Daily I check out what’s going on in the world on CNN.com… today I see these things:
Check out the last one… do you know what number that is? I like to know how much people owe, so I worked backwords… you can see from the image below that this person owes $23 gazillion bucks… I wonder what the payment is for THAT!
What have we come to? This really makes me sick. I just got this (unapproved) comment on my JibberJobber blog:
There were some yellow flags that made me think this *might* be a spam comment:
Nonetheless, I thought maybe it was legit… but then something really caught my eye… look at the commenter’s URL:
Ripoff Report? Seriously? Someone wants a link to the ripoff report? Now my curiosity is piqued.
So I click on the link, and indeed the name of the commenter will be hyperlinked to a report on Ripoff Report. The event has to do with a doctor (vet) who apparently did something wrong…
It gets better.
The person who took their dog in to this vet is probably not the same person who left this comment. Check this out – when I click the Whois link (this one, again, from the image above):
… I find out the person who left this comment is in Amsterdam.
From this, I’m guessing that the person who is mad at his/her vet hired a person or firm to spread libelous comments on the internet, with the intention of doing regular ol’ SEO. Not cool.
In fact, quite disgusting.
Note to the vet: Dr. what’syourname (I’m not going to say here, as he/she doesn’t deserve any bad link bait or negative SEO (yes, it’s in the top image, but search engines aren’t smart enough to figure that out)), there are tactics to get rid of this that are quite easy…. drop me a note and I’m happy to introduce you to my colleagues who specialize in this type of stuff (or go to ReachCC.com to find them yourself).
Note to person who is responsible for this filth: thanks a lot. I was just getting my faith in humanity restored, and then I have to see this crap.
Mark Hovind will join us on July 21st to discuss his analysis (deeeeep analysis) on recessions, and his insight into this recession and where we are headed.
You can learn more about Mark at Job Bait.
My site is JibberJobber.com – you can sign up for a lifelong free account to organize your job search and track your personal and professional relationships (it is a personal relationship manager, much like a customer relationship manager, but for an individual).
Also, if you are on LinkedIn, you need to check out my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD. You can see the menu here, and testimonials here and here.
Look forward to seeing you on the webinar!
(I wrote this blog post to be the landing page after you register for the webinar… if you haven’t registered, you can do it from here)
UI -> User Interface… we still get the occassional email that says “I have NO idea what JibberJobber is/does! What is it?”
I’ve lived in this world for too long to be unbiased, so we take this feedback seriously and work on little tweaks to help people get it. Here’s the old home page (the stuff in the YELLOW is what we were changing – it wasn’t really YELLOW! Also, I think this is the 3rd or 4th version):
And here’s what we just changed it to (one minute ago):
What do you think?
I started blogging three years ago this month. It was a fantastic environment where you had your own “bully pulpit” … a place where you were in charge, you had the mic, and you could say whatever you wanted.
I soon learned that bloggers had quite the ego. They used their bully pulpit to talk about boring stuff (that we were supposed to be interested in) as well as though leadership or subject matter expert stuff. Bloggers had enough rope to hang themselves with – and some did. Others became fantastically popular (Seth, Guy, Michael, Chris Brogan), and even internet celebrities.
One of the most empowering, ego-feeding things for a blogger is the comments – or, NUMBER of comments. When someone leaves a comment on your blog it means (a) you have readers (aside from your momma), and (b) you touched someone intellectually to the point they wanted to weigh in.
Getting comments on a blog fed a blogger’s ego like Golden Coral feeds a hungry boy scout. There are even bragging rights associated with getting comments.
Read a blog that doesn’t get comments? You might just be the only reader of that blog. Obviously, a blog with a few comments (if there are consistently a few), or dozens, or hundreds, or even tens of thousands, really validated the blogger.
And fed their ego.
Fast forward a bit and we come to the evolution, or perhaps the problem (if your ego is tied to your comments): the introduction of other social platforms where discussion can happen.
For example, three years ago I might have written a thought-provoking post and gotten 15 comments on the blog post – my ego is fed, I’m validated, and everyone knows I’m a force to be reckoned with.
Today, however, it’s different. I write a blog post, and tweet a link to my Twitter followers. I get NO comments on the blog.
But my tweet gets RT’d 6 times.
And 4 people reply to my tweet with their thoughts.
And 7 people comment on my “status” on Facebook, since my Tweets become my Facebook Status.
There are two problems with this scenerio:
The first problem is artificial… it isn’t really a problem, although it crushes the blogger’s ego. If you get no comments on the blog, you start to look like a chump… right? What happened to all of those validating comments? Maybe you should QUIT BLOGGING?
You might have heard that blogs are dying (they aren’t!)… I think people who see the conversation go elsewhere wonder why they still blog and are somehow convincing themselves they should follow the discussion (as it travels through various platforms), as opposed to continue to initiate the discussion (on their blog). I think this is a shortsighted mistake.
The second problem is what really irks me. It is that someone who reads my blog post WILL NOT get the benefit of the wisdom of the crowd.
I try and write my blog posts from my perspective, and always wonder what other smarter folks would say – either agreeing or disagreeing – I don’t care their position, but I do want to get a well-rounded discussion.
It’s no one’s fault, but when people respond a little bit here (Twitter) and a little bit there (Facebook), and even in Facebook they respond on the Wall and/or the Notes section, the conversation is fragmented, and NO ONE can follow it, except me.
It makes me sad that the wisdom of the crowd gets lost amongst the platforms, and no one else can get the value of the conversation.
Are blogs dying? No. But there is an interesting evolution of where and how the conversation happens…. and this is an evolution that hasn’t been fun to watch 🙁
I have a weird brain. I have been told I am a “unique” thinker… which usually means I’m thinking of weird or off-the-wall stuff…. ideas that don’t always fair well in a corporate setting.
I also need to multi-task. For example, today my goal is to get my inbox down by a couple hundred (a great task to do while healing my torn calf)… but I had to take a break to do this blog post. Because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and because now seems like a good time.
Today I will also contribute to the design of JibberJobber, sales and marketing of my LinkedIn DVD, writing one of the three books I’ve started, and probably another blog post or two. And a few tweets here and there.
I came up with my 10 revenue streams, and work to move each one forward as appropriate (some are on the back burner where they wait patiently, others are on the front burner where they are simmering).
When I’m sitting I need brain candy. This is either Internet, work, TV, movies or reading. Last night before bed I started Harry Potter again – I can’t just “go to bed….” must have something for my brain.
I wonder if I’m ADD, but I don’t want to insult anyone and self-diagnose, since I don’t know much about ADD.
I do think that in order to be successful down the path I’ve started, I need to have some level of “Business ADD.”
How else would I be able to work on multiple things at once, making progress on them, without the ability to pull out of one project and go into another project, time after time, throughout the day?
Would I be more successful if I could just focus on one project? Not sure. But I’ve chosen my path with 10 revenue streams, and I feel like I need to be able to jump around.
Maybe I need professional help – thoughts?
Sometimes I think I’m nuts. Even though I’m more sane than others. But seriously, what am I thinking, doing my own business? Where’s the safety net in that??
Sometimes I think I’m dense. Even though I got a hecka lot of education, and feel like I’m rather witty. This “dense” thing comes mostly when I compare myself to others.
Sometimes I’m lonely. Even though I have a terrific wife and family support, and thousands upon thousands of people who read my stuff in my blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. But when I’m sitting in my office, all by myself, with hours to go in the day, wondering which thing I should do next, I wish I had a team working with me.
Sometimes I feel poor. Especially recently as we paid for a new baby, a broken van and car, my doctor’s visit to get my calf looked at, working on getting our basement finished, and payroll… but then I think about the families I met in Mexico who know what poor, and poverty, and hunger, are, in a way that i’ll never have to know.
Usually I’m hungry. Not for food, but for success. Actually, not even crazy-wild success, just the kind of success that pays the bills for a family with a modest lifestyle. That’s what i told my publisher, and why I swore I’d make money from book sales.
Most of the times I’m scared. Scared of failing. Or scared to take steps backwards. I often wonder if I’m the right guy for the job, and then I just get back to work, day after day, to get the job done the best I can, and hope that indeed, I could be the right guy for this job.
I’m an entrepreneur.
I feel privileged, and hope that I don’t mess this up.
I feel like this is bigger than me… much bigger than me.
I feel like thousands of people need me to keep on plugging along, as my stuff (whether it’s JibberJobber or my books or DVD or blogs whatever) are making a difference to them.
I feel like my future is in MY hands. Not the CEO of Enron, or some board of directors, or some cranky boss… but my own hands. Please let me not screw this up.
I’m an entrepreneur. While it isn’t easy, it’s rewarding. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
I’ve been thinking about something for years… since before I started JibberJobber. A bit of history…
Back in the olden days, just 4 years ago, my old boss would talk about the number of hits on website. When he reported hits the developers would snicker, because hits were not very well defined.
Most executives wanted to know how many people visited the website (unique visitors) or how many pages they looked at (page views). But this notion of “hits”…. hm… let me tell you what a hit was:
Hit: the number of times our server served something. You (the normal human being) thinks it’s something logical, like perhaps unique visitors or page views… but each time our server served an image we got a hit.
Get that? If a page has 3 images on it, you get 3 hits. Want to multiply your hits by 10? Put 27 more images on the page, and now you got 30 hits! Want to really impress the suits? Put 300 tiny 1×1 (pixel) images on the site, you can even make them transparent (so they are invisible), and you get 300 hits!
Yippee!!!!
The programmers saw right past it. The suits didn’t.
So there’s my introduction to this fake metrics crap. If you like this stuff then pick up one of my favorite books, How to Lie With Statistics.
Now, fastforward to today. There are some other metrics that a business like JibberJobber would measure.
Users.
What is a user on JibberJobber? If I wanted to impress someone I would tell them the number of people who have signed up… which is usually called a “user.”
Not so. Absolutely not so.
Let me differentiate between:
Signups: this is anyone who has signed up… regardless of whether they have ever logged in or not (much less use the system. This is a super-easy metric to report, but most times I hear it I think it’s a fake number.
Users: Like… LinkedIn has 40M users. NO, they don’t. They have had 40 million people signup….! I think users are people who… use the system.
Upgrades: These are people who fork over the loot… I’ve had peope in JibberJobber upgrade the day they signed up… without ever using the system. Love that, of course… but it doesn’t guarantee they’ll be a “user.”
There’s a terrific post on TechCrunch talking about a freemium site called Evernote – the post is titled Evernote Stats: One Million Registered Users, 360,000 Active, 13,755 Paid
I love this because off the bat it declares the signups (which they call “registered users,” the users “which they call “active,” and the upgrades. Nice differentiation!
Now, the concept on premium upgrades, conversion percentage, etc. is a totally different discussion (and I disagree with how TC got the percentages)… but this is a good place to start talking about real metrics.
Here’s a site I meant to bookmark… the model seems super-cool… I was trying to remember what it was, and even asked on Twitter a while back, but could not forthelifeofme figure it out.
Until recently.
I finally came across 99 Designs (again)… it is contest based. As of now they say they have 35,359 “talented designers” who are anxious to participate in contests for logo design, website design, etc. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: create your design brief (costs $39 USD)
Step 2: set your budget (usually from $100 to $600, paid to the person who wins the contest)
Step 3: work with the designers (rate the designs and give feedback to those who submit designs)
Step 4: choose your favorite design (YOU choose the winner and then get the art with the copyright)
I don’t have any projects right now, and honestly would rather hire a full-time graphics designer,… but I absolutely love this idea.
I have liked Chip Hartman from the minute I met him… I love his creativity and sense of humor. And he’s a genuinely cool guy, to boot! Here’s an image he made for my new boy (this is not a pic of my son) – click the image to go to Chip’s site:
Thanks Chip – very clever!