Last week, Robert Scoble of building43 stopped by Box HQ for a chat with CEO/Co-founder Aaron Levie and VP of Marketing Jen Grant. They talked about the new content viewing and embedding features we recently introduced, where Box is headed with Cloud Content Management, and how Box’s open platform has brought key integrations with business applications like Salesforce.com and a growing variety of mobile apps to Box customers.
Here’s a video interview I did this morning with Guy Walker from ARC (Association of Related Churches)
A Thursday update to Seesmic for BlackBerry fills in some big coverage holes missing from Seesmic’s proficient desktop tweeter for Windows and Mac. It may be time for those heavy Twitter users among you to get Seesmic back on your radar, if not on your BlackBerry.
Retweeting is Seesmic’s main addition in the latest release, where the retweet funtionality pops up into the options menu. Retweeting quickly reposts another user’s 140 characters as is. For more creative control, there’s also Quote, which will let you edit a tweet–even adding geolocation, a short URL, and a photo–to the message before sending. Like Ubertwitter, Seesmic for Blackberry now includes a preview of a picture embedded within an opened tweet. Good. Now you can slake your curiosity without having to leave the app or wait for a full-size image to load in the browser. The same goes for links leading to Google maps.
[ht to cnet]
Yesterday I was nosing around the interwebs and came across Friendster on a social bookmarking tool…According to TechCrunch Founded in 2002, Friendster is one of the web’s older social networking services. Adults, 16 and up can join and connect with friends, family, school, groups, activities and interests. The site currently has over 50 million users.
I found this graph that shows current usage by country
And then this morning I discovered this little jewel
Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization
Let’s create a list in the comments of social sites that we don’t use anymore:
You’ve probably noticed after coming home from Christmas that your number of subscribers on your blog has dropped significantly.
I was doing some research on the whole Friendfeed / Feedburner fiasco and found the best conclusion for the new year at ReadWriteWeb:
…Google Dominates, RSS Readers Less Relevant…
These statistics are by no means the definitive RSS Reader market numbers. They do clearly show two things though:
1) Google now dominates what’s left of the RSS Reader market. Bloglines is hanging in there, but it seems like it’s given up the fight judging by lack of activity in its blog and traffic dips.
2) RSS reading is a very fragmented experience circa 2009. People can monitor news and information via Twitter, Facebook, start pages like Netvibes, their Firefox bookmarks, their OS, aggregators like Techmeme, and so on.
You can read the whole article here.
For me, I knew who reads my blog. They comment or tell me on Twitter. And when I redesigned the site these thoughts were on my mind:
-not about the numbers
-It’s about relationships
-I’m not blogging for money
-this is a place to share ideas, inspiration, and thought-processes.
What about you? Will the change in RSS numbers change the way you blog in 2010?
These are 7 questions that have been keeping me up at night since I read them this weekend on Chris Brogan’s blog:
What are the basic, bare-bones components of our business? – Use small words. Describe it as briefly as you can. No matter if you THINK you know the business, try it again.
How do we share? – Inside the business, outside the business, it’s important to figure this out. Think broadly about “share.” With social tools, there are lots of implications, but inside the company, it’s crazy and potentially bit.
How do we collaborate? – Similar but different to sharing, the question is: now that we have these amazing tools, how do we best apply them to collaborative efforts: business-to-customer, customer-to-customer, business-to-business, etc. The last of these, business-to-business, is harder than you think. Do you dare open your company up for external collaboration? Software companies do it all the time. Would it work for you?
How do we wire new networks? – Let’s accept that social software like Facebook and Twitter are part of what’s next. How do we tap these in concerted ways? How do we build interactivity for our own business purposes into these tools? And here’s one: what would happen if one of them went away? Do you have a plan b?
How do we make new distribution points? – I have a new favorite thing to say at conferences with regards to distribution: Walmart and the Mafia are both masters of it. In both cases, they learned how to bypass prior roadblocks, they learned how to shift materials faster into buyers’ hands. They know how to distinguish between buyers and non-buyers. Do you? And are you expanding your distribution? Are you jumping gates?
How do we develop relationships that yield? – It’s great to have 100,000 friends on Twitter. How many take action? Of the 36,000 folks who subscribe to my blog, I usually get between 50-100 comments per post. That’s less than 1/3 of 1%. If comments were my business, I’d say that stinks. Relationships that yield are how we separate “friends” or “community members” from “customers” in our various business buckets. They overlap, but for the sake of this question, think strongly about “yield” and what it means to you.
Where is that yield and how do we extract value? – You’ll note that I don’t ask you for much in the way of money. I like to ask big companies for it. You? I like to give things away for free, because it’s also a strong way to advertise what I know, because I want you to succeed, etc. But somewhere along the line, baby needs to eat. Where do you extract value from your efforts? (This one is particularly tricky and important.)
LinkedIn has always been about helping you to build your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding new assignments and jobs to kick-starting a global business enterprise.
Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.
Want to know how to connect Twitter and Linkedin? Go to the Linkedin blog to find out.
[photo by beautyinmetal]
Part of my relationship with my clients is the fact that they rely on me for tools, tricks, and tips that will help them function better in their world. And I in turn rely on others to salvage through heaping piles of these tools, tricks, and tips. That’s why I dig ReadWriteWeb and all that they do. Today I found a great article with some killer tools for small businesses to use. Here are 5 of those tools:
Note:I’m currently using Monitter for listening to chatter about my clients and their projects.
1. Jott
Have you ever called yourself and left a voice mail so that you wouldn’t forget something? Jott takes that idea a step further, transcribing the voice mail and sending it to your inbox. Instead of sending a quick memo to yourself to remember to email your vendor, you can dictate the email and save time. Upgrade to Jott Assistant and you can dictate to-do lists, automatic Web postings to your social networks, calendar items and more. Jott is a subscription-based service, and it starts at only $3.95 per month for a small Assistant account. For small-business owners on the go, it can be a life-saver.
2. Grasshopper
Grasshopper not only gives your business its very own toll-free 800 number, but it allows your customers to reach you even when you’re on the go. Voice mails are delivered to your inbox, as are faxes (in PDF), so you can stay connected everywhere. You can have multiple extensions and extend the service to your employees as well. The service starts at $9.95 per month (plus a $25 activation fee) for 100 minutes. Other plans are $49 and $199 per month.
3. Monitter
If your small business is on Twitter, keeping an eye on the conversations related to your product or service there makes sense. But if you’re geographically focused like most small businesses, you probably hate having to weed through similarly named companies and mentions of your industry from folks 1,000 miles away. Monitter lets you search Twitter for keywords, but filters them by specified distances from a zip code. You get tweets about your category, industry and company from within your home territory, where it matters. Monitter is free to use.
4. HootSuite
For anyone who runs a Twitter account for business, a tool like HootSuite can be a productivity boon. Not only can you manage multiple people contributing to the same Twitter account (so that one person isn’t solely responsible for tweeting), but you can manage multiple accounts with ease. The software has a bookmarklet for quick link-sharing and offers some cursory stats on your Twitter account as well. It’s free to use.
5. Survey Monkey
Perhaps the one luxury that many small businesses can’t afford is market research. Survey Monkey enables you to conduct your own online surveys to gain insight into your customer base for free. The tool is easy to use, looks professional and produces a bevy of charts and graphs to help you understand your results. If you have trouble with online tools, Survey Monkey has several video tutorials that make it a snap to tap into customer insights.
You can read the complete list here
