Category: Business

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Business Development

Words to live by

Jared Sinclair: “Focus on a difficult problem that matters to a significant number of normal people. Don’t worry about being the prettiest or the most featured. Get your hands dirty and find out what the rest of the world is struggling with.”

Will write C/C++ for foodThese words apply to any software indie, not just someone developing an iOS Application. I’m convinced now, more that ever, that services are the way to go. Create something people are willing to pay for and give them access to it from the desktop and mobile (iOS and Android), and possibly other platforms. Guys like Rob Walling have been spreading the gospel of the micropreneur for years.

A perfect example of this in the iOS world is the work Justin Williams is doing with Glassboard. He’s following the micropreneur playbook, even if he doesn’t realize it. He’s found a nice niche market, he’s asking people to pay for the service (the nerve!) He also has a blog, where he runs ads, and has just recently changed his podcast from advertiser supported to listener supported. All very smart ways to earn a living. These ideas all run counter to the Silicon Valley idea of blowing large sums of money in hopes of an “exit.” These guys are actually running businesses, bravo.

If anyone thinks this is easy, they’d be wrong. It’s not easy. It requires long hours and sleepless nights to get things off the ground, then it requires constant supervision to make sure it doesn’t fall apart. Oh, and even if you do all of that, it can still fall apart. Hey, it’s a business. Some people have the midas touch when it comes to business and many of us do not. The majority of us will fail.

Something else in another of Jared’s posts that really struck accord: “My marriage and mental health suffered a lot because of that punchcard. I worked on Unread seven days a week, at almost any hour of the day. I think the quality and polish of Version 1.0 is due to all that extra effort, but it was physically and emotionally taxing. It’s not a sustainable way to live, and I don’t recommend it.”

This reminds me of something I read on a CompuServ (I believe?) forum circa 1988-89, back before the internet. My manager would check the forums on occasion for tips and tricks for Clipper developers (wow, what an awesome dBase compiler.) If memory serves it was in one of those forums we found a quote that sticks with me to this day. An indie developer of C extensions to Clipper said something like:

“Being a self-employed software developer is great. I can work any hours I want to work. Any 80 hours in the week I want to work.“

Food for thought if you’re thinking of going indie. I don’t mean that to discourage you. I only say that because it’s going to take a lot of work. Be prepared to do more than have a great idea. Be prepared to put in the time to make it work. Oh, yes, one more thing. After you develop this great application you have to market it. I think that’s where most of us will fail. Marketing. I’d imagine that is more important than actually developing a great service, or application.

Categories
Business

Facebook is bad for Business

Social Fixer: “I’ve spent 4 years and countless hours building up a community around my software: my Page had 338,050 Likes, my Support Group had 13,360 members, and my Interest List had 1.47 Million followers. But all of that work was wiped out in an instant when Facebook decided to shut it down without notice.”

I have a hard time feeling sorry for this company. Why? You shouldn’t rely on Facebook for your business presence, that’s why. It’s pretty simple math. You’re not in control of the content; 1+1 = Facebook is in complete control.

Don’t be stupid. Drive everything through your own site. It should be the center of your web presence. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc to drive business back to YOUR SITE.

Categories
Business Cloud Social

Path + WordPress

Engadget: “App developers can now ask for permission to use Path’s sharing API, which they’ll get if Path sees such apps as a logical fit. To get the ball rolling, the social network has already granted access to 13 partners that include WordPress…”

I’ve enabled posting to Path, lets see if this works.

Categories
Business Government

Killing America

The Atlantic: “The problem for the companies, it’s worth emphasizing, is not that they were so unduly eager to cooperate with U.S. government surveillance. Many seem to have done what they could to resist. The problem is what the U.S. government — first under Bush and Cheney, now under Obama and Biden — asked them to do. As long as they operate in U.S. territory and under U.S. laws, companies like Google or Facebook had no choice but to comply. But people around the world who have a choice about where to store their data, may understandably choose to avoid leaving it with companies subject to the way America now defines its security interests.”

Makes me wonder if any large technology company would have the guts to leave the United States? Of the bigs cooperating with the US Government, Google seems like the only one different enough to pull it off. Then again, even they’ve become more like the typical American corporation.

I worked for an oil and gas company for nine months, or so. They were one of those slimy companies that had their headquarters in another country to avoid paying certain types of taxes, but when your government forces you to become a scumbag you might as well go the whole hog and leave the country.

I know a company that has recently moved from using Google Docs to using another service because of security concerns. Makes you go hmmmmm.

Maybe Google, given Larry Page’s desire to create Google Island, could lead the pack in moving the Silicon Valley to Silicon Land and start a new country?

Could you blame them?

Categories
Business Indie iOS

The Dark Side of the App Store

Ben Thompson: “My use of Paper is an essential part of stratechery, yet I needed to only pay $8.99 for two in-app purchases, for which I never need to pay again. That’s a hell of a bargain, but it’s ultimately unsustainable.”

It’s difficult to sustain a business on an app when you can only charge for the initial purchase. This is a problem Apple needs to solve on behalf of app developers.

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Business Tumblr

Yahoo! Tumblr

Venture Beat: “While Tumblr is popular, it only made $13 million in revenue last year, when it first started selling ads, and hopes to grow that to $100 million in revenue this year.”

Wow. On Friday afternoon the acquisition point for Tumblr had gone to $1.1 billion. Mind boggling considering they had revenue of $13 million last year.

I like Tumblr. If this acquisition happens I hope it’s good for Yahoo! and good for Tumblr. I think the first thing they do is start using Flickr for photo sharing on Tumblr then do something to bring the two closer together. Seems like a nice fit considering the popularity of photo sharing on Facebook and Instagram.

I read a comment somewhere, sorry I don’t remember where, to the effect that all Marissa Mayer is doing is buying other companies and anyone could’ve done that. That’s true, but anyone didn’t do that, Ms. Mayer is. I think it’s pretty brilliant, and unlike Twitter’s acquisition of Posterous, which was all about engineering talent, this one seems like it could be a nice fit and an opportunity to do something incredible with two products; Flickr and Tumblr.

UPDATE: Interesting piece on Hacker News. Apparently $1.1 billion may be too low? That would be the VC’s talking if there’s any truth to it. Take the money and run, while you still can.

Categories
Business Cloud Technology

Parse: It was good while it lasted

AHHHHHH!Parse: “Some of the world’s best brands trust us with their entire mobile presence, and a growing number of the world’s brightest independent developers trust us with their next big thing. We couldn’t be happier.”

Parse is one of those companies I was really excited about. Our connected world is about services, not websites or mobile, but services. The backend; the logic and data it contains are the important bits of the puzzle. They’re also the most difficult to create and maintain. Parse built something that allowed developers to create small scale services without the need to build the backend. It was a genius idea and one that opened the doors for indie developers to create great services.

How much trust will the “world’s brightest independent developers” have in Parse now that it’s part of one of the most untrustworthy companies in the world?

I guess I can’t bag on these guys too much. If Facebook offered me a pile of cash for my product, I’d take the money and run.

Categories
Business Cloud Social

The real Communication Network

Matt Gemmell: “The interesting part, though, is what you won’t be used to from Twitter. There are no ads, anywhere. Because it’s a paid service, there’s no spam at all; I’ve certainly never seen any. There’s an active and happy developer community, which ADN actually financially rewards. There’s a rich, modern, relentlessly improved API. And again because it’s a paid service, there’s a commensurately (and vanishingly) low number of Bieber fans, teenagers, illiterates, and sociopaths.”

I joined App.Net back in August and since that time a nice community has sprung up. There are a number of apps available to make the experience better and those numbers grow every day. Unlike Twitter developers are encouraged to develop unique and exciting applications, they even pay for the right to access the API. Imagine that, an entire social where the users actually pay to be a part of it. What a concept.

App.Net is creating the communications platform Twitter abandoned in favor of becoming an advertising company. The Twitter like experience is just one of many different types of applications being built on this platform.

If you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll pass on an invite for a free account.

Categories
Business Life

Yahoo Remote Employee Policy

Business Insider: “After spending months frustrated at how empty Yahoo parking lots were, Mayer consulted Yahoo’s VPN logs to see if remote employees were checking in enough.”

I work remotely. I use a VPN connection. I’m not always connected via VPN. I would be screwed as a Yahoo employee.

Having said that I work on desktop software so maintaining a persistent VPN connection doesn’t mean anything to doing my job. I can lose the connection and still build new features and fix bugs. It’s not a big deal. Maybe the folks at Yahoo need a persistent VPN connection to perform their daily tasks and that’s what screwed them?

In the end Ms. Mayer has to do what she believes will turn Yahoo around. At the end of the day her butt will be on the line if they don’t succeed.

There is, of course, another side to this coin. You can find highly motivated, very good, people that can’t live, or don’t want to live, in the Silicon Valley. Not everyone is well suited to be a remote employee. It takes some getting used to and it takes a lot of personal discipline. If you can manage it, it’s a pretty great setup.

Richard Branson on the flipside:

“I have enormous respect for Michael Bloomberg and have rarely disagreed with anything he has done or said. However, on this occasion I disagree completely. Many employees who work from home are extremely diligent, get their job done, and get to spend more time with their families. They waste less time commuting and get a better work/life balance. To force everybody to work in offices is old school thinking.”

The bottom line: It’s up to the company to decide what’s best for the company. If you want to telecommute, look for a job that will allow you to telecommute.

Yahoo clearly isn’t the place for telecommuters.

Categories
#twitter Business Design Development Social

Twitter Display Guidelines

A wonderful boquet of flowers.In the wake of the new Twitter 1.1 API changes announcement I thought I’d focus my attention on the Twitter Developer Display Guidelines so I can understand the changes I’ll see to my favorite Twitter client; Twitterrific.

The guidelines will make our Twitter experience more consistent, boy howdy. Basically every Twitter client will look pretty much the same or it won’t be allowed to use the Twitter API, and a client that can’t use the API is useless.

Please note, if you’re using a Twitter provided client, these rules don’t apply, so you have nothing to worry about.

How do the various clients display Tweets in the Timeline? See the Timelines section in Display Guidelines.

Twitterrific

Twitterrific is my favorite client because it’s darned simple, great UX and UI design. Twitterrific is unique amongst the three clients we’ll examine because it shows a reply icon in every tweet. Note the arrow in the lower right corner of the image. Tapping on that icon will display a menu of choices that includes Reply, Direct Message, Retweet, and Retweet with Comment. Not even Twitter’s native iOS client provides this functionality.

Twitterrific: What needs fixing?

I use the term fixing loosely. Here is a list of the rules Twitterrific breaks, according to the Display Guidelines.

  1. Tweet Author
    • The user’s name and @username should be displayed on one line, with the name first.
  2. Retweets
    • If the Tweet being displayed is a Retweet, the name of the user who Retweeted it and the Retweet icon must be displayed under the Tweet text. e.g. “Retweeted by Josh Brewer”. The name should link to the the Retweeting user’s profile [1].

The @username doesn’t appear in the tweet and the retweeted by text doesn’t show below the tweet. It’s not seen here, but the retweet text displays to the right of the users name. One of the great things about Twitterrific is how it displays tweets in different colors depending on the context of the tweet. I’m not sure how Twitter will feel about that, but the guideline doesn’t call it out.

That’s not so bad, but it does mean Iconfactory will need to fix some things.

Tweetbot

Tweetbot: What needs fixing?

  1. Tweet Author
    • The user’s name and @username should be displayed on one line, with the name first.
    • The avatar must be positioned to the left of the name, @username, and Tweet text.
  2. Timestamps
    • Tweet timestamp should be displayed in the top right corner.
  3. Retweets
    • If the Tweet being displayed is a Retweet, the name of the user who Retweeted it and the Retweet icon must be displayed under the Tweet text. e.g. “Retweeted by Josh Brewer”. The name should link to the the Retweeting user’s profile [1].

Tapbots has a bit of work. In most cases the users avatar is displayed in the proper position, unless its your tweet, then it’s on the right. That’s an easy fix for them. Once that is fixed the timestamp will move to the proper position in the upper right corner. The Retweets item is interesting. The rule states it should display the name of the user who retweeted it. Tweetbot does that, sort of. If the retweet was by you it displays “Retweeted by You”, which doesn’t fit the rule to the letter.

Twitter

Twitter: What needs fixing?

  1. Retweets
    • If the Tweet being displayed is a Retweet, the name of the user who Retweeted it and the Retweet icon must be displayed under the Tweet text. e.g. “Retweeted by Josh Brewer”. The name should link to the the Retweeting user’s profile [1].

Not surprisingly Twitter does the best job of following the rules, but they do break this one. In the Twitter iOS client a retweet icon is display in the upper right hand corner of the tweet and the user’s name isn’t displayed.

Random Note

In the Individual Tweet section under the Branding bullet point this is listed.

The Twitter logo or Follow button for the Tweet author must always be displayed in the top right corner.

Emphasis on the word Tweet is mine. Twitter didn’t coin the term “Tweet”, the fine folks at Iconfactory did.

EOL