Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
CitySpeek – Against The Giants April 14th, 2009
In any saturated sector or niche, there always seems to be a few people who seem to find it fit to charge headfirst into the legs of giants, bringing a fight straight to the leaders. Often they do not tilt at wind mills, people would have (and did) laugh at some little dorm room startup called Facebook that wanted to take a bite out of the giants of social networking. CitySpeek seems to be doing something similar in the realm of microblogging. Let’s take a look.
CitySpeek is a project built by two Portland (OR) entrepreneurs in their non day job time, so I must lay aside my natural predilictions for both Portland and moonlighting entrepreneurs to attempt to give them a fair shake. The service, a seemingly advanced derivative of microblogging centers around individuals “speeks” as compared to “tweets” on the ubiquitous Twitter. However, past the bland palate of possible tweet content (text) a speek can have rich content.
Forget TwitPic, you can upload an image with a speek, and it will be updated right next to your text, which is limited to the industry standard 140 characters sadly. This is not a revolutionary change, but an incremental one that is a giant step forward. Imagine not having to open a TwitPic link wondering if they were just link baiting some porn that you would open next to your boss at work. Trust me, it happens. A small change that is very useful, classic innovation. Also, CitySpeek is a approved Twitter client, post it to CitySpeek and it pops up over on Twitter. Simple.
CitySpeek also has group functionality. You can join any group, and it collates all speeks to that group as @messages to a user called the group name. So, in effect, a group is like a super user within the system. CitySpeek also has a live map that tracks speeks around the globe, more on that in a second. Past its revisions and minor improvements to the microblogging system, CitySpeek is a generally attractive functional microblogging platform that has yet to find its audience. This is where we hit headwind.
CitySpeek is a little empty, which is where the map comes in. It loads just fine, but it seems to not update very often: speek volume is low. The CEO alerted me to CitySpeek’s usage statistics, and while I cannot divulge them here, it is assuredly an early stage project. Public microblogging is only as useful as the people that are on it. At the moment, if you speek a few times and then check the public timeline, you will be all three of the last results. It takes a while for you to get moved down the list. However, I do have hope for the system: it does offer things that are fresh, for example it does not seem to need 3rd party clients for the system, as it integrates with your IM software. It is just as pretty and functional as Yammer, and does not seem to break like Twitter (unfair, I know).
But unless CitySpeek can augment its user numbers, we will just have an empty building with a fading sign out front. This is what I would do if I was a part of the CitySpeek team: focus on groups for local organizations. What CitySpeek does well, is group people. Give it a try, you will like that feature. Now if you glance at the title of the company. “CitySpeek,” it seems that the company wants to work with discrete groups. That combined with their groups is their way to success. They must push not the fact that they are a microblogging competitor to Twitter, they will never win with that. But, if they sell themselves as an effective communication tool for groups, they have a future.
In fact, in their area there is another startup, Tatango, that functions in this space, group communication. It seems logical that if they ran towards this strict focus, they would be in the market for a fair sized purchase in a year. The Portland area is fillied with interesting groups of smart people, if you offer them an effective tool, they will use it. And a dedicated group to your product is the perfect nexus to build momentum from. CitySpeek can outreach to their community, work with groups, build local buzz, expand to the West Coast, and then out from there.
And this, I think, is where their business model comes in. As this forsakes the mass market approach, CitySpeek can charge for their product. If you give a group a solid product, you can expect some dollars in exchange. They can forget the annoying AdSense on their site, and take the Yammer or Clicky approach. They could use some seed funding to devote more of their time to project, perhaps a Portland area angel will make that happen.
Give the service a try here: CitySpeek.com
Follow the founders here, and here.
Posted in Featured, Startup Reviews, Web/Tech | Comments (0)
Power Interview – @BigRichB Talks Twitter April 3rd, 2009
- originally written for techgeist
Twitter user @BigRichB is one of the most powerful people on Twitter that you have never heard of. He has more followers than Om Malik and all the individual TechCrunch authors nearly combined, 76,000 plus, actually. I asked him a few questions about how he uses Twitter, and where it is headed. Words from the mouth of the expert, lets go.
Questions are bulleted, followed by a completely unedited response from @BigRichB.
- You have had a meteoric rise in your following on Twitter, yet you state that simple mass following is unproductive, do you think that content/value creation is more powerful?
Mass following IS a waste of time. It simply takes too much time because it’s inefficient. Since it’s inefficient, you have to follow and unfollow way more people repeatedly to get more followers.
But here’s a tip to save you some time (wish I did this when I was under 10,000 followers)… use TwitterKarma to do mass unfollows with 1 press of a button. Unfollowing people is where the majority of your wasted time happens.
As far as content/value creation… that is pretty much unnecessary for getting tons of followers. Building relationships and interacting with people is more important.
- What do you find the most useful in Twitter? Is it the ability to meet like minds, or do you find a utilitarian value in such a large following?
I came on Twitter to network. My massive following has allowed me to hang out with and/or talk on the phone with over 5 millionaires. You get noticed and get attention by having a lot of followers. They’ve helped me out a bunch.
Sure, there’s not way to have truly meaningful relationships with everyone when you have 50,000+ followers, but the lines of communication are open. Just about every time I make a post at Twitter, I get over 100 replies.
A large following is pure social proof ala Cialdini. Why not take advantage of social proof to establish your authority? Some people seem to have moral objections to following a lot of people. Seems weird to me since I’d personally object more to celebrities who follow 20 people but have over 100,000 followers.
- What are your methods for reciprocating to the community that you derive so much value out of?
I don’t look at it in the big picture sense like that. I see it simply as this… if you talk to me, I’ll talk with you. If I talk with you, I hope you talk with me. I see it as a 1 on 1 thing, not me VS all 76,000 of my followers lumped together.
But I can also say this. I didn’t set out to create a Twitter product. It just happened. I created Brute Force Twitter because I kept getting 10-15 dm’s and posts a day from people asking me how I got so many followers so fast.
Since a lot of people are interested in that, I created it for them. It’s not like I can explain it in 140 characters. So I made a product out of it.
- How do you monetize your following, if you do, and if you do not, why not?
I don’t monetize the following on my @BigRichB account. That account is strictly for networking and just hanging out and getting to know people. I have a separate Twitter account that nobody knows about for monetizing followers. In fact, I now have 3 accounts.
- Where do you see Twitter in the next six months?
Twitter is the big rage now. It’s becoming mainstream fast. In 6 months it’s going to be HUGE. I just read an article that says Twitter will have 50 million people on it by Christmas. NOW is the time to build up a big following… before millions of people flood onto Twitter. You want to be ahead of the crowd.
- Where do you see yourself on Twitter in the next six months?
Brute Force Twitter will establish me as a top authority on Twitter. I’ll get pushed out of the top 100 because Twitter is promoting celebrities via its suggested users list for newbies that are just getting started. Being in the top 100 is basically meaningless now since those people are hand-chosen by Twitter. I just read Twitter just hired a concierge whose only job is to make celebrities happy on Twitter.
Gee, as a normal person, I really appreciate that (sarcasm). We build up the site and get no appreciation. Celebrities just come on it and have their assistants make posts for them and they get promoted. Ok, rant over.
Me… I’ll still be doing my thing… asking lots of quirky questions and being very random. It’s fun.
- If it is not right now, when will Twitter become mainstream? When will it be fair to say so, and why?
Twitter is almost mainstream. Look at CNN and FoxNews… they regularly mention their Twitter accounts. You keep hearing about Twitter from everywhere. It’s growing like crazy now, but I think over the summer is when Twitter will kinda announce its arrival.
- Do you have any tips or tricks that you would like to share with the readers?
Tips… use your followers. They’re a big asset.
For example… I had problems with my car. I posted about it and got tons of helpful replies. That kind of support is awesome. Another example… I was trying to figure out how to transfer my desktop files to my laptop… I posted the question and got a bunch of replies that solve the problem for me. So for me, Twitter helps me to solve problems.
Another tip… be yourself. Authentic. Don’t be uptight and hide who you are or your personality. That’s boring and not fun. It’s hard to build a relationship and trust a person who “plays it safe” in order not to offend people. Be real.
Tricks… I’ll give you 1 trick, but not 1 of the main ones from my Brute Force Twitter system. Follow the followers of spammers.
Look, everyone hates spammers, me included. But they’re there. Before Twitter kicks them off, follow all their followers. Why? Because if someone follows a spammer, surely they’ll follow you, right? Think about it.
You can find out more about @BigRichB, real name Richard Bryda on Twitter.com/BigRichB. His Twitter system as mentioned above can be found at http://BruteForceTwitter.com. A big thank you to Rich for taking the time to share his insight with all of us.
Posted in Featured, Life, Startup Reviews, Tech Blogs, Twitter, Web/Tech | Comments (3)
Moving Away From Facebook – Are LinkedIn & Twitter Large Enough? March 22nd, 2009
I signed up for Facebook several years ago, meaning that I have been on the site for much of its life. As with Digg, I have watched these services grow from something nebulous and conceptual to something concrete that generates millions in revenues. But as the explosive success of Digg (in terms of reach, not profits, Digg still hemorrhages cash), seems to be being mirrored by Facebook.
As an ex Facebook devotee, I thought that I must be in the minority, running against the seemingly unstoppable tide of Facebook’s growth. We are daily regaled with tales of hundreds of thousands of signups per day (or whatever the number is) that Facebook accretes. Facebook is assuredly growing, and quickly. How many friends do you have? I now sit at something close to 650. How many do I actually give a damn for? Maybe 100? Maybe.
The point is, as Facebook has grown and grown, I am having an increasingly difficult time extracting value from my experiences there. Aside from the occasional comic and incriminating image of a friend that I can find, there is little there of use that I do not garner from other forms of communication. Phone calls, for instance, especially video calls over Skype. Facebook is surely no traditional news source, or if you want to claim that it is, it is nothing more than a poor one. It is, theoretically, a “friend news source.” Stupendous. I truly have the time and energy to keep up to date on that.
I used to love the younger generations’ version of the bar crawl, the “Facebook Creep.” Spying, in other words. But very politely, at least that is what people tell me. If they put it up there, it is fair game, or something like that. I have grown tired of it. I have better things to do.
Here is my thought, if I can interact with my business friends on LinkedIn, and everyone else on Twitter. What space does Facebook fill? What utility does it bring me? For me nothing, but I feel that I am not a plurality. Give this some time, well see. I suppose, we have to regress to privacy again. If you are a private person, you would cling to the controls that Facebook gives you. I have already made my thoughts on this plain, privacy is dead.
If Twitter and LinkedIn are going to continue their growth rates, I am done with Facebook. That is a promise. I have less and less time, and Facebook offers a thinner and thinner value proposition every time I log in. Do I really worry about the redesign? Not at all, but apparently, given the level of activity that it has stirred up, it is terrifying. Can we move on?
Posted in Featured, Web/Tech | Comments (2)
How To Get 1000 Twitter Followers – A Guide March 7th, 2009
People often ask me how to accrete followers on Twitter, it’s a fair question. As someone who has gone through the entire curve, from hating Twitter to becoming a self described addict, I have experience to share on how to gain followers on Twitter. Now, this will not get you an amazing account, you will not be like @kevinrose, who has over 240,000 followers and follows just 150 people. He is a celebrity, you aren’t. However, this little guide is a fine and fun way to gain a following on Twitter, and thus a little influence in the world of the internet. A final thought, there is a method here other than, “follow like a demon.” If you just up and follow two thousand people, 7 will follow you and you may get blocked for being a spammer. Let’s begin.
- Prepare your account:
- Image: Make sure this is either a real image of yourself, a fun avatar, or something related to what you do. Picking the image of the Statue of Liberty for your account is probably a bad plan.
- Give your location, a city is fine. There is no need to get overly specific. I settle with just “Chicago.”
- Make sure to link to something that you control. Your blog or company website are great links. A good youtube.com link can be fun, but it won’t help you. People find my blog every day through my Twitter account. This is also a good way to show yourself off, if you have a great website to display.
- Your bio section is the most important thing that you fill out. Try and make whatever you do sound interesting. Do not claim to be either a “life coach” or “social media expert.” That means that you are probably an annoying spammer, and people will not follow on account of that alone. A good bio would read: “Cofounder at Acme corp, I work on solving tricky problems. Hit with an @ message if you need any coding help.” This is what you do not want: “SOCIAL MEDIA GOD IN TRAINING, LET ME WORK WITH U ON UR SEO WEBSITE WORK! LETS BE FRIENDS AND CONNECT!!”
- Auto-Dm’s. Whatever you do, do not use these. People will actually unfollow you if you use auto-dm’s. Just don’t.
- Pick your niche:
- What do you do? I work in web tech. Some of my favorite Twitter users are real estate workers; whatever you do in real life, or wish you did, will be just fine. There are now so many Twitter users that there will be other people talking about the same thing. Make sure your bio mirrors the niche you choose.
- Find the top 10 Twitter users in that niche:
- Once you define your niche, get out on Twitter and find the top ten or so people in the genre. Follow them, and keep their names written down somewhere.
- Begin selected following:
- Now that we are prepared, we can start the bulk of the work, following people. Head over to any of the niche leaders that you have found, and follow fifty people that they follow, and fifty of their followers. Only follow people that have avatar images. Beyond that, don’t worry about who they are. The fact that they interact with that niche leader means that probably they share similar interests as yourself. Never follow more than 100 people in a day. There is no need. Do this for about two weeks. You should get about a 40% follow back rate over three days of any group of people that you follow, provided you share interests.
- Interaction:
- Get TweetDeck, and start talking. Monitor your incoming feed, and respond to everyone that you can (only when you have something to say, of course). You should be sending out about fifty tweets a day at this stage. People that would not follow you otherwise, will notice your interaction and follow you. This is where you begin to meet new people, and develop new interesting relationships. I now know developers in Australia, metal drummers in the South, and so many other interesting people that to list them would take all day. This is the best part of Twitter.
- Also, this is how you keep followers. If you never give back, people will let you go. Retweet friends work, bounce new stories around, be active in the community.
- Unfollowing:
- After a week of following people, head back through your list and unfollow that do not follow you, and that are dull. Simply that someone is not following you does not mean that you should drop them. There are so many great people that I follow that do not follow me, that I follow strictly for their great content.
- Continued following:
- Keep adding people past the two weeks, culling as you go. Do this for about twenty days, and you will have about 1200 followers. This is gradual, and take a serious time commitment, but it will work.
- Success:
- You are now following about 2,000 people, and have about 1,200 followers. Success! You now have influence in the Twitter world, and in the internet as a whole.
Here is a warning though, Twitter has following caps. At 2,000 they cut you off. Once you have around 1,900 followers they raise that cap so that you can follow around 10% more people than follow you. This keeps people honest and lowers spamming. So, take care after a point with who you follow, you only have so many slots.
Also, like I said, give back! Twitter is a great grouping of great people. Your generosity will not go unnoticed. Simple things like taking part in #followfriday will build your reputation quickly. Have fun, and I hope to talk to you soon.
–
You can follow myself at Twitter.com/alexwilhelm. Mention that you read this and I will happily be your first follower.
Posted in Featured, Twitter | Comments (13)
Tatango: Changing Group Interaction, And Profiting Along The Way
March 5th, 2009
It is a rare startup that in today’s economic climate is managing to not only grow, but turn a profit at the same time. Tatango, a startup that you may not have heard of despite its healthy and growing revenue numbers, is such a company. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the CEO and was very impressed with the trajectory of the company.
Tatango is a mass SMS service, that allows you to create groups of people and send text messages to all people in these selected groups. The company has recently added in voice messaging, and has forthcoming plans to add in web based messaging as well. Each recipient must opt in to the updates, preventing spam abuse from taking over the network. Derek Johnson, cofounder and CEO, says the company sent out over 50,000,000 messages last year, making it a hub for text messages across the United States. I assume that this refers to total messages sent to all recipients, therefore one message to many people would be counted as more than one update.
The service is based off of the freemium model, charging users for an improved feature set, while keeping basic use free. All messages from free users come tagged with advertisements, thus monetizing every user. The company has variety of paid upper tier plans that will strip your messages of advertising, throw provide enterprise level support, and let you work in custom widgets. The paid services start from $5/month and wander up to $100 monthly at the top.
Asking around, the company seems to have found grass roots level user growth from the everyday internet user, not the technorati that seems to be first base of usership for any tech service. Growth from these users to the site seems to be slow however, Compete reports only a 33% growth year over year [this data is skewed some as Compete only has data for the company back to May of 2008, before that the site was too small to register].
The company has raised an angel series of cash, and the CEO has informed me that a Series A round of funding is in the works. The company reported turning a “healthy profit” with a “main focus” on growing their userbase. This is a logical step given the high revenue per user that the company seems to receive. It would be prudent to take on a temporary negative cash flow (using investor dollars) to accelerate their user base accretion. You can always prune back promotion and refocus on profitability.
While there are exceptions, it is so refreshing to see a company born in the Web 2.0 bubble succeed with an actual business model.
Competition to the product seems to be standard SMS mass messaging. On my iPhone I can set up a group and send out a ad free text message to (as far as I know) as many people as I wish. Dekker responded: “Obviously the iPhone is great for sending small group text messages, but the average group using Tatango is around 30-40 members. With this many people in a group, this makes messaging from an iPhone almost impossible.” Sounds reasonable. At the moment I do not personally have the need to SMS that many people at once, so I have not attempted to push the limits of my phone in that manner.
Looking forward, I see a bright for future for Tatango. The next funding round will only bring them renewed success provided they can keep their focus. Fortunately, more people than just their investors are watching, you can watch the company in action via their livestream at tatango.tv. If watching people type on iMacs listening to rap is your thing, indulge.
Related Links:
Tatango Crunchbase Profile.
Tatango Company Blog.
Tatango Twitter Profile.
Posted in Featured, Startup Reviews | Comments (2)
Ad Placements – Lower Rates Means More Total Pixels March 4th, 2009
I hate to quote scraping content provider extraordinaire Silicon Alley Extraordinare but they have reported an obvious truth today. Recall when people were astounded to hear that Gawker Media (A premier blogging network, that owns properties like Gizmodo) had actually managed to boost ad revenues during the recession? Seemed to good to be true, and in a way it was. The numbers seem to be fair, but the reason behind the rising payouts is nothing special.
This states is nicely: “The secret, says Gawker owner Nick Denton in the memo, has been those big, bold site-skinnings.” [source]
Read: We plastered our site with more advertisements than a NASCAR racing car hood. Effective? I suppose. But at what cost? Those ads do detract from the usability of the site. Especially when Gawker adds in those exceptionally bothersome when they are the roll-over expanding ads that block your ability to view content. Nothing makes me wander off your site faster than wildly intrusive advertising. I will tolerate even the most annoying banner ad, flashing with free iPods, but put that on top of what I am trying to look out, and we will have to have words.
Most of this new real estate was/is given to a specific brand attempting to “sponsor” a whole site. It seems at the moment that the Gawker network does not have such a partner, here are the ads that you will find on Gizmodo:
All in all, those ads seem neither special or overly harsh given the total size of the Gizmodo front page. So I don’t see it, at least at the moment. Our these sponsorships such powerful revenue generating tools that even having them run part time makes up for the slack in the market, and more? If so, this is where advertising will surely go. Everyone follows the money, don’t think that bloggers are any different.
But the trend that we are seeing is simple, it is the dust bowl farmer mentality: lower prices for one ad, so we place more ads. Boosting ad inventory in a time of dropping prices is only going to do one thing, ask your local economist, lower prices. When does it end? When we have money again, of course. Until then, keep looking to Gawker to point the way. Welcome to the race to the bottom.
Posted in Advertising, Featured, Tech Blogs | Comments (2)
Paid Blogging – Disclosure and Lies March 3rd, 2009
First of all, if you think that bloggers are not paid to cover certain startups, you are wrong. Paying bloggers for coverage is as old as any form of bribing [A good friend of mine knows a PR firm, whose weapon of choice is buying blog posts, for example]. Often the compensation is monetary, but there are many ways to reward someone. So, to decry the theoretical onset of paid blogging in general is missing the point. It already happens. The question is, how do we avoid or improve it.
Put yourself in the blogger’s shoes. You write and write, slowly building an audience. Perhaps you have just reached 100 visits a day. You are proud of your small audience. Your blog makes little to no money, but you do it for the love of the conversation. Out of nowhere, someone offers you thirty dollars to write a post on their product. That is two months of hosting for one post! How can you say no?
People will, and do, say yes. And most of the time, in these back alley transactions are not reported on the posts. What to do?
Before we can take this farther, we need to get a piece of perspective. Think about Diggnation, they are ad supported. But instead of wearing a T Shirt with a brand on it [equivalent to an ad] they vocally endorse of product [equivalent to a blog post]. We don’t complain. They need to pay for their show, flights, food, and beer. So, we sift through their ad segments, knowing that we are supporting them by watching. How is this different?
Disclosure. I for one would have no qualms in any major blog doing the occasional paid post with full disclosure. I could simply not read it if I wanted. They get some extra dollars to feed the servers, the company gets guaranteed exposure, and I am not harmed at all. I would rather have that then the current “don’t ask don’t tell system.” People need to stop thinking about blogging as a white knight, and realize that for many, blogging is a legitimate business. This means expenses, therefore they need revenue, just ask Twitter.
I know that this raises a few new ethical problems, does past paid coverage affect future unpaid coverage and the like. But really, are we all so narrow that we cannot handle forming a few new rules? Besides, this might let bloggers cut down on the number of annoying ads they place all over their sites in drastic frantic efforts to monetize their traffic. If TC did three paid posts a week, I bet that they could bring in at least $10,000 in revenue. What company would not pay $3,3oo to be written up?
Run the numbers on that, 10k weekly is half a million yearly. For one paid post every other day. It’s an extreme example, but an interesting one. This does not really apply to this blog, as my traffic is low enough that I fly under the radar of most advertisers. Also, for what it is worth, I have never taken an compensation to post on any company, so I am not covering my tracks. What do you think?
Posted in Featured, Tech Blogs | Comments (2)
How Much Do You Communicate? March 2nd, 2009
This could be titled, ‘Do we communicate too much?’ but I thought that that would be accusatory. And as I am not sure that we do, it seemed presumptuous. So, how much do you communicate? Between Skype, IM, Twitter, Facebook messages, SMS, email, phone calls, and voice mail, how much do you talk? The problem thought hit me this morning when I woke up two hours and about two hundred pieces of communication behind. [This is akin to waking up with a migraine.]
I always dread look forward to waking up, there is new news to digest, new people to talk to, new problems to solve. Lately, however, the inundation of communication has been keeping me from getting to the parts of the day that I love. I woke up to 75 emails, seven Twitter DM’s, 12 @’s on Twitter, two Facebook messages, three SMS messages, one voice mail, two missed calls, two Skype IM’s, and 40 people on Gtalk [three of which I needed to talk to]. What had changed so much during my short sleep that required so much talking? Nothing, really. Yet I had to hit the ground running in nothing but boxers and a toothbrush [he who Tweets needs no pants].
I love to communicate. I love to talk to people, which is why I am a compulsive follower on Twitter and have racked up several thousand updates. But the backlog is beginning to kill me. I now have over 11,000 unread emails in my inbox. That is cumulative, but still indicative. How many communications do you dodge on a daily basis? And this is only communication that is directed at you. Then add in all the news, blogs, and podcasts that you consume. Information seems to be fashionable to glut on.
Is this gluttony a sin? Not if you can keep up with it. But as my life becomes more and more hectic, I am rethinking the way I work. Perhaps I will listen more and respond less. But if we all do this, then there is only silence. Perhaps we need a new way through the noise. Things like TweetDeck, despite my dedication, only add to my our overload. For now, I am changing nothing. But in the middle of this post, I had three IM interruptions, a Skype call, and had to send three emails. None of it could wait until I finished this.
What does that tell you?
So, I am curious, how much do you communicate? I could be the exception. I have a “talk to anyone” policy that seems to get me into trouble. How do you handle this?
Posted in Featured, Life | Comments (0)
