It’s a job!

Sorry about the bit of silence. Recently I have been meeting with a number of former and current C-suiters to chat and discuss one of my social networking business concepts. As I have been looking for a job / internship (always enjoy getting college credits for things I enjoy) I am also happy to say that one of the said C-suites hired me to work for his web 2.0 startup. The story is a long and exciting one (to me at least) but I’ll spare the details. Needless to say, though, I am quite excited. I consider it a blessing for something that’s a hobby (in this case studying design, social networks, etc) to become a job. As to what I do… I wear a lot of hats, as it usually goes with a small startup team, I imagine. Design, marketing, etc.

I think one of my favorite parts about the job is not just the great, creative, adaptive environment, but that my desk is a door on cinder blocks. Helps remind us to put money where it really matters. Feels like the great entrepreneurial spirit. I love it.

I will talk more about what the startup itself is soon. In the mean time, I am held at gun point by an NDA. Still, I look forwarding to being able to share the things I learn from this with you all :)

Use CRM Right

To benefit the customer.

I wish I could say that the Great Clips here in Wilmington used CRM correctly (my beautician back home did! She was fantastic!). They almost do. They have my phone number logged if I am not in their store when it’s my turn, they have the information on my last haircut logged so I don’t have to remember exactly what the length was, they log when my last haircut was. They’ve got a lot of good things, but they’re missing something important.

They’re not staying in front of me. It’s so simple to do.

I keep track of how long it’s been since my last haircut, which is generally an important step in knowing when to get one. I usually just go based on when my girlfriend starts to comment that my hair is getting longer. If the average time between haircuts is 4-6 weeks, then why not ask to contact me after 5 weeks to let me know? Almost guarantee I’d head in within a few days of the call. For even better response, offer to schedule a time right then and there. If they did this, their cash flow in would be shortened so they’d be getting more within an annual (years) time.

So simple. So what say you, Great Clips? I just got my haircut today. Give me a call in 5 weeks and I’ll head in. (Now… I suppose if they read these sorts of things they may not be having this lacking in the first place.

Facebook Flixster, lookout Netflix

Flixtster is one of the new applications on the Facebook Platform. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that this application will take off like wild fire. Even given it was just made available around 3 days ago or so, there are already a huge number of ratings and comments from within Facebook.

A great benefit to Flixsters service within Facebook is that the rating is aggregated not just from Facebook but from the site as well. The recommendations are pretty rock solid, too.

The Flixster application does a good job of making itself spread-able by its design of the “My Friends” section. In this section, it lists all of your friends who aren’t using Flixster with a nice “Send Invite” button next to it. Can’t get much easier than that, now could it? Oh wait, yes it could. As far as I can tell, I can’t recommend a movie to my friend. What gives? Why not tie in Flixster with Events, too? That’s a good way to reduce potential usage.

Watching Flixsters recommendations, ratings, and users fly growth wise across Facebook could be a frightening thing for Netflix. While a lot of users don’t want to leave Netflix because of their ratings, recommendations, etc. Flixster is positioning themselves for what could be a nice usurping.

Ma.gnolia on Facebook’s platform

From talking with the Ma.gnolia guys I know they were over working on getting Ma.gnolia on the Facebook platform, so it’s neat to see this over on Mashable.

“Ma.gnolia’s social bookmarking app built on Facebook’s platform lets member’s latest bookmarks be available for friends to see. The links will be provided for other Facebook members that have also added the Ma.gnolia application. This is obviously an easier way to see what your friends have bookmarked, as it’s displayed within Facebook’s larger community, offering additional info like ratings and tags.”

Great to see. With all the friends I have, including the tech savvy ones, I have yet to see any of them adopt social bookmarking so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think a real purpose will have to be identified. I use it because of how much information I view all the time and wanting to reference things later. For more casual surfing and web usage, I imagine it would come more from the enjoyment of sharing or discovery.

I hope to see Ma.gnolia’s growth aided in the application by something like making invites of new users very easy (kind of how Flixster does it) or by integrating the ability to notify a friend of a particular bookmark that might interest them, etc.

Ma.gnoloa FF Extension Fixed! (0.7.2)

Now works for all versions of Firefox. See MyMagnolia extension page to download.

Download Fixed MyMa.gnolia version 0.7.2

Thanks to all of you who were patient as I worked out a fix for the extension. I’ve now got a fix for the extension and also made some improvements on top of it.

I am in the process of updating a few things on the blog to keep you all more informed on when updates will be occurring for the extension, what I am working on in the extension and such. I will post again when those updates to the blog have been made for your convenience.

Until I have update notification built in, if you would like to be notified of updates, e-mail me at xekonic at gmail dot com with the subject of “Notify me of magnolia update”.

As usual, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or run into any issues, please let me know and I will address it as fast as I possibly can. I am also still looking for some smooth replacement graphics.

Corkd gets registration forms right

Filling out forms online is usually one of those accepted pains in the butt you have to go through when registering for a website.

However, I recently started using Corkd, a service for reviewing/sharing/discovering wine, and I must say that their registration form is fantastic.

I actually enjoyed filling out this form due to the little captions they added. I think my favorite one is “Type it again. Think of it as a test” for entering your password a second time.

[Update] Angelo sends us a link in the comments to Dan Benjamin’s slides on Corkd for RailsConf. I thought I’d also mention that Corkd was acquired, so beyond forms, they obviously have been doing a lot of things right! Thanks for the info, Angelo!

Magnolia Extension Fix/Update

Extension fixed. Get the update here.

For those that recently downloaded my magnolia extension, I thought I’d let you all know I am aware of the issue that is currently going on with it and am working on fixing it fixed it. The reason it’s occuring is because Ma.gnolia just updated their site and apparently changed something that affects how the extension bookmarks pages. I am currently working with Ma.gnolia as to fix this new issue and ensuring that this doesn’t happen again down the line.Please bear with me as I work to fix the problem.

Thanks for your patience :)

[Update: 5/24/07] Good news. After talking with Ma.gnolia, we figured out a fix for the problem. I coded the fix in and it seems to all be working. I will be updating it later this evening!

[Update: 5/22/07] I haven’t forgotten about you all. I am currently working with ma.gnolia to put together a solid solution. I use this extension all the time, so not having it is just as frustrating for me as it is for you all, but rest assured we’re working hard! Thanks again for your patience :x

Harness the power of WOM

The other day I was returning the video A Beautiful Mind to the library. As I handed it to the librarian (whom I’ve never met before), she asked me how the movie was and what it was about. The conversation was something like:

“Great movie, though a bit sad toward the end,” (plus explanation of movie, which i’ll spare you all from).
“I don’t have a lot of time to watch movies, so I am pretty select in the ones I watch. Would you recommend it?” she asked.
“Yes.” I replied. “It’s definitely one to see.”
“Awesome, I’ll have to see it, then! Thanks!”

A similar instance occurred with a friend of mine. I noticed he liked a TV series, Samurai Champloo. Knowing a bit of this genre, I suggested he check out another series. He said he already had it, but if I had any more in mind, to let him know. I mentioned another one. Five minutes later he messaged me letting me know he’s in the process of purchasing it. I didn’t even tell him what it was about.

That’s the power of word of mouth.

Late night updates/workings…

Working on trying to get the 2nd to last part working for the next update of the magnolia extension. Normally I’d be in bed… well, half normally, but being in this fantastic apartment complex my distant neighbors are blasting their music with now regard to anyones complaint. So I figured if I can’t sleep I might as well… er, work?

Consiquently, my room mate and I had a humorous conversation as he noticed I was still up. Went something like:

“You’re developing a firefox extension?”
“Yup.”
“That’s hot. What are they written in?”
“Javascript and CSS.”
“Oh man. Javascript and CSS? What could possibly go wrong?”

That gave me a good laugh. Now, round #2 with Mr. Neighbor.

Track your comments part 2- IM Tracking

Here’s the quickie of the idea: InstantMessenger Comment Tracking

Having recently come across the news that Feed Crier (RSS updated via IM) has been acquired by IMified (a lot of things via IM), it sparked an additional thought from my past post on how tracking your blog comments could be appropriately expanded into a service. Before I begin: congrats to them on that :)
By creating something that does a parsed feed (if necessary) of the comments of posts you’ve commented on, IMified (with Feed Crier) would be able to IM you whenever a new comment was added to a post/discussion you’ve taken part in. An additional awesome point would be to allow you to comment to that post through IMified, turning it into IM comments.

[Update 1]
Adam from Feed Crier/IMified was awesome enough to respond to this post. In his comment, he brought up 2 good points:

1. Blog comment spam prevention goes to great lengths to prevent spam… which makes the proposed idea difficult.
2. Users can already use IMified to do a trackback to the post and write a post on their blog in response to the post or comments.

My response: I know that some blogs publish comment feeds. However, and this may already more or less be in place, I was meaning getting a feed only for a post you have commented on, not on all comments being made on all posts from that blog. Eg: You would be notified of my comment here because you commented on this post, and thus are getting a feed for the comments for just this post as it’s one you are actively discussing in.

Shoot. That’s a good point on the spam prevention. I hadn’t considered captcha and its effects.

Trackbacks through IMified could be a solution, yes, but perhaps a bit over the top if you don’t consider your own comment worth an entire post (as is the case for me, commenting quite frequently). While you could take the tag type approach and auto set its category or tag as “Comment response” it would still be something that “pollutes” your blog. On the other hand, it may provide an interesting way for others to see continued thought. The main concern there would be a disconnect between the location of discussions, that is a blog and its comments compared to a blog and others blogs posting comments. Somewhat inconvenient to follow that many trackabcks. This returns us to my “Blogging The Wish” post on improvements either on the feed reader end or in a social network.