Startup Drinks This Thursday

The second installment of Startup Drinks Omaha continues at Nomad Lounge (1023 Jones St) starting at 6:30 p.m. with WikiCity as the featured company.   This company has certainly had some interesting things happening lately.  Show up to talk about startup culture, network, and support one another on their various projects and ventures.

If you’re not familiar with Startup Drinks, it is a series of events for people involved in startup culture to gather and talk about what they do, what they’re working on, and how they can help one another. Omaha’s chapter will also sport a “featured company” every month, which means that you’ll get to learn about an Omaha-area startup that you may not be familiar with, or you’ll hear what one of your favorites is working on right now.

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Click Here to read Issue 4 of HiVelocityMedia!

Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles

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Sensibilium.com; How to: Multiple Syndication Formula

The idea is to get all my bookmarks and blog post, plus any html I desire, to magically appear on twitter and facebook, and to publish a feed of this result.

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Not even the threat of a gusting hurricane, 280 flooding or trees flying could keep eager startups from the Sheppard Mullin Venture Capital Outlook this morning as valley rockstars Tim Draper of Draper Fisher & Jurvetson, David Hornik of August Capital, Mitch Lasky of Benchmark Capital, Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners, and my client Riaz Karamali of Sheppard Mullin gathered to talk about the state of funding and where money is going in digital media.

As the producer of the event, I was thrilled with the level of exchange – fresh, fun, enlightening.  Hanging out in the green room, the speakers enjoyed catching up with each other, laughing while comparing notes on foursquare, buying virality on StumbleUpon, Hulu’s opt-in ads, Zynga’s looming IPO, and the future of VG.  When I asked if we could possibly be in a consumer spending bubble on VG, I got major pushback.  Listen grasshopper.  Tim Draper  - you buy songs online, that’s VG.  Tim Chang – you buy Kindle books, that’s VG.  Mitch Lasky holding up a dollar bill, smiling – even this is VG.  Tim Chang nodding assuringly, in time game mechanics will overlay all we do, interwoven into the fabric of our lives, from entertainment to the social good, and will likely be what saves the music industry.  Tim Draper added, the future won’t look so different from the movie Surrogates and who wouldn’t support a VG economy if it meant we could send avatars in our place whenever we wanted.

With that, they took the stage.  Riaz asked about deal flow, exits.  Hot areas of investment:  gaming, real-time internet, search, viral marketing, and social collaboration, placing bets on platforms and repeat entrepreneurs.

Tim Draper, Founder & Managing Director, Draper Fisher & Jurvetson
Harvard MBA with Stanford BSEE.  Named #52 of the Top 100 most influential Harvard Alumni sandwiched between Matt Damon and Frank Gehry, #7 on the Forbes Midas List, #1 on AO VC Dealmaker List, and winner of the Commonwealth Club’s Distinguished Citizen Award for achievements in green and sustainable energy.  DFJ $6B under management, portfolio companies ranging from Meebo to Glam/Tinker.  Prices have clearly come down, less money out for same number of deals across the stages.  There are these cycles where the private equity business has a big run, and then they crash and then we have a recession, and the the venture capital business grows and it crashes, no recession, then private equity grows, every business grows and crashes, there are about 8 years between each 16 year cycle and in this case we’ve had the crash and it looks like its a very good time for venture capital, it looks like its the beginning of a big wave, we’ve had an 8 year drought led by SOX regulation, used to be entrepreneurs word hard 5-7 years to $20mm rev/$3mm profit we’ll take you public and everything will be great, you’ll finally get some liquidity, by a house, your life will be great, but now SOX will cost you $3.5mm and you will no longer be a profitable company if you go public now, put head back down another 4-5y, you have to be doing $100mm rev/$10mm profit so the $3mm doesn’t affect you quite so much, and then its not worth it for Goldman Sachs to take you public until you’re worth $2B so its probably now a 15-20y program for you, was that worth it (Mitch – so he says I’m selling to Google). SOX kills incentives to start a company if it now takes 15y to go public and that’s if I just nail it, that’s not right.  So not waiting around for things to change, in response, Draper is launching Xchange in January, a private exchange for institutional investors to trade shares of start up companies, the exchange will provide some liquidity as a stepping stone to what is now a very long term IPO.  (Riaz – at IPO the average company is now 8.5y – 9y, it used to be much less than that, by contrast average M&A target has been 4.5y, so to exit at an earlier point they go M&A).  Looking at new types of search, don’t find it all on Google, betting on more collaborative search experiences, ShareThis, Wowd, CastTV, anything that has a new business model, easy to spread quickly, viral marketing.  Glam became the first ad network by selling ads on all the bloggers sites, not it’s big.  Meebo similar, experience media, IM your friends, watch it together, from any site, ads served on it.  It’s not right to criticize Twitter’s $1B valuation on no revenue, people said the same thing when Microsoft bought Hotmail.  Hotmail was a a whole new platform for email, a marketing machine, they paid a lot but it was a coup.  FB and Twitter created new platforms, marketing forces have real serious value, the money follows.  Referral, advertising, wherever, there’s going to be a lot of money to be made, when you have a platform, you can do a lot with it.  We are looking for ecosystems.  Wigix social network around buying and selling goods on an exchange, time for eBay to get knocked off, they’ve been lazy, home page hasn’t changed since it started.  DFJ has a global network to fund any stage anywhere, we see more.  There’s a lot of great content out there, more than ever before, cheaper and easier to make, use to be created by monopolists, now we can choose, create our own, fight back, blog, not a few guys creating content for everyone, it’s everyone creating content for everyone and the best will rise to the top.  Check out Valley Girl, kid interviews Ron Conway, Eric Schmidt, Craig Newmark.. all pretty in pink but has nichy audience, there a market for that. (Lasky to Draper – that’s the opium dream of the valley, Mad Men is not UGC quality, costs lots of money require some level of aggregation to guarantee audience, Hornik – for a long period of time three networks owned the audience, artificially constraining the market produces a lot of crappy shows too, and then the dialed opened up, capacity to see shows when you wanted to broadened the market, disaggregation brought AMC into existence and made Mad Men possible.)  [Editors note:  For great direct-to-fan content with production value that rivals Curb and The Office, follow Easy to Assemble, the story here]  Microtransactions can be so cheap online that you can make money at it.  We will start to see more interesting things in the digital world, more avatars, more VG, that will draw us in.  As well as macrotransactions where enthusiasts will pay for big money to access to the content. [In the audience todocast.tv which monetizes events via macrotransactions]  VC industry has changed – going global and networked, a number going after cleantech which is capital intensive, struturally being massaged by regulators, SEC – insane – what are they going to look at – its about private money going into companies taking risk.  We’ve had 8 cold years and now the sun is coming out.  (Keep up with Tim’s blog here)

David Hornik, General Partner, August Capital
Harvard JD with Stanford AB Computer Music, Cambridge M Phil Criminology.  VC, blogger, producer of The Lobby, an autumn invite-only unconference on the Big Island where industry thought leaders bond amidst word finds, tradewinds and treasure hunts in search of the future of media.  $1.3B under management with portfolio companies ranging from StumbleUpon to Six Apart.  Bargain shopping 2-for-1 startups this week only.  I guess I need to shop where you guys shop because my prices are not coming down, its business as usual, when it gets tougher, still have consistent number of entrepreneurs feel worthy of funding, but don’t have to sift through as much dreck, the intereresting companies still finding multiple offers, still lots of pressure, so prices aren’t really coming down, when you’re an early stage investor how far down can it really go, when its super early interesting young the price is not $40mm, still looking for interesting companies that are going to build big businesses.  Its definitely harder to get follow on rounds, etc. but good companies are finding capital to build, been surprisingly busy, funded 5 new companies in the last 12 months, hugely unreasonably pace, don’t anticipate it will continue, the firm has 9-10 deals in the last 12m for 6 people that’s a pretty hefty pace but its only driven by meeting great people, meeting great entrepreneurs.  Invested in social gaming space:  Aardvark with Google alumni, Ojai with FB, Everquest alumni, StumbleUpon with ebay Alumni, #1 factor was the team, Blue Rover Labs with MySpace alumni, in that case it was only about the team because they had nothing else, lost $5mm on them, bill.com with PayCycle alumni – about great entrepreneurs doing it again.  If we see something that is a platform business that is big and interesting, we fund it.  If we haven’t funded it we either think it isn’t that interesting, or we tried.  Platforms have the capacity to be a big win.  Splunk, search engine for datacenter.  Build apps on top, ecosystem that grows.  FB, Twitter, Skype – broadly applicable infrastructure – lots of people attached to it, building on top of it, but value goes to the underlying platform.  Fund lots of smart 22y, no real traction, private beta, controlled who they let in, but when you talk with them, they have thought in smart, interesting ways about problem that needs to be solved, most can do one good hour of comedy, but worked a lifetime on that one hour, don’t have the next hour, but if hour two is exciting, by hour 3 you’re done, you had me at hour 2, then happy to make a bet.  Teach a class at Stanford B School on IP & The Impact on Business – patents do not create value on their own, but creates a defensible space, being part of the ecosystem and plugging into it, when someone comes knocking and says I have these patents that control your world, you can then say I have these patents that control your world, and then there is Intellectual Ventures, contribute your patents, join the goon squad or we’ll kick your a–

Mitch Lasky, General Partner, Benchmark Capital
UVA JD & Harvard BA History/Literature.  JAMDAT founder, former EA EVP Mobile/Online.  Benchmark $2.5B under management with portfolio companies ranging from Vivox to Riot Games.  Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.  Aggressively trying to invest at a higher pace in the current environment, entrepreneurs turtling up, because of the valuations and perceived difficulty of fundraising, would invest in more if we could.  Looking for ventures with a better path to a Series B, C, can’t rely as much on follow-on finance market being as robust as it has been in the past.  # deals 2009 less but not so material that its worthy of comment, would have invested at a similar pace had we seen the deals.  Most recent, relevant deal was Riot, digital goods/electronic distribution model robust for core gamers who have the highest willingness to pay, spend $1000y on games, going after the packaged goods industry, contrary bet to casual gaming.  Is email dead?  For kids in the relevant demo, email is to them what the post office is to us, they’re watching real-time stream constantly refreshed, participating in it, consuming it.  We we were in the first round of Twitter, my partner was #5 at FB.  Real-time stream won’t replace email but as a principle means of e-communication, it’s already happened. FB only way for magic to happen is if someone friends you back.  Twitter asymmetrical following allows it to scale as a monetization engine.  When Zynga goes public it will prove you can build an interesting business on a platform, in advance of FB themselves going public, look at Amazon cloud, amazing platforms monetized with microtransactions, allow others to build a business on it.  Businesses come in rocketed to 500,000 in 3 days through virality but not good businesses vs. those that take time to build defensibility, scale.  I’m the content guy, do these deals, pay for content.  Value comes from aggregation and exclusivity, many deals killing this aggregation, destroying institutions that create this content, ability to amass audience that can support expensive productions, great content is expensive to make, Comcast pays ABC $1By in carry fees that supports programming.  Some will agree great new content will come from primordial soup but I doubt it.  (Draper to Lasky – you’re right on Twitter but completely wrong on content!)  VG is the companion business model of the unbundling of media, when you consume songs one at a time instead of bundled in an album, or games one at a time instead of bundled in a $60 package, you need a business model like VG that’s suited to that.

Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
Stanford MBA with U Michigan BSEE/MSEE.  NVP $2.5B under management with portfolio companies ranging from ngmoco to myYearbook.  Shifted toward a multi-stage model with an eye towards China, #deals 2009 more than previous years because valuations are down, pace at one-a-month, but bigger checks going out because later stage, looking for repeat entrepreneurs on the Series A side, seen a lot of superangels and VCs pull out of early stage.  Bet on ngmoco because as the industry shifts from downloads to gaming as a service, apps as a service, where smartphone games start to amass Zynga-like social game dynamics with sizable daus, we’ll need a platform with a backend that Apple’s not going to build.  Regarding Twitter’s valuation, when audience engagement becomes so valuable you can’t afford to lose it, there will be those willing to pay big money for it.  Never been a better time to be an entrepreneur to quickly launch a lifestyle business, monetizes quickly through VG on FB.  Looking for big platform play, right team will figure it out, scope of their ambition.  Technology unbundled disaggregated the market into a million niches, no one is making money on iPhone, not even EA, doubt there will ever be a mainstream band like U2 again, rather a thousand Arctic Monkeys, apply investment filter to it, technology changes formats, formats change distribution, distribution drives business models, change in business models creates startup giants.  Distribution dictates how much aof a ceiling you can spend on your content.  So is VG a fad, one look at Tencent’s $1.2B a year, market cap bigger than Google and EA combined, all they do is VG, show scale of that, and you know its not a fad, it’s a format to make money, model that works well in a frictionless environment, get users to try something with no registration, no credit cards, then can upsell later.

I’d rather see Jim Hendry go.  I like to see the Cubs’ winning seasons as “in spite of Jim Hendry” and not attributable to Jim Hendry.  Ditto to Larry Rothschild.  Larry, you’ve ruined the arm of nearly every pitcher that has come through the Friendly Confines.  Pack your bags.  It’s time to go.

There are some players I’d like to see go, too.  Ahem — Alfonso Soriano.  For awhile, it appeared as though Milton Bradley’s suspension had inspired the remaining players.  That inspiration seems to have waned as September ended and October began.  Otherwise, I might have suggested keeping ol’ Milt on permanent suspension.  (Face it, that would really stick in his craw.  It’s quite difficult to hit homeruns for any team when you’re on suspension.  If you’re teammates hate you, their going to get a big laugh out of your frustrated professional baseball dreams.  SORRY!)  For the record Milton, Chicago Cubs fans dislike because you have had a terrible season.  Start performing?  We’ll talk.

Sadly, I don’t want to see Lou Piniella leave.  Lou does a lot of good for the team and has added some much needed color to the Cubs’ managerial staff.  (Though I still would like to see Lou take a page from the “Patches O’Toole” / Dodgeball handbook and start throwing stuff and the players when they play poorly.  ”If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”  Maybe then the Cubs’ line up would have a little more incentive to toe the line.)

Lou and Ryne should consider working together.  Maybe that would bring the elusive World Series berth and win to Wrigley Field.

It’s no stretch Ryne Sandberg wants to be Cubs’ next manager — chicagotribune.com

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Resize You Webpages According To Screen Resolution

Web Page resizing to fit the size of whatever screen/monitor viewed in has long been the thing of fantasy to all serious web page designers. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just poke in a little bit of computer code at the beginning of our web page html and know that whoever was looking over our website would not have to be subjected to screen scrolling. Well we are not quite there yet, but i don’t think it will be very long before that is a problem of the past. We already have webpage zooming in the latest versions of some of our web browsers.

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Which do you prefer as a tool to let your visitors share your content with others: AddThis or ShareThis? What were the criteria you used to come to your decision on which one to use? Here are a few things you should consider when deciding which content-sharing app to use:

1. Ease of integration — Is it easy enough for you to embed the widget code into your web site or blog so you can offer sharing functionality to your readers?
2. Ease of use/performance – Is it easy and fast for your readers to share your content with others via multiple options such as email, their favorite social networks and microblogs?
3. Analytics — Does it offer you robust insight into the sharing activity on your site or blog?

Having been a longtime user, I can tell you that my initial response to the above questions about the ShareThis service would be “yes” on No. 1 and No. 2, and “sort of” on No. 3. But then I learned about the changes to the AddThis service, and I think that it may win me over as a customer. Here’s why.

At the time I started using ShareThis, AddThis was an underfunded tech startup that looked more ad hoc than professional. I was swayed by ShareThis’ polish when it entered the content sharing space. Today, AddThis gets the added professional muscle of Clearspring, a tools and platform sharing company; this acquisition bodes well for the AddThis application.

AddThis is a community-driven platform with the goal of letting people “share anything to anyone anywhere.” It no longer limits visitors to sharing content only to a small hand-picked list of sites. It now wants to be a “switchboard for the web,” which means that the providers and networks that show up when your visitors click on the AddThis button are dynamic and flexible.

The new AddThis menu is a “smart menu.” If you are visiting sites using AddThis, you’ll get tagged with cookies that the AddThis application can read at the next AddThis-powered site you visit so it gets to know you and makes a note of your network preferences. So if you tend to share content mostly on Evernote and Posterous, instead of Facebook and Twitter, AddThis will now customize the menu you see to see your most frequently used networks instead of a pre-selected hierarchy of services.

Another smart aspect to the newly enhanced AddThis service is the ability for any social network to get added to a vast and growing list of potential places where visitors can distribute content to, which makes AddThis more open. Users can also recommend additional services; AddThis will then contact those services to get listed in the directory.

AddThis believes these enhancements to the application are good for the user and good for the publisher. As a content publisher, I see its point. As a user, I like the idea of a smarter menu so I don’t have to sift through additional screens to find my favorite sharing forums. And smaller service providers can also benefit by not being automatically relegated to the “last screen” of a sharing menu.

Another addition to the new and improved AddThis is translation of the tool into 50 languages.

Some other benefits of using AddThis over ShareThis include pure market share. The company says that according to Comscore, AddThis has about three times the reach of ShareThis in terms of sheer unique users.

On the analytics front, the company says it has the competitive horsepower to crush the competition over time. I’ve just signed up for an AddThis account to start testing it out; analytics are a big deal to my company, so we’ll see how that measures up over time.

So which one do you use? AddThis or ShareThis? And why?

Lo más interesante que puede ofrecer un blog es la posibilidad de interactuar con sus lectores por eso aquí les presento 4 formas de ayudar a que tus lectores interactúen en tu blog.

Enlaces sociales: enlaces para que tus visitantes puedan compartir y recomendar tu blog a sus amigos y contactos. Para esto, existe ShareThis que te deja compartirlo de muchas formas como: por correo, twitter, facebook, etc.

Encuestas: la ventaja de las encuestas es que ayudan a empezar discusiones y además los resultados que obtienes pueden ayudarte a conseguir algunos enlaces hacia tu blog. Para esto en wordpress esta WP-Polls y hay servicios como PollDaddy que te dejan crear y compartir tus propias encuestas en tu sitio.

Votación: una buena forma de obtener retroalimentación de tus lectores es permitiendoles votar en tus artículos, pues, de esta forma puedes conocer el tipo de artículos que más le interesan a tus lectores y te ayudan a reconocer tus escritos de mayor calidad. En wordpress hay un muy buen plugin para esto, que es GD Star Rating.

Comentarios sociales: la realidad es que actualmente muchas de las conversaciones relevantes a tus artículos ocurren fuera de tu blog, para esto, con Disqus puedes traer las reacciones de twitter en tus comentarios, entre otras posibilidades. Otra forma interesante de añadir interactividad a tus comentarios es con IntenseDebate Comments.

Fuente: http://www.refugeenet.org/el-destino/2009/09/05/4-formas-rapidas-de-volver-tu-blog-mas-social/

Over the last few months I have had the pleasure of working on the Authority Domains blog, which is hosted by us. We use WordPress.org. I have had a number of messages asking me which plugins to use. With there be literally hundreds to choose from, many that have the same functionality, it can be hard to choose. The following list are the ones we have had luck with. Frankly, it was all trial and error. Some plugins work better with certain templates. So remember, these plugins work great with our template, but may not work as splendid with yours.

NOTE: Be sure to update to the latest version of WordPress before installing any of these plugins!

-Adsense-Deluxe
Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress Posts. For complete usage and configuration click on AdsenseDeluxe under the “Options” menu. By Acme Technologies.

-Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” It simply works. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

-All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Options configuration panel As far as I am concerned, this is a must have!
By Michael Torbert.

-FeedBurner FeedSmith
By FeedBurner.

-Google Analytics
Adds Google analytics to your blog, with all sorts of advanced tracking toys enabled. By Denis de Bernardy. You will need to have a Google email addy to use this. Yep- it is free.

-Gregarious
A solid social bookmarking plugin. We aren;t currently using it, but it might work for your needs. Try it out! By Ankur Kothari.

-Popular Posts
Displays a highly configurable list of the most popular posts. It helps you keep the spotlight on the most popular posts from your readers. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed. By Rob Marsh, SJ.

-ShareThis
The ShareThis WordPress plugin provides a simple way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more. To check out the ShareThis plugin for WordPress, visit: http://sharethis.com/wordpress

-StumbleUpon It!
Easy plugin that allows your visitors to submit your blog posts to StumbleUpon.com. By Andrew dela Serna.

-Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. This makes your blog sticky!  Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.

-TweetMeme
The TweetMeme button easily allows your blog to be retweeted (RT). The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

-WordPress.com Stats
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.

-WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. You will be happy you add this! By Austin Matzko.

WP-ContactForm
Need a contact form? WP Contact Form is a “drop in” form for your readers to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post alike.

“How to” Install Plugins

1. Download plugin and save to your computer.
2. Open the zipped folder.
3. Click “extract all files”
4. Upload files or folder to “wp-content/plugins” on your “remote server” via FTP on FileZilla.
5. In WordPress Dashboard, click on “Plugins”
6. Click on “Activate” to enable each plugin.
7. Follow any specific instructions on how to use each plugin (this is important).

I tried to give credit to the original creators of these plugins, so to give credit where credit is due- I want to hear your favorite plugins. Have at it in the comments section. I hope this blog helped provide a beacon of direction in a world overrun with a great many useless WordPress plugins.

Share This Post

dixietrend.com

I was looking at my iGoogle Home Page yesterday and realized that I have a least 10 different ways to share updates and content to the sites I frequent and can do so without every having to leave that page with the exception of when I am visiting a specific website. Even then, my browser toolbars remain stationary. For my purposes, I am pretty much strictly on three social networking sites: Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn. However, at least one of the tools that I am going to discuss on this post will allow me to post to a large variety of other sites if I so desired. Today, we’ll talk about 7 and each is a bookmarklet, or button, on my browser toolbar. For the record, I am still using FireFox 3.1 as 3.5 was causing stability issues with some gadgets and flat out was not compatible with others. A colleague of mine found that he had to delete toolbars altogether to get by similar issues with FireFox 3.5. Having done that, he tells me that it runs flawlessly. Not ready to go that route … yet (smile). Moving from left to right on my FireFox toolbar we have:

Share on LinkedIn: The link to load this bookmarklet can be found at the bottom of your LinkedIn home page. FYI, at the time that I first upgraded to FireFox 3.5, this tool was not compatible and was, therefore, disabled. At any rate, should you see an article that you wish to share on LinkedIn, from the article page itself, click on the bookmarklet and away you go. Please note that sharing articles on LinkedIn is not the same as changing your update. When sharing an article you are actually either posting it to a group page or sending a notice out to your first degree contacts that they may wish to see the article. However, it’s perfect for this task and does allow you to also provide your comments regarding the post.

Hootlet: This button is provided by HootSuite. It is designed to be primarily a Twitter tool. When I say “primarily”, HootSuite will integrate with Ping.fm which gives you the ability to post to multiple sites so you could also use it for that. For Twitter purposes, however, once again from the website page you wish to share, click on the Hootlet button and a Tweet is prepared for you complete with a HootSuite shortened URL (ow.ly format) and the article title. You can also add your comments within the 140 character limit. What is very cool about this tool is that I can choose to send the Tweet now or schedule it to go out later by date and time in 5 minute increments.

Share on Posterous: I’m going to be doing a fairly sizeable post on Posterous maybe later this week but this button is great for posting content directly to your Posterous blog which can then, incidentally, be auto posted (forwarded) to a variety of sites.

Share Video: This is actually a video capture tool from VodPod. Why VodPod? Pretty simple for me. It is the only video widget available for integration on sidebars with WordPress.com blogs. Like this one (smile). However, while looking at this, I see that I also have another tool provided by Jing that is a little more flexible. As these are complicated topics, I have links to posts previously written on these apps that you will find at the bottom of this page.

Share on FaceBook: Much like the LinkedIn bookmarklet, this button (available from FaceBook) allows me to share content on that site. Works the same as the rest. From the website, click on the button, and a content post is prepared. You can select from available identified images found on the page being shared (choose one or none) and add your comments. Bada bing, bada boom, click the button on the interface and this has been posted to your FaceBook and in a format that is legible vs. just your comments and a URL link.

Shorten with j.mp: This is a brand new Twitter tool and is actually a new URL shortening method created by bit.ly called j.mp. The advantage over other URL shorteners, including bit.ly, is that it does it with two less characters. Believe me, that can be a bunch when you are limited to 140 characters total. Works almost identically to the Hootlet button but you do not have the ability to delay send. Bit.ly, and I am not going to ass/u/me j.mp, is fast becoming the preferred shortener. It is used with a variety of tools and does provide for click analytics. For what it worth, HootSuite does the same thing with their ow.ly format but, to my knowledge, nobody but HootSuite uses that.

ShareThis: This tool has become a backup plan for me when nothing else seems to work. And, there are times like that (smile). ShareThis will allow me to share content on any of my 3 major sites and on a bunch of others. It works virtually identical to both the LinkedIn and FaceBook bookmarklets. In fact, as I was using it for FaceBook sharing, FaceBook came to me and said “Hey, I can give you a button to do this!” (smile). Using it for Twitter is annoying as it wants me to enter my username and password each time. Not sure if this is something I can correct or not in a setting but, if it is, it is not obvious and I don’t have the time or the need to mess with it right now.

That’s all for now. Gotta’ run, have fun and thanks for visiting!

Craig

P.S. I see that WordPress.com has upgraded it’s spell check capabilities. It now knows that “blog” and “WordPress” are actual words. It’s a start (smile).

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Social T-Rex:  Trait #5 – Don’t Become Extinct

This is the last post of my in-depth ”5 Traits of a Social T-Rex”.  Is there any irony in the fact that the end of a series is about not becoming extinct?  How do you, as the bold social networker stay ahead of the curve, implement the latest trends and still have time to spend with family and friends?

I recently evaluated all the social media/avenues that I am currently utilizing…take a guess….32.  The reason I was evaluating all my networks was to see what could consolidate or even realistically maintain with some sense of sanity.  Here are a few suggestions.

1.  Establish a clear goal for your social network:  What do you hope to accomplish?  Who are you trying to reach?  Then follow your plan and execute.

2.  Be involved consistently:  Plug in to at least 1 large social network, 1 forum and 1 blog and involve yourself in discussions, postings etc.  Do this on a regular basis, dare I say have a plan of attack for each network, forum and blog!

3.  Maximize your searchability via  Google, Bing and Yahoo search hits via RSS feeds.  Google yourself every so often and see what pops about you.  RSS feeds will provide the “web injection” to that your blog/website (and you) need for expsosure.  A few helpful links about RSS feeds include;             

(a) websites http://www.ehow.com/how_5322054_add-rss-feed-website-blog.html

(b) blogs http://www.ehow.com/how_4787764_rss-feed-symbol-wordpress-blog.html

(c) social networks http://www.ehow.com/how_5295002_add-feeds-social-network-pages.html

4.  Turn tools into time savers and self promotion:  Let’s face it, can I really be involved on 32 variations of social media and still hold a full-time job, spend time with my family and sleep?  No…. Tools that save me time and self promote include;

(a)  Update your twitter account via RSS feed;  www.twitterfeed.com

(b)  Get the latest icons and widgets for email signatures, websites and blogs;  www.widgetbox.com

(c)  Create a quick way for people to share my pages;  www.addthis.com | www.sharethis.com

Don’t go the way of the prehistoric T-Rex, rather become a Social T-Rex!  Don’t become extinct, stay ahead of the curve by learning and embracing the new and emerging social networking trends and tools!

Twitter’s advanced search uses emoticons : ) and : ( to infer a tweet’s attitude. Last week, Tweet Satisfaction STOPPED using emoticons to infer “happy” and “mad” tweets. Why?

In the end, it improved the signal-to-noise ratio of happy and mad tweets about brands. But, it wasn’t an easy decision.

Why are : ) and : ( poor indicators of emotion or sentiment?

The emotional response to brands (positve or negative) is difficult to infer from 140 character messages. When Tweet Satisfaction started, the library of “happy” and “mad” match terms was pretty small. We decided to include emoticons or attitude to increase the volume of happy and mad tweets.

Soon emoticons like : ), : D, : ( began to dominate the Twitter analytics for popular brands. During the iPhone 3GS launch, we had dozens of messages like “UPS confirmed delivery of my iPhone. I can’t wait to get home to try it! : )” and “UPS confirmed delivery of my new iPhone. I wish I was home so I can try it out! : (“

Tweet Satisfaction’s natural language processing engine would interpret both messages as happy tweets if we ignored the : ) and : ( symbols. But with these symbols, how would a reasonable person interpret the sentiment? The first message is  happy. But, the second message is debatable.

In other cases, the : ) was used in messages where someone  had a bad experience with a product, brand or particular store. “After arguing with the sales clerk at XYZ, I gave up and decided to dispute the charges. We’ll see who has the last laugh!  : )”

Finally, the attitude symbols were often used in messages that had no actionable information about why the person was happy or mad.

What does this mean for you?

Tweet Satisfaction’s Twitter Analytics will now return fewer “happy” and “mad” tweets about a particular brand. It will be easier to find actionable insights to improve product, customer and brand experiences. This is especially true for brands that get lots of buzz on Twitter.

If people rarely tweet about your favorite brands, this change will make it harder for the brand to rise on Tweet Satisfactions Popular Picks list. If you manage one of those brands consider adding viral features the product or website. ShareThis has a nice widget that might help.

allpositiveoptions.com

I’ll admit it. I’m more than a little frustrated about now. I have spent a considerable amount of time looking for the perfect application, widget, gadget, or whatever else you might want to call it that will allow me to easily share what I want, and how I want to do it, on the specific social media sites of my choosing. I still can’t seem to find it and I am hoping somebody will comment on this post with the solution I seek. Primarily through trial and error, here’s my established criteria:

1. I want to be able to selectively share on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, or simultaneously on up to all three. One pass and one click. Check the boxes you want to share on.
2. I want to be able to share content to include links, photos, videos, whatever, and all with one click from the web page that I may be reading.
3. I will want this app to fill in the content name, provide a shortened link if applicable, and allow me to comment on the post.
4. When I share content to FaceBook, FaceBook recognizes the link and does that “content conversion” thing to show what the post was about.
5. This application will also provide me with a way to easily send just a written update to any or all three of these services.
6. I am not interested in something that will also allow me to monitor feeds from these sites. I have other apps that already do that well and don’t need, or want, another.
7. I’m looking for a magic “button” that resides on my browser.

Here’s what I am using and why they do not meet these criteria. Please note that, for the areas listed, if these apps do in fact have these capabilities, I sure as hell can’t figure out how to do it (smile). Your corrections and advice will be highly appreciated!

1. TweetDeck or Seesmic: You need to cut and paste link info into the Tweet. Will also update to FaceBook but not to LinkedIn. Need to open the full client.
2. SocialScope: This is a BlackBerry app. It is, without question, the best Twitter app out there for the BlackBerry. IMHO. It comes close to meeting my needs as a sharing platform, however, my BlackBerry is painfully slow on web page loads and I want a desktop app. This will also not update to LinkedIn.
3. HootSuite: A great app and the Hootlet button is fab for grabbing content but, will not update to LinkedIn or FaceBook.
4. Streamy: May be the closest thing on a desktop but will not update to LinkedIn and is a full blown Twitter / FaceBook client. It also includes, however, a great reader and you can import feeds straight from your Google Reader account if desired.
5. Google Reader: They have just added a “send to” feature in Google Reader but it only works from within Reader itself and does not include LinkedIn. No way to send plain text updates.
6. Digsby: I looked at this yesterday and had high hopes. It will share to all three sites and does so nicely. It is also a full client that seems to run in the background. However, it just did not seem completely polished and my computer speed seemed to slow down substantially. Maybe just me? FYI. This was the only app I saw that actually will monitor update feeds from LinkedIn.
7. ShareThis: Works with all three sites and is a simple button on my browser. You do have to send different posts for all three sites, however. And, it does force you to send content to both FaceBook and LinkedIn. No simple text updates.
8. GizaPage: If all you are interested in is having one page where you can go and tab click to each of your actual social media sites, look at GizaPage. This site is actually designed as a place for you to send folks to learn more about you and connect to you. One link on your signature line. However, if you go to the page it will recognize you as the owner (at least from your desktop) and then you can go to any of your sites and operate them just as you would if you went to them directly.

Here seem to be the two best for what I want to do:

1. Hellotxt: This does not meet my exact specifications but it does allow you to update simultaneously to multiple sites, including LinkedIn, and include content on the updates. It’s really pretty cool. Check it out.
2. Ping.fm: Very similar to Hellotxt. Practically a twin. Also has some interesting apps including HootSuite and I had noticed previously that these two have some sort of relationship.

Ultimately, all of this comes down to specific needs and applications. Each of these tools excels in different areas. You will probably settle on selecting a few.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Recientemente, AddToAny ha publicado un gráfico acerca de las formas más populares de compartir contenidos en Internet. De acuerdo con sus datos, Facebook lidera la clasificación:

Estadísticas de AddToAny

Pero para valorar estos datos, como siempre, hay que tener en cuenta cómo se han obtenido. AddToAny (al igual que otras alternativas como ShareThis) ofrece a bloggers y webmasters una forma fácil de permitir que sus lectores compartan los contenidos que les parezcan interesantes: basta con incluir un botón como éste:

Al pasar el puntero del ratón por encima del botón, se ofrecen al usuario múltiples alternativas para compartir el contenido en cuestión:

Lo que nos dicen los datos de AddToAny es que, entre quienes hacen clic en alguna de las anteriores opciones, Facebook es la alternativa más popular. Pero, ¿qué pasa con toda la gente que no hace clic en este tipo de botones sino que simplemente copia el link para después compartirlo de otra forma? LifeHacker se hizo esta pregunta y estos son los resultados de su encuesta: entre sus lectores, el e-mail y la mensajería instanténea se siguen utilizando más que Facebook para compartir enlaces.

Lo cierto es que tanto el e-mail como la mensajería instantánea son sistemas muy poco eficientes para compartir de forma amplia: las cadenas interminables de e-mail se convierten casi en spam y el ámbito de la mensajería instanánea es muy privado. Pero tienen a su favor su relativa simplicidad y que sacan muchos años de ventaja a las redes sociales: Facebook no empezó a ser relevante en España hasta principios de 2008.

Sin embargo, las redes sociales ganan terreno: de acuerdo con el último MediaScope Europe de EIAA, en 2008 y en el grupo de edad de 25 a 34 años ya habían desbancado a la mensajería instantánea, aunque todavía estaban muy lejos del e-mail:

Fuente: EIAA Mediascope Europe 2008

A Jeremiah Owyang le gusta decir que el e-mail es la primera y mayor red social: en mi opinión, si lo es se trata de una red bastante mala. De hecho, el propio Jeremiah hablaba ya en 2007 de si los mensajes vía Facebook estaban desplazando al e-mail. No sé si será Facebook o evoluciones como Google Wave, pero creo que el futuro del e-mail tal y como lo conocemos será el mismo que el del fax.

Compartir en: Bitacoras.com · Del.icio.us · Fresqui · Friendfeed · Facebook · menéame

Hell yes.  Finally the U.S. has managed a seriously impressive soccer/football/futbol victory.  As much as I enjoy watching La Furia Roja, I gotta give it up for Team USA.

Check out the full story at ESPN.com.

PS. ESPN, why no ShareThis buttons or a similar system?  Make it easier to share your great content, por favor.

Found this on U2.com:

U2.com News: Let’s Do It For Real…

Posted using ShareThis

Another busy week in the Silicon Valley.

And that’s only the main events (that we could fit in the headline!). Yes, we’ll be attending more, like ShoreTel’s event at the Giant’s stadium on Monday, Technologizer’s Tweet up on Tuesday or a meeting with startup ShareThis on Wednesday!

If you think we missed something, send us an email, Facebook poke, twit…

• Monday through Wednesday: the Tech Policy Summit is a three-day executive gathering that will focus on the theme of “Accelerating Innovation and Economic Growth.”
• Tuesday: attending Google’s Searchology event at the Googleplex to try out the new search engine features; and in the afternoon at Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara for an update on the company’s business (and perhaps EU lawsuit!).
• Wednesday: Mark Logic’s user conference in San Francisco.
• Thursday: A conversation with Judy Estrin on Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy at the Computer History Museum.
• Friday: TiEcon,the largest conference dedicated to entrepreneurship kicks off in Santa Clara, CA.

With the Semantic Web it becomes easier to share content, data is portable, easily linkable…

Here are two services that makes it easy to allow your viewers share your content in popular sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon and Digg. They auto-generate a widget that contains buttons that link to those services and trigger them once your viewers click them:

AddThis

ShareThis

One of the key functions we are looking to develop over the coming months is a fully fledged social bookmarking affiliate marketing system to help our website be more viral. We havent seen anything on the market that does what we want but what we are looking at doing is incorporating a common social bookmarking function such as Addthis or ShareThis into an affiliate marketing system resulting in a system where Thinkers will be compensated for sharing the good word once a challenge is created by someone which they referred.

The key to success of any marketing program is giving people motivation to share their experience and what better way than to allow Thinkers to cash in on the effort people have invested over the years by networking on social media such as facebook, myspace, twitter and the like.

Feedback on this concept would be appreciated.

Keep on Thinking

CrowdThinkTank Team