mschaecher

If your willing to pay for a service their are countless maturing in the monitoring and engagement space.

http://www.radian6.com/ http://www.trendrr.com/ http://www.scoutlabs.com/ http://www.viralheat.com/

There are other I am sure I am missing, pry some good free ones out there too.

They should be more focused on selling their product not the various networks. The networks should drive the traffic to themselves based on their own merit and efforts.

Compare that with a competitor, SocialGo, which is pretty clear in explaining what you can get from their service at various price points. Whereas Ning doesn't appear to be trying to sell me anything, let alone compare my options.

For instance if you were selling a service that does online analytics for the music industry, write posts about the music business using the data you collect. Include relevant keywords such as 'online artist tracking' 'statistics for band', etc. Those keyword phrases revolve around what potential customers would be searching for in Google when looking for a service like yours.

Outside of organic results like above, drive traffic to your blog by producing content that is meaningful, useful, and interesting to your readers. You want your content to have value to your readers.

Join the conversation on other blogs, through commenting. IMPORTANT don't spam..add value.

Tell good stories.

Check out http://www.mint.com/blog/ the used their blog expertly all the way through their exit and to this day.

The 'What's This' tip links and the 'About' section aren't working.

Under the choose your algorithm sections, when I select one of the choices it highlights the choice, but nothing else changes. This leaves me unsure if they are not working or if I am doing something wrong.

There are also a lot of people out there who might not be familiar with the term algorithm, even less understand what they actually mean. If you are aiming to reach 'normals' it might be helpful to use more common language like filters instead of algorithms.

Same thing with the copy where you describe the algorithms. To me, it seems like you are describing more how the algorithms function...rather than how it will effect what I see as a user. I'd say figure out in plain, concise language what the benefits of each 'filter' are to the user.

Terms like renewal rates, site voting power, and slow rate change don't convey to the average user how each filter effects them. I think a good place for including and describing these terms is probably in the 'What's This' tool tip for that section.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the 'State of Social Media' section is. What does that mean for the user? Why is it important to the user? What exactly does that information tell me?

The site source labels do look like buttons as tjpick mentioned. But I would also add that the Reddit and Tweetmeme labels look/are the same at least for background color. When I scroll the page almost all of the submissions are from Reddit and Tweetmeme, except for one for digg. Since the green is so much more pronounced than the grays used on the other two, I feel like it is highlighting it as something special I should look at or click. I would use the gray background color for all of them, and just use different colored font(maybe with a more pronounced font so colors(sites) are easily distinguished).

The gray description text is hard for me to read, in that I actually have to try and focus on reading it. The submission time and user are highlighted which usually signals important information in context to the info around them. Is that the important information you want to highlight? Seems to me like those are second or third tier pieces of info, where text like the description, site source, etc., are actually the important/useful parts.

Need a footer. Footer makes it clear that this is the end. Right now it looks like the page just hasn't loaded entirely because I was expecting to be able to go through multiple pages.

You can go through the local network stations or the actual cable providers. Both will help you put together the ad (cheap if not free, quality depends on the idea, ie horrible car ads)

You can also pick your channels and general time frames that you want your ad to air in. So if you are targeting parents who own their home, you could select HGN, DIY, etc. and set the time frame to between 5 pm(afterwork) to 12 am(pre-sleep).

Same with radio in terms of dealing directly with the radio stations. You can write your copy, tell them you want one of the on air personalities to read it to some music. In a couple hours you can have a few different ads to choose from. It is surprisingly cheap to dominate any given radio station if you are in the right media market(not Boston or the likes).

When it comes to internet startups, the real problem with TV, Radio, or offline advertising in general is the bad conversion and lack of metrics like we are used to in the online world.

We are already used to single digit(or less) conversion rates for online advertising campaigns. You can imagine how much more that drops when your ads are reaching people who might not even be by a computer and are expecting them to remember your brand/product next time they are.

As for metrics, the easiest thing you can do is have control and variable zip codes. See how registration/purchases fair for zip codes outside of the market you are doing media buys in(but still relatively close geographically), compared to the rates for the area that you are advertising in.

Square has backwards compatibility with how credit cards are currently used and a fast, innovative team.

The hack I came up with was that we would announce that we weren't going to accept and money from lobbyists, PACs, or anyone outside the state. Not that we were going to get much anyways ;)

We still got stomped. But it was great ammunition in our message toolbox and we used it all of the time.

Thats what I call message hacking.

And a BIG thanks to the HN community as well!

I know my calling in life is to start my own company someday(soon!). Hacker News and Mixergy have been indispensable resources along the way to discovering what I love and want to do.

Health: Tools, apps, and services that make providing healthcare cheaper and effective throughout the world.

Energy and Environment: Tech, tools, apps, services that help increase access to reliable electricity and/or help save the planet

Food: Take your pick from growing, distributing, health, or environmental impact. Scalable solutions that provide healthy food, at low cost, to everyone, while reducing the food industries environmental impact are desperately needed.

And more...

The problems are complicated and global, and they require creative and elegant solutions that scale. Help solve these problems and you can help make the world a better place and get rich in the process.

I'd love to see a Mixergy interview!

I also now a bunch of people in the music/event promotion business locally that would be the perfect fit for this kind of app.

Some of the issues I think of at first glance for this kind of app regard around the physical ticket.

The process of selling the ticket digitally is simple enough but, getting actual physical tickets that work at the door is another task; especially if you take into consideration fraud prevention and some sort of pos mechanism(QR Codes by phone??) to verify the ticket in the case of larger events.

I'm surprised no one in the online tickets space is making a move to integrate the Facebook platform into their current ticketing offerings. Or are they?

I've got experience with events through politics, music, and some work on a web app for handling event registration for car shows on a car enthusiast social network. Feel free to touch base with me at schaecher.michael at gm if you want to bounce anything off me or whatever

There are credit collectors running ads that sound like a PSA from the government regarding a 'bailout for consumers struggling from credit card debt. If your last name begins with A through M call today, or N - Z call tomorrow' There are no less than ten variations of this ad running on 3-4 radio stations in Nebraska.

I also hear a ton of shady commercials for weight loss supplements that end if with "WARNING: IF YOU LOSE 10 POUNDS IN 10 DAYS DISCONTINUE USE" Really?! That happens?! Doubt it, but for a lot of unsophisticated listeners that could be a value proposition rather than a warning. I heard 2-4 Acai Berry ads last night alone.

It's not like these radio commercials are being launched on some self ad network, where no body checks it before airing. Hell some of them are even read by the DJs at the radio station as part of the ad buy.

http://www.wearehunted.com is another good one.

Got a band you like? Check out their top friends on Myspace.

https://squareup.com/

http://www.onlive.com/

http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

http://www.firstsolar.com/en/index.php

That is a quick list off the top of my head of companies that are doing new and innovative things that have the potential to seriously disrupt some existing industries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31corner.html

I would recommend that they tap their volunteer and donor network for the skills they need. Some old school NPOs tend to still only use their volunteers for menial office tasks. There is a good chance that they have volunteers that have the skills they need for various projects, they just don't ask. Make your talented volunteers a CEO of something and they will work their butts off for you.

I got on a presidential campaign and ended up managing a congressional campaign doing this. I also landed some nice medium term contracting work with a couple different startups and an NPO, by approaching them and telling them what I can do to add value to their comp/org.