IDEA #25 - Blogroll Advertising Network
February 21, 2007 | 5 Comments
Is there an AdSense network for the blog post world? Meaning, I imagine a network that I add my RSS feed to — and in return, download a widget, which I put on my blog that displays random (?) blog post headlines (and 100 characters of the post). So instead of advertising companies — I’m advertising other blog posts to read across the web.
As the network expands — these wouldn’t be random any longer, they’d be much more focused. The widget would be able to tell what other blogs my readers visit (and I link out to) and start displaying links to blog posts that would be of relevance to my readers. The more clicks to other blogs, the more clicks I would expect to receive from other blogs. Thus, if I send out 500 clicks to other blogs — I would expect 500 incoming clicks from various blogs in the network.
This might all be free — maybe though there are ways to pay money to have a blog post featured on the network.
MyBlogLog could likely put something together like this kind of easily — since they already have the blogs with their widget installed (and thus aggregate data of the MyBlogLog readers that are surfing amongst the different MyBlogLog widget-ized websites).
To me — the web is huge, and there’s room for every one of us blogs. Someone is going to keep coming back to your blog if you offer interesting content — otherwise they won’t. If someone adds 5 more blogs to their daily reads — they’ll likely continue going to all of them, or it’ll be a battle of the best, for which is going to continue that readers’ interest.
Does this make sense? If my blog only gets 5 readers per day, but another gets 500 — will the 5 readers per day blog ever get proper publicity? How does this get monetized?
Another semi-related idea post of mine is here.
LESSON: Finding Your Inner Jerry Maguire
February 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I LOVE this movie — always have. Michael Gray posts a great motivating blog post. If you need to be pumped about running with that idea that has plagued you — or if you need a kick in the ass to not go half-assed at anything in life … read his quick post.
IDEA #24 - Our Overlapping Website Viewing Habits
February 20, 2007 | 5 Comments
Recalling Attention Trust, which Fred Wilson blogged about previously — it tracks where his time is spent online; it keeps track of your clickstream — what websites you’re visiting.
If a bunch of users had this installed and then it was aggregated into a database, you could find users with similar browsing habits / interests — if 75% of my time online is spent on overlapping sites that another user is on, I’d love to know what else that person is surfing. I’d possibly like to meet that person.
OthersOnline is trying something similar — and Slifeshare is tracking your “digital life activities.” MyBlogLog overlaps a bit — but they haven’t executed on all the aggregated data they have (seriously, they know so much on their users it’s sick — Yahoo did well; someone would do equally as good with a purchase of TiVo or Last.fm — the value of their aggregated data is priceless).
What ideas did this post just give you?
LESSON - 5 Deadly Sins for Blind Business Creation
February 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Great post up by Andrew Chen (EIR at Mohr Davidow Ventures) with some reminders to entrepreneurs:
5 Deadly Sins for Blind Business Creation
1. “I’m smart, I know this will work.”
2. “I’m introverted, and I like the technology more than the people.”
3. “I’ve spent too much time building already, I’m afraid of the results.”
4. “I think we should build all of it first, then figure out if it works.”
5. “I’m dumb, I don’t know what assumptions to verify.”
Read the full post — we all need these reminders (particularly if you haven’t lived in the trenches yet).
IDEA #23 - Your Syndicated Chronological Life
February 20, 2007 | 5 Comments
Ever wondered what you do all day? OK - you likely know that now, but curious what you were doing last month? Or last year? How about what your friends are up to? Excellent post by Emily Chang today regarding an RSS mashup she’s done for herself. She’s mashing up all her social RSS feeds — Flickr, Last.fm, her blogs, twitter, her events at upcoming.org, plazes, etc. They’re all being pulled together, timestamped, and stored in a database on her server — then fed out as one big data stream. Talk about a stalker’s paradise.
She’s using a plugin called feedgrab (odd it doesn’t have own URL) by Andrew Weaver. She mentions one of the problems she had run into in the past was hosted solutions (e.g. flickr RSS feed is hosted at flickr.com) — I also wonder how long those hosted RSS feeds last for (or how many items are in them). Also, multiple servers are going to have multiple timestamps. Her solution runs on her own server, pulls from the various RSS feeds in real-time, stores the entries on her server, and follows one consistent timestamp.
So who’s going to create this for the rest of us? Read more
Marshall Kirkpatrick: SMS/IM/Email Alerts for RSS Feeds
February 19, 2007 | 2 Comments
Here’s another SMS idea…
Former (yet current) TechCrunch contributor (editor) Marshall Kirkpatrick listed his demands for a SMS/IM/Email alerts system for RSS feeds:
I use services like this extensively, some of which I do pay for. Nobody quite gets it right yet as far as I’m concerned. I would gladly pay a monthly fee for a service that sends me IM and SMS alerts for any number of RSS feeds that I select - if it that company did it right. Here’s what I’m looking for:
1. IM me if I’m online, if I’m not then SMS *and* email me the URL of the feed item if I’m not online (Rasasa and zaptxt each fill different halves of this request)
2. Let me set the hours I want to recieve SMS alerts, outside those hours email me. (rasasa does that)
3. Send me the first 25 characters or however much is possible from the feed item, not just its title (anothr.com does that by Skype IM but no SMS is avail)
Read more
IDEA #22 - Amazon.com Social Networking
February 19, 2007 | 2 Comments
There must be a way to turn Amazon.com’s userbase into a huge social network. Amazon offers an API that gives access to their user reviews (although it may just be per product — so you grab a product and then get the user reviews associated with that product; you can do 1 per second — thus you can’t just start grabbing user reviews; but you could start correlating popular products and grabbing that info). I believe there are tools to view wishlists — maybe those must be shared.
Must be a way based on the user reviews (if a user email / ID is provided) of aggregating all of that data and figuring out compatibility amongst the users. Thus, if I’ve given high ratings to various items and so has someone else — then we’d likely strike up some good conversation, and/or have some other product recommendations for each other. Might be strong similarities with our music tastes, or movie tastes, or book tastes, or anything else — but those 3 would be the ideal platforms to work from.
I realize Amazon has “state-of-the-art” product recommendations — that’s not the focus here. The focus is Read more
IDEA #6 additions - LikeLoveOrHate.com (adds user compatibility ratings; dating / event capabilities)
February 19, 2007 | 8 Comments
If you recall, this original idea (”a HotOrNot for interests”) was all about the creation of a very simple (on the front-end) website for users. As soon as the user comes to the website, they’d be asked a question and immediately start answering them — simple questions like, “Do you like peanut butter?” (like/love/hate) or “Do you enjoy reading books?” (like/love/hate) — then depending on these answers, we might dig a bit deeper into a topic. So if the user says they love to read books, we might ask — “Do you prefer non-fiction or fiction?”, etc.
The addition: If you’re a member on the website Last.fm, then you’re aware of the “music compatibility rating” that you have with other users of the website. Basically, you’re logged in and as you browse other user profiles, it will show you your music compatibility.
I propose we do something similar with my idea — everyone has a Read more
IDEA #21 - Remynders.com
February 15, 2007 | 8 Comments
The Problem: What about all the commercials and advertisements you see — maybe you’re looking for a new car and see a billboard for the new Nissan 350z — and you’d like to check that out further online, but you’re in your car now. Or you’re watching a TV show and see a commercial for a new video game you’d like to check-out later. Or you’re reading the newspaper and see an ad for a new laundry detergent offering a $1 off coupon at their website.
But you’re likely not going to drop everything to hop on your computer — you’re likely going to forget about these things.You’ll likely have to see those ads several times (industry studies show 8 times), before you’ll really remember. However, there is potential to capture your attention the first time — in those few seconds. I call these, impulse interactions.
The Idea: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a unique code for each of those ads? I could simply send the code as a text message, or call a phone number and input the code. That’s it, done. The code gets tied to my account and next time I’m at my computer, I could login to my account to view all the ads/offers I had “bookmarked” offline. I’d see a link to the website for the Nissan 350z — and a link to that $1 off coupon for laundry detergent, etc.
The Competition: Well, this idea is being done already — but still hasn’t taken off. There’s Aboutcodes … Read more
IDEA #20 - Finding the Employee Leak
February 15, 2007 | 6 Comments
I guess it is just assumed by Yahoo that a staff-wide email would get leaked, so they’re not going to put any juicy strategy into those types of emails — but it got me thinking, wouldn’t they love to know who did in fact leak this? It’d be simple, really — well, until employees learned the secret.
I’d take the email and send it through a bulk email program that alters some of the words / characters in the email. Correspond each version to each employee and then if you ever see a leaked version, you would be able to match it. Especially an email of that size — although, maybe there couldn’t possibly be 9,800+ grammatical changes
Although what about all types of emails you send (to more than 1 person). Wouldn’t it be great if they were passed through a filter — just in case they were confidential and were leaked?
