Monday, May 12th, 2008
When I try and explain what Twitter is to people, a blank stare usually follows. Next is: So how do they make money?
The best response that I can come up with (ie: it ends that thread of the conversation) is that it’s a proof of concept and that they’re still trying to figure out their model and their users are still trying to figure out the value offering.
I keep seeing the value proposition of Twitter coming up here and there.
At Blog Carolinas, Andy Beal gave a great example of how a family could use a private account to send text messages to everyone at once with updates/questions like “I’m at the grocery store. Does anyone need anything?”
When I was on a road trip last fall, we Twittered (with almost no followers) for recommendations of what to do in Seattle. 20 minutes later, we were told exactly where to go and what places to see. Without that type of connectivity, that night would have been one of the more average nights, rather than one of the craziest nights we had on the entire trip.
BrightKite seems to have potential at giving new value to Twitter’s base functionality. By utilizing text messaging and online messaging at the same time to distribute real-world locations, it’s certain to add a whole new dimension of functionality to Twitter’s offering. I’m already seeing Twitter messages scroll by of random meetups that wouldn’t have happened if BrightKite hadn’t been used. (Speaking of, anyone have an extra invite they want to send my way?)
Today, an earthquake at 7.8 on the Richter Scale hit China and Beijing today, in what has already killed thousands, and is sure to be even more devastating than we currently know. Robert Scoble points out (still waiting on a source for this) that the USGS was three minutes behind the first Twitters of the earthquake, which you can see here.
It will be interesting to see what pieces of the Twitter puzzle get brought together and what comes of it in the next couple of years. It obviously has a significant value proposition. Hopefully, we’ll see a revenue-generating model that suits users, developers, and companies.
Monday, March 24th, 2008
So, I don’t really like sleep…other than the fact that it’s nice after significant physical exertion. But still, it kinda cramps my productivity. So I’m going to try and do less of it.
Those that know me, know that I’m fairly particular about sleep. I usually keep uncommon hours and often have no sleep schedule whatsoever other than “when I’m tired.”
This year, I’ve been trying to hack at the system of sleep a bit more precisely. I’ve done a fair amount of research and have discovered that, simply put, sleep is a series of chemical reactions in your body. I’ll explain more about what those are and what they do in a later post.
I’m definitely not up for polyphasic sleep in 20 minute cycles. It’s just not socially convenient in any way, shape, or form, and I can’t even imagine not getting into a longer flow-state.
However, 3 hours of sleep at night, with a 90 minute nap, like this guy, seems plausible. It would also fit in with my natural sleep habits.
So, my question to you all is this: What sleep experiments have you done? What research do you know about that I may benefit from?
I’ll be putting together the results of my research before next week - which is when I plan on starting the new sleep habit.
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Just because you can see the line, how do you know it’s there and what it’s like?
Sometimes you don’t when you think you do.
And when you cross that line, you’ll see that an experience offers an infinite number of points to take in rather than the limited perspective of speculation.
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Tonight, I spent about 20 minutes putting together a script to automate a task that I’ve spent 3 hours on in the past two days. Now, I’ll get 5 times as much done…in my sleep tonight.
When I first started working at KeywordRanking/WebSourced/MarketSmart Interactive, I watched 20+ salespeople run Keyword/Search Engine Ranking Reports reports for 2-3 hours before making cold calls…Every…Single…Day. They would get a lead in from the website, enter in the URL and keywords, and send it to the prospect before making the call, waiting while it ran, etc.
It was completely stupid.
Once I realized what was happening, I spent my free time one week, and a few hours over the weekend, putting together an automated script that integrated a few programs and completely eliminated all of this work.
On Monday, I came in and ran the script.
Immediately, it started churning through the weekend’s leads one-by-one, pulling information out of Outlook, putting it into the ranking report software, copy the report into an e-mail, and send it to the VP of Sales.
Overnight, the entire sales team had just gained 25%+ more productivity. At 20 salespeople, this was like hiring 5 new people. And it didn’t cost a dime.
Due to the 1,200+ clients we had at the peak of the KeywordRanking/WebSourced heyday, we put together a lot of automation practices and infrastructure that was pretty rad.
Today, I still use automation practices as much as possible. It’s smart, it’s efficient, it’s effective, and it saves boatloads of cash…If you know what you’re doing and how to do it.
The problem is that most people don’t even know what’s possible to automate. The answer is: Everything.
Maximizing these three things below can turn your operations from a headache to the easiest part of your business to manage. Plus, seeing all of this work get done while you’re focusing on maximizing your knowledge and strategies? It’s just smart business.
1: AutoMate. This is the piece of Windows software that can make every other piece of software talk to each other. You can make it send keystrokes, run programs, open new windows, copy/paste, whatever you need it to do. I “know a guy” who even uses it to automate parts of his marketing. Online data mining with specialized software a pain? Not once you get the hang of AutoMate.
2: Outsourced Assistants. Tim Ferriss brought this idea to light for me. I’d say the learning curve here is a bit steeper, and a bit more costly, but once you get through that, you can have all of your weekly reporting, analysis, bills, whatever, all taken care of while you sleep. And you don’t have the responsibility of an employee…just an hourly bill.
3: Automation tools with your current services. Google AdWords reports. Automated bill-pay. RSS aggregators. Outsourced transcription services. (Writing a book? Ramble for a while and get someone else to type it for $30/hr…that’s a lot of words.) So many people don’t maximize the value of these tools, and it’s simply a matter of sitting down with them and tinkering around to see what they can do. And heck, that’s fun. Make the stuff you already pay for do even more work.
Aside from these three things, you also have things like Excel macros and learning the basics of PHP/MySQL to create and run tasks from your own computer. There’s nothing like having your own customized tools for those secret data mining and analysis projects you work on.
Go work less.
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
For several reasons, I love this article on Jeff Bezos, published by Wired in 1999. The tech boom was gaining notoriety, and the young Amazon.com was a hopeful leader still trying to find its way like everyone else.
One of the things I like is the idea that Bezos lives by called a Regret-Minimization Framework, exemplified here:
“When I’m 80,” he asked himself, “am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing a chance to be there at the beginning of the Internet? Yes.”
Steve Jobs holds a similar posture in his legendary morning routine that he shared in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech…
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
They both can be tough postures to hold, but are very powerful in answering decisions about how to live life…Or grow your business…Or manage your employees…Or make that decision that can have potential negative consequences for the community.
If you never have, consider giving the idea some practice in your day-to-day. Maybe you’ll find yourself throwing raves, setting otherwise-unreasonable goals, or quitting your job and moving across the country.
Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Reuters reports that YouTube has helped Ontario police find a man they believe to be responsible for a murder at a local night club.
A video posted on the ultra-popular Web site YouTube has helped Canadian police find a man they believe responsible for a murder.
Police in the Southern Ontario city of Hamilton said on Thursday that they uploaded a one-minute, 12-second clip from a surveillance tape onto the video-sharing YouTube site.
The video, which showed suspects arriving at a local nightclub for a Sean Price hip-hop concert, garnered media attention and was viewed more than 30,000 times.
Reuters Pictures
Photo
“This is the first time Hamilton police have utilized video web posting in an investigation, and to the best of its knowledge, the first time that law enforcement has ever used it as a direct investigative tool,” Staff Sgt. Jorge Lasso told a news conference.
This whole “Web 2.0″ thing might just be useful, huh?
This reminds me of the “America’s Most Wanted” poster that hangs in the FBI building in Washington DC. That could be really cool if YouTube et al began having a law enforcement section of the website to help with things like this. I know that many people would be interested in viewing footage like this in their area - All of the cop/America’s Most Wanted/etc TV shows are certainly a testament to this, as is this story.
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
StumbleVideo launched today and Andy Beal got a first look, digging in with yet another thorough writeup.
With the launch of StumbleVideo, the company is betting that people will enjoy discovering new videos in the very same way, and spend even more time “channel surfing”. “People demand instant access to online video content that’s personally gratifying, and they don’t want to spend all day looking for it. That’s where StumbleUpon fits in,” says Feller. “StumbleVideo allows people to discover great videos they would likely never find using traditional keyword searches. The experience is like channel surfing through video content that is laser-targeted to your tastes.”
And without further ado: First Look: StumbleUpon Announces New Video Surfing Site, StumbleVideo
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
IBM has decided that Second Life has become to valuable to ignore and has decided to launch a Second Life Business Group.
Second Life is one of the main areas in the new IBM group, but not the only one, Wladawsky-Berger said. “I really believe that highly visual and collaborative interfaces will become very important in the way we interact with all IT applications in the future,” he said.
I’m curious as to what those other groups are. I would be willing to bet that MySpace, FaceBook and Bebo would be included in there.
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Chris Richardson was kind enough to not only listen to me talk about the cool video search marketing stuff that’s out there now, but also was kind enough to interview me and put it up on WebProNews.
Here’s a link to the video. Or watch it below ;)
Monday, October 30th, 2006
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done some nutty things in my life. And I’m not really going to talk about those things here or anywhere online.
But apparently Jeremy David doesn’t hold the same sentiment.
“I am going to do an experiment – open source my life. See what happens when a community of users has control over a person in the “real world”. I graduate with a BCom in August of 2007, so that gives us 10 months to figure out an effective and elegant interface, accumulate enough of a community to make it actually happen, and develop an infrastructure that makes this possible. In that time I will slowly transition control of my life over to this website. Sounds pretty intense, doesn’t it?
Consider this the announcement of Choose Jeremy’s Adventure BETA.“
Best of luck to you, man. Most people in college don’t take the chance of falling asleep first at a party, let alone let someone else make their decisions for them.
That is pretty rad, though.
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