- Posts tagged mybloglog
- Explore mybloglog on posterous
Digging on Feedly
I've been trying to figure out ways to manage my RSS feeds. I currently have about 200 feeds coming into Google Reader and have recognized for a while that I need to delete some of the redundant ones, I just am having a tough time figuring out which ones should stay and which should go.
Enter Feedly, a new service that claims to clean up RSS in more of a magazine format, highlighting what is important to you based on your reading patterns. Almost like my own personal Digg for stuff I'm interested in. Pretty cool and should help anyone from claiming RSS bankruptcy. It should also help in cleaning up my feeds a bit and introducing some new ones that I would have otherwise missed.
Louis Gray has an extensive post on Feedly. Rather than recreate everything that Louis has written (which is what turned me on to the service), here is a quick list of the features that I have grown to really like after about 8 hours of usage.
Works with Flock - I've installed Firefox 3, but am not too impressed with it. Sticking with Flock for the meantime, so I'm glad that Feedly works with it. Integration with Google Reader - I probably wouldn't have signed up for another RSS reader, no matter how great the claims of greatness were. I just don't want to deal with having to re-sign-up for feeds. Sharing seems easy - For whatever, I don't share feeds all that much in Google Reader. I've already shared a bunch of feeds in Feedly. For whatever reason, it just seems easier. Keep an eye out here for my shared sites. The screen saver feature is rad - It throws up visual representations of your feeds. It doesn't seem to serve any real value, but it is cool. Twitter Integration - This is kind of cool, but I could see in the wrong hands how it could get kind of spammy too. Something would have to be really awesome for me to Tweet somone else's post. I don't know, something just seems wrong about that. Comments - One of my complaints about Google Reader was that I couldn't see comments. For most feeds in Feedly, you can. Something Social - I periodically see pictures of other users, but I can't figure out what that means. I assume that, long term, that it will be something MyBlogLog like.My only complaints are that the navigation can be a bit goofy. Sometimes space takes me to the next post and sometimes it pages down. Not really sure what is consistent. Also, the annotation seems to be a bit buggy. I can only seem to highlight and comment on one word at a time. Both are odd and I'm sure that this is a first release issue. What I've seen, though, is that Feedly seems really easy to use, clean and may be the way for RSS to get into the mainstream.
Eric Marcoullier Is Blogging (again)
First, this is very late. I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but it has slipped. Eric is one of the co-founders of MyBlogLog and, while we were at YHOO, we had a few conversations about the integration of MBL to Yahoo just before he left.
I am of the belief that MBL is the best acquisition that YHOO made since Flickr and I think that it is really sad that YHOO doesn't (didn't?) see the potential of it (or maybe I didn't see YHOO seeing the potential of it). In any case, while working with him, I found Eric to be a really good, smart guy. It is always a drag when people like that leave.
I do enjoy when good, smart people write in a unique fashion. Eric had a blog that he shut down to focus on MBL. Good news is that he started writing again, in cool, 100 word increments. His posts are funny, articulate and, due to this self imposed limit, really quick to read.
Check it out.
YHOO + MSFT: Did You Hear?
I've been thinking about MSFT & YHOO ever since Steve Souders went to Google about a month ago. Not so much in regards to an acquisition, but for what MSFT did to Borland during my first year there back in 1996 (I'm old).
If you aren't familiar with the history, during the battles between Visual Basic (MSFT) and Delphi (Borland), MSFT recruited away 30 members of the Delphi development team, including Paul Gross and Anders Hejlsberg, essentially killing Delphi and with it, Borland. MSFT threw obscene amounts of money at the Borland Delphi team. Literally, tens of millions of dollars.
Why wouldn't MSFT & GOOG do the same thing? Why not just identify a few dozen of the key people within the company, throw a ton of money at them and kill YHOO from the inside? Facebook did it to the west coast sales team a few years ago. Why not keep that going? It would be cheaper than doing an acquisition.
Then I started thinking about the old Bill Gates spam that came out in the early days. Remember that? If you forwarded an email, Bill Gates would give you a few dollars for each person you sent it to because he was tracking some new email service?
For $45 billion, MSFT just paid about $55 per user for YHOO's 800 million users. MSFT may have been able to extend an offer to pay key users $100 to migrate their usage to MSN and generate some pre-defined number of page views. They would have still paid out a bunch of money, but it would have been far less than the $45B that they are paying for YHOO and they would have killed YHOO, possibly making them more intimidating to GOOG (maybe). It also would have gotten users on MSN faster than the integration will happen.
Alas, Ballmer didn't call me for guidance and selfishly announced the acquisition before I could offer my two cents. Two of the more perfect metaphors that I've heard are 'two elephants mating' (Paul Kedrosky) and 'Tying the Titanic to the iceberg' (Andy Baio).
The problem that YHOO has faced, with few exceptions (Flickr, MyBlogLog, Upcoming), for at least a couple of years is that YHOO needs to pander to the lowest common denominator. YHOO needs to make 800 million people come back to their pages on a regular basis. Not an easy task, but it is hard to release services that are unique and innovative that 800 million people will adopt (Twitter is awesome, but only has 800K users). In other words, YHOO has become the Wal-Mart of the internet.
There is nothing wrong with being Wal-Mart mind you. Wal-Mart is a big, consistently profitable company, but don't expect the next big thing to come out of it. The company will be too conservative or too slow.
In the end, the MSFT acquisition of YHOO will go through. The integration of 3 different ad plaforms (YHOO, RightMedia & MSN) will take a really long time. This will frustrate advertisers who will migrate to GOOG (for contextual) and Facebook (for display). The really good people within YHOO (the people they should have targeted in the first place), will get frustrated with the stock price, the direction of the integration and the idea of working for 'the man'.
If there is a negative impact for my friends, I'll be bummed. They are smart, they will land on their feet. I'll be more disappointed if the YHOO services that are really interesting, like Flickr, like MyBlogLog, like the stuff coming out of Brickhouse, gets mitigated to the back burner in favor of less exciting services that pander to the masses.
Web 2.0 Sales Tools - Blogs
This is the second in a series of posts about Web 2.0 services that can be used for sales people. The first post on Instant Messaging is here.
Blogs
Let me just say upfront, keeping a blog is a very time consuming. Also, unless you are lucky or already famous, blogging is a commitment that pays very little dividends. You probably won't get Techcrunch hits and you probably won't get Calacanis rich. Certainly not right away. So why do it and why does it help a sales person? Simple, blogging will make you a better writer.
In an era in which more and more communication is written, it is becoming ever more important to be able to string a few sentences together. As a sales professional, it is vital that, not only can you form a paragraph, but that the thoughts that you are trying to convey are precise and persuasive. While blogging isn't a miracle cure to get you a Pulitzer, like anything, practice makes perfect.
Of course there are other reasons to blog. If you write about what you sell, it can encourage a dialogue between you and potential prospects. You can be recognized by industry leaders. You can use your blog as an extension of your resume allowing potential employers to get a better idea of who your are and where your areas of expertise lie. All excellent reasons to start or maintain your blog. But, even if it never gets a hit, the regular writing will make you a better writer. That will make you a better sales person.
How to Get Started
Getting started with a blog is about the easiest thing in the whole world to do these days. The services fall in to two categories hosted or you host it. Most of them are free or charge a nominal fee for using the service. I don't have enough experience with all of the services to offer an educated standpoint on them. Rather than wasting space and your time, I'd encourage you to try a few of them out and see what you like and what you don't like.
Most of the free services offer a nice WYSIWYG editor and an HTML editor. Many of them offer the ability to do at least some level of customization to the look and feel of your site. Most of the free sites now allow you to map to your own domain name. The biggest benefit to a freely hosted blog service is that you simply log in and type. There is no server to manage, no database to tweak, it doesn't get much simpler. The downside to free services is that many of them only offer limited customizations and add-ons and services such as Wordpress.com, don't allow ads.
If you choose to own a domain name and buy the hosting plan, your provider will generally allow for a single click install. I use GoDaddy and have Wordpress hosted on my server. Installing Wordpress is easier than banging my head on the keyboard. Going this route allows for the maximum amount of flexibility to the site. I personally enjoy futzing with the site, so this was a better route for me. Your mileage will vary.
What to Do
Write. Write a lot. Everyone loves a beautiful site, but content is king. I'm guilty of spending too much time trying out new plug-ins, messing with my look, adding widgets and not enough time writing. Try to find 15 - 30 minutes a day and just write. I wish I were this disciplined.
People always ask me where I find the time. The truth is, I don't watch a lot of television and I usually post late at night. The important thing is that you write.
Pick a topic related to your work. If you sell real estate, write about the market in your area, the changes in interest rates, tricks to make your home more valuable. If you sell enterprise software, write about the market, your competitors, public stuff about your company, changes you see in the industry. Just write.
Be careful what you write. Don't write about proprietary stuff and don't bash your company too much. Jeremy Zawodny does an excellent job of delineating his personal opinions and that of his employer. When Yahoo does something that he doesn't agree with, he writes about it in no uncertain terms. Don't be stupid. Like Jeremy, be more valuable to your company than your blog posts.
How to Get Noticed
This isn't where I'm the expert. There are a zillion sites that will hep you and your site get on the radar of people. Link to other blogs. Comment on other sites. Ping Technorati. Join MyBlogLog and other communities.
Mostly it is about content. Write good content, about timely things and people will notice you. Eventually, people will come to your site. The writing exercise will be the most important. As you become a better writer, you will also become a better sales person. That should be the ultimate goal.
