Joel on Twitter

I still have mixed feelings about Twitter, but I generally agree with the points that Joel makes. In particular I think that if you can do more listening than you do talking you can maximize its usefulness as a tool. He writes:

Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly awful way to exchange thoughts and ideas. It creates a mentally stunted world in which the most complicated thought you can think is one sentence long. It’s a cacophony of people shouting their thoughts into the abyss without listening to what anyone else is saying. Logging on gives you a page full of little hand grenades: impossible-to-understand, context-free sentences that take five minutes of research to unravel and which then turn out to be stupid, irrelevant, or pertaining to the television series Battlestar Galactica. I would write an essay describing why Twitter gives me a headache and makes me fear for the future of humanity, but it doesn’t deserve more than 140 characters of explanation, and I’ve already spent 820.

The other day I was having a conversation with my parents about the purpose of Twitter. I argued that it was to attain useful information. I use it to find interesting articles and conversations. I think the key here is that it helps me find them. The entirety of these conversations does not actually occur on the Twitter platform. My parents argued that it was yet another tool of my generation that provides entertainment to the every-growing portion of the population who have a short attention span. The difference between “learning” and “empty enjoyment” may help illuminate the segmented market of Twtitter users. So, when you use Twitter, do you find yourself gaining knowledge; do you “learn” something of interest or value? Or is it just a way to pass them time; a vehicle for empty enjoyment? I think the answers to these questions are important for the impact Twitter will have on my generation.

Becoming an “expert”

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert, and in the spectrum of knowing, taking a view, and acting, I’m somewhere between knowing and taking a view. Below is just what I’ve observed, I’m not speaking as someone who has mastered these stages.

When I worked in Sales and Trading this summer, I was given one piece of advice more than any other: take a view. All the full-time employees expected each summer analyst to read the Wall Street Journal and talk to other traders about the latest market activity. But, many people had difficulty translating the knowledge they acquired into a coherent view on the market. It’s one thing to know the price of oil relative to equities and to read why the “experts” think the trend will either continue or cease. It’s quite another to develop your own genuine view on the subject.

It’s tricky too. In stating your opinion, where does regurgitation end and originality begin? My answer would be that forming an original opinion requires a return to primary sources – a study of the original facts or statistics, combined with a critical review of many secondary sources. So, you aren’t taking a view, but rather only being knowledgeable if you restate the opinion of one of the senior researchers at the firm or mimic the column you read in the opinion section. Taking a view requires the examination of original data and the analysis of diverse and contending readings in order to figure out what you might be missing. Only then can a person advance from simply knowing to taking a view.

Now that I am transitioning from the finance world and to the startup world, I see the same principles being important. There is a stark difference between knowing what web products do, who started them, and how they were funded (this is the “memorize TechCrunch” approach to becoming an expert) and being able to predict which will be successful and then explain why.

Some mistake simple knowledge for expertise. In fact, expertise = (knowing + taking a view + acting). And knowing, taking a view, and acting must occur in this order. Which is why it’s so important for anyone new to a particular industry to not only take in information that you read online or elsewhere (the knowing) but also engage with it (the taking a view) by talking with other people, be it in person or virtually. Laying the foundations of knowledge and taking a view early will increase your chances of success in action beyond the basal rate of luck. And then you may become an expert.

Real-Time Rewards

Fred Wilson recently made a post about rewards and monetization of the foursquare platform. He writes:

“the most interesting way to reward a checkin is to provide some real value at the moment of checkin. For example, when I show up a my local cafe in the morning and checkin, I’d love to occasionally get a message on my checkin screen that says ‘you’ve checked in for the tenth time and earned a free espresso drink.”

With respect to online communities such as foursquare, I’ve always wondered how powerful the incentive of gaining new badges really is from the users perspective. Sure, it is a status thing and can be addictive, but is it sustainable long-term? Perhaps tech early adopter types hold the value of a certain number of points in high regard, but I don’t think this is generalizable to the general public. Keep in mind that many of these early-adopters are either in the tech business, or hope to be. Active engagement in these online communities, and the building of a significant “web presence” can lead to career rewards.  As I outlined in a previous post, both venture capital firms and startups value people who are actively engaged on the web. However this incentive isn’t something that is generalizable to those outside of the tech world.

But, everyone likes to save money. I think the more sustainable incentive for users is the accumulation of rewards. In this case, rewards are powerful because they are granted in real time, and the user is being rewarded monetarily (through a discount) by using the service. My guess is that we will see a trend of real-time rewards replacing “badges” and “points” as an incentive for usage in many online communities.

However, I think we’ll see real-time rewards limited to national brands, at least initially. National brands provide the most scalable targets from an operational standpoint- one national affiliate can give discounts all over the country. These will be the early adopters, followed only later by “mom and pop” shops. As Chris Dixon recently pointed out on his blog:

The problem is that, for the most part, these local business either don’t think of the web as an important medium or don’t understand how to use it.

So what does this mean? If location-based services like foursquare discover that they can best engage users through real-time rewards then they will quickly move to put in place deals with vendors to give their users discounts. Because of the factors outlined above, I think this will be initially limited to national vendors, meaning a delay in the “going local” trend that many have talked about with respect to these types of location services.

A few weeks ago at the Hackers and Founder event in NYC, Udorse demoed its new iPhone Rewards Camera App (full disclosure: I plan on joining the Udorse team this summer). I’m excited about the product because I think it plays into emerging market signals. Real-time rewards delivered to your phone is highly motivating for users. In this case, I predict that businesses will be willing to pay per action (and provide discounts) for a qualified user of the product.

But the true power of these real-time rewards lies in the sharing of these rewards with a wider social network. The ability of a business to leverage an existing user’s network to pull in new customers through discounts is scalable in an exponential way. The promise (and delivery) of real-time rewards can pull in new users in a way that the promise of new badges and points cannot.

Let’s quit the gimmick of writing open letters

Recently I’ve seen a lot of “open letters” circulating on the Internet. The ones that I’ve come across usually have been addressed to tech CEO’s like Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt or Steve Ballmer, or to their companies: for example “an open letter to Google.” The word “open” (as opposed to private, direct letters) connotes the idea that “if I am open in my letter to you, then you should be open in your response to the public.” The logic suggests that when the company doesn’t respond (as is the case 99% of the time), it reflects that they are not as “open” as the original letter writer and fail to meet standards of accountability to the public. And isn’t that an important aspect of what makes a company “not evil”: that they are engaged in an open discussion with the world?

But this logic is off base. It is unrealistic to think that, in terms of openness, a public company can be judged in the same way as a single customer or a blogger. CEOs cannot and should not be expected to respond personally and publicly to every critical letter they receive; if they did their boards should give them the boot for wasting the shareholders’ money. The real measure of responsiveness is whether the company considers taking actions that reflect the suggestions they get from large numbers of their customer base, and when it can’t respond positively, the company its position persuasively.

The perception of taking the high road in terms of openness is not the only reason people use the open letter medium. Formatting the ideas as a letter allows the author to be quirky and dispose readers to believe that the writer is effective and that the intended recipient should read it. The reader should be excited because, after all, this is not just another opinion piece, but a letter that Steve Jobs might actually read! This is the implicit promise of such letters, yet are they really read by their intended recipient at a higher rate than opinion pieces? Probably not.

Let’s quit the gimmick of writing open letters. If you want to influence a company, forget the open letters to CEO’s. Be more direct about the audience you are really reaching: the consumers. Write an opinion piece and ask customers to vote with their own emails and dollars not spent with the company.

Cartoon yourself in Photoshop

I just finished creating a cartoon image of myself to use as an avatar in my Twitter profile. I think using a cartoon image is a pretty neat alternative to a plain image. I searched the web for sites that would convert an image into cartoon for free, and didn’t find anything that really matched what I wanted. So, I decided to try to do it myself in Photoshop.

I’m fairly new to Photoshop, so this was my first attempt at creating something from scratch without referencing online manuals and tutorials. In celebration of this, I’ve decided to post some of the techniques I used in creating the final image. If you are impatient like me, you can scroll to the bottom to view the final product.

Step 1) First, take a picture of yourself that has a nice big shot of your face. You’ll continually reference this picture as you create your cartoon. It will help you determine where to place each part of the face as well as shadows. The key is to create new layers, and hide completed layers while you work so that you can refer back to the original photo image. Create a new layer, and label it “outline.” In the new layer, begin to outline the features of your face, as seen below. I used a black brush, size 9. If you have difficulty with a the freehand brush, hold down shift so that your lines are more smooth.

Step 2) Once you have the outline complete, color the entire space (or just the skin area if you want to be more meticulous) a beige color. I used #b1856c. Next, set the color to your hair tone, and use the pen tool to go around the outline of your hair. Do the same for your eyebrows. For the eyes, use the pen tool to create the white space, the brown circles, and the eye pupil. I added a little white circle in the middle, which creates a little glare. It actually looks kind of wierd if you leave this part out.

Step 3) Create the nose, mouth, and add  a few shadows. For the nose, select the eyedropper tool to get a shadow color from the photograph. Then use the paint brush tool to outline the lower part of the nose. Add a Gaussian blur at a 3.0 radius to smooth it out to make it look more like a shadow. Apply the blur until it looks right. For the top part of the nose, do the same thing but with a lighter skin tone.

I found the mouth to be the trickiest part. It always looked a bit off when I tried to outline it using the pen tool. So I went back to the original picture, used the lasso tool to cut out just my lips, and then applied a dry brush filter (Filer->Artistic->Dry Brush). I used Brush Size 8, Brush Detail 9 and Texture 1.  Once this is done, insert the image into your working file. Use the erase tool to get rid of any excess skin color, so that all that is shown are the beginning of the red lips. If you want, keep a little bit of the shadow right above the lips, I though this added some nice depth.

Why not just do the whole face this way? It really doesn’t look much like a cartoon if you do the whole face like this, but I’d suggest you to utilize this method for any features you have trouble with.

Go back to the original picture and make a note of where the shadows fall on your face. Use the same technique you used for your nose to add a few shadows (perhaps add an even heavier blur to make it more subtle.) For my cartoon, I added shadows above the chin on my face, and below the chin on my neck.

Step 4) Add color to your background and whatever clothing you are wearing. To find nice color combinations, check out Adobe’s kuler. On the shirt, I added some shadows for texture (using the pen tool and a slightly darker shade of the color I was using for my shirt) and also a few buttons.

That’s it! It doesn’t take too long, and looks pretty cool as a Twitter avatar. I’m not a Photoshop expert, but its pretty fun to take a stab at things like this once you have the basic skills. Check out how the finished product looks as my avatar on twitter.

Start a Blog. Now.

This website represents my first venture into the world of blogging. I have long considered posting my thoughts on the web, but have always been limited by a few factors, least among them being time. I figure that many people like the idea of having a blog and sharing there thoughts, but are constrained for one reason or another. So, I’ve decided to give a quick list the hesitations I had about entering the blogosphere, and the reasons why these hesitations subsided.

1) Having a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a personal webpage is simply narcissistic.

I’ll admit that I used to suffer from the same syndrome that is usually associated with the generation before me, not my own: I am not quite sure who would want to hear what I have to say.

Yet, my generation sees these elements as necessary to stay connected to their world, not as narcissism. As of January 2010, Facebook had 26 million users ages 18-24, representing 25% of their user base.

This obsession with establishing an online presence is not limited to my peers. What is most staggering about the Facebook population is that the highest concentration of users are ages 35-54, making up 29% of the user base. Granted, this is a wider range of age, but it still discounts the theory that establishing an online presence is something that only the college generation finds important. In fact, according to an April 2009 comScore report, in the U.S, 14 % of Twitter users are between 55 and 64, nearly the same amount of users as those between 18 and 24, which accounted for about 12 % of the total.

As for the blogging world, there are an average of 900,000 new blog posts in any 24 hour period, and 133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002. World internet penetration stands at about 1.7 billion, meaning there is about 1 blog for every 12 people. In light of these statistics it is clear that this is the new social norm.

So, given this changing landscape, where an individual having a web presence this is becoming a societal norm, this excuse breaks down.

2) I have great ideas, but I like to read, not write.

Let’s be honest, you may have great ideas, and you may like to read, but you the real reason you don’t like to write is because you’re lazy. Yes I said it. And it’s not okay.

I have long been a passive participant in online forums. Realgm.com for basketball. Hacker News and Reddit for Tech and Startup News. These sites sparked new thoughts and ideas, many of which I am passionate about for a few hours, then I moved to the next thing. I tricked myself into thinking that I was absorbing all the information, and didn’t need  a blog, or a place to express my ideas.

Writing down your thoughts and ideas forces you to think about them in a linear and logical way. It forces the critical thinker to examine all aspects of a given idea. What precipitated the idea, and what is the context of that idea, and what is the impact. It forces you to dig a bit deeper for statistics and other evidence that supports your theories. So, this is where the physical writing helps stimulate your thought process.

Publishing it to the world is another advantage. Often, I would have a cool idea, or take on an argument, and keep it to myself. My argument and solution was the best, and if it wasn’t who would tell me? Blogging provides an avenue for people to tell you that you are wrong. This trains your mind to think about the various angles at which your argument or insight can be refuted, and results in a much clearer and thorough expression of thought.

3) It’s really not that important

I remember reading an article that talked about how at some point during the late 90’s, individual businesses began to set up web presences. If you weren’t on the web, you couldn’t be found and did not exist. It seems that we see a similar trend, but for individuals. A strong web presence is so undervalued as a facilitator for success, and I see this trend only becoming more clear. Take a look at this Union Square Ventures job posting. They ask candidates to send them links to their online presence in place of a resume. I’ve heard similar stories of Venture Capitalists getting exposure and eventually jobs in large part due to their Twitter following.

Yet, there is still such a large part of the population that does not appreciate the significant impact a web presence can have.  It may be commonplace in the web world, but it is far from the norm among other professionals. When I worked in finance this summer, almost none of my peers utilized the tremendous power of blogging and twittering to express their ideas.

So, for job-seekers, having a blog can be the differentiating factor, particularly if it is a qualitative, writing-intensive role. When people read your blog, they feel like they know you on a personal level before even meeting you. This has tremendous power.

4) I’ll do it later, when I acquire some sort of expertise or reason for people to listen to me

This one was pretty high up there for me. I’m a college student, who has little industry experience. I thought, “I’ll definitely start blogging once I work full-time, or become an expert in online marketing, or have a successful startup business.”

Content is a great equalizer. If your content is good, internet users will find you. Besides, naturally you will get better with practice, and blogging now and honing your skills will allow you to seize the opportunity once you do have an audience.

5) I have no time.

Lies. This post has cost me 30 minutes of my day (and it shows, you say!) Perhaps, but it has allowed me to delve deeper into my ideas about why blogging is so important, and for this, I can sacrifice the 30 minutes that I usually devote to watching YouTube videos.

Now, go write down on (e)-paper your ideas about how stupid or fantastic this blog post is.

Who am I and what is this blog?

Either by choice or by chance, you’ve reached my blog. Not just my blog, but the first post of my blog. Perhaps taking a look at my inaugural post will be cool if sometime in the future I can accumulate thousands of interesting and insightful posts, all of which rank atop Google’s search results and bring me enormous fame and glory. Though this is obviously (not) the ultimate goal, there is much to do between now and then. And the first step is to introduce myself.

I’m currently a senior at Duke University, and will be graduating in the Spring of 2010 with a major in history and a minor in economics. I’ve worked at 2 profitable startups, campusdestinations.com and Peer2Peer Tutors. During my college summers, I’ve worked in wealth management, investment banking, and sales and trading. In the past few years I’ve become fascinated by all things web. So, next year the plan is to be in New York working for a startup consumer internet company full-time. I also know more about basketball and the NBA than any man should, enjoy cooking, reading, and watching movies. For more about me, check out my homepage (freely hosted through Duke!)

The reason I tell you all this is to give you a sense of what topics I’ll talk about in this blog. It will be mostly be focused on topics relating to the web. But, I’ll also spend some time discussing things that I’ve learned through my experiences that I wish I knew before I ventured on a particular journey. Also, if you are a college or high school student interested in any of the things I talked about above, I’d be happy to chat.

Hopefully when I look back at this post several years down the line, I will say “Wow, I can’t believe that was so poorly written compared to my posts since then,” rather than “Wait, I used to have a wordpress account…and I even made a few posts?”