Fred Wilson recently posted about the value of sharing on the web, which he called extroversion. Fred, and I, are both fairly open with our identities on the web and by doing that we’re taking a bet that the value of sharing is larger than the small chance that some web stalker will do something stupid. Personally speaking, this bet has definitely paid off.
In the comments I expressed an interest in identifying some sort of non-cash currency that could help measure the value that we receive from sharing on the web. Whether it’s specifically via knowledge sharing or something more tangible I’ll have to work that out, but it is an idea that I’d like to continue to develop.
Then shortly after that conversation, Blagica recently asked a similar question on her posterous blog:
As the Adaptive Blue team wrote in their blog post about this new release, this update is “One Small Step for Glue, One Giant Leap for Usability”, and they are right. Before today, I always thought of Glue as the intangible social network. The data was out there, and valuable, but it wasn’t easy or clear how I could share or analyze that data. Now it’s easy to do that. Now with the profile page on GetGlue.com/ryangraves I’m defined by the content that I define as favorites. I love that.
The GetGlue team has done an awesome job of listening to their user community to figure out how to make the experience better and better. Here’s what they said about listening to their community.
We’ve heard consistently from the community that one way to improve the Glue experience is to break free from the small overlay and provide a richer experience for browsing a user’s collection of books, movies, and music.
Today, with the launch of Profile and Object pages on GetGlue.com, we’re taking the first of many planned steps to address this.
Here’s a view, a description and some *thoughts on the value that these new features provide to it’s users and the web in general.
I’ve been listening to a lot more music than normal since I’ve been working from home for the past few weeks. I’ve really enjoyed diving into the lesser known songs on some of my favorite albums.
I decided to see how some of my new found favorites racked and stacked against one another, luckily, there now exists a tool to execute that comparison very easily. I used NextBigSound.com, the TechStars company that just release their site a few weeks back at TechStars Investor day. The screenshot above, which looks extremely similar to the Compete.com interface, shows the popularity ratings of these bands measured by how much their music is being played across the social web. Using sites like Last.fm, MySpace, and others they’re able to measure how often songs are played and shared.
I’ve grown up with dogs and love them. I have a particularly special place in my heart for Golden Retrievers because a special Golden named Chelsea use to break my falls at the age of 3. Now @mollstar’s dog, Moose, takes Chelsea’s place. I don’t dive bomb him but I definitely appreciate his attention.
Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of internet meme’s (viral stories) about cool dogs, so I decided to write a quick post on the cool dogs that are making a name for themselves on the internet. This post is definitely different than the traditional post here but sometimes I think that’s not such a bad thing. After you read this post & watch these videos, go give your pup a hug, or go find a dog to add to your family, you won’t regret it.
Skidboot – The best trained dog ever:
David Hartwig, Skidboot’s owner clearly has a special love for this pooch and it’s obvious that this love has lead to their success.
Transparency in a digital world is a very good thing. You all know that I’m very transparent with my activities on the web. I always sign-up for service with my real name and I’ve never left an anonymous blog comment in my life. I really do believe that if you’re going to do something on the web or otherwise, you should be comfortable with that action being viewed by all. What others in the web world might call transparency, I call integrity.
By no means am I trying to get on a high horse here and call out anyone who uses their initials or a fake name. Some people just aren’t as comfortable putting their ‘identity’ out there, and maybe for good reason. There are people out there that may use that information against you but I think there are more positives to being digitally transparent than there are negatives. I guess only time will tell.
Recently a Manhattan supreme court judge ruled that model, Liskula Cohen, was entitled to know the identity of the blogger behind a Blogger.com hosted blog called, ‘Skanks in NYC’ (since taken down). The judge ordered Google, which ran the offending blog, to turn it over. This is just a small example in the larger “blogosphere” of transparency taking over the digital world, but I do believe it sets a precedent.
Late last year I started thinking a bit about gen-Y and what my generation means to the workforce. I wondered how we would affect the way businesses hire, how they’d treat employees, what opportunities companies would create for us, and how we would create opportunities for ourselves even when companies wouldn’t (or couldn’t). Those thoughts lead to the other side of the coin, how will companies react to my generation, and future generations as customers and adopters of their products?
I started by looking into the official names of past generations:
Added thanks to yw600’s comment: 1954-1965 – Generation Jones
1965-1979 – Generation X
1980-2000 – Millennials or Generation Y
2000/2001-Present – New Silent Generation or Generation Z
I recently had a conversation with my friend Miguel (of BookVim.com) about the classic book 33 Strategies of War and I wanted to share my favorite strategy that the book discusses and that Miguel and I broke down a bit. The strategy is called Guerrilla War of the Mind Strategy. Below are some lessons I took away from the strategy and from our conversation.
Guerrilla War of the Mind Strategy
“Do not fight the last war”
This is the gist of the guerrilla war concept, don’t repeat your effort and don’t treat every new situation or challenge the way you treated the last. It won’t work out. Every challenge has a different set of conditions. In short, one solution won’t solve another issue, once size won’t fit all.
Your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different.
Again, this a great lesson for folks who say, “man we did it so well before, why are we sucking now?” I’ll tell you why, because 100% of the time, now is different that before. Change your strategy, change your approach and don’t let you past be an obstacle.
Last night I was at Lollapalooza (#lolla). The day was phenomenal including shows from Airborn Toxic Event, The Hood Internet, Passion Pit, Snoop Dogg, & Band of Horses. I took a bunch more pics and posted them to my flickr. One thing that really stuck out to me all day was the fact that when these bands get up on stage they have a huge voice, the crowd will literally do anything they’re told. I paid a lot of attention to the differences between how certain groups use their time in the limelight and what they say, how they act, and their general attitude. Here are my take-aways from each band with lessons that when applied to business are pretty powerful and actionable. Some are stronger that others but each is valuable in it’s own right. Enjoy!
What skills do you think the perfect entrepreneur needs to have? My answer would be (and I assume yours would be similar), the perfect entrepreneur has every skill that a business requires in order to get started and grow, then that same entrepreneur would have to have the leadership skills to guide a newly acquired group of people to continue to grow and eventually sustain that business.
In order to be perfect that single person would have to be able to take a startup from the foundation stages of a company, all the way to the operation stages of a full fledged business. It goes without saying that one person who has all of these skills is incredibly rare. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who are phenomenal fund raisers, or fabulous technology/product people, and others are business model guru’s who know how to extract every penny from a customer. Then there are guys like Eric Ries who dominate when it comes to optimizing the startup process through concepts like minimum viable product and customer development. But still, it’s tough to find someone who can take you from nothing, to something, to something huge, then sustain it.
The Perfect Entrepreneur
The skills can be broken up into 3 categories, Finance, Product, and Leadership. I’ll clarify what each of them means to the business, then try to find someone who fits the bill. I think you know who I may chose.
I recently came across one of the more talented videographers I’ve ever seen on the web. Jon Rawlinson is a filmmaker, cinematographer and editor based in Vancouver, Canada. He’s been doing documentaries and corporate video production for about 7 years and has done projects in over 30 countries (awesome). I only know Jon through his work and his website, but what I do know is that his fans, who comment heavily on his Vimeo page, really envy his life. After I spent 20 minutes or so watching his older videos I was right there with them, this guy is livin’ the dream. This is a perfect example of, ‘do what you love’ and you’ll put the dream in action.
Check out this video of the ‘Celebration of Light’ in the UK:
Jon’s amazing ability to capture people, scenes, and light and his unique ability to piece that work together with the right music has recently gained him a lot of publicity. Most recently, Jon filmed this video in Japan of the Kuroshio Sea, the worlds 2nd largest aquarium.
Facts from Jon’s Blog: The main tank called the “Kuroshio Sea” holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world’s second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.
Jon says on his blog that the Kuroshio Sea video is his first ever “viral” video. I’d say. These are some pretty phenomenal statistics.
Hi. I'm Ryan Graves and this is my personal blog. I'm an entrepreneur living in Chicago, working in San Francisco, but from San Diego. My wife blogs too, and I <3 my family.
