social networking Archives - Page 2 of 2

What about your people?

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

All our startups, businesses and brands have their people. It’s members, it’s customers. The humans that matter in whatever we do. So how do we connect with them? Not talk to them or worse, at them, but how do we really connect with them?

Here’s what we are doing at rentoid. We are having an coffee session in the CBD of melbourne (our home city) where members can come and grab an espresso and simply chat. If only 1 person turns up, that’s fine by us. Because that one person matters as much as the 250,000 others. In fact to them, they are the only person that matters.

The discussion will be whatever the people want it to be about. Not a contrived focus group. What matters is making a connection with them, being a group of people trying to help each other, breaking down the traditional corporate facade. Not having any gatekeepers. And quite frankly we can’t wait.

If you’re in Melbourne came and meet the rentoid team for a chat and an espresso on us before work. We can chat about startups, marketing, life and maybe even rentoid. We’ll be at Journal in Flinders lane. All the details are here.

When’s the last time you took time out to hang with your people?

Mass customization

Posted on May 17, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a few categories or Industries which have been revolutionized by Mass Customization:

T-shirts (Threadless & Neighborhoodies)

TV (Youtube & Joost)

Handbags (Elemental Threads)

Journalism (Blogs & podcasting)

Newspapers (RSS)

Job Seeking (Aggregation & feeds)

Book publishing (Lulu)

Tourism (the web in general)

Luxury goods (fractional ownership)

Music (itunes)

Networking (facebook & social apps)

In fact there’s just too many to mention.

But the real question is this: If it hasn’t hit your industry yet, why not and what are you doing about it?

One piece of advice

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

If you could offer entrepreneurs one piece of advice what would it be?

Start up blog’s is this: Don’t die wondering.

I’m sure all 20,000 monthly startup blog readers want to hear yours. Add them to the comments or email them to me and I’ll post them on an upcoming blog entry with your name / blog beside it.

Ahead of their time

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a meme from the Cluetrain Manifesto guys. It was written some 9 years ago and still rings true. The predictions herein are still evolving today, and yet some corporations still haven’t got it.

Start ups out there; invest 5 minutes with the ideas below, embrace them and you’ll be well ahead of the game.

[slideshare id=7027&doc=cluetrain-28722&w=425]

Fun parks and CBD’s

Posted on March 27, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

In reality there are two ways we can define websites. They’re either Fun Parks or Central Business Districts.

Startup blog definitions:

Fun park: A website which is primarily in existence for the entertainment of its users. A place to enjoy, socialize, have fun and waste time.

Central Business District (CBD): A website which has a commercial function from it’s inception and is essentially there to assist people in trade.

Examples of each include:

Fun parks	CBD’s
Youtube	Ebay
Facebook	Paypal
Flickr	Amazon
Hot or not	Lulu

Sure, there’s some overlap, but it’s the insights behind the two variants that matter.

Fun parks are ‘fun’. They’re easy to use and addictive in nature. They tend to spread quicker and go viral because there’s less risk. We’re not being asked to spend money, just enjoy the rides. So the fun park fills up quickly, gets popular and the owners monetize them by selling advertising billboards to all the eyeballs in the fun park. Eventually the park becomes overcrowded and people start to leave. They tend to have a rotating user base.

CBD’s are useful. Sometimes fun, but usually more serious and offer ‘value’. The commercial function is built in to the site, hence it doesn’t need to ‘monetize’ itself. People tend to investigate more, take longer to put their name down and join site. But once the do, they often become evanaglists and do the marketing for the site. They build more slowly, maybe take years, but usually end up with a more loyal user base. And rightfully end up more profitable. (profit as defined by yield)

Both are valid, both are evolving. If you’re a start up, it just pays to know which category you fit into.

Social Networking – let’s get physical

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Ok – so we’ve all worked out that we can now find each other on line. That there’s more people than we thought with similar interests, and that connecting with them can be mutually beneficial.

Now; get off line and get out there.

Get connected physically. Nothing beats facetime and smart social networking organizations are getting back to basics. Creating old school events like business networks such as Rotary have been doing for years. Old is the new new.

If you’re in Melbourne (which I am) get along to the Hive. The Hive is a new entrepreneurs network started by some savvy entrepreneurship students in Melbourne.

Their premise is simple. Come along, hear some successful entrepreneurs speak, meet other entrepreneurs. Communicate, collaborate and corroborate. It’s free and valuable.

You can check it out here and here. They run a good show for some youngsters.