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How to "Like" Anything on the Web (Safely)

cgseo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:58:52 +0000

Worried about Facebook “like” fraud? You should be. Thanks to Facebook’s overly simple implementation of the new Facebook Like Button , anyone can post a “Like This” button on their website pointing to any URL of their choosing. In other words, users can be tricked into liking websites they’re not even on . You can bet that enterprising spammers have already figured out how to use this technology for their own nefarious purposes. If you want a safer solution, there’s a new Facebook “like” bookmarklet you can use instead. Sponsor The bookmarklet was created by Kyle Bragger , formerly the CTO of Cork’d , a social networking site for wine lovers, and now working on his own project, Forrst , an invite-only community for developers and designers. Not only does using the bookmarklet he created protect you from “like fraud” as described here , it’s also a handy way to like anything on the Internet – even if there’s no “like” button available on that page. How to Use the Facebook Like Bookmarklet To use the bookmarklet, just drag this link to your bookmarks bar in your web browser: Like-o-matic . Once there, you can click it anytime you’re on a page or website you like. Like ReadWriteWeb , for example? Click the button. Although there’s no “Facebook Like Button” for the website as a whole (you can, however, find us on Facebook ), you’ll be given the opportunity to “like” ReadWriteWeb. After clicking the bookmarklet once, you’ll see a message appear at the top of the screen: “Be the first of your friends to like this.” Click the button with the thumbs up on it and it will register your like on Facebook and post it to your News Feed. That’s all there is to it. By using the bookmarklet instead of the like buttons on the websites themselves, you can be sure that your Facebook “like” will be pointing to the real thing. Plus, it allows you to “like” anything you want – even a site that isn’t using Facebook buttons. Nice! Discuss

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How to "Like" Anything on the Web (Safely)

If Location Apps are Games, How’s the Gameplay?

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:45:00 +0000

One of the motifs you keep coming across when reading about Foursquare and Gowalla, the mobile location apps, is that they are games, and the games are fun. The most important thing when it comes to gaming is the most subjective, whether the players are having fun. But it’s not the whole story. Were these apps structured to have gameplay, a through-line with obstacles and rewards? Are Foursquare and Gowalla, and apps like them, games by design? And if so, is the gameplay good? Sponsor If you’re unfamiliar with the applications, users visit various real-world locations and check in via mobile device. On Foursquare, they score “badges” for visits and, if they’ve visited a given location more than any other place, they become the “Mayor” of that locale. “Parents often make chores a game to get their kids to do them,” said Dylan Romero, Community Manager for The Great Game Experiment. “They hit the part of the brain dealing with achievement and reward to get more desirable results. I think Foursquare is more a game in this sense. If you want to incentivize customers, videogame or not, give them something to shoot for.” “The game mechanics are designed to lead people through the experience of using the product,” said Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare. In other words, gameplay is not in service to the game, but in service to the product. “The ‘game’ for me is to see if I can get a response or, even better, a perk out if it,” Klavars, a Foursquare user, Tweeted. Although there is currently no reward, other than regard among the Foursquare community, presumably, some venues offer specials to Foursquare users. Gowalla differs in some important respects from Foursquare. Gowalla uses a series of icon-based rewards called stamps. Given that Gowalla was born from a design company, it’s no surprise that the symbols are very attractive. Likewise its “items.” Locations are sometimes tied to items that show up when you’ve checked in. You can hold the items or drop them off elsewhere, which means a given place may have more items than it had originally. The scoring of these items seems more traditionally game-oriented than Foursquare’s simple badges. Gowalla also has the equivalent of badges in its pins which can be strung together into itineraries for trips.gowallaferry.png Gowalla also has the equivalent of badges in its pins which can be strung together into itineraries for trips. However, according to Gowalla’s Josh Williams, the company doesn’t see it as a game at all. “While there is certainly an element of entertainment and fun to be had while using Gowalla,” he told us, “we view it first and foremost as a social networking service.” “The iconic items are a bit of an experiment for us. Can we lay a transient piece of data across the service and allow people to interact with it by moving it from place to place, attaching meta-data to it (like a digital message in a bottle), or even attaching real world value to it, as in the case of the NBA tickets given away to a Nets basketball game last week. They’re simply another way to interact with the world around you.” Gowalla requires GPS and that’s how a user checks in. Foursquare only requires you enter the address, which has led to cheating. However, gaming is not just in the rules but in the expectations. With Foursquare, the unwritten expectation is that if you check in at a place, you will be there for some time. Here the location app aspect of Foursquare creates an expectation in its gameplay. On Gowalla it is perfectly acceptable to check in to a place you can’t really stay, like a landmark. It seems, then, that neither company has consciously designed their services to be games. But much in the same way that a kid finds a baseball diamond in a clearing in the woods, perhaps the users are the ones who’ve identified and acted upon, the latent gameplay. Because although Foursquare and Gowalla may not be games, there is a game that is being played with them. Gowalla, in requiring GPS and requiring no any real relationship to the place, might be less appealing on the location side of things. Playing Foursquare is also arguably simpler, and therefor more appealing to more people. I think it’s fair to say that people with higher gameplay expectations will probably find Gowalla more appealing, regardless of creator intent. People who want quick fun with more of a social aspect may favor Foursquare. Discuss

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If Location Apps are Games, How’s the Gameplay?

The Largest Cloud in the World is Owned By A Criminal Network

cgseo — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:39:26 +0000

The biggest cloud network in the world is owned by the mob. While you may think that Google, Amazon and Microsoft are the world’s largest cloud providers it’s really the Conficker worm that has helped criminal networks spawn a botnet of mass proportions. Sponsor How does Conficker meets the definitions of a cloud? According to the Spectre Group ,a veteran technologist explained the connection last week at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, Ca.: “Conficker controls 6.4 million computer systems in 230 countries at 230 top level domains globally, more than 18 million CPUs and 28 terabits per second of bandwidth, said Rodney Joffe, senior vice president and senior technologist at the infrastructure services firm Neustar. The biggest cloud on the planet is controlled by a vast criminal enterprise that uses that botnet to send spam, hack computers, spread malware and steal personal information and money, Joffe said. In other words, the cloud is mobbed up.” The Spectre Group further explains how, Conficker meets the definitions. The botnet cloud is available for rent and and is just about anywhere in the world. It can be used for a variety of purposes, be a denial-of-service attack, spam distribution or data exfiltration. In fact, all that comment spam that plagues blogs could easily be spawned from the Conflicker cloud. Joffe used the presentation at the conference to illustrate the dangers of Conficker and and how it poses a threat to legitimate cloud computing providers. He said at the conference that Conficker has not been as active as it once was, but is still a threat. The Manchester, UK Police Department was hit in February. And it has a huge footprint, all over the world. The operators have a lot of experience, too, dating back to 1998. The Spectre Group says in comparison the legitimate players in the market are far smaller: “By the way, the biggest legitimate cloud provider is Google, based on Joffe’s information, made up of 500,000 systems, 1 million CPUs and 1,500 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwdith. Amazon comes in second with 160,000 systems, 320,000 CPUs and 400 Gbps of bandwidth, while Rackspace offers 65,000 systems, 130,000 CPUs and 300 Gbps.” The Conficker cloud demonstrates the illusions that have to be considered when thinking about cloud computing. It’s not just the danger of a a PC being infected by a virus. It’s the danger of another computer entering the criminal enterprise. Discuss

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The Largest Cloud in the World is Owned By A Criminal Network

The Art of the Elevator Pitch: 10 Great Tips

cgseo — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 03:00:33 +0000

The elevator door opens. And there stands your ideal investor. It’s the chance of a lifetime. But that chance only lasts as long as the elevator ride – you have less than a minute to make an impression. Hopefully, you’ve got a well-crafted elevator pitch ready to give. The elevator pitch is not the hurried presentation of a full-blown business plan. It’s an introduction, an overview and a pitch – and a short one at that – meant to capture the attention of a potential investor. Of course, an elevator ride is a short one. Guides for elevator speeches that say you have one minute surely overestimate the amount of time it takes for an elevator to move from floor to floor. Of course, an elevator speech isn’t restricted to elevators. Rather, it comes in handy for any occasion where a concise presentation is appropriate. Sponsor When crafting your pitch there are two key things to keep in mind: its content and its form. In other words, it’s not just what you say but how you say it. Here are a 10 tips to keep in mind as you craft your elevator pitch. 1. Keep it short . Be succinct. According to Wikipedia , an adult’s attention span is eight seconds, so be sure to give just enough information (and more importantly perhaps the right information) so that after only hearing a sentence or two, someone knows what you do – and if it’s a pitch, what you need. 2. Have a hook. As Mel Pirchesky advises , “The objective of the first ten or fifteen seconds is to have your prospective investors want to listen to the next forty-five or fifty seconds differently, more intently than they would have otherwise.” 3. Pitch yourself, not your ideas. As Chris Dixon writes , “The reality is ideas don’t matter that much. First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes – often dramatically – over time. Secondly, ideas are relatively abundant.” Instead of talking about ideas, highlight what you’ve done – the concrete accomplishments or skills – rather than some intangible concept or a future goal. 4. Don’t forget the pitch. It’s easy to get so caught up in the details of who you are that you neglect to mention what you need. What amount of financing are you seeking, for example? 5. Don’t overwhelm with technical or statistical terminology . While being able to tout one or two amazing and memorable phrases or figures can be useful, don’t fill your elevator speech with numbers or jargon. 6. Practice . Rehearse your elevator pitch so that when the opportunity to give it comes, you can deliver it smoothly. 7. Use the same tactics for print. You can hone your elevator skills by practicing them in writing. Babak Nivi describes the email elevator pitch here . 8. Revise. As your startup moves through various stages, be sure to update and refresh your pitch. 9. Be involved in the startup community before you pitch. Business Insider suggests “Engaging in online discussions, writing insightful blog posts, and participating in the relatively small startup community can earn you a ‘strong presence’ that gets you noticed by potential investors.” Building relationships with investors before pitching to them will help your success. 10. Listen. When seeking to build strong networks, remember it can be just as important to listen as it is to talk. Do you have any other suggestions on crafting an elevator pitch? Feel free to add your tips in the comments below. Discuss

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The Art of the Elevator Pitch: 10 Great Tips

The Modigliani Test: The Semantic Web’s Tipping Point

cgseo — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:06:00 +0000

In our recent posts about Structured Data , we’ve emphasized that most of the current initiatives have been around uploading new data to the Web – whatever the format. The U.S. and U.K. governments have led the way with their ‘open data’ websites, but much of that data isn’t ‘linked’ yet . In other words, it’s online – but siloed. So how do we get to the next stage of the Semantic Web, linking disparate data sets together so that people can begin to use that data? The tipping point for the long-awaited Semantic Web may be when you can query a set of data about someone not too famous, and get a long list of structured results in return. I’ve decided to term this ‘The Modigliani Test.’ Sponsor Amedeo Modigliani is one of my favorite artists. He was moderately famous during the early 20th century and has something of a cult following nowadays. But he’s not Da Vinci or Picasso famous. What I’d like to do in a Semantic Web is type the following query into a search engine and get back a large list of results: tell me the locations of all the original paintings of Modigliani. As of today, there’s no place to type that query in and get a list of structured data . The closest I can find to doing that is the Artcyclopedia entry for Modigliani, which has a list of locations for Modigliani artworks. It’s great that they have the location data listed on one web page. However it’s not structured data, so we can’t query it. There’s also not much order to the data, we have no idea if this is a comprehensive list, it’s not verified data, and so on. In summary, there’s a lot of data on the Web about the location of original art works – but much of it is in traditional ‘document’ web pages. What we’re after is a giant database of art works, which anybody can query and re-use. Here’s an early, overly geeky view at what a Linked Data of painting locations would look like (hat-tip @dakoller ): The above is a far from comprehensive list of art works by Hieronymus Bosch (a search for Modigliani, by the way, brought up zero results). Plus of course we need a much more intuitive UI, so that non-geeks can use it too. What do you think, when will The Modigliani Test be passed on the Web? Discuss

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The Modigliani Test: The Semantic Web’s Tipping Point

Do VCs Like Games? Gaming Startups and Investors

cgseo — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:00:00 +0000

The gaming industry continues to see phenomenal growth – from console systems to social games. The 12 million subscribers of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft – once the giant of gaming – now seems small compared to the 80 million Farmville players. Farmville’s maker, Zynga was recently estimated to be worth $5 billion – a valuation that appears to bode well for investors and for startups. But are games good buys? Can gaming startups attract the investment they need? Sponsor Gaming industry consultant Nicholas Lovell recently wrote a post on the blog Gamasutra where he suggested “Four Reasons Why VCs Won’t Fund Game Companies.” Lovell’s arguments are as follows 1. VCs don’t invest in projects Lovell contends that game developers are good at creating (and even at pitching) projects, but that VCs don’t necessarily care what makes a good project – in other words, what makes a good game. “Investors care about businesses; developers show them projects.” 2. Investors want to see a running business, not an idea 3. VCs want sustainable businesses Lowell writes, “Traditional games developers are really difficult for any investor to fund. They look like quite late-stage businesses: they may have hundreds of staff, millions in turnover and a proven track record. But fundamentally, they are always just one deal away from bankruptcy. They look like startups from a risk perspective but are like late stage investments from a reward perspective.” 4. History sucks The history of the gaming industry is full of failed businesses, and as such VCs find the investment there to be risky. Arguably, investors’ opinions might be changing, particularly given the rapidly increasing popularity of social games. While traditional console games and MMORPGs require significant investment and substantial development time before a game is “live,” social games are, arguably, “lighter.” With the growth in virtual goods and virtual currency, even “free” social games, as Farmville and the like have demonstrated, can become vastly popular and very profitable. Discuss

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Do VCs Like Games? Gaming Startups and Investors

What Websites Do You Like? New Twitter Tool Will Tell You

cgseo — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:21:58 +0000

The Website Taste Predictor is a new Twitter tool that analyzes your Twitter account in order to recommend websites you would like. The project uses Twitter’s OAuth authentication protocol to access your Twitter account so you don’t have to enter in your username and password in order to try it out. How exactly it works, we can’t say. There’s no “about” page, “FAQ” or other explanation. In fact, there’s not even a credit as to who made it, only a URL. But the URL is a big hint: it’s hosted on the MIT.edu domain underneath the subheading ~peretti. And just who is ~peretti? Only the co-founder of the Huffington Post and the viral tracker BuzzFeed , Jonah Peretti . Sponsor New Twitter Tool From HuffPo and BuzzFeed Co-Founder? Peretti is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab, has taught at NYU and the Parsons School of Design, consulted for major brands like Sony Pictures and Procter & Gamble and created several viral experiments like the Nike sweatshop email and FundRace.org . However, he’s best known for co-founding BuzzFeed , The Huffington Post , ContagiousMedia.org , and the Eyebeam Open Lab . So if this “Website Taste Predictor” is also his creation (we’ve contacted him to confirm), you know it’s not going to be your run-of-the-mill Twitter tool. For what it’s worth, we’re nearly 100% sure about Peretti’s involvement. The tool is hosted under his account on MIT’s servers , he tweeted about it back on April 7th and he responded personally to a comment about it over on Digg (the fact that this post never hit homepage it a testament to all that is going wrong over there). However, while these clues seem to point to Peretti as the creator, you can never be too sure. We’ll wait for an official word and will update accordingly. Website Taste Predictor in Action So what does the Taste Predictor actually do? Well, it doesn’t just parse your Twitter history to spit back a list of links you’ve tweeted. That would be too easy. It appears to delve deeper than that to function as a true recommendation engine. Whether it looks at keywords, follower lists or sites related to those you post links to, we can’t be sure, but we do know this: the app gets it right on the money. And I mean downright scary right. In my case, for example, the list returned included a large group of sites I read regularly consisting mainly tech-focused blogs and mainstream media sites plus a handful of sites I’ve been known to check out less often. What I don’t know is how it figured out that I’ve been known to gaze at the occasional lolcat , fail photo , web comic or celebrity

What Can Startups Learn from Last Week’s Twitter Announcements?

cgseo — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:00:42 +0000

Last week brought two major announcements from Twitter. On Thursday, the company announced an official application for BlackBerry. On Friday, Twitter announced that it had purchased Atebits, the makers of the iPhone app Tweetie . Over the weekend, there was substantial discussion and a fair amount of hand-wringing by third-party developers, many expressing their frustrations about the company’s direction. Attempting to reassure developers in advance of next week’s Chirp conference, Twitter API lead Ryan Sarver responded by email to some of these concerns. Sponsor Certainly Twitter isn’t the only company at the center of debates about control of a platform (Apple, Google, and Microsoft come to mind), but in light of the flurry of responses to Twitter’s moves, it is worth considering some of the (perhaps contradictory) lessons for startups that can be gleaned from the past week’s events. Find your niche : Much of the third-party development on Twitter has served to address gaps in the original product: mobile clients, URL shorteners, photo sharing, and search for example. As VC and Twitter investor Fred Wilson argued in a blog post early last week that tipped the hand, perhaps, to where Twitter was headed, there is still room for the development of “killer apps” in social gaming, enterprise, and analytics. Innovate and adapt : Find your niche, but then be prepared to innovate and adapt. Some have suggested that Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie might not bode well for other Twitter clients like Seesmic and Tweetdeck , unless the two can continue to innovate. By adding new features unavailable via the Twitter website, and by linking streams from Facebook and LinkedIn, they have established themselves as more than just a Twitter client – but the pressure is certainly on for these to continue to distinguish themselves from the official Twitter applications. “Of course we’re hole fillers,” Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur admits , explaining that while that’s a good place to start, it isn’t the right place to end. Look beyond the platform : As Mark Suster writes of both Twitter and the iPhone, it is important to think beyond the platform, contending that startups should not think of Twitter “as a business but rather as a channel.” In other words, a platform like Twitter should be a used as a way to reach customers but, unless you’re Twitter, should not be the vehicle itself. If this is the ” inflection point ” for Twitter, the tasks for startups will be to learn the lessons from this critical juncture in the platform’s history, balancing the sometimes contradictory needs for specificity and flexibility and innovation and stability. Discuss

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What Can Startups Learn from Last Week’s Twitter Announcements?

Startup Strategy Roundtable: Web 3.0 and E-commerce

cgseo — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:15:00 +0000

As part of my ongoing Online Strategy Roundtables , this morning I worked with three new entrepreneurs, each at a different stage of validating who their customers are and building their businesses accordingly. Two have e-commerce businesses, which I love. In fact, my Forbes column tomorrow will discuss the shift from brick and mortar shops to e-commerce and how such businesses are so well poised for Web 3.0. Main Street America is changing as small business owners move online and get rid of the expensive real estate costs. Sponsor Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. Up first was Ellen Sinreich and her company Green Edge Workshops . Ellen is a consultant with expertise in sustainability and real estate. Based on her practice, she has designed some workshops that enable employees to develop strategies that will drive down a company’s carbon footprint. She is looking to reach mid market companies in her geographic region (New York), but to date has no customers. Clearly this is a business that has yet to be validated. I believe Ellen is trying to reach too broad a market based on her experience. I recommended she narrows her value proposition to align better with her expertise by targeting companies that deal with facilities and building issues. She asked for advice on finding clients and unfortunately there is no obvious way to find clients when you are a consultant. What worked for me early on was using my personal network for referrals and I suggest she does the same to connect with her target market. Later on, while discussing the Entrepreneur Journeys methodology, I also suggested that folks should read the Finisar case study in Entrepreneur Journeys Volume One to get a good feel for what it takes to get a business off the ground through consulting, and then build a product company through that process by getting close to customers, while generating cashflow all along. Finisar, for those of you who don’t know, went public in 2001 at a $5 billion market cap, and was largely a bootstrapped case study. Danny Wong presented Blank-Label , an e-commerce site that allows men to co-create and custom design dress shirts at affordable prices. This site was launched five months ago and has seen a steady increase in sales but has not yet hit its stride. While Danny is well-versed in SEO traffic optimization, he needs to narrow his market to target the exact psychographic interested in being this involved in buying shirts- in other words, style conscious men. I recommend he target his PPC campaigns to the more fashionable zip codes across the country and to go slowly. I believe focusing all their efforts on the correct psychographic will make all the difference. This is a business for a small niche market, but definitely worth building. Catherine Wood Hill gave a heart-felt presentation of La Grande Dame , an e-boutique for plus-sized women that she started with her mom. Having launched a year ago, and with thousands of customers already, this business has been well validated. Their target is women between the ages of 30 and 55 who are looking for high-end designer clothes in sizes 14 and up. I like it when a business is so tightly focused. This allows you to do so many things inexpensively through the Web. We discussed ways to fine tune customer acquisition so the business can scale faster. She said their PPC advertising has never yielded a good return on investment, so I suggested that she targets the most affluent zip codes in the country. I also suggest she continues to do more PR and all the SEO marketing, blogging, Tweeting, etc., that she is already doing to reach more customers. I believe this has the potential to become a very large business. I did research on this segment myself when I ran Uuma, my personalized fashion company for busy, professional women which Ralph Lauren was interested in acquiring in 1999. The roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . Photo by Svilen Milev . Discuss

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Startup Strategy Roundtable: Web 3.0 and E-commerce

White House to Federal Agencies: Beware Social Media Ratings and Polls

cgseo — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:17:00 +0000

In a memo released yesterday , the White House made it significantly easier for federal agencies to use everything from social networks to online forums. But with the newfound freedom comes a surprising caveat: User ratings and rankings on those services, the new guidelines warn, “should not be used as the basis for policy or planning.” In other words, a million Americans can Digg or retweet an important blog post, but government officials shouldn’t use that popularity as an indicator of the post’s value. Sponsor That’s not always a bad thing considering that a dedicated group of like-minded people can game a casual voting system. But the voice of a social network corresponds to real people in the real world. A recent study , for instance, found that Twitter chatter accurately forecasts box-office revenues. As a whole, the new guidelines [ PDF ] were sorely needed. Social media and other online activities fell under a law that arduously dictates how agencies handle written materials. Under the new guidelines, online activities are now considered a “public meeting,” which gives agencies much more freedom to blog, hold virtual meetings or even run contests. That freedom comes with a stipulation. The memo was written by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator, Cass Sunstein. In it he explains that agencies should “exercise good judgment and caution when using rankings, ratings, or tagging” because they aren’t “statistically generalizable.” That’s true, but it doesn’t mean they’re worthless. John Zogby, founder of polling firm Zogby International, told us last year that if you keep in mind that social networks don’t necessarily represent the entire scope of the American people, then the data from them has “tremendous, tremendous value.” At least 66% of all federal, state and local governments now use social media. It’s still early in the current midterm election cycle, but candidates are already investing heavily in social media; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the rule, not the exception. Those candidates will take their online communities with them to Washington when elected. Where else would they expect to get input on public policy than from that same community of voices? Discuss

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White House to Federal Agencies: Beware Social Media Ratings and Polls