Rants and raves of a startup enthusiast.
I couldn’t look past this quick, clear and cleaver guide using a viral video to demonstrate how to effectively create a movement. Take 3 minutes to watch this and another to see how its lessons could be incorporated into your plans.
Posted in Marketing, Psychology.
For those of you that do not know 37signals they are the developers of some simple and efficient products that have taken the online community by storm. They now have over 2.5 million subscribers. A considerable achievement given it was without the use of traditional and expensive marketing techniques. I have said enough, now just watch the video.
Note: This very video is an example of their marketing. If you like some of the lessons on offer stop reading my blog for a moment and check out Fried and Hansson’s book Rework
Posted in Marketing.
Dan Ariely is the bestselling author of Predictably Irrational, he describes many unorthodox and often downright odd experiments in an effort to identify how emotional states, moral codes and peer pressure affect our ability to make rational decisions.
This video coveres “Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes)”.
Taking these findings into account and assessing their affect on everyday life and you can find several environments that are actually geared towards cheating, intentional or not.
The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) in Australia could really take these studies into consideration.
I would love to see a study whereby drivers are reminded of their oath to abide by the road rules and not drive while fatigued. Do you think it could have a similar effect as the “honour code pledge”?
Posted in Marketing, Psychology.
I sometimes forget that not everyone is aware of what has happened around the world. Rarely do I speak to anyone that does not access the Internet on an hourly basis (or more).
Ps. My summarizing things into one sentence is proving a challenge, but more efforts will be made. I know beyond a doubt that if you allow a text string to be 160 characters it will be used at some point.
So by design your typical wordpress installation (such as this one) provides a lot of freedom. Freedom to expand well beyond what may be necessary at times.
Posted in Life.
At a local Business Chamber event today I noticed a couple of interesting things.
The first was that the speaker Bob Ansett referenced “Think Global but act Local”, which I could not agree with more especially considering we are about to launch Local.net. Bob is a great speaker; it was a great pleasure to listen to his fun and fantastic on the job and life experiences.
The second was a brief talk by Andrew Meyles of Forsythes that referenced the “United Breaks Guitars” music video, highlighting just how important customer service is and how the Internet can effect your business even without your being online.
I imagine the people at United Airlines would be following this (with over 5 million views at the time of this blog). But if you or an employee was to do something that resulted in such a response then you really need to really look at things in-house and you would really want to know of and engage with those effected in aid of a solution. Customer service in the web world very much requires business to keep a pulse on social interaction related to their business. Web2 people would much prefer spend 4 minutes typing up a blog post that tells the world about an experience then spent for the third time over twenty minutes on the phone explaining in very simple English without being understood and little hope for a solution.
It also intrigues me that people think it will not happen to them because they are not as big as United. Just remember this, not everyone you have a negative effect on is going to upload such an enlightening video, but as soon as someone does you can safely guess there would be lots of people willing to comment and share it within their own networks. That video has 5.4 million views but 22,000 people have added their comments to the story and 35,000 have rated it highly.
Posted in Life, Uncategorized.
Improving Lives In A Small Kenyan Town – Kiandu
This is a grass roots project by four mates in Sydney. They aim to improve the education of the children of Kiandu Village in Kenya. They are doing a fantastic job and have setup a website at Kiandu.com with the whole story and ideas on how you can help out. If you donate to this great cause every cent goes into this school. No admin or marketing fees here.
Please watch the video and if you think they are doing a great job and can spare $50 via PayPal it will go a long way.
The Kiandu Story from Kiandu on Vimeo.
Posted in Charity.
We are in the final days now before the release of Local.net, a project that has been almost two years in the making. It is a very exciting time and I cannot wait to send out the next batch of invite codes to the 10,000+ people that have registered.
I could not help but write about the energy and excitement that we have been living. The pure adrenalin that is driving the Local.net team is a fantastic experience and has highlighted just why some people call their businesses their babies. The months and months of anticipation, the unknown, and the joy of brining something to the world that would make a life of its own!!!
Local.net is a website that has a particular relevance and context but it will be the users and their influence that will ultimately determine its purpose(s). Building anything that does not have a fixed purpose or application is extremely difficult and for the entire time we where developing there was always the unknown… Would the public like it or not!
This element of surprise has made for an interesting time; the anticipation of what people may think has been cause for much careful thinking. You can have test groups and ask as many family members and friends for feedback that you like but nothing will remove the stress and anticipation of what the general public might do, both those with positive or negative intentions.
Thankfully, everyone that has been involved with the project has been excited and most importantly (for our sanity) everyone that has only recently been made aware of what Local.net does has received it exceptionally well, beating our wildest expectations.
On this note I would like to thank everyone that has helped out to get it to where it is today. The people working in-house, those working from afar and very importantly those that have no idea their experiences and influence have contributed.
Everyone who is directly involved has my thanks already but I would like to say a quick thanks to a few people that would never have known:
There are a great many others, too many to mention but my quick blog post has already well and truly over shot the preferred word count.
For those that read my blog but have no idea what Local.net is all about… no need to worry, it will not be to long until we launch the public beta and so you can check it out for yourself.
Posted in Life.
There is order in nature, if you are a fish, a human or an inanimate object you have a natural tendency to synchronise. Psychologically and physically, I think this is something to remember.
You can replicate this underlying behaviour (synchronization) with an environment containing just four simple rules.
1. You only need to be aware of those nearest you
2. All individuals have a tendency to line up
3. Attraction to each other
4. Dangar = Get out of the way
These four rules have been explained with various definitions over time from laws of attraction to conforming to social pressure but it is these four rules that pop their head up in many welcome and unwelcome circumstances. Keep them in mind and you might just find yourself with a greater understanding of why certain things work and another that is seemingly similar fails.
Posted in Psychology.
This video from July 2005 has some great concrete examples on how the world has and is changing. Clay Shirky’s insights on Institutions vs. Collaboration will help enabled you to consider this change and importantly it’s potential to effect your current or future initiatives.
Parts I like:
- Mass Amateurisation of typically professional roles (touching on pros and cons)
- How he has to define what Flickr is and what Tagging is. (As this was in 2005)
- His reference to Kubler-Ross model (a.k.a. The 5 stages of grief / dying)
The cooperative systems he talks about have now been around a little longer and some relevant and effected institutions have moved further down the Kubler-Ross model.
Posted in Uncategorized.
www.Kiva.org
Kiva.org is the great example of a win/win scenario in a web2 world. The only losers here and those with “traditional business models”.
It is a project that is great for the community, is rewarding to all users and its founders. I will not go into detail on what it does I would encourage you to check it out for yourself… I will wait a moment while you do.
Go check out: www.kiva.org
See my profile at: www.kiva.org/lender/masonfok
There are a great many things that Kiva.org is doing extremely right and I will try and summarize over a few below in case you cannot see them.
Its business model appears sound and it contains all the elements required of a successful online social engagement.
They offer users a Profile page that provides a publicly viewable summary of my participation.
These both give recognition to the one investing but more importantly it builds a social interaction that fosters further use. Encouragement is received by viewing the profiles of others. (Call it mob mentality if you will)
They are consistent with their calls to action. Referring friends is critical to its growth and they understand how to enable their users to do this with very little effort.
Grouping people into Community “Teams” is also encouraging communication between likeminded users. This has also created a low pressure competitive environment as your participation is both credited to your profile and your designated team. The “Team” concept and consistent communication would also have a significant impact in the frequency of participation.
Finally, the people behind the curtain I think are fantastic. Consider this: If you where an online payment processing facility and your job was to develop new business. What would you do?
Do you spend millions on billboards and radio, or do you apply a little lateral thinking?
Matt Flannery
Kiva.org is the first and possibly only website that has a fee-free account with PayPal. The Kiva.org boards are also loaded with PayPal executives. Matt Flannery the CEO and co-founder has done well to identify the potential of a Kiva/PayPal relationship and PayPal have done even better by recognising it. Kiva/PayPal has been able to facilitate something great, a peer-to-peer finance network that is completely win/win.
At the time of writing this 493,422 people in 185 countries have used the PayPal service as part of their Kiva.org experience. How much marketing would a “traditional” business have to do in order to generate such a large and wide user base?
I think now more than ever it is risky to be “traditional”. Encourage lateral thinking in your business and you never know what you could achieve. If someone came to you with a concept as alternative as kiva.org was in the early days, would you have given it the time it deserved?
Posted in Great Websites.
