Monday, May 4, 2009

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BlackBerry Partners Fund announces 2009 BlackBerry Developers Challenge Top
The 2009 Wireless Entertainment Symposium for BlackBerry Users hasn’t even officially started yet, but news from the event has already started making its way out. The BlackBerry Partners Fund has just announced their second annual BlackBerry Developers Challenge , offering up a hefty cash prize to the developer who brings the best BlackBerry app and business plan to the table. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch>> Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Latitude Now Lets You Publish Your Location To Gmail Chat And Your Blog Top
Google has released two nifty applications for Google Latitude, a feature launched through Google Mobile Maps that allows you to broadcast your location to select friends, family, and colleagues based on the coordinates of your cell phone (via GPS or otherwise). Google says that since Latitude’s launch, users expressed interest in sharing their location with people who are not their Latitude friends. The two apps rolled out today allow users to do this. Google Talk location status automatically updates your Google Talk or Gmail chat status message with your Latitude location. The application will automatically update your status message to your current city as you move, and anyone who can chat with you will be able to see this location status. Your current city is shared with all of your Google Talk or Gmail Chat contacts even if you hide from certain “friends” in Google Latitude. The Google Public Location Badge lets you publish your Latitude location on your blog or website via your mobile phone. You can choose to show just the city that you are in or you can have your device’s location detected automatically, using GPS, Wi-Fi, or cell tower ID, which provides a more specific location. Here’s an example of what a badge looks like embedded in a blog. For your privacy, you may choose to share your best available location or share only your city-level location. Before these apps, there was no way to broadcast your location to the public at large via Latitude, only to your own Gmail contacts through the Latitude feature. Now you can publicize your location more broadly via Gmail Chat and your blog. Of course there are privacy concerns with publicly sharing your location at all times, but it is already happening and public geo-broadcasting will only become more popular over time. There are upsides to using location-based services to find friends or contacts-or even purse-snatchers- and other services have caught on to this rising trend, including Loopt, FourSquare , and Whrrl. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Plurk Adds Real-Time Search. Doesn't Mention Twitter. Top
Plurk , a micro-messaging service similar to Twitter, today added a nice new feature: Real-time conversation search. As you might expect, it allows you to search Plurk’s growing index of data to find out what people are saying about a topic right now. In its post on the matter, Plurk goes into how it thinks this is the next phase of search beyond the traditional search engines, and how social search could revolutionize things. Of course, it fails to mention its number one competitor in the field: Twitter. Plurk, which launched about a year ago, differentiates itself from Twitter mainly in its look and feel. It emphasizes a horizontal scrolling timeline rather than a vertical one. Plurk also gives users set verbs to use for their updates, such as, “parislemon LOVES real-time search.” That’s all well and good, but Twitter still has the users — a lot more of them. Plurk notes that it’s been growing every day since its launch, and is close to seeing its 1 billionth aggregate responses, but that is nothing compared to the company it won’t mention in its post. Unfortunately for Plurk, Twitter also just rolled out its on-site search integration to all users last week. Now, the fact of the matter is, if you really want some key data for something happening in real-time, you’re going to go to Twitter to get it, not Plurk. If you have a lot of friends that use Plurk, it may be interesting to use this search to see what they are doing, but Plurk knows the true value of real-time search lies in the masses — that’s why it’s opened up the public data for search queries. And again, it simply cannot match Twitter on that end. And this real-time search on Plurk has another weakness too. It will only index actual updates right now and not responses (which make up the 1 billion number I threw out there earlier), so that’s a much less sizable index. Plurk has to do this to be able to search working, as it doesn’t have the team or the funds that Twitter currently has. But kudos to Plurk for getting this done. It is a nice feature to have for any site and will soon be a necessity for these types of micro-messaging services. Track what people are saying about it on Twitter. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
It's Awe.sm: Create A Powerful Custom URL Shortener For Your Own Domain Top
You may have noticed over the last few weeks that TechCrunch links on Twitter have had a nifty custom URL, with links looking like tcrn.ch /1A’ instead of more generic codes from TinyURL or Bit.ly. This was due in no small part to the handiwork of our crack team of developers, but it was made possible by a new service launching today called Awe.sm . There are countless URL shortening services available on the web, and they’re probably only going to become even more popular as Twitter continues to catch on with mainstream audiences. But these services come with downsides , like obscuring where a link is pointing to (which makes them a godsend for spammers). Awe.sm is looking to offer publishers an alternative to these generic services, while also offering a powerful analytics engine that offers much more insight as to how their content gets distributed across the web. Every time we publish a post on TechCrunch, Awe.sm generates a handful of links specific to the service it originates on. For example, the shortcode link at the bottom of this post is different from the link that we send out on Twitter through the TechCrunch account. Awe.sm then tracks these links, analyzing how they're spread and storing meta data on each. Even better, the links awe.sm creates are compatible with Google Analytics, so you don’t have to learn how to navigate yet another dashboard. This means that we can get a feel for how our links are spreading throughout each service, quantifying just how effective each one is and adjusting accordingly. And for some services, including Twitterfeed, AddtoAny, and TweetFace, Awe.sm can work in tandem with the service to gather even more data. Readers benefit too - spammers don’t have access to tcrn.ch, so all URLs pointing to that domain can be considered trustworthy. Awe.sm is available beginning today for $99/year, which includes 10,000 URL creations per month (more than most people will ever need) and the option to export your data at any time if you want to stop using Awe.sm. The company’s flagship product is this custom URL shortening service, but it is also going to provide publishers with more tools that will help distribute content across a variety of services to maximize their audiences. The service is also slowly opening up an API to developers, who can build their own applications off the platform. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
While 23andMe Raises $11 Million, Mohr Davidow Sells Stake To Invest In Rival Top
23andme, a company that helps consumers understand and decipher their genomes, has raised a partial $11 million out of a $24.26 million B round of funding, according to regulatory filings. 23andme, which was co-founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki, raised $9 million in Series A funding from Google, Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures in 2007. Now PEHub is reporting that Mohr Davidow Ventures divested its stake in 23andme after investing in a direct competitor Navigenics. Losing one of your main investors to a competitor is not a good sign. 23andme maps customers' DNA and helps them find information about their ancestry and their risks of getting certain diseases (Michael tried it last year ). Google ended up taking a $3.9 million stake in 23andMe in May 2007, after Brin had personally loaned the company $2.6 million. The debt was repaid after the Google investment. We’re curious as to how much, if any, of this round’s $11 million is Brin’s or Google’s money. Also, we’d like to know why Mohr Davidow shifted its funds to a 23andme’s rival. Navigenics’ service is similar to 23andme’s with slight differences. For example, 23andme offers one package, priced at $399, to test your saliva. Navigenics offers two packages of testing priced at at $499 and $2,499, with the higher priced test including genetic counseling and testing for more health conditions. Most recently, California's Department of Public Health issued cease and desist letters to 23andMe, Navigenics and 11 other genetic testing startups, mandating that the labs demonstrate that they have been certified by both the state and federal government, and, perhaps more importantly, that all genetic tests were ordered by a patient's doctor, which is required by state law. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Once Again: 1981 Video Predicts The Death Of Print Newspapers Top
There’s a lot of talk today about how the new big screen Kindle could help save the bleeding newspaper industry. As we laid out last night, that is complete BS. But I think it’s worth revisiting a video we posted a few months back about the topic. It’s from 1981 (incidentally, the year I was born), showing that newspapers seemed to have some idea about what the future of their industry would be. It’s a common misconception that newspapers are simply late to the Internet game. As this video shows, some of them (including some of the major ones now failing) have been thinking about this stuff for 28 years. That is a long, long time. Towards the end of the video, the local news reporter says, “the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that’s a few years off.” And this was at a time when hilariously, it took 2 hours to receive an entire newspaper over the modems of the day, and it cost $5 an hour to transfer that data — at the time newspapers were $0.20. Despite all of that, the local reporters were smart enough to see that the writing was still on the wall. The beginning of the video is perhaps the most direct and interesting: “Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper. Well, it’s not a far-fetched as it may seem. In fact, both local San Francisco papers are investing a lot of money to try and get a service just like that started.” What happened? The video ends with the local news reporter saying, “so for the moment, at least, this fellow [a newspaper delivery guy], isn’t worried about being out of job.” That fellow is unfortunately very likely out of a job now. [thanks Kelly ] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter Starts To Act Like Apple By Making Life Hard For Developers, Shuts Down StatTweets Top
We’ve all heard the stories about Apple rejecting apps from the iTunes App Store for arbitrary reasons. Now Twitter is raising some hackles for shutting down accounts for no good reason. In this case, the accounts belong to StatTweets , which was created by Robbie Allen, the developer behind sports stat site StatSheet . StatTweets was a way to get sports scores and updates about your favorite NBA, NFL, and college teams. What did Allen do wrong? Twitter cited violations to its terms of service including “copyright infringement,” “mass account creation,” and “squatting” (you can read all the details on the StatSheet blog ). It was probably the second issue that got him into hot water. Over the course of a weekend, he and his wife (manually) created 650 Twitter accounts, one for each team, with each account drawing data from that team’s page on StatSheet. It probably looked like spam to Twitter, but simply looking at some of the accounts would show that they were not spam. In fact, all together the accounts attracted 63,000 followers, which indicates that some people found them useful. Twitter quickly became the second-largest referring site to StatSheet before the shutdowns. While he did create many accounts, each of those accounts was far more useful to sports fans of particular teams than one giant stream of updates from 650 different teams. So it seems counter-productive in this case to enforce that rule. As far as the copyright issue, each StatTweets account used an official team logo for its avatar, which may or may not be actual copyright infringement and which he is certainly not alone in doing. Regardless, he offered to take down the logos if that was the issue. And Twitter’s trademark policy indicates that infringing accounts “created to help a community or provide information” would be given an opportunity to make changes before the accounts are deleted. Allen says he never got that chance. The squatting violation refers to inactive accounts he is supposedly sitting on like those for college football teams. The reason those accounts are inactive, however, is because college football season is over. Twitter support might be too overwhelmed to deal with this case, or maybe they are still trying to teach Oprah and her fan s how to Tweet properly. In the meantime, this is Allen’s livelihood. (If you want to show your support, retweet this message ). Twitter needs to treat its developers with some more respect because they are the ones creating some of the most compelling data streams and apps around the service. Apple can still get away with making life hard for developers because, seriously, where else are they going to go? Twitter might feel like it is in the same boat, but it is not. There are plenty of other real-time streams to wade in. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Former MySpace Chairman Richard Rosenblatt's Advice To The New Executive Team Top
Richard Rosenblatt was the Chairman of MySpace at the time that it and parent company Intermix were sold to News Corp. in 2005. He is currently the founder and CEO of Demand Media , a Los Angeles based social media company that has raised over $350 million in capital. We asked him to write a guest post giving advice to the new MySpace executive team . You can follow Richard on Twitter at twitter.com/demandrichard . My Insider Perspective from the Outside When Michael asked me to guest write this post, I hesitated because MySpace’s new management team is extremely capable and will determine their own path to restore the company to its glory days. But after fielding dozens of calls and hearing erroneous comments being attributed to me, I decided to weigh in with the hope of providing some general thoughts for the team to consider as they embark on their journey. I've never been a fan of armchair generals so I'll refrain from giving specific operational advice – I am not in the trenches and haven't been involved in the day-to-day operations for several years. We had our share of challenges, but in the end we prevailed, and I wish the same success for the new MySpace team – as well as all entrepreneurs entering the social media space. Keeping past experiences in mind, here are some general thoughts on where MySpace can push forward: Own the spaces that only MySpace can MySpace is forever linked with the birth and meteoric growth of social networking – so the media, industry pundits and social media aficionados will always measure you against whatever the latest social networking companies are doing. Ignore the peanut gallery. Define yourself and your markets according to whom you truly are and where you can be successful; do not let them define you. MySpace is bigger than social networking. The MySpace brand is global and occupies a powerful position in the mind of hundreds of millions of people. That power can be transported into other business areas – places where Facebook, Twitter or the next generation of players would struggle to take root. Only MySpace has deep ties and an inherent understanding of where entertainment and community intersect. Only MySpace is plugged into Hollywood from top to bottom. Copycat strategies are rarely rewarded on the web. Witness the billions of dollars invested by industry titans in pursuit of what entrepreneurs built before them. Microsoft Search vs Google Search. Google Video versus YouTube. Yahoo360 versus MySpace. Don't waste your time trying to "catch up" in areas that you aren't currently leading. Build your lead in the areas you already dominate and define valuable new offshoots from that elevated market position. And bring back the entrepreneurial spirit that is so often lost in thousand person companies. Keep your corporate friends close, but keep your entrepreneurs even closer as you build a culture of "change" and taking "chances" in the organization and product. Transform your unique UGC into marketable media Over the last few years we've seen MySpace focus enormous energy on driving revenue through branded advertising in diverse and creative ways. We have also seen the addition of traditional media within the main areas of the Site. These efforts should be appreciated by everyone because prior to selling MySpace to News Corp., the conventional wisdom was that neither advertisers nor professional content providers would support a community made up of user generated content. In my opinion, News Corp. proved that this form of new media was a viable business and from that proof hundreds of social media companies were born. All that said, while these are valuable and important commercial programs, remember that you are serving an audience of millions of users each with their own talents and a predisposition to express themselves online through content creation. Every day, they're piling into the site, uploading videos, posting photos, sharing original songs and publishing content that is often a great deal more than chatter. Take the same energy that is being put into monetization and reaching "professional" content producers to tap the power of the crowd and build a strategy for empowering your users to fuel a rich and valuable content component for your site. Start by curating the best of the community from the bottom up and make the MySpace experience all the more immersive. Each night the world tunes in to offline, curated social media in the form of American Idol, Britain's Got Talent, and Project Runway. What brand is better positioned than MySpace to lead entertainment curation online? We have done this through Demand Studios and are profitably sourcing high quality socially published content for our network of properties and commercial partners. MySpace can do it with a focus on entertainment and related content categories. Listen to the community and let them guide YOU Now is probably a good time to revisit your community strategy. The hallmark of MySpace's early success was being the definitive place online to hang out and have fun, allowing you to freely express yourself. The new team will need to recapture that communal energy that fueled MySpace's once explosive growth. I remember Tom used to read and respond to nearly every single email and then built the user's "needs and wants" into the product. That was a key learning from MySpace. And, as a result, every product at Demand Media comes from the wisdom and energy of the community, making it feel vibrant and alive. Metrics aside, you can truly "feel" whether a social network is alive or just a collection of people milling around. Today, MySpace feels more like a loosely woven collection of millions of personal home pages than the vibrant community that we all know is there. More than providing widgets and the ability to "friend" places and things, let your users gather around topics, hobbies and their personal passions. Let them create their own sub-communities within MySpace and set yourself up to entrust an inner league of users to manage and moderate a fun, safe and fulfilling environment - enabling those gathering points to be focal parts of the experience. In addition to developing the community experience from the bottom-up, it's equally important to think top-down about its core meaning and purpose. If you do nothing else, define a clear vision for the essence of the MySpace community experience. At Demand Media we call this SOUL , and the continuous, organic growth of our owned and operated network of properties is predicated on it. Finally – and this is the easiest advice to give but perhaps the hardest to follow – get internally focused. You have a new team at the top and thousands of people below you watching your every move. Who you spend your time with will speak louder than any words you can utter in a conference room or in an email. Are you glued to the users? To the product developers? To the ad sales team? To "the suits?" To the pundits? You have 100 days to set your course. The more time you spend away from "the glass" – the less likely you will be to get it right. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Henry Hudson's Voyages On A Google Map Top
Henry Hudson never did find the Northwest passage to India, but this year marks the 400th anniversary of his third voyage—the one where he came to New York and sailed up what is now the Hudson River (he made it as far as modern-day Albany). Hudson showed that often it is what you stumble upon on your way to somewhere else that turns out to be your great discovery. To celebrate the anniversary, the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation has charted all of Hudson’s voyages onto a Google map, along with overlays of historical maps. The overlays are kind of clunky, but just being able to see the actual routes Hudson took is kind of cool. I only wish the custom map was available on the Google Maps site itself (maybe it is, but I wasn’t able to find it, although I did find this map of Hudson’s third voyage which was put together by an elementary school class). In fact, Google Maps should have an “Explorers section” where you could see famous expedition routes from Lewis and Clark’s to Shackleton’s voyage to Antarctica. Many of these have already been mapped out for Google Earth or as custom Google Maps, but it would be nice to have them all in one place as a section within Google Maps, or at least make Google could make them easier to find. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
No Child's Play: KIDO'Z Creates A Kid-Friendly Media Browser Top
Making a browser may not exactly be child’s play, but there is still a need for one children can play with. Tel Aviv, Israel-based KIDO’Z is taking a crack at it by launching its custom media browser for kids today, so if you have any young children who use the internet on a regular basis, you might want to give this one a whirl. KIDO’Z is a pretty nifty Adobe AIR-powered desktop browser app that gives kids a safe and fun environment to play games, watch videos and/or visit pre-approved websites. When you first install the AIR app as a parent, you can configure the age and gender of your offspring as well as your location and preferred language (there are 17 available). What’s nice is that all these settings are taken into account at a content level, so KIDO’Z automatically caters the media it think is most suited for your kid(s) at first launch. As a parent you get password-protected access to an admin panel where you can add more or restrict access to certain content, set limited time frames for usage, and so on. All content only shows up when a KIDO’Z team member approved the content beforehand, and to add more layers of security all scripts, file downloads, pop-ups and any other attempts that could lead to content which has not been approved, are thoroughly blocked. To use the app, kids won’t need to know how to read or write since obviously the whole UI is quite visual of nature, and very colorful to boot. The main menu of the KIDO’Z browser currently consists of three categories: games, videos and websites. All media can be opened and viewed inside the app’s interface, and in fact kids can only leave the KIDO’Z environment by exiting the browser altogether. CEO Gai Havkin tells me the tool will later be extended to a closed network of communication tools, including e-mail and instant messaging features (see last screenshot), making it more of a social experience but without the security and privacy hazards of existing services. KIDO’Z is currently completely free of charge, but the startup plans to start offering paid content packages in about three months, so parents can buy additional video material, games etc. for a couple of dollars per month. The company also told me it’s currently in the process of closing several deals with computer manufacterers to get KIDO’Z pre-installed on machines, and it expects to announce a number of partnerships soon. Other media browsers specifically targeted at kids include KidZui , KidRocket and BuddyBrowser . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Big Screen Kindle Hail Mary To Newspapers Will Fall Incomplete Top
Hail Mary - noun : A long forward pass in football, esp. as a last-ditch attempt at the end of a game, where completion is considered unlikely. New reports have several companies on the verge of releasing large screen electronic readers designed specifically for reading newspaper content. The first such product may be unveiled as soon as this week — a large screen version of Amazon’s Kindle, which we first reported on last year . This is setting up a lot like the newspaper industry’s Hail Mary. And it’s a pass they won’t catch. The industry has been hit worse than anyone else by the ad spending slow down in our current recession. Almost all of the major newspaper companies are bleeding , and this week The New York Times Company may have to close the Boston Globe — a huge metropolitan newspaper. It’s sad. Some of the best journalistic work throughout this country’s history has been done through newspapers. But if these companies really are putting their faith in a large screen Kindle to save them, it may be time to start mourning them for real. The idea that a large screen Kindle (or any similar device) could save newspapers is a joke — and one that perhaps shows these newspapers do not even know their own killer. It’s not the “paper” part of newspaper that’s the problem, it’s the “news.” As in, newspapers are way too slow at delivering it in the age of the Internet. People are unsubscribing from newspapers because what’s the point of reading something in print a day after you’ve read it online? Sure, there are certain takes by certain authors worth reading later, but even most of those are now online first. And of course there is something to be said for good journalism, but that is being done online as well — and can be viewed for free. For the most part, the newspaper industry as it stands today is the very definition of “a day late and a dollar short.” Would the newspapers save a lot of money by literally stopping the presses, and distributing their content digitally to these readers? Of course, but they would save just as much money — if not more — by entirely switching to the online format. Some have already done that, but many don’t want to because it’s proven hard to make people pay for content on the web. But the idea that people are going to run out in droves to get these new giant Kindles just to have the privilege of paying for newspaper content is absurd. Yes, some people are paying for the content on regular Kindles right now, but that’s only because that device has a gateway drug: Books. Books have proven to be popular in electronic format (beyond Kindle, just look at the iPhone eBook sales to prove it). But books are fundamentally different from newspapers. There isn’t a free online equivalent to books, like the newspapers have to contend with in blogs. People do not buy Kindles just to get the newspaper or magazine content, and they’re not about to start now. In fact, I’d argue that it’s the much less sexy textbook business that could be the real key to this big Kindle. Textbooks are an absolute rip-off in print form, with many costing over $100 a book. If Amazon was able to offer textbooks on this large Kindle at a discount the same way it offers a discount on regular books on the regular Kindle, that would be worth the price of admission for just about every college student in the country right there. And a Kindle textbook reader makes sense because it would make bookmarking, taking notes and syncing all of those things up to the cloud, a snap. But the number one problem with the Kindle is its price. At $360 it’s way too expensive for the average consumer to go out and buy. So how much would a Kindle with a larger screen cost? You’d have to imagine it would be more, if not significantly more. So let’s assume that it’s $500. And if it’s $500, for a device meant to read newspapers and magazines (in grayscale no less), it might as well be $10,000. Again, the only reason the Kindle is selling pretty well at its ridiculous price is because of books. Newspaper and magazine content will not mobilize users in the same way. Speaking of mobilizing, one reason people still do enjoy newspapers is because they are very mobile. But who on Earth is going to want to take a large screen Kindle on the go? Sure, if it is also a tablet computer that has many functions, it makes sense to carry around — but again, just a device for reading newspaper content? No. And such a device, like the Kindle itself, is just a holdover until all of these devices start to merge. And that’s going to happen sooner rather than later. So I implore newspapers not to put too much stock in these big screen Kindles. I know the options are awfully thin as to what can save you, and the Kindle is a potentially sexy savior; but it is not the answer. I’m really worried when I read articles like the one in the NYT that quotes high ranking print media industry folks as getting all excited about the possibilities with these large screen readers. This is a false hope, people — a Hail Mary. CrunchBase Information Amazon Kindle Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
TweetPhoto Aims To Take On TwitPic By Adding More Features. Will It Stick? Top
People love to share photos on Twitter , so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see many independent application developers focused on facilitating just that through tools using the micro-sharing service’s API. Many of them have been submitted to us, and we wrote about a few in the past, from stand-alone services like TwitPic , Twitxr , Pixim to add-on services from photo sharing startups, like ImageShack’s YFrog and PhotoBucket’s TwitGoo . Now a new contender, TweetPhoto , has launched its service and plans to go head-to-head with TwitPic, which seems to have emerged as the leader of the pack with over 1 million users and traffic going through the roof (sometimes bringing along the same scalability problems that plagued Twitter for years). In a way, TweetPhoto is more like Posterous , which allows users to micro-blog by e-mail and also doubles as a photo sharing service with Twitter integration (at least the way I use it). The service lets you upload photos by e-mail, mobile phone or the web, and automatically posts links to the images on Twitter and Facebook. Conveniently, TweetPhoto automatically geo-tags photos and offers decent search functionality and trending topics, features that are currently lacking on TwitPic. TweetPhoto also added a social layer which allows you to tag, favorite and comment on photos but also see who favorited and commented on your own photos. It also offers a way for users to embed custom widgets on their blogs and of course even boasts its own URL shortening service, dubbed Pic.gd . Of course, there’s no guarantee more features means TweetPhoto will stand a chance against TwitPic and other services that have been around for years. People seem to be comfortable with using TwitPic despite its lack of features (which is being worked on, by the way), and I doubt more features will make them switch any time soon. That said, if you were on the look-out for a Twitter photo sharing app that offers that extra bit of functionality, I’d suggest you give TweetPhoto a spin. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Trent Reznor Responds To Apple: You Want Obscene, I'll Show You Obscene Top
Trent Reznor, the leader of the band Nine Inch Nails is pretty upset that Apple has rejected the latest version of his iPhone app. And rightfully so, the reason for the rejection once again points to Apple’s inconsistencies when it comes to the App Store approval process. While we pointed that out yesterday , Reznor pulls no punches in pointing it out today, in the NIN’s forums . Here’s what Reznor had to say (warning, it gets pretty graphic): Now, “The Downward Spiral” the album is not available anywhere in the iPhone app. The song “The Downward Spiral” I believe is in a podcast that can be streamed to the app. Thanks Apple for the clear description of the problem - as in, what do you want us to change to get past your stupid fucking standards? And while we’re at it, I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency - because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any “indecent” material for sale - but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film “Scarface” completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense? You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says FUCK or CUNT? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone! Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck’s sake get your app approval scenario together. Below, find the rejection letter that Apple sent NIN’s developer: Follow-up: XXXXXXXXXX Dear Craig, Thank you for submitting nin: access to the App Store. We’ve reviewed nin: access and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states: “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.” The objectionable content referenced in this email is “The Downward Spiral”. Since the app is live on the App store, please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to iTunes Connect. Thank you Regards, iPhone Developer Program Here’s an update from the actual developer as well: v1.0 is live. v1.0.3 got rejected due to content yet the app has no content in it. this was mainly a stability release to fix the bug that crashes the app for international users. the bug was fixed 24 hours after 1.0 went live and we have been waiting for apple to approve it ever since. meanwhile the app continues to get a growing number of 1 star ratings from international users understandably frustrated by the bug. but looks like our hands are tied. apple is not allowing us to make the current app more stable because there is “objectionable” content online (yes on the internet). so we are essentially not allowed to fixed bugs unrelated to the issue. we removed the song “The Downward Spiral” from the server, hoping to appease apple and get this bug fix through. however i have yet to receive a reply. So NIN went as far as removing the supposedly offending content from its servers to appease Apple. Pretty crazy if you ask me. [via Reznor's tweets ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
My Day With The Google Goats Top
As promised, I went to go visit the Google goats today — you know, the goats that were brought in to replace lawnmowers in Google’s ever-expanding quest to go more green. I was told the goats would be in the big field at the corner Rengstorff & Amphitheater (on Google’s campus in Mountain View), and sure enough, I found a few hundred of them there. Apparently, the area was previously covered in 4-foot tall brush, but within a few days, the goats had eaten it down to basically nothing (as you can see in the videos and images below). These goats, which were being picked up today and transported to their next gig (at Morgan Hill), will do this field-clearing once a year for Google, the herder on site told me. He was a bit concerned for the goats because a few of them got sick due to people feeding them flowers (which, apparently, are poisonous to them), he told me. PETA, would no doubt be concerned about the lack of shelter for when it was raining, and the electric fence that encircled the goats. But all in all, it looks like the goats did the job they were brought in for, and were very efficient in doing so. Now, the question of if it cost Google more in both money and fuel to have the goats shipped over to the site versus what it would have been to pay some people to mow the lawn, is a different question. But hey, nevermind that, cute friendly goats! Check out some pictures below and two videos below that. The Qik video has some more substance, but is much longer and is pretty hard to hear at points due to the wind. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Kidlandia Personalizes Fantasy Maps For Kids Top
As a four-year-old, Brian Backus became captivated by the children stories told by Dr. Seuss, a neighbor of Backus’s aunt. According to Backus, Dr.Seuss’s tales inspired him to join the world of cartoon storytelling years later as a producer at Disney Interactive. Now, Backus is launching Kidlandia, web destination where parents and kids can create personalized cartoon fantasyland maps named for the people and places that tell a child's personal story. Kidlandia lets parents and kids create maps of a fantasy land, where the child is King or Queen of their own eponymous fantasy kingdom such as “Leenatopia” or “Michaelland.” You can insert family members or friends names into the map, so other areas of the land incorporate family members’ names. The map also features whimsical characters from horned Uniquills and scowling Grumps to long-trunked Yuhoos on the map. Once created online, parents can order prints of the map for the child, which range from $40 for a small sized scroll to $180 for a larger sized, high quality, framed print of the map. Parents can order the maps to be printed on scrolls, that are easy for the child to carry around, or on canvas that is stretched over a frame to be hung. Backus says that Kidlandia is driven by what he calls the “Disney Strategy,” which focuses on getting parents and kids emotionally involved with characters and a story line and then merchandising products about the characters and stories to kids who want to integrate the tales into their everyday lives. In Kidlandia’s case, each map tells the child’s own fantasy story, a personalized family story. Backus plans to add additional merchandise to market, including stuffed animals and puzzles. Backus says that there is tremendous revenue potential in fantasy games and toys for children and is hoping to share in a market where Disney makes billions each year. Investors in Kidlandia include Josh Felser, former CEO of Crackle; Kent Lindstrom, a Friendster exec; and Dave Samuel, founder of Crackle and Spinner. Kidlandia is a creative idea and the price points for some of the maps are fairly reasonable. But there doesn’t seem to be any integration with the web to create a virtual world for kids alongside the product, which doesn’t make the site very interactive. Webkinz and Disney’s Club Penguin create virtual worlds for children to immerse themselves in a fantasy land, and have become increasingly popular. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
How OpenTable Could Actually Matter Top
Dot com meltdown survivor and restaurant reservation software company OpenTable had been a rumored IPO candidate for a while. Still, it shocked many when it finally filed its intention to debut on the Nasdaq back in January. What? Does this company just have a thing for market meltdowns? There's still no word on when OpenTable will actually price, but so far, the IPO is still on, signaled by the company filing its first quarter earnings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. What's more: It had an OK first quarter. Revenues increased from $13.2 million a year ago to just under $16 million, and the quarter had a modest $366,000 profit. Last year's first quarter came with an $87,000 loss. Now that the markets have recovered, I'm betting on a pricing later this year. That’s good for me: I’ve been promised a sit down with the CEO once the quiet period is over. (Send me your burning questions!) And it’s certainly a much better thing for OpenTable's very patient investors and venture capital as a whole. The National Association of Venture Capitalists is so concerned about the lack of IPOs in venture land that it recently laid out an ambitious proposal to change the rules. But OpenTable is hardly an Internet homerun. It's frequently described as a consumer Internet company, when really it's a software-as-a-service company. The good news –for this moment in time—is that that means Open Table doesn't have an ad model. It actually has paying customers in the form of restaurants using its reservation software and paying it monthly subscription fees. But what software-as-a-service companies gain in predictability of revenues, they lose in big blowout quarters . In other words: Don't expect this IPO to set the world on fire. Netsuite—a company with a far bigger addressable market, a better growth rate and more than three times OpenTable's annual revenues– hasn't fared well since its 2007 IPO, and so far Salesforce is one of the only SAAS companies to get to $1 billion in annual revenues. A business like OpenTable's takes a lot of investment in sales and marketing to close a modest deal, and that will be harder as the company strives for more international reach. But there is one way OpenTable could use this IPO to its advantage: Forget international expansion for now and use the IPO proceeds and new stock currency to acquire a real consumer Internet company or at least some star UI talent. I've long criticized OpenTable for catering only to the restaurants, and not caring much at all for the actual diners. Just look at the so-called loyalty rewards system: You practically have to eat out every day of your life to get a $20 dining voucher, and points expire without any notice. They'd do better not to have a loyalty program at all. In short, for diners OpenTable has been a convenience but not much more. And since many restaurants call you to verify the reservation and insist you call them back, it's not really even that convenient. Can you imagine having to call United after you've already bought your ticket online or call Amazon to verify you really wanted to buy that book? But increasingly OpenTable seems to be inching in the user-friendly direction, and it turns out being the only player who knows exactly where you've dined, when, and what availability there is in restaurants near you at every moment can be a pretty formidable advantage. Consider user reviews , a feature idea OpenTable only recently launched. My initial reaction was it'd be near impossible for OpenTable to compete with Yelp's edge, community and UI savvy. But unlike Yelp, OpenTable knows where you've dined, when. Like NetFlix or Amazon can prompt you to review a rental or purchase as soon as the transaction has occurred, OpenTable now sends out an email asking for your thoughts. With some UI help and a one-click-from-the-email rating system, the company could get people in the habit of quick reviews and build a library of your tastes, tailoring recommendations in other cities for you, or even sell that data back to restaurants. It shouldn't aim to get the same depth of reviews that Yelp gets. Instead, it should aim for breadth. A simple, one-click yay or nay on every place you dine that no one else can replicate, because no one else owns the reservation engine. Here's another edge that isn't new, but was new to me: Because OpenTable's software is at the host stand, diners can search for real-time reservations. Say it's a Friday night in San Francisco and you're wondering what restaurant you can get into in ten minutes. Before you'd have to call around blindly asking how long the wait was. On OpenTable you can search for immediate openings in a given neighborhood. Most online reservations sites have an hour cut off because the systems have to sync together. But OpenTable is the restaurant's system. It's the first time I've seen OpenTable actually do something for me as a diner that I couldn't have done any other way, and the new location-aware iPhone app makes that functionality all the more powerful. These are baby steps to the applications OpenTable could develop on top of its in-restaurant software edge if it hired some crack consumer Internet talent. Here's hoping the IPO is a means to that end, and not just the final destination for a company that's mostly spent the last decade playing it safe. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
What The Trend: Finally, A Way To Make Sense Of Twitter Trends Top
For sure, Twitter Trends give visitors a great general overview of what the app’s user base of millions are talking about the most at any given time, giving some insight in what’s happening around the world. It’s an awesome way for people to discover what’s going on, and more users will see the benefits of keeping track of trending topics now that the company has decided to integrate the top 10 trends in the right sidebar of the web version for everyone. At times the keywords for the trending topics, often determined by many users using the same hashtag for something can be quite self-explanatory, e.g. today’s ‘Swine Flu’ and ‘#swineflu’. More often that not, however, you have no idea why a certain keyword is currently a trend, and figuring out what all the fuzz is about can be quite a pain. Enter What The Trend , which attempts to offer short blurbs about trending topics with a short explanation on why it’s in the top 10 list. For example, I had no clue why ‘Jonas’ was in the top trends list, until I clicked through to this user-editable explanation blurb and learned that it’s a new show in Disney Channel. In addition, What The Trend shows me the latest tweets about the topic, and also attempts to fetch related pictures from Flickr as well as news through Google News. You can directly tweet that there’s a trend explanation to your own Twitter account, with bonus points for another service boasting its very own URL shortening service (wttrend.com). The service has its own Twitter account which it regularly updates with new trends + explanations and also offers RSS feeds and its own API. I’m left wondering which desktop application provider will be the first to integrate the What The Trend explanations, and how quickly people will start abusing the wiki-approach the service is taking: my guess is we won’t have to wait long for either one to happen. I can actually see myself going this website once and a while to get a feel of what’s trending on Twitter, although I wish I wouldn’t need to and Twitter would incorporate this into the web version itself. Until that happens, and I doubt it ever will, What The Trend provides the perfect alternative. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
A Peek At The 100 Million Views Club: You Won't Be Invited Any Time Soon Top
So I got up this morning, fired up Techmeme to see what was happening in tech and on top was this blog post from online video tracking company Visible Measures featuring a home-brew list of the 18 most watched viral videos of all time. It’s important to note that the video measurement startup didn’t simply analyze which videos got this total number of views on the 150+ video sharing sites it currently tracks, but also took into account views that were generated on other online properties where the videos were spread, like blogs and social networking services (a measurement method it refers to as True Reach ). I won’t bore you with the full list of very viral videos - check out the Visible Measures blog post to see who’s currently on top etc. - but there is a general observation I’d like to share and discuss with you. Here’s what the company concludes after featuring the list: As you can see, the list is a diverse collection of older and newer campaigns, and includes music videos, movie trailers, user-generated spots, and clips from TV shows. What they all have in common is a massive total audience. I wouldn’t call it that diverse, actually. If you break the list down, you’ll note that it counts 8 music videos, 4 movie trailers, 2 TV show clips, and 4 user-generated clips. So out of the 18 online videos that amassed over 100,000,000 views according to Visible Measures, 14 are professionally produced videos that were arguably created for airing on television primarily, and certainly not specifically for online video sharing sites. Furthermore, if you break down the list of 4 clips that were classified under ‘User Generated’, two of them are actually professional artist performances that were simply recorded and/or uploaded by a regular YouTube user ( “Jeff Dunham: Achmed the Dead Terrorist” and “The Evolution of Dance” ). Another one ( “Lezberado: Revenge Fantasies” ) features a woman talking about a professionally produced TV show (The L Word), and the video that Visible Measures links to on YouTube is actually one from the official channel of Showtime, where The L Word was aired on from 2004 to 2009. So if you really want to be a pain about it, the only real user-generated video that was viewed over 100 million times would be “Charlie bit my finger - again!” , a video featuring two cute kids that funnily enough I had never seen before. This isn’t abnormal, of course: mainstream media are called mainstream for a reason, just as celebrities are celebrities for a reason (well, most of the time) and popular music artists, TV series and movies are popular for a reason (well, most of the time). You’d have to be pretty naive to think YouTube (or any web service originally meant for amateurs to share videos on) isn’t always going to be used to massively spread professional music videos, movie trailers and clips from and about popular TV shows, and that they’ll overtake most if not all videos about dogs riding skateboards and whatnot. This isn’t to say user-generated (amateur) content doesn’t have any value - it always does for at least one person - and could never be on par with professionally produced content, but looking at the list you’ve got to wonder whether we’re not all mostly craving for the latter on whichever medium we’re using at the moment we’re in the mood for it. Your thoughts? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
It Turns Out That Google Even Has A Competitive Advantage In Scanning Books Top
Google is serious about scanning books. Throughout the objections raised over the years by authors and publishers and the more recent delays in its settlement with the Authors Guild, Google has been scanning millions of books all along trying to digitize as many as it possibly can. It is so serious about capturing and indexing the knowledge stored in books that it has a patent , which was issued on March 24, 2009, on how to scan books faster than was previously possible. The basic technique it uses involves two infrared cameras which determine how flat or curved each page to be scanned is and then adjusting the optical character recognition software it uses to read the text accordingly. In other words, the infrared cameras help figure out a book’s three-dimensional shape and then back out any resulting distortions. This results in much faster book scanning since each page doesn’t need to be flattened by glass plates and spines don’t need to be broken. There are other book scanning projects besides the Google Book Project. The Internet Archive , for instance, runs 18 scanning centers around the world, which all together digitize only 1,000 books a day. I am not sure what kind fo technology the Internet Archive uses, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Google’s scanning operation is much faster. Those are billions of pages of high-quality information just waiting to be indexed and searched. For Google, the faster it can get those books scanned, the faster it can start to serve ads against those searches. Now, I wonder how it flips the pages. (Hat tip to Buzznewsroom ). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Like My Parents In 1994, Apple Finds NIN's The Downward Spiral Objectionable Top
Back in 1994, there was no album I wanted more than Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. The problem was that I was 12 at the time, and the album carried the dreaded “Parental Advisory” sticker, which meant I couldn’t buy it at the store without my parents — and that wasn’t an option. You see, they (like most other parents) weren’t too fond of songs like “Closer,” on the album. You know the one. “I want to f**k you like an animal.” Yeah, that “Closer.” Well, now it’s 2009, I’m 27, and should be free to buy whatever the hell I want. Except I can’t once again. This time thanks to Apple. You see, Apple has apparently rejected an update to Nine Inch Nails’ iPhone app because it found the contents of The Downward Spiral to be “objectionable,” according to Nine Inch Nails’ frontman Trent Reznor. History repeats itself. But what’s odd here — and what continues to be odd about the App Store approval process — is that the first version of the Nine Inch Nails app was already accepted into the store a few weeks ago. In fact, I have it. Guess what’s on it? Content from The Downward Spiral. I’m listening to “Closer” right now. Let me assure everyone, this is not the radio edit version of the song or the album. So what gives, Apple? Well, it appears to be yet another ridiculous case of Apple’s uneven app approval process. I know I’ve written about this a half dozen times already. But you know what? I’m going to keep writing about it until Apple gets its act together with this. I have no problem if Apple wants to pick and choose which apps it accepts in their store — it is their store after all, and they can do what they want with it. But it’s entirely unfair to developers, many of whom are now trying to make a living off of the platform, that the process is a complete and utter crapshoot as to whether an app will get approved or not. We’ve seen dozens of apps that are approved the first time, but later rejected for a seemingly small update. And we’ve seen others that are rejected, make almost no change , yet get in the next time they’re submitted. It would seem the the life or death of an app is entirely in the hands of the App Store inspector who checks it out. Sometimes they catch things that they don’t want in the App Store, sometimes they do ( baby shaking app anyone?). But I’m really not convinced that it’s not just a personal decision on those people’s behalf which apps get through and which don’t. I’ve seen way too much evidence telling me that is exactly what happens. So we can debate whether it’s silly for Apple to block the Nine Inch Nails app for content that it already carries in iTunes (I think it is, obviously), but that’s really a secondary issue. The big issue is the whole approval process. And Apple really needs to improve it soon. It still stands high above all other mobile platforms in terms of apps right now, but with the Palm Pre about to launch, and Android getting more phones on the market (and a few other mobile app stores just opened or about to open), Apple won’t be able to coast along with this wonky approval method forever. Eventually, some developers will get pissed off enough and just go to another platform. Reznor himself seems dumbstruck by the rejection, “Not even sure where to start with that one,” he tweeted . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
How To Grow Your Blog Through Customer Development Top
This is a guest post by Neil Patel, co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogger at QuickSprout.com . He also does consulting work for a number of major Internet properties, including TechCrunch. When you think about growing your blog, whether it is a personal, professional or company blog, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Chances are it is something related to traffic or subscribers. Getting more traffic or subscribers is never a bad thing, but if you really want more sustainable traffic you first have to understand the people coming to your blog. If you can't make them happy, how can you expect your traffic to grow? Stop Assuming! You have a vision of how you see your blog and where you want it to go. The reality is that your vision may not match up with what your readers are expecting. So instead of assuming things about your readers, start getting feedback from them. Feedback – Through services like Skribit your readers and customers can provide post suggestions. The feedback is posted publicly and other readers can vote on it whether they agree or disagree. Polls – Polling services like Poll Daddy can allow you to figure out what direction you should take your content. For example, if you have some ideas for your blog, you can create a poll and have your reader's vote on which ideas they would like to read more about. Reader surveys – No matter how small or large your reader base is, you can survey them. Eric Ries, who is a big advocate of customer development , started surveying his readers when he only had 5 RSS subscribers. He asked them the following things right within his blog post: On a scale of 1-10 (where 10 is most likely), how likely is it that you would recommend this blog to a friend or colleague? How did you hear about it? What led you to become a subscriber, versus just reading an article and leaving like everybody else? (Or, if you’re not a subscriber, what would it take to convince you?) What do you hope to see here in the future? As shown above, there are many ways to get feedback from readers. Another example of getting feedback was when Michael Arrington first started TechCrunch. He began having meet ups at his house just months after starting the blog. The face-to-face feedback that he must have received proved to be valuable and effective in helping TechCrunch grow. As a result, the content on TechCrunch, which started with primarily basic company profiles , has also been expanded on and improved from there. Track, Analyze, and Execute! Analytics solutions like Google Analytics, Feedburner, and Lijit are great, but what's the point of having them if you aren't really using them? You probably log into your Google Analytics account every once in a while and look to see if your traffic is up or down, but do you ever get down into the nitty-gritty details to try and understand your readers? Do you know what changes you need to make to increase your readership and engagement levels? Traffic sources – analyzing the traffic sources that are bringing you visitors, such as referring sites and search engine keywords can help you understand the type of people visiting your blog. If most of your traffic is coming from tech blogs, it is likely that your readers are somewhat sophisticated, which means if you geek out you may win some brownie points with them. On the other hand if you notice that most of your readers are coming from celebrity blogs or other types of non-tech sites, you probably don't want to get too technical with your content because they may not understand what you are talking about. Additionally, with the rise of Twitter clients, URL shortening services are becoming increasingly popular, so it is important to understand how this affects your analytics and referral traffic. Referral traffic can also help you identify conversations related to your blog occurring on social media sites such as Digg, Twitter, Facebook and even forums. Visitor loyalty – Metrics such as time on site, bounce rate, and percentage of return visitors should give you a sense of how loyal your visitors are. You will never be able to please all of your visitors, but you should be able to please a good percentage. Dig deep and see what's causing your high bounce rate and try to improve it. Internal search data – Services like Lijit and Google Analytics Site Search do a great job of tracking your internal search data. If you have a search box on your blog, they can track the number of searches per day and what keywords your users are searching for. This should help you understand what they are looking for and what you need to provide to these readers. Geographical data – Looking at your geographical data may actually shock you. Although most your traffic may come from the U.S you should drill down to see what worldwide cities bring you the most traffic. For me it is a few major cities in India and London. Analyzing this data helps you understand the background of your readers and what you should or shouldn't write to grow your readership. Remember, language and religion play a big role in many people's lives. RSS subscribers – Feedburner doesn't just show you how many RSS subscribers you have, it also gives you data on what your RSS readers like and dislike reading. You can look at data such as click through rates on specific stories. This will help validate what you thought the most popular stories were. In most cases the stories that you thought were your best, aren't your readers' favorites. Feedburner also lets you track things like when people unsubscribe to your feed. This is a great feature because if you notice tons of people unsubscribing at once, you can try to understand why and adjust accordingly. After you analyze the data provided by your web analytics solutions you need to take action. Whether it's modifying your design to decrease your bounce rate or figuring out what new content topics you should be writing after looking through your Feedburner/Lijit stats, you have to take action. If you don't, you shouldn't even waste time tracking your stats. Engage, Engage, and Engage! Blogging is a two way street, you can't expect to understand your readers if you don't interact with them. Polls, surveys, and feedback tools are great, but that is only half the battle when it comes to engagement. Here are few ways you can engage with your audience: 1. Respond to every email – Gary Vaynerchuck spends most of his time responding to every email he gets. Just try sending him an email… he may be a bit delayed in responding to you, but no matter what, he will respond. This is the main reason he has been able to build a strong brand and a popular blog because he takes the time to listen and respond to every person that emails him. 2. Respond to every commenter – every time someone comments on your blog, you should respond to him or her. How do you expect to create a conversation and a community if people are just talking to themselves? This is a time consuming process, but if you want to develop a relationship with your customers, there is no better way. You can even use comment systems such as IntenseDebate and Disqus to help improve commenting on your blog. 3. Leverage your competition – just because someone isn't reading your blog, doesn't mean you can't get to him or her. Start reading other blogs in your industry and all of your competitors' blogs and comment on every one of their posts. Respond to the comments and win over readers. Conclusion If you want to grow your blog, you need to first understand your readers. Without understanding your audience you won't know what they like and dislike. Take the next few hours and start analyzing your blog and create a game plan on how you can grow your blog. If you find yourself getting stuck, just leave a comment and I'll do my best to help you out. J Lastly if you want to learn more about customer development, I highly recommend that you check out Steve Blank's blog , he pioneered the concept of customer development and even wrote a book on it. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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