tag line:
Arsebook is an anti-social utility that connects you with the people YOU HATE.
I didn’t register since I’m afraid it’s just a big scam to get e-mail addresses, but is it really a real site? If so, what can you do if you register?
I thought this was very creative. There are many other amazing advertisements here for those interested in creative ways to reach your target audience.
Via StumbleUpon
I’m not sure what made me think of this, but I was thinking about the Braveheart clip that I posted a couple days ago and I realized it can easily be related to the web 2.0 generation.
In today’s world, William Wallace is a Web 2.0 entrepreneur and the “Nobles” signify traditional business executives.
William Wallace was admired by the Scottish commoner because he wanted what they wanted — freedom — and was determined to give it to them. Today’s web 2.0 entrepreneurs are successful for a reason — they are solving problems consumers want solved. The web 2.0 business model usually comes after the problem is solved, rather than driving business decisions from the get-go. Whereas traditional execs are aiming to increase profits with their business decisions, the majority of web 2.0 entrepreneurs are making a business out of solving a real life problem that they’ve experienced. The business model comes later.
Another reason Wallace symbolizes the web 2.0 entrepreneur is his fantastic response to the “That is impossible” comment by a noble (in response to the idea of invading lower Englad) — Wallace responded by saying “Why? Why is that so impossible?” It wasn’t. Wallace sacked York against all odds. Obviously there are limits — ie I can’t fly (damn!) — but I truly believe individuals are only bound by the mental limits they place on themselves. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs realize anything is possible and aren’t limited by the mental pre-conceptions that those who have been entrenched in an industry for 20 years are.
Just as the nobles were concerned with maintaining their power and “title,” traditional business execs try to maintain power in their industry. They don’t always want what’s in the best interest of their customers, often because they are making money from keeping customers in the dark. This is exactly the reason that those execs who don’t understand the web 2.0 phenomonem, user-generated content, and social media are going to quickly get surpassed by web 2.0 entrepreneurs who do.
Web 2.0 is all about transparency and empowering the consumer, which I believe is a good thing all around. Power to the people!
Sure, Facebook is not perfect. Nothing is perfect. But I don’t see how people are jumping to the conclusion that there is a “Facebook problem.” Yes, Facebook is completely changing the internet — but it’s for the better in my mind.
For the record, I totally agree with Charlie.
Guy Kawasaki clued me into these great social entrepreneurship videos, labeled the “FRONTLINE/World” series and are from PBS. The Series highlights:
stories of people whose ideas and organizations create new and sustainable markets and services that benefit underserved communities everywhere in the developing world. In a nutshell, these are stories about individuals whose ideas leap beyond charity to find systemic solutions to poverty, education, health and social justice.
I just watched this video (click the “watch video” link) talking about the impact of microfinance in Uganda. The video had quite a long segment about the San Francisco start-up Kiva.org (previous coverage).
I “stumbledupon” this image and thought it was worth highlighting
From the little web design work I’ve done & from what I’ve heard from other developers, Internet Explorer is a bitch and a half to code for (especially IE 6). It’s fitting that the yellow section is close to a third of the total web design time spent.
Though I have never read Lawrence Lessig’s blog or heard of him, I ran across a inspirational post of his on Techmeme last night. He’s shifting his life focus away from intellectual property and toward political “corruption.” Lawrence seems to be very influential — check out this section of his bio:
Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001), Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999) and Code 2.0 (2006). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired.
He received a number of thorough comments, most of them positive, in response to his decision to shift his focus to political “corruption.”
Anyway, the point is that I think it’s very cool to see someone of Mr Lessig’s stature (influence and connections) who has been devoted to intellectual property and making software free for 10 years to switch his focus to something that REALLY needs to be addressed — corruption of the political process. I thought this was a great quote:
In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.
It’s freakin ridiculous — politicians should not be funded by special interest groups. There HAS to be a better way to run elections — MAYBE give every candidate equal television time? Give them a “salary cap” of sorts for their campaign. Anything is better than the corrupt system in place now. Though I’m sure it won’t happen quickly, I hope Lessig can help turn the tide.
I’ll be attending Seatle Mind Camp in Tukwilla on July 1st. From the about page, here’s what Seattle Mind Camp is:
Seattle Mind Camp is a self-organizing, digitally minded, entrepreneur-driven, overnight Seattle confab.
Just FYI — my employer, Zillow.com, is one of the events’ sponsors. If you’re a local seattle techie or entrepreneur, I hope to see you there!
I just “stumbled upon” this great YouTube clip demonstrating leadership from Braveheart, arguably, the greatest move I’ve ever seen.
I’m really hoping everyone reading this has seen the movie (if you haven’t – I’d highly reccommend it).
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup.” Though I’ve never hired anyone, I found Marc’s reason number 4 interesting — hiring is hard.
Fourth, hiring is a huge pain in the ass.
You will be amazed how many windowshoppers you’ll deal with.
A lot of people think they want to be part of a startup, but when the time comes to leave their cushy job at HP or Apple, they flinch — and stay.
Going through the recruiting process and being seduced by a startup is heady stuff for your typical engineer or midlevel manager at a big company — you get to participate vicariously in the thrill of a startup without actually having to join or do any of the hard work.
As a founder of a startup trying to hire your team, you’ll run into this again and again.
When Jim Clark decided to start a new company in 1994, I was one of about a dozen people at various Silicon Valley companies he was talking to about joining him in what became Netscape.
I was the only one who went all the way to saying “yes” (largely because I was 22 and had no reason not to do it).
The rest flinched and didn’t do it.
And this was Jim Clark, a legend in the industry who was coming off of the most successful company in Silicon Valley in 1994 — Silicon Graphics Inc.
How easy do you think it’s going to be for you?
Then, once you do get through the windowshoppers and actually hire some people, your success rate on hiring is probably not going to be higher than 50%, and that’s if you’re good at it.
By that I mean that half or more of the people you hire aren’t going to work out. They’re going to be too lazy, too slow, easily rattled, political, bipolar, or psychotic.
And then you have to either live with them, or fire them.
Which ones of those sounds like fun?
Though I know many people are always casually looking for jobs because they don’t truly love their current job, I guess I didn’t realize the complexity “window shoppers” add to the hiring process for businesses, particularly small companies without full time recruiters. It does make sense — people love to feel wanted. The recruitering process is much the same as “Rush” process that takes place at fraternities. Rush chairmen (the people in charge of signing pledges) have to deal with the numerous window shoppers that just hang out in the Greek system, going to every party, getting free beer, and looking for girls. It’s the rush chairs’ job to weed out the casual rushees from the serious potential pledges.
The post hasn’t changed my mind — I’m still an entrepreneur, even if it is hard.
I just found a great post by Robyn Tippins, MBL’s community manager, titled “What Defines A Great Community Member?” All of her points are extrmely relevant to anyone who participates in online communities.
This is a particularly good quote (at least in my opinion) — “If you want readers, you’ll have to write content that is so darn useful that people can’t live without it.“ Don’t just leave useless crap as contributions (like “I agree” or “great post” or “thanks for checking out my site”), it doesn’t do any good and probably ends up hurting your online brand with negative word of mouth. If you contribute to any online community, I’d make sure to read the post and think about whether all your contributions are a net positive for the community you participate in — you might be ruining your online reputation without even knowing it.
Well, I didn’t log in and review the session, but let me say that this proposed panel for the next Blog Business Summit (in Chicago), titled “Effective Blogger Engagement: Beyond Press Releases and “Pitching”, is a good topic to cover. Being a blogger & having talked to numerous other bloggers, I think it’s safe to say that most bloggers don’t enjoy being sent press releases or canned pitches. Those in the public relations & marketing industries need to take note or risk losing the respect of the bloggers they are trying to reach with their message.
Where is the web headed? Watch this video, it’ll get you thinking.
Hat tip to Read/Write Web.
You’ve got to be kidding me, this is just freakin absurd — the NCAA ejected a reporter for blogging a baseball game? Why — because it deems live blogging is a “live representation” of the game, which is supposedly prohibited by NCAA rules. Ludicrous if you ask me.
There is a fantastic post by Brian Solis over at PR 2.0 that everyone should read. It’s titled “The Future of Communications – A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing.” Here’s the closing paragraph, but you REALLY should read the whole thing if you work in the internet industry (and even if you’re not) –
What does the future of integrated marketing and communications look like? It’s a mashup of new media and traditional media – all with the common goal of engaging people and influencers on their terms. The difference is that by listening, reading, and participating, corporate marketing will be smarter and more approachable than ever before. This is how we humanize brands, create loyalty, and earn customer’s business.
Let businesses be measured by their actions and not their intentions. In the world of social media, companies will earn the community of customers they deserve.
I think we’re doing fairly well with “social media marketing” at Zillow, but I realize there are still improvements that we can make.
If you have questions or suggestions, please e-mail me at meyers (dot) drew (at) gmail (dot) com.
Or you can reach me on Skype - my screen name is drmeyers2001
I'm going to need good contacts in all these areas at some point in the future, but nothing is immediate. When I get to the point where I need these services, I'd rather use someone I've known and trusted for awhile rather than having to go seek someone out. But if you want my business and to be recommended by me, don't pitch me; build a real relationship and the biz will come later. You can start that process in the comments here (or on any of the blogs I write), via a personalized email, or on Twitter
