The blurring of loyalty and friendship.

The fight of 2009/10 was MySpace vs Facebook and it was easy to see who the winner was there.  This season 2010/11 it’s “which ‘check-in’ app will win the war: Gowalla vs Foursquare”.

Both companies are working hard with local retailers to grab deals and offers as folk check in.  Your friends are your friends, but what to do when this happens….

So let me get this straight, a large retailer wants to be my friend.  I don’t think they do really.  Friendship and loyalty are based on a first encounter, a positive transaction.  A big (or little for that matter) retailer requesting friendship with no reason of foundation is just wrong.  Now, on the other hand, I might be in and out of Littlewoods so I wouldn’t mind them being my friend at all, as long as the offers are right.

When it comes to the data the retailer doesn’t really know who you are, it’s the app provider who knows who you are so the retailer can’t really send you anything that personalised.  What’s happening here is basically permission based marketing.  You’ve added me as a friend so I can market to you.  It’s the one thing that pisses of the Facebook generation.

There’s a better way, I’m just not saying what it is yet…..

Article: Just text me and I’ll be on the operating table within the hour

Picture by jynmeyer

The last few weeks have passed me by at an alarming rate. In the meantime I did have time to put together another Belfast Telegraph article for their web watch column.

You can read it here.

Work hard, play hard.

I can imagine the productivity of most companies on a Friday afternoon will start to tail.  Even more so in the tech sector when we saw Google’s home page.

Learning Pool has a pretty manic schedule but it’s done with humour, got to have a laugh. In one company I worked for me and mate use to have an array of acoustic guitars, basses and mandolins for the occasional lunchtime bluegrass jam.

I just wonder how much fun Google had putting all that together

The Bootstrap Diaries: The first 12 months…..

It seems hard to believe that on the 27th May it will be one year to the day when the Datasentiment seed was really sewn.  On that day with my Nokia E51 in hand I showed a really crude mock up of an app. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for.

So, 12 months later, what can I say.

1. It takes longer that you want it to.

Annoyingly so, I’m an impatient type at the best of times but this was difficult. Looking back though it’s happened at the right time.

2. The plan WILL change

DS then and DS are two totally different things.  The USP is a killer but it took about sixty phone calls and three mock ups to get there.  Only after Barcamp Derry did things really take shape and every line of code up until that point was scrapped.

It was the best thing that could have happened.

3. You will get answers but only IF YOU ASK!

The world will not come to you, you have to go to it.  Six months of the year was network, network and network.  Lots of good came from it, I met an awful amount of really nice, helpful good people.  You know who you are.  Yeah I met some arses too but you’ll always get that.  The skill is figuring out who the tyre kickers are.

4. Brand “you” counts.

How you project yourself, your passion (an overused word in startup land) and your conduct will either work for you or kill you off.  Ultimately it’s your choice.

Time for me to lay Open Coffee Coleraine to rest

If there’s one thing I’m short of right now it’s time.  So taking stock of things over the last few weeks and I decided that Open Coffee Coleraine is one of those things that should be left off my to do list.

Now if anyone wants to take it over, please feel free and go ahead.  There’s a Twitter feed and a little Facebook group that you can have as well.  Organising these events isn’t difficult, just phone up a coffee shop, set a date and then publicise.

It didn’t do me any harm…… I got noticed, got a startup, got employed.  So it does work.

You could say that me not having enough time is a success story.

Why Project Kelvin could actually matter.

When I was running This Is Limavady it was at the time of the whole Telehouse nonsense for Project Kelvin.

Hibernia Atlantic were promising a 40 millisecond performance increase, citing video as a beneficiary.  Thinking about it a lot more, high frequency trading is really the potential startup to do in Northern Ireland.

Some HFT networks can do 10,000 trades a second (that’s 10 every millisecond). A 40 millisecond gain would create 400 trades (one company moved their entire network for such gains so they are important).

Now with 365 * 86400 second you get 31,536,000 seconds with an increase of 400 trades a second gives 12,614,400,000 trades.  If each were to make 10p each that’s £1.2 Billion in the back pocket for shandy’s all round.

Yeah the numbers are up the spout a bit – but it does make you wonder.

Let’s have another look at those Limavady job figures….

For anyone that’s known me for a long time, you’ll know that I had a blog called thisislimavady.co.uk. Each day I’d look at the total job figures and the figures for Limavady.

Now I saw a tweet this morning saying that the number of job opportunities had risen….. So…..

Jobs available 5/5/09 – 1400

Jobs available 5/5/10 – 1354 (down 46)

Jobs in Limavady 5/5/09 – 14

Jobs in Limavady 5/5/10 – 9 (down 5)

The main concern now if the effects of the coming weekend.  Over three hundred houses go up for sale in Ballykelly.  An entire community arrives en mass.  Will this create a tipping point to increase the sales in the Limavady area?

Simon U Ford – Social Media Emotional Blackmail

An age ago in the, “I wonder if there’s any money in this Twitter lark” I downloaded a PDF, I read it and thought it was okay.  Fine, the end of.  Didn’t hear anything for a little while and then last week started receiving emails from Simon U Ford (what does the ‘U’ stand for?)

The first email was like, yeah okay. Deleted it and didn’t think anything else.  The email I received yesterday annoyed me on several counts because I personally think it’s just plain wrong to do this.

From: Simon U Ford <support@socialtraffic.biz>

Subject: Thank’s for opening up Jason?

Date: 24 April 2010 13:30:13 GMT+01:00

To: Jason Bell

Hi Jason,

The other night, I woke up screaming. Nothing unusual about
that. Except, this night, I’m sweating and thinking about
you?

Really, me! We’ve never met and you know NOTHING ABOUT ME!

I wake up and call my assistant Abigale, she’s having lunch, on the other side of the world, in London….

I bet you didn’t….

Abigale, did you see Jason Bell opened my email, but I
don’t think he downloaded my new book?

Correct I didn’t download it as I wasn’t interested in reading anything else.

I did my best Jason, I labored over that email for hours.
I applied everything I know about email copy writing. I even
called the best darn editor on the planet, Andrew Williams, Jr.
I asked him to edit it for me.

NOW THIS REALLY ANNOYS ME……..

Do you have any idea how expensive he is Jason?

Did you not do your market research assuming that only less than 1% will click on your link? Your overheads are nothing to do with me and this tactic certainly isn’t working…

Why didn’t you download my book Jason? You have no idea
what clicking that link would have done for you Jason?

It’s my choice if I wish to download or read anything. I didn’t download it because I didn’t want to. Simple, get used to it. Don’t though, get the violins out thinking I’ll change my mind because I won’t.

I’m going to give you one more chance Jason. You
will be thanking me later, the minute you realize, just how
valuable downloading my new book turned out to be.

I’ll be thanking no one because it probably comes across as the same old rubbish that all the other social media “experts” keep touting about.

Thanks for clicking it Jason,

The only think I’m clicking is that unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email…..

Simon U Ford

–

This is marketing at it’s most annoying and very worst.  It’s obvious it’s generated ala Constant Contact (even though he didn’t use Constant Contact).  The thing that drove me nuts was the pitch of waking up in the middle of the night sweating, come on give me a break.  If I ever pitched like that I’d soon know about it and if I pitched like that face to face I’d be in hospital but not pressing charges.

Simon U Ford – Please get real for a second, this route does not work!

First blog post for LearningPool blog on sentiment mining.

For those remotely interested in sentiment mining social media data, my first article for my employers at Learning Pool is now up.

Plus it has the video of the Twitter data for “just landed in” during the swine flu outbreak.

Self employed or startup in Northern or Southern Ireland? smeople.com

Just a quick heads up, there’s a new website for self employed, small business and startups called Smeople.  Founded by Rob Marr it’s there to bring like minded entreprenuer type folk together to share and help each other on.  Sounds like a plan, just wish it existed twelve months ago.

Anyway, the site is www.smeople.com and it’s free to join.