Why I’m now a fan of twitter
I signed up for twitter over a year ago, yet after I had tried it out for a few weeks I lost interest in the tool. It struck me as something that was easily replaced by Facebook’s status section and that since I had more friends on Facebook than I had on Twitter, why continue to use Twitter. I even hade Facebook on my Blackberry for easy updating and tracking of other friends facebook activities.
However, over the last few weeks I have come to realize that twitter is not only a powerful tool for communicating online and via your cell phone, but that it is also a much better way of getting you casually connected with alot of people who you would not meet or become friends with on facebook. Most of the people who I “follow” on Twitter, I have never met in person, and would not consider them my friends. I follow Ben Bernanke, Jim Cramer, Guy Kawasaki, and that is just a few of the people I follow that I otherwise would have no “access” to in the real world, or even meaningful contact with on Facebook.
The reason that I am now enjoying twitter is that I have started to follow people who are smarter and more connected than I am, as well as the few actual friends I do have on twitter. I now get interesting articles sent my way, keep in the know about web/tech happenings, and get to see what some of the smartest most succesful people in the tech industry are working on and thinking about. I don’t follow anybody that starts following me and this helps keep my feed down to a managable ammount of information that I consistantly find interesting.
If you’re on twitter, or join, let me know!
After the jump a good video by Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the guys who I am really enjoying following on twitter, on why facebook needs to adapt or get passed by twitter. A good take, and if you head over to his site check out his other videos there is some good stuff in there.
Money Saving tips turn into…have a life and get fired.
Recently I have been seeing alot of talk about the work life balance in the startup community. On a Seattle Startup mailing list talking about the 4 day work week and then today Jason Calacanis and Tech Crunch have been posting back and forth about their ideas for a work life balance at a startup.
Calacanis posted a great post about money saving tips for a startup. His ideas include
- Buying lunch for the team and having meetings over lunch- Save time and not have other meetings.
- Buy Mac’s- more expensive up front, but save money on IT.
- Buy second monitors- makes people more productive and happy.
- Don’t buy a phone system- Most people can use cell phones, only buy phones for the people on them all the time.
- Buy the hardest working people computers from home so that they can work at home and on their own time.
- Get an expensive automatic espresso machine and keep it fully stocked with milks, nice beans, and syrups.
- Don’t waste money on PR or recruiters.
and the one that has created all of the publicity around the web…
Kleiner Perkins creates a $100M iFund
Kliener Perkins along with Apple has created a $100M fund, called the iFund, which will be used to help create a development community for the iPhone. Today Apple announced quite a few new things for the iPhone, including Microsoft Server Exchange support and the the Software Developers Kit which will allow any developer to create their own applications for the iPhone. It looks like it will be a great platform, with alot of cool functions and features, but does it really need a $100M fund?
Since the iPhone is less than a year old and already has gained a large market share it seems like a hot product with alot of room for growth, both on its platform and in the consumers hands (on their ears?). Apple has announced that they will be controlling ALL application sales through their iPhone Apps Store. This will allow them to make that all apps have been approved by Apple and that they are malicious, or porn, or anything like that. It will also make sure that Apple gets a cut of each application that is sold (30%). They have however, allowed each developer the freedom to charge whatever they want for the applications they have developed, even if it is free. This store, the platform, and what appears to be the ease of development for these applications seems to be reason enough to build an application, but Apple seems to think it needs more.
So the iFund will help developers get up and going and get their ideas funded to develop iPhone applications. I just don’t understand what the exit strategy for these companies will be though. Other than Apple acquiring them I just don’t see another exit strategy. Seems like a great deal for Apple, but not a great deal for Kleiner Perkins or the developers who take funding. Although Kleiner Perkins is generaly viewed as one of the top VC firms in the industry, so maybe I’m just young and don’t understand the business well enough yet.
“Macbook Air, Why the hell not?”
Well, the Macbook Air did get announced on Tuesday at the Macworld Expo. It’s incredibly thin and has a few cool features (1 cool feature is all I have seen. A multitouch trachpad for iphoto and itunes. Is that all?), but luckily I’m not debating if I need it or not. It’s ridiculously expensive, for not that good of an actual computer for the price you’re paying. It is VERY thin though.
I got more than double billed…and I’m not even mad.
So this morning my hosting company Dreamhost sent me an email saying that they had billed me for the next year of web hosting, plus updating some domain names, and that my credit card had been billed. Well, I was at work so didn’t look into it much, but I thought I had been billed a few months ago and that I wasn’t due to pay for the service again for another nine month. Well a few hours later I found out I was right.
Dreamhost sent out an email, posted a blog entry, and many other blogs started writing about the mixup. The billing team at Dreamhost has taken a very non-chalant tone in all of their customer contact pieces, and they continued this tone, even in a HUGE mixup that they made. They actually billed $7.5M to customers today, which isn’t bad for a single day of billing I guess.
The honesty and humor was a perfect mix of being up front as well as keeping their same tone to keep me feeling good about hosting my domains with Dreamhost. A great company who I highly recommend… unless they triple bill you.
For a good reach check out their blog entry addressing the issue: Dreamhost Blog- “Um, Whoops”
Gaming, a sport?
A few weeks ago when I was bowling with some friends we got into the discussion of what constitutes a sport. I wont’ go into it all right now, but I would say that bowling is definitely a sport. Now the question to ask is, is computer gaming a sport?
Major League Gaming now has an agreement with ESPN that will provide content for ESPN.com which will also include online video of various events and matches. ESPN includes bowling, billiards, darts, poker, and a bunch of other non-mainstream sports, but how far are they going to push it. Personally I would say that neither poker nor online gaming are sports, but they are competitions and for that ESPN is choosing to carry them on their network.
So, in your opinion, does this partnership make sense? Should ESPN carry Major League Gaming events on their website for now? Will it lead to them putting it on tv opposite Sunday football when they are desperate for a different target audience?
About Otis
I live in Seattle, Washington. I am passionate about working with and interacting with others. My work experience includes marketing, account management, and sales.
I am a huge sports fan who on top of cheering for my favorite teams (Go Beavs!) also appreciates coaching strategy, as well as the marketing behind teams, players, and events.
Personally, I enjoys exploring new cities and areas (particularly small towns) and getting outside and playing.