Archive for the ‘Tech Blogs’ Category
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)
The WordPress iPhone App March 12th, 2009
I gave it a whirl, had my post all ready to roll out, and for the life of me could not get it to post. I am sure that I am just missing something simple. Other observations:
- The app is very well designed (aside from where the “publish” button is.
- Works with Wordpress.com and self hosted blogs, had no problem finding mine.
- You cannot use the keyboard in a horizontal manner, which is annoying, but survivable.
- It loads all your categories, making it simple to file your post in the correct place.
- You can select publishing times (says the website, I did not play with this yet).
In general, the app is well designed, free, and simple. It is a godsend to any blogger on the go. There are times you just don´t want to pull out the laptop. For those temporal periods, and short posts, this app is exactly what you want.
Posted in Life, Tech Blogs, Web/Tech | Comments (1)
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 To Get On TechCrunch November 9th, 2008
Sean Hammons, a good friend of mine and former boss, was written up again on Techcrunch today. And boy was it strange. He sent Techcrunch a very grumpy message, saying, in part, this:
“Many people think you write way too much about Facebook (myself included), and/or that you have a major bias towards them. Well I want you to prove us all wrong. Prove that you wrote about this feature on Facebook four seperate times, not because it
Posted in Tech Blogs | Comments (0)
Why TechCrunch Sucks November 5th, 2008
Beefs:
They cannot find spell check.
Eric Schonfeld is a jerk.
Michael Arrington is a bigger jerk.
They have a poor mind for picking what to cover, and what to ignore.
They have far far too many ads.
Authors that are not Mike/Eric write on esoteric things that are often plain dull.
People spam the blog comment system enough to make me grit my teeth.
CrunchNotes has not been updated since June 10 2008.
The @TechCrunch twitter account now only spams away about TC articles.
(more as I think of them.)
Things That Do Not Suck:
Steve Gillmor
CrunchBase
Logo
Posts about me.
I miss the TechCrunch of yore. Maybe this crash will force Arrington to fire some people and retake the reins at his baby.
Update:
I am not the only one thinking this. Sean Hammons over at Clicky Web Analytics said this via twitter: http://twitter.com/schammy/status/979211716
Posted in Tech Blogs | Comments (3)
Internet Usage During the Election November 5th, 2008
I love Beet.TV, they have great depth across the media world and have an stupefying ability to get data and interviews on whatever, and whomever, they want. They just put together an amazing chart of internet use during election day:
This is an amazing statistic, over 8.5 million visitors per minute. TechCrunch reports that this is twice the normal level, “18 percent above the previous peak of 7.3 million visitors per minute achieved during the World Cup back in June, 2006.” (source here).
What is interesting here, is how distributed the traffic spike was. Looking at the global numbers in the image, you can see the global importance of this, now past, presidential election.
I tip my hat to the Obama camp. We in the Libertarian party are going to disappear, and then lose the next election.
Posted in Tech Blogs | Comments (0)
How To Fix Yammer October 28th, 2008
To begin, I love the concept behind Yammer. Internal corporate microblogging is an excellent idea. It brings the best aspects of Twitter but focuses them towards collaboration and productivity enhancement. The applications are myriad. The appeal, properly executed will be massive.
But Yammer is not executing. Instead of building something feature-rich, deep, and compliant, they built a nearly direct Twitter-clone and placed a wall around it. The problem here is not merely a lack of ingenuity, but by staying so close to the Twitter model Yammer hamstrings themselves. Any company that wants a solution like Yammer can host their own instance of Identi.ca, and maintain complete control for free. As Yammer offers nearly nothing extra, they can be dismissed.
Yammer needs to build their feature set, and become a microblogging centric communications suite for corporations to effectively compete with other product offerings and have a future. Yammer has funding as part of the Geni team, access to excellent engineers, and a base of users garnered during their recent launch at the TC50 conference. They have all the pieces and a great opportunity.
I have myriad suggestions, some I plan on keeping to myself in case I decide later to enter the space with a competing product. However, the following things make sense and should be implemented with haste:
Twitter Integration:
People do not want to update two things. Hence, Yammer needs to accept your Twitter following list and provide those updates in a separate feed. Also, updates should have a public/private function to allow for exportation of any update to the user
Posted in Tech Blogs | Comments (0)
