January 2007 Archives
A list of domain names I own, but have yet to bring to life.
Last night I had burritos with Amit Gupta. One of the topics of conversation turned to domain names we'd purchased and never done anything with. I'm not sure if everyone does this, but both Amit and I have a tendency to buy domains for projects and then not necessarily see it through. All in all I own 29 domains at the moment. Of those about 10 are actually functioning.
Anyway, Amit suggested it might be fun to start a meme of sorts asking everyone to list out their unused domains. I'm going to get it started and if you wouldn't mind writing it on your site and then leaving a comment with a link that would be great. It'll be fun to hear some of the crazy ideas people had.
- backinthehabit.com: Not sure why I bought this other than I thought it was funny. Maybe one day I'll put up a Sister Act 2 fan page.
- endorsemint.com: This was part of an idea to create some kind of system that would help YouTube and Myspace stars find endorsement deals . . . never went anywhere.
- ganggreenblog.com: This is actually built and ready to go, it was going to be a Jets blog similar to Da Bears Blog. Similar to the Jets, it didn't really go anywhere.
- iamwhiteboard.com: Around the office we've got a whiteboard and for a while a new picture went up every day. The idea was to have a site documenting all this . . . we did it for one day.
- mommywhenwilligetmyfur.com: This is a pretty strange one, but a funny story. At one of this year's fantasy football drafts, Jason told us all about what Rosie O'Donnell had said on an episode of the view. Apparently in response to another host saying she bathed her daughter wearing a bathing suit, Rosie responded that she always bathed with her daughter nude. She went on to say the last time they were in the tub her daughter asked her "mommy, when will I get my fur?" Needless to say this became the joke of the draft and eventually mommywhenwilligetmyfur.com became the prize to the winner.
- thejobfilter.com: This was another halfway-completed project. The basic premise is that I hear about a lot of talented people looking for jobs and a lot of companies looking to hire. This was going to be a place to connect the two . . .
- wearespacemonkeys.com: A kind of inside joke with Loren from 1938 Media.
Anyway, that's it. So now it's your turn, what's in your domain name graveyard?
Leave a Comment
Six reasons I'm going to Community Next.
Next week I'm going out to San Francisco for CommunityNext, a one-day conference about the realities of building, maintaining and monetizing a social network. There are a bunch of reasons I find this interesting and I figured I'd cover them here (plus I promised the other Noah I'd plug it). Before I begin, though, there are only a few tickets left (I'm sure Noah can chime in with the exact number), so go get yours at www.communitynext.com and if you're going to be there, please let me know so we can meet up.
Okay, now onto the reasons . . .
- Clients: There's a quote of mine to this effect on the CommunityNext site, but I'll repeat it here: It seems like every week a client comes in looking for some sort of social network. I don't foresee this going away. Social networks make a lot of sense from a marketing perspective because when they're done right they can provide real value to customers. Not only can a social network help them connect with other likeminds, but it can also be a place to help build a more meaningful relationship between company and customer.
- Intranets: I expect this will be a growing area of interest (or maybe it already is booming and I don't know). Social networks seem like an absolutely perfect fit for company intranets. They offer a logical way to share information and collaborate. I don't know what else to say about this one . . .
- Adoption: It's easy to come up with lots of great tools, gimmicks and whatever else for a community website, but getting people to actually use it can be tough. I'm incredibly curious to hear some lessons on how best to break through the early barriers of community building. I've been watching Da Bears Blog expand rapidly in the last few months, but it took us a year and a half. The size didn't matter so much for us, since we were doing it for the love of da Bears, but clients are often not prepared for the slow growth. Any tips on speeding that up would be huge.
- Super Bowl: Is coming up this weekend. Which means it's a good thing CommunityNext is not this weekend. Choosing a date is important, now all I'm going to miss is the Pro Bowl, and nobody likes it anyway.
- Community: I think people are starting to realize that building community tools into almost any application/website makes sense. I've been talking about building something here to better tap in, one of the brilliant parts about iTunes is the sharing functionality, Microsoft's Zune was a sorry attempt at it and I could go on and on. With the internet extending to all parts of our lives, new tools will continue to pop up that connect us.
- likemind: When Piers and I started likemind it was mostly a whim, I don't think either of us realized the desire people had to take their online relationships and move them into the 'real world.' Now we've got lots of people showing up all over the world as proof. I'm very curious to see if in the future we can find tools that help the community flourish (rather than grow, which I would rather happen organically). I'll be listening to everything with an ear towards whether the learnings can be applied to help likeminds around the world meet, learn and grow.
Well, that's it. Like I said, if you haven't already, go sign up and if you're going, see you there.
Leave a Comment
In some cases optimizing pages for search engines might be more important to a company's PR than regular PR.
This morning I had breakfast with Noah Glass of Mobo, a mobile payment service he started. He was telling me about some of the press they've gotten and said something that immediately sparked an idea in my head: The majority of articles where we're mentioned came from journalists Googling for something like "mobile payment."
Obviously this makes sense. Journalists are just like everyone else, they get their info from Google. But it's a big deal for the PR industry, who need to figure out how to include search engine optimization (SEO) as part of their offerings. After all, what good is it to pitch a journalist with a story about fried ice cream only to find the other guy's company is listed first in a Google search. (For the record I have no idea why that example came to mind.)
Anyhow, I need to think a lot more about this, but I wanted to throw the idea out there. I'm going to give it more thought, but would appreciate feedback. Eventually I'd like to turn this into a story for PR Week. I'm not sure whether the angle is that this is an opportunity or a danger for the PR industry. Is SEO something that PR agencies could take on? Does that make sense? If you work in either industry, do you ever work with each other?
At the end of the day the question to ask yourself is where you want to spend your money. If you've got $1,000, is it better to spend it optimizing your website or pitching stories? Obviously there can't be a single answer to this, since it depends so much on the context and type of business, but it seems like a reasonable idea. I need to think some more about where in the life-cycle of a business this makes sense, though. Clearly in the case of a cutting-edge application like mobile payment, SEO for PR purposes is viable. But for something more static, a journalist is less likely to be searching so generally . . .
Anyhow, curious to hear everyone's thoughts.
Leave a Comment
I'm trying to give back a little more to all of the readers of this site.
I've been meaning to write this entry for a while but have been struggling with exactly what I want to say and how to say it. Anyhow, basically the point is I want to give something back to all you readers and I want to make this place feel a little more like a community.
One idea I had is to feature the blogs of commenters/readers more prominently on the site. I've also thought about aggregating posts from your sites (assuming you all agreed) and displaying them here. Obviously I need to work out some details, but just wanted to throw out the idea and get some opinions, thoughts and ideas.
I figure eventually this will require me writing some code and redesigning the site, but for now I would like to feature a few posts every week from your blogs. So in the comments or an email I'd really appreciate if you posted a link to a post on your site you'd like people to read. Don't feel self-conscious or anything like that (I know normally I feel a little weird about posting links to my site in comments).
I'll then update this post or add a new one with the links.
Is this a good idea? Has anyone else been thinking about this sort of thing? I know 9rules has its widgets and MyBlogLog helps with the community portion, but I'm not really a widget sort of guy (I like to control every pixel plus I hate the load time).
Anyway, just an idea . . . We'll see if anyone's in to it.
Leave a Comment
A look at the success of Da Bears Blog.
Right now I've got one thing on my mind and it's Da Bears. In case you missed it on Sunday, they beat up the Saints and set themselves a date with Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl. Needless to say, I'm pretty damn excited about it, but that's not what this is all about. Instead I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about some of my learnings from running Da Bears Blog.
Just about a year and a half ago I started the site with a few friends. We didn't really have a plan for it, just wanted a place to talk Bears football. Slowly the site began to develop a voice as Jeff became the main writer. Since then the site has taken off and while the traffic isn't enough to pay my bills, it is a lot higher than NoahBrier.com.
Anyhow I thought a lot of the lessons would be applicable for building traffic on almost any website and especially blogs. So . . .
- Find a voice: Da Bears Blog is not a newspaper. That's because people have newspapers already. It's the voice of a serious football fan. It is also very well written.
- Post frequently (but not soooooo frequently): It's been my opinion for a long time that blogs don't need to post 5 times a day. Once a day will do just fine. Da Bears Blog is designed with that in mind: Only one story appears in its entirety on the homepage (just as on this site). People come back everyday to see what's going on. They keep coming back to keep up with the comments (which often reach the 40s and have topped 100 on occasion).
- Think about SEO: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is your best friend when it's comes to growth. A few changes in title tags can mean the difference between 1st place and 30th place on a search you're really looking for. Da Bears Blog scores big on a couple key Bears searches and about 40% of the traffic ends up coming through that way.
- Consider SEM too: SEO isn't enough. With Da Bears Blog I've also bought a fair amount of keywords, including a number of searches that the blog appears number one organically. I first heard about this strategy awhile ago and it seems to be paying off. While we do pay for some people who we might get for free, the traffic from these keywords is impossible to ignore.
- Encourage email subscriptions: I recently started doing this around here as well (you can subscribe here), but for a site where the majority of the audience is not geeky email subscriptions are hugely important. These people get an update every day and make it back to the site. In the offseason, when Bears football isn't necessarily top of mind, this should allow the site to stay relevant. This has been a big push lately (subscription form on every page) and it seems to be paying off.
Now I know these aren't necessarily revolutionary, but I think there are some interesting tips. The site gets the kind of commenting that most blogs dream of (30+ comment average). Of course it's a passion topic, but shouldn't everything be?
Anyhow, hope you'll all be rooting for the Bears 13 days from now.
Leave a Comment
Just a few thoughts/notes/observations from a few days in England.
Apologies for the lack of posts over the last few days, as most of you probably know, I'm in London.
Since I have a few minutes before I go out and eat my hangover away, I figured I'd jot down some of the assorted notes/thoughts/observations of my trip.
- At my gate in JFK Airport Samsung had a charging station. I've always thought it was odd that there weren't more accessible plugs in an airport and I think it's a brilliant move on Samsung's part (who also used the space to show off the Blackjack).
- Continuing on the phone and plug theme, I was at another hotel in the area for a few minutes and noticed a charging station in the lobby. What was unique about it was that there were about five safes and each one had a few cell phone manufacturers listed on the outside. If your phone needs a charge you just pay, plug it in, lock the safe and come back later. Quite a brilliant execution if you ask me. Surprised I've never seen it in the States.
- It's amazing how I've completely erased from my mind what it's like to be in a smoke-filled bar. Since New York passed the law however-many-years-ago, I've enjoyed not coming home stinking of cigarettes quite a bit (though my dry cleaner is quite a bit less happy I'd imagine).
- I was talking to a guy at the Newman Arms before going upstairs for a steak and kidney pie (mmmmmm . . . . ). He was getting his doctorate in environmental science and specializes in a small rodent-like thing who is native to England and has a name I can't remember for the life of me. Anyhow, the population of said rodent-thing has declined incredibly over the last 10 years (I think he said 90%) and is now endangered. What was incredibly interesting to me is that one of the big factors in the decline is the mink. Turns out the mink is a predator of the rodent (who is apparently actually in the lemming family). Now minks are not native to England, there came to be so many of them because animal rights activists go around releasing them from fur factories where they are bred to be slaughtered. I'm not a big fan of fur, but it's pretty interesting that animal rights activists are taking away the natural rights of another animal in their protests.
- The oldest (and best) cocktail bar in London is apparently the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel. A bartender at The Sanderson told me about it and then I read this in the book on the history of the cocktail that I'm currently reading: "In 1898 the Savoy Hotel opened its own [American cocktail bar] . . . From 1903 to 1924, the Savoy's head bartender was a woman, Ada Coleman. She passed the sliver shaker to Harry Craddock, a former bartender at the Holland House in New York, who crossed the Atlantic when Prohibition robbed him of his trade . . . Craddock committed his recipes to print in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), perhaps the most stylish drink book ever produced."
That's it for now, have a long day of museum hopping planned and need to hit the road. Hope all is well on the other side of the pond.
Leave a Comment
I'm headed to london and holding a likemind in celebration.
So next week I'm going to London, which is very cool. The only bummer is that I'm going to be missing likemind.ny. Luckily, I've got something to fill my likemind needs:
likemind.lon
That's right, this will mark the beginning of likemind.lon. With a hat tip to Russell we'll be holding it at The Breakfast Club right before Russell's coffee morning (which I am also looking forward to), here are the details for likemind.lon:
where: The Breakfast Club, 33 D'Arblay Street, btwn Berwick and Wardour, London (GOOGLE MAPS)
when: friday, january 19 at 8:30am (GMT)
hosts: noah (guest host) and amanda
Between likemind and coffee morning, it will be about 5 hours of coffee for me. I expect to be shaking and brain drained by the end, but I'm sure it will be a blast.
I'll be there from Tuesday to Friday, so if you're around, let me know and definitely try to make it on Friday morning. Also, if anyone has some good recommendations on things to do while I'm there (I've been there many times, but not for about three years), please leave them in the comments or drop me a line.
And one quick shout out: HAPPY (ALMOST) BIRTHDAY LEAH!
Leave a Comment
Why finding your core idea will help you be more elegant in 2007.
I don't mean to trot out old themes, but with yesterday's iPhone announcement on the brain I can't help but think about elegance.
Simplicity was a big theme in 2006, but as Piers astutely notes, it's not really what everyone desires. As Don Norman wrote, "Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity." It's not that people prefer complexity, but they want a product that does everything they might ever want to do (even though most likely they'll never use the vast majority of those features). I'd argue that what people are really looking for is elegance: The intersection of simplicity and complexity.
Unlike simplicity ('less is more'), elegance doesn't have an ideology. It just is. It's about delivering the best possible feature set in the best possible way. It's about making each and every one of those features easy to use. Not surprisingly, the most elegant is also often the most innovative (and, as Scott points out, the most obvious).
The problem with elegance is it's not easy. It requires a company to really know who they are and who their audience is. They need to get back to basics, which just happens to be the point of this whole piece. (Apologies for taking four paragraphs to get there).
Today Gareth asked "What will [marketing in] 2007 be about?" I posited a guess that was built both on Gareth's and Mark Earls' responses: "I think 2007 is about back to basics. With the influx of user generated content and the realization that consumers can be great co-marketers, it's time for brands to dig deep within themselves and figure out who they are and what they want to be when they grow up. Companies need to identify core beliefs and assets and focus on them."
From there anything is possible.
So what do you all think about this? What will 2007 be about?
Leave a Comment
Just showing off my new business cards.
I woke up this morning feeling like my head was going to explode.
And I just took some Nyquill, so bedtime is imminent.
So in lieu of a real post I figured I'd just show off the new business cards I designed for myself this weekend.
Big up to Florian (new blog) for the idea.
That's about it. If you're dying for something to read, you can always check out the sidenotes, the great comments from my entry about entrepreneurial spirit or a blog of one of my many recent commenters.
That's it folks, I'm off to a hopefully healing sleep. Good night.
Leave a Comment
2007 will be the year of the likemind.
Just wanted to take a little time to announce some exciting likemind news. On top of locking down an official day (the third Friday of every month), we've expanded again and we're now at seven cities.
Rocking out at 8am this month will be New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston and Oslo (though they're at 9am). We've gotten an amazing response so far and we're looking for 2007 to be a big year.
If you've never been, I highly recommend checking it out. If there's not one in your city, you could always volunteer to host.
Before I finish, I just want to talk about two things that people said to me after the last likemind.ny. First, Shana (of dolphin and theory people fame) described it as kind of like a cocktail party in the morning. Then, Erik said he was amazed that the social pressure was on the people in conversations to include outsiders, rather than the outsiders to include themselves in conversations. It seems that because people genuinely believe everyone else around there is interesting, they really want to talk to strangers. It's a very neat vibe.
Now unfortunately I won't be at NYC this month, since I'll be in London that week. But stay tuned, because I'm trying to set up a little likemind.lon action for while I'm there. And of course, if you're in London from January 15-20 and want to meet up at some point, drop me a line
Leave a Comment
Recently someone told me not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. It stuck.
I can't remember who told me this, but they said "not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur." (If it was you please let me know and I'll give you credit.) Since then it's been swimming around in my head non-stop.
To me an entrepreneur is someone who wants to follow their own path, not necessarily someone who runs their own business. They're leaders, not followers. They find joy in breathing life into an idea. They prefer fewer instructions, not more.
Personally, I can't imagine wanting things any other way, but lots of other people can and do. There are a ton of individuals out there who would prefer to do what they're told and like the structure and regimen: They enjoy executing someone else's vision.
It was an important reminder to me. I think it's an important reminder to many of us. We are not 'regular'.
For me it's always been this way. At three I wore two different socks because I could. In kindergarten I refused to do the math problems everyone else was doing. In middle school I proved the teacher wrong on a question he had been asking classes for 20 years. I'm not bragging, just saying that I never knew it any other way. (Seriously, though, who brags about wearing two different socks?)
When I was told that not everyone thought that way, an idea that I'm sure sat somewhere in my mind, all of a sudden surfaced. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that we don't all have the same thing driving us. Many seek stability, normalcy and routine: They prefer to have a job they could easily describe to a stranger.
Different things make each and every one of us tick and I don't think we acknowledge that often enough. I know I fall into the trap often of overgeneralizing based on my own experiences, or the experiences of a select few around me. It's important to dig deeper and look beyond our own prejudices. Sure you can use your own world to draw larger ideas, but once in a while we all need to get shaken up a little bit and reminded that what we see as normal might not be that way to everyone else.
At least that's what "not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur" means to me. How about you?
Leave a Comment
We're only three days into 2007 and I couldn't be more impressed with the quality of thought.
I don't know what's causing it, but I have run across a ton of interesting reading over the last few days. Since I know you all enjoy it as much as I do, I thought I might pass it on with a little commentary where appropriate.
I apologize for giving what kind of feels like another half-assed post, but sometimes I just don't have 2,000 words in me (and I'm sure sometimes you don't feel like reading it either). So now you can pick and choose. Of course, you could always subscribe to the sidenotes via RSS and get the constant flow.
By the way, one last thing before I get started with the links, I'm looking for an opinion on a slight design change from some people who visit the homepage, if you meet this criteria and wouldn't mind contacting me, I'd greatly appreciate.
Okay, enough boring stuff, onto the links . . .
- The Laws of Attraction: This Psychology Today article breaks down the laws of friendship. There's some great stuff in here and I'd like to do a larger post that talks a little about the ideas of friendship brands. The article talks about the importance of things like reciprocity in this kind of relationship. Really interesting stuff.
- The Long Tale: I had been hoping that Abe would post this for months. In it he talks about how The Long Tail doesn't really address the massive inequality and, in fact, attempts to redirect our attention away from it.
- Can Google Come Out to Play?: This one only gets a link because I just had lunch over at the Google office. The Times article discusses the new NYC mega-office and all the Google-perks. The one thing I couldn't help feeling after reading it, though, is that they're creating a dangerously closed system. Sure they hire incredibly talented people, but encouraging employees to not interact with outsiders can have disastrous results in the long run.
- Designs for Working: Special thanks to Jecklin for this old Gladwell article. In it he talks about how companies are using some city planning ideas to design offices. It's especially fascinating after reading the Google article. Especially interesting to me were the different employee profiles, which reflects some Tipping Point thinking within the office environment.
- The Return of the Yuppie: This one comes courtesy of PSFK and suggests that the yuppie never really died. I've been thinking a lot about luxury culture myself lately and this is right in line. People seem much more comfortable being whatever they want to be, even if that identity falls into a stereotype. "Here are some of the things, according to The Yuppie Handbook, that the budding yupster could not live without: gourmet coffee, a Burberry trench coat, expensive running shoes, a Cuisinart, a renovated kitchen with a double sink, smoked mozzarella from Dean & DeLuca, a housekeeper, a mortgage, a Coach bag, a Gucci briefcase, and a Rolex. Oh, har har har, that crazy yup!"
- Ephemeral Profiles: danah boyd writes about how data lock-in isn't really a big deal to teens. If they lose a password to a profile and have to start over it's okay and in fact is something that they might do every so often on purpose. In one way, I can't imagine changing my domain name or screen name, but in another sense, the idea of being able to start fresh is incredibly appealing. It's something we can't really ever do in the physical world. I know I love to format a hard drive and start from scratch again: There's a kind of freedom associated with it.
- Wave v Particle Model of Messages: I've really been digging Joe Andrieu's blog lately. In this entry he suggests that the metaphor for a marketing message is shifting from the wave to the particle. A particle, Andrieu suggests, is better suited for todays landscape where: "1. Once a message is in the medium, the source relinquishes control. 2. It doesn’t necessarily matter what causes a message. If its out there, it affects the environment. 3.The only way to mitigate an unwanted message in the environment is to seed new, credible replacement messages with such potency and saturation that it displaces the previous. (Preferably, one does this without offending the environment.) 4. It pays to shape your messages effectively. Make them smell good. Make them believable and understandable. Make them effective tools at helping your organization. Because once they are out there, they are out of your hands."
- How I Did It: Sidney Frank: I had heard about this guy for a while, but never really knew the whole story. Basically Frank alone turned Jagermeister from a 500 case a year business into the shot-of-choice it is today and created Grey Goose from scratch into a multi-billion dollar brand. In this interview of sorts he talks about his many successes and how he accomplished them. My favorite snippet: "The big-selling high-priced vodka at the time was Absolut, which was $15 a bottle. I figured, let's make it very exclusive and sell it for $30 a bottle. I said, France has the best of everything. I asked a distiller there whether they could make a vodka. They said sure. The product manager and I tasted about 100 vodkas on my front porch here, and we agreed on one vodka as the best-tasting."
Well, that's it for now. If you've got anything else I missed and should check out, please leave it in the comments. If you want to talk about any of these articles, please leave that in the comments too.
Leave a Comment
Three thoughts, one entry.
This is one of those posts where I have a little to say about a bunch of stuff, so rather than force out a long post about any one of them I've decided to throw them all together.
Before I get started, happy new year to everyone, hope it was a great one.
Now onto the action.
The Wheel
I can't remember exactly when I had this thought, but all of a sudden it popped into my head: There was a day when the wheel wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye. Same thing with computers, pens, cell phones and shoes. All these things had to be invented, which means that somebody had the wherewithal to actually make it happen. It's amazing and very encouraging to think there are still huge innovations that no one has even begun to think of.
Great Musicians
At about 1:30 on New Years Eve a jazz musician sat down at the bar next to me and we started talking. One of my kicks lately has been to ask people who are passionate about what they do who it is they respect the most and why. I want to understand what it is that makes that person, who I've probably only heard of in passing, so talented. When he was talking about soloists he said what made them great was that you never knew what note they were going to play next. They never tipped their hand: Every note was a surprise. This also happens to be one of the things that makes a great wide receiver in football. When a great WR goes out for a route he knows it, the quarterback knows it but the defensive back has no clue whether he's going to turn inside, outside or run straight upfield.
Moscow Mule
Turns out the vodka craze is in large part due to great marketing. A Moscow Mule is mostly a combination of vodka and ginger beer. Turns out John G. Martin had recently bought Smirnoff (originally called Smirnov, which apparently was a little too Russian-sounding) and needed a way to promote the booze when everyone was drinking whiskey. What Martin decided to do was get together with Jack Morgan, then owner of the Cock'n Bull in LA who also had a ginger-beer franchise. They placed their concoction in specially-engraved copper mugs made by another friend with a struggling business. Then came some real marketing: "He bought one of the first Polaroid cameras and asked barmen to pose with a Moscow Mule copper mug and a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. Then he would leave one copy of the photo at the bar and take a second copy to the bar next door to show them that their competitors were selling their concoction. Between 1947 and 1950, thanks to their invention, Smirnoff vodka case columns more than tripled and nearly doubled in 1951." As a side note, after reading this I ordered a copy of Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail.
Well, that's it for now. Hope that helps you ease into the new year. Let me know what you think about this stuff, would love to discuss and see if there are some bigger themes for upcoming entries.
Leave a Comment
Hi, I'm 
