staying power - n. the ability to endure or last.

Some startups today seem like they’re cool features or tools (insert twitter tool here) but I just don’t see how some of them will be around in a year or 2 when their budgets dry up. I could be totally wrong and maybe Twitters tool will get bought out left and right in some mass consolidation of the market, but I doubt it. When I evaluate startups today I look for staying power. In my mind that means, how do they change the status quo such that people will not return to the norm? For example, Twitter has changed the way I think about what I’m doing. If something cool happens I share it. If I read something crazy or have an experience that I think people would enjoy sharing with me I blog about it, then tweet the link. I take pictures and tweet them, I talk with friends on twitter way more often than I send text messages. Twitter changed the way I communicate and I don’t see that changing back.

I believe that Dailybooth has staying power because it’s changing the way people communicate again. It’s moving us ever so slightly away from text. With Dailybooth you can upload images in a stream and have conversations with images. This is just Twitter with pictures you say!? Maybe. Or maybe it’s the first step away from text centric twitter to something of the future. People probably aren’t ready for full video conversations just yet (although I believe they will eventually) which is why Seesmic has moved away from focusing on video conversations. I think Seesmic video was an amazing idea but I think it just came to early. But Dailybooth may provide that smooth transition away from text in a way that adoption will be much larger. Only time will tell. What do you think?

Both Gary V and Kevin Rose are investors in Dailybooth and both of those guys have proved repeatedly that they know how to trend spot when it comes to web services. When people change the way they communicate it’s exciting and those guys might have nailed it with their investments here. The staying power of Dailybooth is right in front of your eyes. Jump on and follow me!

The images below, if you haven’t look yet, are a crowd sourced image thread of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song. They start with the two images above and continue all the way down through the end of the song. This kind of image collaboration just doesn’t happen often and I do think that Dailybooth has caught onto something special here.

via world economic forum

Why THE DREAM IN ACTION Has A Forum

I’ve decided to add a forum to THE DREAM IN ACTION because I want the site to be more than one to many communication. Simply put, I think putting your dreams into action on a daily basis is as much a group thing as an individual thing. I truly believe that the inspiration you can get from other peoples change is powerful and can serve as a catalyst for change and action in your life.

Also, I think that the readers of this blog are powerfully intelligent and it would be foolish of me to not provide an outlet for other readers to benefit from that collective insight. With a forum anyone can ask a question and anyone can provide an answer.

Why Forums Are Beneficial

Forums are very beneficial for collecting and filtering he wisdom of crowds. Blogs like Zenhabits and 4-Hour Work Week that center around ideas that can change your life are perfect examples of how a solid forum can provide great benefit to readers looking for a little more than on author/blogger can provide. Here are a few more reasons why Forums work.

• Forums encourage a wide variety of contributors. Many popular forums with large audiences have members who are experienced and enjoy helping other people solve problems or get inspired.
• Forums drive discussion. Blog comments are great but it’s still difficult for one commenter to speak directly to another. Disqus commenting system helps but I still see value for group discussion in a forum environment. Discussions get people thinking and challenged, and more discussion is never a bad thing.
• Forums allow YOU to participate. The forum will be moderately moderated. Most discussion will be open and free within reason so the least experienced entrepreneur can dialog with VC’s or corporate CEO’s, anyone can join, no go out and recruit!
• Forums allow branding/promotion. Our forum will allow you have a signature — which is like a form of advertisement. Intelligent comments will drive traffic to your blog or website, this is a reward for valuable participation.

10 Steps To Dominating Your Forum

Now that the forums are setup, how are you supposed to use theme. This 10 Step Guide To Forums will help you use the forum effectively and participate in a more direct conversation with other readers.

1. Use The Forum With Purpose - While forums are an excellent resource for deeper discussions, they can also be a huge time-consuming activity if you aren’t careful. Be intentional with why you are joining the forum at any specific time. Are you getting a question answered? Or, are you helping out other readers? Either is a legitimate use but make sure your careful because time flies when you’re having fun.

2. Be A Resource. This is the best way to get your questions answered quickly and thoroughly, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Make sure to ask your own questions from time to time though (be human), by focusing on helping out other readers you will quickly increase your value to them and drive traffic to your site.

3. Use An Avatar. On this blog we have Gravatar enable so you’ll be able to post  message and have your personal avatar show who you are. If you don’t have this setup through Gravatar it’s very simple, go hear to sign-up.

4. Use A Signature. You will have a signature on each post and we encourage you to include a link to your blog! Write a short blurb that will tell the forum participants of who you are, be honest to gain credibility.

5. Focus On The People Not The Traffic. In order to be effective using the forum, focus on building relationship with other bloggers. Build your network before you need it! Although you can drive traffic to your site if you become valuable to the forum it is a much more effective tool for meeting people. Forums may not be a huge source of traffic but relationships with blogger can prove to be extremely valuable when trying to get the word out. This is when forums really become valuable and what you should focus your efforts.

These 2 tips below are from Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Work Week on how he reached out to bloggers to promote his NY Times #1 Best Selling book. Both of these strategies are perfect for implementing when you start using the forums.

Start Before You Need Something

“I reached out to certain bloggers as far as a year in advance of the book being published,” Tim told me. By building his connections ahead of time, he never had to start a relationship with a blogger by asking for a favor.

Don’t Be A Promoter

Nobody wants to get to know a guy who does nothing but promote himself. “Your job is to convince them of the messenger, not the message,” he told me. “Don’t try to push your message until you establish yourself as someone they’re willing to listen to.”

6. Take Your Contacts Outta Here. Follow up with people via email or Twitter when you chat with them in the forum. Although it’s a great method of communication we don’t ant it to be your only method. The name of the game, relationship building.

7. Be Respectful. This one is obvious, but sometimes you still have to say it. We will not ban but we don’t encourage anonymity. Be real, authentic, and nice and you’re good to go. If you goal is to help or be helped then be cool, otherwise peace.

8. Ask For Feedback. Our forum has a category ‘misc’- for general Q’s & A’s . Feel free to ask for feedback on your blog or startup by providing a link. Be careful to solicit this feedback with the right attitude and in a respectful manor. Also, although we are accepting some forums are not friendly towards this type of communication.

9. Focus On Your Core Competencies. This forum will cover a wide variety of topics. If you are looking to network by helping folks out, you’ll be most effective by focusing on what you know. The forum ranges from Marketing to Economics to Entrepreneurship to Travel, you may be an expert at all of them (in which case I look forward to chatting, but if you’re not, help where you can and learn where you can.

10. Find Win-Win Opportunities. One of the keys to effective networking is finding win-win situations. If you meet other bloggers that write on the same topics as you, try to find areas where you can help each other. Maybe you can write a guest post for another blogger and a particular topic that you know well. This would be good exposure for you and it would provide valuable content for the other blogger. Link exchanges are also common.

Send Off

I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes of this community. I hope that the 4-5 thousand readers a month of this blog take the time to sign up for the forum and give it a whirl. But, in the end I’d much rather have a passionate community of 30 or 40 than a passive community of 400. If you find value from this community or even see potential value I would ask and encourage you to share it and promote it with me! See you there.

via vadirajcs

I’m pumped that now my Tweets feed directly to Facebook. All the friends that made fun of me for using Twitter are now commenting and joining in conversations around my Tweets and my blog posts that I share on Facebook via Twitter. This is a huge “crossing of the chasm” for Twitter because the “normal people” are now joining in on web based conversations at a rapidly increasing rate.

Sorry this post is so late, I’ve been thinking/working on it for a while. First, I’ll share why you should use Twitter for status updates, then show you how.

9 Reasons Why You Should Use Twitter for Status Updates

I have found multiple reason for using Twitter. I’ve use the service for almost a year and have been able to meet a ton of cool people using the service. I’ve used Twitter for personal and business cases. It’s a phenomenal communication platform that allows for extreme flexibility in communication. Here are my top 9 reasons why you should use Twitter to update your Facebook status.

1. Twitter allows for mobile status updates – Go to the ‘Devices’ tab under your Twitter account settings and give Twitter your mobile phone number. Then SMS or txt message ’40404′ your message. This will update Twitter and now also your Facebook status. Easy peasy!

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2. Stay involved in technology or turn into a grandparent early – Haven’t you ever gotten annoyed at your grandparents (or even parents) for not even caring about a new technology?  Well if you don’t continue to adapt and adopt new technologies, your going to be left in the dust. A huge difference between our generation and theirs is our ability to learn things quickly and continually adapt. Please don’t get old while you’re still young.

3. Twitter’s community is creative and powerful - I’ve learned so much from my Twitter followers. I actively engaged them by asking questions, asking advice, and reengaging with them. I’d like to think I’ve helped as many folks who have helped me. Whether your trying to figure out what movie to watch, what restaurant to eat at, or what the weather is, your Twitter community can be an extremely powerful resource.

4. Travel updates – When I was in China, I was able to send an SMS message to 40404, Twitters number (after I setup the new number in my Twitter profile under ‘Devices’) with “d Mollstar I love you.” and it would send a direct text to my fiance with no charge at all. Using the internet instead of standard text messaging I was able to stay in touch at a fraction of the cost. Another example is my buddy Allen Burt, my partner in LibraryforLaos.org, has been able to keep his friends and family informed of his travels through the South Pacific over the last few months using Twitter.

5. Status updates are the new diary – Who has time to diary these days? Now with short updates on a semi-regular basis you can have a track record of the joy in your life. One sad but powerful story is of  @martin, a well know entrepreneur and networker throughout the tech world. He was an adventurer to the fullest extent and recorded some of his last joys via Twitter. He was taking flying courses at the Santa Monica airport and shared his last great experience before his plane later crashed. His joy and adventure  was shared and saved through Twitter.

6. Get your Google juice going! - It’s more and more important to control what people find when searching your name on Google. Every recruiter now days is going to perform this search on your name, so get a head start in controlling what they find. I recommend blogging too, but that’s for another conversation. Twitter actually has very good Google juice so you can influence what is found by being an active and powerful Twitter user.

7. Learn, share, network, create opportunities – With Twitter growing at a faster pace than even Facebook itself, it is becoming more and more likely that your next job, sale, or even romantic relationship will come from Twitter.  I know this sounds absurd but I know you’ve probably met or encountered people on Facebook that you hadn’t yet met. Then you may have met them and maybe you dated? This will happen more and more from Twitter as it’s popularity increases. I  know it sounds Match.com-ish creepy but just wait and see. Create opportunities from this growing crowd of intelligent and plugged in people.

8. Shaq and Britney do it - Well maybe this isn’t that good of an argument.

9. Twitter is the new filter to good online content – You used to read the newspaper, now you read Google news or maybe even Digg.com if your web hip, but more and more Twitter becomes my source of good news. Think about it, if you get to choose exactly who you follow you have a 100% personalized filter of the type of people you want sending information your way. If they suck, drop’em, if they’re awesome, tell others to follow them (see #followfriday). Twitter is the new content filter than no algorithm can beat.

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7 Steps to Connecting Twitter & Facebook

1. Log into Facebook and search “Twitter” in the search bar (top right)

*don’t let TwitterSync fool you, it’s not what you want.

2. Select the first option, the window below with show and then click, “View Application”

3. I’m sure you’ve done this before, just add the application.

*(Same process as adding iLike, WhereI’veBeen, etc.) You’re giving the Twitter application the right to interact with Facebook and input information into your Twitter profile. Make sure you have a secure Twitter password. Using the same password as you use on Facebook is fine.

4. How do you want Twitter to interact w/ Facebook? I recommend publishing to your Newsfeed but keeping email notification off.

5. Give Facebook your Twitter login information.

6. Allow Twitter to update your Facebook status (I’ll explain why in a minute)

7. Allow Status updates without notification –> Authorize Twitter

*This is the final approval process. Make sure to click the box “Allow Twitter to update my status…”

Now you’re done! Twitter will do the rest for you! No more logging into Facebook for status updates.

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I hope this helps you all in connecting two great technologies, not for technologies sake, but for the purpose of making your life easier and improving communication between friends…after all, that’s the point of all this anyway, right? Please don’t hesitate to ask questions about how to set things up, usually the community is pretty helpful in helping one another but I’ll chime in if need be. :)