Some of these friends think that if they don’t do these things no one else does. Or, they think that those that do are just young kids and not their customers. They are dead wrong.

This sentiment goes both ways, however. People that do these things sometimes believe that everyone does them. They are dead wrong too. “Everyone is on Facebook”. No, everyone is not on Facebook. This little blue planet we live on has over 7,000,000,000 people on it. Facebook’s active user base is in the hundreds of millions. Astounding? Yes. Everyone? No.

When you’re evaluating a new marketing strategy, or trying to decide if a business model will work, or you’re looking at a new product — always try to look at yourself to see if you’d be someone that would respond to it. But, just as importantly, know that if you wouldn’t that doesn’t mean others wouldn’t. Try to find someone that does connect to it and try to see how many of those types of people are out there.

I’m using the example of communicating over the Internet for this post but really you can fill just about anything in here such as; people that like rap music, people that enjoy going on vacation, people that drink coffee.

It is true that there are many people just like you. But it is just as true that there are many people that are not like you at all.

If you have any reason whatsoever to use video for your business, website, or yourself – consider using Viddler. It will feed my future children if you do.

Bijan Sabet, partner at Spark Capital and one of the lead investors in Tumblr, today on his tumblog:

“i gotta talk to @davidkarp about this. if i’m reading this correctly, it looks like Tumblr is *growing* by 200M page views per week.”

You’ll be hard pressed to find him talking too much about their downtime.

And again (because I feel as though this post could come across the wrong way), I’m willing to bet all of the money in my pockets that the Tumblr team is doing everything they can to keep their service up and running – I just think they and their investors should be talking about it more. They should be talking about how they’re pulling out all of the stops, pushing all of their resources and people at the problem, their successes and failures in that area. Simply ignoring the subject and constantly trying to talk only about the good things that are going on smells like propaganda and spin. And I seriously doubt that is intentional but that is the way it smells from here.

Note to self: Learn from this.

If only these guys did the packaging for, well, everything.

Duration: ~59minutes

In this presentation I cover how to measure success for a start up in a global market (read: the Internet). I tried my best to give an overview of some of the common pitfalls that startup companies seem to face as well as some possible solutions that have worked for me in my career. I tried to have a little fun too.

Notable links for this presentation would be:

• Viddler’s Business Services Web site
• Viddler’s video analytics announcement
• Wufoo for creating surveys

See also some excellent notes from my presentation by Scott Meade.

LessConf was thoroughly enjoyable and I felt privileged to have been part of it. Thanks to everyone in attendance for putting up with me for an hour.

Today it changes again. I’ve decided that my personal blog being ‘named’ my name just wasn’t working. I’ve known this for a long time but I didn’t do anything about it because I wasn’t sure what to do. Finally I got sick and tired of thinking about it and just decided to name it after what it has already become, rather than naming it something I’d like it to become. If that makes any sense.

As of today this blog, which is still going to be my personal Web site in all of the glory that it has come to be, is known as First Initial, Last Name – The official Web site of Colin Devroe.

For several years I have admired the ‘blogs’ that have been branded with their own names yet are run by one or very few people. If you read this blog with any regularity you can probably guess the forthcoming list, but here it is anyway: Daring Fireball run by John Gruber, Waxy.org by Andy Baio, Avalonstar by Bryan Veloso, Waking Ideas by Daniel Nicolas, Monday by Noon by Jon Christopher – and many, many others. I’m listing my friends who are good examples because, well, they are my friends and this is my blog and I can do that sort of thing.

This doesn’t mean that I put my own personal blog in this same line up. I don’t. It isn’t worthy. Also, some of these examples shouldn’t be classified as blogs. Daring Fireball is a business. It is the way John feeds his family. It just so happens that John’s business is “blogging”. This site will never be a Daring Fireball.

So First Initial, Last Name it is. I may grab an appropriate domain name for it, at some point, but I’ve always done more than fine with cdevroe.com so I don’t see that happening any time soon. Who types in domain names more than once or twice anyway, really? You should have subscribed to this site by now.

Side note: I’ve recently added the Share This button to my site (come to this post to see it). If you feel that anything I share on this site is worthy of letting others know about, please consider using this button to make it quick and easy to share the post, photo, or video on your service of choice.

Thanks to all of you that subscribe, read, and participate on my site. I really do appreciate it.

I’ve seen this reported in a few places, that Sprint is going to spend $100,000,000 on a marketing campaign aimed directly against the iPhone.  Why am I the only one that loves this?

For the first time in nearly a year, Apple is actually going to get some competition.  iPhone knock-offs do not count as competition.  The Instinct, and more specifically this marketing campaign, is something I would consider real competition.  They are using Apple’s own tricks against them (see: the Mac vs. PC marketing campaign).

Some of the points these commercials pick on are related more to AT&T’s EDGE network than the iPhone itself, but that’s ok with me.  The point is, Sprint’s EVDO and GPS features in the Instinct are better than the current iPhone’s EDGE and “location aware” features.  The interface might not be as good, but that is besides the point.

If this campaign forces Apple to move even one-step faster than they would otherwise, or if this makes AT&T and Apple make EDGE faster, the “location aware” features better, or the new iPhone hardware even $1 cheaper than they would have – then I am all for this campaign reaching as many eye balls as possible.

Competition has always been good for the consumer.  As much as I love my Apple products, I want them to have the stiffest competition possible if it means I will end up with even better products than I might have otherwise.

Be sure to go over to Gizmodo and watch the commercials.

Source: Sprint Spending $100 Million to Kick iPhone in the Nuts (iPhone Wearing Cup)

Scoble’s argument is that companies doing really great things in Israel may, or may not be, getting the same type of PR that companies in Silicon Valley are.

I’d argue that you don’t have to run your company on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea in order to see the same effect.  We at Viddler, in my opinion, are doing some really great things, have big plans, and are doing it for far less than our competition.  However we seldom receive any “press” related to some of the moves we’re making.  One could easily argue that this is a good thing and that we can publicly operate in relative stealth mode – but sometimes it hurts more than it helps.

As a for instance: If I was the Technology Evangelist for a video-sharing site based out of Silicon Valley – do you think my post about what Flickr video means to the rest of the industry would have gone relatively unnoticed by the online press?  I doubt it.  Do I think my post should have gone unnoticed? Yes.  Because I didn’t say anything that any one else wasn’t already thinking.  Sometimes the weight of the words written by those in Silicon Valley are held in too high regard, and I wouldn’t want that to happen to us either.

At the end of the day, I believe Viddler can be successful with or without the PR that is generated mainly by “buzz”.  Buzz may indeed help to spread your message (hopefully the right one) but it definitely not a key to sustainability.  Sustainability comes from building a valuable product or service, wisdom in the marketplace, execution of vision, and “picking the low-hanging fruit” instead of leaving it behind.  If you don’t do that, it wouldn’t matter how many posts Mike Arrington writes about your company.

I get the point. I see the strategy. And, I can’t really blame anyone for spreading their work all over the place in order to get exposure from each of the communities (or audiences as some like to call them) that each of these services have worked very hard to foster.

But is this strategy a good one? Is the benefit great enough to actually recommend this type of marketing? I don’t believe it is, but I’m willing to learn otherwise.

WineLibraryTV is obviously one of the flagship video podcasts that uses the Viddler player. Each episode, since they are embedded on the show’s main Web site, get thousands if not tens of thousands of views. These numbers do not directly reflect the entire audience, since they offer their shows also in Quicktime format for playing within iTunes, iPod, etc. From what I’ve been able to research – the number of people that download the Quicktime format of the show far exceed the number of people that watch the show in the Viddler player.

All of that being said; WineLibraryTV still uploads their videos to YouTube (and maybe other sites too?). Perhaps the strategy here is to, hopefully, get some viewers through YouTube back to their main site. This strategy seems to make sense, but when you look at their YouTube account you see that most episodes only have around 100 views on them. In the realm of WineLibraryTV, that is nothing.

But, some may say “Why not? It doesn’t hurt!”. This might be true, and one could also argue that with services like TubeMogul, it is downright easy. But, one has to ask themselves if they’d rather spread themselves out all over the Internet, or be able to strictly control their brand.

As you know, I’ve been putting together a strategy of “Bringing it all together” wherein I’m starting to take much more control over what I “put out there” and how it is displayed, shared, etc. So perhaps my opinion is skewed and I’m missing something – but really – I feel that if someone’s content is good enough, it won’t matter where they put it. People will come, watch, and interact.

This post was prompted by my seeing this: “We just posted loads of clips all over the freakin’ place!“. When I loaded up the list of places and videos and the links to each, I was amazed (ok, I even LOLed a little). I’m sitting here wondering if this strategy has worked for them or not. Wondering if it was worth the effort or – if it diluted their brand at all.

Maybe I’ll have to do some further research through interviewing people that have done both. Ze Frank comes to mind as someone that has controlled his brand extremely well (in my opinion). Perhaps I’ll ask him and someone who has spread themselves all over to see if either strategy has its own set of benefits.

I’m eager to learn. Opinions?

This article was first posted to Business Logs, almost exactly as you see it below, and was also featured in a magazine.

Speaking from experience, using buzzwords can actually do you more harm than good, especially when you have no idea what you’re talking about.

This topic has been documented before and I’m probably reiterating the feelings of many with this article but I was recently pushed over the edge on this whole “I used Ajax to build this product so it must be good” attitude that we’re seeing so much.

To use an analogy, let’s look at the automobile. An automobile, for most is a “device” which carries yourself and your family from point A to point B. Unless you’re an enthusiast, or a grease-monkey ( I use this term with the utmost respect because I used to be one ), your vehicle is just something you use for this service. Typically when buying a new vehicle, you’ll check consumer reports and various other resources to be sure that the car you’re buying is stable, safe, and will do well for the area you live in or the purposes you need it for. I’d say that most consumers rarely “look under the hood” and buy automobiles specifically because it uses a specific motor spec, or transmission technology. In other words, most people do not care what is in the car, just that the car performs well.

The same should be for Web applications or services. The fact that the product or service was built using Ajax, Ruby on Rails, or any other popular buzz-worthy technology should be of little consequence if your product or service is useful, usable, feature-rich, and stable.

When using a service like eBay, which millions of people use each and every day, do you think that people care what technologies eBay is using to bring its service to their customers? Not at all. On the contrary, the only thing that customers of eBay care about is uptime and stability. As long as the service works for the duration of their usage, and is always available, they could care less what is going on behind-the-scenes. I believe the same applies to my automobile analogy. Unless your car fails to start in the morning, chances are you’ll never care about what is going on under the hood.

The buzzword trap

Misusing buzzwords can also trap you. Stepping away from product-marketing using buzzwords for a moment, let’s suppose that you’ve added all of the most recent buzz words to your resume and turned it in to several companies. You could be trapped the very moment that you’re called to task on any one of those technologies.

When I said “speaking from experience” I was not talking about myself. There was a time I had a job where my boss was put in his position based solely on his use of buzzwords. Every person under him knew it, as did he. Several times he was called out on not knowing what he claimed to, and each time that happened his credibility and value was eaten away. It was not long before those that were under him, were moved into position higher than he – including me.

Market your product to those that need it

Using buzzwords to market your product is not a bad idea. It just narrows your audience so much that you’re probably missing out on the big picture. By defining your product in simple, easy-to-understand terms, you’ll capture the entire audience. You won’t leave anyone out in the cold, wondering what your service does. By marketing in this manner you will end up marketing your product to those that need it not just to those that think its “cool” that you’ve used a specific technology to pull it off.

This isn’t to say that some products are specifically built for programmers and the best bit of marketing you might have for your product is to drop buzzwords. For those situations I suppose its fitting. However, if the only thing your product has going for it is the fact that you’ve used Ajax, don’t expect it to get much attention after the initial buzz-burst.