Category Archives: Internet

New site Hunch helps with decision making

Hunch is the lazyweb

Frankly, Hunch is a great idea and I have no doubt will become another staple of the internet. What Wikipedia is to knowledge sourcing, Hunch is to decision making. With the ability for anyone to make edits, suggests decisions, vote up, vote down, and leave comments in the form of pros and cons of a decision, Hunch will become the platform for decision information.

With topics from Electronics to Sports and Fitness, one can make a decision about nearly anything.

With thousands of topics, one can make a decision about nearly anything.

If you think about it, people are making decisions every day. Very often we involve our friends. Too often I see friends on Facebook or Twitter ask questions like: should I buy the new iPhone 3GS or the Palm Pre? What should I do over the weekend? What graphic design book should I read? Or they’re answering the questions like “What cocktail am I?” [note: who cares?] My selfish dream is that this chatter disappears and relocates to Hunch; a site dedicated and perfectly designed to handle these questions (much better designed than 140 characters on Twitter).

Badges are always a win

If you want to build a web application that encourages people to immediately sign up and be active: add badges. I’ve used Hunch maybe a dozen times and I already have 8 super sweet badges. No doubt I’ll be back to get more. But seriously, credibility is important on the web. Banjos are to Hunch what edits are to Wikipedia and reputation are to Stack Overflow. It encourages more participation, though, arguably may incentivize people to add junk. That’s fine though, in theory, as the community will sort out the user generated signal from the noise.

The hidden value: Teach Hunch

Hunch asks a lot of questions about you. It gains a lot of information not only from your decisions, edits, recommendations, etc. It also asks you, point blank, “Do you enjoy shopping for clothes?” or “Do you have a car?”

My previous answer was the same as 48% of respondents. I'm in the minority?

From the plethora of information that thousands of users are providing you can quickly get some very cool (anonymized) correlations.

Liberals are about twice as likely to prefer arugula to iceberg in their salads, but the exact opposite goes for conservatives.

Of course, the concern being how much Hunch can learn from us, where that information will go, how it will be used for/against us, etc. Some will argue its harmless in the beginning, others say that

Cataloging reviews and bookmarks

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In a prior effort to minimize my online activity I removed myself from using a lot of websites. Two of which I’ve come back to: Yelp and Delicious.

I find a lot of interesting sites and articles online and I’ve continually found myself thinking “shoot, what was that site name?” or “where did I read that article about ____?” I’ve come back to Delicious to help catalog these sites.

I’m also interested in sharing my thoughts on restaurants and bars I’ve visited. Yelp has been an invaluable source for finding good places to eat. I love being snarky and sharing my opinion, so, I’m also back on Yelp posting reviews.

An interesting side-note: I’ve stopped actively using Brightkite. In the numerous interactions, I’ve found little-to-no value in cataloging and constantly keeping track of my location. It is fun to engage in conversations at conferences and get togethers.. but certainly nothing that Twitter can’t achieve.

Add Twitter Favorites to your site

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Hint: if you’ve never used Twitter the following won’t make much sense to you.

I easily annoyed by people on Twitter who ‘RT’, or ‘re-tweet’; they simply post an update that says exactly what someone else says, plus attribution. Frankly, answering the Twitter mantra “What are you doing?” with “this is what someone else smarter, funnier, or more charming is doing” seems inane. It’s poetic, though, in the sense that it’s a quick litmus test for people worth “following.” Alex has always been against this practice and suggested an alternative to RTs: favorites.

There are very few features on Twitter: updates, direct messages, replies, favorites, followers, followings. I charge everyone to use the favorites feature more often. In fact, there’s a site dedicated to finding the real good ones: favrd.

Point being: I’m a huge proponent of using the little star. I’ve started publicizing my favorites here in the sidebar of Mind/Averse and it took less than 30 seconds using WordPress. It’s really quite simple.

Add Twitter favorites with the WordPress RSS widget

Assuming you have a widget-friendly WordPress theme installed, simply do the following:

From the WordPress dashbord, Browse to Appearance > Widgets
Select the ‘Add’ button next to the “RSS” widget
Visit your Twitter favorites page and determine your personal RSS feed (view the page source if you’re stuck here; find the <link> tag with http://twitter.com/favorites/youridhere.rss)
Insert the favorites feed into your RSS widget, give the widget a title, pick your options, etc.
Save the widget and save the changes to your sidebar

Now everyone who visits your site can immediately find the tweets you find useful. You’ll get to be cooler, smarter, and funnier simply by association.

Other ways to integrate Twitter favorites

I can think of various creative ways for individuals and businesses to use Twitter favorites.

For example, if I were a company with customers sending @replies to me telling me how great I was, I may favorite those. I can then use something like SimplePie to integrate my favorites into my blog as a separate page of testimonials. I know 37signals uses ‘buzz’ from Twitter on their site.

Bonus: do the same with @replies

The @replies RSS feed is a bit different and uses the Twitter API and 401 authentication, not a custom RSS feed, for your replies. No worries, you can either pull the RSS feed from Twitter Search or you can do the same thing using the following syntax:

http://twittername:[email protected]/statuses/replies.rss

In theory, the API will include all mentions (any time @devinreams is included in an update, not just at the beginning of an update).

Ha, this is why they call me a social media pro.

WordCamp Denver 2009 organizer recap

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The following is a behind-the-scenes look at WordCamp Denver, a local WordPress-oriented conference, that Crowd Favorite (my employer) volunteered to organize for the Denver/Boulder community. From my perspective as the primary organizer (and not necessarily that of Crowd Favorite), a few lessons worth sharing with anyone organizing an event for nerds:

Start early, anticipate bumps: no matter how many times you plan an event (this was not my first) you forget details. Get started early, take lots of notes and outline all the various things that need to happen (including the minutiae that needs to happen the day-of the event). Also, be sure to follow-up with people (speakers, sponsors, venues, printers, etc.). If we hadn’t pro-actively followed-up on some details (and assumed everything was taken care of as promised) we may not have had shirts printed in time nor a venue reserved for the after-party.

Leverage your network: luckily for us, a lot of great friends and contacts in the Denver/Boulder area stepped up to volunteer their time (speakers) and money (sponsors). Because these people made themselves available, we were able to throw a full-day event at an awesome venue (Denver Art Museum), and an after-party for people to mingle and mix (and still keep it accessible for 300+ people to attend).
Tickets will sell themselves: though nerve-wracking and always a concern, conferences and events like WordCamp will sell out. Every event I’ve organized has always had dozens of people clamoring for tickets at the last minute and offering cold hard cash at the door. As a participant, I understand the reasoning: you hear about it late, you realize cool people will be there, your plans were TBD up until a certain point, etc. As an organizer, consider setting aside some ‘reserve’ tickets that you can open up for the people that realize ‘sold out’ means ‘I can’t come’. Frankly, you can charge a premium for these tickets.

Let the people socialize: one criticism, though from a vocal minority, is that there weren’t enough structured breaks. On the contrary, we set aside a full two hours at the Paramount Cafe so that people could mingle and meet each other and the speakers. What you’ll often find at conferences is people will set aside their own time. If they don’t like the panelists, they’ll go into the lobby and strike up conversations. Make sure you have adequate space for people to step out and not disturb sessions in-progress.
You can’t please everyone: it’s a well-known fact that you can do your best and people will still leave your event unhappy. We tried to mitigate some of this risk in a number of ways. You’ll notice a number of conferences split up sessions into multiple tracks so that individuals can attend those that appeal most to them. We also (thanks to sponsorship) were able to keep the ticket prices lower (which means a higher perceived value of the event): if people give you a hard time after organizing an 8-hour conference that only cost $30, well, it’s hard for anyone to argue they didn’t get their money’s worth.

Keeping this all in mind: have fun. As an organizer it’s amazing how many people will go out of their way to find you and say thanks; it’s why we volunteer to put on events like this. Thanks to everyone who attended WordCamp Denver 2009.

PS: nobody has perfected the art of wifi/phone service when massive amounts of people are in the same place at once (look at the inauguration or SXSW 2009). I’m really, truly sorry you had a hard time live-tweeting about how young Dave Moyer was. ;)

I love birthdays…

Social media best practice: be authentic

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Jeremy Tanner tagged me: I need to chime in and tell the world, in all my infinite wisdom, what a “social media” best practice is.

Interestingly enough my knee jerk reaction was to say either:

if you call it social media you’re doing it wrong, or
just stop trying, FFS.

At least, that’s the way I’ve felt in the recent months. In fact, it’s a new rule for me on twitter. If you’re a self-proclaimed “social media” guru, then you’re not.

That leads me to my point: to be successful in social media (or any media, I believe) you need to be authentic. It goes back to one of my personal favorite posts: my thoughts on transparency and honesty. If someone is extremely active across a variety of services and trying to connect with so many people (Linkedin, twitter, pownce, etc.) it sends the message that you’re convincing me I need to listen to you. It’s like trying to advertise your product after building it and calling that “marketing.” The biggest way to fail is to reach out to as many people as possible just to broadcast to your followship.

Instead, be an authentic person. Just be you and the right people will find you. For instance:

Penelope Trunk, although a writer (its her day job to make uninteresting things interesting), is a geniune lady who will bare all and do her best to connect. I consider her the Britney Spears of the internet sometimes but she’s authentic and, thanks in part to that, has a tremendous followship; in both size and passion.
Gary Vaynerchuk, although a marketer (its his day job to get the message out to everyone), is a geniune guy who will talk to anyone and go out of his way to make them feel important. He’s a busy guy but spends most of his day just talking to people via e-mail, twitter, facebook, and so on. In turn, he’s built up one of the most popular video podcasts about a product that no-one had ever thought to look for online: wine.

There’s my thoughts on how to do social media the right way. Agree / disagree?

Tag, you’re it: noah kagan, Andrew Chen, Ramit Sethi. (original link)

Top Websites That Aren't (Yet) Mainstream

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Lets dive right into them, shall we? I present to you, the websites that aren’t quite mainstream … yet.

1. GMail

Who: Google
What: Free e-mail with lots of space, IMAP, mobile accessibility, powered by ads
Why it’s cool: GMail was on the cutting edge of webmail with a huge giveaway of space and a smart interface coupled with the awesome power of Google search.
Why it’s not mainstream: People are afraid of Google still. They see the ads and think that your information is no longer private nor secure and that your precious e-mail and information will be sold to spammers and advertisers. Ironically enough, Google is one of the best at combating spam.
Send me an e-mail

2. Hulu

Who: NBC, News Corp (and now the content of dozens of others)
What: Free access to legitimate television shows and movies in high quality, powered by ads
Why it’s cool: I can watch Comedy Central shows, Food Network, Fox, etc. in high definition with less advertising and all for free. I can even subscribe to the show and get alerts when a new episode is up.
Why it’s not mainstream: Nobody has heard of it. And NBC continues to botch up their video content by releasing stuff like NBCOlympics.com. So, we all assume media companies don’t get “real” video yet and wander over to YouTube.
View my public profile on Hulu

3. Newsvine

Who: Veterans of Disney, ESPN, and other media organizations; MSNBC
What: News from multiple sources PLUS the ability for anyone to write, “seed” (post an existing) or comment on an article.
Why it’s cool: We can contribute the news and read about whats important to us. Plus we can engage with others and talk about stories, debate points, create long lasting friendships, call someone a retard, the list goes on…
Why it’s not mainstream: I think it’s too much work for someone to ‘seed’ the news and it gives little value for me to share it with someone else. To many, there is not enough incentive to write articles either. The only saving grace is the fun in arguing and being social on the internet. More people are interested in participating but I don’t think they know about their options.
Add me as a friend on Newsvine

4. Twitter

Who: Obvious (Ev Williams)
What: 140 character message broadcast to anyone who wants to “follow” you (and you get to follow people back)
Why it’s cool: It’s like chatting with only the people you want to listen to via SMS, the web, and many other applications
Why it’s not mainstream: People still don’t “get” it because nobody has explained it the right way to people. You can’t just say “you have to do it” because everyone can see through internet fads. Not everyone is into making random connections with strangers on the internet. Plus, the site really isn’t what I’d call user friendly.
Follow me on Twitter

I thought about adding a “how to fix it” to each of these but nothing about them is broken. They’re just different, unknown, and misunderstood websites that may just always maintain that “web2.0” charm.

But then again, only the “early adopters” were using these sites:

Facebook – why do you need a profile online? I have real friends.
Google – what else is there to search for? I found the porn.
Craigslist – we already have classifieds, they’re called the classifieds.
eBay – I can buy cheap things at Wal-Mart.
Amazon – books belong in stores (so that I can read them for free!).

Top three lessons from online communities

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I’ve seen, first hand, the challenges faced when trying to get a group of people together on the internet. I’m a member of a of a number of online communities. I’ve also helped found a few communities. They include:

9rules – a group I really wanted to become a part of, the best of the best content
yopos – something noah and I tried to start (coming again soon!): young professionals
Twenty Somethings – a group of attractive, witty, smart bloggers all in their twenties
Employee Evolution – smart professionals guest blogging about work, life, entrepreneurship
Brazen Careerist – the natural extension of EE, network of existing and new bloggers about the above
BarCamp/New Tech – online and offline, meetup with some local nerds
SXSW/CommunityNext – organized events/conferences around a community
AKPsi – offline, but 50+ college students with an interest in business (VP/President)
Two other college clubs – again, offline but a good look at how people interact

And I’ve done tons of observation of popular online groups (FlyerTalk, Zen Habits, Get Rich Slowly, I Will Teach You To Be Rich). Here are my top three lessons learned.

Existing community must already be strong

When I say strong you need to have an extreme amount of quality or quantity. A little of each will not be sufficient.

Employee Evolution and 9rules attracted people because of the high quality–they both grew very quickly. On the other hand, yopos sought out to do the same and, I admit, consistent quality wasn’t there (and we didn’t have the numbers either).

In college, AKPsi was one of the largest groups in the business school (100+) and because of that it kept attracting more and more people (network effect). Once our numbers started to drop off we had to quickly focus on quality or else we’d get stuck in mediocrity. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. We had generations of mediocrity in the group, as the numbers diminished even they left. By the end of my college career the group dropped to a quarter of it’s original size. The same happened with two other groups–when the strength dwindled, the community failed.

Without the quality or quantity it’s very hard to do anything. You could take five very talented people and create something amazing. If you have 100 people, odds are you will find some great, active, and interesting people worth sticking around for.

People always talk about meeting up, rarely do

It must be how we are hard-wired as humans, but no matter what your group is–people will want to meet in person. People will try to organize and coordinate these events but they rarely happen. Even in college, where we met as a group every week, it was challenging to have people commit to anything outside of something we’ve already structured for them.

Lucky for the internet there are groups like the SXSW coordinators who will put on an event for everyone to go to. But even with 9rules we never saw any official “get togethers” no matter how often it was brought up. I’ve seen the same start over at Brazen Careerist and I question what will come from the discussions (I have a good idea, though: nothing).

Some obvious exceptions to the rule are groups like BarCamp. These still usually require a big investment from one or two people (and that’s it). If you want something to happen you have to take the initiative yourself at first. Then, make sure you have the strong community to help in the future (see previous point). People usually need to see value first.

Now, the inverse of this is also true: people love to participate a lot in the beginning. Say you open up a forum: people will chat about anything and everything they think of on day one. By day ten they have less to talk about, less to reply to. The challenge here, depending on your group, is maintaining participation and having people come back (quality and quantity help).

There are key participants, focus on them

No matter where you go, one will notice the “key” players. Especially in a discussion environment like a forum. Within five minutes of surfing FlyerTalk it was clear who knew what they were talking about and was respected by the group. When I started yopos there were a few guys who were very eager and I didn’t have them time to focus on them and empower them to help with the community. Lesson learned.

CommunityNext had a ton of people show up and a lot of it was due to key figures. Get them involved, get them in your group and make sure people know about them. One of my favorite stories was watching Hiten Shah try to fix the wireless network at Stanford. People noticed him working on it and one or two people stopped and offered to help.

What about you? Do you agree or disagree? Have you learned anything worth sharing?

PS: I’ve been working on updating and consistent-ifying my look. Click through to devin reams and let me know what you think. Oh, and be sure to tell your friends about my services.

Dreams’ Daily Dosage

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Here again are some of the cool things I’ve found, done, or learned this past week:

Monday
For you iPhone users, MobileScrobbler will scrobble (send data to last.fm) straight from your jailbroken iPhone. A bunch of other features include: lyrics, playlists and recommended tracks.

Tuesday
I’m a huge proponent of telecommuting. I hate spending a half-hour getting ready in the morning, shining my shoes, packing a lunch and then driving / riding the train maybe an hour each morning. That’s 2 – 3 hours each day I could just as easily work from home! Sun did a study on how much a day or two each week could save in energy.

Wednesday
I’ve started making fruit smoothies in the morning which is probably the best thing to happen to my routine (I wrote about how important morning routines are). It’s as easy as buying some bananas, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries–then mixing it (in The Magic Bullet of course). Heck, make a pitcher’s worth for the whole week. Thank me later.

Thursday
My Man in India (my virtual assistant from GetFriday) has done some fun tasks for me lately. For a few weeks I had him go into Facebook on Friday, see who had a birthday in the past week, and then send them a message. I love to send people these messages — just to say hi — but I figured it was a simple enough task to outsource. It went well, I had a few conversations with long lost friends. But! Noah Kagan was wished a happy birthday… a few months early.

Friday
Watch out for Linkedin address book imports. I accidentally (or was it meant to be?) invited my entire contact list to connect. But, again, I re-connected with some long lost friends (including an ex- from two years ago). I should get an award for most people ‘recruited’ to the darn site, though (at least 5 sign ups a day for a few days in a row).

Haha, that’s all for this week… I’m off to Colombia by the time you read this. See you if / when I get back!