Tuesday, 18 September 2012
This is a brilliant piece about new social media marketing the rise of visual.
I didnt write most of it - as written By Ekaterina Walter
What I will do is at a couple of thoughts and a couple more links.
And occassionally argue against it as sometimes heavy tech users can believe the world is doing something which data wise says the opposite. We get this with mobile marketing - when mobile marketing people believe everyone has an smartphone - and they do not. Ok in the UK it's about 61% but that still is NOT everyone - and no I don't think it will be everyone by 2014 either.
Anyhoo, Miss Walter writes - Blog posts became Facebook updates and Tumblr posts, which shrunk to Tweets and finally to Instagram or Pinterest. Here's how smart brands are navigating the new visual social-media era.
Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have ushered in visual marketing as the breakout trend for 2012. When it comes to their products, businesses are learning to show, not tell, and visual content sites are fueling our desire for beautiful photography and sensational design.
Two years ago, marketers were spreading the maxim that "content is king," but now, it seems, "a picture really is worth a thousand words." But are either of these things really new or news when it comes to marketing?
The real point so often over looked by tech lovers is that it is the human experience enabled by the technology which is the driver and NOT the other way around i.e. people like stuff and like to tell their friends, nothing new. But add one click and tell all your 'friends' on facebook - and you have yourself a marketing revolution (if not a social one as well...)
This evolution of marketing is nothing more than tech catching up with what we as human's already want - which is why augmented reality (a terrible name for a game changing technology is so exciting...) and why mobile visual discovery companies like Blippar could really be on to something.
"Blogs were one of the earliest forms of social networking where people were writing 1,000 words," says Dr. William J. Ward, Social Media professor at Syracuse University. "When we moved to status updates on Facebook, our posts became shorter. Then micro-blogs like Twitter came along and shortened our updates to 140 characters. Now we are even skipping words altogether and moving towards more visual communication with social-sharing sites like Pinterest."
Oh and if you don't know much about Pinterest - here is a great interview with it's creator.... It could be the greatest PPC advertising platform in history. However underneath all of it is something more. The trend towards the visual...
This trend toward the visual is also influenced by the shifting habits of technology users. As more people engage with social media via smartphones, they're discovering that taking a picture "on the go" using a high-resolution phone is much less tedious than typing out a status update on a two-inch keyboard.
A 2012 study by ROI Research found that when users engage with friends on social media sites, it's the pictures they took that are enjoyed the most. Forty-four percent of respondents are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures than any other media. Pictures have become one of our default modes of sorting and understanding the vast amounts of information we're exposed to every day.
Detavio Samuals is the EVP and Director of Client Services at GlobalHue, one of the nation's top market advertising agencies. He explains that pictures are a bit like movie trailers for written content--they provide a snippet of what an article, brand, site or other piece of content is about, so that you can quickly decide if it's what you wanted or not.
"Pictures have also become a short form way of communicating lots of information quickly and succinctly," says Samuals. "The need for publishers to get to the point quicker than ever came about as humans became more pressed for time and content became more infinite. For publishers, it was evolve or risk losing their audience, and the only thing shorter than a tweet or post is a picture."
So what does all this visual stimulation mean for brands?
Fashion designer Kahri-Anne Kerr uses visual social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook to market her Kahri collection. In the fashion world, visual fantasy sells product, as customers need to see the cut of a garment on a model and feel as though they could make that item work in their own wardrobe. "When I post pictures on Facebook, they get the most feedback of all my posts," says Kahri. Visual media is a great way to share more about what inspires the designs, as well as linking to your online store and straight product shots."
"I am just getting into Instagram, which I use to give a personal look at the person behind the label by taking shots around my studio and in my everyday life."
Designer paper/analog brand Moleskine has harnessed the power of visual media to create one of the world's most active, prolific, and creative online communities. Their visual content strategy focuses on user-generated content: They create large-scale projects that users participate in by posting their own images and videos.
A popular campaign called What's In Your Bag? had users update pictures of the contents of their bags into a Facebook album. The project generated thousands of likes and comments as readers looked at the contents of other bags (which included Moleskine notebooks, naturally), and shared photos with their friends.
Inspiring fans to create and spread images, customize their notebooks, organize online competitions, and otherwise engage with the brand on a creative level has set Moleskine apart in its highly specialized market.
Search engines now rank content based on social conversations and sharing, not just websites alone. Brands can use visual content on their social media to increase engagement and inspire sharing and viral marketing. The rise of platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, and Facebook's multimillion-dollar acquisition of the latter, shows how visual content is becoming an increasingly important force for communication online.
Brands that can rock visual media will find themselves market leaders.
But let's be honest is it really for ALL brands? It seems from the above and the known demographics for Pinterest (at present around 90% women) that certain things and sectors will work well with visiual marketing and perhaps others would not.
The other thing that worries me a little with this obbession with the visual means is marketing truly to become all style over substance? It is going to become that you ONLY judge a book by it's cover, a brand from it's Pinterest board, a company from their meta narrative on Facebook Timeline etc.
We all feel like we are too busy to investigate more, to read more, to slow down more, to make better less superficial decisions (which is surely what giving something less than a second to sum it up is doing...) but time is a feeling.
Ask how much TV people watch and hope much time do they feel they have.
I suppose the above comment is NOT about marketing at all. Maybe it's just a race to the bottom - the quickest - and the prettiest. All of which might give the people what they want in a way they want it. This used to be a maxim of mine.
But as a got older and really looked at marketing - perhaps we should give the people the very best of what's out there - not just a one second picture flash.
Just some thoughts. And mainly from - Ekaterina Walter who is Intel's social media strategist. Follow her if you would like to on @ekaterina on twitter.
As for me I am going to think about how this makes mobile marketing either better or worse and blog about it here...
I didnt write most of it - as written By Ekaterina Walter
What I will do is at a couple of thoughts and a couple more links.
And occassionally argue against it as sometimes heavy tech users can believe the world is doing something which data wise says the opposite. We get this with mobile marketing - when mobile marketing people believe everyone has an smartphone - and they do not. Ok in the UK it's about 61% but that still is NOT everyone - and no I don't think it will be everyone by 2014 either.
Anyhoo, Miss Walter writes - Blog posts became Facebook updates and Tumblr posts, which shrunk to Tweets and finally to Instagram or Pinterest. Here's how smart brands are navigating the new visual social-media era.
Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have ushered in visual marketing as the breakout trend for 2012. When it comes to their products, businesses are learning to show, not tell, and visual content sites are fueling our desire for beautiful photography and sensational design.
Two years ago, marketers were spreading the maxim that "content is king," but now, it seems, "a picture really is worth a thousand words." But are either of these things really new or news when it comes to marketing?
The real point so often over looked by tech lovers is that it is the human experience enabled by the technology which is the driver and NOT the other way around i.e. people like stuff and like to tell their friends, nothing new. But add one click and tell all your 'friends' on facebook - and you have yourself a marketing revolution (if not a social one as well...)
This evolution of marketing is nothing more than tech catching up with what we as human's already want - which is why augmented reality (a terrible name for a game changing technology is so exciting...) and why mobile visual discovery companies like Blippar could really be on to something.
"Blogs were one of the earliest forms of social networking where people were writing 1,000 words," says Dr. William J. Ward, Social Media professor at Syracuse University. "When we moved to status updates on Facebook, our posts became shorter. Then micro-blogs like Twitter came along and shortened our updates to 140 characters. Now we are even skipping words altogether and moving towards more visual communication with social-sharing sites like Pinterest."
Oh and if you don't know much about Pinterest - here is a great interview with it's creator.... It could be the greatest PPC advertising platform in history. However underneath all of it is something more. The trend towards the visual...
This trend toward the visual is also influenced by the shifting habits of technology users. As more people engage with social media via smartphones, they're discovering that taking a picture "on the go" using a high-resolution phone is much less tedious than typing out a status update on a two-inch keyboard.
A 2012 study by ROI Research found that when users engage with friends on social media sites, it's the pictures they took that are enjoyed the most. Forty-four percent of respondents are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures than any other media. Pictures have become one of our default modes of sorting and understanding the vast amounts of information we're exposed to every day.
Detavio Samuals is the EVP and Director of Client Services at GlobalHue, one of the nation's top market advertising agencies. He explains that pictures are a bit like movie trailers for written content--they provide a snippet of what an article, brand, site or other piece of content is about, so that you can quickly decide if it's what you wanted or not.
"Pictures have also become a short form way of communicating lots of information quickly and succinctly," says Samuals. "The need for publishers to get to the point quicker than ever came about as humans became more pressed for time and content became more infinite. For publishers, it was evolve or risk losing their audience, and the only thing shorter than a tweet or post is a picture."
So what does all this visual stimulation mean for brands?
Fashion designer Kahri-Anne Kerr uses visual social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook to market her Kahri collection. In the fashion world, visual fantasy sells product, as customers need to see the cut of a garment on a model and feel as though they could make that item work in their own wardrobe. "When I post pictures on Facebook, they get the most feedback of all my posts," says Kahri. Visual media is a great way to share more about what inspires the designs, as well as linking to your online store and straight product shots."
"I am just getting into Instagram, which I use to give a personal look at the person behind the label by taking shots around my studio and in my everyday life."
Designer paper/analog brand Moleskine has harnessed the power of visual media to create one of the world's most active, prolific, and creative online communities. Their visual content strategy focuses on user-generated content: They create large-scale projects that users participate in by posting their own images and videos.
A popular campaign called What's In Your Bag? had users update pictures of the contents of their bags into a Facebook album. The project generated thousands of likes and comments as readers looked at the contents of other bags (which included Moleskine notebooks, naturally), and shared photos with their friends.
Inspiring fans to create and spread images, customize their notebooks, organize online competitions, and otherwise engage with the brand on a creative level has set Moleskine apart in its highly specialized market.
Search engines now rank content based on social conversations and sharing, not just websites alone. Brands can use visual content on their social media to increase engagement and inspire sharing and viral marketing. The rise of platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, and Facebook's multimillion-dollar acquisition of the latter, shows how visual content is becoming an increasingly important force for communication online.
Brands that can rock visual media will find themselves market leaders.
But let's be honest is it really for ALL brands? It seems from the above and the known demographics for Pinterest (at present around 90% women) that certain things and sectors will work well with visiual marketing and perhaps others would not.
The other thing that worries me a little with this obbession with the visual means is marketing truly to become all style over substance? It is going to become that you ONLY judge a book by it's cover, a brand from it's Pinterest board, a company from their meta narrative on Facebook Timeline etc.
We all feel like we are too busy to investigate more, to read more, to slow down more, to make better less superficial decisions (which is surely what giving something less than a second to sum it up is doing...) but time is a feeling.
Ask how much TV people watch and hope much time do they feel they have.
I suppose the above comment is NOT about marketing at all. Maybe it's just a race to the bottom - the quickest - and the prettiest. All of which might give the people what they want in a way they want it. This used to be a maxim of mine.
But as a got older and really looked at marketing - perhaps we should give the people the very best of what's out there - not just a one second picture flash.
Just some thoughts. And mainly from - Ekaterina Walter who is Intel's social media strategist. Follow her if you would like to on @ekaterina on twitter.
As for me I am going to think about how this makes mobile marketing either better or worse and blog about it here...
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Some well read wisdom about start ups
This is SOOOOOO good I feel a little ashamed that I have no input into it - ok a little bit later on. So I mainly pop it here so I will not forget it.
Those of you who are launching a business...............
................. especially a techie business, will love this.
Life in the “Trough of Sorrow” all works credited to Andrew Chen as he wrote it.
In the life of a startup you get to a place called the Trough of Sorrows. See below.
Ok not a bad thought. But the real Question is that whilst you’re in the Trough of Sorrow, what do you do? How do you beat it?
This is something we sadly failed to do with goAugmented even after winning awards - so we lost our developers and lost our way. And lost the company in the end...
Traditional business literature won’t help you solve it- most of that stuff is focused on life after product/market fit, after the Trough of Sorrow. A lot of startup stuff is focused on the initial phases, when you don’t have a team, idea, or investors.
What happens when you have a team, an idea, and investors, but it’s not quite working yet? What do you do there?
I have some notes from my personal experience, and from others who have beat the Trough of Sorrow, and wanted to share them. First off, there’s both an emotional component as well as an analytical one.
Dealing with the emotions
Let’s start with the emotional first. First, a couple important things to remember:
Getting to product/market fit is hard, and even though you feel like you’re uniquely failing, you’re actually not. Turns out every startup has to go through this, but not every startup survives it. Entrepreneurs will blame themselves for failing, but it’s OK, this is hard and we all start the journey by failing a lot.
A corollary to the above is, expect to face the Trough of Sorrow. It’s hard to avoid. Quitting, starting over, executing a “too big” pivot, and other avoidance strategies won’t keep you from hitting a difficult point again, it’ll just delay the inevitable. Instead, just figure out how to work through it.
Expect to fight with your cofounders. When things are going great, cofounders tend to go along since the focus will be on keeping the momentum up. When things are mixed or going badly, there will be meaningful disagreements about what to do next!
Quitting is your decision. There’s a huge spectrum of tools you can use to fix up a broken thing. You can change the product, switch customer segments. You can recapitalize the company, reset the team, and fire your cofounders. You can (usually) find a way to keep going if you want to. Whether or not you want to quit, that’s up to you, but don’t think that quitting and starting a new thing will let you start something up without passing through this difficult phase.
Churning customers, employees, and cofounders isn’t failing. While you’re going from one iteration to the next, people will fall off the wagon. It just happens. That’s OK! That’s part of what happens, and even though it’ll feel like it’s a failure, don’t let it discourage you. The question is, does the new strategy make more sense than the old one? You only fail when you fail.
An additional thought on quitting: It’s ultimately the entrepreneur’s personal decision to quit, because there’s always some alternative scenario, as unpleasant as it might be. You can always dilute yourself more, raise more capital, or reduce the burn rate. It can add more time to the clock, which might be unpleasant, yet it might save the company. Is it always logical to do that? Maybe, and maybe not! But it’s worth considering that there’s always another move, and an entrepreneur shouldn’t ever feel like they’re somehow “forced” to quit.
A lot of entrepreneurs quit when they hit the Trough of Sorrow, struggle for 12-24 months, and face up to the reality that they’ll have to raise another dilutive round. Is this a good time to quit? Maybe. But given that the majority of startups go through this kind of stage, I’d actually argue that it’s just part of struggle to being successful. Sometimes it just takes 3 years to get through the Trough of Sorrow, but on the other side is something that might really be worth the pain. Maybe :)
I find that when I spend time with startups as an investor/advisor, a lot of my time ends up being about the above issues. Probably 80%, actually. If you can minimize the emotionality of feeling like you’re failing, you can try to keep the team together and get to the problem solving part.
Dealing with the problems
If you can hold everything together, and keep the team productive enough and the runway long enough to try to make a run at the problem, then here’s a few wild unfounded generalities on how to proceed. It’s super hard to generalize here but here’s an attempt.
Identify the root problem. Is the product working? Does the onboarding suck? Or is execution on growth lacking? You can figure out the main bottleneck by trying to understand where it’s working and where it’s not. If the problem is high retention and high engagement, but not a lot of people are showing up, just focus on marketing. If the product is low retention and low engagement, you probably have to work on the product. More marketing and optimizing your notifications won’t help there.
I find that much of the time, startups take too much product risk, and that’s why they aren’t working. Most of the new products I run into aren’t at the phase of “we’re product/market fit, just add more users!” Instead, most of the time, the products are just fundamentally broken. They are asking users to do new things, they exist in new markets with no competitors, and as a result, it’s unclear if the customer behavior is there to support their product. Instead, try to take a known working category and try to invent 20% of it, rather than 90%. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, the MP3 player, or the computer, and yet they are super innovative and successful. You don’t have to invent a new product category either, and it’s easier to get to product/market fit when you have a baseline competitor to compete against.
Resist the urge to start over. There’s always a feeling that if you just rebooted, you’ll somehow avoid the Trough of Sorrow. Not true. Trust your initial instincts in your market and in your product, and figure out how to guide it into a similar place. If smart people invested in you and in the market, there’s probably something there, but you have to find it.
Get your product to be stripped down, focused, and so easy to understand that it’s boring. Look, you’re not in this to impress your designery friends, you’re in this to communicate your product’s value prop in simple and focused terms. The closer you are to that, the more boring your product will sound- that’s a good thing!
Money buys time, and time buys product iterations. This is why there’s a school of thought that says, raise as much money as you can at every point- before product/market fit, raise the max amount so that you have as many iterations as possible to ensure you get to P/M fit. After P/M fit, raise as much money to maximize the upside. Something a few steps back from that extreme is probably the right one :)
Pick up small tactical wins. Even if you do something in the product that doesn’t scale at first, it can be worth it- like prepopulating content, inviting all your friends, doing PR, etc. These small wins build momentum, raise team morale, gets you incremental amounts of capital, and makes it so that you can keep going. Over time, to scale, you can figure out how to systematize these processes or they can end up bootstrapping bigger and more scalable ideas.
Small teams are great. They move faster, way faster. If you plan to do lots of product iterations, you don’t need to communicate all the changes and get buy-in from everyone. Conversely big teams have lots of chaos every time there’s a bit pivot. Build out the team afterwards to create the complete featureset, but until then, consumer product teams can just be a few engineers/designers and the product leader. That’s <6 people. As you can see this is quite brilliant and just what I wanted to read before we start Entermobile - a new platform for brand your own mobile games and apps.
Think of wordpress but for mobile games and customer engagement rather than for blogging and websites. It could be really rather cool for mobile marketing and the like. But already we are looking into the worry of the trough of sorrow.
Which if you think about it is very much like the Trough of Disillusionment which features in Gartners the Hype Cycle. Also worth a look or two.
Those of you who are launching a business...............
................. especially a techie business, will love this.
Life in the “Trough of Sorrow” all works credited to Andrew Chen as he wrote it.
In the life of a startup you get to a place called the Trough of Sorrows. See below.
Ok not a bad thought. But the real Question is that whilst you’re in the Trough of Sorrow, what do you do? How do you beat it?
This is something we sadly failed to do with goAugmented even after winning awards - so we lost our developers and lost our way. And lost the company in the end...
Traditional business literature won’t help you solve it- most of that stuff is focused on life after product/market fit, after the Trough of Sorrow. A lot of startup stuff is focused on the initial phases, when you don’t have a team, idea, or investors.
What happens when you have a team, an idea, and investors, but it’s not quite working yet? What do you do there?
I have some notes from my personal experience, and from others who have beat the Trough of Sorrow, and wanted to share them. First off, there’s both an emotional component as well as an analytical one.
Dealing with the emotions
Let’s start with the emotional first. First, a couple important things to remember:
Getting to product/market fit is hard, and even though you feel like you’re uniquely failing, you’re actually not. Turns out every startup has to go through this, but not every startup survives it. Entrepreneurs will blame themselves for failing, but it’s OK, this is hard and we all start the journey by failing a lot.
A corollary to the above is, expect to face the Trough of Sorrow. It’s hard to avoid. Quitting, starting over, executing a “too big” pivot, and other avoidance strategies won’t keep you from hitting a difficult point again, it’ll just delay the inevitable. Instead, just figure out how to work through it.
Expect to fight with your cofounders. When things are going great, cofounders tend to go along since the focus will be on keeping the momentum up. When things are mixed or going badly, there will be meaningful disagreements about what to do next!
Quitting is your decision. There’s a huge spectrum of tools you can use to fix up a broken thing. You can change the product, switch customer segments. You can recapitalize the company, reset the team, and fire your cofounders. You can (usually) find a way to keep going if you want to. Whether or not you want to quit, that’s up to you, but don’t think that quitting and starting a new thing will let you start something up without passing through this difficult phase.
Churning customers, employees, and cofounders isn’t failing. While you’re going from one iteration to the next, people will fall off the wagon. It just happens. That’s OK! That’s part of what happens, and even though it’ll feel like it’s a failure, don’t let it discourage you. The question is, does the new strategy make more sense than the old one? You only fail when you fail.
An additional thought on quitting: It’s ultimately the entrepreneur’s personal decision to quit, because there’s always some alternative scenario, as unpleasant as it might be. You can always dilute yourself more, raise more capital, or reduce the burn rate. It can add more time to the clock, which might be unpleasant, yet it might save the company. Is it always logical to do that? Maybe, and maybe not! But it’s worth considering that there’s always another move, and an entrepreneur shouldn’t ever feel like they’re somehow “forced” to quit.
A lot of entrepreneurs quit when they hit the Trough of Sorrow, struggle for 12-24 months, and face up to the reality that they’ll have to raise another dilutive round. Is this a good time to quit? Maybe. But given that the majority of startups go through this kind of stage, I’d actually argue that it’s just part of struggle to being successful. Sometimes it just takes 3 years to get through the Trough of Sorrow, but on the other side is something that might really be worth the pain. Maybe :)
I find that when I spend time with startups as an investor/advisor, a lot of my time ends up being about the above issues. Probably 80%, actually. If you can minimize the emotionality of feeling like you’re failing, you can try to keep the team together and get to the problem solving part.
Dealing with the problems
If you can hold everything together, and keep the team productive enough and the runway long enough to try to make a run at the problem, then here’s a few wild unfounded generalities on how to proceed. It’s super hard to generalize here but here’s an attempt.
Identify the root problem. Is the product working? Does the onboarding suck? Or is execution on growth lacking? You can figure out the main bottleneck by trying to understand where it’s working and where it’s not. If the problem is high retention and high engagement, but not a lot of people are showing up, just focus on marketing. If the product is low retention and low engagement, you probably have to work on the product. More marketing and optimizing your notifications won’t help there.
I find that much of the time, startups take too much product risk, and that’s why they aren’t working. Most of the new products I run into aren’t at the phase of “we’re product/market fit, just add more users!” Instead, most of the time, the products are just fundamentally broken. They are asking users to do new things, they exist in new markets with no competitors, and as a result, it’s unclear if the customer behavior is there to support their product. Instead, try to take a known working category and try to invent 20% of it, rather than 90%. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, the MP3 player, or the computer, and yet they are super innovative and successful. You don’t have to invent a new product category either, and it’s easier to get to product/market fit when you have a baseline competitor to compete against.
Resist the urge to start over. There’s always a feeling that if you just rebooted, you’ll somehow avoid the Trough of Sorrow. Not true. Trust your initial instincts in your market and in your product, and figure out how to guide it into a similar place. If smart people invested in you and in the market, there’s probably something there, but you have to find it.
Get your product to be stripped down, focused, and so easy to understand that it’s boring. Look, you’re not in this to impress your designery friends, you’re in this to communicate your product’s value prop in simple and focused terms. The closer you are to that, the more boring your product will sound- that’s a good thing!
Money buys time, and time buys product iterations. This is why there’s a school of thought that says, raise as much money as you can at every point- before product/market fit, raise the max amount so that you have as many iterations as possible to ensure you get to P/M fit. After P/M fit, raise as much money to maximize the upside. Something a few steps back from that extreme is probably the right one :)
Pick up small tactical wins. Even if you do something in the product that doesn’t scale at first, it can be worth it- like prepopulating content, inviting all your friends, doing PR, etc. These small wins build momentum, raise team morale, gets you incremental amounts of capital, and makes it so that you can keep going. Over time, to scale, you can figure out how to systematize these processes or they can end up bootstrapping bigger and more scalable ideas.
Small teams are great. They move faster, way faster. If you plan to do lots of product iterations, you don’t need to communicate all the changes and get buy-in from everyone. Conversely big teams have lots of chaos every time there’s a bit pivot. Build out the team afterwards to create the complete featureset, but until then, consumer product teams can just be a few engineers/designers and the product leader. That’s <6 people. As you can see this is quite brilliant and just what I wanted to read before we start Entermobile - a new platform for brand your own mobile games and apps.
Think of wordpress but for mobile games and customer engagement rather than for blogging and websites. It could be really rather cool for mobile marketing and the like. But already we are looking into the worry of the trough of sorrow.
Which if you think about it is very much like the Trough of Disillusionment which features in Gartners the Hype Cycle. Also worth a look or two.
Monday, 10 September 2012
Have we all fallen into The ‘Busy’ Trap again...?
As I rushed around today with my eyes hurting from client work on several computer screens - my back bent over from keyboard typing out plans and keywords - and my body worn out from doing nothing over the weekend but eat and drink... I realised something.
I would be rubbish at being really busy i.e. really working i.e. hard back breaking labour from back in the day. Like working down a mine or something. I really would.
So when I found this rather wonderful article about the modern idea of busy (or business) I thought it worthy of blogging about. It's all about The ‘Busy’ Trap.
If you live in America (or the UK) in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”
I said it this morning whilst talking to an old friend and mentor of mine about a series of new projects we are launching.
But TIM KREIDER believes that "It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this; it’s something we collectively force one another to do."
Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet.
It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.
I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.
Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another’s eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.
The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. Not long ago I Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.
Are our frantic days are really just a hedge against emptiness?
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.
I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?
But just in the last few months, I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy. For the first time I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint; it makes you feel important, sought-after and put-upon. Except that I hate actually being busy. Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this.
Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check e-mail I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I’ve remembered about buttercups, stink bugs and the stars. I read. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.
“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.
Here I could talk about the Protestant Work Ethic and the super growth of capitalism but I won't (Dan adds in...)
Perhaps the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved as I do. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle. My role is just to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play. My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.
Amen - which is kinda way my next project massmob - is about people doing stuff without massive commitment - which helps them make money but in a fun way. But I might just be a dreamer too...
It's truly what I believe the internet and by extension mobile phones on the internet allow us to do. To get away from work and play more :)
Whilst making a little money from our creativity and great marketing on the side :)
I would be rubbish at being really busy i.e. really working i.e. hard back breaking labour from back in the day. Like working down a mine or something. I really would.
So when I found this rather wonderful article about the modern idea of busy (or business) I thought it worthy of blogging about. It's all about The ‘Busy’ Trap.
If you live in America (or the UK) in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”
I said it this morning whilst talking to an old friend and mentor of mine about a series of new projects we are launching.
But TIM KREIDER believes that "It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this; it’s something we collectively force one another to do."
Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet.
It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.
I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.
Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another’s eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.
The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. Not long ago I Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.
Are our frantic days are really just a hedge against emptiness?
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.
I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?
But just in the last few months, I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy. For the first time I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint; it makes you feel important, sought-after and put-upon. Except that I hate actually being busy. Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this.
Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check e-mail I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I’ve remembered about buttercups, stink bugs and the stars. I read. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.
“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.
Here I could talk about the Protestant Work Ethic and the super growth of capitalism but I won't (Dan adds in...)
Perhaps the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved as I do. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle. My role is just to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play. My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.
Amen - which is kinda way my next project massmob - is about people doing stuff without massive commitment - which helps them make money but in a fun way. But I might just be a dreamer too...
It's truly what I believe the internet and by extension mobile phones on the internet allow us to do. To get away from work and play more :)
Whilst making a little money from our creativity and great marketing on the side :)
Friday, 7 September 2012
Help people save themselves, from themselves
Am loving everything that Luke Williams is blogging about on DISRUPT.
http://www.disruptive-thinking.com/
So here is one of his borrorwed thoughts - reborrowed.
People often struggle with the tension between wants, which are things they crave in the moment, and shoulds, which are the things they know are good for them in the long term.
In their column for Fast Company magazine, Dan and Chip Heath make the case that “People need help saving themselves from themselves, and that presents a business opportunity.”
They reference the work of Katherine Milkman, a professor at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Milkman has studied the way customers wrestle with wants and shoulds, and she suggests bundling the two.
For example, the Heath’s write, “exercising is a should, so what if your gym offered to receive your magazine subscriptions? That way, if you wanted to read the new Vanity Fair (a want), you’d have to drop by the gym. Or, what if Blockbuster offered you a free tub of popcorn (a want) for every documentary (a should) that you rented?”
Look for the tension that lies between wants and shoulds. Treat all customers as highly invested in moving from where they are to where they want to be.
Do they need help “saving themselves from themselves” to get there?
It kinda goes into my idea for a charity app. Which would basically incentivise charity giving.
Time me what you think... Only two questions and all for charities... and your future karma :)
http://www.disruptive-thinking.com/
So here is one of his borrorwed thoughts - reborrowed.
People often struggle with the tension between wants, which are things they crave in the moment, and shoulds, which are the things they know are good for them in the long term.
In their column for Fast Company magazine, Dan and Chip Heath make the case that “People need help saving themselves from themselves, and that presents a business opportunity.”
They reference the work of Katherine Milkman, a professor at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Milkman has studied the way customers wrestle with wants and shoulds, and she suggests bundling the two.
For example, the Heath’s write, “exercising is a should, so what if your gym offered to receive your magazine subscriptions? That way, if you wanted to read the new Vanity Fair (a want), you’d have to drop by the gym. Or, what if Blockbuster offered you a free tub of popcorn (a want) for every documentary (a should) that you rented?”
Look for the tension that lies between wants and shoulds. Treat all customers as highly invested in moving from where they are to where they want to be.
Do they need help “saving themselves from themselves” to get there?
It kinda goes into my idea for a charity app. Which would basically incentivise charity giving.
Time me what you think... Only two questions and all for charities... and your future karma :)
Got a GREAT idea - but need funding - Get it CrowdFunded first...
Looks like my charity app idea might be a starter.
So was thinking - how do I get it funded? As happy to give some money and time but cannot fund it all.
So what about Crowdfunding.
Something I hadn't thought about at all.
Well after looking into it - there are pros and cons. But not many cons for the me. Especially as the charity app idea I was going to give away anyway ;)
(If you haven't heard about the idea - click here to have your say on it...)
Anyhoo, there are lots and lots of these crowddfunding sites out there for ideas. Be they a new mobile phone game, a new app, a ecommerce site or actually pretty much anything.
Each has its good and bad points. A little like business inncubators. Each should have a niche but not all do. Each has a different culture and a different USP.
So here is My Top 12 List of Crowdfunding Sites for Entrepreneurs' like US:
1. WeFunder (I have already signed up to this one.... for MassMob - the new ecosystem for mobile game developers...)
A crowdfunding site for startups.
We’re all waiting to see which crowdfunding site is going to pull in the most investors since the law has passed. With more than $12,000,000 already committed in their beta, WeFunder might just take the lead and win hands down.
2. Startup Addict
Crowdfunding for….well…startup addicts.
The Startup Addict crowdfunding website still appears to be fairly new, but unlike the others we’ve seen…it doesn’t have a particular niche focus other than helping Entrepreneurs get their business launched. Which I think is a bit pants.
3. Believers Fund
Crowdfunding Website for New Mobile Apps (LOVE IT and signed up for charity app)
Now I don't know the Believers Fund’s lot, but they are a favorite of mine. They’ve narrowed down into the niche of crowdfunding new mobile apps, and have strong partners behind them like Microsoft BizSpark. Believer’s Fund also seems to have a much healthier following of “believers” (ie: funders) compared to other crowdfunding websites. All of this is good. But I do wonder whether other ideas I have would be save on it. (Will get back to you on this....)
4. Rockethub
A leading Crowdfunding Website for Creative Projects. (Has the best marketing...)
Rockethub has definitely gotten a large following from a lot of media exposure. Because of that, there’s a lot of activity happening over there…and hey, there’s actually funders! Probably down to it's greatmarketing...
5. Quirky
A Crowdfunding Website for Inventors (Which DOES THINGS DIFFERENTLY...)
Quirky really fits it’s name, it’s a new crowdfunding website for the quirky types: inventors (ie: engineer types). Back in August, the three-year-old product development network raised $16 million in Series B and today is adding more coin to its coffers with a sizable $68 million series C round, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Kleiner Perkins is also a “significant participant” in the round and is joined by previous investors Norwest Venture Partners and RRE Ventures.
So why all the excitement from VCs? Quirky is building a platform that intends to redefine product development by pairing inventors and creatives to its growing in-house team of product designers, engineers and manufacturing and retail professionals. The startup’s team focuses on two ideas each week and helps their founders bring the ideas to market. Which I think is the clever bit.
And it works as since 2009, according to tech crunch, the team has developed over 200 products that have made it into stores like Target, Staples, OfficeMax and Bad, Bath & Beyond and its community has grown to over 250K-strong. The average product has 800 contributors. Nice.
6. New Jelly
A Crowdfunding website for Artists.
New Jelly’s crowdfunding website focuses on helping artists and films get up off the ground. An industry that’s suffering more and more everyday, I’m glad to see someone like New Jelly reach out to them. Perhaps they could link with Etsy?
7. CoFolio
A Crowdfunding Website to Help Fund Local Small Businesses.
This one seems to be new, so it may be a little while before we see it really take off. None the less, I love what they’re doing. It’s all about keeping things local here, and helping the small businesses. It doesn't make any sense to me at all - unless they were doing it to help new bars open or local resturants... which is a great idea.... which I should write down... :)
8. Kick Starter
A Crowdfunding Website for Creative Projects (THE BIG MAMMA....of them all.)
Kickstarter holds the lead as the world’s largest crowdfunding website for creative projects…including: artists, journalists, inventors, and film makers. A quick review of the front page explores crowdfunding projects for a comic film, a museum, and a documentary. It is quite simply the coolest of them all - and these year it's all been about the gaming industry and especially mobile games in particular which has spurred some of my interest in Massmob :)
The only gutting thing is that often you have a new cool idea. Go on Kickstarter and find it's been in prototype for a year and just got $10,000 funding...
i.e. Last month, we were chatting about choose your own adventure books.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1181171727/defender-of-the-realm-0?ref=live
9. Start Some Good
A Crowdfunding Website for Social Entrepreneurs (I LOVE IT)
Start Some Good is a new crowdfunding website for social good initiatives to raise funds through a community of supporters. There are many non-profit Entrepreneurs here, but also for-profit socially responsible Entrepreneurs.
10. Peerbackers
A Crowdfunding Website for Entrepreneurs and their Dreams.
Peerbackers seems to be doing pretty well, and has a lot of ideas close to their funding goal. It also leverages social media to help you fund raise through peers, as well as strangers. Nice, clean interface. Not used it all yet. So no idea.
11. Eppela
Eppela is a new crowdfunding website out of Italy. This crowdfunding website supports social projects, art & entertainment, as well as lifestyle & technology businesses. So it's niche is the place - which is odd - why doesn't Britain have one then?
12. Indie Go Go
Last but not least, Indie Go Go…the world’s largest and earliest (founded in 2008) crowdfunding website. They have helped to raise millions of dollars for over 30,000 campaigns, across 194 countries. Personally, I don't like their marketing and think that other sites will simply run over them in being more professional and looking more web 3.0. But I would say that I am a mobile marketing geek...
So was thinking - how do I get it funded? As happy to give some money and time but cannot fund it all.
So what about Crowdfunding.
Something I hadn't thought about at all.
Well after looking into it - there are pros and cons. But not many cons for the me. Especially as the charity app idea I was going to give away anyway ;)
(If you haven't heard about the idea - click here to have your say on it...)
Anyhoo, there are lots and lots of these crowddfunding sites out there for ideas. Be they a new mobile phone game, a new app, a ecommerce site or actually pretty much anything.
Each has its good and bad points. A little like business inncubators. Each should have a niche but not all do. Each has a different culture and a different USP.
So here is My Top 12 List of Crowdfunding Sites for Entrepreneurs' like US:
1. WeFunder (I have already signed up to this one.... for MassMob - the new ecosystem for mobile game developers...)
A crowdfunding site for startups.
We’re all waiting to see which crowdfunding site is going to pull in the most investors since the law has passed. With more than $12,000,000 already committed in their beta, WeFunder might just take the lead and win hands down.
2. Startup Addict
Crowdfunding for….well…startup addicts.
The Startup Addict crowdfunding website still appears to be fairly new, but unlike the others we’ve seen…it doesn’t have a particular niche focus other than helping Entrepreneurs get their business launched. Which I think is a bit pants.
3. Believers Fund
Crowdfunding Website for New Mobile Apps (LOVE IT and signed up for charity app)
Now I don't know the Believers Fund’s lot, but they are a favorite of mine. They’ve narrowed down into the niche of crowdfunding new mobile apps, and have strong partners behind them like Microsoft BizSpark. Believer’s Fund also seems to have a much healthier following of “believers” (ie: funders) compared to other crowdfunding websites. All of this is good. But I do wonder whether other ideas I have would be save on it. (Will get back to you on this....)
4. Rockethub
A leading Crowdfunding Website for Creative Projects. (Has the best marketing...)
Rockethub has definitely gotten a large following from a lot of media exposure. Because of that, there’s a lot of activity happening over there…and hey, there’s actually funders! Probably down to it's greatmarketing...
5. Quirky
A Crowdfunding Website for Inventors (Which DOES THINGS DIFFERENTLY...)
Quirky really fits it’s name, it’s a new crowdfunding website for the quirky types: inventors (ie: engineer types). Back in August, the three-year-old product development network raised $16 million in Series B and today is adding more coin to its coffers with a sizable $68 million series C round, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Kleiner Perkins is also a “significant participant” in the round and is joined by previous investors Norwest Venture Partners and RRE Ventures.
So why all the excitement from VCs? Quirky is building a platform that intends to redefine product development by pairing inventors and creatives to its growing in-house team of product designers, engineers and manufacturing and retail professionals. The startup’s team focuses on two ideas each week and helps their founders bring the ideas to market. Which I think is the clever bit.
And it works as since 2009, according to tech crunch, the team has developed over 200 products that have made it into stores like Target, Staples, OfficeMax and Bad, Bath & Beyond and its community has grown to over 250K-strong. The average product has 800 contributors. Nice.
6. New Jelly
A Crowdfunding website for Artists.
New Jelly’s crowdfunding website focuses on helping artists and films get up off the ground. An industry that’s suffering more and more everyday, I’m glad to see someone like New Jelly reach out to them. Perhaps they could link with Etsy?
7. CoFolio
A Crowdfunding Website to Help Fund Local Small Businesses.
This one seems to be new, so it may be a little while before we see it really take off. None the less, I love what they’re doing. It’s all about keeping things local here, and helping the small businesses. It doesn't make any sense to me at all - unless they were doing it to help new bars open or local resturants... which is a great idea.... which I should write down... :)
8. Kick Starter
A Crowdfunding Website for Creative Projects (THE BIG MAMMA....of them all.)
Kickstarter holds the lead as the world’s largest crowdfunding website for creative projects…including: artists, journalists, inventors, and film makers. A quick review of the front page explores crowdfunding projects for a comic film, a museum, and a documentary. It is quite simply the coolest of them all - and these year it's all been about the gaming industry and especially mobile games in particular which has spurred some of my interest in Massmob :)
The only gutting thing is that often you have a new cool idea. Go on Kickstarter and find it's been in prototype for a year and just got $10,000 funding...
i.e. Last month, we were chatting about choose your own adventure books.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1181171727/defender-of-the-realm-0?ref=live
9. Start Some Good
A Crowdfunding Website for Social Entrepreneurs (I LOVE IT)
Start Some Good is a new crowdfunding website for social good initiatives to raise funds through a community of supporters. There are many non-profit Entrepreneurs here, but also for-profit socially responsible Entrepreneurs.
10. Peerbackers
A Crowdfunding Website for Entrepreneurs and their Dreams.
Peerbackers seems to be doing pretty well, and has a lot of ideas close to their funding goal. It also leverages social media to help you fund raise through peers, as well as strangers. Nice, clean interface. Not used it all yet. So no idea.
11. Eppela
Eppela is a new crowdfunding website out of Italy. This crowdfunding website supports social projects, art & entertainment, as well as lifestyle & technology businesses. So it's niche is the place - which is odd - why doesn't Britain have one then?
12. Indie Go Go
Last but not least, Indie Go Go…the world’s largest and earliest (founded in 2008) crowdfunding website. They have helped to raise millions of dollars for over 30,000 campaigns, across 194 countries. Personally, I don't like their marketing and think that other sites will simply run over them in being more professional and looking more web 3.0. But I would say that I am a mobile marketing geek...
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
A fine point about modern life, tech companies and addiction to both....
A great point from someone much more clever than me.
So I pop it here for thinking about.
As the author, Jason Hreha, makes a great point - us techies and marketing types are great at making our customers want stuff... but...
Perhaps the industry needs to seriously consider the impact of its products. Are we helping our users lead better lives, or are we making them compulsive, impatient and distractible?
So here are his thoughts. On When did Addiction become a good thing?
I am a behavior designer. I take a deep understanding of human psychology and emerging research in the behavioral sciences to build products that change user behavior in planned and predictable ways. However, these days I’m somewhat dismayed by the persistent chatter about building “addictive” products. When did addiction become an admirable thing to cultivate?
As members of the tech industry, we need to ask serious questions about the behaviors that we are promoting. Are we really helping people live better lives? Or, are we promoting suboptimal habits and aptitudes? At best, many of the products we’re building are time wasters. At worst, they’re the addictive equivalents of cigarettes — irresistible cheap thrills that feel good in the moment, but are destructive in the long run. “Addictive” products are rampant in our lives — Facebook, Farmville (or any Zynga game), Twitter, Pinterest. The list goes on and on.
With Web products, the general assumption is that user attention can eventually be turned into money, so revenue models are often postponed. In this paradigm, success is measured in terms of user acquisition and retention. The more users you have, and the more time they spend on the site, the better. Designers of these products have learned to manufacture desire — and they’ve gotten really good at it. Services such as Facebook and Farmville constantly interrupt the lives of their users by sending out push notifications like there’s no tomorrow. But this shift towards compulsive and chronic usage might have some unintended consequences.
I worry that by promoting constant task switching and multitasking, the Internet is changing our attention. Just as muscles grow stronger with use, and persistent practice makes any skill better, some of our most subtle mental abilities grow or wither with our choices. It’s rare for a whole hour to go by without some interruption from our phones (or email, etc.), and computer and mobile interfaces have made multitasking easier than ever. While the jury is still out, it’s a real possibility that heavy multitasking is increasing compulsiveness and distractibility.
So what do we do? To me, the answer is simple. We should ask “why.” If we’re going to bring positive creations into the world, we need to seriously think about how our products are going to fit into, and enrich, people’s lives. What’s the reason we’re building these products in the first place? “To get acquired” or “to make a lot of money,” shouldn’t necessarily be our answers. Focusing on maximizing certain metrics, and creating numerically “successful” products, distracts us from bigger questions about the purpose of technology, and what role we as technologists should play in the larger community.
I believe that the purpose of technology is to take over the grating, tedious tasks that we have had to put up with for so long, so that we can live fuller, more interesting lives. In short, technology allows us to be even more human by becoming less mechanistic.
If none of us ever had to work, I think that our activities would cluster into three areas: art, interpersonal interaction and discovery (science, academic research, curiosity). While this is a much longer discussion, I worry that our community is aiming to make technology and content consumption our primary activity, instead of helping us engage in these creative and personal endeavors.
I’m not trying to be the crotchety, out-of-touch naysayer. Personally, I love LOLcats, Reddit, and many other services that could be classified as time wasters. The trick is moderation. The problem is that we, as a product design community, are purposely trying to create compulsions.
I don’t have the answers. I’m not saying that we should stop building. I’m just saying that we should take a hard look at ourselves and determine whether or not we’re bringing value to the world. We have the chance to do something spectacular with technology. We have the chance to make billions of lives easier and more enjoyable. We have the chance to free people from tedium. Let’s take this opportunity to build timesaving — and lifesaving — services, not quick hits.
This is a call to make more Amazons, eBays, and AirBnBs. A call to build fewer Zyngas. As I said before, I don’t have the answer. But with all the brainpower in Silicon Valley, I think we can figure this out.
------------
I think he has a fine point...
Jason is the founder of Dopamine (ironic, we know), a behavior/UX design firm based in San Francisco. He named the company after his favorite neurotransmitter, which is involved in learning as well as addiction. It’s a reminder of design’s ability to be either helpful or, if misused, harmful. He is also a UX mentor for 500 Startups and a researcher in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. He blogs at persuasive.ly
So I pop it here for thinking about.
As the author, Jason Hreha, makes a great point - us techies and marketing types are great at making our customers want stuff... but...
Perhaps the industry needs to seriously consider the impact of its products. Are we helping our users lead better lives, or are we making them compulsive, impatient and distractible?
So here are his thoughts. On When did Addiction become a good thing?
I am a behavior designer. I take a deep understanding of human psychology and emerging research in the behavioral sciences to build products that change user behavior in planned and predictable ways. However, these days I’m somewhat dismayed by the persistent chatter about building “addictive” products. When did addiction become an admirable thing to cultivate?
As members of the tech industry, we need to ask serious questions about the behaviors that we are promoting. Are we really helping people live better lives? Or, are we promoting suboptimal habits and aptitudes? At best, many of the products we’re building are time wasters. At worst, they’re the addictive equivalents of cigarettes — irresistible cheap thrills that feel good in the moment, but are destructive in the long run. “Addictive” products are rampant in our lives — Facebook, Farmville (or any Zynga game), Twitter, Pinterest. The list goes on and on.
With Web products, the general assumption is that user attention can eventually be turned into money, so revenue models are often postponed. In this paradigm, success is measured in terms of user acquisition and retention. The more users you have, and the more time they spend on the site, the better. Designers of these products have learned to manufacture desire — and they’ve gotten really good at it. Services such as Facebook and Farmville constantly interrupt the lives of their users by sending out push notifications like there’s no tomorrow. But this shift towards compulsive and chronic usage might have some unintended consequences.
I worry that by promoting constant task switching and multitasking, the Internet is changing our attention. Just as muscles grow stronger with use, and persistent practice makes any skill better, some of our most subtle mental abilities grow or wither with our choices. It’s rare for a whole hour to go by without some interruption from our phones (or email, etc.), and computer and mobile interfaces have made multitasking easier than ever. While the jury is still out, it’s a real possibility that heavy multitasking is increasing compulsiveness and distractibility.
So what do we do? To me, the answer is simple. We should ask “why.” If we’re going to bring positive creations into the world, we need to seriously think about how our products are going to fit into, and enrich, people’s lives. What’s the reason we’re building these products in the first place? “To get acquired” or “to make a lot of money,” shouldn’t necessarily be our answers. Focusing on maximizing certain metrics, and creating numerically “successful” products, distracts us from bigger questions about the purpose of technology, and what role we as technologists should play in the larger community.
I believe that the purpose of technology is to take over the grating, tedious tasks that we have had to put up with for so long, so that we can live fuller, more interesting lives. In short, technology allows us to be even more human by becoming less mechanistic.
If none of us ever had to work, I think that our activities would cluster into three areas: art, interpersonal interaction and discovery (science, academic research, curiosity). While this is a much longer discussion, I worry that our community is aiming to make technology and content consumption our primary activity, instead of helping us engage in these creative and personal endeavors.
I’m not trying to be the crotchety, out-of-touch naysayer. Personally, I love LOLcats, Reddit, and many other services that could be classified as time wasters. The trick is moderation. The problem is that we, as a product design community, are purposely trying to create compulsions.
I don’t have the answers. I’m not saying that we should stop building. I’m just saying that we should take a hard look at ourselves and determine whether or not we’re bringing value to the world. We have the chance to do something spectacular with technology. We have the chance to make billions of lives easier and more enjoyable. We have the chance to free people from tedium. Let’s take this opportunity to build timesaving — and lifesaving — services, not quick hits.
This is a call to make more Amazons, eBays, and AirBnBs. A call to build fewer Zyngas. As I said before, I don’t have the answer. But with all the brainpower in Silicon Valley, I think we can figure this out.
------------
I think he has a fine point...
Jason is the founder of Dopamine (ironic, we know), a behavior/UX design firm based in San Francisco. He named the company after his favorite neurotransmitter, which is involved in learning as well as addiction. It’s a reminder of design’s ability to be either helpful or, if misused, harmful. He is also a UX mentor for 500 Startups and a researcher in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. He blogs at persuasive.ly
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