Geek Dinner

I went to a geek dinner last night even though I'm not sure I count. There was a broad spectrum of people from Google java developers to Craig, a .net guy, who is working in the mining industry.

(Craig Murhpy's Flickr page)

Moo.com (hey - I didn't know they were based in London) gave a talk on their history which is a nice little story. They're now doing ~30,000,000 cards printed per year which, at £10/100, is a turnover of £3m on cards alone before other products are taken into consideration. They also state their gross margin is 70% so I guess they are approaching (if not already at) profitability.

The one thing that struck me about them as bunch was the team dynamic where everyone could answer a question and there seemed to be no strict hierarchy which is the way it should be.

I also bumped into Alex from SmallBizPod.

Review of Thaismile Restaurant where the event was held.

Twitter and and micro blogging eats itself

How many Twitter messages are:

Twittering on @Twitter

?

I do like these services even if I don't have enough time to constantly play ball. I'll pick it up for a while and then drop it again.

Anyway, as my wife is expecting our next girl in around a month I loved this which then made me thing of this.

Google kicks in

Just beginning to see some huge growth in Users of BView off the back of better Google listings producing long tail search results.

We produced a XML site map for launch which was frowned upon by a couple of of SEOs I know. The argument here is that SEO activities are harder to monitor because there is no direct correlation between a page being in the index and effort applied to get it there via internal links while the traffic boost is non-existent.

I think this is subjective as we have been able to monitor how Google is crawling pretty accurately. Now that we have some examples of content hubs and crawl pathways we will try to be a bot more selective in what is returned in results because some of our pages provide a better User experience than others and we want to provide great search results every time via Google as it can only help us.

Product priority

The basics of product prioritisation:

1. Everything should have a number one priority
(it's clearly part of our core proposition)

2. Everything should be done in the next release
(it's because you are not planning and coding properly)

3. The planned release can always be disrupted for the latest big idea
(we just can't wait another 20 days to properly plan, build, test and deliver it)

4. Everyone else's ideas are ridiculous
(i.e. let's not build them)

Basics of post-release analysis:

1. That was my idea first
(it's not my problem you can't remember me suggesting it)

2. What idiot thought of this?
(I hope they've forgotten it was me)

Website that should use RSS but never will

I go to the national rail website and perform searches for my next train home all the time. It is an annoying interface and I don't like it. The URL is not paramaterised so I can't bookmark it. I want a RSS feed that I can instantly see my next train.

What is interesting and how much of it to display

When we built BView we thought "hey let's make the site social and tell people what is else is going on" so we built little widgets of content that pull out local people, reviews etc. Of course we were not the first (or the last) however I've come round to thinking that when including content it must either be directly relevant or it should be just a flow of activity.

An example of this is local people. It's nice to show local people but it is nicer is to show people that do things the same as me (based on some kind of relevance rating). Local reviews is good but I want more than that...I want latest reviews in the area, I want who wrote them, I want edits, comments, essentially anything that might spark my interest.

I love what Brightkite has done in this area and I am working on making something better.

Reputation management: the right way and the wrong way

When we launched BView we had assumed that there would be a mass of abusive reviews and/or reviews that the business did not agree with.

It transpires that:

i) people are genuine and should be trusted (which is an area we are building the app out in)
ii) reviews tend to be well written balanced and fair.

That does not mean we haven't had people use the review system in a manner we don't agree with.

Vindictive reviews have featured (you rated my friends business badly therefore I am going to review you badly) while well written reviews of poor experiences get requests for removal. These have been frustrating as we offer the means to address all issues and take the conversation into the open.

My advice to people creating platforms of this ilk: trust the people.

Google update rates

WOW! Add a new story on Digg and it is returned in Google results less than 10mins after addition. I've also noticed this happen on Yahoo Answers.

Marc Andreessen on Facebook board

Saw on webware that Marc Andreessen has been asked (and has accepted) a place on Facebook's board.

I was pissed that I missed thechance to meet him when he was in our officesa few years ago as his blog is great and ning has been ultra bold in taking it's time and burning though a lot of cash to get tothe point it is an it's current value.

Fun to see what Ning (Open Social clan member) does with Facebook (already pretty well integrated actually) in the future?

Good move by Facebook. Marc, there always a place on our board for you.

Yelp allows businesses to "fight back"

Techcrunch are cover Yelp's new suite of features that allow businesses to join the conversation which happens around their business. I think this is a great feature and something BView has done since launch.

Allowing the business to join the discussion:

• businesses can respond to reviews
• reviewers and businesses can engage in a conversation around a review
• businesses and reviewers can subscribe to each other to track activity

It seemed like the fair thing to do in order to allow a balanced view where both parties can present their case and allow the reader to decide.

It's not a fight - it's a conversation.

Backpack is great

We've been using Backpack to manage the workflow of design tasks. It's far from the perfect solution but when it's a small team it doesn't need to be as talking makes up for the short fall in task management.

I guess the appeal of backpack is how basic it is. I know two people (inc. myself) who have used it to find, select & buy a house for example.

The RSS feed of changes is useless due to its over granularity but aside from that it gets my vote.

Calacanis is a brilliant marketeer

Jason Calacanis chutzpa generates some awesome marketing. Is it strangely coincidental that Mahalo results don't get good Google exposure?

What the hell...Calacanis & Andresen make their blogs work for them.

Is Yahoo's recent innovation result of Microsoft threat or change in leadership?

For the last few months (seems like ever since Microsoft began to seriously make noies) the innovation has started. Is this a result of i) the threat of an acquisition attempt or ii) fruits of the change in leadership i.e. the move from publisher to real tech company?

A lot of the products are very early stage and would appear not to be quite the finished article while also quite obvious and "cool" without much practical application.

I lean towards the former forcing the pace of the latter.

Sometimes Google rankings still confuse me

Can anyone telle me why for the term "business insurance" Direct Line is #1? Here's an example ofan inbound link. So if you advertise with Google then all the affiliate links count towards your inbound link score. If it wasn't a Googlead then I think Google would treat it as spam.

The above Google result desperately needs reviews against each service. Watch that skew click thru...We'll gere there slowly but surely (insurance on BView).

Facebook definitely slow

Having poled a statistically significant group of 3 people in a pub last night it was agreed that Facebook is a lot slower and we are all suspicious that instant chat is killing speed. One of the 3 was a systems guy and his theory goes as follows:

- Systems will block Gmail (and every other mail client)
- Systems will block IM clients
- Facebook has both of the above
- Systems do not block Facebook
- That's because they use it themselves too much

Another attendee is working on the BBBC/ITV/C4 web VoD platform called Kangaroo. Sounds interesting but of course he couldn't talk about it on the record...

BView comments are cool

My old company Simply Business have been replying to their reviews on BView (well, the bad ones) and have done a great job.

I love this feature.

Facebook instant messenger

I played with Facebook IM for the first time yesterday and I was pretty impressed with the front end display and the way it has been incorporated into the UI of the existing site. A few issues though:

- it told me people were online who clearly were not
- new messages took an age to "load" (or so I was being told) so not very instant

I might actually use it once it works. It got me wondering though how much this will antagonise corp IT departments who block IM clients already. Will it cause FB to be blocked by more businesses or can the functionality be separated from the rest of the site? Is it any different to playing scrabble? Will anyone care.

I also tried to pull in some Yelp news from my profile there. Oh dear - started getting someone else's activity (and yes I checked the email address).

EDIT: and FB is getting very, very, very low just now. I had to stop using it for a while as it just ground to a halt.

Retreading a path already trodden (even by myself)

Rules for a web form:

- allow a User to experience the functionality and then present them with the quid pro quo (i.e. the form)
- never ask for data you won't use for the User's direct benefit
- never provide optional inputs

Very simple. But what happens? You look at your form and you think "what can it hurt it I add..." and before you know it you are collecting data "because it will allow us to make our demographic data rich" which is rubbish.

I promise I will never do it again until next time.

BView new business owners

I thought I'd shamelessly promote some of the business owners that have controlled their profile on BView:

• Anson McCade
• X & Y Communications
• Xbridge

My thanks to these business owners.

Tracking inbound links and monitoring Google

We have just seen the Google bot start to crawl around the BView domain for the first time. It's path appears to be this blog and the "find me on" links I have added to the RHS nav. It is debatable whether we should have no cache, no crawls against User profiles but that will emerge over time. From my profile the bot moved to another User's profile and a couple of reviewed businesses. 14 pages picked from the domain as of now.

I have been recommended SEOMoz tools that track inbound links and allow monitoring and impact of off line efforts (press etc.) on the inbound concentration.

I think we'll track the domain using this tool rather than the old skool manual process I used to have to employ back in the day.