It’s absolutely amazing that Google has created a virtuous information arms race in which experts are competing with each other for web traffic by giving away their most interesting information.
Interesting content means links which means organic web search traffic which means more clients.
How amazing is it that businesses have been incentivised to be interesting.
You used to be a toolmaker. You used to be all about organising information. What happened ?
Forget competing with Facebook and go make some amazing new tools.
Creating a successful social networking site is like starting a successful new nightclub, it isn’t about solving problems it’s about being cool, and being cool ain’t what you’re about.
You’ve got cash and smart people so go invent some bad-ass new tool to take on a really big problem.
Google PagePay
Micro-payments, so bloggers can charge half a cent (or pence if you roll that way) for someone to read a full post.
Mirco-payments would change the world, a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t monetizable would become monetizable, a whole bunch of people would be able to get paid for doing what they love.
Solve the “I love to do it but I can’t get paid for it problem”.
Google Cred (ibility)
Use your mad data props and data mining skillz to record and assess predictions made by pundits and public ‘experts’.
Google can tell me what I want to know it’s time it helped me work out who was worth listening to.
“Won’t added accountability cause people to be less likely to make public predictions ???” Good, if it causes people with back predictive powers to stop talking as if they were experts that’s a win.
And how great is it going to be to find out that the most reliable economic predictor didn’t go to standford, it’s some guy who no one has ever heard of who runs a beans farm in some out of the way place.
Solve the “Who do I listen to” problem.
No doubt the observation below is well known to customer support veterans but for new MISVs taking customer support emails for the first time it’s worth knowing, meaning I wish someone had told me 
Often (but not always) the first email I receive from a customer with a problem or question seems a little rude.
At first I was a little taken aback, offended even. But time and time again their second email, their response to my reply, is much more polite and friendly.
In fact, the less friendly the first email the more friendly the customer is once they realize that you, a real person, will respond and care about their problem or question.
Obviously the customer isn’t trying to be rude it’s just they expect to get the run around, they expect to not be considered important. Once you show that you do care life gets much easier.
So i guess the lesson is to always keep your cool, be polite and assume the best of that person on the other side of the interwebs, a cranky email probably isn’t an attack on you and your product, it’s just someone who wants your help.
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Answer
I’ve been suprised at how you can notice the effect of pushing content out there.
I spend a week creating articles, tutorials and other content, and a month later I can see the effect.
Admittedly there is a lot of work for a small reward but I guess the theory is that it’s cumulative over time. The content you put out today is still bringing up qualified traffic in a years time.
However the work required to create content that will draw people in so they can see the benefits of your product does make one thing clear to me :
If you can make a product that is so remarkable or useful that people naturally want to tell everyone else about it, you are set.
People normally don’t tell other people about the furniture shops they go to, but Ikea customers do. People usually don’t put stickers identifying their PC manufacturer on their car, but mac users do.
So far my guess as to how to create such a product is :
- It has to be different.
- It has to have a character/personality/value system behind it.
I guess it doesn’t even have to be good, it just has to be something people identify with.
I mean for example, PDF editors seem to be popular. I wonder if you could create a product called “PedantPDF” designed specifically for people who care about spelling, grammar and details. The top of the homepage could just say
“Details Matter. Raising quality since 2010″.
Features could be added to check image quality or file size for possible improvements.
I mean, maybe that’s a bad idea, but maybe a core group of people who are proud of being picky would rally around it.
Just a made up example.
* It was deliberate
Ok it’s lame but I don’t care
Real programmers often end up explaining stuff to the person who started off explaining it to them
Real programmers have written programs for imaginary hardware
Real programmers think that maybe one day the web will take off
Real programmers regard databases as ‘cheating’
Real programmers make their girlfriends compose shopping lists in RDF
Real programmers think the next big thing will be usenet
Real programmers have sold scripts for in excess of $1000 a line
Real programmers remember ‘No Hireing’ DHH because his indenting was not up to scratch
Real programmers have written programs for an operating system that less than 100 people use
Real programmers think SICP has too much fluff
Real programmers have both recieved and given death threats in comments
Real programmers sold at least one university assignment to a bulgarian they met on irc
Real programmers steal Steve Jobs’ cars’ license plate
Real programmers have proposed marriage based on code quality alone
Real programmers have joined billion row tables unnecessarily to irritate a DBA
Real programmers can often detect a sites PageRank by smell alone
Real programmers have considered ways of programming via musical instrument
Real programmers have requested the job title of “The Big Kahuna”
Real programmers were granted the title
Real programmers have telneted into an mmo
Real programmers used to whistle 1200 baud modem handshakes back in the day
Real programmers still talk about it
Real programmers still remember the bbs that Mel used to hang on
Real programmers have broken hardware with software
Real programmers have asked a programming question on a date
Real programmers profiled and optimized their first hello world program
Real programmers tried to get funding for Knuth.tv
- Infographics can be very viral. People love infographics, I know I do.
-Post frequency / schedule matters a lot. Posting every day can be very powerful.
