Blog Day - Some Recommended Reading
August 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I was just pinged about Blog Day (thanks Carlos!):
What is BlogDay?
BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
Here are just a few of the blogs I frequent that you may not know about:
Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners — this is a must-read for startups/entrepreneurs interested in ad-supported methods. He brings great insight/investigative ideas to the table a couple times a week typically.
Andrew Chen — he’s an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Mohr Davidow Ventures. He brings some great insight to the table like Jeremy — doesn’t post much, but it’s good stuff.
James Hong of HotOrNot [note: problem loading his blog at moment] — here’s another. Here’s a must-read post on re-inventing HotOrNot (aka dropping a $500k/mo revenue stream).
The 3 of these guys I’ve just mentioned all are into the viral/ad-supported business models, social networks, and what makes people click the way they do. Lots of good behaviorial type stuff.
Non-Tech: Whitney of USA Today’s POP Candy — this gives you the latest on pop culture in all aspects (movies, TV shows, music) daily.
What bloggers do you recommend? Post in the comments.
ASK STEVE #7 - How Do I Get Blog Attention?
August 30, 2007 | 4 Comments
Hey Steve-
Since I last wrote to you, FunAdvice.com has continued it’s growth spurt, and we now get close to one million uniques per month.
According to quantcast.com & compete.com, FunAdvice is the fastest growing Q&A site.
A few weeks ago, we launched our biggest upgrade in a year, and signed on Mandy Moore (yes, that mandy – http://www.funadvice.com/my/mandymoore ) as a featured advisor. To help promote her new album & tour, she’s answering some questions on our site.
While Yahoo Answers has had celebrities ask questions, we believe it’s more interesting & sincere of them to answer questions, because to answer a question from a fan, you have to care, interact, and acknowledge them – something her fans have appreciated greatly on our site, while she hasn’t had time to answer many questions, it’s been thrilling to have her participate even in a modest way.
Our press release is here: http://www.funadvice.com/doc/press
And now my question:
With no venture capital or angel investment, yet with such an amazing story (as everybody we talk to agrees), why is it that we get “ignored” by most sites, tech / social network bloggers, etc? What is it that we have to do before we “matter”…? Is there a size milestone, eg, X million uniques / month?
Thanks in advance as always, I continue to enjoy reading your blog (though the summer break you took resulted in me reading less, it’s good to see you posting again).
Best,
Jeremy Goodrich
Co-founder, FunAdvice.com
Jeremy,
I like the site overall. I checked it out a couple days ago when I saw your comment on the Wis.dm $5mm announcement.
How do you get attention? You need to make it. You need to make a name for yourself — and get people to remember your site’s name. Possibly get a blog up, start writing stuff, become the expert of the ‘question/answer’ market — provide numbers/stats on you and your competition; possibly vs other markets, or vs social networking sites, etc — anything that may compare. Get your face on the blog and maybe seek some investment in your company.
Personally, I think giving up 5-7% equity for $15k — if you were accepted — into Y Combinator or TechStars, is more than worth it. Because then you get to go on the roadshow and give a presentation to a room full of VCs and the press that can’t wait to write about the demo’s. But first ask yourself, why? Why do you need the press you’re asking about — and thus, for what I just said, do you really need to give up equity to get money, to hopefully get press? If you’re seeking VC or angel funding, I think this is the way to go.
Or get an advisor or angel to give you some investment — if you get a big dog advisor/investor behind you, you’ll likely get some press. But above all, just have a really great product that users are using. If I were you, I’d focus on building your community — the press will eventually follow if you keep growing it. But really, anytime your competitors are mentioned anywhere in the blogoshere — comment on the post and email the author personally. Don’t make it sound like, “Why didn’t you write about us?”, but rather “Another player in the question/answers market is FunAdvice” — and promote your competition a bit; start showing some charts that plots you against Yahoo Answers and another competitor.
You should feature Mandy Moore on your homepage.
Any widgets for myspace/blogs? facebook app? What about a widget that I could put on my blog that allows people to ask me a question? And also lists the most recent questions I’ve answered? There you go — there’s a viral mktg idea for you. [note: make signup simple and maybe right through the widget -- the widget will be flash. just require an email address and username, maybe password too?]
Wow - some deep, serious shit on here — http://www.funadvice.com/photos/view/1505
This is really sad — http://www.funadvice.com/q/anorexica
P.S. Get a logo — they are like $50 for a cheapie. You can try running a contest with your current userbase — give away a MP3 player or something, and make the winner the featured advisor or user for the week. Or contact Juan who did the logo for Techquila Shots, he rocks!
Anyone else have some advice for Jeremy (and the other entrepreneurs reading this)?
Best,
Steve
Do you want my advice?
FUNNY: As Not Read by Oprah
August 29, 2007 | 1 Comment
Read and laugh. I think this is the funniest thing I’ve read in the past year. (digg it)
Whuddleworld - TY Beanie Babies Needs To Buy This
August 27, 2007 | 2 Comments
WebKinz are those furry little stuffed animals you buy for $12.95 at the store — they fly off shelves, or they were — I see them everywhere now. Remember Beanie Babies — these are those, but with an Internet spin to them (you get a digital code; go online; and your stuffed animal is online and you take care of it — it’s alive!).
Anyhow, TY must be hurting, BAD. TY [maker of Beanie Babies] needs a strategy — an online one, to make their Beanie Babies move.
Well, if they could morph this site a tiny bit — this is the answer, in my opinion: Whuddleworld is for sale.
Q: Facebook Apps - How to Sync FB Login with Non-FB Login?
August 23, 2007 | 7 Comments
I’m trying to figure out — what’s the best way to sync a user that signs up for a Facebook Application via Facebook, so that they can use the application at the non-Facebook website as well? I know iLike was going to be doing this, but not sure if they have yet to do it. A user should be able to login to iLike via their Facebook account, or they should be able to go to http://www.ilike.com directly and login.
The opposite I’m also curious about — what if the user signs up at (for example) http://www.ilike.com and then wants to join that account with their Facebook account?
Anyone have thoughts on best way to do this?
ASK STEVE #6 - TinyURL (or clone) could become next Digg or Del.icio.us
August 17, 2007 | 5 Comments
I’m behind on answering advice questions and apologize to those who have submitted any. Keep the questions coming in and I will get to them. -Steve
Ivan sent in a link to his service called YooRL, which is basically a service that shortens a URL (like tinyurl or urltea) and then keeps track of what links are used/clicked in real-time — which they turn into a popularity chart on their homepage.
I think it’s a great idea — if he were to focus the service the way I just said. Honestly, TinyURL is sitting on a goldmine of data that isn’t being used to its’ full potential — I think the site could become another source for people to see popular items on the web, much like how digg (# of votes) and del.icio.us (# of real-time bookmarks) show popular items.
I would do a Google Maps mashup based on the IP of users accessing each URL and do a geo-IP lookup, then show this map for each URL that shows all the locations of users that have accessed the URL. You could even make this interactive like TwitterVision, showing location accesses in real-time — or simulating how the URL spread.
I would also let website owners grab a JavaScript include snippet that they could put in the header of their webpages to further track how their webpages’ popularity ranks across the world in real-time. You could eventually start trimming this data, so that maybe there are the ‘top news stories’ across the world (using all URLs of news sites), and eliminating the login URLs of like Amazon.com that get accessed millions of times per day.
Note: To somewhat alleviate miscalculations — only allow each IP to count as 1 visit, because a user may visit their own webpage/URL 50x and that would skew the data.
So Ivan — I like the idea; and who knows if Read more
Money doesn’t come easy, or else everyone would be rich
August 16, 2007 | 2 Comments
My buddy Eric Nagel is finally blogging. He’s doing it Shoemoney style, by posting anything — family-related, affiliate marketing related, or random geek things (like how he has the temperature auto-updating online for his hot tub, pool, and office/attic — and also how with the holidays coming up, he has a light show programmed to music).
Eric is a very smart guy — potentially the smartest I know. He also works hard and knows that money needs to be earned — and to save those pennies. Back in highschool he said we’d someday work together — and over the past 10 years, we have here and there, but I’ve moved away from Buffalo 7 times and have been the “live by the seat of my pants” kind of guy, whereas he’s been married with 3 kids for 6 years now.
I’ve always said he’s the ying to my yang, but I think he’s always been way too conservative and I was way too aggressive. I’ve simmered down quite a bit since falling on my face over the years and I think he’s relaxed a bit too, but we’re still not ready to go at it together. I’m now more than likely permanently back in Buffalo, so someday I think we’ll be doing some things together once again.
Recently he told me, “Steve, I’m going to make a million dollars someday. Someday, you’re going to make a million dollars in a day.” Hopefully we both reach financial freedom at some point.
Anyhow, the title of this post was a quote from one of his recent posts. Eric works his own hours, from his own home, getting to spend time with his young growing kids, and he makes twice the salary I do in a year — so I recommend adding his RSS feed and hopefully he’ll keep up with his writing.
Tip: Don’t Ever, Not Reply to a Sales Inquiry
August 14, 2007 | 9 Comments
Lesson here: A small project coming your way might just be a way that someone is trying to test you out for potential larger projects down the road.
My buddy Eric is looking to get a simple Facebook app developed — it’s small and shouldn’t take much work. Mashable has been pumping FBFactory as often as they possibly can — wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a connection there. So I recommended Eric contact them — their website is quite simple, seems professional and straight to the point.
It’s been a week now and no response — not even a, “This is an auto-reply, we’ll get back to you — thanks for the inquiry.”
I was curious about how they would handle him (his project), because I’d possibly recommend them in the future to people looking to get a Facebook app developed. Even if they are slammed with work and this is too minuscule for them, they should have said that. Some/Any kind of reply back to him was necessary if they’re wanting people to send email into them or fill-out a form on their website.
But they didn’t. And quite frankly, they’ve lost any future business I (or someone looking for my recommendation) may have sent their way.
If you are slammed or have a minimum project price — state that on your contact/inquiry form page. “Minimum project price is $XXXX. We are currently backed up with work, we will respond to your inquiry no later than Monday August X.” And then set aside some time each week to reply to each inquiry — keep your sales funnel churning.
P.S. Any web developers out there that are independent consultants — I look at Odesk from time to time; there’s not really anyone on there focused on Facebook apps. You should add that as a skill if you’d developed one before. Not that it has to be dev’d in FBML [since you can instead use an IFRAME and use any language you want on your own server], but not a single provider has listed FBML as a skill set. Ditto on ELance, and not sure on Guru.com as I can’t seem to search for a specific skill set.
ASK STEVE #5 - Posting to all your Social accounts in one click
August 3, 2007 | 2 Comments
Steve,
Hey, we’re working on http://wheezio.uk.to
It will allow people to easily add all their twitter, jaiku, pownce, facebook, livejournal, blogger etc accounts.
The users will then be able to simply write whatever they want to post ONCE and choose which of their services they wish to post it to, and hit post. Their blog post will then be posted automatically to all the services they chose.
This idea arose due to the fact that new twitter-like apps are coming out all the time and some people move between them, but not all their friends move with them. So they have to post on multiple sites for all their friends to be able to be kept up-to-date. So with this they could just post their stuff once and it goes to whatever ones they wish.
Also users should be able to get all their updates from the different sites in one place. Save them checking all their social sites to get their friends updates. Although this feature is still under consideration as to whether it would be feasible to add this extra feature.
We don’t currently have any money making plans for it, as we have some larger sites in development that would help fund such smaller applications that we have came up with.
Its not currently open for users yet, but we’re getting there rather quickly.
Just wondering what your thoughts were on it, i think it would appeal to a lot of people, as it is very simple to use and the need is there.
Cheers
Joe Finnigan
http://nightworkmedia.uk.to/
Joe,
Sounds like a good concept — just trying to think whether I’d use it. Like you (and most), I have many social accounts - Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog, etc. Problem is, I typically have to login to all of them at some point to see if I have new messages or comments from others — or to see what’s new on my friend’s accounts (since this isn’t being pushed to me anyhow).
I guess it’d be convenient to go to one site and be able to input a message, then check boxes next to the services I’d want that message published to. But going back to my paragraph above, doesn’t that eliminate the social parts of all those social services I’m apart of — I don’t want to just share with the world, but I want to see what my world (friends/family/colleagues) are up to as well.
Then there’s the security question — would I really give up all my logins/passwords to all of these sites to one (financially unbacked) website (that would be very susceptible to being hacked — yet not have the security in place to truly lock this down)?
I likely wouldn’t use this service. 
Great Daily Tech News Summaries - WebbAlert
August 2, 2007 | 1 Comment
This is hot. It’s the day’s tech news in under 5 minutes as a video. But, if you don’t want to commit to a 5 minute video — they summarize the news in a daily (M-Th) blog post. She references bloggers as the all-stars we in the tech blog community like to think they are (in Aug 2 video she shows Fred Wilson’s blog and opinion on the Dow Jones/WSJ acquisition by News Corp).
I like it. Check it out — WebbAlert
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