Thoughts on business, startups, and technology.
You’ve been warned.
Paul Boutin of VentureBeat just wrote about how Socializr integrated Twitter into their product.
He ended his piece with:
Fair warning to social apps makers: By June, it’ll no longer be news that your product connects with Twitter. It’ll be news if it doesn’t.
With Twitter’s growth (in users and buzz), and an accessible API, I gotta say I think he is right. Consider yourself warned. (Ooo what an ominous way to end an entry…)
I’ve been thinking about one’s online reputation lately.
There are a lot of tools for businesses to manage their online reputations, but how about individuals? How about small-time bloggers, web designers & developers, and general netizens who don’t have access to marketing budgets, yet are concerned about their personal brand?
These questions bubbled in my mind after reading this comment from George of Illuminati Karate:
I made a list of my random social accounts recently, and was surprised to come up with 15. Making a list can be a good check to make sure you’re effectively managing your online reputation.
That is certainly true. Here are some more free ways to manage your personal online reputation.
First, you need to find out what other people are seeing about you. What are potential employers seeing? Or potential dates? Or your parents?
Next, you need to control what others find about you. While you can’t control every little thing, there are ways to steer the overall findings, and thus, your online reputation.
Duct Tape Marketing also lists a ton of reputation management tools, though I didn’t find many of them to be worth the time needed to learn & use them. I know that the services I’ve listed here may already take the average person quite a while to do.
They are worth it though, especially in today’s connected world. You never know when a potential date, employer, friend, business partner, or family member might be doing some online snooping on you.
Photo by: Photo Mojo
This is the second post in a series on How to Make Money as a Freelance Blogger:
Next, you will need to market yourself and promote your services. This will require a portfolio of published writing samples. To be taken seriously as a professional freelance blogger, you will definitely need a well-marketed blog – which can provide as a source of fresh writing samples too.
This step is pretty involved, however. You will need a good domain name, a web host, some blogging software and some technical knowledge. If you don’t have any technical knowledge (or a technical friend who can help you), there are free blogging services you can use. Blogging services don’t require any technical know-how, but you won’t look as professional when using one.
Also, you will need a presence on social media sites to help extend your reach and brand. Having a presence can educate you about the social media world as well, where potential gigs could arise. Social media sites are sites like MySpace (NWSA), Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Digg, Newsvine, NowPublic, etc.
You have two choices here:
First, pick and register a domain name. A good domain name is:
You can verify whether or not the domain name is available on a domain registrar. If it is available, you can register it through the registrars for a yearly fee.
Since most of the good ones have already been taken, you can consider using a domain name suggestion service to help you along. Some allow you to register the domain name too.
Second, sign up with a web host. A web host is where you’ll actually place your website’s blogging software. The two registrars above (Namecheap.com and Go Daddy) also provide web hosting.
After you sign up with a web host, they will give you directions on how to associate your domain name with your new web host account. Contact their customer support if you need help doing this.
Third, pick your blogging software. Fortunately, this is free.
This is where you’ll need some technical knowledge. You will have to download the blogging software, then upload it to your web host and install it. After playing with some settings, you can choose a theme to make your blog look nicer.
Here are some must-read articles on setting up your own domain name, web host, and blogging software:
This one is easier than setting up a blog with your own domain name. A blogging service will give you everything you need right away. The drawback is that your domain name will be a mix of yours and theres: e.g. yourblogsname.blogger.com. This doesn’t look as professional has yourblogname.com. But hey, it’s easy and it’s free.
Just sign up and you’re done!
Now for a list of must-read articles and resources:
And more must-read articles and resources:
Here is one last resource. It is a massive list of 40+ sites for writers. Truly massive list. If you think I’ve already given you too much to read, then you may not want to click on this link. But please do at some point. It also offers a great deal of useful information.
More tomorrow!
The How to Make Money as a Freelance Blogger series:
It’s fun to play with others! Um, that sounded dirty. But I must thank Isaac for giving me a heads up about a “programming is like sex” meme on Twitter. ‘Twas quite fun!
And I think this phrase originated from Peter Harkins way back in 2006. Funny stuff! (For geeks, mostly. Everybody else is going, “these guys really gotta get laid.”)
I think I’m starting to enjoy this Twitter thing…
Hop! Onto the Twitter bandwagon I go. I just created a Twitter account.
Well, I actually created it a while ago, but just decided to follow a bunch of friends and tech industry professionals last night. Partly to understand the potential of this new technology and social media/communication method, and partly to see what the heck my friends are up to.
Then, suddenly, amidst a few reciprocal follows from friends, I got a bunch from strangers. Wow. And I haven’t even made a single tweet yet! I feel so… faux importante!
I wonder what makes a person blindly follow another person? Especially when that person hasn’t made a single tweet yet?
Well, I suppose I answered my own question by following these “tech industry professionals.” But then, I took a peek at each of their twitter streams to see if they mostly made insightful industry-specific tweets, or random personal junk. (It was a mix of both.) I did see a friend who only made three or four tweets ever, so I didn’t bother following him.
Who are you, my new Twitter follower strangers?
Yea, okay, so that title is a little dramatic. Blame Douglas MacMillan on it.
He recently penned an article for BusinessWeek (MHP) entitled, “The End of Instant Messaging (As We Know It)” that discussed the rise of in-browser instant messaging clients like those used on Facebook and Gmail (GOOG).
These IM clients differ from traditional IM clients in that they are, well, in the web browser. Embedded in a website, so to speak. As you type on your friends’ Walls and Facebook Stalk your secret crushes, you can get a little message in the bottom-right corner of the page. It only exists while you’re on the Facebook website though. If you go check your stock quotes on another site, that little message in the bottom-right corner will disappear.
Also, you don’t have to download anything. Or sign up with another account. It’s just there for you automatically, as long as you have a Facebook account.
With traditional IM clients like AOL (TWX) Instant Messenger and Yahoo! (YHOO) Messenger, you have to download some software and create an account. It’s a little more tedious, but lots of people have done it already. Plus, it doesn’t go away as you check out different websites.
So what’s the big deal? MacMillan pointed out that traditional IM clients have been seeing a decline in usage. “Instead of spending time with these old-fashioned chat windows,” he writes, “Web users are flocking to sites like Facebook and Google’s Gmail, where instant messaging tools are more closely embedded in what they are doing.”
That’s a good point. Sites like Facebook already have a person’s attention. Instead of asking my friend, who’s using AIM to download YM so I can chat with him, why not just send him an instant message via Facebook (assuming he’s got a Facebook account, of course)?
MacMillan doesn’t supply any data to back up the claim that the decline of traditional IM usage is due to in-browser IM usage, but anecdotally, I have seen an increase in friends using in-browser IMs. The first time I received a Facebook IM, I thought it was some kind of ad. Nowadays, I receive lots of Facebook IMs, some from friends already on my traditional IM lists, others from friends not on my lists.
Those latter messages I’ve grown to appreciate. Since I don’t have them on my traditional IM lists, Facebook has given me an easy way to chat with them. In addition to connecting me with long-lost friends whom I can now email, I can also chat with them in real-time without needing their YM or AIM username.
(Sure, I could call them up too. And I have in a few cases. But sometimes the spontaneity of a random IM chat is kinda nice too.)
Which brings me to an issue that concerns me greatly. I am a power user of IMs. I use IMs frequently for work purposes. Since I work with people across different geographies, IM has become an important business tool for immediate conversations. Phone is just as good, but when you need to share a URL, IM is much better.
Also, IMs offer a log of chat history. I faithfully archive all of my conversations in case I need to refer to information shared over past IMs. In order to do this, I need a client that has archive ability.
Yahoo! Messenger does. And since it allows MSN (MSFT) Messenger contacts to be added, I get to archive conversations with users of both clients. Gtalk does too. And since it allows AIM contacts to be added, I get to archive conversations from both of them.
Unfortunately, Facebook does not archive conversations. I haven’t had any business-related conversations on Facebook yet, so that hasn’t been a problem. But what if I do? What if a client is available on Facebook and decides to chat me over there. How can I keep a record of that conversation without having to copy & paste it? And what about other websites? If they incorporate in-browser IM, will they have archives?
That’s just one problem. Another is having chat archives all over the place. Already, I have one with YM and another with Gtalk. 37signals has a great collaboration tool for small businesses called Campfire which contains its own archives as well. While it’s nice that they all keep a record of my conversations, searching through all of these sources is a major pain in the patootey.
What I need is an IM archive aggregator of some sort. Not more in-browser or out-of-browser IM archives. But a way to search through all of one’s IM archives.
Attached to this suggestion is the natural idea of an IM aggregator – a central IM client that allows you to sign in to multiple services in one place. That, fortunately, has been addressed. On the traditional IM client side, there’s Pidgin, Jabber, Trillian, and tons more.
On the in-browser side, there’s Meebo, Soashable, ILoveIM.com, and tons more. (Not to be left behind, traditional IM clients have also created in-browser versions: AIM Express, Yahoo! Web Messenger, and MSN Web Messenger. Gtalk was released as a downloadable client and in-browser app at the same time.).
That’s a whole lotta choices. A whole lotta. Looking at them all is kind of like going through the cereal aisle of the supermarket, except that these require login accounts and passwords and no milk or bowls or… ah, nevermind, bad analogy.
That’s a whole lotta choices. All of them solve the problem of having multiple IM accounts. But now that Facebook and other companies are releasing their own IM systems, we’re going to run into the problem of having multiple IM accounts again. Great. Thanks Facebook.
Having a proliferation of choices isn’t uncommon though, especially not for new markets. Over time, leaders will emerge. Hopefully, global standards too. The current leader, Meebo, is already doing something that I hope will continue:
They just got Flixster to offer Meebo’s in-browser IM client as a feature. This means Meebo is moving into the IM provider business. Since they already offer an archive, any in-browser IMs I get from Flixster will appear in my Meebo account too. Neat!
Now if Facebook integrated Meebo, how cool would that be? Or – even better – if Facebook integrated Gtalk, then I’d be able to combine my Facebook chats with my existing Gtalk & AIM archives. Oh what a happy day that would be.
And not just for me, but perhaps for Facebook and others as well. They’d be able to outsource all of their IM development & maintenance to a IM provider. Sort of like a Disqus for IM, perhaps? (Not sure if that analogy works either, but you know what I mean.)
I’m guessing the folks at Meebo are already thinking about this. I wonder if the Gtalk people are too. If not, I hope so. An IM aggregator that works both in-browser and as a downloadable client, and can be leveraged on third-party websites, and has a common, searchable archive would be totally awesome. And I’d feel fine…
Oh well, had to happen sooner or later. Yahoo!’s (YHOO) second experiment with social networking, Yahoo! Mash, is officially shutting down on September 29, 2008.
The first experiment, Yahoo! 360, has already shut down. Sort of. It still exists at its URL. But Yahoo isn’t actively developing it anymore and is quietly transitioning it to “a more integrated Yahoo! ‘profile’ experience.”
I know the developers on both projects. Even managed some of them once. It’s kind of sad to see this happen. Not surprising at all, just a little sad, because I know how much hard work these developers (and the entire teams) put into these projects.
Unfortunately, the market just didn’t take to them. Both arrived late onto the social networking scene. Both didn’t do everything the market wanted, and did too much of the things the market didn’t want. And both carried the Yahoo brand, which was good and bad. Good in that thousands of Yahoo fans jumped on and loved its fledgling integration with the rest of the Yahoo network. Bad in that Yahoo didn’t seem as cool to the MySpace (NWS) and Facebook crowds.
It was great that the management team green lighted these two products originally. Too bad they didn’t green light them sooner or give them more resources to make better products. Both had big dreams. Seeing their full visions materialize would have been pretty cool. But alas, they were not to be.
Rest in Peace, Yahoo! Mash – and Yahoo! 360. You were interesting experiments. I hope somebody learned something from them.
I’m sad. The makers of Scrabulous have decided to disable their game for all North American users. Sniff.
This is the result of a struggle with Hasbro (HAS) and a suit filed against the Brothers Agarwalla—Scrabulous’ founders—for violating copyright law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Fans of Scrabulous are now in an uproar. Don Reisinger of Masable says this move makes Hasbro look stupid. The official SCRABBLE® Facebook app is littered with comments like, “Boo, hiss. Way to alienate your corporation!” and “I’m going to extend my boycott to all Hasbro toys, etc.” And a campaign has been started on The Point, calling for Hasbro to work with Scrabulous instead of shutting it down (though there only 6 members as of this post).
This has led to a great deal of negative PR, especially in the blogosphere. At a quick glance, I see a “RIP Scrabulous“, a “No, I Do Not Want to Play Scrabble“, and a “F U, Hasbro. F U.”
On the other side of the equation are people defending Hasbro’s actions. Or at least raising the issue of copyright infringement as a business benefit: is it “worthwhile to go after pirates, thieves, and copyright-infringers, or… simply let them be and consider it free advertising”, writes Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb.
And… I don’t see that many other bloggers supporting Hasbro in my Technorati search. Oh well.
All of this drama makes you wonder why Hasbro didn’t just offer to buy Scrabulous, right? Well, apparently they did. While Hasbro and Electronic Arts (ERTS) collaborated to build the new SCRABBLE® app, RealNetworks (RNWK)—another company given the rights to create online Hasbro games—has been working with Scrabulous to “bring the official Scrabble game to Facebook users”, writes Heather Timmons of the NY Times. (Funny, I thought that’s what Hasbro and EA just did.) Furthermore, according to Peter Kafka of Silicon Valley Insider, an offer has been put out to & rejected by the Scrabulific Duo:
The hold up? Money. A source familiar with the negotiations say Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla want too much.
What’s the gap? The brothers say they’re generating $25,000 a month, or $300,000 a year in revenue. A 10x-20x multiple on that would make Scrabulous worth $3-$6 million, but for argument’s sake let’s say they’ll have a hockey stick growth curve, and that their game project could be worth more than $10 million.
Sound fair? Maybe. But our source says the brothers want a “multiple of several times that” $10 million, and the four corporations they’re negotiating with think that’s ridiculous.
If that’s true, then that’s perhaps a bit optimistically presumptuous of the Brothers Agarwalla. $10M is a tidy sum for what is technically a copyright infringement.
In the meantime, to satisfy your Scrabble fix, you’ll need to add the new SCRABBLE® Facebook app (or the SCRABBLE beta Facebook app; I’m not quite sure which one is the official official one). Unfortunately—oops—the app isn’t working. Instead, you’re slapped with a big fat “We’ll be back up shortly. We’re working on some tech problems and Scrabble will be ready to play as soon as possible!” message. This isn’t their fault though. Alex Pham of the Los Angeles Times reports that this is the result of a hacker attack. (Perhaps from some die-hard Scrabulous fans?)
All of this amounts to a major catch-22 for Hasbro. Fighting against Scrabulous means loads of negative PR and possible damage to their business. Aligning with Scrabulous means setting a potentially damaging precedent to their business. (Yossarian lives!)
The Discussion Boards of both SCRABBLE apps are full of rants and more rants. And just how many pro-Scrabulous Facebook groups are there? Over 500, with Save Scrabulous clocking in at over 47 thousand members so far (including me). Wow.
The Scrabble board game may have enjoyed a surge in popularity due to Scrabulous, though it’s impossible to confirm this since Hasbro isn’t releasing their sales figures. I wonder if those sales will drop with this negative fallout.
However, I totally understand Hasbro’s actions against Scrabulous. If they supported Scrabulous, they may unleash a disastrous tidal wave. Say Hasbro purchased Scrabulous for $10M, this web business formula could have emerged:
And if you didn’t gain spectacular popularity, the offline game’s parent company would probably just ignore you, like Hasbro has of dozens of Scrabble knock-offs already on the web. Lots of upside for very little downside! Dollars galore!
Either way, Hasbro is sure in a pickle. In that context, I can see why they’d opt to shut down Scrabulous. Months from now, as the public backlash dies down, Facebook users may begin adding the new SCRABBLE apps to quench their Scrabble thirst, and perhaps forget about this whole ordeal. It’s possible. Take jetBlue, for example. Back in February 2007, a severe ice storm took down over a thousand of their flights, leading to a major PR black-eye. Since then, they’ve rebounded from that episode. And if that’s not a great example, take Martha Stewart and the ImClone scandal in 2004. Despite being jailed, she’s back and arguably as strong as ever.
Hasbro could have handled the situation a little smoother though. But I doubt they had a web-savvy/social-media-savvy team of PR specialists on board (and if they did, WTF?). I would have recommended that they reach out to the community in some way. Maybe to solicit suggestions, maybe to implore an understanding. Even if people argued against them, just having a genuine public voice can sometimes earn a lot of empathy. At the very least, it could have softened the blow. This could have also come from Electronic Arts and RealNetworks, the makers of the online SCRABBLE apps.
Personally, I’m bummed as hell that Scrabulous is gone. I had quite a few games going there. I wish a compromise could have been reached, though I wouldn’t have the foggiest how that would have looked.
R.I.P., Scrabulous.