learnyousomething

Thoughts Of A Strange Man

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:15:00 -0400

for all those coming to this site and wondering why i haven’t updated in a while… i’m posting here.

Wrong: Cody Brown

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:54:00 -0400

(first: I don’t know Cody, nor is this intended as a personal attack on him. He is probably a very smart person, much smarter than myself. This is simply a counter-argument to his stance on Twitter)

In Cody Brown’s blog post “M yspace is to Facebook as Twitter is to ________” he force fits an anecdote “Scale is Everything” to fit his personal belief that Twitter will fall the way of MySpace. The problem is that he doesn’t even get why MySpace fell apart, more or less where Twitter’s weak points are (I’ll give you a hint, RSS is not one of them).

—-

How Cody Is Wrong: Point 1

Cody: MySpace failed due to segmented user groups and the inability to maintain a 3 front war (social networking-facebook, music-lastfm, entertainment-blogging)

Reality: MySpace failed due to an atrocious user experience.

The problem with MySpace has nothing to do with the fact that it’s user groups are segmented. In fact, when given the choice people prefer to get their whole experience in one place (just ask the Walton family). The problem is when that experience is lackluster, then people look for anything as an improvement over what’s annoying them.

MySpace let it’s users create their own pages from scratch. Which meant horrid color combinations, flashing backgrounds, auto-start music and videos, giant page sizes causing often minute long load times. You’d wince as you clicked to each new page, unsure of what terrors laid before you. MySpace’s problem is they have absolutely no control over the user experience, they let the animals run the zoo. The question shouldn’t be, why did MySpace die? It really should be, how did MySpace last this long?

—-

How Cody Is Wrong: Point 2

Cody: Facebook became what it is because Zuck started with a small group and through incremental evolution ended up with a broad-appealing product.

Reality: Facebook became what it is because Zuck started with a walled garden, let buzz reach a breaking point in that garden, then tore down the walls.

This difference while subtle, is vitally important. Facebook didn’t become a world-wide phenom due to it’s gradual evolution. What made facebook so cool at its inception is that it was only for college students, and only a couple colleges had it. This created a walled garden within a walled garden. First you couldn’t join unless you were in college, and even if you were in, you had to be in the select few ivy league schools to get it.

Then, instead of opening up to all colleges at once, Zuck started opening up to colleges one by one. It became such a big deal when your college finally was added to facebook I remember it actually interrupted one of our lectures when someone in class realized that we could sign-up. This created a buzz in the college community. And it bred a feeling of ownership to this service. It was ours, not our parents and not those high school kids.

Well you can imagine that buzz grew more and more as people outside the college community heard about it (probably those just outside the walls- recent grads and seniors in high school) and wanted to join in on the fun. This buzz kept growing and growing at a frenzied pace as more and more blogs and companies talked about Facebook. Then, one day, they opened the doors for everyone. At that very same time MySpace was dealing with news about nude pictures of high school students, and peodphiles. MySpace didn’t stand a chance.

I guess if you want to boil this down even further you can say that Facebook won because it was easier to use, easier on the eyes, and got all the cool kids on board.

—-

How Cody Is Wrong: Point 3

Cody: MySpace was popular for a use they didn’t anticipate, and they failed. Twitter is also popular for a use they didn’t anticipate. Therefore they will fail.

Reality: That’s a hasty generalization there sir.

Ask any successful startup founder, your first idea is never the one you end up with. And how you imagine users to play with your application is almost never how it’s used in actuality.

Do me a favor. Read up on the creation of Flickr, PayPal, The Internet, Viagra. Did any of these founders anticipate how their products would eventually be used? Not a chance.

—-

How Cody Is Wrong: Point 4

Cody: Twitter will eventually be replaced by multiple service providers much the same way MySpace was. One being a product with minimal centralization (RSSCloud for example), the other will be centralized but better organized.

Reality: Your Retarded.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume Cody means that for our individual twitterers and tweets we’d be using the decentralized RSSCloud (or similar) service. This would allow content creators to keep their data and use it however they’d like. Allowing different apps/readers, as well as different ways to display the tweet-equivalents. Then the centralized product would be for news organizations, as a method of making it easier for us to find legitimate news from legitimate sources.

First, decentralization will never happen. The reason is simple. Why would anyone want to join a decentralized group? Name one incentive for Oprah, Ellen, Shaq, Ashton or anyone else to move from Twitter to a decentralized source? Exactly. The only way Twitter loses ground for our daily conversation is if they restrict their usage in any way. That catastrophically bad idea aside, decentralization can’t kill Twitter. Only Twitter can kill Twitter.

Oh and the idea that a product with better organization is going to take down Twitter is laughable. The more likely scenario is that someone will come up with a way to better organize and display Twitter’s pipe and become the next TweetDeck.

Face it, Twitter is the only source of micro-blogging. Not only that, it still has a long way to grow. Twitter may eventually be overtaken, but not while it’s still surging forward like this.

—-

The answer to your question is, this: MySpace is to Facebook as RSS is to Twitter. (fixed your question).

How I Would Save: Facebook

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:09:00 -0400

Facebook is dying.

It doesn’t look sick now, but it also doesn’t look well. It can be fixed, but it won’t be. Mark my words: by 2012 Facebook will be a footnote.

——- What’s The Problem? ——-

Where do I begin? Facebook isn’t a service anymore, it’s a disaster. It’s trying to replace instant messaging (Facebook Chat), Twitter (status updates), and even email (Facebook messages). It’s neither fish nor fowl.

Facebook can’t seem to figure out who it wants to be when it grows up. If you take the past 6 months as any indication you would be convinced that they idolize Twitter and, like a 7th grade girl, Facebook will do anything to look, act, and sound like Twitter. It’s sad really.

Before that it looked like Facebook wanted to be a real-life version of the Sims or World of Warcraft. With it’s bumper stickers, pins, gifts, flair, top-friends, zombies… etc. It felt less like a community and more like a f*cking flea market.

So what I’m trying to say is that the problem is, Facebook’s leadership doesn’t seem to understand why people love/use it.

People use Facebook to maintain their network of people they almost know but don’t care enough to call. It allows you to play voyeur with your quasi-friends.

Facebook is not the next wave of communication, it never was. It’s big sell is that it allows you to (barely) keep in touch with people you otherwise would never speak to again. That’s it.

They need to lose these grandiose plans for world domination and accept what they really are. A portal that greases the wheels of communication between you and one-off friends.

——- How Would I Fix It? ——-

First I would immediately stop working on anything that the majority of users don’t get gratification from. What I’m saying is I want to cut the bullsh*t.

So this means I’d cut:

Every 3rd party Facebook application
- I’d venture to say that 90% of users don’t use one single 3rd party app.
Facebook Chat
- It’s creepy. You have no control over the fact that people instantly know a) you’re online and b) you’re actually at your computer.
Facebook Connect
- If I wanted to know what you thought of a particular blog post I’d read the comments.
Message Sending for Groups, Fan Pages, Events
- This gets annoying. 4 out of 5 Facebook emails I get are some group message about something I could not care less about.

Now that I’ve cut the fat, I’m going to stop this inane obsession with beating Twitter. It’s not going to happen. Facebook and Twitter are social, that’s where the similarities end. Twitter lets me see and share public thoughts and discussions in real-time. Facebook lets me catch up with friends, check in on acquaintances, and gives me another way to flirt. On my own time, privately.

So with that I would change the homepage. No more obsession over the status updates and more concentration on pictures, wall posts, and profile updates.

I would then add the following:

Improve the Friend Recommendation Service
- Improve the algorithm for finding people in my friends network that I would/should know
- Make this a bigger deal on the home-page.
Rank friends
- Three Levels
  - Close
  - Friends
  - Acquaintances
Show different “profiles”, photos, and wall-posts based on friend rank
- Allow me to share more or less of myself depending on the friend rank
- Allow me to post status updates to only one level of friends… etc
Improve Flirting
- Like the “poke” button have a “flirt” button
- - If the person reciprocates they can give you their phone # / ask you to call them
  - Allow you to block “flirts” from specific people or from people more than n-off your current connections, or above a certain age… etc
Integrate with Hallmark/1-800-FLOWERS/Amazon… etc
- Instead of letting people send “e-cards”, allow people to buy and send real cards, flowers, gifts.
  - Let groups do this as well
- E-gifts are thoughtless, real gifts show you care

Facebook has a real chance to make something of itself. It’s the biggest (and arguably the best) social networking site out there. It has over 250 million users, and still can’t turn a profit.

Maybe someday down the road they’ll realize the error of their ways, but my guess is that Facebook will be the Webvan of the post-dot-com-bust.

PicoWin: Series AA Funding Becomes Cool

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:40:00 -0400

Maybe it’s because more people are out of work and trying to make money. Maybe it’s because VC firms are having trouble raising funds as big as they have been in the past. Maybe it’s simply because there’s a huge market. Whatever the reason, entrepreneurialism and Series AA funding has suddenly become cool.

Just a couple years ago if you didn’t have an angel in your pocket and didn’t need over $1m your funding options were limited to those in your bloodline. In the past 5 years or so this has changed dramatically.

Read up on the individual ventures about what they offer, there’s something here for every flavor of entrepreneur. I personally am going to stick with bootstrapping for my current idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one of our other ventures ends up taking one of these routes.

Series AA Providers

1) Ycombinator

2) TechStars

3) SeedCamp

4) YEurope

5) LaunchBox

6) AlphaLab

7) DreamIt Ventures

8) Bootup Labs

9) Bootphase

10) Summer at Highland

11) Charles River Ventures: QuickStart

12) Start@Spark

Update (7/20): Forgot a couple

13) First Round Capital

14) Founders Fund

15) Prototype Invest

—-

Let me know if I forgot any.

The Idiots Guide to Twitter (part 2)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:21:00 -0400

Ok so now you know the basics, that’s good. Gotta start somewhere. Time to add to your lesson plan. Next up, growing your followers and learning the true power of Twitter plus one big no-no.

1) Embrace the Retweet

A retweet is simply where you copy and paste someone else’s tweet with “RT @username” in front of it. The purpose of a retweet is twofold.

First, you get to associate your name with the person you are retweeting. Which is why it’s usually a good idea to retweet a big name person, or at least someone on the up and up.

Second, you build good will/twitter capital (twapital… write that down) with the person you are retweeting. This is a great way to have that big name, mentioned above, notice you and possibly start opening up their communication more to you. They’ll be more likely to respond to your replies, and possibly even retweet something of yours.

Anytime you can get a big name to even mention you it’s a big deal. Because now all of their followers will see your username, giving you free exposure to thousands of people thanks to a couple of keystrokes.

2) Learn Who To Follow

This is important. There are thousands of very powerful and important people on twitter, but honestly we only have the personal bandwidth to handle 100-200 people… at most*. So who do you pick, and where do you find out who is even on twitter to follow?

I personally use two different services for this. Guy Kawasaki’s (blog/twitter) Alltop and Kevin Rose’s (blog/twitter) WeFollow.

First both Guy and Kevin are big deals in social media, so they know what they’re doing and what works. Second, the sites are incredibly easy to use.

Alltop (link) is a website that compiles blogs and other social media lists by category. As far as twitter is concerned there are two links of importance, Twitterati and Good Tweet. Twitterati is a list of some of the top twitter users, and Good Tweet is a list of blogs that come up with great material for you to twitter about. You can (and should) also use Alltop to find the top bloggers in your areas of interest, you can then go to their blogs and see if they have twitter.

WeFollow (link) is a list of twitter users by category. The categories are arranged based on the number of followers someone has. It’s a little thin when it comes to breadth of categories but it’s new and it’s growing. You can also add yourself to the list.

* - I feel if you twitter for fun then you shouldn’t have more than 100-200 people you follow. If your twitter is your companies/organizations or you are your own brand then I highly recommend auto-following people that follow you and just using TweetDeck to separate the signal from the noise.

3) Dress Up That Profile

You may not know it, but you have a profile for twitter. It is wee but it is mighty. When I look at a twitter page that is the very first thing I notice (ok second depending on the quality of the picture). Some do’s and don’ts for profiles.

Do: Quickly and Simply explain who you are and why I should care.

Don’t: Be overly “cute” or metaphysical about who you are. Wit is fine, but you have to be good at it. Otherwise you’ll just come off as immature and trying too hard.

Do: Put your blog/website on the blog/website line.

Don’t: Put your link anywhere else in your profile. It just looks spammy.

4) Don’t Use “Text-Type”

I don’t care about your BFF Jill, neither does anyone else. If you LOL keep it to yourself and I want a youtube video as proof of you ROTFLMAO. Aside from the occasional WTF or leetspeak you should be using full words. And really if you had to click on the link for leetspeak, you shouldn’t use it, ever.

Every time I see someone write “Going 2 bed, C U all later” or something to that extent it just screams “hey look I’m hip, I’m up on how you kids speak yo”. Instead, summon your inner Hemingway to fill those 140 characters. And if you can’t say it in 140 characters then it’s not meant to be tweeted. It’s just that simple.

DON’T: Cross The Streams (link)

Don’t sync your facebook with your twitter feed. In fact, never use facebook as a compliment to twitter. It’s not. This is a relatively recent problem, but a problem none the less. I can’t believe those in charge of facebook don’t understand their own product enough to realize this.

Facebook is for connection at a distance. It’s for keeping up with the day to day events and activities of someone via pictures, relationship status updates, and wall posts. Facebook is voyeurism, Twitter is talking (sometimes to yourself).

Twitter Version: Facebook is a person’s highlight reel, Twitter is the live-game.

When I’m on Facebook I could not care less about what blog article you are reading or if your coworkers loud chewing is annoying you. I want to see you in drunk pictures, I want to see what people are saying on your wall, and that’s about it. Adding your twitter feed to facebook just clutters my newsfeed and will probably put you on my “annoying” list.

—-

Do yourself a favor, stay off the annoying list.

The Idiots Guide to Twitter

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:27:00 -0400

If every twitter user read this before even considering their first tweet, the world would be a much less annoying place.

Consider this your “Idiots Guide to Twitter”. In 7 easy steps I plan on taking you greenhorns from Twitter n00b to a slightly less embarrassing Twitterer.

1) Get the Right Hardware

First off, no one really uses the website to tweet, “via the web” is the scarlet letter of twitter n00bs. Use a service. For your desktop Twhirl and Tweetdeck are amazing. For the iphone Twitterfon is great, and free.

These applications will make it much easier for you to engage in conversations with others. They take the guess work out of direct messages, replies, sharing pictures, and shortening URLs.

2) Follow the Leader

The most important thing to remember about Twitter is this… Above all else Twitter is a community. It’s about engaging in conversation, exchanging ideas, promoting yourself and others. It’s organic.

The single best way to learn what is and isn’t acceptable in any community is to shadow a leader. So your very first move (after getting the right hardware) should be to follow all/some of the following Twitterer’s:

kevinrose
guykawasaki
techcrunch
fredwilson
jimmyfallon
ev williams (twitter co-founder)
biz stone (twitter co-founder)

Follow these people for a week. Read what they have to say. Check out the links they post. Notice the different strategies they all employ. Try to figure out why they have as many followers as they do.

Do this all without tweeting once. Take one whole week to just absorb this, and learn. You, and the community, will be much better for it.

3) Conversation Basics

The following are the basic commands and what they mean in twitter.

@username - This is a reply, it lets you respond to someone’s tweet. If done properly the username should become a hyperlink in your timeline, and they’ll get a notice of this reply. Replies are how conversations are born. You can also use this to reference someone in your tweet (i.e. “hanging out with @biz in Union Square”).

d username - This is a direct message. It doesn’t show up on anyone’s timeline and only the user you sent it to can see it. It’s essentially a private tweet.

url shorteners - The two best are bit.ly and is.gd. They shrink unruley URL’s (just look at the one for this post) into something that can actually fit into a tweet.

share pictures - Twitpic allows you to post and share a picture via twitter. Great when you’re on your iphone/crackberry.

#keyword - These are hash-tags. They allow you to link your tweet to a particular keyword. Making it easier for people searching for tweets on that particular keyword. Like for this post I might say #twitter_basics or just #basics.

4) Remember: this is not a billboard

This is a common error for Company’s/Organizations. They get on twitter and assume that the best way to get out their message is to literally, get out their message.

Every single tweet is some link to an article about them saying “look at what the wall street journal said about us (link)” or “new york times announces that the _____ (insert business market you are in) business is on the rise”.

Allow me to be perfectly clear, STOP THAT!

Remember, this is a community. This is like having dinner with a family friend that happens to be an insurance salesman, and all he talks about all dinner is how you “really should get some supplemental health insurance, I can get you a great deal”. Would you talk to that person ever again?

Promoting yourself or your business is fine… in moderation.

5) Tweet like you eat

I like to follow a “food pyramid” tweet strategy.

The base (starches + fruits + veggies) should be filled with unique, personal content. This should be your opinions on current events/articles, what you’re doing (only if it’s noteworthy), and replies to other people’s comments. The kind of stuff that shows your personality 140 characters at a time. The majority of your tweets should be of this variety.

The middle (meats + dairy) should be links to cool articles/videos/websites. These are things that are good a couple times a day, but when done regularly can really clog up your system. They add flavor and are what many people look forward to. So even if people don’t like your opinions they still might follow you for the funny links alone.

The top (sweets and fats) should be self-promotion. These need to be USED SPARINGLY. Done on rare occasion they make for a great treat, and can really get a great response. Unfortunately these can easily be abused.

Keep your tweets on a strict diet and you’ll at least not annoy the sh*t out of your followers.

6) You Don’t Have To Be Cool

Unlike anywhere else, on Twitter, you don’t have to be cool to converse with a celebrity. Shaq, Ellen, Martha Stewart, Diddy, Jimmy Fallon… all are on twitter.

And unlike other scenarios involving celebrities, twitter has no faux pas for randomly joining a convo. Every conversation is an open forum, so if Shaq says something that strikes you, feel free to reply to him. He may not answer, but it’s not because you broke some unspoken rule that only cool people can talk to cool people, it’s simply because he’s Shaq and he probably gets 1,000 replies a minute.

7) Don’t Be That Guy

That being said… don’t be that guy. We all know that guy (in this case “guy” is not gender specific, it just flows better than “person”). That guy that has a comment for everyone and an opinion on everything.

It’s fine to be opinionated or to have a lot of views, just don’t impose them on people. Twitter isn’t about deep conversations. It’s about interesting quips, picking sides, adding color commentary. If your explanation takes more that 1 tweet, you’re doing it wrong. If you often find yourself in long drawn out arguments via twitter… you’re doing it wrong.

——

You just have to understand twitter as it is. It’s not some great marketing platform for you to reach hundreds of thousands of new people every day. People really don’t want to know about “what you are doing” every single minute of the day. And it’s not a place to forge amazing alliances or to boost your network.

While all these things might happen, that’s not the point of twitter.

The point of twitter is to bring everyone down to the same level, and essentially hold a dinner table conversation, with everyone.

Tell about what you learned today, or a funny thing someone said at work, or something you heard on tv that pissed you off. That’s what twitter is for. That’s what social media is about. Anything else that comes of it is an unintended bonus.

Haven’t posted in a while but absolutely was compelled to....

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:51:00 -0400

Haven’t posted in a while but absolutely was compelled to. This is one of the most genius Guerilla Marketing tactics I’ve seen in a long time. So good I’m actually planning on trying this sometime in the near future for one of my various retarded ideas.

Wonderful.

PicoWin: Hulu's Buffer

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:31:00 -0500

[emphasis added by me]

Hulu get’s it. Not only are they a kickass site (and great sign that media conglomerates aren’t complete idiots), but they get it.

When it comes to my interaction with their site, I really don’t need an up to the second update on the status of the connection buffer. In fact having an up to the second update (see: youtube) will only make me obsess over the buffer. In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t matter one iota to Hulu as far as “saving resources or money”, but it adds to my user enjoyment (if only a little).

Hulu gets that every extra bit of user enjoyment only adds to the addictiveness of using their site/service, making me that much more likely to come back.

Takeaway: If your business relies on enjoyment > information, every single detail of your product should reflect that.

If it looks like a button, MAKE IT ACT LIKE ONE

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:08:00 -0500

This is the reQall homepage (click the picture to get to it). What is the one part of this page that sticks out the most to you?

The majority of web users would guess the “Sign up Now It’s Free!” button. I would venture to guess that almost as many people would assume that this huge focal point of the website is a clickable button to allow you to sign up for the service.

If you are one of those people, you are wrong. Apparently reQall went to all the effort to make this one focal point of their homepage, and then screwed up the end-game by giving it absolutely no function. What’s worse is after looking at the page for a solid 2-3 minutes (an eternity in web time) I still don’t know where to click if I want to sign up for an account.

Hey reQall. If the whole point of your homepage and advertising campaign is to sign up new users… make it as easy as physically possible to sign up. Also, if it looks like a button, MAKE IT CLICKABLE LIKE ONE.

The 7 deadly sins of my employer

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:49:00 -0500

The company I work for is a pretty big deal. We’ve been blogged about by TechCrunch and GigaOm. We’ve been featured multiple times in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

That said, we really suck. Our product rocks, most of the people working here kick-ass, but as an organization we blow. We’re still a start-up, so we have time to change our ways, but I’m afraid these things will never happen. I feel like many of the mistakes we’re making are the same ones other companies make on a daily basis, so I wanted to share how I would improve: my employer.

Sin 1: Using Twitter as a Billboard

I almost feel like it is better to not use any form of social media than it is to use it and suck at it. And boy do we suck at it.

First there is Twitter. We don’t understand Twitter. Twitter for companies is a great way to raise awareness of your brand and product, and to insert yourself into conversations with bloggers and customers. You can keep up to the minute with trends and convo’s and have the chance to shape how the public views you in a second by second basis. Twitter is a great way to make your company approachable.

Instead, we use Twitter as a web cork-board of sorts. We post any and everything written about us and every update. While these posts are informative they are a complete misunderstanding of the medium. Informative posts on Twitter should be like sweets and fats in the food pyramid, used sparingly.

Sin 2: We have no Blog

This should be the first sin, but I feel sins of stupidity only slightly outweigh sins of omission. The fact is that we are a 2-year old internet start-up company that doesn’t have a blog. I find that unacceptable.

A proper blog can not only bring more eyeballs to your site, it can greatly increase public education with your brand and your product. Look at 37signals (I know they’re a rare form of success, but not one unrepeatable). They are willing to take the time to write TWO blogs, one based completely on product updates and educating the public. The second blog (Signal vs. Noise) has one purpose, to drive more people to their site. It’s interesting, opinionated, and occasionally controversial.

Sin 3: We suck at marketing and advertisement.

We are an internet based ad-network and we don’t know the first thing about it.

For SEO we aren’t in the top 50 for our medium’s keyword, and we’re #4 in our exact businesses keyword. That’s like looking up “computer” and having Dell or Apple not show up on the first page. It’s unacceptable.

We aren’t even running an adwords campaign. SEO is tough, and I understand that, but to give yourself a temporary fix you could at least run a decent adwords campaign.

We advertise in magazines. Let me repeat that, we don’t have an adwords campaign yet we are advertising in the back pages of magazines. WE’RE INTERNET BASED! Gah it’s enough to make me want to tear out my hair.

Sin 4: From a usability standpoint, our website is a disaster.

We have a very clean looking site, unfortunately that’s about the only nice thing I can say about it. It is painfully obvious to me that only two types of people designed our site, graphical artists and developers. No one with actual usability understanding or experience would ever let our site see the light of day. It’s like Ferrari releasing their newest car with seats on the ceiling and the transmission mounted to the drivers side door.

Nothing is intuitive. Nothing is easy to find. I would venture to say that 75% of our site is useless and too damn hard to find.

Not only is the design terrible, the content is obviously written by someone with an MBA and no experience in web-content. There is too much writing, and what is there takes a bit to digest and understand. Nothing is written simply.

We have millions of dollars of investor funding, a great product, a great technical team, and a great sales team, but we skimp in the absolute worst areas. The ones that the customer sees.

I want to make everyone who has anything to do with our site go home and read “Getting Real” and “Don’t make me think”. I then want to show them our site, roll up a magazine, and hit them in the nose while yelling “no!… no!”.

Sin 5: We are a start-up acting like a big business

We act as though we have 2,000 employees when in reality we have 20. We have rigid holiday and sick day structures. We have an obvious hierarchy system. We have cubicles.

Our executives proceed with an air of untouchability to them. They claim to want to hear ideas from everyone but literally do nothing do encourage this. It is obvious in the company’s demeanor that the only opinions valued are the ones with the biggest paychecks.

The problem is we are at a time in our growth where structure should be used as little as possible and freedom for innovation should get priority over politics and hurt feelings. We should have a chip on our shoulder, we should be working hard and playing hard, there should be innovation in the workplace and flexibility on how that’s achieved.

Where we should be: Google 2.0.

Where we are: Office Space 2.0.

Sin 6: We use expensive proprietary software/services

This really is part of Sin 5, because only large companies are wasteful enough to do this, but it’s such a waste of money that it needs its own sin.

We use salesforce and webex. We spent over $5,000 last month on Salesforce alone. Are you kidding me? $5,000?!? 37signals HighRise costs $150 a month and does everything we could possibly need. Hell we could actually have an efficient office by using all of the 37signals products and still be saving $4,500 a month!

Webex is a much smaller transgression ($60/month) but still a sign of waste when we could use Rondee.com for free.

These aren’t the only examples. We have a Verizon phone system (easily $1500/month) when we could get a VOIP based one (we have a T1 connection) for closer to $300/month.

It’s this culture of waste without thinking that starts to drive you insane. How can a company that is supposed to be on the “cutting edge” be run so poorly, without thought?

Sin 7: Our customer service system blows

I am the lone customer service rep for our company. So this area is the one I work the closest with and can see the most mistakes in. Before you ask, yes I have brought many of these points up only to have them stomped out because I thought it up and not someone else.

We have one of the worst FAQ’s I’ve seen in quite some time. This is unfortunate because we have a complex system and it ends up turning away so many of our customers. The ones that stick with it either a) bungle up their campaign, waste their money, and never return or b) call in and waste my time on a question that could have easily been answered in our FAQ.

Want to know the fix here?

1) Improve the FAQ. Make it easier to understand.

2) Improve the in-line help. You know those little “?” on other sites that help on the tricky areas of the site? WE NEED THOSE!

3) You know that money I mentioned saving above? Spend the $200 a month necessary to get a ZenDesk and GetSatisfaction profile for our company. It will cut down on wasted productivity but it will help us convert more “sign-ups” into “paying customers”.

Spirit Airlines: Fail

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:01:24 -0500

Spirit Airlines: Fail:

This is just an example of how one, minimum wage earning peon in a company can bring it’s entire reputation and PR efforts to the ground.

Steps to preventing this from happening to your company:

1) Actually consider every single one of your company policies.

2) Give employees (especially customer service employees) some flexibility in employing company policies.

3) Hire the right people.

4) Never outsource a vital part of your business. (hint: if you provide a service, your customer service is VITAL).

Now back to watching history.

The Daily Beast - Dirty Secrets of College Admission

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:55:00 -0500

The Daily Beast - Dirty Secrets of College Admission:

Kinda makes getting into college seem a whole lot less special, and makes getting rejected a whole lot less personal.

:::sigh:::

How I Would Improve: Our Energy Strategy

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:27:00 -0500

What’s the problem?

We are addicted to a fuel source that is limited. Not only that, it requires massive amounts of our resources (money) to be shipped to other parts of the world. A net loss of resources.

Not only that our way of life and energy sources are increasingly being put in peril by unfriendly governments and terror organizations. Plus it forces us to start pulling less than morally clean moves (i.e. our foreign “tactics” in Sub-Sahara Africa, the Middle-east, the Eastern Bloc, and South America… to name a few).

How would I fix it?

Massive internal construction projects. I mean massive, these will put the new deal to shame. It will take a tremendous amount of resources and will take 10 years minimum, but my god will it be worth it. Plus this would let us spread the cost over 10-20 years, making the bite a little easier on the public and our budget.

First the money spent will not be a net loss, it will be an investment that pays off many times over down the road. Plus it will be lining the pockets of the American people instead of rulers or dictators in far away lands.

Since much of the labor is manual labor that means these are the kinds of project that actually would help out the lower and middle class. Unemployment would decrease as more of the unemployed would be able to receive training and start working.

Also it would give another option to high-school students that didn’t see college in their future (the others being minimum-wage and military work). These students, as well as anyone else, would be able to receive training not only in construction but also in maintenance and repair of these systems. Which means after their construction stint is up they would still be employable after.

Part 1

Start a $0.25 per gallon gas tax.
- This will do a couple things for us
  - Pay for many of the projects and systems listed below.
    - income: $32 billion per year.
  - Act as a “gas guzzler” tax, because people who have to buy more gas will pay more.
  - It will inherently help ween ourselves off petroleum.
- Naturally credits will be given to those with lower income and to shipping and transportation companies
Start massive high school and lower income area training programs. cost: ~$3 billion
- Similar to Navy, Marine and Army recruitment.
- Allow anyone to receive training.
Build massive HVDC stations in various natural resources hot spots (solar, wind, geothermal, ocean) cost: ~$35 billion
- Like the Pacific DC Intertie
- This allows us to transmit large amounts of energy, massive distances with minimal energy loss (comparatively).
- Helps bring power to the parts of the country that need more energy then they can naturally produce.
Completely upgrade our power-grid. cost: $75 billion
- Estimate taken from Bloomberg
- This is absolutely necessary. Our grid is archaic, inefficient, and insecure.
- The new grid would have much better security than our previous, it would save us millions in lost energy and repairs.
Pour money into improving energy storage techniques. cost: $15 billion
- In order for any of our future energy systems to be viable we need to have a much better method of massive energy storage. Like a scale of 10 better than what we currently have.
- This means research grants galore.
- We may even go so far as to create a NASA-esque government agency to do so. It’s that important.
Begin teaching energy conservation in schools. cost: $500 million
- Maybe a DARE for energy kind of thing. Except actually have it work.
- Start teaching as soon as elementary education begins, so kindergarten. Make it a staple of our early education.
Two massive High Speed Rail systems. cost: $60 billion
- Connecting Boston, Philly, DC, NYC and Chicago.
- Between Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.
Improve efficiency of farm equipment and other heavy machinery. cost: $30 billion
- We currently expend 100 calories of energy for every 1 calorie of food we farm. That means for every calorie of food consumed 99 extra calories of energy are lost.
  - Before the automobile this simply wasn’t possible and didn’t happen
  - We would have starved. You must get more energy from your food than it takes to create it.
- Push hard for biodiesel and other forms of improved farm equipment. If city buses can do it, tractors can do it.
Push money into petro-alternatives for automobiles. cost: $10 billion
- This is a given and a necessity.
- The front runners right now are hydrogen power and battery power.
- Push money into anyone willing to do the R&D on massive scale production of these technologies.
- Green is still a necessity. We can’t be pushing out petroleum only to be killing ourselves with nickle and lithium.
Cost to Retrofit all the gas stations in the USA. cost: ~$50 billion
- This is just a guess seeing as I don’t even know what format of car will ultimately be chosen as the best.
- This is a completely necessary part though.

This is part 1 of our energy revamping. It’s the groundwork that we must first do to allow for part 2. With this we will cut our energy needs, improve where our energy is used and make it economically viable to start producing renewable energy.

Total Cost + 20% (buffer) = $334 billion.

Total Income (assuming 2% growth) = $352 billion.

With that simple $0.25 and taken over a 10 year period we would be able to create and pay for every single project I implement above, without the need to take away from any current government program.

Part 2

This is the easy part… to explain. It’s incredibly expensive and would take an enormous amount of man-hours, but it’s what we need to do. We essentially need to create over 3.7TW of power via renewable methods. It won’t be cheap or easy but it will pay for itself 10 fold. The total cost would be $6 trillion.

Massive Solar Panel Plants. cost: $1.75 trillion
- Take Death Valley plus the uninhabited portions of New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Arizona.
- This number is assuming current costs. However, hopefully, by then the costs should be a good deal lower.
Nationwide Wind Farms. cost: $2.5 trillion
- As of right now this is the most cost effective renewable resource we have, with the highest potential for energy.
- Placing massive farms in the areas of the USA that average wind speeds >20 mph.
Improved and Increased Geothermal Plants. cost: $1 trillion
- This is one of the reliable 24/7 renewable resources (along with ocean).
- We need to improve the efficiencies and increase production of plants and research in this field.
Large Scale Ocean Power Plants. cost: $667 billion
- Put these along our pacific coast.
- We also need to pump more into the research and improvement of extracting maximum energy from the tide.

Assuming a 15 year production schedule, and spreading the cost over that time. This would cost the American public $400 billion per year (plus upkeep). Considering the cost of the Iraq war and the need for constant military support to our vital oil producing countries, this is a paltry sum.

Not to mention that after these are built we would only be paying for the upkeep of the facilities and not the actual energy resource itself. We would save trillions of dollars over the years, not to mention the improvement it would have on the environment.

… but that’s just how I’d do it.

The Hush Sound - Wine Red

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:45:39 -0500

The Hush Sound - Wine Red

Creative Inspiration

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:41:57 -0500

Creative Inspiration:

Absolutely incredible stuff here. Be sure to check out their action method products.

Second to none.

A Fine Frenzy - Liar Liar

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:54:00 -0500

A Fine Frenzy - Liar Liar

How I Would Improve: Education

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:53:00 -0500

This is going to start a series in which I find systems that I feel need fixing. Instead of pointing out what is wrong with a system (thats what every other blogger is for) I will focus on how to fix these systems.

These could be everything from fixing a particular website design, to something bigger. In this case, the United States education system.

What’s the problem?

The United States education system is average at best. Essentially we’re more illiterate, worse at math, retarded at science, and cheaper than most of the “first world”.

How Would I Fix It?

Eliminate proficiency testing and most standardized testing
- This is an archaic and asinine system attempting to compare schools in an apples to apples sort of way
- It doesn’t work, it’s bias (often racist if not sexist), and leads to more anxiety problems than improved school systems.
- Instead why don’t we allow schools and PTA’s to fight out the individual schools achievement and teaching practices? This is what we pay them for right?
Allow more granular control of education funding
- Let Superintendents decide which schools need what money. Let those school’s Principle’s decide what to do with that money. Make the Principle’s answer to the Superindentants after each year.
- Force schools to make their books transparent and open to the public to scrutinize. Nothing makes people walk the line like public scrutiny.
Give more in Grant money to schools that pay more for non-research professors.
- Make researching professors earn the right to be paid as much as non-researching professors.
- Additionally: Require that universities differentiate between researchers and teaching professionals.
  - Require that they make public their number of pure-teachers. How many TA’s per pure-teacher.
Teach reading via the phonics method
- This was the standard method of reading that most of us were taught growing up. In the past years they have strayed from this method, and in that time childhood literacy has dropped. As have primary-education reading and writing scores.
Reward the best teachers
- Every year have parents, student’s and other teachers rate one another. Those with the highest overall scores and highest achieving students get raises and bonuses.
Improve the Gifted and Special education programs
- Tighten the filter for the Gifted program. Everyone wants to believe their kid is exceptional, but this isn’t about egos. We want to be able to truly challenge those students that need it.
- Increase the funding and the subtlety in which both programs are implimented. These are meant to be aids, not spotlights.
Cut the red tape for Teachers, but stiffen the penalties for those found abusing their power/priviledges.
- Regardless of if they have tenure.
- We need to make it easier for Teachers to teach in the way they feel will best inspire their classroom.
Make Science and Math fun again
- Teach explicitly in theory, practice, and understanding. Use word problems, videos, interactive testing.
- People want to know why we have so few graduating science and engineering majors, it’s because school has sucked the fun out of both.
- Eliminate the memorization in primary education. Start teaching both sooner in the education process. Take longer to teach less material, this is about understanding now cramming.
If it is decided we need proficiency testing, require all tests to be over 75% open ended questions.
- Reverse the current trend of hundreds of multiple choice/matching questions with a handful of open-ended questions.
Complete overhaul to the Guidance Counselor and Support staff system and requirements.
- These are the people guiding our nations youth. These should be the most vetted, highest paid, and most scrutinized workers.
- This should be where great teachers graduate to. Being a guidance counselor should be like getting a promotion. It should be a highly sought after position.
Help Businesses create better internship opportunities.
- Both monetary and service help
- Maybe give tax breaks to these businesses
- Reward contingent upon both a student as well as a third-party review of the internship.
Improve and increase the Federal student aid system
- Start by making colleges open their books to the public.
  - Make them show and account for every single red cent.
Be very tough on scrutinizing the Public and Private school use of their funding.
- This is the only way to break the cycle.

You’ll notice some themes in this list. Granularity, transparency, and rewiring. Our current system is broken. College is a for-profit business in which every college just wants to cram the most students they can in the smallest space for the most money. They care more about researchers and grants than they do student experience. Given the choice most would rather cut their biology program than their Football team.

[this is the rough draft… i’m still fixing it up]

Kate Nash - Merry Happy

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:49:00 -0500

Kate Nash - Merry Happy

Pandora doesn't get it

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:51:00 -0500

Pandora seems to not understand why myself, and most users, love their site. So let me make this as clear as I can.

We come to your site to listing to continuous streams of great music of our choosing.

When you break that system, you break your offering.

The Transgression

Pandora recently started pausing your music if you were not active on the site for a specific period of time. In order to start your music back up you would have to go back to the window/tab you have Pandora loaded on, and click a button allowing your music to begin playing again.

The Reason Behind It

Pandora is losing money hand-over-fist. They have to pay record labels ridiculously high fees for every song played on their service (not their fault).This is one of their ideas to limit “wasted plays” no doubt. They figure they should try to limit the number of plays on someones computer when they leave their computer while Pandora is still up and running.

The Fail

Most people that listen to Pandora do so with it in the background. They are at work, studying, or reading. That’s what music is, background.

When you make me break away from my work, studying, or book, even for a second, you are making your service annoying.

You have gone from “great service I can’t believe I lived without” to “Ok service with more good than bad”. I am willing to bet that while Pandora’s total plays (and thus total burn) are down since implimenting this “feature”, I am also willing to wager a significant sum that they are seeing a decrease in total monthly visitors and user session times.

The Lesson

Never, I repeat, NEVER interrupt your key offering unless death is your only other option. Even then, wait until this is your very last option. Do everything in your power to make your service as great as possible for your users.

The moment you make your service annoying is the moment you open the door for your competitors. In today’s age, a moment is all a company needs. Don’t give them that.

The Fix

First, turn off that pop-up immediately. Second, I hate to have to say this, but look into other sources of revenue. Advertising may be just that. Don’t go overboard with it, but this allows you to create a ‘premium membership’ for those users willing to pay for the convenience of continual music.

Or maybe you can look into only allowing a specific amount of time via your iphone app. Or how about you charge a small fee ($4.99) for your iphone app? Something, anything.

Just let me listen to my freaking music.

30 most satisfying simple pleasures

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:12:02 -0500

ohyeahitsfelicia:

hellovagina:

1. Sleeping In on a Rainy Day
2. Finding Money You Didn’t Know You Had
3. Making Brief Eye Contact with Someone of the Opposite Sex
4. Skinny Dipping
5. Making the Yellow Light
6. Telling a Funny or Interesting, True Story
7. Seeing a Friend Stumble Over Himself
8. Hearing the Right Song at the Right Moment
9. The First Sip of a Beverage When You’re Thirsty
10. Catching a Glimpse of Bare Skin on the Opposite Sex
11. Saying the Same Thing Simultaneously
12. The Pull-Through Parking Spot
13. Realizing You Have More Time to Sleep
14. People Watching
15. Putting On Clothes Straight from the Dryer
16. A Familiar Smell
17. The Feeling You Get When Your Idea Works
18. Fresh, Clean Bed Sheets
19. A Beautiful View
20. Reminiscing About Old Times with Your Closest Friends
21. Receiving an Unexpected Compliment
22. Having a Good Laugh
23. The Feeling After a Healthy Workout
24. Receiving a Real Letter or Package via Snail Mail
25. The Celebration in the Instant Something Makes Sense
26. Relaxing Outdoors on a Sunny Day
27. Holding Hands with Someone You Love
28. Playing in the Water
29. Making Someone Smile
30. Finishing What You Started

Sososo true.