After The Dot Net

If you are one of those who is interested in startups and also like to dabble in stocks or trade stocks then Startup exchange is for you.

Startup exchange, which is in alpha, is promoted by Tradevibes and is part of the Tradevibes website. Startup exchange is a virtual trading exchange where members trade stocks of tech startup companies. TradeVibes describes itself as the best way to discover, research and discuss hot (and not so hot) startup companies and Startup Exchange is one of the products that is offered by the users to maintain their interest in the core product.

Once you join the startup exchange you give 100,000 virtual dollars and you start

trading in stock of the tech startups trying to earn virtual money. The winners are declared every week and there are prizes for the highest earner (return) and for that member who has the highest net worth that week. The prizes are interesting ranging from a meeting with a tech entrepreneur to Wii.

Startup exchange is a good example of how crowd computing can be used to generate intelligence. In the case of Startup exchange crowd computing is used to predict the stock markets. The concept is interesting as Tradevibes uses this game to evaluate the value of the tech startups. In their own words “the prices of the companies in the exchange represent the community’s view on the valuations for these companies”. They hope to attract enough members so that they are able to predict the trends in the actual market.

There have been mixed reactions to the virtual exchange. If you want to explore more about Startup exchange then head to their blog which has more information.

Pros

• The members benefit as they can make some extra money while indulging in the favorite profession and also acquire knowledge. It is a good service to subscribe to for students of economics with particular interest in startups. 
• Virtual Exchange is also helpful to those who trade in stocks of tech startups in the ‘real’ world.
• Virtual Exchange is helpful to the Venture Capitalists.
• Virtual Exchange is helpful for technocrats to know what is ‘hot’.

Cons

• The amount of work the members do is not justified by the value of the awards though recognition is not measurable but then Virtual Exchange needs to get more popular as a service where one can find rock stars as far as tech startups is concerned.
• More tools and knowledge base would help the members in making Virtual Exchange better.

Conclusion

Virtual Exchange is a interesting service and will catch interest of users. A increase in incentives and a better knowledge base would go a long way in making the service a great one.

Twitter according to Wikipedia is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users (also known as twits) to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Twitter was seen as a tool to update your friends, colleagues and family about what you were doing or where you were. It was heavily criticized by some as a time waster and a distraction until some smart guys came along and they started using this tool to build their personal reputation or brand, to promote their websites and their blogs and last but not least breaking news. These Twitter is used as a tool for networking and online relationship building.

Since I was new to Twitter I set out to explore how I can use Twitter to promote blogs and website. You might find a number of articles if you Google “Twitter promote blog website”and the thought of going through them is intimidating. However, I had heard so much about Twitter and its advantages that I went through those articles and posts over a span of two days and here I’m sharing the gist of my findings on how to use Twitter to promote your blog or website

Drive Traffic: By posting updates about your website or the blog you can drive traffic to your website. Since most of the followers you will have will be like minded people the traffic you create is useful traffic as chances are that the your followers on Twitter would be interested in the content you have linked in your tweet.

Make Business Contacts: Business contacts can be made using Twitter which might not be possible otherwise. Once you are following business contacts on Twitter you will remain up to date about their latest activities.

Establish Yourself as an Expert: If you are an expert in any area (and specially if you are an expert in a technical field) then Twitter is right place to establish yourself as one by answering queries of your followers.

Ask Questions: On a different angle, you can use Twitter to gain knowledge and become an expert in a field by asking questions to experts or people who are an authority on a particular subject.

Get Ideas for Blog Posts: By following the tweets of contacts or experts in a particular field you are bound to get some interesting ideas about topics of your blog posts.

Provide Live Coverage: Live updates on events can be provided through tweet. Recently the Worldwide Apple Developers Conference was covered live by some Twitter users one such user can be found at https://twitter.com/wwdc2008

Find and Share Resources: Last and not the least is that Twitter can be used to share and find resources for different fields as Twitter encourages  users to to share information.

However, one should be careful not to Tweet more than needed because too many updates in a day might upset some of your followers and it can get worse if someone officially complains about spamming. Therefore one has to ensure that when Twitter is used as a marketing tool one is not too direct about it and the updates should contain useful information which would be useful to your followers.

Problogger who is a respected blogger shares his process of using Twitter. Problogger sends an update whenever he posts on his blog and if there are quite a few comments on his first update then he follows it with another update giving feedback on the comments. Problogger uses Twitter in another innovative way where he asks his followers to let him know whether a particular post on his blog is worth Twittering or not and I’m sure he gets more responses on such queries than a regular update.

I would recommend adding Twitter to your online marketing resources and if you need tools to help you use Twitter then I recommend the tools listed on this page http://mashable.com/2007/09/29/twitter-toolbox/

Listening the NATN (Net@Nite) on the TWIT (This Week In Tech) I discovered a website called JibJab whose creators, Evan and Gregg, were interviewed on NATN.

Though the website is an old one I thought it was worthy of a mention as they were doing something futuristic. JibJab is a service that allows you to send customized greeting videos and images. The fact that you can star in the videos or images, even if you are not a ‘techie’, makes the service interesting and fun.

All the animations are done in flash. Initially JibJab started with political satires as themes for their videos and then added a sendable section in 2007 where they have animated greetings. The fact that you can customize the video makes the service interesting. Sendables are of two types – premium sendables which are available to those customers who sign up by paying a small fee (ranging from $0.50 and $3 depending upon the greeting card you choose) and general sendables which are available to anyone who signup for the free service.

There are some JibJab exclusive videos which feature rich people and the most famous one is the George Bush and Al Gore rap battle which was their earliest production. The best thing about the service is that it is easy to customize the videos.

The 35 member team is doing a commendable job and is one of the few companies that have lived through the dotcom crash. The sendable service is called JokeBox and can be accessed from the main JibJab website as well.

Strengths: easy to use, fun, creative and free

Weakness: If bandwidth is a constraint then the service will test your patience.

TicketStumbler is a search engine for tickets and also helps you compare the prices of tickets available at different sources. The ‘cool’ factor of TicketStumbler is that it searches hundreds of brokers and ticket exchanges and presents the results in a readable format and easy comparison.

Some of the websites which TicketStumbler has partnered with are

• Stubhub
• Razorgator
• Ticket Network
• Ticket City

They currently have 1.5 million listings representing 7 million total tickets. The results are pulled at a good speed and you have a slider interface for quantity and the price range of the tickets you are looking for. You can filter the results by the providers as well.

The secondary ticket market is a huge one and TicketStumbler might surprise a few people but they would have to be ahead of competition from the likes of Tickex.

JDiskReport enables you to understand how much space the files and directories consume on your disk drives, and it helps you find obsolete files and folders.

The tool analyses your disk drives and collects several statistics which you can view as overview charts and details tables.

This is ad- and nag-free uncrippled binary multi-platform software that is free of charge and that never expires. If you have not been managing your hard disk using a software try out JDiskReport and you would be surprised by the fact that how much redundant data is there on your hard disk. If you use this software please share your feedback.

Typography is not an easy subject if you are not inclined to design.

For me when I’m designing it is very important that I have examples in front of me which means I’m a better copier but honestly I think it requires skills to copy. If the decision has to be made about typography then it examples become more important.

Smiley Cat Web Design has a post on collection of formats for headlines which I think is a must see for anyone who is involved in web designing therefore I’m sharing the link. Expand your knowledge about heading designs by visiting http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/typography-for-headlines.php.

Typography for Headlines | Smiley Cat Web Design

If you are a blogger I’m sure you have been asked why you blog and also why do others blog. This question is not easy to answer. I decided to find out why people and went to my trusted resource Google.

Dane Taylor in his blog mentions that he writes or blogs for personal pleasure only. Way back in 2004 Sandhill had the same question and when he asked his fellow bloggers why they blog the answer he got was the pleasure of sharing or having their comments on different things on the Internet was the main reason why most of the bloggers blog. Victoria Carrington classifies the reason why people blog based on the type of blog one writes for. You can read the list here. Though the list is not complete I would agree with Victoria in general.

One of the websites or blog that impressed me the most was Chris  Garrets. He has conducted a survey to find out why people blog, their demographics and blogging trends in general. A background of Chris is important as that makes the survey more credible.

Chris Garrett is a professional blogger, Internet Marketing Consultant, new media industry commentator, writer, coach, speaker, trainer and web geek. He was also a founding member of Performancing. You might know him from his past writing for such sites as ASPToday, ASPAlliance, Threadwatch, or more recently, ProBlogger, The Blog Herald, FreelanceSwitch, Cogniview, AdSavvy and CopyBlogger.

Top ten readers who best answered the questions in the survey were awarded a Pro Blogger book! The findings of the survey are interesting (please be aware that these statistics are for 2008)

• The number of people who started blogging was the highest in 2007. Though the number of blogs started in 2008 is less but one has to keep in mind that only half of the year has gone by.
• About 75% of the bloggers started blogging after 2005.
• 62% of the responders to the survey were  males.
• USA has the most number of bloggers followed by UK.

• Most of the bloggers have higher education.
• 30% of the respondents were between 20-30 years whereas 50% of them were between the ages of 30-50 years.
• 50% of the bloggers blog for pleasure
• 35% of the respondents blogged for business
• Only 4% of the bloggers blogged for money.

While the results are very interesting one has to keep in mind that it has been assumed that the respondents are a good representation of bloggers around the world. This assumption means that the results are not perfect representation of the blogging community but one can safely assume that the survey results are indicative of the trends. To access the full report of the survey please go to http://www.chrisg.com/survey/.

In the end it is safe to assume that majority of the bloggers blog for pleasure and this is true for me. It would be great if you can share why you blog by adding comments.

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