Back-Left Alpha

Share on Twitter: Right Within your Current Webpage

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:00:06 -0400

I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds, and use a great application called Reeder to read my subscriptions. A great feature of Reeder is that I can share articles on Twitter quickly, with only a few clicks.

When I find a great article or photo using my web browser, easily sharing it on Twitter is much harder. I have to open my Twitter application (or go to the Twitter web app), copy & paste my text (or create my own), copy & paste the URL, and shorten the URL. All before the tweet is actually posted.

I want to share content on Twitter through a web browser as easily as I can with my RSS reader. Therefore, I created a bookmarklet that does exactly that. With the lloquy.com bookmarklet, you can tweet anything to your followers right from the web page you are currently visiting.

Here’s some benefits.

No need for a separate application. The text box opens right within your browser. You don’t even leave the web page you are currently visiting.
Make Sharing Incredibly Easy. Highlight some text on the web page before clicking the bookmarklet and we’ll auto-populate the tweet with that text. If no text is selected, we utilize the page title. Note you can remove all this and just be creative. We also automatically add a shortened URL to the page your currently visiting.
No New Credentials. Users logon through Twitter with their credentials on Twitter’s website. We never see or store your password.

This bookmarklet is exactly what I needed, and I thought I would share it with people who needed something similar. To get it, go to lloquy.com and logon. Below is a short video on installing and using the bookmarklet, in case you are interested (Apologies there is no voiceover).

My SEM Experience utilizing "Startup Lessons Learned"

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:58:00 -0400

How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? - Eric Ries

If you are part of a startup, you have likely read Startup Lessons Learned by Eric Ries. The quote above is based on this post, and details his experience utilizing Google Adwords to attract initial users to IMVU. I wanted to slowly increase our user base at lloquy.com, allowing time to pivot implementation and limit mistakes to a wider audience. Therefore, his method to attract users really got me excited, and I wanted to write about my experiences utilizing this type of marketing.

My previous experience with Google Adwords was positive. Around 2003/2004, I used Google Adwords to gain users on a videogame-related blogging website I created. My daily budget was a mere $2/day, and the service consistently brought 30-40 users each day. That website wasn’t a business, though (merely something I did to learn new technology). I felt that if Eric Ries was having better success today, then this method could easily provide a high return on investment and warranted some of my attention.

Unfortunately, my experience in 2011 was less successful then Eric’s and my past experience in 2003 (by a wide margin). Google Adwords, like Google’s analytics’ service, has become extremely complicated and hard to use without a significant time commitment. For Adwords, I believe this is because common and popular keywords are being taken by companies with a much higher budget, leaving bootstrapping startups behind.

I tried many, many keywords, but at most times, my keywords ended up being in one of two categories. Either the keyword did not have enough data to adequately gauge the number of daily clicks (meaning a low percentage of users searched on it), or the keyword was really expensive (meaning my $5/day would result in 1-2 clicks only).

Since you only pay for clicks with Google Adwords, I decided that casting a wide net was still a good method, and utilizing a wide net of lesser-used keywords would still produce a sufficient number of clicks at a low cost. This hypothesis proved to be false. I did receive some visitors, but the majority of clicks were from Google’s Display Network, and not from the keywords I entered. With the majority of clicks coming from the Display Network, I was unable to figure out any information that could help me improve my campaign.

I’ll be the first to admit that if you’re willing to really study Adwords and put in the time commitment, then you may have better luck. For a startup, there are 1000x things to do at any point in time, and I reached my limit with what I felt I could accomplish with Google Adwords. I felt bummed that this technique wasn’t working for me and decided to ask Eric Ries whether he still believed in his blog post. His response is below.

Me: @ericries Do you still find your post on SEM… relevant? I had tremendous success years ago, but not so much in 2011.

Eric: @presstartgames yes very much so- but AdWords itself has gotten too expensive for most keywords. try reddit or stumbleupon

Great advice, and my test validated his response. Eric offered two alternatives, so I researched both and decided to try StumbleUpon next. StumbleUpon utilizes a system where you pay for users to “stumble” on your website. Users have the capability to “like” or “dislike” your website, and you can earn free stumbles if enough users like your page.

Unfortunately (again), StumbleUpon did not produce the results I was hoping to achieve. While I only put in a small amount of funds for this test, StumbleUpon did not provide one sign-up to lloquy.com.

The results so far? Two different services with two similar results. At this point, I concluded my issue had to be one of three things

The services (Adwords and StumbleUpon) weren’t bringing the early-user I needed
My launch page sucked
My vision for the startup sucked and users didn’t want it

I decided to ask Hacker News users (through this post) on issues with my launch page, and while I received some excellent advice on how to improve the launch page, I also received the following advice.

Stumbleupon traffic doesn’t work well. People are simply browsing from one site to the next looking for articles or funny cats and your bounce rate using SU is probably 100%.

Google ads might work but you might be better off getting on http://betali.st and http://startupli.st to get those early adopters.

Another request for advice and another excellent response. BetaList and StartupList are both free websites that attract users looking for early access to websites. I thought this could be a good approach and decided to submit lloquy.com to BetaList. After my submission, a few weeks had passed with no news on if it would be featured. I’d given up on that avenue and concluded the website would not help. I thought I was back to the first step.

Then BAM! it gets featured. The result was a steady stream of new users signing up on the launch page. In total, BetaList resulted in approximately 100 new users, which is exactly the goal, since lloquy.com has still not “launched” (in a marketing sense).

To summarize, the message of Eric Ries initial post is still valuable (and true), but the technology is constantly changing. For startups looking for the initial set of early users, I highly recommend BetaList over more established methods like Adwords. I haven’t tried StartupList yet, but plan to in the future.

Like this article? Have a comment? Leave it here.

Content Curation at lloquy.com

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:37:00 -0400

Content aggregation and consumption is inefficient. There’s just too much information for people to consume at any point in time. This is true even though the amount of information humans are able to consume continues to increase every year.

A few weeks back, I read an article from VC superstar Fred Wilson regarding curation.

I’m a big fan of curation in these services… If you are building a marketplace or a social platform, make sure to build curation into your model. It will make the service easier for everyone to navigate, particularly new users.

Good content aggregation does two things. First, it quickly helps find content that is relevant and interesting. Second, it should help increase the chance you will not miss content you’re interested in. Curation is a difficult problem for content aggregation, but I believe its an area where lloquy.com can innovate.

Follow people, not crowds. Most content aggregation websites utilize a system that promotes popular content through a voting mechanism. We think a better system is to follow individuals. If you can find individuals that share your interests, then you receive a much higher success rate discovering content through recommendations from that user. Twitter is a great example on utilizing people for content aggregation, even though it was not the sites’s primary purpose when the site was created.
Social Discoverability. Discovering people with similar interests is only part of the solution, however. While many people share similar interests, not all of those people share great content. Following people who align with your interests but share inferior content is just another form of noise. You need to be able to quickly discover if the person is worth following. Our reputation algorithm strives to provide you the answer quickly. The great thing about our algorithm is that it takes your actions on other social networks as well as lloquy.com. In other words, while sharing content and being social on lloquy.com is the best way to increase your reputation, sharing great content on Twitter will also affect your score here (Which is how it should be).
High Signal, Low Noise. With content aggregation, I feel many websites present a high level of noise. Again using Twitter as an example, you have to process a lot of noise to find the content. The problem with solutions that contain high levels of noise is that there is a greater probability of missing the “signal”, or content.

This morning, I quickly scanned 214 tweets and RSS posts and found 2 articles to read. This is a huge amount of waste, but I think by focusing on the improving your ability to get better content (through the bullets listed above), lloquy.com can greatly increase people’s ability to curate their content.

Like this article? Have a comment? Leave it here.

The Theory, or Hypothesis, of lloquy.com

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:12:45 -0400

I browse hundreds of articles from websites, RSS feeds, and social news websites each and every day. A few weeks ago, I noticed something about my web surfing habits: I skip the majority of content that is sent to my RSS reader or found on the front pages of social news websites. Even though I subscribe to each RSS feed I receive, I do not read most of the articles. There’s just too much information for me to consume. While social news websites always contain 2-3 interesting articles per day, I find myself skimming tens or hundreds of articles to find them.

This presents several issues. First, it takes time to browse all this content. This amounts to a lot of wasted time. Second, because I’m skimming quickly, I know I’m missing good content. I’ve realized that these methods do not help me curate my information consumption. RSS feeds send me everything, and social news websites utilize a voting system which may not align with my own interests.

I believe recommendations from people who align with your interests are the best method to manage information consumption. Think about it. Facebook does this right now when your friends “like” something. People you follow on Twitter post content all the time (some interesting, some not, but that’s another post). The problem with these networks is that it’s difficult to discover content outside your initial layer of contacts (friends).

lloquy.com was created to connect people and their actions, through their content. Through web content, you can see what actions users have made, and make connections through those users to discover other users who share your interests. It’s through this discovery of people that you can create a stream of information that will hopefully be more valuable and a better return on your time.

I recommend you sign up for lloquy.com and try it. Once you have registered, check out this page to get started.

Quit Telling Me to Invite My Friends for Early Access

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 11:37:00 -0400

I get it. Hipster got 10,000 people to sign up by offering “early access” to their product if they invited their friends, and LaunchRock started an entire project based on the concept. With these successes (as well as fork.ly), it seems many new projects are utilizing this concept, even when it doesn’t seem to make much sense.

I really respect the companies who have had success utilizing this marketing method. I also think LaunchRock is a great idea. So understand it’s not the concept that I’m against. There are many situations where using this type of sign-up method (for early access) is valid and reasonable. For example, if you are performing problem validation, then this type of splash page is particularly useful. Or, if a user’s experience is enhanced by having their friends on the site (such as a social network), then it makes sense to push this requirement.

Using “early access” as an incentive to obtaining a viral launch page is a nice idea. My frustration arises when this concept is used for ideas that do not benefit the people I must invite. For example, being informed that I have to invite friends to access a new blog, newsletter, or email is frustrating. If I want access to a new web application, such as an analytics service, I don’t want to pressure my friends to sign up so I can get access. In today’s world of information consumption, I quickly forget about the newsletter or service and move on.

While using early access on launch pages have provided success, I believe it’s time to offer other incentives to encourage launch pages to be shared with your friends and contacts. LaunchRock is seeing this as well, as their latest blog post shares how one company is utilizing the service for more then just early access. Startups should offer enhanced services to people who share, or something that is harder to achieve without sharing with your friends. lloquy.com enhances your influence score, which is one of the main indicators of reputation on the website. The ability to increase your reputation even before you have access provides a reason to share the site with their friends.

In summary, while early access may work for some websites, it does not work for others. Services like LaunchRock have made it incredibly easy to create a launch page, but it doesn’t replace the strategy of attracting users to your website.

Introducing lloquy.com

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 16:18:10 -0400

For the past month, I’ve been working on a new web app/service called lloquy.com. The purpose of the website is simple: Discover new people through their content. If you like discovering interesting stuff to read through Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News, or some other similar website, lloquy.com may be interesting to you.

Online, people are consuming data at an incredible rate. In fact, people double their consumption of information every two years. With this incredible increase, it’s becoming more important to curate, or filter, the information you are receiving. Today, you probably use your friends and social networks to curate content for you. The problem is that this type of curation only occurs from people you know. We believe it’s the people you don’t know who may have the most valuable information to share. lloquy.com was created because we want to help you find those people!

lloquy.com is “people” focused instead of “content” focus. What does that mean? When your friends link to an article on Twitter, for example, you click the link to read the article, and then move back to Twitter to find the next curated article. lloquy.com focuses on the person who wrote the article, allowing you to easily follow that person and read other content created by that person.

lloquy.com is currently in “beta”. If you want to get an invitation, sign up on the launch page. You’ll get one shortly. If you refer people to the website, you’ll get in quicker. Referring people also has the added benefit of increasing your website influence (Trust me, it’s important. Like currency.).

Currently, you’re able to do a few things on lloquy.com.

Create Dynamic Content Streams: Follow interesting people you meet, and we automatically create a Follow Stream of their actions on the website. This way, you’ll see what these people write, comment, and like on the internet.
Comment & Vote Up Webpages: Using the lloquy.com bookmarklet, you can easily comment and vote for content you find on the web. You can also share your comments with your followers on Twitter.
Bookmark content for later reading.

That’s about it. While I’ll have more over the coming days/weeks/months, I really want to hear what you have to say. Let me know by email or follow my Twitter account.

Objective vs. Subjective Risks

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:20:35 -0500

Objective vs. Subjective Risks:

When analyzing problems or questions, it’s important to get past the first answer and find the root cause. In my experience, the first answer usually only looks at the immediate problem or obvious solution, ignoring everything around it.

The URL provided takes a similar approach to risk. In many instances, we may not do something because we view it as risky. We may avoid showing people our website, or posting a blog on Hacker News, because we risk that people will tell us it’s not good. By looking at the overall picture though, we may learn that many actions pose very little objective risks, and our ability to get over subjective risks is key to being successful.

What’s incredible is that lots of things pose largely a subjective downside but have an objective upside. That means that if you can get past caring about those downsides, you can leverage yourself heavily and can repeatedly expose yourself to risks with big objective upsides with little effective downside.

Check out the full article here.

Lo, My 21 Subscribers, Who are You?

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 06:39:00 -0500

I have a belief that social engagement is a required task to increase trust with your audience. Unless you already have a huge following (and startups have zero followers), you have to create content and engage your audience to gain their trust before they use your product(s).

I’m proud that this blog is starting to increase in followers as I put more focus to it. If a startup founder’s (or blog author’s) ego can take it, growing something organically from zero to something larger provides you with the opportunity to directly communicate with the “earlyvangelists”, allowing creators (and start-ups) to gain valuable feedback that can only make your product or content better.

Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers can’t. You can talk to them on the phone. You can provide personalized support. You can find out what it would take for them to adopt your product, and then follow up a week later and see if they did. Same with finding out what it would take to get them to recommend your product to a friend. You can even meet the friend. - Eric Ries

Eric Ries periodically would query his audience for feedback on his blog. In fact, the title of this post is borrowed from him, as I think it is a great idea.

If you have a minute, I’d appreciate your time to answer some questions. Feel free to post at lloquy.com (BONUS: You get early access to lloquy.com). If you sign-up there, I’ll turn on your beta access within 24 hours (in most cases, much sooner). Or, feel free to email me.

On a scale of 1-10 (where 10 is most likely), how likely is it that you you would recommend this blog to a friend or colleague?
How did you hear about it?
What led you to become a subscriber, versus just reading an article and leaving like everybody else? (or, if you’re not a subscriber, what would it take to convince you?)
What do you hope to see here in the future?

Thanks in advance.

Better Content Discovery

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:29:00 -0500

Connecting with people online has certainly changed in the past 15-17 years. My first internet-connected computer came with Prodigy, and I still remember speaking with people through their online message boards. The only way to communicate with people on the message boards was through email, but this service provided a great way to communicate with people online, and share information that aligned with your interests.

Around the mid-to-late 90’s, chat rooms and instant messaging took off, and services such as Yahoo chat and ICQ became extremely popular on my college campus. These two services could replace message boards and email (for 1-on-1 communication), as you could meet people in real-time by entering an interest-based chat room, and keep communication going through instant messaging.

Blogs and RSS feeds started to gain popularity after the new century, allowing everyone to talk about their interests from their own platform. People who enjoyed their writing (or aligned with their interests) subscribed to the author’s postings, receiving updates through their RSS reader.

Today, social websites are starting to complement blogs and RSS feeds. Searching websites such as Twitter or Quora, you can easily find information and discussion about any topic that interests you.

Taking a quick look back through time, I believe that while it’s become much easier to find information and content related to your interests (what you are looking for), it’s become much more difficult to connect with the person who wrote it, long-term. In other words, it’s much easier for people to find what you wrote, but it’s much harder to retain those people when you write other material, even if the reader’s interest in that material is high. I think this is a problem, because people who share their knowledge and write content have goals and reasons for doing it. For many, the ability to retain an audience is crucial to their end goals.

Why is it difficult to retain the audience? When message boards, email and IM were the primary communication method, it was more difficult to discover new people with success. However, the 1-to-1 communication made it easier to maintain communication. In today’s 1-to-many communication environment, it’s much easier to move on to the next 1-to-many discussion instead of seeing what else the original poster has to communicate.

For example, I enjoy reading about startups and entrepreneurship. If you’re also interested in startups, a great blog to read is How to make it as a first-time entrepreneur by Vinicius Vacanti (who co-founded Yipit). A few weeks ago, I started thinking about how I found Mr. Vacanti’s blog, and realized that it was pure, dumb luck. Somehow, I ended up following him on Twitter, but never checked out his blog or other writings. It was luck that I caught his posting about How to get your first 1000 users. After reading that article, I started clicking through his other links and found articles on other topics that interested me, from other websites that he found interesting. If I wouldn’t have taken the time to discover his other writings, I wouldn’t have found this wealth of information.

Today, it’s just easier to move on to the next “1-to-many” conversation or discussion then discover more content from a particular writer, and websites like Twitter and Quora provide some social proof to much of the content you see.

So what’s needed? A few items are listed below.

A place that allows users to easily see content people have authored, as well as comments they have made.
Compile and provide access to the content, no matter where the person wrote it. This is crucial, as many people write on several social sites (from Quora, Twitter, StackExchange, blogs, etc).
The ability to provide social proof on an individual piece of content, which allows users to skip content that may not meet their interest.

Many websites provide the capability for some bullets, but not all. When you meet all three, you have the capability to connect with people, not by who they follow, but by the content and interests that each person shares. I feel this is an amazing way to discover and share information. By discovering and sharing information with a wider audience, we help the people who contribute the information meet their goals, no matter what they are.

Like this post? Then you may enjoy lloquy.com. Sign up for the beta, as your feedback would be greatly appreciated. Refer friends and increase your influence with the service, as well.

Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:01:26 -0500

I know what you’re thinking; The answer should be “both”. You’re right, in that if a person could be both smart and get good grades, that is the best outcome. What if you could only choose one, though? Most people would probably say “Smart”*, but I believe in many cases their actions say the opposite.

I understand this question is really an oversimplification of a larger human dynamics question. However, I wonder if it is better to learn what’s “known” (what is taught in school), or learn what may be unknown (through experience).

The truth is that a person’s overall “drive” (being proactive) and lessons they take away from their own experiences are far more valuable then what they learn from a formal education. Having the skills to understand tough problems and find solutions make any person more valuable then a person with multiple degrees but no ability to solve problems.

So why do companies put more focus on education than experience? I believe the key answer is “drive”. Solving the unknown is only possible if you are proactive in solving it. The opposite of being “proactive” is “reactive”. If you’re reactive, you tend to take what you know to solve a problem. Education helps immensely when you have to be reactive.

So back to the original question. If most people were asked, I believe they would put “being smart” over getting good grades. However, to have the ability to solve the unknown, you have to be proactive. This quality is very tough to learn, and it’s something that is never guaranteed. It’s also hard to quantify. For example, when employers look at resumes, they would always prefer proactive, smart people, but tend to look at education first, as education is easy to quantify.

If a random young person asked me this question, I would want to state that he should be “unknown problem” smart. However, I would probably push him to get good grades and attend a good college, unless I knew he would have the drive to succeed without college. Good grades help you get into a good college. Good college grades help you get a higher salary job. Degrees help the majority be more successful.

Peter Thiel doesn’t believe good grades are that important. I think he’s right for a small minority of people who are going to make it no matter what they do (because they’re smart). Good grades are important for the majority though, and help ensure more then a small percentage have successful careers.

Startups must be Proactive

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:51:29 -0500

The first habit, or the foundation, of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is being proactive. In short, you are responsible for your own life, and therefore possess the initiative to make things happen.

I’m not through the entire book yet (I’m actually only on Habit 2), but this first habit applies to startups as much as life. If you own a startup, you are responsible for that startup’s success, and you must make things happen.

The following is a scenario I’ve seen before. You create a business you know customers will love, because you love it. Whether you spent money to create it or did it yourself is irrelevant. You go-live, but the people don’t come. You decide to post a link to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Nothing. You add features because you thought of cool new stuff. Still nada.

Here’s the point where many entrepreneurs make an incorrect critical decision. They either continue to add features, or they quit, assuming they’re product won’t be successful.

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed. - Paul Graham

Paul Graham is really good at taking complex topics and breaking them down, such as the paragraph above. You only need three things to create a startup, but you can’t achieve any of them without being proactive. Startup life is difficult, and successful entrepreneurs can not let blame various circumstances for their results. They need to proactively find ways around those circumstances to achieve success.

Lean Startup principles are proactive by definition. You talk to customers to learn and validate assumptions until you achieve market fit. You’re continuously deploying changes, and testing small updates to understand their value. You remove waste that is not providing value to customers.

Being proactive sounds obvious, and I’m sure most feel they are already being proactive. However, looking at the definition of proactive from the book, I’m looking for ways to do better.

I can’t wait to read about the other 6 habits.

Tailoring your Features to Decrease Burn Rate

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 13:25:56 -0500

I launched TweetAfter.me with a minimal feature set. I had (and still have) many ideas to enhance the service, but made a conscious decision that none of them were necessary on the very first day. This allowed the service to get in front of users faster, allowing feedback to be received quicker, which ended up changing my view of which features were more important in my backlog.

Besides deploying with a minimum feature set, I also felt it was important to reduce recurring costs until higher revenue is generated. Let’s face the facts. A new product or service has zero users when it launches (TweetAfter.me went live on 02 January 2011), and no product or service is guaranteed to increase users. Therefore, it makes sense to lower your recurring costs to reduce your overall burn rate.

Sometimes that includes making tough choices regarding features. While sometimes, you completely remove a feature, tailoring the feature may be the only solution. A real example from TweetAfter.me is that tweets are currently scheduled in one hour increments. The goal has always been to provide a lot more flexibility in duration between tweets, default schedule durations, etc. However, right before deployment, I made the tough decision to reduce the initial scope of these features. Why?

To achieve my initial goal would have had a recurring cost 12x more expensive then current recurring costs. With zero users on day one, it made little sense to pay 12x more money for features of a just-launched service. The truth is that startups should test the market to verify those features are needed. If they’re needed, then users may pay for them, increasing your return on investment for these features.

Therefore, just don’t assume you need expensive features on day 1. Higher costs give you less time to validate decisions with customers. On day 1, one of your highest priority goals should be to give your startup enough time and money to reach customers. If you spend the money now, you lower the chances of succeeding regarding that goal.

From 0 to Anything

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:13:49 -0500

If I had to describe the Lean Startup Methodology in less then 5 words, I would say “Ideas, Product, Learn, Repeat.” First, people have ideas and deploy a minimal product. You then learn from customers who use your product and repeat the same process, modifying your ideas and product(s) based on customer feedback.

Learning is the toughest step in this cycle, as it is the only state that requires external people to complete. Very early customer development and validation is also a state that doesn’t get much attention. Although that is starting to change (due to the Lean Startup movement), most material I have read focus on struggles with idea and product, then shift to funding and scaling. It’s a shame because the learning phase can often be the most frustrating, and without persistence, may create a lot of waste, or even critical mistakes. Take these two examples.

Just Keep Adding Features: Many entrepreneurs skip the learning phase completely if they become frustrated with the lack of initial customers, electing to implement new features from their backlog instead. This can be counterproductive, as one of the biggest forms of waste is creating features users do not want. A decade ago, I made this mistake with a blogging platform I created (before blogging was actually a term). I became impatient, and by the time users were on the platform, the usability of the platform had degraded due to the feature additions I made combined with the lack of validating the usability of those features when integrated.

Pivoting too Soon: The 2nd potential mistake is entrepreneurs giving up and moving on to the next idea. They repeat the “idea, product, learn” loop, as they believe they “learned” their product or idea was flawed and the best course is to start over with something else (Note that sometimes, this is true). Entrepreneurs are being told to “Fail Fast”, which I think is great advice, but if entrepreneurs can’t learn why the product failed, then they may need to keep going.

So, how do you enhance the learning stage when you’re trying to entice “earlyvangelists” in the crucial beginning weeks or months? It’s not easy. Here are a couple ideas to start the conversation.

Search Engine Marketing: SEM services, such as Google Adwords, could be a cost-effective way to get initial users to your website. Eric Ries has a great article on this approach, and I encourage you to read it, as there’s not much I can add. Note that Adwords has become significantly more complex then even a few years ago. Therefore, I advise that you spend a great deal of time optimizing your campaign. If you don’t, you may draw the conclusion that something is wrong with your service, when in reality, your ad campaign sucks.

Use Social Networks: It is so much easier to increase your reputation with the plethora of social websites. 10 years ago, there was very little. Blogs allowed non-technical entrepreneurs to increase their reputation and become their own brand. Now, websites like Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News, Quora, and Stack Overflow allow you to share your knowledge and insights with a larger audience. If people trust your insight and thoughts, users are more likely to try your services and products.

These ideas are more indirect methods to better achieve your goal of reaching initial customers. I purposefully stayed away from other, more talked-about ideas, such as A/B testing or customer interviews. No matter what you do, understand most methods take a significant amount of time to “get right”, and many times, it’s easier to go back and add a new feature. Don’t fall into that trap!

I’m interested to hear your methods regarding this topic, as everyone benefits from new ideas, and no idea will work for every situation.

Like this post? I encourage you to visit TweetAfter.me and provide feedback.

3 Ways to Save Content

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:40:00 -0500

TweetAfter.me provides a bookmarklet that allows users to to save and share interesting things they find on the internet with their Twitter followers throughout the day. When the service became available, the bookmarklet only stored the page’s title. However, you can now use the bookmarklet to dynamically change the text that you tweet along with the URL.

Tweet the page title
Tweet selected text found in the page
Tweet whatever you want

The Default

By default, your profile is set up to tweet utilizing the first two options. When clicking the bookmarklet, the service will automatically store the page’s title, unless you have selected text to be stored. If text is highlighted within the page, then the service will save this text in place of the title. “The Default” works even if you have not logged into the service, and your text is saved as you are redirected to/from Twitter to verify your credentials.

The Dynamic Tweet

I’m sure your wit and humor stands out on your Twitter profile. Tweeting the page title or some selected text may bore you. If so, then TweetAfter.me allows you to tweet what you want with Dynamic Tweets. With this setting enabled, clicking the bookmarklet will show the small form (pictured above) in the top left corner of your browser. Type what you want and click Submit. Note the URL is automatically added, so there is no reason to add it to your text. Also note, at this time, you must be logged on to utilize Dynamic Tweets, and the bookmarklet will utilize The Default method if you have not logged onto the service, even if the setting is enabled (Why? Since you’re not logged on, the service can’t tell if you enabled this method).

You can enable or disable Dynamic Tweets at any time from your profile page.

With these 3 options, TweetAfter.me is a terrific supplement to your overall Twitter experience.

TweetAfter.me Update: 09 January 2011

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 10:30:36 -0500

Listed below are updates to TweetAfter.me from this week. Feedback has been really good so far. Please continue to contact me with what you like/hate/would like to see enhanced.

Visual Recognition: After bookmarking a page, a visual confirmation is shown in the top-left corner of the webpage. It will disappear after approximately 1 second.

Tweet selected text: Find an interesting quote to tweet? Highlight the text in your browser and we’ll tweet the quote in place of the page title.

Installing the lloquy.com Bookmarklet

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:50:00 -0500

The bookmarklet is the only setup necessary to use lloquy.com. Registration isn’t even necessary. With lloquy.com, you could be setup, bookmarking, and having conversations to in under 30 seconds. This post takes you through steps to install the bookmarklet on some different platforms.

The easiest method is to just drag the bookmarklet image found on the main page to your bookmarks bar. For most platforms, including Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, you are setup in under 5 seconds.

For Internet Explorer, try these steps.

Make sure your Links Toolbar is visible. If it is not, right-click on any part of the menu bar and make sure Links or Favorites Bar is checked.
Right-click on the lloquy.com bookmarklet button and click Add to Favorites.
Be sure to save the favorite in your “Links” folder so that it appears in your Links Toolbar.

For other platforms, such as the iPad, you may have to perform other steps, although they are still easy. To install the lloquy.com bookmarklet on the iPad, you have two options, which are detailed in the following subsection

Installing the lloquy.com bookmarklet on your iPad

To install the bookmarklet on your iPad quickly and easily, add the bookmark to Safari or Firefox on your computer, then synchronize your bookmarks to your iPad with iTunes.

If you do not want to sync your bookmarks in this way, then you can perform the following steps.

Ensure proper settings on the iPad by going to the Settings app and turning on Always Show Bookmarks Bar, as well as JavaScript. Set Accept Cookies to From Visited.

If you are reading this on another platform besides the iPad, Open the Safari web browser app on your iPad and return to this page.
Copy this link holding down and selecting Copy.
Click the button shown in the picture below. Click Add Bookmark.

Change the name to lloquy.com and ensure the bookmark resides in your Bookmarks Bar. Click Save.
Tap the bookmarks button in the toolbar. Ensure that you are seeing items from your bookmarks bar. Tap Edit and select the lloquy.com bookmark.
Replace the URL with the copied text by first tapping the X button to clear the URL, then holding down your finger until the magnifying glass appears. Click Paste. Remove http://www.lloquy.com/? from the beginning of the URL.
Save your changes and tap Done.

This method is awkward and has a higher probability of error. However, with the iPad’s inability to copy javascript, this is the best solution I could come up with at this time (I’d love to hear from developers who could do something better).

If you feel more platforms should be involved, let me know and I will try to add instructions.

Using TweetAfter.me

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 18:59:00 -0500

Did you know that 25% of tweets on Twitter contain links to interesting opinions, news, and photos? Posting interesting stuff, through links, is one of the best ways to increase the number of followers you have. However, update too many times in a short timeframe, and you’ll lose a percentage of people following you.

For me, I only have certain times I can tweet, mainly when people aren’t focusing on Twitter. I find interesting stuff, but no one sees it, because I post when no one is looking, and I post in bulk.

TweetAfter.me was created to easily bookmark interesting news, opinions, and articles you find on the internet, and tweet on your behalf in set intervals (2 Tweets every hour). Therefore, if you find 20 articles in the morning, TweetAfter.me will spread those tweets over 10 hours.

TweetAfter.me is incredibly simple. To get started, just drag the bookmark located on the main page to your bookmark’s bar on your browser.

That is the only setup required. Note that registration wasn’t required, because there is no registration. TweetAfter.me does not store your Twitter password.

So now that you have the bookmarklet on your browser. How do you use the service?

Surf the web. Find interesting stuff.
When you found something you want to share, click the bookmarklet. If you have not confirmed your credentials with Twitter this session, we will redirect you to Twitter to log in. After verifying your credentials, you may be asked to authorize TweetAfter.me to communicate on your behalf. Accept this request (You can turn access off at any time by visiting Twitter.com).

You will be redirected back to your original page. The page is now bookmarked and will be tweeted when scheduled.

Subsequent bookmarks will not require you to logon. Therefore, to visually show that websites were bookmarked, a visual cue will appear in the top-left corner of the browser when the bookmarklet is pressed. It will disappear on it’s own.

That’s it! When you find other interesting pages, just click the bookmarklet and it will be saved for future tweeting.

The Lowdown

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 17:36:00 -0500

So, is TweetAfter.me a fully-featured service that provides me everything I could ever want as a supplemental tool for Twitter?

TweetAfter.me is an “un-launched” product that allows users to bookmark interesting content they find on the internet, and share that content at a later time. If you’re like me, you may find multiple things during one timeframe (such as when you’re drinking coffee). Instead of sharing those links all at once using your favorite Twitter client, TweetAfter.me allows users to bookmark that content, and we’ll automatically share with your followers throughout the day.

So what is “un-launched”? Another term that may be more utilized for this stage in product development is “beta”, which just states that the product contains only a subset of features a finished product would have. Instead of keeping the service in stealth until it is complete, however, I realize that TweetAfter.me has value now with it’s current set of features. Therefore, I hope users will use it to grow their follower count and reputation, as well as provide feedback on enhancements they would like to see.

Why tell you this? First, if you use the product and see something you don’t like (or think of something you would like the service to perform), I want to hear about it. I know how I use the product, but the service will only be truly valuable by understanding how You use the product. By utilizing an “un-launched” term, I’m stating that the service is consistently being upgraded. As an example, the first two weeks have brought several major upgrades to the service.

Tweet what you want utilizing our Dynamic Tweet Form instead of tweeting the content title
Select text from the page to tweet
Your own profile page, allowing you to perform multiple actions, like deleting a scheduled action tweeting content right away
A visual cue of success when clicking the bookmarklet

These examples come straight from user feedback. Therefore, I encourage you to try the service and give me the “lowdown” on your use.

Work & Life Balance

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:16:20 -0500

Over the weekend, I read this (although I did not listen to the supplemental video). The author made a point to state he would never work for entrepreneur Jason Calacanis due to his views on work/life balance (in other words, there should be no balance). See a supplemental opinion from Jason here.

I’m a big proponent or work/life balance, so articles like those in the previous paragraph really get me thinking. Is it possible to succeed when you have a life? Do you really need to sacrifice aspects of your life? Work extremely long hours for weeks/months/years? The answer to each question is Yes.

To answer ‘yes’ to each questions could seem contradictory, but it’s true. To be successful, you must have a work & life balance. That doesn’t mean you work a normal 40 hour week and then go out and have a life. It’s much more difficult, or else everyone would be a success.

So what’s the answer. Calacanis states that work should be your life and you should love your job.

I never stop thinking about whatever project I’m working on, and I don’t consider what I do work-never have.

This advice is absolutely true. However, this advice, on its own, makes you a ‘workaholic’ and doesn’t give correct balance. You need to love your job, and honestly, I bet most people do not. If you don’t love your job, and you’re not thinking about how to be successful more then your competitors, then you’re going to lose.

So what can you do to increase work/life balance. My belief is that, similar to Lean Development, you cut waste. Many people cut out time with family, sleep, or other healthy activities. These items are essential and necessary. Even better, they’re not even waste. In the short-term, going to the gym may seem like waste when you’re trying to make a delivery, but work/life balance is a long-term goal, not a short-term.

So what’s waste? I think it’s better to start off with what isn’t waste.

Family Time: When I had my 2nd child, a friend told me to always value “Quantity” time over “Quality” time. He’s absolutely right. I firmly believe that every moment with your family is a long-term benefit (as well as a short-term). Also, you only get one chance. If you’re too busy working when your child is 5, you will never be able to get that time back.
Exercise: As I said previously, lifting weights and performing cardiovascular exercise may seem wasteful when you got things to do, but long-term, both help enhance success. It manages my stress and allows me to think outside the office. Plus, it makes me stronger and skinnier (Bonus!).
Sleep: 7 Hours, Minimum
Active Learning Activities, such as Reading: Reading is especially good to relax. Like exercise, you’re getting a benefit while you’re actually away from the work environment. Whether it’s books on technology, programming, or business, what I learn in my free time will help with my end goals.

With these items in mind, waste can be defined as any activity that does not help you meet your goals. Passive activities, such as watching television, are wasteful. With the idea of cutting waste to achieve a work/life balance, you can work 70-80 hours a week, stay healthy, and coach your child’s sports team.

It only takes hard work and self-reflection.

Great pic from a previous airplane ride. Taken with my phone.

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:43:06 -0400

Great pic from a previous airplane ride. Taken with my phone.