Newspapers have never made the bulk of their money from a subscription model. It’s always been an advertising based model, that is why your Sunday paper (the most popular edition) is so big: it’s packed with ads. Why do the executives that run these media companies think that I am willing to pay them for their online content, all of the sudden?

If I do pay, will the ads disappear? Of course not. They can’t afford to do that. The money they’ll recoup by charging for a subscription will never make up for advertising, it will just be a little extra.

I am not sympathetic to the newspaper industry. They could have seen this coming years ago. Wasn’t it obvious that the internet adoption rate wasn’t slowing down?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against paying for great content, but I am against paying for the inefficient infrastructure that exists at most media companies. I am against paying for the advertising account managers and the travel agents. If I am paying for content, I want to pay the content producer – not the provider.

So I’m writing this post so I can start directing people here rather than restate my opinion over and over. My point is: Twitter is immensely valuable. That’s the short version. What follows is the long version.

Today at lunch we talked about Twitter, again. The same argument came up…again. “Twitter is not valuable.” “No one wants to know what I’m eating for lunch.” Okay, probably true, but even if we set aside the fact that someone might actually want to know what you had for lunch, the argument is weak.

First of all, I can make this “useless” argument about any type of software. Watch:

Why do I need Quickbooks to manage my finances? I already know how to add and subtract.

“Wait! That’s not all Quickbooks is good for,” you’re yelling. No kidding, I know.

By taking this minor subset of tweets - seemingly useless bits of information - and extrapolating it across the entire service as proof that it is a worthless flow of information ignores the millions of useful tweets that people publish each day. It’s a straw man. You’re claiming one Tweet sums up the entire service.

It’s not actually that useless

Now: let’s consider that some people you know do care about what you ate for lunch. This is a concept calledambient awareness. People who aren’t necessarily with you every minute of the day end up feeling closer to you because they can passively process details of what you’re doing during the day via short bursts of connected information. Weird, right? No. It’s not weird.

Nellie (my girlfriend) and my mom both read my Twitter stream. When I call them in the evening, even if we haven’t talked for a few days, they are up to date on what is going on in my life (not every detail, but enough that they feel like we’ve been chatting regularly). We can instantly start a conversation without me recounting what I was doing 72 hours ago.

So if we combine that with the fact that I can also maintain dozens of relationships with minimal effort, Twitter is starting to prove pretty useful.

It makes my closest relationships stronger and keeps the looser ones in tact.

We haven’t even gotten to the magical part

Real time search.

Google can’t do this. Twitter can. Imagine this: an earthquake happens in Los Angeles and your uncle lives there. I’m going to know this happened within 30 seconds because I am on Twitter and I will start seeing tweets and retweets about it.

Tyler pointed out at lunch that this is still too long to do anything about it and the USGS still knew first. Okay, true. But they could easily hook up their alert system to Twitter and push out updates on earthquakes over a certain magnitude and every amateur geologist would know just as fast their scientists.

Back to your uncle.

You’re not going to be able to get through to him on his cell phone because anyone with cellular telephone reception is going to be using their phone - the network will be jammed. This happens after an Ohio State football game, it’s definitely going to happen after a major earthquake.

You aren’t going to be able to search Google for more information - they have to index the entire fucking web, Google won’t know about this earthquake for at least 15 to 30 minutes, and even then it’s going to be from news outlets who are still piecing together that information from their sources. The sources who, like your uncle, have no cell reception.

Twitter will give you a real time stream of information from people on the ground. You’ll be able to see the first tweet about the earthquake and get an idea for when it occurred. You’ll be able to see the USGS estimate of the magnitude, the epicenter, and the chance of aftershocks. You can do this right now.

What about your uncle? The best bet is to compose a text message to someone saying he’s okay - it will send as soon as their is room on the network. So as long as he’s doing that, why not make that text message a Twitter update so the whole family, as well as all his friends and colleagues, will know he’s okay. They’d all know at once. They’d even know where he was at the time of the earthquake!

This is where things get interesting

I know what you’re thinking, again: the search on Twitter for a situation like this would be a mess. Thousands of update per minute probably. I agree, it would be a huge mess today.

In 5 years Twitter could easily create portal pages for major events on the fly once the number of tweets related to that topic hits a critical mass. Hell, maybe Twitter will be able to do that next week. If they haven’t thought about this yet, they’re not as smart as I thought. They have the power to give certain Twitter accounts high levels of credibility (USGS, for example) and use these to spread the most relevant information while using some other algorithm to process what user generated content deserves to hit this portal page (e.g. which user got the most @replies on the topic).

Right now you’re willing to pay for information from CNN that takes at least 10 minutes to hit their newsroom - they have to verify sources, find a reporter on the scene, and find someone who can pretend they know what they’re talking about. Even with that bureaucracy CNN is really close to real time.

Twitter is real time. It’s not close, it’s there. Why wouldn’t we be willing to pay for that?

At this point it’s clear that I forget about this blog for long periods of time. But I really do work on things elsewhere. I’ve been busy since January working on some of my own projects, working on Bleacher Report stuff, and working on some client work.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

It seems like I’ve been working on Ramit’s site forever. I think we first started discussing it in September of 2008, I actually started playing with design ideas in January, and I finally launched the site a few weeks ago right when his book was released.

I am still making tweaks and working with Ramit to optimize the site, but it’s up. I am pretty happy with it, though obviously there are things I wish I could go back and rework.

Objective-C & Cocoa

I’m jumping on the iPhone application bandwagon and I’ve been learning Objective-C and Cocoa in my spare time hoping that in about 6 months I will know enough to actually release something. I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head as to what I want, we’ll see if anyone else wants the same thing.

Real Work

At the day job I’ve been building some exciting features that we’ll be releasing soon. If you’re a sports fan, head over to Bleacher Report - we’re making some big changes that will up the quality of content a ton. Also, if you like writing about sports, sign up and start contributing - our best contributors are getting some major opportunities (press passes, guest columns, etc.).

Blogging

I am about halfway through a complete redesign of this site. I can’t remember the last time I had a design up that I was happy with and allowed me a lot of flexibility in types of content I am pushing out. Now I will have it.

I actually have about 10 posts backed up in WordPress that I need to finish and push out. Some Gmail tips, some ideas on marketing web sites, and some complaining about the general start up world. Stay tuned.

If you think it’s too quiet around here, I also post at Tumblr - and much more frequently.

bleikamp.tumblr.com

I actually tried posting my Tumblr stuff to my WordPress blog but I didn’t take much time to set it up and so it turned into a mess. I will give it another go when I have some free time. Until then, check out Tumblr.

I am a big fan of their posting interface and the multiple forms of content I can consume (audio, video, quotes, links, posts…) without leaving the dashboard.

Business school sucks at preparing people to be managers at companies that operate in the technology sector. I graduated from the Fisher College of Business in June of 2008 - it is a great school where we used the “case method” and did graduate-level course work in a lot of classes. The cases focused on traditional manufacturing - the type of manufacturing you see at GM - the type of manufacturing that is dying…fast.

The Assembly Line is Dead

There is no assembly line when you’re designing and building software. That process model is dead. Developing applications is an iterative process, there is a natural flow, and there is a lot of work that can be done on all levels at the same time.

When you get “business people” managing “web people” you have a conflict. They constantly want to fit the development cycle into their preconceived ideas of formal processes - they think there must be logical steps, they think time frames must be definite. Designing and developing software is nothing like sending a car down the assembly line. The two aren’t even close to parallel.

And so we have an issue. A classic impasse. Management wants process. Developers want to build something that works. Designers want to spend time thinking about use cases. What do we do?

Until business schools start educating people better, the only option is better communication from both sides. Having gone to business school I understand the need for process and accountability, but I also understand that building software is not a game of absolutes. For every feature, there are bugs, every bug takes time. Software is never done. Design is never done. Everyone has to understand this.

For a brief period of time I worked on building Facebook applications - it was like a mini gold rush. Everyone was building applications, fighting to get users and jump a few spots on the leaderboard of most used applications. People quickly began coming up with ways to make their applications “viral.”

Making an application viral wasn’t particularly hard. You had to come up with incentives for users to invite their friends. For example, to use a specific feature maybe someone had to invite 5 friends. Or maybe to earn 20 points they had to invite 10 friends. Whatever - the point is, you force people to invite their friends to use certain parts of the application.

This is a waste of time. This is forced virality - it is not good for developers or for users.

Users Want Genuine Recommendations

It didn’t take long for Facebook users to figure out that all these invitations they were getting weren’t “real.” They were a way for their friend to advance their own goals on a given application. This taught a lot of users to ignore invitations. If you constantly recommend things to your friends that aren’t genuinely interesting or unique, your friends stop taking you seriously.

You can’t tell your friends every movie you see is amazing or they’ll start to think your taste it movies isn’t trustworthy - the same goes for restaurants, hair salons, and even web applications.

Developers Need Genuine Recommendations

Developers need users to be genuinely interested in their applications. If they’re simply inviting friends to unlock a feature it’s a one time quick fix - once they see the feature it had better be amazing or they won’t be going through the trouble of inviting their buddies again.

If the application is genuinely useful or unique, you won’t need to force them to tell people. They’ll do it because they think it’s worth their time to let people know about something useful. They’ll do it because they want to be the one who found the application that changed the way their friends use the internet. If you don’t have that, your application will fizzle and die no matter how many people you force to join it because your active user count will be 0.

Having 100,000,000 users isn’t worth much if only 12 log in each day.

The Field of Dreams

If you build it, they will come. I don’t know how I worked Kevin Costner into a post that started out with Facebook. But he mowed down his corn field and built a baseball field for a bunch of old baseball players. Too bad Facebook developers aren’t deleting their useless applications and building things people actually want to play with. Does it take a mediocre actor to build something cool?

Is it harder to build something worth using? Yes. No shit. That’s the point - building unique and useful applications is going to take a lot of time, a lot of thought, and a lot of work. You can’t build it in a weekend. You can’t simply build a copycat application and “market it better.” It has to be genuinely good. It has to be viral by itself, without forcing it on users.

Give the users help to make it viral - give them the Digg buttons, make it easy to email friends the articles, and make sure they know how easy it is to submit an article to Yahoo Buzz. But don’t force them to do it in order to see a feature. Let them do it because it’s worth their time.

As a web designer I tend to forget that there are great user interfaces in the world beyond the web - not all human-computer interaction is done on the web. I also tend to forget the different ways that people interact with user interfaces. It’s not all done with a mouse (or a touchscreen, in the case of the iPhone).

Since moving to San Francisco I’ve signed up for a checking account with Wells Fargo and the user interface design on their ATM machines makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside every time I use it.

Wells Fargo ATM user interface

So the design is nice, yes, but the best part is the thought that goes into the way users interact with the machine.

When I am done pressing buttons and have decided how much money I want, whether or not I want my receipt, and whether I am done, I want my cash. At every other bank I’ve ever used the cash comes out, you grab it, and you start to walk away. Then you remember your card is still in the machine so you run back and grab it.

The team at Pentagram changed it up. After I’ve made all my decisions, the machine forces me to take out my card before I get my money. I am thinking “Give me my money!” But it is beeping at me, forcing me to take my card out before I get the good stuff.

So simple. So smart.

I was late to the Twitter bandwagon. I thought it was stupid, useless, and a waste of time. I was wrong - 1500 “tweets” later and I think Twitter is a fun application and also useful for building relationships.

First, what is networking? Seth Godin gives a better definition than I could and says it basically comes down to helping people achieve their goals. He specifically mentions the number of followers you have on Twitter being useless. I agree - I don’t really care how many people follow me.

My strategy with Twitter is to keep the number of people I follow small. Right now I follow 52 people and I recently unfollowed about 15 people. I do not care if they are offended - most of them were “social media experts” who are “hyper twitterers” and constantly hyping useless links or people who had let their accounts go dormant. I never, ever do a “reciprocal follow.” I keep the number of people I follow small for two reasons:

1. I do not have the ability to care about what hundreds of people have to say or what they’re doing, so I don’t pretend to care by following hundreds of people.
2. I only follow people who I know or have an interest in (i.e. I know Paul, he encouraged me to write this post, and I am interested in what Lance Armstrong is doing even though I don’t know him personally, so I follow them both).

People who are following 20,000+ people are kidding themselves if they think that they are “networking.” Those people don’t give a shit about you and you definitely don’t give a shit about them - I can barely keep up with 52 people. I believe some people can keep up with 150 people, maybe even 300, but 20,000? You look like a social media expert, which is a synonym for dumbass.

Following People Should Make Them Feel Special

If I notice someone new followed me I usually go check out their Twitter stream. A lot of times I notice that I am the 3,394th person they have followed - I am just a number in their online network. But if I am 1 of 50, or 1 of 100, even if I am 1 of 200 people being followed, I feel “important” to them - I feel like they think I offer something of value. Is it always true? Nope. But the ability to make someone feel special with one click is powerful, and if you follow thousands of people you lose that power.

Twitter is Actually Useful (and Fun)

So I have this network - small, yes, but smart and personal - on Twitter. Lets say I want to know if anyone has any advice on a design I finished for my website…all I do is write the question, post it to Twitter, and I get 5-10 quick comments.

I make sure to interact with the people I follow as much as is reasonable. Do I respond to their every tweet? Of course not. But if they ask a question about a topic I know a lot about I will happily tell them what I think. My Twitter stream is a network of consultants, all willing to give 140 characters of advice for free. All I have to do is provide advice when I know the answers and everyone is happy.

I like Twitter because it requires a relatively low amount of maintenance but keeps you in the “front” of people’s minds. It’s kind of like buying someone a cup of coffee, but without the hassle of actually buying them a cup of coffee. They know you’re there, they know what you’re interested in, but you don’t have to call them every day. Perfect.

Lets not forget the most important part of Twitter: it’s for fun. If you join Twitter expecting to build business relationships by acting and talking like a “business person”, I will not be following you - not because what you have to say isn’t valuable, but because I can go find it somewhere else. I am not on Twitter to learn lessons about business, I am there to have fun and keep up with friends, clients, and acquaintances in a less formal atmosphere.

My Twitter Rules

• Don’t follow people because they followed you.
• It is okay to offend people and unfollow them. Maybe they’ll get the hint that they’re boring.
• Don’t use Twitter like instant messenger - if you can’t get it out in 140 characters, send an email or write a blog post.
• Don’t follow more people than you can keep up with. No one believes you can keep up with 20,000 people.

I’m sure there are more, anyone care to add to the list?

I recently picked up Outliers on a whim while I was waiting around at Chicago O’Hare during a long delay. I finished the book in the 6 hours I was flying and I was left a bit “empty” feeling when I was done reading. The book attempts to explain the perception of “genius” or “excellence” and show that society’s opinion and social circumstance turn minor advantages into major advantages to individuals over time.

Great. I agree. But most of the “evidence” here is anecdotal, and while it makes for interesting stories, it is not really anything new - it is simply all summarized in a nice, hardcover book. I am not the only one underwhelmed by Gladwell’s book, Joel Spolsky provides a nice summary as well.

Rather than rehash my issues with Outliers, I will simply give my only anecdotal evidence that Gladwell doesn’t really offer anything new in this book.

My Anecdotal Evidence that Malcolm Gladwell is Lame

When I went to lunch with some of my co-workers a few months ago we were discussing successful people and of course Bill Gates came up. He is worth nearly $60,000,000,000 and in a world that views wealth as success, his name was bound to make it into the conversation. What was our conclusion on Bill Gates’ success?

He was in the right place at the right time. Sure, he’s brilliant. He’s a visionary. He can be credited with changing the world of computers. But he was in the right place at the right time when he founded Microsoft and an incredible number of chance events occurred, all in his favor, that lead to his success. Of course he had to be smart and be relatively risk averse to pursue the opportunities that came up. But other smart people were around who probably wouldn’t have been too far behind him had he not acted when he did.

And that is essentially what Malcolm Gladwell tries to establish. But my point is it didn’t need to be established. Didn’t we already know this?

See - Malcolm Gladwell’s book didn’t teach anyone anything new. And I love “evidence” based on a few stories (or one, in this case).

I’ve been working on realigning my blog a bit the past two days. It is running on Thesis, which I am treating more as a WordPress framework than a theme, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of work to get rid of the default look and feel that the theme comes with.

A huge bonus of using Thesis is that most of the typography decisions are made with the theme’s control panel, so that gives me a chance to work on little details, like the search box. So, how’d I make a fancy search box?

First, lets get one thing straight: This is not a custom search box in terms of markup. This is the exact same, default XHTML that Chris includes with Thesis, all I did was position it where I wanted in the theme and style it to look the way I wanted.

Step 1: Add the Search Box to Your Theme

Using Thesis’ hooks you can position the search box anywhere: within the navigation, inside a sidebar, even inside every single post (I wouldn’t recommend that). I positioned it to the right of my tabs.

// Remove default navigation
remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');
 
//Create my new markup
function bleikamp_nav() {
	echo '<div id="nav">';
	echo '<div class="nav_container">';
	thesis_nav_menu(); // Default navigation tabs
	thesis_search_form(); // The default search function
	echo '</div>'; 
	echo '</div>'; 
}
 
// Hook in my new navigation + search
add_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'bleikamp_nav');

What am I doing here?

1. I disable the default Thesis navigation because I want to wrap it in my own containers
2. I create my new navigation function. I actually reuse the Thesis function I disabled (thesis_nav_menu) and drop in the default search box (thesis_search_form).
3. I hook my new navigation + search function into the theme before the header.

Step 2: Style It

#s {
     float: right;
     background: url("images/bkg_search.png") 0 0 no-repeat;
     color: #fff;
     padding: 6px 10px 6px 30px;
     width: 156px;
}

This is where all the “magic” happens. Until you add this CSS, you have a boring looking search box sitting right next to your tabs.

I floated the search box to the right hand side of the navigation container. The tabs are floated to the left side.

I add a background image to the search box, which is how I achieve the rounded corners and get the icon into it.

I set the text color to white, since I am using a dark background.

The padding is important. I am using shorthand CSS, so the numbers mean top, right, bottom, left. The search box is still square as far s the browser is concerned, so the padding helps us position the text correctly on top of our background image.

• The top and bottom padding are what center the text in the box and display the entire height of the image.
• The left and right padding keep the text from running over the icon or running too far into the curves and looking “off.”

Will this work on all browsers?

I have no idea, I didn’t test it. But in general my code is completely functional in every browser, but may not look perfect. There are more “bulletproof” ways to do this, but this is my personal site and I am basically designing this for people who use modern browsers.

Also, this CSS is not unique to Thesis and can be used to style any text input you want.