Inside Linkspank

3 New Tools

2009-02-26T10:50:00.001-08:00

1. Get the Linkspank toolbar for Firefox at http://www.linkspank.com/toolbar. It is far and away the fastest way to share links on the web. You also have the option to view a news ticker and you can save pages with a click for later browsing.

You can send your spanks to Facebook and to Twitter at the same time as individual email addresses! Use these tools:

2. Add the facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/linkspank The app is not super pretty right now, and the page to import your friends takes about fifteen seconds. But once you have the app in, you can spank individual facebook friends, and post links to your facebook wall at the same time as you send them to email or facebook people. Plus you'll enjoy better features as I improve the facebook app.

3. Add your twitter account at http://www.linkspank.com/twitter You can see what spanky tweets look like on my Twitter profile: http://www.twitter.com/bitchell.

A few hours creating a tiny image

2009-02-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

Despite the spartan layout on Linkspank, some spankers are confused about where the menu is, or what they can or should do when they receive a spank from another (slightly savvier) user of the site.

a picture of the menu

I've tried various tactics to address this issue. For a while, the "spank" and other links were formatted as big red buttons. Some people liked that, but it started to drive me nuts with all the red on the page. I felt that red as a highlight color was being overused and abused.

Today I decided to try creating an image that would go at the left of the spank and call attention to the links. My first idea was to create a little icon with the hand in it. Some work led to this icon:

first stab at the icon (bigger size)

But when I shrunk the icon to 40 x 40 pixels, it looked crappy. I decided ultimately that it wasn't my lack of skill that was causing the problem, so much as the fact that the hand is a fairly intricate shape to be presented at such a small resolution.

After despairing briefly, I got the idea to use a caret-shaped image to call out the menu:

the spanky caret

This took me about two seconds to make, and I like it so far. All I wanted was something that says, "Yo! Look here. This is the spot," and the caret does a pretty good job of that. It also looks a little like a command prompt, or an arrow, both of which make sense in this context. It's also a use of red that seems to be in line with the usage of red on the rest of the page.

Finished product:

Drew Barrymore yech!

That is all. As for the Seal of Spankiness, I'm using it for the time being at the side of the page to promote the Linkspank Toolbar, which is getting high reviews so far.

I hope you have enjoyed this foray into random minutiae. Have a nice day.

The blackjack table and startup marketing/investing

2009-02-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

Gambling with More Money Means Better Chances of Winning

If you're a good blackjack player, you can win 55% of the time. You ought to be able to make some serious money in the long run, but you could still go into the casino and lose all your money. The reason is that wins and losses can come in streaks -- they don't have to, but they occur naturally in a long sequence of coin tosses (or blackjack plays). A streak of losses could take away all the money you're playing with, and in that case you have no money to play with and you have to go home.

One solution, as gamblers have observed, is to bring massive sums of money to the casino. It's still possible that a long losing streak could take you out. But the bigger your pile of money, the less likely you are to hit a big losing streak that takes you out. Then, if you're able to stay in the game, you can play on and your slight edge in winning (that 55%) can manifest in money.

Playing with more money increases your chances of winning.

(More technically, that 55% is a statistical average based on a large number of games. For that 55% to end up being the case, you have to be able to play a lot of games. The imaginary mathematician who's calculating that 55% is imagining that you have an infinite amount of money to play with.)

Investing with More Money Means Better Chances of Winning

Consider that this means for another type of gamble, the business venture. Playing a bit fast and loose with the analogy, we can think of the venture as something that has an unknown outcome, which won't necessarily work, but which has a good idea and "should" work given a good chance (that's the 55%), an opportunity to try different things, a little tweaking, a little luck, and so forth.

For the worthy but uncertain venture in question, investing MORE can make the venture more valuable (better chance that it won't run out of money and that it will succeed).

Corollary: size of investment affects valuation in a fashion that is not merely additive.

Corollary: from a risk and payoff perspective, the proper size of an investment isn't how much money the startup "needs" or how much the company is worth from a discounted cash flow perspective. The proper size of investment is the amount of money that will make sure that the startup isn't left at the blackjack table with no money.

Corollary: these considerations make one big round of investment much more valuable than a few smaller rounds, even if they add up to the same dollar amount.

Corollary: these financing questions don't view whether a startup runs out of money as a particularly good indicator of the quality of the idea or of the execution. Although naturally your likelihood of running out of money at the table depends on the quality of your edge (5% or whatever), it also depends on the number of hands you play and the size of the stakes of an individual hand relative to your total financing (and these factors more depend on your type of business, industry, etc).

Use this Software: OpenOffice and GIMP

2009-02-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

As of a week ago, I thought "Vista" and "open source" were incompatible words. But now I'm an experiment to use only open source. Here are a few results:

OpenOffice has been great over the last week. I actually like it better than Word. I've used it to edit large documents and formatting-heavy documents. After one crash upon installation, it has worked perfectly. I've edited documents created in Word, and saved documents in Word format, as well as pdf. As of now, I trust it both with important documents of my own editing and documents that I need other people to be able to open in Word. No need for Word anymore.

I just installed GIMP to replace my aging version of Photoshop, which I was afraid to install on Vista. I see Photoshop as an indispensible tool for any entrepreneur. So far, I like GIMP a lot. I've just been messing around. It's not a Photoshop clone, but as a Photoshop user I find it pretty easy to get around (given the background fact that Photoshop may be the hardest-to-figure-out piece of software I've ever touched).

As I argued, the best software isn't just free - it's also open source. Firefox is open source (good); Google Chrome is not (less good). Google Chrome is the Ralph Nader of browsers - don't let it mess up the election results.

Hours worked, telecommuting, and goals

2009-02-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

Why you (or anyone) shouldn't think about how many hours you work.

The more you think about hours, the less you think about results. Success hinges on a single-minded focus on results. Therefore, you shouldn't think about hours at all. (How's that for a syllogism.)

Corollary: telecommuting. Telecommuting is good for any organization. It involves thinking about hours less. That's good.

Corollary: goals. If you stop thinking about hours, you'll find out really fast if you have any goals. If managers suddenly panic because they don't know whether anyone is doing any work, then your organization has no goals. That's a reason to go to telecommuting / no hours immediately – you need goals in a hurry.

Google's product development mantra and the Tipping Point

2009-02-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about when and how to release and push out Linkspank's new toolbar / Firefox extension, which is really cool and quite well received by its small number of users so far. The question is “when and how to launch.”

For at least a few years, Google has advocated an approach to product development whereby you release your product at an early stage and then “iterate” - make improvements as users demand them and improve the process. Google has been voicing this mantra for a few years. This approach to designing a piece of software works best when you're building something simple and you can change it easily (the web is good for that). The philosophy is not too far off of the ideas espoused by 37Signals.

But also taken as a truism is what Malcolm Gladwell has to say in The Tipping Point. Small changes (say, in an Internet site) can make a big difference. Tipping-point thinking implies that your average cool website with a couple thousand users, like Linkspank, may be just a few crucial changes away from explosive growth.

Google's product philosophy and the tipping point meesage have something in common: tweaking. When you iteratively develop a product you have released, you're making pretty small changes. And in searching for the tipping point, you are trying to find the devilishly minor changes in your product that can take it from zero to sixty. You can think of iterative development as a way to search for the tipping point.

Here's a flipside, though. Part of the underlying message of the release-and-iterate idea is that people overestimate the risk of release. “If you get fairly close to the right product,” Google means, “your users will help you close the gap more efficiently than you would have done otherwise.” IF, that is, the customers know what they want; but as traditional marketing does a good job of showing, customers generally don't. And as the tipping point argues, it can be tough for anyone (designer or user) to identify that the small changes that are going to be crucial. That's in contradiction with Google's idea.

Moreover, the mere fact that small changes are critical according to the Tipping Point undermines one of Google's messages: that there is a low cost to release. Who are we kidding? Releasing a product always has a risk. Any potential user who turns away from your product may not turn back, so any time you to go them there is a risk.

It's easy for Google to proclaim iterate-and-release now that the company has a huge user base and a pervasive brand: they can easily tap into pre-zealous users, and if they alienate some users on some products, there are still billions of Google users out there for the following iterations.

The early days of Google – the development of search – was similar to release-and-iterate in some ways, and different in others. The founding duo was informal and agile when it came to making a product and trying it out. Nevertheless, the “releasing” they did in the early years was pretty cautious.

Release-and-iterate is not an answer in and of itself; you have to think about the risk of launching in terms of your resouces, and what you hope to find or achieve in your iteration (perhaps the tipping point).

Beware of mantras - Wittgenstein taught us that.

Anyway, the toolbar is coming soon and it's sweet!

The ultimate reason to use Firefox (and open source)

2009-02-03T07:25:00.000-08:00

Over the last few months I've felt a growing loyalty in my bosom for Firefox and other open source software - software which, in a miraculous display of goodwill and cooperation, is actually written by masses of volunteers rather than the staff of a company. But I couldn't figure out why I was so newly in love with open source. Yesterday I was trying out OpenOffice (a free version of Microsoft Office) and that made me think about it more: why am I so in love with OpenSource?

There are a lot of nice things about Firefox, OpenOffice, and other open sources products. They are free!; they are often safer to use, since the army of volunteers fixes bugs quickly; and they tend to be easier to modify and contribute to (as in the case of Firefox extensions).

But these reasons aren't the ultimate reason to use Firefox and open source products. The ultimate reason is that "normal" software products will usually either screw you or dump you at some point in your relationship. A company that makes money always has to reevaluate its strategy in terms of profitability. If Microsoft Word isn't profitable enough (not a problem at all at the moment), Microsoft needs to make it more expensive or discontinue it -- either screw or dump their customers.

Open source projects, will be truly loyal to you in a way that companies just won't be over the long run.

You might cite traditional economics: "Isn't Word worth just as much as Microsoft charges for it?" No, because the market for word processing isn't perfectly competitive (or very competitive at all, for that matter). Microsoft has created a situation where customers are "locked in." So you're not quite paying the exact value for Word; you're paying extra for the fact that Microsoft has got a corner on the market, taking action to edge other companies out in part, and partly just because the nature of a Word processing encourages (but doesn't require) that everyone use the same software, leading to a situation depleted of options.

You can think about it as a question of value creation vs. value capture, my previous post. Companies that need to be profitable need to capture value (that's the revenue part). As a result, they won't create value in situations where (1) the value can't be captured by anyone or (2) it's too difficult for them to defend the value they create. Each of these situations is a missed opportunity for technology users around the world to be happier and better off.

Open source projects, on the other hand, aren't so concerned with capturing value. They just create value. Many open source products are open for you to modify and redistribute! That allowance is about the most extreme manifestation you can get of an organization that wants to create value without worrying too much about how it can profit by its creation. It's made possible by the fact that individual contributors to these projects are intrinsically motivated, rather than being motivated by money. (They may be motivated by money in their life, but not in their contributions to these projects.)

In other words, by having much lower demands of the value they capture, open source projects create more value (for you).

Viewed through a value creation / value capture lens, open source projects are virtually guaranteed to be better to you in the long run. Why? The nature of technology development is that new technology depreciates over time. In essence, the "pie" of a particular market shrinks over the long term (just like the cost of technology). At that point, companies that need a piece of the pie are going to start being greedier about how you split up the pie, or else they will move on to another pie. All in all, open source providers are your better friend.

The main exception to my hypothesis about the superiority of open source is that, in the case of big projects, they can be a bit amateurish at first and hence you don't want to adopt them too early. Open source operating systems -- alternatives to Windows such as Linux and Unix -- remain fairly hard to use, despite having been around for a while. Nevertheless, history seems to indicate that one an open source project gets up to a professional, mass-market level of quality, it will stay there (and push the product to a higher level). A few years ago, I tried open source word processors and didn't think they were good enough. But now I'm optimistic. OpenOffice crashed the very first time I tried to open a document, but it's worked perfectly so far since then. I actually like it a bit better than Word, though frankly it's very similar in its features.

Firefox

OpenOffice

Value Creation vs. Value Capture in Technology

2009-02-02T20:57:00.001-08:00

In any business area where value is truly created (=technology) you gotta think about value creation vs. value capture. You write code, develop products, make a new chip or doohickey; you create value, but how much of the payoff can you secure?

Microsoft, Apple, and Nintendo have made so much money not because they have created the most value, but rather because they have created a lot of value AND managed (with amazing shrewdness relative to everyone else) to capture most of the bucks that that value can produce. Plenty of value creation (e.g., the average new, neat cell phone) is too easily imitated.

Doubts about Google's business model? They are such: Google continues to create tremendous value, but without capture (unlike the early and ongoing beautiful marriage of search and ads).

Facebook vs. LinkedIn. Facebook creates more value; it's cooler, does more, people love it more, it's just all around contributing to society more. But LinkedIn does provide value, and it captures that value better because it's an environment in which it's sensible to charge some users (and for them to pay) for premium services. You could say Facebook is the better company from the public's eye, but LinkedIn is the better business.

The Lure of Technology and Excuses about Blogging

2009-02-02T19:06:00.000-08:00

My Lenovo died over the weekend. It never worked perfectly; I had problems with the graphics card from purchase, and it performed consistently slower than it should have, despite my persistent efforts to remove bloatware and guard against spyware.

The Lenovo/IBM came from a company best known for its quality commodity products, but in my case it came with RAM, memory, and extra doohickeys that were state-of-the-art when I bought it a year and a half ago. By getting a product that way, I violated my previous mentor Larry's advice about buying "at the knee of the curve."

Larry was one of my mentors in 1999 when I took a year off from school and worked in a laboratory environment. I had never worked in a laboratory and I constantly did stuff to piss Larry off, mostly because I was motivated and looking for ways to be helpful in an environment that had no idea what to do with me (I thought this problem was particular to that lab, and then I thought it was particular to academia; now I understand it's normal for older people managing motivated youngsters - they know nothing, but they are more motivated and in some ways smarter).

Larry taught me a few excellent lessons. Probably the most important one was that he taught me computer programming. Not everyone would be impressed by my computer programming, but I know some stuff, and he got me off on the right foot. It has been said, "Good programmers code; great programmers reuse." Larry taught me that by giving me a bunch of his code to jump-start me in writing code to control a test apparatus in the laboratory. Without ever having taken a class, I learned coding in a way that was appropriate to me, akin to language immersion. I still have never taken a class in programming, and I still code everything by reuse. I might not be the greatest programmer ever, but I'm fast and the stuff works. (I just wish Larry had taught me css because Linkspank could use some style, despite Darkspank.)

The Larry lesson at hand was buying at the knee of the curve. We bought plenty of computers and equipment in our laboratory environment, and since it was a high-physics lab all of these prosaic decisions were made by physicists rather than procurement managers or engineers or business people. Larry explained that you were best off buying a computer or anything else at the "knee of the curve" and he drew a graph to explain it (like a good physicist). The cost of what you are getting rises gently in a line, but when you get to newer technology the cost suddenly rockets up. You want to buy the stuff that is just before where it rockets up - that's the knee of the curve.

It may be that the knee of the curve solves some sort of optimization for the value you are getting for your money. But viewed from a business lens as well as a physicist-economist lens, it makes sense to buy at the curve because the more expensive technology is "bleeding edge", and the people who are bleeding edge are not the developers of the technology (who are making the only profits they can make in their line of business, since the cheaper stuff ain't profitable), but consumers like you and me. We bleed because the stuff breaks.

Expensive technology is not better; it's worse, because it breaks. My Lenovo is an example. The Nokia N series is an example. All-in-one printers are lost in a no-man's land between commodities and luxury products.

In my opinion, if you are buying technology, you should buy the best thing in the arena of completely cheap stuff.

There are two exceptions: toys, and special needs. Here is where it gets complicated, because people tend to file computers under one or both of these areas. But I would suggest that life is much nicer and more fun if you can draw crisp lines around the toys and special needs, away from the stuff that you actually need to work. I use my iPod touch to work (I wrote about 10-15% of my novel on it) but it's a toy; if it breaks, I can do pretty much everything anyway on my Blackberry.

For this reason, if you are a gamer, maybe it's better to go for Xbox over WoW. Or have separate computers.

Actually Larry taught me that too: about having production configurations. You don't install anything on a computer that you're doing work on. It's the only way to avoid messing it up (rather, it's a necessary, but not sufficient step).

If you view the knee of the curve philosophy more broadly as pertaining to non-monetary expenditures, you could think of it as a mantra by which you can allocate how you spend your time. Spend your time on things where it's easy, and you get good returns. Don't work too hard on anything, and don't dabble in anything. Work on things a proper, middle amount until you don't have any time left.

I'm not sure what that means about blogging. It would imply that blogging just a tiny amount is a total waste, and that putting tons of effort in is a waste (no problem there, since there is no professionally written blog on the web). Maybe it's telling about how a venture is going: you put in your effort up to the knee of the curve, and either the venture is working or it's not. If it's not, maybe you should drop it rather than going up into the high-cost zone (sweating blood to get anywhere); either it fundamentally works or it doesn't.

Life should be full of toys and commodities; may the twain never meet.

Two features: Categories + DARKSPANK

2009-01-21T07:39:00.001-08:00

1. Homepage Categories.
You can change your default homepage categories. Want gossip staring
you in the face when you open linkspank? Voila.
http://www.linkspank.com/index.php?page=edithome

2. Themes
We are testing just one site theme - Darkspank. More are to follow.
http://www.linkspank.com/index.php?page=editskin

Hopefully you enjoy them. If not, keep it to yourself. (Just
kidding; feedback desired.)

On using Twitter / what I'm doing

2009-01-21T06:47:00.001-08:00

Twitter is best designed for providing a firehose of data about what
you're doing and thinking. That's what it's built to do with it's
short format and flexible alert system, and (unlike facebook) it's not
built to do anything else.

Why would anyone want to know what I'm doing and thinking eight times
a day? I have no idea. The main person who would is my mom, and she's
not on Twitter. But come to think of it, there are several people who
I'd like blow-by-blow accounts from.

You can "follow" someone without getting text messages about them on
Twitter, but I think this option is overused too. The main question is
whether you want to step up to the firehose at all.

Anyway, if you're interested in my firehose (!), you can find it under
bitchell on Twitter. If not: I understand.

--
Sent from my mobile device

There is no such thing as a universal economic downturn.

2009-01-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

There is no such thing as a universal economic downturn.
Strategy hinges on tradeoffs. The misfortune of one company, industry, region, or point in space-time is the opportunity of another. On this I think of Porter and Blue Ocean Strategy. Even if the overall market cap out there falls, the potential for any individual or company to profit is constant.

An example:

Recession? Not for These Businesses

For the VERY lastest in news, articles, videos, you can search for recession on Linkspank.

20 second analysis: Apple after Steve Jobs

2009-01-15T07:34:00.001-08:00

There's been a lot of non-analysis about speculation about the fate of Apple after Steve Jobs, who's taken six months leave from Apple and whose return is speculative.

Say he did depart in June 2009, rather than return. Here's my quick analysis, broken into two parts:

You could sum up Apple's business strategy as innovation + ecosystem.

The innovation that Jobs has personally brought to the company and directed is probably the hardest thing to replace. And repeated, profitable innovation has proved impossible for most companies.

Apple's strategy doesn't require constant innovation (like a chip designer or a Nokia or Motorola), so much as the occasional disruptive innovation (Mac/iPod/iPhone), because the company does a good job of selling their products in a protected environment in which they get to capture all the value (iTunes and the whole Mac "ecosystem"). Even without another major innovation, they are good for another several years (and even if Jobs stuck around, it would be tough to expect another major innovation). You should doubt that another major innovation is going to come even WITH Jobs, because they are so hard to come by. So the situation doesn't change in his absence.

As for the ecosystem, the whole point of the ecosystem is that it tends to protect itself (with care and maintenance of the brand and partnerships); we should expect any other competent CEO to run with it correctly.

The corporate culture of Apple is much discussed. But since I'm discounting Apple's ability to sustain innovation post-Jobs, it doesn't matter whether the culture would support further innovation (though there good reasons to think it wouldn't). On the other hand, squeezing money of the ecosystem is something that the culture is currently build for.

You can search for the newest stuff about Apple on Linkspank.

Half-Formed Thought of the Day: Compensation by Stocks

2008-12-11T14:24:00.001-08:00

Executives are compensated in part with stocks in their own companies, and expected not to sell the stocks. This compensation scheme makes sense insofar as executives become personally invested in the success of their companies, and to the extent that their compensation (i.e., the value of the stock) is linked to their performance (which makes the value of the stock go up).

This form of compensation, common-sense though it may be, runs against another piece of common sense about stocks: the older you get, the less you should hold in stocks, and the more you should hold in cash or bonds. Stocks are volatile in the short-term, but have the biggest gains in the long-term. They are the ideal investment for young people, but the older you get (and the closer you are to needing to liquidate your investments), the more you should move your savings in stocks into bond or cash form. But executives are usually old. Many a CEO is 50, 60, or 70, and is employed in what may be his last job of his career. He should be moving his investments into bonds, but the majority of his compensation he is making at that time (which is also a great portion of his lifetime earnings) may come in the form of stocks that he is expected not to liquidate.

Even if the performance of a company were purely attributable to the performance of its executives (which is hardly true), compensating in large part by stocks (or otherwise forcing executives to hold them) can create false incentives. First, in the case of older executives, the volatility of stocks is all the more present; this actually dilutes the value of the stock - CEOs won't consider the stock as valuable, and hence (for example) they will generally seek (and obtain) more compensation. As with any inefficiency, it's a loss for both sides.

Secondly, executives whose main wealth is in the form of stock could be expected to be pressured, by the volatile nature of their own savings, to act rashly to protect the market value of their companies in the short-term, rather than building sustained growth. The short horizon of the stock market is already a problem in motivating executives so this effect would be most unwelcome!

Pay-for-performance is still ideal in my opinion - but maybe more of the delayed and/or conditional compensation should take the form of cash.

Upcoming: Chicago, Philly, New York

2008-12-05T18:51:00.001-08:00

I'll be in Chicago in late December and then Philly. Then I'll be in
NYC twice briefly in January. If you're going to be around drop me a
line...

(a pretty prosaic way to break my blogging silence but I do have some
updates coming.)

"THE Failure of free markets" = complete nonsense

2008-09-23T19:05:00.001-07:00

Asking whether the current market crisis proves THE failure of free
markets is akin to asking whether the fall of ancient Greece proved
THE failure of democracy. (It didn't; there have been some decent
democracies since then.)

The error stems from a poorly phrased question. At most, this crisis
proves one failure of free markets, or maybe the complete failure of
one free market. Not all free markets are the same, just like all
democracies aren't. After all, our democracy doesn't decide whether
to go to war by popular vote, as the first democracy did :-).

Who knows anything, anyway

2008-09-23T15:14:00.001-07:00

I have a few longer posts in draft form on the way, including one on
the recent events in the market.

What stirkes me most about the recent market turmoil is the degree to
which it was not foreseen and is still not understood. It is a simple
enough fact, but still pretty staggering. A decade that has now had a
few major crises on American soil (9/11, Katrina, this) that caught us
off guard would hint that our ignorance will be a theme of the 21st
century.

Get a preview of the Linkspank Firefox extension

2008-09-21T17:03:00.001-07:00

This week the Linkspank Firefox extension will be available for
testing. Here's what you should know:

1. If you're not using Firefox, you should. It is the best way to
access the web in terms of speed, security, and sweet features.

2. The Linkspank extension is a one-click installation that will
change your life. It will help you find articles and videos you would
have missed, save and share them faster than you thought possible.

3. The extension is private and won't break your Firefox. Our protoype
of the extension was tested for months so this will be safe.

4. It works well even for uncluttered browsers. The extension adds a
toolbar to your Firefox window, but you can hide it and still use the
functionality of the extension using shortcut keys.

If you'd like to be among the first to try it, contact me at
www.linkspank.com/contact. All are welcome (there is no level
requirement).

Creating toolbar to help you if you're a tool

2008-09-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

I have a couple big posts to do. One to answer the Faq "how is Linkspank doing," another to answer the Faq "how are you doing," and the third to answer the Faq, "why did you invite me to facebook?"

For now I'll just note that today I worked on the new version of the linkspank toolbar for Firefox. The previous toolbar was well received by testers and a version for the latest edition of Firefox has been requested. It will be useful even to people (like me!) who prize screen space and are wary of anything that might take up that space.

And if you don't know what a toolbar is, well this toolbar will be cool enough for you to learn. But in short summary, it will provide you with the magic of Linkspank wherever you go on the web, and will allow you to save and share web pages with one click. And, if you're not a Firefox user, you should be, because despite other options it's still the best way to browse the web.

If you're a firefox user and you want to experience the toolbar glory early, just let me know.

PS the Cowboys suck.

Building the New Google

2008-09-11T13:39:00.001-07:00

Soon I will write about the Facebook invitation bonanza that you may have noticed, but today I'll just drop a note about a current project.

Linkspank Version 2, coming in a couple weeks, will feature a "New Google." How's that for a bold promise? It's called the "New Google" for two reasons. First, it's not Google, so if it's any form of a Google it's a new Google. But there is a second and better reason to call it a Google, which is that it is going to be a Google (search engine) for "new" stuff.

We are testing the search engine and it's already totally sweet. It does something that is really obvious and needed, but for some reason no one is providing it right now. Hence I'm predicting you'll be all over it. To prove me right or wrong, stay tuned to this blog. And get prepared to pump it up to your friends and stalkers when it comes out.

In the meantime... see you on Facebook :-).

Check out my Facebook profile

2008-09-09T19:48:00.001-07:00

facebook

Andrew Mitchell has:

572 friends
11 photos
73 notes
72 wall posts
31 groups

Check out my Facebook profile

Hi Inside,

I set up a Facebook profile where I can post my pictures, videos and events and I want to add you as a friend so you can see it. First, you need to join Facebook! Once you join, you can also create your own profile.

Thanks,
Andrew

Here's the link:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=657320649&k=YZD2Y4SXW35M5FMAP1V4UP&r&v=2

This e-mail may contain promotional materials. If you do not wish to receive future commercial mailings from Facebook, please opt out. Facebook's offices are located at 156 University Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94301.

oops! Linkspank is down.

2008-09-08T22:26:00.001-07:00

Should be back online in the next 2-5 hours.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Coming this Week: Winner of the iPhone/ iPod Touch

2008-09-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

The winner of the contest for the iPhone or iPod Touch has been determined and will be announced this week. The result was delayed a bit massively by my staycation + vacation in August but I'll work on getting the Appledom into the hands of the new Spankmaster as quickly as possible.

Personally, my Blackberry Curve + iPod Touch combo has been working pretty well for me. The Curve has actually given me a couple little problems (trouble with my Blackberry account; some crashing as well, due possibly I think to my Google talk application on it) but I'm retaining hope that it will be the perfect device with an improvement or two on my part.

I will affirm strongly that, if you're often in the presence of wi-fi, the iPod Touch is a sweet sweet thing to have, especially if you don't have iPhone. I have some beefs with iTunes and Apple, but the iPod Touch is SO great at lots of stuff (as is the iPhone!). If you haven't checked out Pandora for the iPhone or Touch, you really oughta do that. A little investment in Pandora goes a long way and I will heap praise on Pandora in an upcoming post.

All our great problems are unsolved

2008-09-05T16:48:00.001-07:00

The world around us tries to convince us that the great problems have
been solved, that the Internet or your field of science or business is
coming to a state of maturity. People state and imply that there isn't
much more to be done...or that what's left to be done is merely the
extension of what we've already achieved (e.g., bringing the web to
mobile devices).

Don't fall for this idea. It's wrong. Thomas Kuhn, the coiner of
"paradigm shift", eloquently explains to us just how difficult it is
to think outside the narrow tracks of cotemporary research and
development.

For Internet, the classic mantra is that search is "done". Maybe it
is, in a way. But people said that pre-Google and I can think of some
big shortcomings with what the Google homepage gives us, brilliant
though it is.

For one thing, searching only works if you can state what you are
looking for. Sometimes you don't know how to state it, and sometimes
it just can't be stated easily (e.g., when you're browsing).

Linkspank Version 2 will present more than one new twist on searching
and browsing. So I'm psyched about that.

So there you have it: a little plug to stay thirsty for version 2, and
a little reminder about pushing the edge of the paradigms.

Chrome (by Google) is the Usain Bolt of Browsers

2008-09-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

With Chrome, you can find cool crap on Linkspank faster than ever before

When I heard about Google Chrome coming out as an alternative to browsing the web with Firefox or Internet Explorer (among others), I wasn't too interested at first. I just saw the browser's appearance as part of the big G's strategy to provide everything online that you are formerly used to installing on your computer (e.g., Microsoft Office).

But I heard that Chrome was really fast, so I downloaded it. BY GOD this browser is fast. It's also nice to see that Linkspank works well in it. I'm personally quite excited.

From a Linkspank perspective, Chrome underscores the mighty power of Google. I often look at Linkspank's so-called competitors and I'm stunned by just how little they achieve. What have all those big teams doing for all these years (quite a few years, for some of them)? Google, on the other hand, can come in and change the game quickly. For Linkspank, it means that we have to use our smallness as an advantage, which is an ongoing consideration in the strategy.

The Punchcard Method

2008-09-02T06:54:00.001-07:00

When the subject of exercise comes up in conversation, I usually share my love for what I call the "punchcard method."

In the work environment, "punching the timecard" has become a synonym for doing little more than showing up. But I've found that approach to be helpful for staying in shape.

Here are my rules for myself: it doesn't matter how hard I exercise, how long I exercise, or what I do. The only rule is that I try to do *something* on a regular basis. Sometimes it's just a few pushups or a headstand or a ten-minute job.

This method has worked well for me for years. I wouldn't dare attribute all my luck at exercise to this method (I think in fitness as elsewhere people greatly underweight the importance of the cards they are dealt). But it's worked well enough that I ask myself if I can copy the success elsewhere.

Maybe the method is most appropriate for cases in which you have a plan, or at least a shred of a plan. Punching the card on a doomed startup idea probably won't go anywhere. On the other hand, punching the card on that basic idea or that area of passion may get somewhere eventually. Hmm...now it sounds like nothing more than a tale of persistance. Maybe it boils down to the division between planning and execution.

FIN.

Darkspank Preview

2008-09-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a flavor of Darkspank, one of the upcoming skins for Linkspank:

As mentioned earlier, there will be other skins too, for those of us who don't want a dark, brooding spank experience.

Linkspank TV continues

2008-08-31T09:38:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since the last episode of Linkspank TV. After
piloting slightly different concepts, we got feedback that people
liked it, but it didn't need to be so "produced" and it would be
better if it happened more.

So today we're embarking on a new Linkspank TV format: more casual,
more often. Today I'll be shooting with Bice so stay tuned.

Designing skins

2008-08-29T17:32:00.001-07:00

One feature coming in version 2 of linkspank is the ability to earn
different "skins" (including color schemes and background images).
You'll get a wider choice of skins as your Level increases through
diligent spanking of your email and Facebook contacts.

In the future I'd like to have skins by graphic designers; maybe there
will be a contest for skin design. But to start things off I'm doing
a couple myself.

1) Darkspank, with a black background and light text. That one is about done.

2) Macspank, which will appear more like the Apple computer
environment. Not sure if I can pull this off.

3) Babespank. Your screen is adorned with babes.

4) Baconspank. Featuring bacon graphics.

5) Zen temple. I'm envisioning a Japanese Buddhist temple in a
mountain forest; may be difficult for me.

6) The cubicle. Your screen resembles a cubicle setting.

Some or all of them may have dynamic components. For example, the
temple may change lighting from morning to night; the cubicle may get
new post-it's throughout the day.

Look for it in Version 2. If you have skin requests fire away. If
you're interested in designing skins just holler and/or stay tuned.

Feature requests welcome for Version 2

2008-08-28T09:55:00.001-07:00

Linkspank Version 2 is in production. It will feature:

1) new appearance and navigation, with "skins"
2) a fuller set of Google tools
3) a new toolbar for Firefox 3
4) a search function which you can find NO WHERE ELSE and which is HUGELY SEXY
5) a new way of browsing and getting content based on what you like.

If you have suggestions or requests, smack that "contact me" link at the right.

Spreading yourself thin

2008-08-27T20:16:00.001-07:00

Business school convinced me that "strategy" means a lot more than
"having a plan." It is making decisions about trade-offs. You can't
attack all parts of the chess board or Risk board at the same time.
Your product can't be everything to everyone. You can't specialize in
everything.

Nevertheless, I think people apply strategy too strongly in their
personal lives. They think that their interests and pursuits should be
obviously consistent with each other.

But in personal life, strategy is a mere vehicle for the blood and
fuel of what we do: our passion, wherever it comes from. Strategy is
your tack on a sailboat, and passion is the wind. The wind is the
indispensible part.

This aphoristic stuff has been in my head because I've been writing a
book this summer. I'm about half done. I don't think any VC would have
counseled me to write a sci-fi book as a constructive move for
Linkspank. I think it has been good for a periodic stoking of my
passion about my startup, though. And fun.

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

Some Smack Talk

2008-08-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

This fall, Linkspank will do for web browsing what Pandora has done for music.

Minus the digital-rights issues.

Web Navigation

2008-08-26T11:22:00.001-07:00

Navigation: the artful balance between guiding a user's web experience and providing a set of alternatives.

If you are short on guidance, your user gets confused, or aborts the experience early due to lack of interest.

Even when you guide users, if you provide too many alternatives, they are also more likely to stray off the path you're guiding them down.

If you are short on alternatives, the user's experience is brittle. It ends whenever they refuse to follow your guidance or face some difficulty in doing so.

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

The REAL Story Behind the "New Facebook"

2008-08-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

If facebook sent you an announcement indicating that Applications were being deleted from the site, how would you feel?

Possibly, a mix of relief, indignation, and apprehension. Relief that your facebook experience wasn't going to be so chaotic anymore. Indignation that the efforts of all the little people out there to build apps were suddenly being shut down. And apprehension that, with apps gone, you might be missing out on something great.... something great that you could have used or played with if apps had been around.

Well, prepare to unleash those feelings. I am sorry to report that the "new facebook" has been introduced primarily to brush Applications under the carpet. Sure enough, applications are still a part of facebook. But they are a hidden part, one that facebook makes you work extra hard to find. And they are harder than ever to receive: all the work you do sending hatching eggs to your friends goes quite unnoticed now.

Consider this: what is so "new" about the new facebook? Here are some of the differences you may have noticed:

+ Some of the stuff that was on the left was moved to the right, and vice versa;
+ Some borders and shadings have been removed or added;
+ Stuff has been moved into "tabs"

These changes, especially the last one, make the site a lot "cleaner." Basically, a lot of junk that you were looking at before (i.e., applications) is back in the invisible tabs now. You click on them sometimes. Sometimes. Kinda like how you click on advertising sometimes :-).

What's in the front tab? It looks kinda like facebook used to look... before the whole applications thing got started.

There are three main ways to interact with facebook applications: through your own mini-feed; on the profile pages of other people; and via emails that you receive. The latter method of communication is restricted almost to the point of making all of the apps worthless. Now, the former two methods have also been hobbled.

There you have it. May the relief, indignation, and apprehension commence. Personally, I feel mostly relief. I liked a lot of the facebook apps, but the quality is "inconsistent" and it's part of a grand strategy of trying to be everything to everyone -- which, as it turns out, is the exact definition of not having a strategy. Of course, now that the apps have been shuffled away, it looks like maybe facebook did have a strategy: the apps were helpful, for a while. If you believe that, you may want to move your "indignation" slider a bit to the right. But maybe it would be wrong to credit them with that idea, since technology companies tend to be short on foresight. And now we are back to the basics of facebook, and the basics are a beautiful thing.

5 Greatest Technology Failures of the Last Year

2008-08-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

Here are the five greatest personal technology failures that I have experienced in the last year.

5. Google Calendar. I'm still using Google Calendar and I will continue to use it. But I put a text message reminder in the calendar to move my car, the reminder was not delivered to my phone on one occasion, and my car was towed. The text message alerts have worked well otherwise, but that was a big failure. I experienced other Google Calendar issues in the last year. I tried to manage multiple calendars and load public calendars, but it didn't always work so well. I evangelized Google Calendar to a friend to manage and publish a public calendar on her website using a widget, but the widget didn't always update properly and she couldn't change the light blue color inside it. Bummer.

Solution: I still use Google Calendar. It's a lightweight app, it has treated me well most of the time, and I know it's getting some investment and improvement.

4. HP All in One Printer. I love being able to print stuff, and especially to make copies and scan items, in the comfort of my home office. Hence I was extra sad when my HP Printer jammed up and I couldn't fix it. My attempts to fix it were half-hearted because I already hated the HP software on my computer. I wish the whole thing had worked better. Not that the case has been any different for the last ten years or so. Boo.

Solution: I don't have a printer any more.

3. Microsoft Word. Word 3.1, if I am remembering the version correctly, was the first piece of software that I fell in love with. It was fast, simple, and reliable. Microsoft Office 2007 is like a celebration of everything terrible that a piece of software can be. It's slow. It is fascist about a new file format with no obvious benefits to the format. And the menus make no sense. In an attempt to make menus based on pictures, the creators of the software have moved away from the tried-and-true fact of human psychology that we think in terms of nested lists.

Solution: use Google Docs, which has been working awesomely for me for a few months now. For now, it still seems to be necessary to have Word. But I don't use it much.

2. Nokia N95. I really liked this phone, and I've always been happy with Nokia. And maybe I pushed the envelope by buying an unlocked version before it was really ready here. Also, the phone did some great things for me. It gave me a mobile web browsing, good email connectivity, map usage, and a hulking 5 megapixel camera AND videocamera. But the software just really really sucked. It crashed and it was super slow. The camera was embarrassingly slow, for all the megapixels. It was something of a relief when it died.

Maybe the phone is better for some people. Maybe there are sweet phones in the N Series. But after this experience I realized that the primary criterion of a phone is reliability. So I got slightly reduced functionality, but maximum reliability, with a Blackberry. As a bonus, I've found that my Curve plays really well with Google Apps, which are the backbone of my productivity technology. Then I have an iPod Touch for bonus productivity and bonus play.

Solution: Now I'm using a Blackberry Curve and an iPod Touch.

1. Norton Anti-Virus by Symantec. For months, I was trying to figure out what was freezing up my computer and slowing it down. I lost a ton of productivity. Turned out the problem was due to Norton Anti-Virus. Norton, kiss my butt.

Solution: Now I'm using AVG Free. My speedy computer is speedy again. My computer works better and is faster now even when AVG is in the middle of a scan of my hard drive. Plus, as a nice bonus, AVG is free.

Vacations

2008-08-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation. It's the first time that I've been 100% certain that
I've been on vacation in almost two years. I have a bizarre schedule
with lots of free time, but the week I'm in the middle of is the first
time in a while that I've set out to myself not to work. It's not so
much as a personal promise as a personal allowance.

A friend of mine recently had to fight his boss far in advance to get
a two-day vacation, and he was required to bring his work cell phone
and his work computer and be available during those two days. We had
an interesting chat about vacations. I posited that a vacation of
fewer than 7 days is worthless; a vacation of two lengths minimum is
necessary in order actually to relax and clear your mind; but a
vacation of longer than two weeks is dangerous, because you may not
return to work, unless you really like it. (Maybe the test of whether
you like your job is whether you can return to it after a vacation of
3-4 weeks. Management idea: counter the conventional wisdom of
encouraging your staff to take vacation in drips and drabs and instead
send them off on 3 week vacations.)

Reasons to go on vacation (each reason creates a different goal for
your vacation or type of vacation). They are in order of increasing
level of ambition for a vacation:
+ work in a relaxed environment
+ catch up on sleep
+ do anything but your job
+ spend time with people you love
+ have new experiences
+ have lots of fun
+ exist in a mental state that is free from work
+ purge your body and soul
+ achieve some form of enlightenment that is impossible in your daily life

I'm confused by people who appear to think that it's cool to be too
busy to go on vacation. It's certainly good to be vital to your
organization, but if you have authority you can set vacation time for
yourself; if you have competence you can set up the ship to run in
your absence; and if you are wise then wouldn't you want to spend some
time relaxing, thinking, getting perspective? Bill Gates and his
erstwhile trips into the woods are probably the best example of the
latter point.

The main reason I've gone so long without a vacation to date is that
I've been motivated not to go on vacation - I've kept working. But
this summer I ran out of gas on Linkspank and needed a vacation, and
strategically speaking it has been a sensible breaking point. (New
things coming in September, including an update on the site.)

I think vacations are good for Planning. Sometimes I think of humans
as having two work modes, Planning and Executing. Executing is like
jogging or walking - it's semi-involuntary. The more voluntary action
is required of jogging or walking, the more exhausting it becomes, to
a point of quickly becoming unfeasible. Such with execution: the
planning has to be laid out in advance. Good for vacations, when
you're relaxed, you can think, and you are reclining. :-)

Representativeness Bias in the Tech Industry

2008-06-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

In business school Dick Thaler taught us about the representativeness bias, which could be crudely stated as the bias of over-weighting everything you're familiar with when making judgments, estimates and guesses about stuff. Dr. Thaler convinced me in class that we all fall prey to this bias far more often and with a greater deepness of error than we imagine, even after the bias has been explained to us.

Dick Thaler taught us about representativeness bias

For people in the tech industry, the representativeness bias can lead to (1) an over-estimation of the penetration of a product or service, either in awareness or usage, and, on the flip side, (2) an under-estimation of potential market sizes. As someone in the tech industry, you are a techie and you know lots of techies. Hence when all the techies you know start using a website, say Twitter, you overestimate how much people use Twitter or even know about Twitter. On the flip side, you underestimate how much Twitter has at stake to win by capturing the uncaptured market, or how badly some other service could thrash Twitter by grabbing the uncaptured market.

less of a big deal than people say
(though I wish them luck)

To stick with Twitter for a moment: how many people use Twitter? About a million. If they were all in America (which they aren't), they would number 1 American out of every 300. Hey, that doesn't sound like very much! How much of the remaining 299 out of 300 Americans do you think have heard of Twitter? Hint: *much* less than half! In other words, no one knows about this service, given that it's supposed to be something that any old person with a phone and friends can enjoy. Now, I like Twitter. But this is a service that is supposed to be as neat and as of general interest, as, say Facebook, which has 80 million users. If you needlessly chop a huge portion off that number to be "conservative," you have a potential market for a Twitter-like service of 50 million people. So, in user accounts, Twitter has penetrated 2% of its potential market. Basically, it's sucking big time. You'd be inclined to ask yourself if it's designed wrong, marketed wrong, or environmental factors are against it. Some conclusions: (1) Twitter is overhyped; (2) the idea of trying to build a better Twitter is undervalued. Now I don't mean to pick on Twitter exclusively. It's true for any site you like, to varying degrees. You can even say it about Facebook. Facebook's membership -- again even if you inflate it by counting everyone as an American -- compromises about a quarter of the country. That's a heck of a lot of people. But it's also outnumbered 3 to 1 by the non-Facebook users. For a site whose goal (according to me) is to be entertaining enough to compete with sitting around and watching television, it's a massive but still quite incomplete advance.

With a relentless focus on the mass market, Jobs avoids the representativeness bias of techiedom and can think big, score big

A great example to the contrary is the iPhone. As you may recall, Steve Jobs made some pretty bold sales forecasts for the iPhone before it was launched. If iPhone had been viewed in terms of the "smartphone" market, Jobs would have seemed crazy. But he was thinking correctly. You could say that the smartphone market was like Twitter - cool, but nowhere near the size it was supposed to be. He wanted to go for the real market, which was more of a Facebook type size (to continue the analogy). Of course, don't go saying that "everyone" knows about the iPhone now! ;-)

This logic inspired my foray into Linkspank. A tech insider may think of the competitive arena for link sharing, social news, or whatever you want to call it, as saturated. But the reality is quite the opposite. One of the biggest sites in this area - Digg - has only a few million users. Compared to the size of the market -- for really any person you likes YouTube, reads news on the web, or gets or receives email forwards is a potential user of such a site -- Digg is a little sniveling baby.

It IS true that the small minority of people who use Twitter, for example, may be different from the other 97-99% of Americans in some meaningful way... but I'll leave that point alone at this time.

Here's another, slightly more fun example. You know those "viral videos" on YouTube and elsewhere that "everyone" has seen? The all-time most viewed video on YouTube, the Evolution of Dance:

It has been viewed about 90 million times, which is say about 90 million people. By comparison, an estimated 140 million people view some part of the Super Bowl each year. So, while it's impressive, it still falls a bit behind the Superbowl Halftime Show (estimating, since that's not what the previous figure refers to). And that is the number 1 video - the number of views drops off VERY quickly as we go down the list. Still in the top ten is the "laughing baby video, which has a mere 50 million views:

It's pretty funny, and a lot of people have watched it, but unless you live on a special techie-only planet, you know more people who HAVEN'T seen this video than you know who HAVE seen it. Fewer than 1 in 6 Americans has seen it (once again, with my grotesque the-world-is-America math).

People like to talk about the magic of a technology that has enabled 50 million people (if views = people) to watch something filmed casually in someone's kitchen. And it is magical, I agree. But looking at the numbers closely turns the viral video concept a little bit on its head. Our popular notion is that something catches fire on the web and then "everyone" sees it. But the reality is that sharing is still rather inefficient, and it's more right in many respects to think that "no one has seen anything." :-)

Linkspank addresses this problem in a few ways: it lets you share more videos and links with your friends, without inconveniencing them (since they can manage their Inbox and email settings). You can also see which of your friends have already received a spank. So rather than being a part of the problem, be a part of the solution (haha): join the spank and spank this page to your friends, so they can read this nifty article... and catch up on the Evolution of Dance and the Laughing Baby.

facebook's iPhone app is OKAY

2008-05-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

For the latest couple days my iPod Touch has been grafted onto my body, in my brain, forming a Voltron-like monster who constantly browses the web and does pretty much anything you can do on the iPod Touch.

You call that a knife?

The result will be an iPhone app that rivals the best ones out there. Stay tuned, and practicing tapping things to build your endurance.

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

2008-04-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

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:

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.
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

2008-04-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-27T12:25:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-26T19:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-18T18:16:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-18T15:58:00.001-07:00

Code

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

Publishing Features

2008-04-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-04-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-06T21:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-04-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

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.

The Ad Model I Want: More like Gmail, Less like AdSense

2008-03-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Linkspank has no ads on the site, but if and when we ever put any on there, this is what I want.

NOT: Traditional AdSense style

Ads based on content of entire page
Ads driven heavily by words in URL and page title
Ads load pretty much only on page load

WHAT I WANT: Ads behaving like Gmail Ads

Ads load specific to a portion of a page (e.g., a Gmail message)
New ads load when a new page loads (e.g., a Gmail message)
Ads don't care so much about the URL or header.

This would be useful in particular for the Linkspank Inbox, where you pop up messages of interest to you. If you have tips on the subject, let me know! :-)

We have a really awesome feature coming.

2008-03-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

An update of the linkspank system is upcoming soon. There are some cosmetic changes and some boring or moderately interesting features.

I can't wait for our "new feature" to be fully operational

But also coming down the pike is a really cool, really super new feature. It doesn't really have any precedent so we'll have to see if the Procrasti-Nation of Spankers digs it or not (and it may take some tweaking). But I can't wait to try it out!

Top Ten Reasons to Go to the Spank Party on Thursday

2008-03-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

10. It’s the best thing going on that night in the Boston area. Editor’s pick on Going.com and Yelp.com.

9. Great support for Linkspank.

8. This is a one time deal.

7. Drink tickets.

6. Schwag. Some real nice freebies.

5. Sweet location.

4. There are spank girls.

3. There is a Spanking booth.

2. You can play a wii on a projector screen.

1. You can take the Wii home.

For all the full benefits, rsvp at www.linkspank.com/party

Data and Reflections on the last monthly newsletter

2008-03-06T18:02:00.000-08:00

Recently I listed Constant Contact as a top tool for entrepreneurs. Last week I used it to send February's edition of The Monthly Spank: Surf your Way to Hawaii by Skilled Procrastination (where, you'll see on the link, it's also now archived).

We recently sent this amazingly sexy newsletter.

In this post I'll share some of my first experience and divulge data specific to Linkspank with a boldness that pretty much no one else in the Universe has.

Here's how the newsletter did:

That is, our newsletter was opened by about a sixth of recipients, and about a sixth of them clicked on something in the newsletter; so our open rate was 16% and our CTR (click through rate) was 18%. Anecdotally someone told me that an open rate of 16% was pretty good /average, and there are some old numbers claiming that 8% is an average CTR, which would make our CTR pretty good. Of course, we shouldn't be TOO impressed by that, because our Monthly Spank goes to registered spankers - people who have specifically opted in to Linkspank. So really I think we should be shooting for a much higher open rate and CTR rate.

Or should we? Consider the call to action of the email: Surf your Way to Hawaii by Skilled Procrastination. As indicated by this title, the primary message of the newsletter was about the contest. Realistically, the percentage of spankers who are going to consider gunning for Hawaii will be easily less than 50%, almost certainly less than 30%. So our open rate of 16% maybe is more accurately considered an open rate of 50% or so within our target segment (the one third of spankers who might consider gunning for Hawaii), which would be an insanely high open rate.

The CTR is less ambiguous. People have opened the email because they have some basic interest in the subject. From there, the question is whether we entice them to click. When you put it that way, I feel that the CTR is the main area for improvement in this case: surely we can get more than 1 in 5 who open the email to at least click on something! ...when, in fact, the Monthly Spank was asking much more of them - namely, to complete the checklist, spank on the email, and so on.

So the CTR was the main failure. From here, I dive into more speculative terrain. I think we could have improved in the following ways:

Guide the experience more. There were a lot of links in the Monthly Spank, while the call to action was specific and guided. Essentially we were making it easy for people to get lost. Only 27% of those clicking through "started" with the link we gave them to start with - the Orientation Page. Which invites the question, Why did we even bother providing the other links? We probably shouldn't have.

Rather than providing three steps here, next time I'll try providing one link,
which guides the experience from there

Of course, this takes guts-- sending an email with basically one link. But I think the more you think about it, the more you will agree that it's the right way to go. When people right emails with a bunch of links, I think they are either being chicken about the call to action, or maybe there is no call to action and they are just being informational (in which case a newspaper-like profusion of links makes sense). (I would question whether anyone using Constant Contact is really ever doing the latter goal but whatever.)

People are whipping through their inbox. They give any newsletter they open a brief moment, usually with the intention *not* to click anything but just to give it a glimpse. Hence you want a clear, obvious, seductive link to lead them away from their inbox, into a magical experience where you induce them to get spanky.

In retrospect, the call to action was mixed, which couldn't have helped the cause. Was the call to action really "spread the word about Linkspank" or was it "win the contest"? Surely the ideas are related, but we needed some better Pyramid Principle thinking here with an idea at the top. To make things worse, the call to action that was first in the list (completing orientation / spreading the word) was opposite that of the title (win the contest).

Were I to do it again, I would have focused on winning the contest. I would have cut the intro section, and shaped it as supporting text that explained that your procrastination, Hawaii-winning efforts not only further your sunbathing chances, but also support the startup, enrich the community, and spread the word to friends who will forever be in your debt and love you.

We'll see if we get those numbers up in future months!! As for you - winning a Hawaii trip all starts at the Orientation Page, which will educate you and win you points. :-)

Top 10 Tools for Entrepreneurs

2008-02-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

Based on my Linkspank and prior experience, these are my top 10 tools that I would recommend to another entrepreneur without knowing anything about his or her business.

Here’s the countdown:

Tool #10: An all-in-one printer. Mine is an HP. The need for this is a vestige of the old fashioned world. But hey, you need to print stuff, fax stuff, and SCAN stuff. Scanning stuff is awesome. And it’s a great substitute for faxing things, especially if you don’t have a land line, because who needs that caveman stuff. Scan it, email it, and then you have a record as well.

Tool #9: An iPhone, Nokia N95, or Blackberry. They are not equal, but the tradeoffs among them are tough to settle depending on your needs. The ability to capture video with a N95 is pretty awesome. And taking pictures (and uploading them to Flickr or wherever!) tends to come in handy for guerrilla marketing, and solves the problem of owning a camera but never having it on hand. But my N95 randomly turns off, sometimes when I’m receiving a call. File that under the Bad Feature category. iPhones don’t have that feature. Using an iPhone puts you in a constant state of arousal, which is a I guess a plus and a minus. All three are needed because you need to be plugged in to the Matrix. People cite the addiction factor: have one and you can’t escape the internets. But I think if you have a little control it can be the opposite: having these puppies can enable you to stay away from your computer longer, because you can check in without booting up.

Tool #8: Google Docs. This online document and spreadsheet system is far from perfect. But Word increasingly blows chunks. Meanwhile, Google docs is pretty awesome when it comes to collaboration. You can edit the same doc simultaneously with someone else. And collaboration is really the essence of existence. All the fancy features of Word? You don’t need them, because you aren’t publishing anything with this tool (other tools for that on the way).

Tool #7: Constant Contact. I just signed up for this service yesterday so maybe I'm overly pumped about it. It’s so clearly the way to go if you have customers or people that you would like to email on any regular basis. It’s a reliable way of formatting sending HTML formatted messages, managing contact lists, being generally considered reputable by humans and spam filters, endearing yourself to readers with a quick unsubscribe option, and tracking the effectiveness of your communications.

Tool #6: Photoshop. This product is absurdly expensive, and absurdly difficult to learn. But I can’t even begin to fathom how anyone would get by without it. You should have Photoshop if any of the following are true: you have a logo; you have a website; you publish documents; you have schwag. Sure, you could have someone else take care of this stuff for you. But as CEO you are probably Head Marketer and these functions can be pretty core to it.

Tool #5. Your Blog. I don’t really like any of the blog services a TON, but Blogger has suited me ok. (Though composing and adding photos in here makes me want to kill myself.) Unless you have opened a business as an independent intelligence operative, you need a blog. Everyone’s holdup is wondering whether it’s really worth the effort. It is true that a LOT of people still don’t really know what a blog is, even when they visit one. (This is a blog by the way.) But here are a couple reasons why you must have one. First, marketing these days is complicated, and all the best ways of marketing are basically untrackable. You have to give up on being able to know exactly what the payoff is for all your actions. Instead, you figure out your strategy and go with the things that are in strategic alignment with it. So, if rapport with literate humans plays a role in your strategy, you write a blog. Second, writing shapes up our thinking, and it’s nice to have a clue about what we’re thinking.

Tool #4. Social Networks. Blah blah everyone talks about this. Some of the blog thinking applies here: it’s tough to measure the efficacy of all the things we do. But you should be on these puppies. Which ones depends on your business. I’ve used LinkedIn for job postings with some success. Probably every entrepreneur ever should be on MySpace and facebook. But it depends a bit on your business. E.g., if you’re a yoga teacher, you should be on Zaadz. Facebook is quite relevant to our user base and that’s why we have the best facebook app ever, enabling to join the Spank through facebook, login through facebook, and spank your facebook friends. Linkspank was recently written up as a way to be a part of the buzz.

Tool #3. Gmail. Email is pretty important, you know? Linkspank is an email-related business, so I have made it my business to use a variety of email solutions, including webmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, most of the stuff you know. It is no joke that Gmail is *head and shoulders* above the rest. Just the facts. It’s much much much faster, for one thing. After using Gmail, when I log into the other stuff I’m practically tearing my face off. And it wins on features, such as group chat (although that didn’t work for me today) and sending emails in the name of other email addresses, forwarding and on and on and on.

Tool #2. Air card. This is a device that you plug into your laptop, that enables you to be connected to the Internet wherever you get cell phone service. Really it's not a device so much as the service you get from your cell provider. Example: AT&T's. Ok, this one definitely does not apply to all entrepreneurs. But I refuse to bump it up or off the list. It is too sweet. Even with the advent of the iPhone, nothing beats actually being able to get on the computer and get on the Internet, basically whereever you are, and be able to be productive. The wifi network gets too slow somewhere or goes down: you switch to your air card. At the airport, you are productive at the terminal, and actually sending emails on the plane before the folks make you unplug. You are driving and get a phone call: there is a problem. You pull over to the side of the road and get online. Welcome to the world of entrepreneur ninjas and commandos. You have numchucks on your belt, submachine gun cartridges strapped across your chest, and an air card in your computer. One caveat: while these tend to offer slow but acceptible broadband in major metropolitan areas, the connection speed in more rural areas is unacceptible and you will be the slowest ninja ever.

Tool #1: The Human Ear. Ok, maybe this is super cheesy. But there is a pattern and a paradox in this list of tools and it all is summarized by my choice for the number one tool: the strangely shaped fleshy listening devices attached to your head. Here’s the pattern: basically every tool I’ve named here is a communication tool. Maybe everything boils down to communication. As a person, you process information; inside your company, you all collaborate; and on the outside, your company engages the world, markets to it, and learns from it. The trick is that all these tools are useless unless you are actually listening and processing. They just facilitate getting great information to your brain, but if your brain is encased in protective stone there is no point. Conversely, an inquisitive, exploratory attitude – that involves speaking with the primary purpose of getting other people to talk – can get you everywhere. Most specifically, to an ever-improving understanding of your customer. I’m always working on this and our recent beer & laptop event was an example that I would like to continue, to the extent that I can afford to buy other people beer instead of myself.

I mentioned a paradox, as well as a pattern. I think the paradox is that entrepreneurship, in distinction with other ways of spending your time professionally, is different most in that you have to be brave and willing to act. All these tools are about listening, learning, and thinking. If these tools had personalities, they would be cautious creatures, probably not entrepreneurs. So in that case, maybe your number one tool is your Fist. Nothing cheesy about a Fist.

And now, some runners-up for the list:

Pidgin – IM is a great communication tool, and Pidgin helps you chat with anyone without spending 20 minutes logging into everything or burdening your computer. Downsides: doesn’t stay connected perfectly, it’s ugly, and no group chat.

Jott – this thing transcribes your phone messages and sends text to you and other people. “note to self” kind of stuff. Makes you feel important. Huge drawback: transcription quality is not quite there.

Twitter – fits in the blog and social network category, and is useful for similar reasons.

Jawbone – you want to be able to have meetings on the phone, even if your changing your baby’s diaper or driving. This is part of why you want to be an entrepreneur, right? Jawbone helps you do that, by cancelling noise and giving you both hands free for unarmed combat. Downside: doesn’t work with my N95.

Firefox – for PC users, using Internet Explorer is like smoking – WHY???? with the distinction that using Explorer doesn’t even make you seem cool. The current version of IE takes about 10 second to load a tab. What exactly is happening during that time? I wonder this, for a good ten seconds, every time I open Internet Exporer or a new tab therein.

Launch will probably happen in next 24 hrs.

2008-02-26T14:41:00.000-08:00

So get our your evangelism hat.
And your Hawaiian shirt.

Beers and the User Experience

2008-02-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

This week we hosted an event where we gave people free beer to bring their laptops and Join the Spank. The objective was to test the user interface and user experience of joining the spank and trying out the site.

We had 6 or 8 people, which was about a perfect number. The event was hugely useful and easily worth the $70 bar tab. There were many comments and little discoveries. Here's a sample of some of the more interesting ones:

Some of the Ajax (fancy technology) was prevented a couple people from joining, so a lower-tech (and faster, actually) process for Joining is coming soon.
Multiple people, once they logged in, ignored the orientation page and went straight to "Start a Spank." Not what I expected but oh so reasonable in retrospect.
After spanking or adding a link people wanted to see their Wall. Once you get used to spanking you don't look much at your own Wall (you know what's there!) but it's of primary interest initially.

All in all, lots of good improvements in the process for our upcoming launch. I shudder to think how many people have tried and failed Joining due to the first part above! Though the positive flip side is that our growth rate should increase.

It also goes to show that this method of learning gives different results from the pipeline of feedback from friends and users (though that pipeline is quite important).

More on the Pitch: Ad Revenue Model

2008-02-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

An interesting conversation during Friday’s pitch was around the business model.

Now, I think if you’re a potential investor in Linkspank and you’re going to choose to focus on any one part of the business to discuss and you choose the revenue model, it’s probably a sign that you are not comfortable with really discussing the business. Because Linkspank is the kind of beast that requires growth in users to make any money at all; and conversely, if you can achieve this growth than you ARE going to be able to make money.

But revenue is still important :-), and like I said I thought it was an interesting conversation. It’s a chance for me to try to clarify my thinking, improve it with your feedback, and also if you don’t know any of this stuff and you’re vaguely in the business than heads up.

I told them that Linkspank had some exotic opportunities for business models, but that we would start simple and turn on contextual advertising once we hit one million users.

“Contextual advertising” (currently limited essentially to text advertising) is advertising that is placed on the page and chosen according to what the page is about, as determined by a scan of the text on the page. You get a Linkspank about the Nicks, and next to it are advertisements for Nicks jerseys, Nicks videos, Nicks tickets.

This kind of advertising makes such a small amount of money that you need to be serving massive traffic for it to get you anywhere, but it has an advantages. First, you can turn it on about as simply as flicking a switch. Google and other services are the ones actually providing the advertisements. There is no need to sell advertisements, find advertisers, any of that crap. This kind of advertising is (basically) what has made MySpace and facebook businesses that rake in lots of cash.

Here’s the model I showed for how linkspank would make its money:

So, when we have 1 million users, we make $33 million in revenue per year. Here’s how the calculation goes: you have so many users, and the view so many pages, and they click on one or more of the ads a certain (very small) percentage of the time, and you make so much money per click, and you add it all up.

They found the number too high and we took it from there. The ads per page is not really disputable – if you’re going to put 6 ads per page than ok then! The CTR (click through rate) per ad is a little more disputable. If your ads look cool like facebook’s, and not ugly like generic AdSense ads, maybe your CTR will increase a little. Or it might for other reasons. But certainly I have seen real world examples where the CTR is at least this low. I think it’s worth considering a case in which the CTR is 0.1%. (That would cut the $30M to $10M).

The page views per day per user is the key number. Well, sort of. The REALLY key number is the top figure, the number of users. As I contend, the key question for this business is the growth. But this second line is key. It currently asserts that on AVERAGE every spanker will view 150 pages per month, which is a lot.

The second line really involves forming an opinion about how growing size will affect the stickiness of the site and user activity. Users are not currently viewing 150 pages per month; they are viewing more like 10 to 17, depending on how you count.

So why would the figure multiply by 10 when the site grows? It wouldn’t necessarily. It depends basically on whether your site actually does something, or people sign up for it and it’s crap. Let’s contrast LinkedIn and facebook (speculatively, not like I have inside numbers). Both are supposed to become richer and more valuable for you the bigger they get, the more potential connections you have and people you can learn about or whatever. Most users will confirm for you the following reality: facebook strongly benefits from having all your friends on there and it makes it much easier to stick around longer. In contast, LinkedIn for most people is a site that they visit occasionally to approve someone’s connection request and then they pop out. Every now and then someone will spruce up their profile. But they don’t seem to be doing much more than they were when the network was younger. I don’t quite think LinkedIn is crap, but hey these are the (anecdotal) facts on this particular issue.

So far all our data indicates that Linkspank will go the way of faceook on this issue and not the way of LinkedIn. The fundamental logic of what spanking is also supports the claim. Will this really bring us up to 5 page views per user per day? I’m not sure that anyone can answer that question definitively. I’m willing to consider a lower forecast. It still shapes up to a very profitable business – IF you get the growth… which once again is the real question.

That really just scrapes the surface of the conversation, but it's enough for Saturday morning. :-)

Results of Pitch at Deloitte Tech Venture Center

2008-02-15T10:03:00.001-08:00

Bananas are the hottest thing, you should invest

I took my hacking, raspy self to Waltham today and pitched at an "investor roundtable" hosted by Deloitte. Launchpad and Atlas were there, and some other folks. DFJ and Spark were supposed to be there but I don't believe they were.

Summary: they conceded that they weren't part of the target market. I also noticed that they weren't too well acquainted with the market space. I am routinely baffled by how little people understand online advertising. Meanwhile, the guy who thought he knew the space suggested (inadvertantly) that I instead build another delicious - which is a deeply troubling suggestion on a variety of levels.

Anyway, to resume the summary: I think they weren't 100% understanding what Linkspank is. And how can you invest in something you don't understand, right? Agreed. They suggested that I go look for a younger angel investor, which I think is a good call. (The investment I'm looking for is $200-500k, depending on timing and other factors, so it's borderline between angel and group of angels or institutional.)

Internet Site = Must Do Demo

The thing I puzzled over most was whether to include a demo in the pitch. It's the Google way of doing things and I was always sold on that. But I was dissuaded from the idea over the last week, by the fact that my practice pitch listeners didn't want to hear the pitch.

In retrospect, I think it's absolutely true - none of these guys want to see a demo. But it's laziness on their part not to want to see one, and it should be my job to force them to see it. Considering investing in a consumer Internet business without seeing the site in action is like considering investing in an ice cream shop without tasting the ice cream. If you wanna do it, go ahead, but seriously.

So, I think in the future I will insist on a demo, even if this means requiring a presentation time of 30 min (without questions). I know that's longer than the norm, but it's fine because I don't want to do business with anyone who won't take a look at the product.

The need for a demo was underscored by the fact that Linkspank's on-paper stats are astonishing, and they still had trouble winning the group over. With no PR, we've grown to 1300+ users. 67% are active in a 2 month period, with 8+ invitations to join the spank sent out per user. The average session on the site in December was 3.7 hours. The business makes sense on paper. There's not more much I could have told them statistically to convince them without having already had a thriving business :-).

Next Steps

The only part of the outcome I disliked was the idea that no one on the East Coast would have the vision to invest in this idea. I was hoping to get outside the box a little by putting Linkspank here instead of there. But (so the story goes), while there are plenty of techie and visionary people here in Cambridge, they aren't angel investors but rather poor kids.

At any rate, next steps are to look a little more globally, and reach out to angel types and get their advice. It will be fun, because I love talking about the business and I'll get some more meaningful interaction with cool people. And I'll insist on the demo :-).

this blog just got way more micro (I'm talking about Twitter)

2008-02-13T07:42:00.000-08:00

I just checked out the Social Media Breakfast. Was cool, thanks Bryan.

The thing was basically a huge Twitter lovefest. It helped me to think a little deeper about the service.

1. Often I want to blog here, but my thought is "too small" for a blog post, or maybe a bit off topic. Reason to try Twitter.

2. Facebook status updates are fun, and I have previously been of the opinion that they killed the need for twitter. But now I'm understanding that the whole game of twitter is VOLUME.

You COULD do a high volume of status updates in facebook, but that's not really quite what it's for and your friends are likely to get bummed. Twitter is designed more to be high volume.

Actually this scenario is similar to Linkspank - you can post a link on facebook, but you can't do it in high VOLUME efficiently (i.e. without spamming your friends). Enter Linkspank, and your world is awesome - more content, bigger brain, bigger laughs.

Anyway, I'm going to try the twitter things for people who for some reason think it's interesting to follow the individual firings of my synapses. That place will be

twitter.com/bitchell

I'll still blog here, of course - when it's more than just a snippet.

You can see that I used my (sort of) real name rather than "linkspank" as my twitter handle. The reason: twitter is not about companies, but rather people. A huge portion of what I do is "Inside Linkspank" type stuff. But there will be & has to be other junk in there too, because when you go high volume the line gets blurry between this & that. Some people raised an eyebrow at the user name "bitchell." I raise an eyebrow back at them. I'm like hey, What do you expect from a person who names a site Linkspank? ;-)

Pitch: Improving the 10/20/30 Rule

2008-02-08T05:31:00.000-08:00

I'm working on Linkspank's pitch a bit as I mentioned. So far this is basically consisting of having conversations with some of my brilliant friends and colleagues about it.

One advisor checked with me that I would be following Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule. And I was like, "Of course!" And I do think about that rule. But I'm a contrarian guy and when I hear the words "of course" (even from my own mouth) I start to examine them. So after I got off IM, I was sitting at my computer with a raised Vulcan eyebrow. "Of course?"

Could the 10/20/30 rule be improved? Of course. :-) The improved version is the 0/10/20/30/1000 rule. How catchy is that? It's Guy's rule, plus a 0 rule at the beginning and a 1,000 rule at the end.

0: The ideal number of slides that you actually get through in your presentation. This is not a trick - you bring your presentation to use it. But the best presentations are stories, and the best stories hook the listeners immediately and have them so mesmerized by what they're hearing - sitting on the edges of their seats, eyes boggling, mouth agape, drooling - that the use of slides would actually be jarring and disrupt the magic spell that is occurring. What will you possibly ever remember from this little blog post? Maybe the Vulcan "of course" eyebrow, maybe the number zero, but at any rate the elements of a story.

The other rule to append:

1,000: the whole picture is worth thing. So far, one of the most effective parts of my attempts to explain Linkspank to an uninitiated person has been this picture:

Spankmaster

Depending on what you watch on TV, this picture is just a guy, or it's a picture rich with associations and meaning (and usually immediately triggers a smile or laugh). This picture reduces the time that it takes me to explain my target market by about 30 seconds, which is a lot of time.

Summing Up

If you happen to be on my wavelength, you may have thought that the 1,000 rule boils down to the 0 rule, since good pictures boil down to telling a story. I think actually that's true for the 10/20/30 in general: it's about telling a story. The 10/20/30 parts of it are pointers for keeping the attention and understanding of your listeners.

Of course.

The Pitch

2008-02-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

Linkspank will be pitching to investors this month and it seems like a perfect thing to blog about here (protecting the identities of the investors, of course).

This won't be the first time I've pitched Linkspank to investor types but it's pretty close. On the other hand, Linkspank's business planning goes back almost two years.

Here micro-observations so far:

1. Even though your pitch will be a PowerPoint, it's better to introduce your business to people (before you have a meeting) with a 1-2 page Word document. PowerPoint isn't meant to stand on its own, but prose is.

2. Getting a meeting with investors is much easier than winning them over. So I think it's worth it to focus on your message, not the meeting. I think connections are useful only when no one is giving you the time of day, and if your connections will vouch for you so strongly that it will help investors believe in your management ability.

3. I view investment as a partnership and courtship, and I think most investors do too. You don't just want a match, you want a good match with all kinds of signs of mutual fit. If you're feeling too hungry, you're probably missing something. And it takes time, and it's impossible and undesirable to seal this kind of deal instantly.... so there's no need to try. At first, focus on the basics of your business and the caliber of person that you are.

Do you agree? Maybe it's obvious stuff. Anyway, more to come.

Viral Videos

2008-02-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

Last spring, I had the opportunity to study Linkspank Marketing with my Marketing Communications classmates. We did a thorough study of marketing tactics for Linkspank. We came to many interesting conclusions. One conclusion was obvious and yet still striking: it was that viral videos are far and away the most effective way of reaching people online. People know this, yet we were still amazed, in the financial model, just how superior is successful viral video is compared to any other form of advertising, marketing or other expense to get peoples attention

Our experience in creating Linkspank TV made it relatively simple to create a viral video. We already had a team in place to create videos and to create video content. Bur TV show is different strategically from the viral videos. Our TV show is intended primarily for current users of our site. For this reason it makes sense that our television show would be more mainstream, less risky than our viral video, which in turn would be more offensive and more risk taking. Why? Because on one hand, for our television show we have dedicated viewers that we want to keep and make happy. On the other hand, our viral videos have to cut through a lot of noise out there and reach people who are not yet spankers but who should be spankers.

Viral videos appear to have indicated that the main way to cut through the clutter is to be so offensive that you stand out. Or probably “outrageous” is a better word, because viral videos don’t seem to have to be NSFW. To act on this opinion, a viral video is going to play a key role in our public launch this month. We have created a video that we will be sending to our users and and asking them to forward to their friends.

Viral videos are hard to make "stick" or make successful. But I don't think the failure rate is the real deterrent to companies - it's the cost of failure. A weird or outrageous video will alienate some viewers, maybe even many viewers.

Here I think it is key to have a strategy, if you have a strategy that is your guide to determine what you do and even what detail of what you do. I think a lack of strategy is why more companies don't create videos – they don’t know where to start. Do we make a funny video? What should do your video be about? Who should it reach or impress? The world is much more open probably, in that of conservative traditional advertisement. Linkspank, on the other hand is a young startup with a crazy name. We don't mind being weird and we might not mind even being defensive at least sometimes and it wrong as we are too offensive. For our company, this represents a big opportunity. One reason companies have trouble creating viral videos is because they are constrained in a way that we are not or at least should not have to be. That constraint is that big companies are reluctant to do weird or offensive things – while viral videos are actually usually maybe almost as a rule weird and offensive at least to some people.

In my opinion (and this has been my opinion for a long time) it is much more important to win over a small number of users—rather than simply not to alienate the larger audience. It is true that our site has special appeal to a great audience and I would like to be able to serve that large audience. But in this early stage it is important to target and win over early adopters, who will appreciate unusual messages more.

This might lead you to ask, as Linkspank grows, will its communications and brand become more mainstream? I think the answer is yes, to a degree. It is important to evolve to accommodate growth, but is also important to maintain our own identity. Part of my personal agenda is that I would like to create a vibrant large community but that I do not want to grow the community beyond its natural size. I think many successful websites have been pressured to do this to keep growing, and while they have proven that it is possible, I still would contend that it is not necessarily good business. But I shouldn’t be getting ahead of myself – it’s still time to make crazy YouTube videos.

Recap: HBS 2008 Entrepreneurship Conference

2008-01-27T17:22:00.000-08:00

Today was the Harvard Business School's 2008 Entrepreneurship Conference: Life Outside the Box. Being in the neighborhood and feeling a bit daffy, I checked it out.

Wait a minute... they're IN boxes... and wearing suits.

Thanks to the Entrepreneurship Club for putting this event together!! Here's my assessment. Logistics - good. Speaker & keynote lineup - great. Keynotes - good. Panel topics - good. Panel moderation - mediocre. Schwag - good. Food - mediocre. And last but far from least, Networking - good.

The keynotes emphasized the need to be bold, take action, get your ass out and do stuff, and be prepared for people to think you are crazy or doing things wrong. I think it's a great message and I don't get tired of hearing it from successful people.

Ken Howery, co-founder of PayPal, gave a cool summary of how to find a good startup idea: it is at the intersection of two circles - (1) Good Ideas and (2) Ideas that People think are Bad Ideas. The intersection of these two circles basically are overlooked opportunities... great areas to move into. Of course, while (2) is easy to determine, (1) is not. But I think it's an accurate summary of what entrepreneurs who aren't strictly lucky might chalk part of their success up to.

The biggest "delta" (that's business school wimp talk for an area for improvement) was the panel moderation. In the three panels, the moderators, students and profs alike, gave mealy-mouthed introductions, asked spineless questions, and made no contributions in framing or summarizing what was said. They should take a lesson from James Schrager, or just listen to NPR a bit more. Modest improvements would have doubled the value of the panels.

BUT I was glad I went, despite my general dislike of sitting still and listening. And I met some cool people.

Are you a Guerrilla?

2008-01-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

You?

As I mentioned before, Linkspank is going to be doing a public launch "soon." All kinds of exciting stuff is going to be involved in the launch.

If you are Linkspank Lover and you want to get involved with some guerrilla marketing, send us your address to receive a complimentary Linkspank Lover "Guerrilla Marketing" Kit with further instructions.

We plan to do something just like this. Without the public alarm and police involvement part.

It's a secret, so don't tell anyone about it.

Discourse on Fear

2008-01-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

This will be a short post, not a discourse, but it's a topic that's been on my mind. This post comes from deep Inside Linkspank :-).

My thesis: fear is the greatest impediment to success. Learning to drive through your own fear is the ticket to achieving and being happy with your achievement.

Imagine this parable. A child is born afraid of nothing. Injuries, traumas, and rearing teach the child many valuable lessons of caution, so this child is lucky enough not get hit by a car while crossing the street and makes it to adulthood. But the adult has learned the lesson too well, being cautious of everything, and has forgotten the dreams and adventures experienced in childhood.

I think this parable may apply to many or all of us. I'm a fairly intrepid person, having turned down respectable job offers to start Linkspank, having hiked off into the jungle to get lost and have guns pointed at me by tribespeople. But I think that even the most fearless people have opportunities to push through their fear, try things that may fail, learn by doing rather than by thinking, improve by iteration rather than by design.

If you don't believe me, make a list of things that you don't do as often as you should, or that you've been planning to do but haven't gotten to, or just things you don't enjoy. Go through that list and ask yourself if there isn't a trace of fear holding you back from these things.

Luck is a huge factor in success. People try things without really knowing whether they will work, and circumstances and timing conspire to make the right ideas work. But taking a business to the next level will require being able to risk what you have achieved, and being prepared to follow your success with experiments.

I think the application of this principle can be subtle. Google is intrepid enough to test and launch many products, but rather cautious in allocating resources and brand capital to products outside of search and ads. Facebook has been bold in rolling out its apps environment (not to mention Project Beacon), but, on the other hand, the move to the apps environment may have been motivated by fear of what would happen from not doing it (not "growing fast enough").

There's the nugget of my thoughts. How deeply you ponder it is up to you - and your courage :-).

Planning for launch

2008-01-16T06:10:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the prongs of the many-prong attack plan for a public launch coming soon. They are in random order.

- a "viral video" created by the Linkspank TV team is creating a "viral video". Also another episode of Linkspank TV itself.

- a (more complete) Facebook app and facebook group.

- outreach to current spankers, via The Monthly Spank, people who have pledged in the Spankathon, personal outreach to those who claim to love me.

- outreach to bloggers and a press release.

- a launch party (in Cambridge, MA - hopefully to be followed someday by others in other cities)

- some guerrilla stuff (stickers, little cards promoting the Spankathon)

- a new contest, possibly with some extra zazz and zaniness.

What do you think? Let me know.

Facebook Apps - Notifications, Clutter, and You

2008-01-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

It's been in the news that Facebook is giving you tools to de-clutter your profile layout. Fine. (People who listen to the Linkspank blogs will recall that I was predicting this kind of thing a while ago.)

But the "clutter" of applications has been an issue for a few months and particularly with notifications.

Meanwhile, Linkspank is building its facebook app - The Real Version. In doing so, we've bumped up against the second issue: notifications.

Who can send a notification or email to whom within an app, and how? You'd think that's a pretty straightforward, important, basic question. Well, in fact this question has a non-straightforward, confusing, answer:

Holy crap.

(Note, it says confidential but at the page where I found it it appears to be pasted by the source.)

I give facebook a lot of credit for their willingness to take bold action to protect their user experience. The flip side is that the boldness has created that table. Wow.

People want to be able to play around and try games and applications. But they also want a simplified AND organized stream of communications. Not easy to do. This is part of why Linkspank is "sticking to its knitting" and will only build in features that touch the core idea and "ecosystem" at multiple points.

Anyway, regarding the facebook app, we'll be phasing it in starting on Monday hopefully.

What's Next

2008-01-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Some schemes underway:

A PUBLIC LAUNCH will be coming "soon", at a secret disclosed-just-before-it-happens date. There will be some bonus excitement timed to occur with the launch. Linkspank will go from being the web's best-kept secret to... something else.

A Facebook Application is coming soon. A linkspank app for facebook currently exists, but that was really just dipping our toe in the water. A "real" one, with sweet features, is coming soon.

The News Feed will be changed. I know that makes people nervous, because they love the news feed. Don't worry - it won't be deleted! Merely improved, to a slightly less generic, more informative format. It will make it easier to get spanky with your friends and track your spanks.

An amazing recommendation engine will appear. It will help connect people with the precise spanks they will love. It enrich your life. It will make your friends think you are a special genius. It will blow your mind.

Finally, more of the basics. We're always changing little things on the site. We know that your free time on the web is important time for you, and we want to try to make every little detail just nice.

Paradigm Shifts - Wikia Search is not one of them.

2008-01-03T07:38:00.000-08:00

The news is talking about Wikia Search, a new search engine from Wikipedia, to be launched next week. The search engine is supposed to be able to challenge Google because the order of its search results will be based on how users rank results (which, in fact, is a method Google has been obviously experimenting with).

To me, this is an obvious example of operating within the current paradigm. "Search", as we know it, is not the end all and be all of what you want to do on the web! And in fact, it works perfectly well now with Google.

There are bigger problems out there. Try searching for "cool" or "interesting" on Google. You get some pretty un-cool, un-interesting results. It's funny, because a huge percentage of the time people spend online is spent looking for cool or interesting stuff. Search engines just aren't good at one of the major things we want to do online.

Now try searching for "cool" or "interesting" on Linkspank. I think we're on to something. :-)

My New Year's Resolution

2008-01-02T06:21:00.000-08:00

2008 will be the year of the Linkspank.

My New Year's Resolution:
To work *no more* than 35 hours per week.

I'm back from a Christmas / New Year's vacation. It was the first real vacation I've taken since this time last year.

Good vacations make me feel like this.

For me, vacation is like exercise - it can be hard to get myself to do it, but afterwards I'm always glad I did it. I was pretty relentless this time around about not working. I slept copiously, feasted, watched many movies (including star wars II-VI, lots of The Office, cartoons and some Planet Earth), did some fun reading, a lot of yoga. And yes - I did go on Linkspank, but I kept it in moderation so that it would not blend into work :-).

So, I am forming some New Year's resolutions. I used to think they were stupid but two things changed my mind: first, since I'm coming off a vacation I've had time to think and get perspective; and second, in business school they taught me about the psychology of commitment and the power of making (and writing, even blogging) them. (If you write something, and especially if you make it public, you're more likely to do it.)

My new year's resolution:

To work no more than 35 hours per week.

It's important to me for many reasons. First, I believe it helps overall outcome of your work. I have had a good mix of experiences for my age, of working hard, not working, and being around other people working, many of whom are leaders in their fields. And from my experiences I'm convinced that, in most jobs, there is little worth doing by one person in 60 hours per week that can't be done in 35.

Moreover, working less keeps me nice and mellow, gives me time to pursue my hobbies and chill with the people I love, and additionally fuels the creativity and big ideas which I think are the start and stop of any entrepreneurship.

Finally, working a bit less will give me more time for spanking. And that is the most relaxing and stimulating way I know of taking a quick break, and staying in touch with out-of-town friends and family. :-).

Update on Site Statistics

2007-12-22T16:12:00.000-08:00

Some interesting news in the ongoing study of site statistics.

Fact: 42% of spankers have been active in the last 30 days. This number was about 91% in August. Did something go wrong? I don't think so. I think it's part of the business of building out the network. Your friends are what pull you to the site, and most people on the site still have only 0 or 1 or 2 friends. As the network builds, the average frequency of visit should build.

Fact: the average (mean) duration of a session on the site is 3.7 hours.

Wow! I have to go now so I'll be brief on this one. As you'd expect, the number is skewed by a very small percentage of very long visits. Also, it includes visits that may involve plenty of open browser windows.

On the other hand, this figure is calculated as the time between the first page load and the last page load of a session. So, if you visit your Inbox, spend 15-20 minutes viewing links, and then jet without any other page load, that was counted in the 3.7 figure as a 0 minute visit, not a 15 minute visit. In other words, there is some slop on both sides, but the figure is real.

Linkspank is sticky! Yay. That's a good Christmas present.

New Concept for Landing Page for new spankers.

2007-12-17T21:29:00.001-08:00

Should Entrepreneurs go to Business School?

2007-12-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

I’m an entrepreneur who attended business school. I was an entrepreneur before business school (I had an unsuccessful startup on the side) and I went to business school with the plan of starting a business – which ended up being Linkspank. Many entrepreneurs are vocally against attending business school, citing it as a “waste of time” or worse. Today I’ll share some of my thoughts on the issue, and provide a little test for whether you or an entrepreneur you know should attend business school.

Reasons to Attend Business School for Entrepreneurs

I attended business school (the University of Chicago GSB) for three reasons – to get education, to have the life of a student, and to meet people who I could work with as entrepreneurs, investors, or advisors.

1. Get education: this exceeded my expectations. Here’s what I think I learned in business school: strategy, marketing, and some “business sense” in other fields, like investments, accounting, and finance. But I also felt that I got a broader education, like the kind of education that you get in college. Because of this latter point, I felt that whether “it was worth the money” to go to business school is a no-brainer “yes”. What would you think of someone who challenged whether it was worth the money to go to college? That feeling is (probably, depending on what it is for you) my first reaction when I hear people say that business school is a waste of time or money.

2. Have the life of a student: This one is two-pronged. First, I was sick of corporate life and psyched about being a student. I ended up being much busier than I thought I would be but I still think that being a business school student (even at Chicago GSB, which is tame relative to other “Tier 1” schools) is just hands-on way more fun than working. People who are working seem to forget about that – they have forgotten about having fun and they’re thinking about their 360 degree evaluations, salaries, and promotions.

Additionally, I wanted to start a business while I was in school. I think this is an underdiscussed opportunity for entrepreneurs. It’s hard as hell to start a business on the side while you’re working. It’s much easier (though not necessarily easy) to start one while you’re in school. Also your resume and finances are basically taken care of in one way or another.

3. Meet entrepreneurs, investors, advisors: I got lots of GREAT advice from my fellow students. They are sub-average contributors as spankers, but far above average as advisors on product and strategy. Not many of them were entrepreneurs. Many of them have offered to stay in touch about investment.

Reasons Not to Attend Business School for Entrepreneurs

(If you are taking a loan,) You’ll be saddled with debt after school, and as an entrepreneur, you may find it difficult to pay it.

The professors and students around you are likely to bash good ideas.

You won’t learn “real-world” stuff – you still have to learn that by doing.

Business school will not help you decide whether you want to be an entrepreneur. In fact, if you’re on the fence, it may even push you away from being an entrepreneur. (Arguably that’s a pro if it’s the right path for you.)

The Test: You’re an Entrepreneur. Should you go to Business School?

Answer the questions and add up the points. (Sorry it's a little ugly, the formatting on Blogger sucks.)

1. I know what kind of business I want to start, or I am already running a business that I will keep running.

Exactly (-5 points)

Vaguely (+2 points)

No (0 points)

2. How willing are you to forgo income and feel poor after school? (If you are financially independent give yourself 0 points for this question)

Willing (+5 points)

Maybe not (-5 points, 0 points if you would pay for school with a loan)

I’m willing to be poor, it’s the time that is the issue (-10 points)

3. I plan

To start a business during school, even if it means slightly worse grades, and a hectic life (+5 points)

To start a business after I graduate (-5 points)

I have no plan (+0 points)

4. Picture this – you go to business school, but you don’t end up with the real-world knowledge you need to start your business. Your professors seem to doubt that you have the necessary experience too. You:

Go into consulting for two years (0 points)

Just wasted my time (-5 points)

Start your business anyway (+5 points)

Scoring:

5 points or higher -Go to business school, and start something.

0 points-ish -You may want to go to business school – but are you sure you want to start a business?

-5 points or lower -Don’t go to business school. Start something now.

FYI, I would have scored a 10 on this test two years ago. I’m not sure if this test actually makes any sense but hopefully it was thought-provoking.

Reflections on the Hawaii Contest.

2007-12-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

Let's win some sh*t

I will say that the Hawaii Contest has turned out nicely. Even when only a minority of spankers are trying hard to win, the contests do a good job of feeding the community with a constant diet of tasty spanks.

Our Holiday Contest (beginning next week!) will feature some changes, as usual. We'll have two divisions, with separate standings and separate winners. We'll have a new set of prizes...probably less expensive prizes, since a Hawaii trip is not really 3x or 4x as effective as a Wii or a Bose SoundDock. We'll have slight adjustments to the point system to keep the contests competitive. We will also continue to feature sports analysis of the contest as in Linkspank TV this week.

Many other Great Things are forthcoming on Linkspank this month... stay tuned.

Notebook: Homepage Evolution

2007-11-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

Today, some semi-intelligible notes:

Time for a new homepage design for logged-in users. The current design has the following faults. The Top 6 is a nice reminder about the contest, but the Top 6 don't change often enough for it to be interesting. Second, the content tabs (Video / News / etc) are lost behind the contest tab, and they are a little boring to look at.

The new homepage will feature content a little more, and will probably feature some of our experimentation with recommending links to people. Top 6 will still be present, but pushed down.

The new design will probably push down the Spank News (news feed) off the screen. Trying to keep the Spank News on the screen was part of what inspired the current design. And some people will disagree with this. I think it's a case of thinking inside the box, since the news feed is so prominent on facebook. But what Linkspank offers is primo content, and connections with friends through the content. We'll be integrating all that into the top box.

Win 30 Points, Be on Linkspank TV

2007-11-28T08:20:00.000-08:00

Do you like sports commentary? Do you like Linkspank? Do you want 30 points for that Hawaii contest?

Join us at Linkspank TV for the Sports Corner (or something) to discuss the Hawaii Contest. We'll draw some X's and O's, talk about who's winning and who's going to win, and try to make as little sense as John Madden.

let's do this

Any spanker is welcome to participate. Just contact us to state your interest - first to respond can reserve the spot. We'll record Sports Corner today, tomorrow, or Friday, at some hour.

We'll conduct the interview online (probably over Skype) and rip the sound (we'll add visuals to it afterwards).

So sign up.

Six Ways of Managing To-Do Lists (Entrepreneurial Lifehacking)

2007-11-24T14:42:00.001-08:00

Two cliches of entrepreneurship are managing yourself and wearing many hats. At the heart of all this is To-Do List Management. A boring subject, but one which holds the key to our productivity and happiness.

Six Ways of Managing To-Do's:

1. Noting them in a daily work journal (a document)
2. Listing, scoring, tracking them in a spreadsheet
3. Storing them in folders in my email
4. Keeping them in online "sticky note" applications
5. Using Jott to send them to myself via phone.
6. Writing lists on pieces of paper

I have experimented with these for a long time (except Jott, that is recent).

My findings: -- summarized from lots of testing :-)

Since I have a very high volume of items (feature requests, little notes, micro-bugs) the spreadsheet method is required. I need a method that is simple enough that I'll use it, but which can organize and prioritize hundreds of to-do items.

Email, Jott, and paper lists are all useful ways of recording items to make sure they get into the spreadsheet. If the to-do item is very small then it might be dealt with before it makes it to the spreadsheet.

Paper is good also to take items out of the spreadsheet as the Daily To-Do List.

Smaller notes:

I tried the email method during a campaign to keep my emai inbox clean. That campaign worked and I rarely have more than 20 messages in my inbox now. But the email folder method wasn't working for me because I was wasting time by sending myself emails and it was difficult to get myself to visit the folders.

I think the folder method works for less pressing items, and maybe for lists that are only 20 or 30 items usually.

Jott is pretty cool. I think it's more cool as an on-the-fly communication system. But it's good for a quick reminder of a micro-feature that you can send to email and copy into a spreadsheet later. If you could jot to a spreadsheet that would be cool, but the internal mechanism for managing your Jotts is primitive.

I think paper is a really really good method... but it's easy to lose paper and hard to organize it. Sometimes I write notes and they end up useless in a pile. I think written notes have an expiration of 24-72 hours. I think paper is good for copying a list of what to do and then thinking out on paper exactly how you are going to do those things that day.

Journaling your work is important I believe. But it's a big jumble. The journal has two purposes. One is like writing on paper - temporary thinking and quick access - but it's tied to the clipboard on your computer. The other is the emergency haystack - if you're looking for something and you don't know where it is, you can always dive into the haystack.

Many people comment on the soothing aspect of creating lists. Write a list and you feel control over your life. I think it's even more true for a spreadsheet. You have to put some work into the spreadsheet. I have a dorky model where I rate todo items on how important they are to the business. It takes a lot of time to do that... but hey, how can you march without a strategy? Plus having a strategy is much more comforting :-).

four lessons from our facebook experiment

2007-11-23T08:07:00.000-08:00

Here are Four Lessons from our facebook app experiment:

1. Lots of facebook users are willing to install apps... but many of them will hide the profile box and all the other stuff.

2. Lots of facebook users have never installed an app. (I believe this segment is largely college students actually.)

3. People often install an app and that's it - they don't know what to do or what it does.

4. People want to be able to spank their facebook friends. They don't care much about the features of our baby app (sharing recent spanks on your facebook profile, or promoting your spankathon pledge).

I'm glad we did this test. More to come...

Entrepreneurial Lifehacking

2007-11-20T23:06:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post for a while on "Entrepreneurial Lifehacking" - tricks and strategies for being organized, happy, productive as an entrepreneur.

Today I'll just warm up by listing some of the topics I've been thinking about and working on:

+ Daily routines
+ Which to-do's to delete entirely and avoid
+ How to organize and prioritize to-do's
+ Use of phone, email, and meetings
+ How to digest maximum news in minimum time
+ Experiments with Jott.com
+ Phone gadgetry, including the N95 and the Jawbone

Hmn... that sounds like a pretty boring list now that I write it out. But doesn't everyone like to be more productive? :-)

Our Toolbar = Excalibur.

2007-11-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

Our Linkspank toolbar is turning out to be the greatest and baddest weapon since King Arthur's Excalibur. It's going to be completely nasty. Get ready. Prepare for your life to be changed. Coming soon for testing in FF during November, with IE to follow in December.

Turning Email into a Social Network

2007-11-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

The New York Times, TechCrunch and others report on Yahoo and Google turning Email into a social network. Email is a way that people connect, so why not use it to build a network?

I agree that this idea has potential (and in fact think they're a bit slow to realize this!). Here are two concerns I'd share.

1.) Will people want this stuff in their inbox environment?
2.) Might this lead to bloat and the MySpace effect?

I think they could do something very nice if they can navigate around these issues. Do you agree?

Various Schemes

2007-11-13T14:49:00.001-08:00

I have been neglectful to my blog, so here's a shoddy run-down of some happenings:

We're looking for a contest sponsor / partner company for our next contest (to begin in December). If you have a forward-thinking marketing operation and you're looking for new ways to connect with people on the web, then Contact Us.

Creating a Linkspank Toolbar has been interesting. I think the importance of toolbars is overrated, but I consider this is a worthy project. Related subject for the future: my experiences with oDesk.

Linkspank TV (www.linkspank.com/tv) launched with Episode 2 into people's inboxes this week. So far that project has gone great. We seem to be getting approval that we have the right basic concept, so the next step will be to make it even better.

We added a little feature: you can attach spanks to each other now. Like much of linkspank, it's a new spin on a classic idea of the web. To play around with this feature, click "Add..." in the menu of options under a link, then "Add Attachment".

Our PR genius search is going well. I've met some great people, learned a bit about what PR is, and tackled new issues around compensating people from a bootstrapped perspective. More to come.

Just a couple investors have gotten in touch with me. In those conversations and with the help of some folks at Chicago GSB (where I'm heading next week), I'm starting to develop my philosophy on whether/how/when/what Linkspank wants investment. Most people would never dare write about this... but ah, Linkspank is all about being daring. :-) (Don't worry investors, your identities are private!)

That's all that springs to mind at the moment. The contest is going well. Get your ass on there and get yourself to Hawaii! :-)

WebInno15 Debrief

2007-11-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

WebInno15 happened yesterday in Cambridge at the Royal Sonesta. Linkspank made a showing with the Linkspank TV squad. Part of our mission was to determine what people thought of the startups, and whether they seriously believed any of them was better than Linkspank.

Findings: There was a high level of enthusiasm for these startups. When asked to name a favorite, most people listed numerous sites. Some extremely serious people who do no procrastination and are very rich were interested in companies like iProperty and Lemonade.

iProperty: Preferred by People too Rich and Serious to Procrastinate

Generally, however, people came around to admitting that Linkspank sounded cooler than the other sites. They could not help but be captivated by the idea of procrastinating online and winning a trip to Hawaii as a result.

How's this for a property.

Thanks to David Venrock for hosting the event, and to all the great startups for sharing their ideas.

Footage from the event will be available on the next episode of Linkspank TV, which will be hurled violently into your Linkspank Inbox in a couple days.

facebook focus, open social aperture

2007-11-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

I've been pondering the OpenSocial thing, which I babbled about before.

Take these two techcrunch posts. One: facebook no longer caters to college students. Two: you can "do anything with friends" on Open Social.

This reminds me of an old strategy saw: strategy is about trade-offs, as much about what you don't do as what you do.

Facebook apps and opensocial are all about trying to do "everything" - a hint that there is no strategy. It's still cool, in the way that the Web is cool. ("We invented the Internet - you can do anything on it!") But it's up to every app to define its strategy.

Maybe I'm a weird strategy purist, but I thought that facebook should have stuck to students, and sought its growth through more depth in that area, not breadth. Of course, I'm fairly alone on that opinion and may as well be shouting it off a cliff in Antarctica on that one.

the Pyramid Principle in the User Interface

2007-11-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

The Pyramid Principle is a great concept in writing, which ought to be more widespread than it is. (The book is out of print and the creator, Barbara Minto, works it as a consulting business rather than spreading the word.) The gist is that your writing should have one main point, supported by a couple supporting points, each of which is supported. It's a simple idea, but deceptively difficult to stick to and deceptively powerful.

A great idea (as usual, from someone else) was, "How bout you organize your home page according to the Pyramid Principle?"

A step in this direction is a new right navigation:

I think it's way clearer than "Tools" and "Departments", the previous categories.

Linkspank is the greatest bestest way to share links because:

Friends - You do it with your friends
Spanks - There is a lot of good stuff to send and receive
Winning - You can win stuff and achieve your way to glory.

Just a tidbit.

Google's Open Social: A Prediction

2007-11-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

The social web - still like the Wild West

Google launched Open Social - a technology that is basically allows techies to write little things like facebook "applications" but make them accessible to a whole bunch of sites, not just facebook.

This is relevant to Linkspank (at least) because our facebook application is coming out soon. (It got slightly delayed - it looked too slight we added a little feature.)

There is no revolution here, just big companies and small companies playing the angles: big companies trying to lock in "network effects" of their user base by getting additional stickiness on their networks, and small companies trying to tap into the growing pie of big companies. Also big companies (Google) competing with other big companies (facebook) in trying to attract the attention of small companies and create richer networks.

My opinion on Open Social is the same as my opinion on facebook apps - Wild West-style openness is not such a good thing. It leads to lots of crap. Users want simplicity, and they want the good stuff and experiences. They don't want to sort through a bunch of crap.

I think cool stuff will come out of the Open Social platform - just like there are some cool facebook apps. But probably nothing all that great - just as none of the facebook apps have changed our lives. I also predict that the dust will settle in the future, and it will be a closed network, not an open network. The big players know this and they are rushing to be the one. :-)

Just Do It. (The Day after First Filming of Linkspank TV)

2007-10-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

My favorite mantra for entrepreneurship these days: Just Do It.

There, I did it.

All so often, 50% good is good enough.

How would you rate this blog post? Would you have written it? :-)

Toolbar

2007-10-29T08:57:00.001-07:00

Today's a crappy post but I'm keeping the flame alive... :-)

A linkspank toolbar is in the works - something you install in Internet Explorer or Firefox with nice buttons to help you spank and do other stuff across the web. We already have a QuickSpank button for your browser - the toolbar will have additional functions.

The design is not quite finalized. A toolbar is a pretty obvious idea. It was central to our original conception of linkspank, but we jettisoned it after research showed that most people don't know what toolbars are, and a mighty percentage of the other people are unwilling to install toolbars. (Basically any service that requires the installation of a toolbar is either willing to settle for a very small community, or they are clueless.)

On the other hand, the people who DO install toolbars are very important spankers so they deserve all the spanking equipment they want. Plus, this toolbar is going to be bitchin. So it's on the way.

What do YOU want in the toolbar? Let us know.

Spank Statistic

2007-10-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

As of now, 19% of spankers have actually sent a linkspank. This percentage includes those individuals who merely sent a spank as part of a tutorial.

I had been estimating the figure to people as 10%, so it was nice to find that the truth was shinier than my expectation. But the most important question might be whether 19% is a great figure or one indicative of some failure.

I believe it's a good figure. It's much higher than the percentage of users of other user-generated contest sites that actually are generating the content. (The comparisons are difficult because not everything is obviously comparable but I still believe that statement is true.) And the number will go up, by virtue of user experience improvements and consumer awareness of the spank.

Of course, 19% is much smaller than the % of people who have ever shared a link by email or IM (north of 90%). We have a long way to go toward being as used as email and IM :-).

Linkspank TV: Planning the Pilot

2007-10-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

Our Linkspank TV team had its kickoff meeting today. I think we have an awesome team and I feel lucky to be working with such skilled, creative, chill dudes and dudettes.

The goal: create a pilot (or some pilot segments) by end of October or early November. It will be a bit experimental and we have no need to be perfectionists about this so we can move fast.

Before I described some of the segments we were thinking about. For now, we're going with a "video montage" (summarizing the week of spanks), a "superlatives" section (again, regarding the week of spanks), and a "street report" (a variation on the oh so so classic theme).

How to Create the Greatest Site Demo Ever.

2007-10-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

We've created a Video Introduction for linkspank (a "site demo").

A little part of our Video Introduction to Linkspank

Ok, so may it's not the greatest site demo EVER. But I'd put it in the top 95th percentile.

How to make one the way we made this one:

1. Explain what your site is to dozens, hundreds of people, verbally. In doing so, your pitch and explanation will evolve naturally to becoming increasingly effective - and you'll learn what people need to be explicitly told about your idea. Everyone helps you in this step, because you want your idea to be clear to anyone.

2. Create a positioning for your site. This is marketing mumbo-jumbo. People who actually know marketing and don't pooh-pooh the 3C-4P framework are useful for this step.

The reason you need to do this step is that it helps you figure out how to convey your message. Should your demo be slick or goofy? Is having a caveman in it a really dumb idea? Once your positioning is set, it provides the answers magically to all of these questions.

3. Storyboard the demo/video introduction. Pretend you are a cartoonist (even if your demo won't involve animation, as ours does). Long before anyone draws cartoons, they create "storyboards" describing, in excruciating detail, what happens in each "scene" of your demo. If this process sounds too creative to you, remember that you can always do it in Powerpoint.

4. Get a Flash artist/animator to executive your demo. Once you have the storyboard, you can show it to candidates and discuss whether they are the right person for it. In our case, we needed someone who knew flash and who could draw, but e.g. javascript skills were not required.

Notes:

+ This process has creative components - how do you make sure it goes well? The answer is to put as much of the creative work into step #3 by storyboarding everything in exquisite detail. You should let your Flash artist help you improve the idea in step #4, but any gaps in your description are areas of risk going forward.

+ Despite doing our homework, we have no way of being sure at this point how our audience will react to our site demo. But I will say confidently that if your site demo appeals to everyone, and everyone thinks it's unqualifiedly great, then you may have failed to stick to step #3 and maybe you created something too generic.

Just sharing my experiences! Don't forget to share your wisdom back with me ;-).

Seeking PR rep, plus a secret tip

2007-10-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

We're seeking a PR rep! Someone who can get us on the cover of Wired, etc. Please pass along the word to any PR ninjas / divas. Inquires can be sent to prdiva [@] linkspank.com.

One of the PR-worthy things we are doing is launching a new contest, possibly on Monday. This contest is going to be crazy. The bling factor will be magnified. Stay tuned and strengthen your spank hand.

A Formula to (actually!) Use LinkedIn... and an Answer to the Classic Puzzle

2007-10-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

This post will be rough but I wanted to share a formula for using LinkedIn.

Background: I want to start having some conversations on the Linkspank contest sponsorship program. To get various industry perspectives and advice, I need to make some connections.

The Formula:

1. Have a purpose. Most people on LinkedIn don't have a purpose for networking. Which is fine (unless you ask the Never Eat Alone guy). But you need a purpose to do this - getting a job, hiring someone, or in my case, setting up chats with people to get advice.

2. Search for the people you want to contact. E.g., I want to speak to someone from Orbitz, so I search LinkedIn for "Orbitz."

3. Sort your search by degrees of separation from you and throw out everyone higher than degree 3. They are too far away. InMail, referrals, all that stuff on the site - not going to help you with these guys (or anyone).

4. For each person you'd like to contact... (we'll call that person the "match")
a. Visit their profile and confirm you want to contact them.
b. See on their profile page which of your contacts connects you DIRECTLY to that person. We'll call that person the "connector."
c. Contact "the connector" and ask if that person is willing to send you the "match"'s contact info, and also to send an email to the "match" mentioning as much.

5. Contact the "match" by phone and email... and do whatever it was that you were setting out to do.

Notes

(i) Referrals on the site don't seem to work too well.

(ii) Anyone further way than 2 is not really reachable. Who gives a fuck if the CEO is your mailman's chiropractor's husband?

(iii) Observation (ii) gives us our answer to the Classic Puzzle - "who is worth adding as a contact on LinkedIn? Is it worth it? Why am I always logging in just to approve requests and then leave immediately?"

"What is the point of this crap?" Answered!

Answer: connect with someone if you know them enough to ask them the favor in #4. Which is not really all that well - you don't have to have worked with the person. But it's a good reason to build your network with acquaintances who you respect and know a bit about.

More on the TV Show

2007-10-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned we're going to have a Linkspank TV Show.

The team is almost formed - we're working out the details. This is slated to be a weekly, low-budget show viewable via YouTube or another source. It will highlight some of the best spanks of the preceding week.

Here are some of the segment concepts we've tossed around (how's that for openness!):

1. Commentary on Recent Linkspanks.

Example: let’s replay this video, “Snake coughs up entire hippo” and attain a deeper understanding of what’s going on J. Also commentary on more serious spanks, so this could vary a lot in tone.
Comparable to shows that comment on viral videos. Talk show quality.

2. Lightning News.

We actually report the news. Maybe a headline blitz – all the week’s news in 30 seconds.
Comparable to real news + MTV news or something.

3. Interview: Viral Video Creator.

We track down and interview the people who have created popular spanks.
Comparable to a talk show / news.

4. Interview: Portrait of a Spanker.

We interview prominent Spankers. Who is the mastermind behind KidBaby? How did he reach Level 5 with such a low quality rating? Do we think he’s in the running to win the secret Spankathon prize?
Comparable to ESPN sideline reporting. (How did it feel to score the winning touchdown? What will it take to win next week?)

5. Street Reports.

We interview people on the streets and review local establishments. This is usually pretty fun.
Comparable to : that geography quiz video.

6. Caller Segments.

We let people call into the show and discuss a concept that we just shared or something from last week.
Comparable to : radio or TV talk show.

7. Reporting and Analysis of Current Contests.

We give John Madden X and O diagram – type analysis of current contests- who’s winning, how, predictions, analysis, opinions.
Comparable to : ESPN shizzle.

8. On-Air Games

Game show type activity oriented around linkspank, with opportunity to win points on Linkspank and/or sponsor prizes.
Comparable to : game shows, Linkspank itself .

9. Workplace disruption missions

Visit spankers in their workplace or try to convert bored workers to the spank. Try not to get sued!
Comparable to : nighttime TV skits, YouTube stuff.

Jason Fried and 37signals

2007-10-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

I trekked to Providence to hear Jason Fried of 37signals speak this week.

Random picture of Jason Fried from somewhere else

I'll quote here:

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.

Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that's not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn't).

Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.

Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don't.

Lightning summary:

I know and agree with his philosophy (maybe from influences of Google, non-tech aspects of my background, friends, my own laziness) -- this is definitely Super-Official Linkspank Philosophy...

... but I still found the talk useful and will probably check out their book (which you can read free online - go smarties). Based on my limited experience I have admiration for the products as well.

Cover design was not important to this book.

The limitations and influences of Jason's theory are not well explored. When asked how Google had influenced him, Jason said he didn't know. C'mon! Google was the start of this with its pristine homepage back in '98.

Another limitation can be inferred from Google's experience - this method doesn't work well for integrating products. Don't things become more complicated at some point? Isn't the process of managing many simple tools complicated, and isn't there some way technically to help a person do that? (Of course - like any operating system, microsoft office, your Google account.) The more you hammer on this point, the more the general philosophy starts to fall apart and becomes nothing more than "we prefer to focus on building simple products" :-).

The whole thing and especially the last bullet raises a question for Linkspank - which is its scope? How complicated should it be and how wide should its set of features be? Example: people often ask for features that other sites have, especially adding more photos :-).

Short answer: I think Linkspank's feature set can grow, but we still DEFINITELY have work to do around the core idea.

List of Things on my Mind

2007-10-11T07:45:00.001-07:00

The irony of blogging: we tend to do it least when we are busiest and have the most to share :-).

In that vein, I will simply list some of the things on the radar screen:

+ Forming team for linkspank's weekly Internet TV show
+ Polishing design for browser toolbar
+ Working on model for corporate sponsorship of contests
+ Iterating over and over on site UI
+ Sit-down and A/B tests with users on UI
+ teeing up formation of advisor board
+ coming soon: new site preview / demo
+ very excited about MBA team helping with business plan / pitch
+ possible upcoming event: National Sticker Day

We're doing a TV show

2007-10-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

We're going to have a Linkspank Internet TV show.

How freakin' cool is that?

Goal is to have a rough pilot by the end of October.

We have two co-anchors for the show, to be introduced later. Can you guess who they are???

Facebook Apps for Linkspank, Part 1

2007-10-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

Development began and almost completed today for a baby Facebook app for Linkspank. It will hopefully debut next week.

I would bet any sum of money that if you were to guess what the app did, you'd be wrong! :-). I'm trying something slightly different from what the sites most similar to ours (as if any other site could be placed in the same category as linkspank) have been doing. To be discussed more later.

I must say, the development environment is great. Wow! I personally don't think the open apps environment is strategically the best move for facebook (I know I'm a lone warrior on this) but I must give the development environment, tools, and wiki big props.