DARE, DO!

Layers of the web

The bar has been raised for building products people will love. Today we need to consider three layers of the web, all of which needs to be addressed in a great product. Imaging a pyramid consisting of:

Emotional
Utility
Content

Bottom layer: Content: The first challenge is simply to get relevant interesting content. This used to be an end goal in itself but the bar has been moved. 

Middle layer: Utility: Products need to solve a real problem. During the last 10 years we’ve seen a lot of products built that didn’t do that. In particular in the space of location (checkins does not solve a problem normal people have), social (half the stuff in my stream is just noise) and photo sharing (why do i need this photo?). This will change. Forrester’s CEO explains why here, explaining how social network penetration is so high there is no new ground. 

Top layer: Emotional: The new holy ground is shifting focus from technological capabilities and back to human nature. How can we create products with good content, which solve a problem and which people care to use. Certain products become a part of how people see themselves (iphone users, rails developers) and it’s this level of connectivity we need to aim for. People need to care and feel good about using the products. The renewed focus on design, great visuals, audio, social in everything is a part of that important mission. 

Thanks Rishi Taparia of Scale VC, the first to mention this model for me. On twitter as @taps. And to danielrootphotography.com for the photo

Can you use Instagram images, legally?

Following my hunt for good images you’re allowed to use commercially to “prettify” products and websites, I’ve been looking into Instagram. 

So they offer an API which gives access to the images. But they also state that essentially the images by default are ´All Rights Reserved´. As far as I can think, that mean you get access to the images, but basically not the permission to use them, a slightly confusing combination… 

Instagram’s rules in shortened form:

1) Instagram doesn’t own the images - Instagram users do. Although the Instagram APIs can be used to provide you with access to Instagram user photos, nothing override the photo owners’ requirements and restrictions, which may include “all rights reserved” notices (attached to each photo by default when uploaded to Instagram),

2) Creative Commons licenses or other terms and conditions that may be agreed upon between you and the owners. In ALL cases, you are solely responsible for making use of Instagram photos in compliance with the photo owners’ requirements or restrictions.

This is bad news if you want to use them. I wonder if any startup or companies out there has experience with incorporating their images into their product? Would love to hear how. 

Look how pretty! Would love to be able to use stuff like this on a larger scale. This one is by onsoftware

You’re allowed to use Flickr photos

This is an important question for many of us, especially when you’re building services which integrate a lot of photos. We need to protect our companies against potentially infringing on others’ right, but also because most of us actually want to do the right thing.

It’s something I was reading up on tonight and I found this excellent post by Skelliewag.org called A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images.

Here are the main points. 

1: Flickr photos are best:

With Google Images it’s hard to guard yourself against copyright infringement  A page does not have to list copyright information for an image to be considered copyrighted. It’s also very difficult to know the original source of an image.

Stock Photos are legal but tend to be bland, plus they are expensive. Like iStockPhotos

Flickr, on the other hand, hosts millions of photos taken by amateur and professional photographers. 

2: Dont use ‘All rights reserved’, images without explicit permission. Instead go for the creative commons ones, in particularly the Attribution License: 

3: Use the Attribution License 

This allows you to modify the images (by cropping them, or writing on them, for example) and to use them in both commercial and non-commercial spaces. The only requirement is that you credit the author with a link.

4: Finding the images: Go to the Flickr: Creative Commons page. From there, you can enter search portals for each of the six CC licenses, again I suggest the Attribution License. 

Personally I’d like to use filtered photos, like Instagram, so that’s what I’m going to look into now:)

Photo by Dominiqs

2012 is the year of social curation

UPDATED: I’ve received feedback which demonstrate I should explain myself better:)

(To me) social curation is not simply reposting or retweeting. While this provides a social filter to content it only solves part of the problem. In order for content to be truly relevant services need to enable people to set up further filtering themselves, so you only receive certain information from certain friends. Otherwise it’s still largely out-of-context information. 

The service who’ve done this filtering the best in my eyes is Pinterest. Here you follow not a whole person (friend or interesting stranger) but a part of the person, fx. what he posts on his boards about tree houses, but not what he posts on his other boards which you find uninteresting. Everplaces will use a similar concept when launched.

Original post: 

We’ve long been seeing the demand for quality over quantity when it comes to information. Less is indeed more when you are surrounded by massive amounts  of non-useful information (noise). 

In previous decades we solved this with pre-editing, this is what bloggers and editors do when they select the content for us that they deem is interesting for us. But, now we’re entering into a new era, the era of social curation.

Today we can curate further ourselves. We can filter information flows before they hit our inboxes and streams. This mean we can get exactly what we’re looking for. The mass market is not a homogenous group, it is millions of individuals who are unique, but have overlapping requirements.

Social curations means we’re one step closer to providing each unique individual exactly the information that matches their interest and situation (and location)  

This chart shows how it is easier and easier to curate content by spreading information you’ve found find worth spreading: 

Entrepreneur Elad Gil comes to this conclusion in this detailed blog post:

2012 Will Be The Year of Curated Sets
2012 will likely see an acceleration of structured, push button, social curation across the web. Just as the first wave of social media has transformed the consumption of information, this next wave of social curation will fundamentally change how users find and interact with content over time.

Facebook on doing business

Today we had a nice visit from Facebook here at Founders House. Here’s the best from the talk:

John Ndege is from their New York department. He was at Founders House talking about how to work best with Facebook if you’re a startup or a developer. He also shared some fun anecdotes of how its been being at the company from when they had 8m users to the 800m users they have today. Here are the highlights: 

- Be nice to your users. Both because it’s right but also because it actually pays off. We (Facebook) try to do advertising in the least obtrusive way. If we crammed users’ experience with ads we’d make more money in the short run, but lose them in the long run. 

- Be relevant to the purpose people are in there for if you want to get the Facebook effect. People are typically there sharing their experiences, not to buy things, therefore brand advertising often works better on FB than getting people to buy things. So, awareness over sales.

- Get into the engine of stories. Perhaps the most powerful part of FB is the stream. So work on getting into this by communicating via stories users will want to pass on, or even better, let them make their own stories which involve you. 

It was really nice to get visit from FB, they’ve recently started getting more active in reaching out to the startup and development community. John also confirmed that being a platform is a key mission.

Follow: 

@facebook
@johnndege
@instagram (thank for photo) 

How to test your product for market fit fast and cheaply

Fast product development based on hard user data, rather than gut instinct, is all the rage in software development these days. Lean Startup, The Startup Genome and just about every self respecting CTO is hailing it as the new black.

Personally I agree and have there been looking into which forms of testing Everplaces can do fast and cheaply. We’d love to share them with you: 

- Write the press release before you do a line of code - it the product interesting enough for customers that its actually worth building? Learnt from Amazon.

- Adwords. Zynga finds 5 key words for a new game they are thinking of making and make ads to see if people click on them. If not enough do, they dont build the game. 

- Pre-product user testing. Wooga do the first user test of games from a drawing. If testers like it they proceed to doing tests with a powerpoint illustration. Only much later is any programming done. 

- Kick-starter can be used to test appeal - will anyone co-fund your project. If yes, then there are probably also people who would use it. Learnt from IDEO.

- Fake back end. Intuit build the front end fast, but not the back end. In the beginning the backend tasks are performed by humans until it is proved it is worth automising. 

- User voting. Votebox by Dropbox let’s users vote on what feature they do next. With heavy weigh on core users as opposed to casual users. 

- AB landing page testing. Everplaces have several landing pages with different messages, we test which converts to beta sign ups best. 

- Fake buttons. Human IPO make fake buttons on the website and track if people try to click. If enough click, they build the functionality behind it. We also do that in our apps which then takes you to a page that says “Oh, we havent built this yet, but now we know you’d like it we’ll speed up the process” 

Would love to hear how you split test!
Follow suggestions:
Many of these examples came from @tomhulme. Founder of IDEO 
@ericries, author of Lean Startup. Must-read book
@fadibishara. Creator of Startup Genome project
@werner. CTO of Amazon
@krestenbuch Founder Human IPO
@begemann. Jens Begemann, CEO Wooga 

And all very nice guys on top of being brilliant. I recommend following them. 

Insight: How and why AWS was built

The other day I had the pleasure of meeting Amazon CTO Werner, the man behind Amazon’s cloud service. As the father of the cloud I was curious to learn more about why and how he built AWS. Luckily he was happy to share:-)

The first insight is that Amazon built the cloud hosting service to deal with their own scaling problems. They quickly figured that if they could solve their problems, they could solve the server problems for others too. The rest is history.

AWS’s golden rules:

-Designed for flexibility. No lock in whatsoeveer that might hinder engineers wanting to us it.

-On demand. “Amazon was very seasonal so we needed to be able to upscale servers fast and downscale fast. Otherwise engineers would not give up the extra server capacity in slow times but hold on to it “just in case”. by building on demand we could use our sources better”

-Automated. Because otherwise engineers would try to predict demand, and that is not their area of expertise -Elastic. A core feature is not just that you can upscale capacity fast when you need it, also that you can downscale. This is critical for business success as it minimised losses in times of failure, which will in evidently happen designed

- Utility pricing - Transparent. The reality is that developers need to know where their data is to satisfy regulatory demands. So several clouds were required. Drink their own cool-aid? Yes, Since launch AWS lowered prices 14 times

Thanks to hack fwd, the european seed fund as who’se event Build07 i met Werner

More? @Werner @HackFwd I am writing another couple of posts relating to this so follow me on twitter if you want to know when more is posted @tahitahi 

The six weapons of influence for a launch strategy

According to Robert Caildini six weapons of influence exists. I’ve been looking at them as we’re deciding how to launch Everplaces. Here they are, in order of importance for launch strategies. As I see it anyway.  

Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing. So, all your friends are using it then you’re probably going to want it too. This is hugely influential in launching and marketing technology products because people want to be the first among friends. 

Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. (Apparently this also goes for people they think are hot!)

Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for a “limited time only” encourages sales. This is the concept behind the “by invitation only” launch concepts

Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures. Think celebrity/ expert endorsements of a product. If Jack Dorsey wants it. I want it too!

Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor, thus the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing. Networking is partly based on this principle. 

Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self image. So Robert says. I have no idea what that means.

Want to learn more? Interesting article by Smashing Magazines here on building viral webpages

Follow suggestion for launch strategy: 
@smashingmag 
@renate 

Babyboomers - the next demographic layer in adoption of tablets?

My mum got a kindle today. And my dad an iphone. They are totally non-techies. Is this a sign that we’ve hit the the next wave in user adoption of tablets and smartphones?

It made me ponder whether we have reached the tipping point of these two technologies. And marvel at how fast this happened. I mean, when 50-something, retired, middle class people with no technical skills or tech interest whatsoever start buying the products then it generally means adoption has reached a new layer of demographic. 

Why some tech products spread fast?

The beauty of both the iphone and the kindle is that it is easy to use. That does wonder for word of mouth. It means that technically-inclined people recommend them to non technical family members. Because we trust it will make their lives easier, not the opposite. As such we bridge the gap between early and later adopters and spread it to the next layer.  

Another reason is that these products make sense non-technically. It is not gadgets for the sake of gadgets, they are actually useful for a purposes ordinary people have. For people like my mother who reads three books a week and travels a lot the Kindle is a lifesaver. My father is a curious souls who enjoys being able to check the weather, maps and stuff like flight time arrivals. All of this, the iPhone makes so much easier than the previous (non-smart) internet phone.  

And they are excellent consumers…

This age group often couldn’t care less that an app costs $1. They’ve made their money and are now happy to spend a little to have what they want. This makes them an interesting user group whom most tech companies are over looking. I mean, there’s lots of babyboomers and most of them have money to spend. 

While we’re talking about demographics, here’s some stuff I’ve found interesting recently:

- 31 percent of iPhone users are 35-49 years old

- In total, 74 percent of iPhone users are over the age of 25

 - More than 70 percent of users on both the iPhone are male

 - In line with the older demographic composition of iPhone users, they also have higher incomes (78 percent of iPhone users have an annual household income of at least $25,000)

- When the survey below was being done iPhone users planned to buy lots of stuff using it. (clothing (57 percent), entertainment (47 percent), and travel (45 percent)) 

By comScore and AdMob: http://www.macnews.com/content/study-looks-demographics-iphone-ipod-touch-users

Don’t let your startup do one-night stands! What love and user adoption have in common.

We recently made a bold decision in Everplaces not to do one-night stands. As a company I mean.  Let me explain.

We’ve been looking at strategies for spreading the product when it is launching in September, and had a number of ways we felt we could get users fast. For a short while this was tantalizing until we looked each other in the eyes and reaffirmed that we want to build an excellent product for particular kind of people, rather than an average product for everyone. So we decided that loyalty is more important that fast adoption for us. 

For the fun of it we call it our True Love value. We know there are about 20-30% of smartphone users who’ll fit exactly in our demographic. These people are likely to love the product and then spread the word. So for us, 1 of these are more valuable than 10 one-night-stands (the user equivalent of one-night stands is random people who try your product because it is new to them and then never come back. They are simply not compatible with the product.)

So why are people chasing fast adoption?
Because it is excellent for what Eric Ries calls “vanity stats”. Stats you get to impress your investor or competitor but which are essentially worthless. Like “1 million downloads!” - when you actually know that half have never even logged in and the rest are never using it.  

Compromise is death for software
I believe there are quite a lot of parables between love and user adoption. There are just some people, or users, that your product isn’t compatible with. So don’t try to please them by building features for them. Instead, chase the 20% which have the potential to become true loves. I am a firm believer in that doing a little bit for everyone means doing it perfect for no one. 

Do you have the balls to do things right? 
It is a very tough call to sacrifice fast adoption for loyalty, especially if you need traction to raise money. So it takes balls. 

Dont believe me, get it straight from the horses mouth
Here is a post and a video where @EricRies talks about why you should grow slowly, but surely . I have also posted it in the post below.  

@ericries

New moral standards change everything, meet The Sharing Economy

The companies in the sharing economy are starting to get real traction. The concept, also called collaborative consumerism, where people share things instead of buying one product each which they rarely use, is definitely on the rise. 

In this excellent piece TNW talks about how it has taken AirBnb, who rent out people’s flats, three years to be the market leader they are today. They just raised 100m at a bilion dollar valuation. Three years ago investors told them it was a silly idea. No doubt this growth is founded in a fundamental change in consumer attitudes. Today’s consumer’s moral standard favor reusing things and living with fewer (mostly useless) possessions. This replaces the mindless consumerism popular until now, which is so destructive for the planet. And it keeps us mobile and saves us money.

Already, clever entrepreneurs are seeing the business opportunities in this new economy:

• One of my favourites is Parkatmyhouse, at UK startup which rents out people’s driveways and garages when they dont use them. 
• Zipcar, the hugely successful US concept where you buy into a pool of shared cars instead of having your own is also related by philosophy. As is Getaway, recent winners at TechCrunch disrupt, who allows you to rent other peoples cars. 
• Onefinestay replaces tedious (expensive) hotel room stays with stays in private luxury flats

If you ask me there are still plenty of opportunity unexplored. There are tons more items we only use rarely, that take up space, and that are extremely expensive when you think of price per hour used. As attitudes shift further we may see collaborative consumerism and sharing in these areas too: 

• Power Tools (ok, realize I am touching on something core to the male pride here, but seriously!)
• Garden stuff: Ladders /Trailers/ Wheelbarrows
• Motorbikes/ push bikes
• Party equipment like folding table and chairs (we all know you are never going to use them again)
• Holiday equipment (caravans, skis, jet skis, tents)

At Everplaces we are even looking into extending this model into trading peer to peer information. 

Did I mention this new concept offers heaps of new opportunities for ordinary people renting their things out? Personally, I am bootstrapping my startup Everplaces by renting out my flat on Airbnb and RedApple. I’ve found somewhere else to crash for the summer and am making enough money on tourists wanting a nice place to stay in Copenhagen to cover my fixed expenses. This makes the no-salary reality of being a founder a little easier to stomach. (If you want to support a startup, you can rent it here:))

There has got to be heaps more, what do you think is the next big thing in the sharing economy?

Twitter list: 

@parkatmyhouse and founder Anthony Eskinazi @eski009

@onefinestay and fab founder @timjdavey

@airbnb