What Makes A Start-Up Worth Investing In?

I saw in Wired magazine this month a short article about a company that had received VC funding via Seedcamp. One of the founding shareholders in Seedcamp is Robin Klein.

What I found very useful was a short list of checkpoints given by Robin on what he seeks in a start-up.

I've listed it here because I think it makes so much sense...

1. A team excited about what they're trying to achieve

2. A big vision with understanding of the issues involved in achieving it

3. A team that's already achieved a lot with very little

4. A differentiated product or service that meets a need

5. A project with global reach addressing a large market

There's one other point I would add for good measure; a business that can scale. By scale, I mean a business that will see exponentially increasing returns on the assets deployed as it grows.

Conclusion? If you are going to invest your heart and soul into a start up or join a start up team, make sure the answers to the above points are all "yes!"

Time will always tell course.

To the dealer, "I've made my bet and I'm sticking, thanks. I think I've been dealt a great hand".

London Restaurants: Ignore Foursquare.com At Your Peril

A new social network just hit London: Foursquare.com.

Already big in the US, I am willing to stick my neck out and predict that this will develop faster in London than swine-flu.

If you're just getting your head around Twitter, you'll need to step one step further to "get" Foursquare. Once you do, I think you'll realise this has huge potential, as a network phenomenon and as a marketing tool.

The basics.

OK - so you log into Foursquare.com and create an account. What next? You invite others to join and be your "friends" (just like Facebook). You then download the Foursquare app to your smart phone. Ready.

Now, you are on the move, you go out in the evening, and when you arrive at a place (bar, restaurant, concert venue, event, coffee shop, whatever), you "check in". On your phone you simply load the app, it uses the phone's location to identify known venues in the area and you select the one you're at. Simple as that. Then - you can see which of your other friends are also there. Maybe there's friends that are out on the town that you didn't know were out on the town. You decide to hook up on the fly.

Here's the bit you need to pay attention to if you are a restaurant.

First of all, make sure you are listed. The initial list of London restaurants is seeded by WCities, and there's loads missing. Once logged in you can add your place in the "add things" link in the menu. If you're listed, people will be able to "check-in" to your venue easily.

Secondly, there's a competitive element to FourSquare. The person who checks in the most to a venue becomes that venue's "mayor". This person is your most loyal Foursquare customer. They will be visiting you a lot.

This means that you can create a loyalty scheme on this platform. "If you are our mayor, simply present your phone and you will get a free drink". As people to compete to become your mayor, you get mentioned in a whole Facebook / Twitter universe and your brand awareness soars. It's all online and it's all free.

Sounds far fetched? Maybe this year it won't be, but I can see this becoming big for a certain demographic. Huge. The future is just around the corner.

Here's a useful blog post on how to get the most out of Foursquare.com as a user.

Livebookings On CNBC

Dragon says "I'm in"...

Great piece on CNBC yesterday. Live interview with Niklas Eklund CEO, talking about boosting restaurants' profitability.

James Caan, of Dragon's Den Fame, gave his approval.

5 minute clip...

Nine And A Half Weeks, Nine And Half Million Pounds

Today the news hot off the press is that Livebookings* has raised $16m / £9.5m in VC funding thanks to an investment into the company by Wellington Partners.

You can read the full story here.

(* Livebookings is Europe’s largest online marketing and reservations service for the restaurant industry. We help restaurants fill their tables by delivering customers through a free online booking service and network of high-profile partner websites. I say "we" because they’re my employer, too.)

For me personally I can reflect on a summer that was dominated by the fund-raising round and the due diligence process that followed. I feel very lucky to have been involved. I met many VCs myself and the process helped us really refine our business plan, check, double-check and re-check the assumptions and think carefully about our long term strategy. We’ve also received some great input on how to improve our business operations.

Raising capital in the summer months is always more tricky as so many people are away, and doing so in a recession at break-neck speed is an extra challenge. However, it does have the added benefit that we now have a solid foundation of a three year plan in place and so preparing a detailed operational budget for 2010 will be easier.


So, what did I learn from the summer of fundraising?

1. Ask for help to refine the pitch

The pitch we made was rehearsed several times with existing investors who had a feel for what a future investor would need to know. What are the key assumptions that need to stand up for the investor to buy into the growth plan? Address these issues face on.

2. Keep it simple

If we’re not careful, our business can come across as complicated. We really had to focus on making it straightforward as possible to explain the “what”, “why”, “how” and “when”. Using visual aids in presentations is vital to convey meaning, and being able to visualise concepts with pictures is essential.

3. Build and test a very detailed supporting business plan

The business plan that our team prepared was very thorough with lots and lots of assumptions building up a very thorough view of the business over the next few years. It was a collaborative effort and took weeks to nail down. I noticed that what was important here was not to just create the plan, but to be able to talk around some of the key ratios such as cost-of sale, revenue per unit, marketing efficiency and traffic source, share and conversion. Knowing these numbers is the core of the pitch.

4. Prioritise the fundraising process but protect key people

In a fundraising round, you have to be prepared to drop everything to answer investor questions, travel to a pitch, answer follow up questions and provide supplementary data. It means dropping everything else, so you need a part of the team that are focused on running the day to day business so it doesn’t grind to a halt.

5. Show your passion

People buy people and if you’re not excited about your business, how will someone else be? Enthusiasm is contagious, so show the world what makes you tick and why your business is exciting. If it’s not exciting, what are you pitching for?

6. Enjoy the ride

Despite the hard work involved, I really enjoyed the process. I will be the first to hold my hand up and say that there are others on the team who were much more involved than me, but when I did participate I looked forward to the investor meetings. It was a privilege to meet smart people who could think about your business from different angles and help you refine your approach every time. It was a great experience and I was very happy to be involved.


If you’re out there raising money for your business right now, I wish you all the best, and every success.

Learn Something New Every Day

You learn something new every day, so goes the saying.

We all have different things that make us "tick". For me, one of the strongest motivators is learning something new, either through experience or through reading.

Here's a little snippet I picked up yesterday. I was reading Peter Hargreave's book "In For A Penny", the story of how he and his business partner built up their business from scratch starting with just a telephone and a desk in a spare bedroom. Now the business (Hargeaves Lansdown) is one of the biggest financial services firms in the UK and is a listed public company.

Aside from picking up on their business principles (best service, best prices, best information), their company culture (put the customer first, the company second, yourself third), and their innovative real time trading platform for private investors, one little snippet of trivia grabbed my attention.

When you come to cash in your pension on retirement, one option is to buy an annuity with your pension fund (I knew that already by the way). This annuity is a fixed regular payment that you receive for the rest of your life. The life companies that sell these policies assess your risk profile. High risk, you can buy less income with your money, low risk, you can buy more.

The interesting thing is that the more money you have in your pension, the more risky you are to a life company. Why? Well it seems statistically that people with more money live longer. Maybe this is because they can afford a better lifestyle and health care, I'm not sure. As they live longer, then the life company has to pay out the fixed sum for longer, so therefore large pension fund owners will find it more difficult to get a better deal.

I thought about this for a moment on the train. First of all, I was disappointed that if I did make the effort to save harder, I would get a worse deal. However the upside is much more interesting; work hard to accumulate a bigger pot and you might live longer. I'd never thought of life expectancy as a reason to work hard, but there it is.

But how to be successful? One of the other books I read recently was Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers". Here he looks at the truly successful people in their fields and looked at what patterns stood out.

It seems that you need "enough" education (not necessarily the best), "enough" talent (pure talent will not cut it on it's own), fortunate circumstances (luck), and the most important two ingredients of all: focus and effort.

This was encouraging. I'm a great believer in making your own luck. Work hard, see obstacles as opportunities and take control of your own destiny. Sure, life throws you a deck of cards, but even with an average hand you can play a good game.

Learning is great, and knowledge is best enjoyed if shared. Therefore at work recently I took the initiative to start a library. The two books I mentioned above plus another twenty or thirty from my personal bookshelves start the library stock. I've asked colleagues to also bring in their books to loan to the collection. I've bought library cards to put in the front of each book and developed a system for withdrawals and returns. I hope it takes off. I'm looking forward to sharing ideas and seeing the team grow through learning.

Learn something new every day. My new mantra.

Asia By Bike - The YouTube Video

This has absolutely nothing to do with ecommerce or management or anything like that.

This is the reason we all have for working in the first place - to get out and ride! As someone very wise once said, work to live, don't live to work!

My brother and wife recently got back from an amazing 11,000km bike ride across Asia. This short YouTube video gives you a great taste for the amazing adventure they must have had.



You can read about the full adventure at http://asiabybike.blogspot.com.

Why I Stopped Tweeting

In February I asked myself the question "To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?"

For 3 months I embraced Twitter and evangelised it's benefits. I tweeted several times a day every day until one day I stopped. Completely. I even went to the trouble of removing every tweet from my timeline.

Why?

It's taken several weeks to figure out but there are several reasons;

1) The catalyst was a blog post that I read called "Why Twitter Is Evil". Ironically I found this post via Twitter. It was this post that got me thinking.

2) I had always seen my Twitter account as an experiment. I wanted to understand how individuals and companies were using it socially and  commercially.  In my line of work I need to know. I now felt sufficiently knowledgable on how all worked and I'm impressed at the power of the network to pull reach and build reputations.  My learning curve had slowed.

3) Maybe I have Adam Smith's genes because I take a view that many things in life are some kind of economic transaction. Inputs and outputs. You put effort in (or money, a proxy for effort) and you get a reward (or not). Twitter was consuming a lot of time and energy versus the return (knowledge, contacts) that I was getting.

4) Information overload. I'm a busy guy with a large family and plenty of things to cram into every day. There's only so much information I can take. It's invariably limited in depth. I,be realized I'd rather spend 30 minutes reading one quality article in a magazine or a newspaper than dip into 20 trivial tweets hoping to find a nugget.

But really, it's mainly a survival tactic. I either do something well or not at all.

So long Twitter.

Twitterquette - Good Manners For Twitter Users

14 etiquette tips for Twitter

It's 2 months to the day since I started using Twitter.  During that time I've gone from a complete novice to gaining some experience and starting to learn from that experience.  Like any new communications channel that humanity discovers, it takes some time for us to develop social etiquette (in this case "Twitterquette").  We start to develop a sense of right and wrong and our own little set of do's and don'ts.  

Examples;

• Don't talk loudly for long periods of time on your mobile phone on public transport.
  
• Don't speak on the telephone at the dinner table if you have guests.
  
• Don't sent large volumes of email to people you don't know to sell Viagra.
  
• Do reply to people if they take the time to write you a letter / email / leave a voicemail.
  
• Do credit the source of your story when writing a new article.
  

So how about Twitter?

Twitterquette - version 1 (after 2 months, March 2009, UK)

Here are some tips I'd recommend that new Tweeters think about when using Twitter.

Notice that most of them are relevant to all forms of communication, not just Twitter, I just explain to detail relevant to Twitter.

Twitter is a continual conversation that you can dip in and dip out of.  It's like a 24 hour party.  You can stand on the sidelines and watch, you can entertain or you can introduce people.  Just like any social event, understanding the unseen social rules will help you have a great time.  Bear in mind who is at your party.  Are they work colleagues, industry aquaitances, or true friends and family?  Who is following you?  Who do you want to follow you?

My experiences (and advice) are around the assumption that most of the people following me are mostly work-related.

So, here we go...

1. Give credit where credit is due

If you read a tweet that you like and want to tell others, rather than just plagiarising the source, use a "Retweet" to pass the message on.  The syntax is as follows;

RT @username message-content

2. Say thank you for a referral

If someone re-tweets one of your tweets, send them a direct message to say thank-you.  They are more likely to do it again if you say thank you. 

3. Keep 1:1 conversations to direct messages

If you are having a conversation that is only relevant to you and the recipient, rather than use the public timeline to do so, use the direct message feature on Twitter; especially if it's a conversation that will last several tweets.

4. Don't hog the bandwidth

Just because someone follows you, it doesn't mean they want to receive 30 tweets a day from you and have you dominate their feed.  There are a few people that I follow that send out so much trivial mush that I am now going to unfollow them.  Clearly there's a balance somewhere.  I've found (personally) that I can take 5 to 7 tweets a day from 1 person before I start to turn off. 

5. Ask for favours, but do so sparingly

If you have a good following, you can use that to your advantage.  You can for example ask people to RT (retweet) a message if it's that important to you.  It is is a great way to build traffic or awareness.  However, I got a little annoyed by a blogger who was constantly asking people to "digg" his latest article just so it would hit the first page of digg.com.  In real life we give favours and receive favours.  It's a balance that if upset means you take advantage of goodwill and lose some of that goodwill.  Just like real life, use your network & friends sparingly, for what's important.

Tip; if you want to have your tweet retweeted, leave enough characters spare so that the RT @username will fit in without truncating the message.  For me that means working to 120 characters, not 140.

6. Cite your source

If you didn't write something, don't pretend that you did. Cite your source (as in using a re-tweet) or make it obvious that you didn't write the content.

7. Recommend others

If you like following someone, why not recommend them?  On Twitter, there's a custom of doing this on Friday and including the #followfriday hashtag to explain what you're doing.  

An example; #FollowFriday @cindyalvarez (for product management nuggets of wisdom), @thetafferboy (for SEO tactics), @manne (for restaurant news)

8. Be positive

No-one likes a drainer.  Sure, get things off your chest if you have to but do so with humour.  Don't burden the world with your worries and troubles.  Share love, not trouble.

9. Add your own content, don't just re-tweet

Some users are great at finding good material on a topic and then just re-tweeting it.  A few twits that I follow do this, and I follow then because they are consistent in being fast and frequent in their subject niche.  Generally though, I appreciate a few original thoughts as well.

10. Follow others that follow you

If someone follows me, I generally check them out by looking at their bio and their tweetstream.  If I am sure I would not be interested I don't follow.  Otherwise I follow and if it turns out later it's a waste of time, I unfollow.  If in doubt, follow.

11. If something pleases you, say so

See a tweet that makes you laugh, smile or gets you interested in something.  Now and then it's nice to reply to the source and just say so.  It will make the source feel rewarded for making the effort and will more likely continue to feed you in the future.

12. If you want someone to follow a link, tell them why they should bother

As most links in Twitter are shortened, and as so many are posted each day, take the time to describe the destination content and why it's interesting.  

13. Stay on topic

You need to decide who you are.  Are you a corporate voice or are you an individual?  Are you using Twitter for your current job, for your (general professional life) or for personal stuff only.  Decide and decide quickly.  Then, decide what areas of interest you will post on and stick to it.  People that are interested in those areas will follow you. 

14. Be real

I do like to hear the occasional snippet of non-work related stuff, even if I follow you because of your professional interests.  Think: if you go to a professional networking event; no one jumps straight into work, there's always some related chit chat about sport, the weekend or what's in the news.  Too much personal stuff becomes trivial, but it is always nice to see something of the person behind the machine.  I find a 75% work interest / 25% non-work interest is a good balance in the working week and vice-versa at weekends.

It seems to me that the first rule of Twitter is therefore NOT always to answer the question "What are you doing?".  Great Twits are much more subtle.

You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/davidcnorris.  

(My interests are; ecommerce, marketing, restaurants, product management, cycling, skiing, movies.)

Other blog posts that I've found on the same subject:

Twitterquette 101, Part 1: Why your tweets turn people OFF!

10 Twitter Etiquette Rules

Twitter: Decoder ring and twitterquette

Seven Steps To Heaven

Where online marketing fits in creating customer value, and what this means for return-on-investment calculations

Ecommerce is relatively young, but it’s maturing fast. Increasingly there are few businesses that don’t / can’t exploit the online channel as a route to market.

Many have used online marketing to great effect, and there are plenty with experience and success in areas such as email marketing, SEO, paid search and affiliate marketing.

Of course, the great thing about these methods is that they can be measured and spend can be justified with the success that it brings. However, all too often these channels are viewed in isolation and success is sometimes simply measured by the number of transactions that can be directly attributed to the relevant email, affiliate or search campaign.

It’s clear to me however that to measure success, online marketing investments must be viewed in their context of the overall marketing strategy.

Getting back to basics - what is marketing?

Marketing is concerned with creating value for customers and extracting value from customers.

Long term value creation is based on sustainable competitive advantage, which is derived from the ability to provide superior value for customers and provides the reason why customers consistently buy from one company rather than another.

In ecommerce the value we can provide for customers is based on a number of different factors, including, but not limited to...
- Price
- Choice
- Filter and choice selection tools
- Ease of purchase and payment
- Brand reassurance (if the site is well known)
- Personalisation
- Reviews / advice from other customers
- Delivery and shipping
- Customer service

When we spend money on marketing activity to communicate our proposition to our customers and our potential customers, we are doing three things...

1. Bring new customers (acquisition)
   
2. Generate repeat purchases from existing customers (retention)
   
3. Generate more revenue per customer (development)
   

Given the above I think it really helps to understand WHY you are investing in SEO / PPC / Affiliates / Email etc. A good starting point is to think about customer value and then think about how much a customer is worth to you over their lifetime.

I’ve been a customer at Amazon.co.uk for about 10 years now. I may well be a customer there for another 30 years if they don’t screw up. Clearly, whatever activity they did 10 years ago to get me on board worked, but importantly, it must be measured not against my initial purchase but on the total lifetime customer value.

Over 10 years, I have purchased 190 items. I just checked, on my account history, it’s all there! Plus I rented DVDs on a subscription for 3 years. I am probably worth to Amazon about £4,000 over the 10 year period. PLUS – being a fan I’ve recommended many people over the years.

My first order was Steve Redgrave’s book of rowing, £16. Great book. I don’t know how much Amazon had to spend to acquire me as a customer, but I know for sure that if they had measured their marketing investment on my first purchase only, they would have got it completely wrong.

How to calculate a lifetime customer ROI...

CUSTOMER VALUE
[Price] x [Annual Volume] x [Customer Years]
+ Referral Value
+ Promotional Value
= Total Customer Lifetime Value

VALUE CREATION COSTS
(Cost of Acquisition)
+ (Cost of Retention)
+ (Cost of Development)
+ (Special Requirements)
+ (Marketing Overhead)
= Total Value Creation Costs

TOTAL VALUE = (CUSTOMER VALUE - VALUE CREATION COSTS)

On a really simple level, to gain a sustainable competitive advantage any business needs to provide
- the best customer value (however the customer judges value)
- and the best return on marketing investment over the full customer lifecycle

To help put this into perspective, I find the following model useful.



It shows the key stages in “owning” a customer and for each stage; specific promotional goals are required to achieve the customer response. For a company to be truly successful they need to draw potential customers through all stages.

These stages are the steps by which customers receive and use information in reaching decisions about what actions they will take. From not knowing about your product/service to recommending it to others, there are 7 steps to heaven.

The highest marketing costs are usually for the first stages, on the left. The biggest returns come from the stages on the right.

Now to the crux of what this article addresses...

Where do all of the “online marketing” methods fit on the model above? By understanding this, you have a framework to better present your marketing spend in its proper context.

Awareness: Does the customer know that the product/service exists?

• Online PR, social media marketing
  
• Finding a link to the product when doing a Google search on a relevant keyword (PPC / SEO)
  
• Finding the site on a search from their mobile phone
  
• Clicking on a banner advertisement
  
• Seeing a reference from a known company (contra deals / competitions)
  

Interest: Does the customer think that product might meet their needs?

• If the customer does not know what they are looking for: inspiration is needed, ideas and suggestions
  
• Special offers can drive interest for price-sensitive customers
  
• SEO/PPC must match on specific keywords used and tailor the ad copy to that interest
  

Evaluation: Does the customer have enough information to make a decision?

• Build great content. Photos, maps, specifications, availability
  
• Peer reviews and expert reviews, the community can provide the content
  
• Provide booking services that allow customers to compare and contrast options. Search and filter tools are needed to narrow down choices
  
• Create a shortlist, share with friends (collaborative decision making)
  

Preference: Does the customer choose your product to purchase?

• If the customer already knows that they want a specific product and they search by product name, be sure your PPC / SEO / affiliates takes them directly to the product
  
• Have the product in stock
  
• Ease of purchase (payment methods)
  

1st purchase: Can the customer make a purchase easily?

• Always available, real time, 24/7
  
• On all places where the customer might be (as many websites as possible – affiliates, plus own website)
  
• SMS / email confirmations. Delivery and shipping instructions. 
  

Repeat purchase: Can you easily communicate with existing customers and maintain a relationship with them?

• Make it easy for your site/product to be found again through search 
  
• Maintain a customer database
  
• Email marketing
  
• Segmentation / personalisation of messages
  

Advocacy: Is the customer so impressed by the service that they tell others and generate even more business?

• Customer satisfaction emails
  
• Customer reviews
  
• Guest recognition and personalisation
  
• Case studies and customer-based PR stories, distribute online
  

I find that looking at online marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy helps to provide a better understanding of how to calculate a meaningful return-on-investment beyond the immediate gratification offered by same-session conversion metrics.

What’s obvious to me from the above is that not only is online marketing core to the success of an ecommerce business, but that website product management is also clearly a marketing activity. Often there’s confusion about who owns the website functionality. To me it’s clear; it’s part of the overall customer experience, and forms part of the marketing mix.

One important final note; as we are all different as individuals, so are companies and products. There are some products that do not lend themselves to a lifetime customer value view as much as others. Products or services that are bought infrequently need to mainly address customer acquisition, whereas products or services that are bought frequently or repeatedly required much more emphasis on retention and development.

I’d love to hear comments on how the above list could be expanded. If you have any thoughts about what should / shouldn’t sit on the 7 steps to heaven, let me know!

Why Does A Restaurant Need A Website?

I was looking over a discussion forum when I came across the following question...

"My good friends David and Terra own an amazing restaurant and bar in Colorado. They have owned the restaurant for a couple of years and do a steady business of mostly repeat customers. That's good. They don't have a web-site yet - that's not so good. I constantly obsess about all of the opportunities that they are missing because of it."

It's a simple question really. Why do I need a website?

Here's my reply to the question...

Not having a website is like having a road with no signposts to get to it.

The majority of potential diners are looking online when deciding ahead when to dine. If they don't find your website, they'll find someone else's. You need to interact with your customers in the channels which they inhabit.

Your marketing relies not only on your physical presence (your location) but also on your virtual presence. I'm sure there's a sign on the front of the restaurant and a menu in the window. Having a website takes that same principle and gets your storefront into the virtual world.

Of course I imagine what your friend is thinking is not "do I need a website" but rather "what is the return on investment" that I get for spending those hours and dollars on a pretty set of webpages.

It's simple; your website needs to work for you and pay it's way. It needs to take reservations, it needs to provide directions, menus and it needs to persuade people that your restaurant is where they want to dine.

At Livebookings we've found that you can convert 1 website visit in every 10 to become a reservation. And when you take those reservations, they give you email data that you can store to start building a guest database. After that you can do email campaigns to build a stronger relationship with your customers and encourage repeat diners.

Share Joy, Not Trouble

I may have studied Religious Studies at University, however I'm not a religious person or a person of faith.

Recently, when going through my late mother's affairs, I found a small handwritten note used as a bookmark. I think it's my Grandmother's writing but I can't be sure.

Despite not being a believer, I have great respect for the message, especially point 5 (see below) and the last sentence.


1. Have quiet time in the morning and the night.

2. Have a note book handy, don't try to think but rather try to RELAX. Write down any thoughts that do come to you.

3. God cannot speak to you unless you are LISTENING.

4. You can tell him your troubles and RESOLUTIONS and then LISTEN and OBEY.

5. Don't talk to people about your troubles. SHARE your joys with them and even with them LISTEN and they will, in the end, ask you to help them.

Here it is:- "When God speaks Man must LISTEN and OBEY. A changed man can help change the world."

Find A Restaurant Near You

The guys over at lastminute.com labs have been busy.

Last year they brought us fonefood, a website especially built for a mobile phone that allows you to search and book restaurants. The restaurant booking capability is powered by Livebookings.

Now, they are testing a new service called nru (near you). It's a nifty device that can be used on the latest Android phone from T-Mobile.

It's a sign of things to come.

Not sure where to eat? Load up your phone to find and read about restaurants near you.

The video below shows it in action:

Microblogging And Lifestreaming - An Overview

A friend at work, Magnus Hultberg, put together this excellent overview of some of the latest "micro-blogging" services available. I asked if he would mind if I could reproduce it here and he kindly agreed.

Magnus writes...


"A current Internet trend and social network primer... Facebook, MySpace and Bebo are so last millennium.

For an interesting overview of how Team Obama used services like this in conjunction with networks like Facebook, Orkut, AsiaAve, Blackplanet and so on to drive fan base and leverage their own web site and all their digital communication, see this PDF:
blog.guykawasaki.com//OBAMA%20SNA%20Strategic_1.pdf

I am playing around with a lot of these micro blogging services right now. Two other very hot trends because of all of this mobile tweeting from Blackberries, iPhones and normal phones (almost all phones have a Twitter or a Jaiku app for on the go micro blogging) are location tracking (where are you in the world) and identity management (where are you on the web), parts of which is often refereed to as “lifestreaming”.

Brightkite, as I mentioned, is one of the most known location in the world services, another well known one that is up and coming is Fire Eagle (a Yahoo service).

www.brightkite.com , fireeagle.yahoo.net

When it comes to online identity management it is just a fancy expression for aggregating all you do online using APIs and RSS feeds to provide users with one central hub where all information they push out can be found, and verified as coming from them. Profilactic is a well known one, Friendfeed another. In these days of people using lots of online services distributed in the “cloud” that today is the Internet the need for such services are getting more and more apparent.

www.profilactic.com , www.friendfeed.com

Taking it one step further is Chi.mp, which does proper identity management in the sense that if you sign up for their service (still invitation only) you actually get what is called an Open ID which is a standard for authenticating you in any web site (as long as the site is integrating with the Open ID API of course). Portable online identity, one user name and password everywhere. Included in the standard is functionality to, as you sign in with a site the first time, decide how much of your personal information you want to share with them and if you want to do so one time only or indefinitely. Very interesting, and certainly something that potentially will be a big part of the future.

I am at manne.mp.

Geekier than most, I am of course using my personal web site to aggregate all of this stuff.

www.hultberg.org

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?

So, my experiment with Twitter has started.

Twitter is either going to be the biggest Internet phenomenon of this year (think YouTube in 2006 or Facebook on 2007) or I will eat my hat. Well, it will be IF the tipping point is reached. Quite what this tipping point is I'm not sure, but when enough people get absorbed into it's crazy ways then it might just be a hit. It's been around for a while (I've been aware of existence for over a year anyway), but more and more famous people seem to be using it and celebrity endorsement never hurt any product, even strange social networking sites.

Might be a hit? Well, the great thing about Twitter is that not only can you track what your friends are up to, but you can also track the celebs. One of my favorites so far is Lance Armstrong, but plenty of others including the newly elected Pres of the US have a Twitter feed.

So - how does it work? Simple. If you know the "status update" tool in Facebook, imagine that, all by itself. Just status updates, and nothing else. You are meant to type in, in no more than 140 characters (that's one sentence or two), the answer to "What are you doing now?". Then, you select friends or other people you want to follow and they get added to your page so that when you log on, at any time you can see what they are up to. Kind of bizarre, strangely addictive.

According to Hitwise, Twitter traffic has grown by 984% in the UK in the last 12 months. That is fast fast growth. The tipping point might be coming soon.

Why do it? I really don;t know the answer to that. Everyone will have their own reason. If you get something out of it, you'll come back. If that something is keeping up with mates, colleagues or heroes, you sometimes need to give to receive.

This century, enabled by the Internet, one-to-one communications and business will take off. The Internet is the ultimate middle-man. Who needs Hello magazine when Jonathan Ross will tell you what he's up to in real time?

To Tweet or not to tweet? You decide.

Tips:

Use the TwitterBerry application to view or edit "Tweets" on the move

Use www.tinyurl.com to create short urls to save text

Use www.ping.fm to update your status on your different social networking sites at the same time