social web Archives - Steve Sammartino

Top 10 tips to learn a language

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Steve Sammartino

When it comes to starting anything new, including learning how to speak a foreign language. So here’s my top 10 tips on how to hack the language learning process using the web:

Watch free youtube lessons on speaking your preferred language. They’ve got ’em all.
Follow native speakers of that language on twitter. Here frequency & brevity is your ally.
Comment on blogs in that language to practice your written form.
Makes friends on-line with people from that country who want to learn English.
Organize skype chats with your on-line friends to practice each others language together.
Download one of the many free apps to practice in down time or while waiting for people.
Offer free on-line English lessons to speakers of the language you desire to learn.
Watch kids shows (cartoons etc) from your home country that have been translated on-line (see youtube)
Set your browser, mobile and web apps into the language you are learning.
Bonus Analogue tip – go to local restaurant and practice with waiters…

There’s never been a better time to start something worth starting.

Falling in love with infrastructure

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a list of companies who should’ve done something, yet instead, let someone else do it for them. And in being asleep at the wheel, they will never be as powerful (read relevant) again.

Yellow Pages	should have become…	Google
Encyclopaedia Britannica	should have become…	Wikipedia
RCA / Sony / BMG / EMI / Warner	should have become…	iTunes
Newspaper classifieds	should have become…	Craigs List
Trading Post	should have become…	eBay
Barns & Noble	should have become…	Amazon
Industry X	could well become…	Your startup

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The key point is this. The future doesn’t care about your legacy, or how things were done in the past, it only cares about what people actually want. And people don’t care about your existing infrastructure, they only care about themselves.

There’s a million more of these examples out there, and many more to come. The question is which industry will you disrupt because they are too in love with their existing infrastructure?

2 horse race

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Steve Sammartino

If you haven’t already read the 22 Laws of marketing – then you should. It’s a short book which really should be called the 22 laws on entrepreneurship. It seems that most of the laws are true on a category scale – the type of scale that startups with big dreams should pay attention two. recently I’ve been reminded of the law 8: The law of duality.

The Law of Duality says that “in the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.”

The most recent example of this is Twitter and Facebook. it seems as though they’ve won the social web race. Every brand or advertisement is now tagged with ‘find us on Twitter & Facebook’. We have to look pretty hard to find any of the other 400+ social networking sites. It seems the Law of duality is still true almost 2 years after it was written. It seems that certain power laws of dominance still exist, even though we all like to believe the market has fragmented and opened up for everyone….

The truth is there is only so much space in the mind. We can’t carry the baggage of too many ideas with us. So we simplify by limiting what we participate in. There’s lots new world industry examples of the law of duality.

Social: Facebook & Twitter

Search: Google & Bing

Mobile: iPhone & Android

Computers: PC & Mac

The question for internet entrepreneurs, is which new categories are still to get their number 2 player. That is where the opportunity lies.

Why geolocating is huge

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Steve Sammartino

Geo locating is getting big. Real big. Let’s take Four Square as an example; last year over 6 million people checked into over 380 million retail locations. Something is really happening here, yet the doubters are strong with their voices of incredulousness. They can’t understand why anyone cares where they are, or why they’d want to share such personal information publicly, or with their on-line friends. Rather than argue, I thought it was worth posing some of the human reasons why geolocating might be so appealing, an anthropological journey if you like.

The web wants to replicate life – Because it is a form of life. It loves to get physical, real and human… because it’s made by humans for humans.

The 3 ‘human’ reasons why geo-locating will only get bigger are:

1. Who’s here?

People want to see who else is where they are. Are their friends here to? it’s a great way for us to cross the virtual chasm into a physical reality.

2. My life is cool – I’m cool.

See how cool I am being at this particular place. it’s so cool you don’t even know where it is, and here I am…. proven via my smart phone GPS. I’m so cool, I’m teaching you the cool places to be. And I’m showing you how mobile I am and all the cool places to go to – like SXSW.

3. Reward me.

Heck, If I’m going to get a takeaway coffee everyday, I might as well go to the place that gives their Four Square mayor a free espresso on Friday or rewards you after X check ins. You want me to be loyal? You better reward me.

I feel like we are only just starting to see the potential of geo-locating in terms of startup and marketing. It really does feel like the missing link between the virtual and the physical. And for those who are concerned about privacy, like all technology, our choice is a simple one:

Embrace it, or miss out on the benefits.

Friends, fans and followers

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Humans love to count. Here’s a list of some somethings we count obsessively:

Our age
Our money
The value of our house
Salaries
The value of 401K (superannuation fund)
Population
Members
Friends, Fans, Followers
Hits, views, comments.
Market share
Percentage profit
Traffic road toll

Really, we count almost everything. None of us are immune to this human symptom of counting. It’s the ultimate technique for organising and planning, in fact it’s what makes us top of the food chain.

So the question for startups is this: What are you tools are your creating that your people count and compete with?

Mixing it up

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I’ve decided to run a few guests posts on startup blog.

I’ve never done this before and on the surface it my seem to lack purity. But here’s what I think.

The blog isn’t about me, it never has been. It’s about providing valuable information to those interested in the topic (startups, entrepreneurship, marketing). Which the guests posts will do. Heck, it might even facilitate spreading the startup blog word a little further and connect a few people…. Yep, that would be cool.