With The Band

There’s nothing more satisfying these days than someone liking your idea. Loving it is even better. Especially if they are someone who knows their stuff, knows what to do, and knows who to talk to. It validates all the sweat equity you’ve put in to your work.

Can’t wait.

I’m still only on page 3 of Google searches for “zvi”

I will win.

Advertising has been one of the favorite (attempted) revenue sources for many startups, dating back to the Web 1.0. The general idea is, build something interesting that people will use, throw some ads (brokered through a third party), and just wait for the cash to come in.

This doesn’t work for me. Maybe that’s a bad opinion for me to have, as it is the popular choice, and **sometimes** successful. Or maybe it’s a good one, as it forces me to look at ideas for how they can generate non-advertising revenue (if revenue is something I want out of it).

It depends on business spending. If company coffers dwindle, advertising is the first thing to go. So does your revenue stream.

Contextual advertising is still far away from showing ads that are truly relevant to the content/demographics of the user.

Subconsciously, a user recognizes patterns of where ads are usually placed on websites, and what they look at, so they can navigate a website without once glancing at an ad.

And most of all, I almost never click on ads, so why should I expect others to?

For my startup (omg I just called it my startup), advertising is the last revenue source I am looking towards. There are so many other income streams available that allow for better control of the outcome, and can produce far greater returns. If I were to allow for advertising, I would have it much more focused, and sell it myself, focusing more on partnerships and affiliate marketing rather than just YOUR AD HERE!

The conquistador Cortes provided a model for all intrepid souls….that
is to burn the boats on the shore and ensure no way back and the stark
need to make the expedition succeed or go down trying.

Inspirational post by Will Price. Made my day.

If someone has failed before he’s even more likely to invest - “It
makes them want to win even more,” he said. He generally doesn’t look
at business plans at all, and just invests in the individual.

I remember meeting Yossi Vardi when I was in Israel a couple years ago. Mike Arrington has a great writeup on him. I remember a bunch of my colleagues ran up and gave him their business cards afterwards, trying to “get in.” I didn’t understand what the big deal was. My, how things have changed for me.

Besides giving some good advice, I couldn’t help but laugh while watching this.

I love israelis.

I like the idea of LinkedIn developing their own API. I think a lot of good application ideas that initially were developed for the Facebook platform will be a lot better suited to the professional attitude of LinkedIn. I have a few myself, which would be wasted on Facebook, but I believe would thrive on LinkedIn.

Facebook is for my social life, where I interact with friends, and generally, play. LinkedIn is for my career.

I love when the gov’t prevents you from working for them. So instead of actually doing anything productive, I made a fun Facebook application, from start to finish!

CrazyCaptions lets your friends add funny captions to your Facebook
photos! Create caption contests that show up on your profile in one
step!

Developing on the Facebook platform definitely has it’s benefits.

• No user management necessary - users use their Facebook account
• Existing style to incorporate/work off of
• Pre-defined elements - Saves from writing a bunch of custom code.
• Existing content - Users already have photos, etc uploaded.

Since the Facebook Platform has been launched a number of months ago, allowing anyone to write an application that can interact with Facebook users in any number of ways, thousands of such applications have been released. While many startups are forming (and existing ones) focusing solely on Facebook applications, a viable business model for a web app existing solely within the walled garden of Facebook has not appeared yet. So, even though developing such an application may be easier than developing a stand-alone version, it should not, at this point, be considered as the focal point for any startup.

Instead, think about producing a Facebook application to complement your main application. In this post, I’ll show you what elements I’ve implemented in a Facebook application I’m about to release that was developed solely to draw traffic and attention to the primary application, Localnik (If you’d like to know more about the service, stick around for a future post).

1. Function
   The primary function of your application (what users “do” on it) should be the same, or similar, to your main site. You want visitors to use your Facebook application in the same way as they would use the primary version. This will ensure that, your user demographics match up. For example, if you have an image-editing site, your Facebook application should also be an image editor. But…
2. Provide a limited feature set
   What?! Did I just say limit what users can do? I think I did. And here is my justification: If your Facebook application is a mirror image of what your full application is, why should users convert? Finding the right cutoff point is tricky… provide too much functionality, and users won’t bother with your primary site. But provide too little functionality, and your application is worthless. But whatever you do…
3. Advertise your main site. On every page.
   
   At the bottom of every page, I have a advertisement for the full site. Not too intrusive, fits in with the Facebook style, but it is something users will notice. The spin of the ad is focused on telling users how the Facebook app is a demo, and what else the main site offers. This is where enumerate all the features you tearfully omitted out of the Facebook application, as per #2.
4. Entice the users to check out the main site.
   
   People are lazy. Why should they even clicking on a link, registering another account, and exploring something else? You must have something in addition to an advertisement to draw users. Since my main site is in private beta right now, I decided to give each Facebook user an invite code that will give them access to the application before it goes public. This adds the element of scarcity, and gives the user the sense that they are in some way special. Plus, as the founder, it gives me an initial user base :-). Other ideas: Allow them to register for an account within your Facebook application, or generate an account for them automatically, or have some sort of discount/bonus for joining the main site (points?).

These are what I have implemented for the Facebook-specific mini-version of my main site. You could also use Facebook to boost your business by:

• Testing an idea - Facebook apps are easy to make, with a built in viral user base. Keeping demographics in mind, see if your idea holds water before spending time making the full-blown version.
• Advertising - Since you can put whatever you want into your application, make unrelated, heavily viral, applications, and put an ad for your site at the bottom of each page.

Further Reading
If you’d like to know more about Facebook development, check out the platform home page. Once you get your feet wet, the associated wiki is an invaluable resource.

For ideas on how to grow your Facebook application, AllFacebook is a great resource. The Top 5 Viral Facebook Techniques is a must-read.

Also, I am more than happy to help you (zvi AT zviband DOT com, or post a comment below)

I was reading the latest issue of Wired the other day in the gym, and flipped to an article about tilt-shift photography. Tilt-shift photography is a technique of taking a picture so that it looks as if the shot is of a scale model. This used to be done with expensive camera equipment, but recently people have developed Photoshop tutorials that achieve the same effect. I decided to give this a try with a picture I took from a Maryland football game (we won :-)) yesterday, and made this:

I’m pretty bad with Photoshop (I prefer Corel products), so this tutorial was a little bit more helpful than the Wired article.