Warning: Constant ABSPATH already defined in /home/gorjk/www/www/blog/wp-config.php on line 26
jstrauss – Page 6

Delicious Bookmarks for February 3rd through February 9th

These are my links for February 3rd through February 7th:

  • 5 Lessons I Learned After a Year as a Digital Nomad – The best piece of travel advice I've heard in a while: know the difference between traveling and living. If you're going to some place interesting, don't expect to have time to do other stuff like work. You'll just end up choosing between missing out on all the cool things to do where you are (and thus resenting your choice) or feeling guilty about not doing whatever it was you thought you were going to get done.
  • Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? | Video on TED.com – Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned. This is a really great talk. Well worth the 20min it takes to watch. You will be amazed at the empirical evidence on how bad humans are at predicting our own happiness and how subjective and relative happiness actually is.
  • Kareem Mayan’s Weblog: customer experience, emerging technology, media, and more – A great (old) blog post by Kareem on what makes people truly happy, how bad we are at predicting it, and how so few of us actually pursue it. Kudos to Kareem for taking his own advice and deciding to align his life to best pursue his dreams of traveling around the world (http://howsthewifi.com). The video at the end of this post is a must watch. Unfortunately, the embed is now broken – so, go see it here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
  • random($foo): Online Tools for A New Small Business – Leonard Lin's list of recommended business tools for startups. Covering accounting, CRM, marketing and development.
  • Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? – "The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change."
  • FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Happy Boycott CNBC Day! – "The real problem with mullets and Pabst and Toby Keith songs, and with CNBC, is that there are people, large swaths of humanity, in fact, who apparently regard the above unironically."

These are my Delicious links for February 3rd through February 9th:

  • TechStars » Seed capital and mentorship for startups – Documents that TechStars uses as a starting point for seed stage financing for their companies. Aimed to be model documents for an angel or seed financing in the $250k-$2M range. They represent a “light” preferred equity financing and have very simple terms that are generally “balanced” but if anything lean toward the entrepreneurs and represent a great deal of trust in them, which they think is appropriate for angel deals where you are primarily investing in the people at the early stage.
  • 5 Lessons I Learned After a Year as a Digital Nomad – The best piece of travel advice I've heard in a while: know the difference between traveling and living. If you're going to some place interesting, don't expect to have time to do other stuff like work. You'll just end up choosing between missing out on all the cool things to do where you are (and thus resenting your choice) or feeling guilty about not doing whatever it was you thought you were going to get done.
  • Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? | Video on TED.com – Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned. This is a really great talk. Well worth the 20min it takes to watch. You will be amazed at the empirical evidence on how bad humans are at predicting our own happiness and how subjective and relative happiness actually is.
  • Kareem Mayan’s Weblog: customer experience, emerging technology, media, and more – A great (old) blog post by Kareem on what makes people truly happy, how bad we are at predicting it, and how so few of us actually pursue it. Kudos to Kareem for taking his own advice and deciding to align his life to best pursue his dreams of traveling around the world (http://howsthewifi.com). The video at the end of this post is a must watch. Unfortunately, the embed is now broken – so, go see it here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
  • random($foo): Online Tools for A New Small Business – Leonard Lin's list of recommended business tools for startups. Covering accounting, CRM, marketing and development.
  • Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? – "The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change."
  • FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Happy Boycott CNBC Day! – "The real problem with mullets and Pabst and Toby Keith songs, and with CNBC, is that there are people, large swaths of humanity, in fact, who apparently regard the above unironically."

SaaS vs Shrinkwrap or Never trust a company not on Twitter

While eating lunch today, I started to think about the growing complexity of my company‘s expenses and decided it might be a good time to start looking at accounting solutions. The fact that my research began with a tweet is indication enough that I probably don’t fit anyone’s average consumer mold. But, I think some of the insights that came out of my experience are pretty fundamental and potentially extend beyond the ‘early adopter’ echo chamber.

First, I started down the conventional route by checking out market (and marketing) leader QuickBooks. Through some quick web searching, I found a few authoritative sounding comparisons that pegged QuickBooks as the best value for basic users (we’re just at the lower bound of even needing this stuff) — with the notable exception of the Mac version, which apparently gets less product development love than the Windows one. At $180, QuickBooks wasn’t really that daunting on the financial cost front. But, I was already starting to cringe on the usability/time cost side.

What I found myself really wanting was a web app (like Mint or Wesabe) for business accounting — something with a lightweight interface for connecting and organizing data from my financial services providers all in one place. And while I was researching products that might fit this bill, I started to think about why I had this innate preference for a web app (SaaS) over shrinkwrapped software. The business model of packaged software invites feature bloat, because it’s upgrade driven and you need to continually find ways to justify why Thingamajig 2009 Pro Edition™ is so much better than Thingamajig 2008 Pro Edition™. Software as a Service businesses have a much different (and arguably greater) challenge, they need to continue to create value for their customers month after month. Sometimes that value comes in the form of new features, but it doesn’t *have* to. So, you end up with a much more customer-centric product (what customers *know* they want after using it, not what they *think* they want before buying it — as humans are notoriously bad predictors of our own happiness) and a vendor who is truly interested in addressing your customer needs. So, unless there is an element of the problem a given software product is trying to solve that inherently benefits from the advantages of the desktop (i.e. local storage, access to the file system/peripherals, superior performance), I’d rather have the SaaS version.

The other thing that was on my mind when doing this evaluation was my incredibly positive recent experience on Twitter with the CEO’s of iPlotz and Balsamiq, both of which happen to be SaaS products. I realized that it really spoiled me and there’s no way I’m ever going back to the old regime of captive audiences and passive customers. So, my new rule is “never trust a company not on Twitter.” Now, that’s a bit reductionist — and, in Intuit’s defense, they are actually on Twitter (hi Alison 🙂 ). The real point is that today’s customer service equation needs to include how responsive the company is to your new product requirements and feature requests, not just how quickly they fix something when it’s broken or answer a question when you’re too lazy to read the instructions. As much as I appreciate Intuit’s presence on Twitter, I highly doubt Alison is able to change Intuit’s release schedule to get that new feature I want out to me sooner. By virtue of the packaged software business model, she is not adequately empowered to address my customer needs.

Through my research and a very handy post on my friend Leonard’s blog (thanks for the tip Carrie), I found two SaaS solutions for small business accounting: LessAccounting and Xero. They’re both about the same price ($~25/month), and Xero seems to have a slightly superior feature set (automatic syncing with your online accounts is a biggie). But, LessAccounting clearly had the edge in customer interaction. LessAccounting has a very active corporate Twitter account and both founders have personal accounts, they use Get Satisfaction and there are 4 topics on their Get Satisfaction page that have been updated in the last 24 hrs (I also checked out the activity on the Get Satisfaction accounts of both founders), and, last but not least, they have a sense of humor (be it a slightly mean one 🙂 ). Xero has a very active corporate blog and they seem to be quite responsive to their customers’ comments. But as a prospective customer, I would really like to have some better ways to interact with Xero than sending them an email or leaving a comment on their blog. (Update: Phillip from Xero responded in the comments that they do in fact have a Twitter account and an in-product feedback mechanism.) Get Satisfaction and User Voice are both great names, because when you use their products as a company that’s exactly what you do: give your customers a voice and the satisfaction that it’s being heard.

When shopping for SaaS, you’re choosing a partner in innovation. So, the future direction of a product is maybe an even more important consideration than the current feature set. And while LessAccounting can surely replicate Xero’s features, can Xero replicate LessAccounting’s customer-centricity? They both offer 30 day free trials, so I’m going to try both and make a decision in a month. And who knows, at $180 for QuickBooks Pro I may decide shrinkwrapped software is the more sensible way to go this time around (but, that doesn’t mean I have to like it 😉 ).

Update: Wow! This is starting to freak me out. I write these things to capture the distillation of the things I see out on the interwebs that I like and dislike, mostly for my personal benefit in thinking about my own business. I don’t do so really anticipating to hear back from the companies about whom I’m writing, but I guess I’ll just have to get used to this whole blogging thing 😉 .

Thanks to Phillip from Xero and Allan from LessAccounting for your responses in the comments and for engaging in the conversation. Phillip corrected me that Xero does have a Twitter account, which I updated in situ above.


Suggest to ?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Delicious Bookmarks for January 27th through February 1st

These are my links for January 27th through February 1st:

  • Bookmarklet Builder – Handy tool for building bookmarklets, can convert back and forth from normal Javascript to bookmarklet form.
  • TwitterFriends – Your relevant network on Twitter – The most comprehensive (and interesting) Twitter stats application I've found to date. Instead of gimmickry about how you rank against other Twitter users in meaninglessly vague and opaque terms like "authority," this exposes the hard data about yours and your network's behavior compared to average, and gives you some pretty cool visualizations. If I understood statistics and such better, I think this is the kinda tool I could totally geek out on.
  • Which HD video Web service is the best? | Webware – CNET – In depth side-by-side comparison of online video hosting services.
    "- The victor: YouTube
    This time around, we feel really comfortable giving YouTube the quality crown. Its HD encoding is really nice, and you can't beat the price (free). One thing that really separates it from the others is that you can do so many things with your clip once it's up there. You can replace the music, as well as add subtitles and annotations. Community members can also respond to it, adding in-line video replies."
  • The Bacon Explosion – Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog. – NYTimes.com – A (very tasty) example of the power of social media to spread content virally. According to the article, the blog post about this recipe garnered 27,000 views 2 days after being posted thanks mostly to Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. In the month since being posted, it has been viewed 390,000 times and linked to from 16,000 sites. Not bad for some bacon.
  • Secrets of my success: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings – Jan. 28, 2009 – A brief profile on Reed Hastings w/ business tips:
    – Target a specific niche: When there's an ache, you want to be like aspirin, not vitamins. Aspirin solves a very particular problem someone has, whereas vitamins are a general "nice to have" market.
    – Stay flexible: We named the company Netflix (NFLX), not DVDs by Mail because we knew that eventually we would deliver movies directly over the Internet.
    – Never underestimate the competition: We erroneously concluded that Blockbuster (BBI, Fortune 500) probably wasn't going to launch a competitive effort when they hadn't by 2003.
    – There are no shortcuts: Occasionally great wealth is created in a short amount of time, but it's through a lot of luck in those situations. You just have to think of building an organization as a lot of work. It may or may not turn into great wealth.
  • Streaming video cannibalizing DVD rentals, says Netflix – Ars Technica – Netflix results show that streaming video views are taking away from DVD-by-mail volume. Given that there is no price difference (both streaming and DVD-by-mail cost the same per month), the streaming bitrate is at DVD quality or less, and the selection of films available for streaming is worse than that of DVD-by-mail, this is further proof that *convenience* (the only real advantage of streaming vs. DVD-by-mail) is a very powerful motivator for media consumers.
  • Facebook Pages Leaderboard – A neat tool for tracking the popularity of Facebook Pages by number of fans over time. However, the data doesn't appear to be totally reliable. So, be sure to check the current stats on Facebook before hanging your hat on any of these numbers.
  • Announcing the AllFacebook Pages Tracker – Interesting facts about Facebook Page fan stats (as of January 27, 2009)
    – Barack Obama is #1 w/ 4.7M fans, Homer Simpson is #2 w/ 2.6M, and Coca-Cola is #3 w/ 2.3M (I pulled the stats for these from Facebook directly)
    – All Facebook is tracking 620,000 Pages
    – Only 50,000 Pages (~8%) have > 1,000 fans
    – Only 276 Pages (~0.04%) have > 500,000 fans
  • Deborah Schultz: Life isn’t binary, neither is the Social Web – "The social web is my web – it's PERSONAL to me. I am not creating media when I am online so much as I am connecting with people using media as my medium…The social web can actually provide much deeper and more interesting connections for customers and companies than simply being a marketing channel – it ties into the entire product lifecycle. And that is where stuff gets really interesting…and much more complex. This is where relevance and context and trust and intention all come into play."

These are my Delicious links for January 27th through February 1st:

  • Bookmarklet Builder – Handy tool for building bookmarklets, can convert back and forth from normal Javascript to bookmarklet form.
  • TwitterFriends – Your relevant network on Twitter – The most comprehensive (and interesting) Twitter stats application I've found to date. Instead of gimmickry about how you rank against other Twitter users in meaninglessly vague and opaque terms like "authority," this exposes the hard data about yours and your network's behavior compared to average, and gives you some pretty cool visualizations. If I understood statistics and such better, I think this is the kinda tool I could totally geek out on.
  • Which HD video Web service is the best? | Webware – CNET – In depth side-by-side comparison of online video hosting services.
    "- The victor: YouTube
    This time around, we feel really comfortable giving YouTube the quality crown. Its HD encoding is really nice, and you can't beat the price (free). One thing that really separates it from the others is that you can do so many things with your clip once it's up there. You can replace the music, as well as add subtitles and annotations. Community members can also respond to it, adding in-line video replies."
  • The Bacon Explosion – Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog. – NYTimes.com – A (very tasty) example of the power of social media to spread content virally. According to the article, the blog post about this recipe garnered 27,000 views 2 days after being posted thanks mostly to Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. In the month since being posted, it has been viewed 390,000 times and linked to from 16,000 sites. Not bad for some bacon.
  • Secrets of my success: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings – Jan. 28, 2009 – A brief profile on Reed Hastings w/ business tips:
    – Target a specific niche: When there's an ache, you want to be like aspirin, not vitamins. Aspirin solves a very particular problem someone has, whereas vitamins are a general "nice to have" market.
    – Stay flexible: We named the company Netflix (NFLX), not DVDs by Mail because we knew that eventually we would deliver movies directly over the Internet.
    – Never underestimate the competition: We erroneously concluded that Blockbuster (BBI, Fortune 500) probably wasn't going to launch a competitive effort when they hadn't by 2003.
    – There are no shortcuts: Occasionally great wealth is created in a short amount of time, but it's through a lot of luck in those situations. You just have to think of building an organization as a lot of work. It may or may not turn into great wealth.
  • Streaming video cannibalizing DVD rentals, says Netflix – Ars Technica – Netflix results show that streaming video views are taking away from DVD-by-mail volume. Given that there is no price difference (both streaming and DVD-by-mail cost the same per month), the streaming bitrate is at DVD quality or less, and the selection of films available for streaming is worse than that of DVD-by-mail, this is further proof that *convenience* (the only real advantage of streaming vs. DVD-by-mail) is a very powerful motivator for media consumers.
  • Facebook Pages Leaderboard – A neat tool for tracking the popularity of Facebook Pages by number of fans over time. However, the data doesn't appear to be totally reliable. So, be sure to check the current stats on Facebook before hanging your hat on any of these numbers.
  • Announcing the AllFacebook Pages Tracker – Interesting facts about Facebook Page fan stats (as of January 27, 2009)
    – Barack Obama is #1 w/ 4.7M fans, Homer Simpson is #2 w/ 2.6M, and Coca-Cola is #3 w/ 2.3M (I pulled the stats for these from Facebook directly)
    – All Facebook is tracking 620,000 Pages
    – Only 50,000 Pages (~8%) have > 1,000 fans
    – Only 276 Pages (~0.04%) have > 500,000 fans
  • Deborah Schultz: Life isn’t binary, neither is the Social Web – "The social web is my web – it's PERSONAL to me. I am not creating media when I am online so much as I am connecting with people using media as my medium…The social web can actually provide much deeper and more interesting connections for customers and companies than simply being a marketing channel – it ties into the entire product lifecycle. And that is where stuff gets really interesting…and much more complex. This is where relevance and context and trust and intention all come into play."

A Twitter Marketing Success Story

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post on my company blog about Twitter from a marketer’s perspective (I think it’s pretty good, so go read it when you’re done here 🙂 ). This post is about my experience with Twitter on the other side of the aisle — not just as a consumer, but as a *target* of marketers (in a good way).

Last night I was trying out iPlotz, a new online tool for doing product design. I own a license for the desktop version of Balsamiq Mockups, a competing product. But, iPlotz had a couple key features Balsamiq didn’t. So, I was really bummed when iPlotz changed the limits for free trials without warning (the day before I had created 7 wireframes in my iPlotz account, and now it was telling me the limit was 5). Since I was sitting at my desk at home and had no one to bitch to, I bitched to Twitter:

twittermktg_screenshot-1

I wasn’t really expecting a reply from anyone, let alone one from iPlotz. (At most, I had been hoping to publicly shame them a little bit for the not cool practice of changing the rules without notice.)

twittermktg_screenshot-2

I was flattered that someone at this company was actually listening to me. All of a sudden I went from being in a bitchy mood about their policy faux pas to wanting to compliment them.

twittermktg_screenshot-3

twittermktg_screenshot-4

Wow! I was kinda just being patronizing before, but this actually sounds like a really cool product. Even though I just dropped $79 on Balsamiq a few months ago, I might have to buy *this* one too when it drops.

twittermktg_screenshot-5

And that’s that, right? If it had been, it would have been an interesting (if not unique) example of an up-and-coming start-up reaching out to an ‘early adopter’ through social media.

But, that wasn’t the end. When I woke up this morning, I found a reply from Balsamiq.

twittermktg_screenshot-6

It turns out they *do* have the main feature I’ve been wanting, I just didn’t realize they had released an update. And in learning about this one feature I wanted, I also learn about another new feature I love.

twittermktg_screenshot-7

twittermktg_screenshot-8

Well as long as I have their attention, I might as well speak up for that other feature I’ve been longing for.

twittermktg_screenshot-9

twittermktg_screenshot-10

HOLY SHIT!!! Not only are they working on the new feature, but they’ve put its design up for review by their users (via Get Satisfaction). I’m in LOVE! First, to put in my $0.02 on the proposed feature design. Now, where’s that tweet Robi sent a couple days ago asking for design software recommendations (on which I originally remained silent)?

twittermktg_screenshot-11

twittermktg_screenshot-12

twittermktg_screenshot-13

I know Robi can be a cheap bastard sometimes, so I’d better make clear to him how great this really is. 😉

twittermktg_screenshot-14

First of all, this whole episode struck me as rather phenomenal — I literally just had 2 brands (and not just some PR flacks, but the CEOs of both companies) competing for my business on Twitter! And while having Pepsi and Coke compete for my business on TV is the main reason I don’t watch it, I came away from this experience on Twitter with a very positive sentiment about both companies (even though I came into it dissatisfied with both of them). And it’s not just that I was flattered to be conversing with the CEOs, it could have been any employee as long as they were empowered to address my needs (like Frank aka @comcastcares).

But in my mind, this goes beyond Twitter and really showcases the power of social media as a CRM tool (what is the difference between ‘marketing’ and ‘CRM’ other than connotation, really?). As Debs wrote:

The social web can actually provide much deeper and more interesting connections for customers and companies than simply being a marketing channel – it ties into the entire product lifecycle.

By showing that they’re listening to me and bringing me into the process, Balsamiq just turned me from a disenchanted user to an enthusiastic evangelist. Not only are they tolerating my Monday morning product management, they’re inviting it. Bringing your customers into the product development process has the dual benefits of helping you build better and more customer-centric products and making your customers your most passionate sales people (because after all, it’s their product too).

Now, go buy Balsamiq Mockups! 😉 (And, go read my post on quick wins for brands on Twitter.)


Suggest to  ?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Delicious Bookmarks for January 9th through January 23rd

These are my links for January 9th through January 23rd:

  • Tube Mogul Buys Video Analytics Firm – "TubeMogul currently has over 40,000 users, ranging from networks and studios such as CBS, to web only video producers and bloggers like 'Fred.' Illumenex current clients include Internet TV pioneer Revision3 and comedy site 'eBaum’s World.'”
  • "Don’t forget…" – a set on Flickr – Really cool street art project in Berlin (where else) that is adding Photoshop interface elements to billboards to remind passers-by that these images of beauty are artificially enhanced. (via https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9591)
  • Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News – Facebook is now allowing custom FBML tags, essentially code libraries produced by 3rd party application developers that can be used by other application developers to add functionality from one app to another. This opens the door to officially sanctioned mash-ups of Facebook apps, which are already mash-ups in themselves. Using the term mash-up in a non-ironic fashion makes me want to punch myself.
  • The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – The Big Picture – Boston.com – A poignant collection of photos of Barack Obama's inauguration and the reactions to it around the world. My favorite is the American soldier in Iraq crying tears of joy (#19). The fact that the routine transfer of power in our country can inspire such powerful reactions around the world is evidence of what a truly global world in which we now we live. And I believe it shows that we as American citizens are making progress towards redeeming ourselves in the eyes of the world, who hold *us* (not just our leaders) accountable for the actions of our nation.
  • Transcript – Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address – Text – NYTimes.com – Text of Obama's inaugural address.
  • Rev. Lowery Inauguration benediction. Transcript. – Lynn Sweet – "Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around — (laughter) — when yellow will be mellow — (laughter) — when the red man can get ahead, man — (laughter) — and when white will embrace what is right."
  • Resources Every WordPress Theme Developer Should Know About! | Arbenting – A comprehensive list of resources for WordPress Theme development.
  • YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money – NYTimes.com – Many have long claimed that the only profitable type of online video content was repurposed TV shows/films or other "professionally produced" content. This article give several examples dispelling that myth and showing that the online video audience and business has reached a point where even so-called amateurs can make real money. For example, Michael Buckley is making >$100k/year from his homegrown entertainment news show "What the Buck?" purely through YouTube's partner program.
  • Op-Ed Contributors – The End of the Financial World as We Know It – NYTimes.com – Comprehensive (if not revelatory) overview of some of the primary drivers of the financial bubble and resulting collapse by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn. Puts things like the failures of the ratings agencies and the greed of financial services company shareholders, which have been examined more deeply on their own, into the broader context of our current hindsight.
  • YouTube Is Changing How We Think About Video | Techdirt – "The power of YouTube is that it enables something entirely new and different to emerge and to thrive. In the history of disruptive innovations, merely taking a product from one medium and moving it to another usually doesn't get very far. It's the projects that really embrace the new possibilities that are only possible via that new medium that really make an impact."

These are my Delicious links for January 9th through January 23rd:

  • Tube Mogul Buys Video Analytics Firm – "TubeMogul currently has over 40,000 users, ranging from networks and studios such as CBS, to web only video producers and bloggers like 'Fred.' Illumenex current clients include Internet TV pioneer Revision3 and comedy site 'eBaum’s World.'”
  • "Don’t forget…" – a set on Flickr – Really cool street art project in Berlin (where else) that is adding Photoshop interface elements to billboards to remind passers-by that these images of beauty are artificially enhanced. (via https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9591)
  • Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News – Facebook is now allowing custom FBML tags, essentially code libraries produced by 3rd party application developers that can be used by other application developers to add functionality from one app to another. This opens the door to officially sanctioned mash-ups of Facebook apps, which are already mash-ups in themselves. Using the term mash-up in a non-ironic fashion makes me want to punch myself.
  • The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – The Big Picture – Boston.com – A poignant collection of photos of Barack Obama's inauguration and the reactions to it around the world. My favorite is the American soldier in Iraq crying tears of joy (#19). The fact that the routine transfer of power in our country can inspire such powerful reactions around the world is evidence of what a truly global world in which we now we live. And I believe it shows that we as American citizens are making progress towards redeeming ourselves in the eyes of the world, who hold *us* (not just our leaders) accountable for the actions of our nation.
  • Transcript – Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address – Text – NYTimes.com – Text of Obama's inaugural address.
  • Rev. Lowery Inauguration benediction. Transcript. – Lynn Sweet – "Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around — (laughter) — when yellow will be mellow — (laughter) — when the red man can get ahead, man — (laughter) — and when white will embrace what is right."
  • Resources Every WordPress Theme Developer Should Know About! | Arbenting – A comprehensive list of resources for WordPress Theme development.
  • YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money – NYTimes.com – Many have long claimed that the only profitable type of online video content was repurposed TV shows/films or other "professionally produced" content. This article give several examples dispelling that myth and showing that the online video audience and business has reached a point where even so-called amateurs can make real money. For example, Michael Buckley is making >$100k/year from his homegrown entertainment news show "What the Buck?" purely through YouTube's partner program.
  • Op-Ed Contributors – The End of the Financial World as We Know It – NYTimes.com – Comprehensive (if not revelatory) overview of some of the primary drivers of the financial bubble and resulting collapse by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn. Puts things like the failures of the ratings agencies and the greed of financial services company shareholders, which have been examined more deeply on their own, into the broader context of our current hindsight.
  • YouTube Is Changing How We Think About Video | Techdirt – "The power of YouTube is that it enables something entirely new and different to emerge and to thrive. In the history of disruptive innovations, merely taking a product from one medium and moving it to another usually doesn't get very far. It's the projects that really embrace the new possibilities that are only possible via that new medium that really make an impact."

Happyjoel on the CBS Evening News

Cross-posted from the Snowball Factory blog

Last week, our friend (and first client) Joel Moss Levinson, aka Happyjoel, appeared in a CBS Evening News with Katie Couric segment called Cashing In on YouTube (watch it below). For Joel, this follows an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a profile in the New York Times, and (our personal favorite) being named an AccessHollywood.com Rising Star. As you can see in the clip below, the majority of this coverage has been driven by the novelty of Joel’s success. He’s a guy who subsists entirely by making amusing music videos for products for which he has no personal affinity — what news producer wouldn’t love this story?!


Watch CBS Videos Online

For us though, the real story isn’t the wackiness of Joel’s success but rather how he has achieved it. Of course, having the ability to come up with witty lyrics about how awesome watermelons are and the time and energy to scour the interwebs for brands looking to crowd-source their marketing are necessary, but they’re not sufficient. Michael Buckley, the other online video personality covered in the CBS News segment, told the NY Times “I was spending 40 hours a week on YouTube for over a year before I made a dime.” Like Michael, Joel does a lot more than just what you see on screen. Arguably, making the videos is the easy part (at least for someone like Joel) — the real challenge has been building and cultivating the loyal fan-base (or as Joel calls it, his “contest voting army”) that has made him such a newsworthy phenomenon.

As of this writing, Joel has:

Each of these relationship channels has different strengths and weaknesses, and we have achieved a good measure of success using them in concert through best practices and a substantial time commitment. But, the system is far from perfect. In addition to the redundant work required to build and maintain relationships through all these various channels, it is very difficult to identify and de-duplicate the individuals across them, and it is basically impossible to have a cohesive view of what is going on in your fan universe.

While 800 lbs brands like Britney Spears or 50 Cent have enough clout to ask their fans to sign up for new services, the rest of us need to find effective ways to reach our potential fans where they already live online. YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, and other popular social media services provide access to their huge existing audiences, but the relationships you build through them have to be on their terms. We’ve learned from experience in the trenches with clients like Joel and Handsome Donkey, and we’re hard at work on a solution that gives independent online media brands the best of both worlds: access to existing social media audiences with greater control over the fan relationships it generates. So, stay tuned!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Delicious Bookmarks for January 9th

These are my Delicious links for January 9th:

  • The Obama Plan:Fiasco Potential is High | Gregor.us – Interesting post on the lack of rail investment in Obama’s proposed infrastructure spending. I agree that our nation is woefully deficient in commuter and regional rail solutions and that improved public transportation is the most viable solution for cutting automobile emissions. This economic crisis and Obama’s political mandate together provide a unique opportunity for fundamental change.”The problem the country faces right now is that we already invested in the wrong things. Wrong things have little sustainable payoff. We invested in Houses and Cars, and did so for decades. But houses and cars are really just tools that are supposed to set us up to do the larger work. In the United States the car and the home became economic fetishes. Alot of the country now lives in a home that’s too big, in a town too far from work. Continuing to invest in this structure is crazy, given that oil prices will be sky-high again in the near future.”

Delicious Bookmarks for December 20th

These are my Delicious links for December 20th:

  • MotionSponsor.com – Fund a film,Share your dream – Potentially very interesting concept of crowd-sourced film financing. Much like the Internet has changed the profile of campaign finance (i.e. from few large donors to many small donors), there are many potential advantages of a micro-finance approach to film financing. By lowering the minimum threshold to participate in financing a film (in this case to €25) this kind of approach could enable a less profit-driven approach to film-making (i.e. I’m willing to donate $50 to a film idea I like without need to make it back) which may help more interesting but less marketable films get made. Given the potential for this idea, I’m surprised Motion Sponsor is the first implementation I’ve heard of. The company is actually French (the site is available in French and translated English) and they seem to have thought through the design of the system pretty well, however the site leaves a bit to be desired. Definitely a concept (if not an implementation) to watch.

Delicious Bookmarks for December 12th through December 15th

These are my Delicious links for December 12th through December 15th:

  • The Top 10 Most Outrageous Holiday Gifts for Foodies – "I’m sick and tired of reading about ideas for recession-era holiday gifts. We have one little global financial meltdown and all of a sudden we’re all supposed to do our Christmas shopping at Family Dollar? I don’t think so. This is Christmas! The season of greed and gluttony! The time for Americans to dig ourselves into a financial, spiritual, and health hole so deep that it lasts until Spring. Christmas is no time to start cutting up our credit cards and pulling ourselves out of this financial mess.

    The “experts” keep telling us we’re in this recession thing for the long haul, so what harm could one more season of unnecessary overspending do? In that heartwarming holiday spirit, may we present the Top 10 Most Outrageous Holiday Gifts for Foodies, celebrating the best in kitchen presents that are insanely overpriced, shamelessly unitasking, and utterly, completely necessary."

  • The End of Wall Street’s Boom – National Business News – Portfolio.com – Very interesting article by Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, revisiting his experiences as an investment banker in the 1980's in the context of the crash he thought was coming 20 years ago.
  • Namecheap.com – The Great NameCheap Twitter Trivia Contest – Free Domain and Hosting Giveaway – One of the most innovative and well thought through Twitter marketing campaigns I've seen. NameCheap, the Domain Name Registrar I use, is trying to drive Twitter integration with their registered users which they're doing through a giveaway administered via the NameCheap Twitter account. They have >3,400 followers so far.

Delicious Bookmarks for December 4th through December 8th

These are my Delicious links for December 4th through December 8th:

  • techvideoblog.com » Blog Archive » Online video sites HD quality comparison – Side-by-side comparison of specs for various online video hosting services offering HD streaming. YouTube HD and Facebook HD have the best quality.
  • Why Wall Street Always Blows It – Henry Blodget's article for the Atlantic on the causes of the current economic crisis and financial bubbles in general. This version includes an intro and summary outline by Henry, who offers the perspective of someone who was in the middle of the last bubble and largely on the sidelines of this one — "'It's different this time,' by the way, are the four most expensive words in the English language."