Taking the plunge into Austin Startup Weekend

The concept of Startup Weekend is simple.  Participants pay money to be put in a big room tasked to build out a company and working prototype in 54 hours with a team of strangers over the course of a weekend.  Sound awesome?

It did to me and for around 50 other people.  In fact on Sept 10-12, 2010, Austin Startup Weekend saw participants fly in from Boston, drive from Dallas and even cross country boarders from Mexico.  

Friday "Pitch Night AKA Controlled Chaos": I arrived rather early (a rarity if you know my style) and watched @cospace fill up with a very eclectic group of individuals.  I met entrepreneurs, marketers, MBAs & students, developers, and designers. Startup Weekend kicked off with a presentation from Ryan, a startup lawyer and then we went straight into pitches. A Pitch is a 60-90 second explanation of your business idea, the problem that you are solving, and what type of skills/resources you need.  After about 30 pitches, everyone starts to informally gather in groups and ask more questions to the team leaders. Personally, I wanted to join 50% of the pitches made.  Maybe I'm just one of those people at the ice-cream store that wants all flavors, but there were so many interesting ideas.  I ended up joining a team that at the time was WTF ATX which we later re-branded to Instavents.

Our team consisted of 4 people: Chris (student), Lisa (team leader), Alvin (developer) and myself (social media/mktg).  It was a simple concept to create a new way to discover local events and we spent the rest of the evening laying out the site design and how we would create the site.

Saturday "Work Day AKA Just do it": Groups continued to work on their businesses while sipping coffee and chowing down on pizza/bagels/never ending food table.  We talked a lot about how people would use the site, did a bit of market research, had logos created by my friend Aaron, set up social media presence, sifted through potential ideas and Alvin hammered away on our prototype.  We also enjoyed an early even speech from Gary Hoovers (yeah hoovers.com - you may have heard of one of his first startups) which was not only entertaining but very educational.

Sunday: "Investor Presentations AKA Oh Shit..we aren't done": Teams had until 5pm to have their final presentations completed as well as any demo prototype/design.  Our team worked down to the last wire - literally seconds before our presentation.  We has a brilliant design come in 2 hours before time was called from Sebastian, a hour before realized we didn't add a slide about how the site would make money, 6 hours before decided to lose WTF ATX all together and just go with Instavents, and the code was generating a PHP error seconds before our turn.  It was nail biting, blurry and awesome all at the same time.

So then you pitch to a handful of entrepreneurs, startup incubators, and angels. I tweeted through the night although looking back lack of sleep + rapid tweeting do not go hand in hand.  Regardless, at the end of the night not only did we make top 3, but we actually went on to win.

I came home exhausted but renewed at the same time.

My pocket was packed with business cards of people I'd actually like to keep in touch with.


My mind was full of new ways to look at my startup and I was already buzzing about getting Instavents mainstream.

My twitter account (basically the heartbeat for a SM person) is now following some of Austin's rock stars.

And I really felt for the first time some entrepreneurial soul. People who are truly interested in using the collective of their skills set to create new innovative products.

So in closing...thanks to all the sponsors such as @cospace, @infochimps, @capitalfactory, @ideafoundry, @conjunctured, @ghgroup, @texasventures, and @piry.

If you are considering going to a startup weekend - do it, and to the people who I met over the weekend - see you next year!

How Social Media times have changed

I've been actively engrossed in the business side of social media for over 1.5 years now and it's amazing how things have changed. Words like Klout and 'likes' common on our community have replaced huge follower counts and fully customized myspace profiles. Social media integration has become the priority of companies with website and complicated CMS tools left by the wayside. The difference between social media and social networking is clear.
The new shinny objects are still popping up but the dust (at least for me) has settled. I'm comfortable with my set of tools and move through new beta sites at the speed of light. Sure, the tools will change. They always do but I'm good with my strategic and tactical approaches. I have a few successes under my belt and preparing to unleash even more thought leadership around it (through social media of course!).
So where are my interests these days? Better penetration in the bigger sites (twitter, facebook, youtube), how social media can impact search, globalization of social media and of course the occasional shinny object. My mind envisions a world where email doesn't exist anymore and real-time, aggregation, and on-demand are commonplace. Where there will need to be classes on how to select your communication channel because we will have so many options and information overload will be addressed in formal education.
I'll coin the Notorious BIG's phrase "Mo Money Mo Problems" and say our future outlook seems "Mo Info Mo Problems" -- then again who wouldn't want more money. =)

Social Media over Superbowl Ad - Pepsi makes their position clear

Pepsi Refresh Project, Pepsi's new social media project, is taking center stage offering millions in grants to individuals, businesses and non-profits who have ideas in the areas of health, arts & culture, food & shelter, the planet, neighborhoods, and education.


What makes this especially intriguing for social media marketers is that Pepsi chose not to run ads in this years Superbowl but rather focus efforts on their Refresh Project.  Each month Pepsi will receive up to 1,000 submissions in the previously mentioned categories and anyone throughout the month can vote for up to 10 favorite submissions which are grouped by requested grant funding.  At the end of each month 10 submissions are awarded in the $5,000, $25,000k and $50,000k groups and up to 2 awardees in Pepsi's $250,000 group.     


Potentially, Pepsi will award funds to 32 different individuals, and organizations each month.  Pepsi also transfers over the top 100 runners-up from each category to the next month.  Applicants not only describe how they will use the funds, but also applicant videos and pictures.  People are encouraged to share through the social media tools like Facebook and Twitter and Pepsi's Youtube.com channel is also receiving quite the traffic!


It's great to see other companies besides Chase, Livestrong just to name a few utilizing social media for a great cause!


Great article about Pepsi's shift of advertising dollars...
http://masterthenewnet.com/pepsi-dumps-the-most-important-advertising-event-of-the-year-in-favor-of-social-media/

It's Cool to Use Coupons - $100,000 Dollars Cool!

From my grandmother who got excited when the dollar store had a sale to my penny-pinching dad who spends endless hours on slickdeals and fatwallet, being cheap runs in my family. So when the concept of collective buying started gaining popularity due to Groupon's 30 million dollar backing, I became highly intrigued.

The concept of Groupon's collective buying is shear genius - both for the businesses and the consumers. First consumers receive incredible deals as discounts of 50% and higher from retailers who normally don't even offer coupons. From teeth whitening, skydiving, restaurants, massage therapists and more, Groupon offers one coupon a day by city as well as a daily side deal. The main coupon must receive so many purchases to "be activated" which means now everyone who buys the coupon will receive it. If the coupon doesn't receive the required minimum number of purchases (this is highly unlikely with their 2.2 million subscribers across 30+ cities), then no one gets the deal. Most of the Groupon coupons tip within the hour of their release.  Also, consumers pay for the coupon upfront, so businesses not only know how many people downloaded the coupons but also make instant revenue.

From a financial standpoint Groupon only takes a cut of the earnings, so there is no upfront risk for the business and with daily purchases in cities of 300-1500, we can see why almost 97% of Groupon businesses want to have repeat coupons.  The way these companies are willing to offers such discounts is the overnight exposure and income Groupon can offer through its large user base.  Especially in our current economy, discounting is big business!

I hope you are sitting down because it gets even better. Now Groupon is running a promotion "Live Off Groupon" where one lucky winner will attempt to live off Groupons for an entire year. If the person selected is successful, he/she will win $100,000! If you haven't heard about this already, I'm sure you will because these types of promos go viral like gossip through a sorority house.

Now companies you may hear less about with a similar concept to Groupon are sprouting up.  The old adage that great ideas spawn copies definitely holds true in collective buying.  Now not all of these are exact replicates to Groupon but share very similar styles of deals: livingsocial.com, groopswoop.com, townhog.com, homerun.com, youswoop.com, wegivetoget.com, mydailythread.com, twobuckduck.com, couponfield.com, and a non location based daily coupons at deals.yahoo.com and woot.com.

So where does Groupon go from here?  Future plans for Groupon include rolling out to a total of 80 cities by the end of 2010 and we will see how large this industry will grow.

Twitter users - Twitterriffic or Twitterrible

My twitter feed is a bit lackluster these days. I only have a few account focusing on my passions and my time spent reading updates, filtering direct messages, and retweeting seems to have few peaks and many valleys. Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, I'm still at the top of the twitter user engagement stats as a member of the 17% of registered Twitter accounts who sent a tweet in December of 2009. Now, 17% may seem like a small number but with over 75 million user accounts, that still a whopping 12.7 million people.

Now the question is - what are people tweeting about? Twitter since inception has received its share of criticism especially with the baby-boomers questioning the value of social media. As the new generations (Gen X and later) desire to post their life events on social media becomes even more popular, Webinars, articles, white papers and semaniars are giving almost daily attempting to answer the ever so daunting question of how social media will add value. Value to your buesinss, yoru customers, and your employees.

Where will we be in a year, two years, even 6 months from now? Social media within its own industry has evolved. In fact, the one true variable that I feel will remain constant is the continued change and modification of how we interact with and benefit from social media. Take for example, Twitter's use of lists and regional related feeds or Facebook's ever so popular fan pages covering products to non-profits. Similar to FM going to XM or VHS going to blue ray, social media will surely take on a new form in the near future.

Twitter Stats
Twitter ended 2009 with just over 75 million user accounts.

The monthly rate of new user accounts peaked in July 2009 and is currently around 6.2 million new accounts per month (or 2-3 per second). This is about 20% below July’s peak rate.

A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet.

About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times.

Only about 17% of registered Twitter accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009, an all-time-low.
Despite these facts, Twitter users are becoming more engaged over time when we control for sample age.

Tweets from Space - Now that's out of this world!

When I initially heard that last Friday astronaut TJ Creamer made history, my mind raced with images of new moons, precious minerals, even E.T. Wrong! In Texas, a sprinkle of snow is considered an arctic freeze and on some media stations, an astronauts tweeting from space is considered a history event.

I will admit that it is pretty cool. Especially for the Twitter.com marketing team who is probably beaming from ear to ear about the publicity.

So is Twitter still a fad? Is it still nothing but spam and porn? Do people waste their time retweets, replying, and direct messaging other members?

Regardless of where you stand on the Twitter-love Scale, one tweet brought Twitter into the spotlight:

"Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"

Turn your iPhone into a credit card reader

WOW. A new app is on the block and this one got some innovation behind it.

Still being Alpha tested in NYC, Square is a new iPhone payment processing system that allows pretty much anyone to start accepting credit cards through their iPhone. The apparently simple to use interface and easy to plug in adapter transforms a standard iPhone or iTouch into a credit card reader. It's all paperless so receipts are emails out including a map of purchasing location (geomaps...cool), a penny is donated to your charity of choice per transaction, picture verification is available for security and frequent purchase rewards are also available without punch cards (you know much you love keeping 10th one free cards in your wallet)!

So my first instinct was where can I try it and I want one for my business!

Then I started wondering if everyone is walking around with credit card machines how this would impact credit card theft and misuse. I think I need to investigate this more with some primary research and o'darn, guess I have to go all the way to NYC to test it out!

More information: http://squareup.com/

UGC vs. Restricted Publishing

So we've all hear about the scandals of hotels improving their ratings on tripadvisor.com but now another internet leader, wikipedia.com is looking at their content and moving towards a more restricted content model. Why? I've seen it and I'm sure others agree that while wikipedia has a vast amount of content, the quality and credibility for several sections and articles fluctuates.

Does this imply that more and more sites are going to start creating complicated approval work-flows? No, but my expectation is that we will start to see more wide open sites implement more than the captcha human check box. Vs. the alternative of potentially undergoing a lot of scrutiny from poorly published content.

Additional article on Wikipedia changes
Wikipedia: Time for a reality check
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/25/wikipedias-big-news-its-fundamentally-unreliable/

iPhone Apps...gotta love it!

I'm always on the lookout for more apps for my iPhone. I like this list of apps because many of them sounded cool and I hadn't already downloaded them. Enjoy!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081600099_5.html

What's the deal with Ideablob.com?

I absolutely love when I find another long standing company (100+ years) who is innovating and encouraging other to innovate. When I first heard about this site, it was through a linkedin group women 2.0 where an entrepreneur was asking for people to vote for her. So in my coffee-enhanced A.D.D. clicking managed to find myself on www.ideablob.com and 15 minutes later (ie...a decade in web time) was still thumbing through the site.

Not only is the UI fun and interesting and the ideas unique and modern, but I was pleased by the sites overall mission and vision. Congrats to ADVANTA for being forward thinking and giving away 10K a month to encourage the American Dream.

Awesome shirt - really, just beautiful.

I think the shirt says it all. Wonder if they teach this in Psychology class. =)
http://site.despair.com/socialmediatee/

Everyone's doing it...you should too.

Neilson Online report finds that social networking is up 83% in the U.S. since last year. WOW. Fad? I don't think so. Moms and Dads don't worry if you kid drops his/her bag on the floor runs to the computer and starts chatting, texting, talking, gaming and webcaming all at the same time. It's normal. Teachers maybe try even posting something on Facebook during class to get your students to pay attention. And please post all assignments online - throw us a bone! And corporate american, please stop with the hour long face-to-face pointless meetings - use skype or soon google wave to communicate and connect. I need technology in my life.

The younger generation and even some of them 'older' ones are addicted to social networking statistically speaking, so stop being stubborn and start reworking your curriculums, office expectations/collaboration, and after school activities for us social networkers. Yes, we have ARRIVED and are here to STAY!

Good article summarizing the Neilson Online report: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10255626-93.html

Updates around the web

With so much news around video gaming with E3 starting and Project Natal (controller-less gaming Microsoft's newest hype) being spread across the networks, it's amazing that I can actually get any work done.

Bing the new Microsoft search tool hasn't impressed me and I really didn't even get a chance to look into Google's wave demo.

Facebook continues to climb especially internationally, but I haven't stopped watching Myspace. Myspace still leads them in video. I also think Myspace still rocks on music and so while most my friends have dropped off, I still find myself jammin out to my page every once in a while.

And one the biggest surprises from Twitter is research from NeilsonMobile that has claimed the 49 percent of users in the 35+ age group. WOW, now that's very interesting.

What's the deal with Yapta?

In all my travel research of visiting hundreds of travel related sites, I found a fresh face in the flight planning category that I wanted to share. Unlike a one night stand site that cuts you off as soon as you book the flight - Yapta continues to build up your relationship by continuing to monitor the flight price of your purchased flight. Not only does it monitor the price, but they even work to help you receive refunds from the airlines if you have greatly overpaid for a flight.

Now I haven't experienced the refund concept first hand, but it's an awesome idea. Forget those one night stands and move on to something a little more substantial. With Yapta.com you never have to wonder if you got the best deal, they'll make sure you did!

What's the deal with marriage?

Miami Beach Gay Pride - Couple that has been together for 65 years
So normally every Monday, I talk about a new web app or gadget but this Monday is special. I feel like talking about a social trend rather than a social web trend. Now for all my tech followers, definitely checkout a new seo tool in beta called Linkscape http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape. You can view basic stats for free and I think it's one of the nicer tools out there.

But enough about technology, lets talk about marriage. Ever since I graduated college, I feel like my facebook feed is full of weddings, cakes, bridesmaids, engagement photos, bachlorette parties (or at least the clean photos), and more talk about getting engaged, married and of course babies.

I don't get it. I never have and I keep wondering as I get older if I ever will. Now I'm all about finding true love and that special someone to spend the rest of your life with but are we really programmed for marriage? In a society that can't even sit through commercials without flippin channels or tvio'ing their favorite shows. Do people really want to get married till death do them part.

It just seems like a really big commitment not to mention a really long time. Back in the 1920s - till death do us part was like till you were 55* or even earlier. Now with people living into their 80s that's 30 more years with the same person. And yes, I do realize people got married in their teenage years but that's only about 10 years different that most of my friends getting married in their early twenties.

Now, don't get me wrong - weddings can be fun, bachlorette parties even more fun and getting together with your closest friends and family to dance, drink and celebrate an American tradition makes for a great weekend, but I still find myself questioning how so many people are caught up in 1) wanting to be married 2) wanting to be part of all their friends weddings and/or 3) setting restrictions such as I have to be married by 30.

Since this is probably my one and only blog about marriage, I am going to have to weigh in on gay marriage as well. My view is simple. GLBT members should have the same rights granted by marriage (common law or legal) and it should be their choice to get married or not. Now again I don't think rainbow cakes and the best linen table cloths in the world (you know how we do), can change the same fate that straight people are locking into BUT I will say that GLBT should have the same rights - no question about it.

Now, I know there are many couples that have stayed happily married for many, many years. In fact, there are many gay couples who stay together as long as hetro couples ie my picture of a couple Peter and George who have been together for 65 years - now that's impressive. I thank Facebook and all the social networking status, picture-loading, alert tools out there for the constant reminder about how everyone's getting married and I'd better jump on the bandwagon and start trying to figure out my something old, new and blue.

In closing, I want to say I am happy for all current and future brides and grooms. I do wish you the best and 50+ years of passion and love.



* http://www.uoregon.edu/~maphist/english/US/US32-01.html

What's the deal with Skype?

So my newest obsession that again I'm trying to push through my weekly "What's the deal with ...." is Skype.

Currently there are over 10 million people logged into skype. So I would say that quite a few people are USING it. But I still feel there are several outstanding questions out there for the non-user.

You see -- until a few weeks ago -- I too was a non-user. Now, this doesn't seem to make sense. I mean I have an iphone, blog frequently, live on the web, 5 chat programs and so why didn't I skype? Well, I just didn't. Yeah, a very lame excuse but a honorable one.

I would assume the majority of people have at least heard the name, but I'm going to try to cliff note the tool because once you start using it -- you won't stop. No, it might not replace your landline, cell phone or favorite chat tool -- facebook, aim, yahoo, msn or whatever -- but it's definitely a tool to TRY.


What can I do with Skype? You can chat, make a phone call, make a video call, send a file..ok it probably does more but those are the important ones in my opinion

How does it work? So download the program, create a profile, search for friends and then you can start to interact with them ie chat, call, send files.

Does it cost money? The cool thing is that with Skype you can call another Skype person for free - anywhere in the world! You can also call in-country and out-of-the-country landlines for very very very cheap. Visit www.skype.com for more details.

Can I call landlines with Skype? Yes, there is a cost involved but you can.

Do I have to be in front of my computer for Skype? There is an app for the iPhone which I haven't fully explored yet, but generally the answer is yes.

What's so great about it? The integration of video, voice, chat and file transfer. THE PRICE - free to very cheap - can't beat that.

There are also additional packages to receive a skype phone number, call forwarding and other features. I've met people who have actually replaced their landline with Skype and love it. Also, people traveling in foreign countries are able to call home for fractions of the cost of phone cards.

Do you have the 411 on how to make your 404 error cool?

Broken links, bad spelling, whatever the reason may be....404 errors have been around forever. I wanted to link to some pretty creative ways designers are making 404 errors interesting.

Best 404s out there
Big library of 404 pages

My stream, your stream, now it's everybody's stream

What better news than Subway's foot long for $5? How about Facebook opening up it's activity stream for external developers. Now that's quite a mouth full!


The stream is all the updates that take up the middle of your facebook page. It shows you all the posts from your friends in real-time. This keeps you up to date on everything that's happening. And now other apps and websites can utilize it too.

What's going to be interesting to see how the stream is utilized. The Facebook Open Stream API allows websites to "access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience. Other new API methods will allow users to both publish into the stream and to add comments and "likes" to posts in the stream." It's got some other pretty interesting features so make sure to check out the full article at:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/163898/facebook_opens_up_activity_stream_to_external_developers.html

or

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php

What's the deal with WAYN?

So every Monday, I blog about a social networking site that all the innovators and early adapters yawn at, the mainstream feels some varying degree of familiarity and the laggards skip over to more important things for them like changing the record because the needle is hitting the edge.


Today, I feel WAYN.com is one of those necessary sites. WAYN which stands for What are you now? is part of a large family of social networking sites related to the travel industry. It's connected to facebook and twitter - so you can login through your facebook account and your tweets are synonymous with your "what are you up for doing?". You can post pictures, blogs, reviews and videos. And you can also plan trips, search trips, and if you've added the "where have you been" app that's also integrated on the WAYN site.

While the design is very nice -- clean and simple -- I'm still struggling with what gives this site an edge. They receive 32,936 unique visitors daily according to http://checksitetraffic.com and receive an estimated 258.4K US people monthly according to quantcast.com. That's no Tripadvisor.com or expedia.com and for get about playing in the leagues of myspace.com and facebook.com, but you have to admit in the land of a dime a dozen of social networking sites, it's pretty good.

Let me know what you think about WAYN.com. Is it another site you'll use when traveling or just another social networking site in the pack that's getting left behind?

If I had a dollar for every iPhone app downloaded...

...I'd have over a billion dollars

Apple has to be pretty proud of their current position. Over a billion apps downloaded and in their countdown to the billionth app, 5.5 million apps where downloaded daily. For any iPhone owner, apps are just a part of daily life. It's almost a social status to know the 'cool' apps out there and of course a great filler while waiting for a movie to start, filling space before your food arrives, on the train, plane or just sitting on your couch.

In many ways, it's almost expected as an iPhone user that your favorite websites have iPhone apps - myspace, facebook, craigslist just to name a few. And there are so many practical uses. If you want to learn Spanish download 24/7 tutor, or maybe find a move you add Fixster, or before the movie looking for a close by restaurant UrbanSpoon has it all. Regardless if you want to find cheap gas, calculate a tip, need a flashlight, check stocks, take pictures at night, skype or play games - there is an app for that.

So the question that most marketers and companies ask themselves is how do we stay on top and who are the close competitiors. How can we continue to evolve avoiding the fate of the cassette tape or even Geocities that was officially shut down by Yahoo! this month.

I think the big questions that Apple will need to answer is global scalability and flexibility. Right now they beat out Google's Android in terms of users and apps; however, Android is just getting out to market and it's ability to be used globalily on a larger number of devices and providers may change the playing field.