Tag: blogging

Collective Intelligence

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You are in a room full of people.

You are speaking to them on stage and have their full attention.

You tell them to pretend all the people in the world are in this room

You ask the people who believe they have ‘above average intelligence’ to raise their hand.

All the people in the entire room  raise their hand.

The fact is, exactly half will be above and half will be below… we all assume we are the smart guys, the good guys, the people make things better…. we all believe we are adding positively to the collective intelligence.

But collective intelligence has a slight nuance. It only works when we let people with specialist knowledge fill in our own knowledge gaps and or take the lead in areas of expertise. If instead, we take the average viewpoint of the collective audience we usually end up with a pile of crap. Collective intelligence can only occur when we segregate and allocate information requirements, not when we aggregate. The latest proof of this is Youtube.com

youtube logo

Once upon a time youtube was a reliable source of cool and important videos. Circa 2005 the most viewed, most discussed for the day, week or month was an intelligent reflection what mattered. Now it’s a mish-mash of over produced pop songs, inane  comedians, and soft porn. A sad failure of the digital ‘Wisdom of crowds’. Youtube is still incredibly valuable, it just takes a little more digging these days.

The point for entrepreneurs is this: The crowd is not always right. Taking all advice from the crowd on how to iterate your product, service or website could result in a very average product. Intelligent design is usually the work of intelligent people.

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Quote of the Year

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

“We’re living in a hyper accelerated era where advances in technology have doomed our culture. Before anything interesting can develop it’s blogged to death, marketed and raped until the next hot thing comes along, then repeat process”

Annon – As found in the comments section of www.nowtoronto.com

I am on Twitter – Click here to chat with me

Social media – Numbers are irrelevant

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I saw this little 1 minute video from Seth Godin (Who I used to worship, and now just ‘like’) and had to post it here. Be sure to read my comments below the video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0h0LlCu8Ks]

Why the numbers are irrelevant to me….

  • My blog has few promotional elements on it (they’ll find me if I deserve it)
  • I only follow people on twitter I know. I want a conversation. Mind you if you @sammartino at some point I will follow you…. yes I’m interested in conversation.
  • Quantity loses to quality every time. Scores are misleading. Numbers are pointless.
  • Yes you can meet people on line and then create strong physical friendships. I have many times.

In summary I’d say this. If it doesn’t make sense in the real world (physical life) then there’s a good chance it doesn’t make sense on line. In ‘real life’, that is our off line life we think of our friendships and even business contacts in terms of quality. We don’t go around trying to make 1000 friends and wear a t-shirt that says ‘I have 1000 friends’. Rather, we prefer to have strong meaningful relationships which are one on one. Where both parties benefit. We don’t have a list in spread sheet with the people we’ve met. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?

Startups should be using social media to build relationships – not gathering numbers.

From now on I’ve changed my twitter link below on my blog posts. Can you see the change?

I am on Twitter – Click here to chat with me


Best in the world (How to be)

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You are reading the number 1 startup blog in the world! Pretty cool huh. Just Google the words ‘Start up blog’ anywhere in the English speaking world.

It wasn’t always that way – when I started I was over 100 pages deep in Google. Now I have more than 30,000 readers.

Number 1

Fast forward nearly 4 years, a blog entry every single day, on the same general topic (Startups & entrepreneurship), sharing knowledge and practicing what I preach I’ve made it to number 1. There were no tricks, no SEO, no overt social media promotion, not even the .com domain. It came down to 2 things:

1. Consistent output – high frequency of delivery

2. Useful content.

That’s it.

If you want to win, to be the best, then work towards it every day.

I am on Twitter – Click here to follow me

Difference between traditional & social media

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

This is the difference between traditional and social media in one simple chart (albeit a little fuzzy). Forget all the crap you have read on how social media differs to traditional media. This is it summarized right here on startup blog in terms which matter for business:

Difference between traditional & social media

I’ve made some notes above. Don’t believe what you’ve heard – old media isn’t dead – sure it’s more expensive for the return, but it still kicks but. When rentoid was featured on a nightly news TV show as a positive story, we had more hits that one day than we did for the entire year. And we had been and are investing a tremendous amount of time on new and social media. It’s been a two year effort.

If you want a few other qualitative ideas to take with you then here’s a few:

  • They work better together
  • Social media is incredibly slow but has a compound effect
  • If I had endless funds available for media, I’d still prefer traditional media (for now)

These comments are based on fact and real experience in Australia from my business rentoid.com which has had heavy exposure in both.

I am on Twitter – Click here to follow me

Start Up Blog live v2.0

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Given the success of Startup blog live this week, I’m doing it again next week.  We had over 50 people tune in, with virtually no planning, or promotion at all, and had a 1.5 hour Q & A on all things Entrepreneurship and Start up. I really enjoyed it.

Steve Sammartino on twit cam

So I’ll be back on live this Wednesday Night 7.30pm (Australian EST) on www.Twitcam.com

– To see what time that is in your part of the world click here

– I’ll be doing it using my twitter log in which is @sammartino

And you’ll see on twitter when I’m live – and I’ve got the technology sorted now which is really simple to use. In fact, I reckon I came up with some of the best ideas I’ve ever had while talking. So spread the word to your entrepreneurial friends, they’ll love it too.

Best question of the night wins a rad Pez Dispenser as show below:

See you Wednesday night!