Can Twitter Be Taken Seriously If I Never Visit Twitter.com?
Let me first state that, as a publisher and a user, I love Twitter. I love Twitter's portability - whether it exists between Twitter.com, SMS, or Gtalk. But that's precisely what worries me about Twitter.
There is much talk about whether Twitter should be taken seriously. And while I love using Twitter, my worry is that I have never (other than registration) visited Twitter.com.
Why? There simply is no need for me to visit Twitter.com because it is so well integrated into my Blackberry and my Gtalk client. When reading, I enjoy Twitter in a passive matter. And when posting, I still do it remotely via Gtalk. But ultimately, I want a compelling reason to visit Twitter (and I'm willing to do so) - but I haven't yet found one. And if Twitter is going to monetize me as a user - it's important.
Important because the opportunity to monetize me as a user is greater - but more important because if ads were introduced into my Gtalk client or my Flash widget, I would consider it intrusive and likely leave.
Other relevant reading: Twitter's downtime covered, Twitter Forces my Hand and Another Outage
Three Companies Advertising A LOT Right Now: Flock, Disaboom and Microsoft Live
I always keep an eye on who's advertising where. It says a lot about the state of the company and/or it's growth stage. It also says a lot about the network publishing those ads - I regularly hover over ads to see what networks are serving what ads on which domains.
With that, three companies that are, based on my scientific web viewing, advertising very actively:
1. Flock - they actually have a great banner unit. Appearing on tech-related or social sites. 2. Disaboom - a network for the "millions touched by disabilities." They are advertising on any social, news or health properties. 3. Microsoft Live- perhaps the most interesting ads. MS is promoting Live as a dating destination that extends from the net to the mobile phone.
beRecruited Colleges Revamped
This has been an important last few weeks for beRecruited - we hit our 2,000,000th recruiting connection, launched a couple new features and have some exciting things coming in the near future. One exciting site update is our Colleges section - a cornerstone of our platform considering the depth and uniqueness of content we collect about each school, team, and student-body.
As an example, the Duke University profile features university data, information written by our coaches, related schools, visual mapping, relevant links to the team websites, school newspaper, etc.
Traffic is also growing nicely - and we are excited to be exceeding levels from our 'Q4 / Holiday' season (Back-to-School season):
Google Universal Search vs. Ask, Yahoo, and Live
Very thorough, thoughtful article on Google's Universal Search over at SearchEngineLand - but it leaves me asking how anything can be considered universal when the formats change with nearly every query. To give Google credit, the types of pages they include in their search results (core, video, product, news, etc) depends on the type of query. Search for "Yahoo" and you'll get a mix of news clippings, stock ticker, core results, etc. The formatting of the results pages and the blending types change depending on query and Google's familiarity with it's context... the result is anything but a universal experience.
I personally find the always-changing formats somewhat confusing - for instance, for current-event queries, blogs and news are often so jumbled that they are hard to decipher in an efficient manner.
Google Ron Paul and you get a mix of relevant webpages, news, YouTube videos, blogs, etc. Some have icons, others don't. Frankly it's quite confusing and far from the straight-forward experience that Google is known for. For other query types (local, visual, and so on) - this sort of predictive sorting is quite useful.
Use Ron Paul, because current events are difficult to render appropriately, and compare results across the four major engines:
1. Ask: they have a true universal approach: core results in the middle and blending on the right column. Easy to predict where content types are. 2. Google: discussed above. 3. Live: mix of core links, news, icons and related searches. Very clean. 4. Yahoo: two youtube vidoes (with icons), core links and 2 news clippings (which appear more like ads).
Of course, the most important factor is search relevance and the engine's ability to deliver important, timely links for the query. And for that - Google hasn't been beaten.
Ron Paul Dominating the Web According to Compete.com
Last week I posted about using Quantcast to predict the 2008 election - and suggested that Obama and Romney were favorites based on a combination of aggregate numbers and acceleration of traffic. That post resulted in a roasting by Ron Paul fans (on Digg, on Ron Paul fansites, etc), leading me to check Compete.com for comparable charts. According to Compete, Ron Paul has multiples more traffic AND accelerating at a significantly greater rate.
Blue = Ron Paul Red= Mitt Romney Green = John McCain
Using Wikis & Google Docs to Increase Team Productivity
sfEntrepreneurs kicked off Sunday evening and one of the first questions we faced was how the 20+ of us would be able to efficiently communicate in a form other than email. This was a question we continually face with beRecruited (people in San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston) and faced at eBay.
We decided to use WikiDot.com for a couple reasons, and I've been generally happy about the results thus far:
1) Google Docs work well for specific documents - but they don't scale over time well... more importantly the documents are treated distinctly and ultimately get as cluttered as your computer desktop
2) Wikis are ideal for concepts that intend to grow (new pages are easy to create and are woven together intuitively)
3) Wiki technology is less intuitive than Google Docs - but the core functionality takes only a couple minutes to learn
4) Wikis are easier for group contributions (from small edits to major additions) and for group watching
5) Wikidot (like Google) enables private domains and customizable layers of control, invitations, etc - critical for internal discussions
Hiring Bloggers - Where to Look (Oh yeah, We're Hiring a SportsWrap Editor!)
Over the course of beRecruited's growth, we've relied heavily on organic growth and grass-roots marketing. Similarly, we've used Elance, Craigslist, and Kijiji to outsource smaller projects... and, while each is time consuming, it's been effective for us on a project-by-project basis. Now we are hiring a full time beRecruited SportsWrap editor and a few bloggers and, while promoting the open role, I was quite disappointed to find that Valleywag's job board has closed! We had advertised on Valleywag previously and found it *far* more successful than any other medium. Not only were the leads plentiful... they were qualified! There are few locations to reach potential bloggers who are truly web savvy, get SEO, love sports, etc - but Valleywag worked.
Seriously.
LinkedIn works decently. Kijiji and Craigslist generate leads - but are time intensive (and Craigslist is expensive). Elance is better for projects and developments (rather than ongoing employment). TechCrunch, GigaOM, etc seem better for senior-level jobs than for recruiting writers.
Of course if you have any contacts or ideas - please pass my way!
AT&T Raising SMS Rates to $0.20... When Will We Move to Email?
Starting March 30th, AT&T is raising SMS and MMS rates by $0.05 to $0.20 and $0.30 respectively... which is absurdly expensive considering that the actual cost of an SMS message to the carrier is close to nothing. Slashdot and DSLreports.com each did analysis stating that the effective marginal cost of a text message is zero.
So while our phone bills are growing, I ask:
Why is sms still the instant-communication of choice?
I find email, Gtalk and Twitter to be equally effective. Anyone who uses a Blackberry or iPhone (or email capable phone) has access to information instantly and email provides more flexibility. The only benefit of text messages is that you can set dedicated alerts to them (vibration, sounds, etc). Is that worth it?
Gtalk is fully integrated into my Blackberry (or your iPhone) and allows real-time communication, full alert customization... and oh yeah - it's treated as data (rather than $0.20 a message).
