Archive for the ‘How to’ Category
Written on May 2, 2008 – 1:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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Sometimes you just need a break. So do I. Then I either persuade a colleague to play some soccer in the hallway, or press the Stumble button. This afternoon I chose the latter and ended up at TwittEarth, a rather smashing visualization of the Twitter public timeline.
It’s a mash-up by Digitas France SA, who created this Twittearth for fun. Although I don’t question their motives, creating a Twitter mash-up seems like the perfect free publicity PR tool these days.
Just ask somebody to develop a 3D engine (Papervision), use an API for the geolocalization service (Yahoo!) and find some fancy icons (Fasticon). The result? Some heavy coverage on world’s largest tech blogs:
Keep that in mind, all you web design agencies out there. Don’t spend your money on ads, just go creative with Twitter and let the blogosphere do the rest.
Written on May 1, 2008 – 11:46 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
For those people who DO know what RSS is and use it it is hard to imagine that most people don’t. According to some research (Pew Internet & Yahoo) only 12% of all people are aware of RSS and less than 4% have knowingly used it.
Although I can imagine that most of our readers (with an interest in The Next Web) do know about RSS I still wanted to tell you about the phenomena since today is official RSS Awareness day.
According to WikiPedia “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a “feed” or “web feed” or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.”
But maybe this video (titled “RSS in Plain English”) is more interesting to watch:
As you can see in the video, before you start subscribing to the RSS feeds of your favorite sites you will sign-up for (or download) a RSS reader. Try Google Reader, Bloglines or Netvibes.
Once you have your RSS reader working you can subscribe to RSS feeds by clicking the RSS icon on a website or in your browser url field. Most modern web browsers already identify RSS feeds, so you will be able to see the RSS icon. Don’t forget to subscribe to our feed!
Written on April 23, 2008 – 10:49 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
During the “Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia” Web 2.0 Expo session, attendees were able to ask questions by sending a Twitter message to @micromedia2. As you can imagine, updates like “the man next to me smells a bit” and “Thank god Scoble isn’t in the room..” appeared on the two screens. Yet some folks of the audience managed to influence the topics Gregarious Narain (Blue Whale Labs), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research), Stowe Boyd and Brian Solis discussed. They asked for some business insights, and they got it. So gentlemen, how CAN we use Twitter for business?
Brian Solis praised Dell. The computer company follows the Twitter conversations by using Tweetscan and reacts when (potential) customers ask questions or complain about the Dell products. Forrester research does the same thing. “We listen to what people are saying and usually engage in the conversation when we notice one. Other companies like Jetblue, Marketingprofs, Zappos and Comcast do the same thing”, Owyang said. “That’s the immediate benefit”, Boyd said, “Yet the big picture here is that streaming services like Twitter are potentially very big for enterprises. People can follow projects or other companies by having things streamed to them. They don’t have to look it up anymore”.
But what if companies don’t keep an eye on Twittter, like the majority does now. What will they loose? Solis: “The conversations will take place anyway. With or without you. And hopefully, the Twitter conversations might become even more more substantial. When you ignore questions then, especially the one full of hate, you leave the answers to other people.”
Stowe Boyd pitched a pitch concept of his own: TwitPitch. The amount of emails from start-ups who wanted his attention drove Boyd mad, so he came up with a short ‘n’ sweet Twitter format. Now start-ups can pitch to Boyd with one update. That saves him time, and he actually noticed some good ones which he then retweets. “It’s very interesting, the whole pitching process is now in the open discourse. Followers are getting to see the pitches, it’s more of a performance now. We took pitching out of the smoky black room that is email”.
Written on April 22, 2008 – 7:40 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Here at the “Free Traffic, Search Engine & Social Media Optimization” Web 2.0 Expo session, social media expert and famous guest blogger at several influential blogs Muhammad Saleem talks about social media optimization. Most of what he tells is pretty basic and informative - start a campaign on Sunday night -, but I like his overall message the most: it’s about love and appreciation people! Here’s my interpretation of what he said.
Everybody on the web seems to be eager for some attention, but the best way to get some is to grant other people attention. For starters, write an evergreen post about your specialism. For example a Howto ebook about your hobby or profession that will remain interesting for a couple of years. As soon as people link to this quality content, show that you appreciate this and link back to them by saying: this blog picked up my news, read here what the blogger has to say about it. Or allow trackbacks. Other visitors will notice that it pays off to link to you, and start linking as well. Before you know it, you’ve started one big attention love chain.
One remark that goes hand in hand with the love-thought is that you have to be genuine. Of course you can act like you dig the social media revolution and that you’re oh-so open and honest. Yet if you don’t mean it, the savvy users will be able to look beyond your facade. Also, writing beautiful and spectacular headlines on social bookmarking sites is ok and truly effective, yet you have to deliver on the promise.
So if you haven’t yet: change your mindset before you enter the world of social media. Put some effort in relationships, reward active visitors and content-creating colleagues and participate in conversations and enjoy the attention.
Written on April 19, 2008 – 8:44 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
More and more people are mobile workers these days. Laptops with Wi-Fi make it easy to get away from the desktop and any place with Wi-Fi and a power socket can be your office. In my bag I carry an Airport Express, Ethernet cable and power extension cord so I can work everywhere. At the office I am working right now I can choose between 3 open Wi-Fi networks. So which one should I pick? I want the fastest one, right? So how do you determine that?
I used to just pick a random signal and if it seemed slow I would switch to the next Access Point, and to the next, and back again. I knew there were several DSL speedtests you could do but they all seemed so boring. But now I have found Speedtest.net. It is both addictive and fun. I wouldn’t mind having it running in the background all day.
Here is a screenshot of the main dashboard:
As you can see there are maps, meters, colors and counters. They move, shake, update and change color. Everything a geek could want…
Written on April 16, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Several people have asked me to turn the “After the Funding” posts into a document for offline reading. I thought this was a good idea and hope that the document will be a useful checklist for all startups having received funding recently and making plans for the next phase.
Here is a link to a PDF document that provides details on the following five crucial guidelines for recently funded startups:
- Base Decision-Making on Long-Term Strategy instead of Short-Term Constraints
- Set-up a Repeatable Sales Process First, Then Expand Sales Force
- Align Business and Technology around a Product Roadmap
- Establish a Product Heartbeat – a Continual Rapid-Fire Release Plan
- Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done
I will be back in May with more advice on how to unlock startup growth. In the meantime I would be quite curious to hear about what you consider the most significant challenges in the post-funding stage. Strategy? Sales expansion? Roadmap? Releases? Teams? What are the three challenges that keep you awake at night?
Written on April 9, 2008 – 3:37 pm
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Another Wednesday, another post in the series “After the Funding“. While previous posts have looked at strategy, sales, roadmap and releases, I will today look at people. At the end of the day it’s people that make or break startups. And you need to have the right team on board to succesfully unlock growth.
Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done
The early team is built up of founders and a close circle of trusted employees that have often worked together previously and that become close friends. The team has natural chemistry and complementing skills. You need few management skills and early employees wear many hats, filling in as office manager or accountant when needed.
To expand the business, the team needs to be expanded. Expansion means bringing in seniority as well as volume. The team of founders and early employees needs to determine which management roles can be assumed by the current team and which need to be brought in from the outside. And the founders need to create a recruitment process that consistently lands the startup additional talent.
The founders must realize that it is time to bring in the professionals when they are spending more time learning than leading and the staff starts losing confidence. At the same time, they must avoid bringing in too much senior staff with high salaries and low hunger for success. As for expanding the team, the key lies in hiring people that are smart and that get things done. Read and apply Joel Spolky’s “Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing” and never hire someone if there are any doubts or you are having a hard time make a “hire or no hire” decision.
After the Funding
In the first post of the series I explained that decision-making needs to be based on long-term strategy. Owners need to spend time defining a clear and concise strategy and enable others to make day-to-day decisions based on their roles in the company.
Then I cautioned about the risks of premature expansion of the sales force. Owners must set-up a repeatable sales process first and then expand the sales force.
Then followed a post about the importance of a product roadmap to create alignment between teams, to help business define its target market and to guide technology in setting priorities and allocating resources.
And last week I made the case for your product heartbeat – a continual rapid-fire release plan that provides customers with new features at short, predictable intervals and gives focus to the development team.
Interesting Reads
Here are some interesting articles and posts on hiring:
Written on April 9, 2008 – 12:35 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Twitter users can discuss the way you ought to Twitter for ages. Should you solely tell what you’re doing? Or is it better to post interesting links? Tip: if you’re trapped in a discussion like this, there’s a way to make it stop immediately. The magic words? You can always unfollow me.
These endless discussions start with an interesting question though: what are you twittering about? John Krutsch (scripting) and Jared Stein (design) developed a fun app that shows the words you’ve mentioned most by generating a tag cloud. This is ours:
Check your tweet cloud too at Tweet Clouds. Be warned though, it takes 0.04 seconds per tweet. For example, it took 30 minutes to generate Stowe Boyd’s tweet cloud. So as John and Jared say, better grab a beverage while waiting for the insightful results.
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