mschaecher

I agree the main problem with Digg is the community as well. The broader Digg community just isn't interested in the kind of content that I am. That doesn't mean they all aren't though. I'm sure there are a lot of people digging quality content from good sources, ie Fast Company and The Nation, but their submissions and Diggs get lost in all the other crap the majority of the community is submitting and digging.

The way I see myself using it would be to subscribe to feeds of primarily publishers, like say The Economist, FT, Fast Company, Inc., PopSci, blogs, etc. just like in RSS.

But rather than seeing just a straight stream of their updates, the social voting aspect of Digg will help highlight some of the best content coming from these sources.

I don't expect to be discovering the latest Suster, Wilson, or Dixon post from the new Digg. HN and Twitter already make sure I see stuff like that, but not the broader realm of publishers who produce content that I would read...but they never get in front of me know.

Should note it is very new too I believe

http://www.undrln.com/ Don't frequent it but just new it existed

What are the three free ones you use?

Read Clayton Christensen

One of my relatives very close to me is VP of sales and ops at a Fortune 250 B2B insurance co. You definitely hit the nail on the head with #2.

On another note, One of my good friends started working as a direct sales rep for the same company selling group insurance to very small businesses(5-20 people). He has tons of sales experience...But four months in is still stumbling and struggling with how complicated their products(plans) are...and he is one of the top people in their new batch of sales reps.

It is a complicated industry, but a lot of the complications shouldn't have to involve the actual customers or product. Unfortunately the complications they build into product can help make them a lot of money.

If you want to go after this market. Take an approach like Square. Hide all of the necessary complications(regulations, etct) of the industry so the customers don't even have to be aware or think about them. Then start off by gaining a foothold in an under served and less profitable market segment like small biz group insurance (guys selling couch on craigslist and farmers market vendors ~= 1-10 employee small biz in insurance). Then start building from there

I have gist and etacts accounts, neither have worked their way into my regular workflow yet. Both have seemed quite buggy every time I try to use them. And I am not going to spend the time integrating them to truly see their worth until they can solve that.

I do love the Rapportive Gmail extension though, quite different purpose, but awesome.

I was happy to read this post as I am moving to SF on June 26. And it sounds like we roughly had the same budgeting done, except I plan to live with roommates so that will save me some money.

Renting a place off AirBnB for a week while I find a place with roommates. Got rid of almost all of my possessions except for essential computers, clothes, and books. Shipping the computers and clothes that I can't take with me on the flight. Storing the books until I feel like i live in a somewhat permanent place and want them shipped out.

I can't wait to not have a car. Shipping my bike out as soon as I get a place. Going to have a TransLink Muni/Bart pass and a ZipCar card on me as soon as I hit the ground. Plan on using the ZipCar for those rare instances when I need a car/truck. Like my maiden voyage to Ikea for a desk, bed, and maiden Trader Joes grocery trip.

I was just going to chime in with this as well.

Of course they then have to be fair ;) Which if they are, that is probably going to be the base of their messaging for all of their marketing...in which case fairbooks.com is superb

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but I haven't had the chance or time to read all the comments but...It sounds like you are quitting when you hit The Dip

http://www.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches-Stick/dp/15918...

My two cents(I've managed email campaigns to ~100k people):

Sending one email per day to everyone is a lot of mail to be sending your users. You better have a really, really good reason to do so--and those emails better provide significant value to your users, otherwise they will opt out, possibly even report as spam.

I don't know what business you are in, but only certain businesses can really get away with sending that much email--ie Groupon, Gilt, etc.--and that is because those emails provide a lot of value and meet a lot of needs. If you fall in the category of a business who can send that much email awesome!

If possible I think it is best to use a tiered, opt-in subscription model. Some example tiers: "Daily Deals Beat", "Weekly Rundown", "2-Week Summary", and "Monthly Newsletter"(these names suck I know). You can present these options as part of the sign-up process, or better yet, when they click the sign up confirmation email take them to a settings to opt-in to the various tiers. This is also good to have as the landing page for when someone clicks unsubscribe in your email. Take them to this settings page where they can adjust the level of contact, or unsubscribe completely, that is right for them. If you are sending one message a day chances are you will have a lot of people hitting that unsubscribe link, and some might not want to totally discontinue contact so give them options to adjust as well as totally unsubscribe.

Sidenote: Mediapost has an awesome publication called Email Insider, if you plan on sending that much email you might want to be reading this. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?art_type=32&fa=Ar...

An online tutoring service/marketplace for connecting tutors and people would be a cool idea. Not just for offline tutoring either, develop tools to enable tutoring to be done online between anyone in the world.

Anyone know if something like this exists?

I think this is a great product idea, but the marketing/sales on the website needs a lot of improvement--and patio11's suggestions are a great start. Especially need better Call-to-Action elements.

I think a simplified value proposition as a tagline is a must. For instance: Square: Accept Payments Anywhere, Basecamp: The Better Way to Get Project Done, Grasshopper: Sound Professional & Stay Connected--The Virtual Phone System Designed for Entrepreneurs.

--Loyalty Space: The simple loyalty program for increasing sales...or..Real Easy, Real Results...or...(Customer) Loyalty Programs Made Easy..or..The Easiest Way to Build Relationships and Drive Results..etc., etc. Something along those lines, brainstorm a bunch. If you are going to do any advertising A/B test your top 5 in the copy. Check out what other successful companies are doing.

If possible show, don't tell. An awesome video would be great where that carousel currently is. Include some shots of the product actually being used. See Square's videos for definition of awesome videos.

Then I'd put a carousel type section below(but still above the fold if possible), with sections for the businesses in your "Consumer Facing Businesses". I'd list the businesses vertically on the left with icons plus text. Each section loads content to the right with (fictional or real if you got them)examples of problems/needs being solved by your service. Ex: Salons-->Meet Jane, Jane needed a way to fill empty seats in her salon on slow days. She uses her customer database to see which regulars are due for a new cut, and then sends them a custom/personalized discount offer via text message if they come in this afternoon. In no time at all, Jane's seats are booked for the rest of the day with customers grateful for a great deal.<---Copy should be a lot better, wrote this quick.

Customer Testimonials are huge too. Get some as soon as you can. If you know someone loves your product you can even write it yourself, let them have the chance to edit, and sign off on it. No more than two sentence.

About section could use a lot of improvement. In fact I'd pry call it "Why Loyalty Programs" Include some stats from respected sources on benefits of loyalty programs. Cut out as much copy as you can, and try to condense it all above the fold.

Check out Grasshopper for a great "how it works" section.

Include a clear CTA on almost every page.

Compete on aspects other than price.

If your product is truly better--there is one advantage you want to hold.

Make sure you have developed and designed an amazing first user experience. Sign up and user the competitors app--What sucks? What could be better? What wows you? Make the experience so good people want to pay you

Another good one, compete on service/support. It takes commitment but if products are very similar, the service and support can be presented as what you are really paying for.

Check their user forums/FAQ/Knowledge Base/GetSatisfaction, whatever they have, find out what current users gripes. wishes, and problems are. Use that intelligence in your product development and messaging/marketing.

Out. Hustle. Them.

Sure thing. I'll drop you an email in a few about the connections.

As for the side note, no clue what happened exactly. It was the settings for my email field. It should have been friends only, but it was friends of friends instead.

It could be a user error, maybe I inadvertently switched it one of the handful of times I have been checking everything lately. Or some error on your side, I just don't know.

It may have came off conspiratorial, but a few friends and I have both commented on how the only times we run into issues with the Fbook application is when we are trying to delete data or modify settings.(Aside of the chat early in its history) And I was attempting (badly) to convey that observation

Something everybody at Facebook needs to note though: viewing intent as malicious or not is pretty relative to the person and where you are standing. Something a strictly opt -in model can address quite well.

ex: A legitimate business acquires an email list, let's say it is even targeted to people who might want/need their product. They blast out an sales email. To them the intent is not malicious--they are just trying to provide a potential customer with a product or service that might address a need/problem/want in their life.

From a recipients perspective, let's say me, this is a violation of my inbox, my privacy, even my values. Now, regardless of the senders intent or whether the product is good, not only do I not trust them--but I question intent and motives.

I've tried deleting my connections under Music and TV multiple times now to no avail. (The bands I am only fans of bc my friends are in them, I don't actually like. I'm not into the TV shows listed anymore)

When I first went through the initial flow of you guys making all of these linked connections. It took me at least 20 minutes trying to get these TV Shows and Bands deleted.

A handful of days later, I was revisiting all of my privacy settings because I don't trust you. Low and behold there are all the TV Shows and Movies that I thought I had deleted still present on my profile.

It turns out I can't remove these connections at all.

I think a lot more people might have gotten rid of their data if they could, if they knew how, or if they knew that: "These settings only control the information people can see on your profile. This information, such as your Pages and list of friends, is still public, so it could appear elsewhere on the site and be accessed by applications you and your friends use."

But I guess duping people with obfuscated engineering and design, coupled with bad (or no) communication with users is just the rule nowadays for you all.

The worst part is--I resisted joining Facebook for so long, didn't join until well after the Beacon fiasco, because I didn't trust the company one bit. It is sad that I was right about this and should have stuck to my guns.

Side note: While typing this I decided to pop over and re-audit my settings for pry the 4-5 time in the past couple weeks. What do you know some values were not the same as what I had made them previously. Seems like the only time I ever have problems with Facebook from an application point of view is when I am trying to delete or change settings.

EFF

Yes and yes, caught the article on my way out the door and posted it quickly. I wish I could edit..*sigh

I think I saw the guy behind this on Mixery awhile back. Curious what the HN crowd thinks of this product...

I'm a "biz guy" and you caught my curiosity and I would like some more info...

What are the coming reporting changes that the industries are required to adapt to? (Links are fine) Also when is soon for the required reporting?

Have you been developing this with input from potential user/customers, aka Customer Development? How do you know many of them have no way of doing this now?

You can respond here or via email if you want. Mine is in my profile. Lots of other questions...

Salesforce is good, but might be overkill. Highrise is simple and easy, once you have a contact in highrise you can BCC your Highrise account directly from your email client and it will add the messages to the person in the emails contact history.

The custom tagging you can set up in Highrise is great too. For instance you could use a custom tag scheme of: "not very interested" = NVI "annoyed" = AN "Excited" = EX and then add those tags to people as you work through them, then you have the ability to filter by those.

I've seen this a handful of times in my feed over the past week.

Since not everyone is seeing this happen, I imagine that it is a new feature test. I had a friend get the newest Facebook design 4 months before anyone else she new with no explanation whatsoever.

I don't know much about the lingo in the Forex world, but pipsandchips.com is kinda catchy. But it might be an issue if you ever tried expanding the network/app to other niches of, say, day traders.

I'm just gonna share a few that popped into my head, not knowing the lingo or real purpose of the site: getpipped.com igetpips(or pipped).com pippers.com showmeyourpips.com i-pips.com pippr.com pipster.com

I like it alot, but do I trust it? Like to see real faces and names of the founders, and a blog..

I think a follow up is a great idea

I'm on Time Warner Roadrunner service and HN was down for the past hour or so for me too

I use SnagIt for screen capturing on my PC and I love. It provides basic capture editing as well.

Thanks for the reply. Lifehacker and my other searching has led me to these options.

http://www.debenu.com/benubird/overview.html http://www.mendeley.com/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/docfetcher/

Going to try them out starting with Benubird as it looks like it will address my needs the best. Will report back.

I dabbled with Zotero for research purposes awhile back, might have to give the latest version a spin to see if I can bend it to my needs.

I have tons of ebooks, word docs, ppt, PDFs, etc. though, and manually organizing them would probably(definitely) take too much time.

How are you using Zotero?