Sharlene would like to be added as one of my friends!

I got a MySpace friend request from Sharlene.

I don't recall ever meeting her or talking to her in any way shape or form, but she is pretty cute!

Plus she has personality to back it up:

Ah, it's kind of fun. Since most of my friends don't do much on MySpace it's nice to meet a whore-bot every now and then. Maybe I'll let her catch a glimpse of my USB dongle...

The Hierarchy of Needs, and Entrepreneurship

The Hierarchy of Needs

This is pretty random, but I was sitting around today and I got a couple ideas about Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

1. People often frame decisions to start a venture in terms of risk - the comfort of the entrepreneur with taking risks. The hierarchy of needs is an interesting alternative. When you are healthy, safe, loved, esteemed (and you feel this way), it's time to "self-actualize," which may be achieved through a venture.
   
2. Some of the emotional or cognitive conflicts of pursuing a venture could boil down to where you are in the hierarchy. If your venture fails, are you "safe" or are you going to starve? Are you doing it for the esteem of others, or your own fulfillment?

This is maybe the first time I found the pyramid interesting. Anyway, just an idea. Here's an example of why it could be too facile:

High Self-Esteem Isn't Always Healthy

"People with fragile high self-esteem compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend, protect and enhance their feelings of self-worth." Like what? Blogging?

everyone deserves an iPod Touch, including me

So many things about this picture amuse me

I got myself an iPod touch. First, I wanted one to test our budding Mobile Spank on it (because to date I've been doing my mobile browsing on a Nokia N95). Second, we're going to be giving away some iPod touches and iTunes gift certificates soon, and I realized that having and using the touch would allow me to take some videos of how fun it is and also make sure I personally understand the iTunes process. (Believe it or not I'm not currently an iTunes user; I get my kicks from Pandora.)

Which is all very exciting to me. About a billion new things are coming on Linkspank soon, and now I get to spank from yet another device. Bitchinnnnnnnn.

Plus, apparently I can use it as a phone too:

Turn Your iPod Touch into an iPhone [Feature]

Walden Pond, thoughts on the tipping point

I'm about halfway around walden pond, thinking about individuality and
the tipping point. If a business is characterized by tipping point
logic, it's anyone's guess as to how it will play out. Small changes
make too big a difference. The success of the business is based on
nonlinear factors. It's chaos math at play essentially. For linkspank
you can put it this way. People try linkspank and they basically like
it. Some people like it am awful lot. Many of those people haven't
recruited any friends though - despite the fact they like the site and
would be pleased to have friends active on it. Now if you had a
situation where each me those people brought one friend to the site,
the community would grow very very quickly and in fact it would be
about as good as it gets for a site like linkspank. And some
relatively small changes could make some spankers invite just one more
person (though it's hard to know what those changes are). So the
strategic imperative is to find those little differences. In light me
this you can see why luck is a huge factor for all such businesses
whether they "succeed" or "fail". Personally the luck factor doesn't
attract me. Chess is one of my favorite games because there is minimal
luck involved. But i am passionate about so much that linkspank stands
for - using the web to organize and share information, bring smiles to
people, play around and play a new kind of game, be more efficient,
discover cool new things - that it's perfect for me. Being at walden
is a nice reminder of individuality, which is so important to me.
Entrepreneurship requires it, not because you are "working for
yourself", but because you are by definition pursuing an opportunity
that the rest me the world has passed over- your business is an
embodiment of a difference of opinion with the majority. Ok, i'm back
at the front of the pond. May you have a good sunday and know when to
disagree with others. :-)

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

percentage gains

Dilbert Comic for April 19, 2008

Our Revenue is up 1,000,000% haha :-)

Some people say that any decent web startup should be growing 25% per month in usage. I sort of agree. But you start puny and you're trying to get very big (even if not huge). So since when is this a linear game? One of the points of Tipping Point is that you shouldn't be thinking in terms of linear growth, but rather making the tweaks that could lead to the magic formula.

Mobile spank coming soon

Quite soon we'll have a mobile version of linkspank that you'll see
automatically whenever you navigate to the site on your phone. The
goal is to enable you to read your spanks while you are mailing and
browsing on the phone. Also, if you find a link you like on your phone
you'll be able to click through and spank it. It will be simple yet
awesome i believe, and a big step up in what's available even for
iPhone users. On the phone, it's "difficult" to copy a link to share
with someone. We are fixing this problem and helping the cause of
social procrastination by a billion. Let me know if you're interested
in being one me the first users.

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Code

Code

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Publishing Features

We have some publishing features launching soon. I'm playing around with ways to publish your spanks in different ways. You'll hear more about it soon!

Today's experiment: publishing a particular spank on your site to look a bit like so:

On Being a Nomad

A couple days after declaring to my facebook friends that I was "home, taking a break from being a nomad," I saw this.



Boy is that true for me. I have been visiting cities for 5-10 days, working, spending time with friends, getting opinions and advice on Linkspank. I started to envision a life like that in 2001, shortly after getting my first cell phone, when I was living in Europe. Now I'm living the dream. As the article points out, it can be done without having a lot of money. But so many many things are more important than money... to me at least.

the very first video blog post ever.

What makes a good video blog?

I ask you, after admitting my ignorance. Click through the video to comment your wisdom and subscribe, and the world shall be enriched.



And now, some real art. Found at Diesel Cafe. I need to credit the artists but I don't know who they are.

June Goal and Funding

I had a meeting today with a classmate from Chicago GSB and we went over the Linkspank pitch and discussed funding stuff. The pitch still needs some improvement but I'm happy with how it's coming along. The business model is laid out a bit more clearly too and some of the questions from the Investor Roundtable a few weeks ago helped me. Facebook makes about $5 of revenue per user per year based on advertisements. With its current activity, Linkspank would make about $1.50 per user per year. So you set the baseline for revenue that way and make arguments at growing the $1.50 to $5 and beyond, while keeping costs lower than a Facebook say.

His insights were different insights though, and they were quite helpful. He strengthened my resolve to gun for 10,000 spankers ASAP (June is the goal). So returning from Chicago I'm quite refreshed to prosecute the many prongs of this growth plan!

a rounded element.

Those roundy buttons are a small new experiment

This is a pretty microscopic issue, but it's a little piece of shared thinking lovingly from me to you.

In setting up the UI of linkspank, I wanted something that was clear and non-trendy. To this end there has been little in the way of rounded elements, which are cute but maybe a bit cutesy too.

Now though I'm trying to highlight that the spank and more buttons are buttons, so we're playing with the rounded corners. The size and redness of them appears to be appropriate for the inbox, but a bit overwhelming perhaps on the browsing pages where there are lots of spanks. Generally they are helpful for the newbies, a bit outspoken for the experts.

Smack Talk, Big Talk

I've scheduled some smack talk to appear on the blog soon. Some of it will be directed against others, as proper smack talk is.

You? If you're our competitor, probably. More coming Soon

First, though, I will engage in some Big Talk.

Our Next Goal: 10,000 Spankers by June.

Daunting and difficult. We currently have 2,000 spankers. So we are looking to multiply by 5 or so, in three months.

Can we do it?

Your momma can sure do it.