Daily Archives: February 19, 2006

Steve Rubel is testing memetrackers

Blog Tips

And he’s found that TailRank is sending him more links than Memeorandum is (although Memeorandum is sending more traffic). He says he likes TailRank better.
He asks why is Memeorandum more popular with people like me? Cause I don’t want more stuff coming at me. I have my 840+ feeds for that. I want a tool to see what bloggers are finding important and so far Memeorandum is better for me. I’m watching TailRank and the others closely, though, and agree that they are improving! This is an interesting competition to watch.

One thing, though. If you just want traffic, Digg is the winner over both of these. By a factor of at least 10. But is that traffic who you really want as readers? I’m not sure about that.

Thanks John for podcasting the party

Blog Tips, Computer Industry, Geeks, NASDAQ

Thanks to John Furrier for podcasting the party. It’s interesting cause I was stuck signing books in the corner that I wasn’t able to have very many deep conversations with people so I’m relying on recordings like John’s to fill in the gaps. Anyone have other podcasts or video blogs or things like that? Leave your URLs here.

I also wanted to say thanks once again to all the people who took pictures. Not many people might look at them, but I am and I appreciate it.

I specifically appreciate Scott Beale. You might not know who he is if you don’t hang out at conferences, but he shows up to almost every geek event I’ve attended with his super cool camera (he just got a new Canon 5D, which is a full-frame new SLR that just has me drooling) and takes pictures of everything that moves (here’s his of our party). He doesn’t expect anything in return. Never complains. Just posts pictures. And I always appreciate them so thought he should be called out in particular. He’s not the only one, just the one who’s done photography at events like these more than anyone else that I can recall.

Back to my passions

accessibility, Blog Tips, Computer Industry, entrepreneurs, Event, learning

Hey, Guy, how come you haven’t invited me over for breakfast? I thought you were my friend! :-)

Seriously, though, if you’re a company or a blogger and want a link, you don’t need to suck up. Just go to my comment and post your freaking URL along with a pitch of why your blog, software, new idea, etc rocks. But more on that in a bit.

Anyway, this weekend was really incredible. Our party was just over the top.

I find myself asking “now what?”

I’m asking myself what’ll get me excited to get out of bed tomorrow. Thanks to Rick Segal for putting that question in my head (he took Patrick and I out for sushi and we spent a bit of time talking life and technology).
Passion. It’s coming up in lots of conversations.

Today I had lunch with the team from Ether.com. I’m not allowed to say what they showed me, but I saw the fire in their eyes (that’s program manager Ron Hirson on left, and developer and co-founder Scott Faber on right). The passion for building something that changes the world. If you’re someone who sells your time and want a new way to do that (like, say, a lawyer does) then you should sign up for their beta.

I love that passion! It’s why I love hanging out with geeks. People who build things. People who put it all on the line. Who risk everything for an idea.

We need more people like that. Enough talking about me. Who’s the geek sitting tonight in a dark room typing code into a keyboard and hitting F5 to see how much further they’ve gotten in their dreams?

But, back to the Guy Kawasaki post: why suck up to anyone? If you are good, people will notice. They’ll stand in line overnight to buy your product. Word will get around. All you need is a few people to kick it off (and they don’t need to be the A list either).

I get bummed out when I hear people assume that getting me (or other A listers, or even someone who really has huge influence like Walt Mossberg or Steven Levy) to write about them will make their company.

Here’s a little secret: want to get me passionate about something? Get every single person in my life passionate about it.

Why did I return my Cingular aircard and buy a Verizon EVDO one? Cause my friends were passionate. My readers were passionate. And they were right. At Oakland my Cingular card would barely work. Verizon has five bars here and is fast, fast, fast.
Why did I try CoComment? It’s not cause Laurent took me skiing. Well, that helped. But I started hearing about CoComment from other people at the LIFT conference. Laurent didn’t come to the “A list” first. He just was passing them out to anyone. Passion. It’s not about sucking up.

It’s about being so excited by what you’ve built that you’ll tell anyone. Remember Flickr? Two years ago Stewart Butterfield was so excited that he was just pulling anyone who would listen aside at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference and showing them his stuff. That passion won me over as a customer and continues winning me over to this day. (Although he better watch out, cause Albert Lai of Bubbleshare is even more passionate than Stewart was!).

So, don’t suck up, get excited!

PS: are you excited about something you’ve built? Just post it here. Don’t send me email. If you send me email your excitement might get lost in my inbox. 133 emails to go.