Bill Rice

Tagged: Software RSS

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  Bill Rice 10:48 am on July 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: dave winer (5), Social Media (3), Software, twitter (10), users, Web 2.0   

  Software Engineers Learning to Listen to Users 

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  Another software gem from Dave Winer–be a user and listen to users. Hopefully, he will continue to build out this advice, but I thought it was valuable to pull it out and highlight here:

  1. Be a user. Develop apps you yourself have a use for. If you don’t have a feeling for what it’s like to be a user, you’ll never know how to evolve the products, and the stuff you learn in #2 will never make sense.

  2. Listen to users. Learning how to code is straightforward, it takes time to perfect your skills, but it’s relatively easy compared to the skill of listening. I recently suggested to a VC friend that we start a company whose sole differentiator is that it strives to perfect the art of listening to users.

  I think social media and Web 2.0 are making it easier for us to listen to users–trying to use our software as well as get things done. Unfortunately, we often don’t put the effort into making it easy to hear and listen for our users.

  We just added GetSatisfaction.com and the Feedback tab (widget) into all of our applications. Hopefully, that will make it easier for them to talk to us. In addition, we are becoming more active in energizing and engaging our user community.

  Still, the methodology for listening is not perfected. More thought and innovation is needed…

  Ideas? What are you doing to listen better to your users?

  

   

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  Bill Rice 2:50 pm on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Software   

  Tools for Eavesdropping and Taking Action 

  
  Stowe Boyd, of /message trickled into my RSS stream and tickled one of my ongoing projects.

  You see, Stowe is thinking about appliances and applications that “eavesdrop” on our streams and take action. His idea swirls around travel and event planning. Mine, around sales.

  Let’s take a look at what one of these applications might look like:

  1. Tap into “microsyntax” and keywords to trigger capture
  2. Default display would be a “river of news”
  3. Interesting items (potential sales opportunities) can be:
  4. • Flagged
     • Identified
     • Engaged
     • Tracked
     • Captured (into CRM)
  5. Provide Social Graph explorer
  6. Selectively capture microformats meta-data (i.e., contacts, tags)
  7. Have API to simplify Social CRM implementation

  I am really enjoying this project. More to come…

  (photo: Milanella)

  jual_rumah, Bill Rice, and paulknag are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    paulknag 5:00 pm on July 23, 2009 Permalink

    Aren't there already keyword notifier programs like Google Alerts and TwitterBeep which are doing something of this ?

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    Bill Rice 7:54 pm on July 23, 2009 Permalink

    Yes, there are certainly early tools and feature sets that are implemented.

    Some savvy sales people are leveraging these to produce results, which is demonstrating the value. However, try to manage or implement on an enterprise level (even scaling to 10-15 sales people).

    Probably the biggest hole is in the identity piece. Here's an exercise: Try taking one of those alerts you get from Google Alerts or any other social search and try to efficiently track it down to contact information.

    Are you finding those tools to be efficient sales lead generators?

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    jual_rumah 7:55 am on July 29, 2009 Permalink

    Thank you for the valuable lesson.

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  Bill Rice 8:07 am on April 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: api, application development, Software, twitter (10)   

  Why Develop Applications on Twitter? 

  0. Twitter is a coral reef

  1. Twitter has tons (maybe more than a million) of users

  2. It’s a social ecosystem

  3. Everyone can create their own experience

  4. You can listen to your customers

  5. It creates competitive advantage

  6. Journalist use it

  7. It’s just fun–try it!

   
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  Bill Rice 3:39 pm on April 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bill rice (5), joel spolsky (3), kaleidico (2), Software, start-up (3)   

  In Case Anyone Wants to Know Kaleidico’s Strategy 

  From one of the smartest guys in the software business, Joel Spolsky:

  I’ve never learned as much about business strategy as I did from the simple infantry concept called fire and motion (it’s also sometimes referred to as fire and movement).

  Here is how it works. You fire at the enemy. That’s the fire part. And you move forward at the same time. That’s the motion. Get it?

  You’re firing because then your enemy has to take cover. He can’t fire back at you when he’s cowering behind a wall. But firing is not enough. You also have to move forward, or you won’t make any progress. Moving forward brings you closer to the enemy. And closer enemies are easier to hit. You need both — fire and motion — to accomplish anything. Almost every military tactic, whether it’s employed on air, sea, or land, is a variation on this fundamental pattern. Successful business strategies are based on fire and motion, too.

  (Source: “Fire and Motion,” Inc.com, April 2008)

  I was in the military too. Competitors, feeling any fire? We’re moving!

   
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  Bill Rice 6:19 am on September 28, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ideas (73), lead generation (42), marketing (39), Software, technology (41), venture capital (15)   

  Mint the New Proactive Lead Generation 

  In case you missed it, Mint won the TechCrunch40 Top Tech Company Award. Mint is a new simple way for you to manage your money online.

  At first glance, it seems to be a more intuitive and user-friendly personal accounting replacement for Intuit’s Quicken. However, as you begin using Mint you begin to note how effectively it is proactively generating lucrative leads for various financial services companies from your financial data. As it scrubs for opportunities for you to save on expenditures and improve returns on your money it is spitting out opportunities for you to proactively engage companies with a better deal.

  This is not just personal accounting software it is a lead generation platform (also note Sy Fahimi, CEO of Adteractive is an investor).

  This platform raises two important innovative opportunities:

  1. Can the companies that are receiving these lucrative leads have the analytic capability to effective improve their retention and win rates?
  2. Once you receive a win can you effectively manage that lead into a conversion?

  This is a true example of a marketing (yes, I see Mint as marketing and lead generation) company learning to stock the pond with consumers that self-organize, target, and initiate. Lead generation continues it evolutionary march.

  Tags: mint, techcrunch, techcrunch40, personal finance, lead generation

   
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  Bill Rice 1:08 pm on September 10, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ideas (73), mortgage (31), Software, technology (41)   

  IBM gets approval for mortgage operations 

  The announcement that IBM has received approval for mortgage originations could be bigger news than many might first imagine. This could be the entrance of mortgage as a service (MaaS) taken from the lessons of SaaS.

  IBM Lender Business Process Services, or LBPS, received clearance to provide mortgage origination services for federally insured Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans.

  When it announced the unit’s launch in March, IBM said the unit would fill a void in the lending space, particularly for small and midsize lenders.

  The Charlotte-based unit will allow mortgage lenders to replace the fixed costs that are associated with typical loan fulfillment operations with a variable-cost framework. This in turn will free up lenders to provide better service and support to consumers, IBM says.

  LBPS will offer a variety of lending services, including loan application, underwriting, processing, vendor management, document preparations, and loan closing.

  In a market where lenders are looking for operational efficiency, outsourcing the enormous overhead and disjointedness of a technology division in a 30-60 day cyclical mortgage business model may make sense beyond the small and medium size operations.

  Tags: banking, mortgage, software, technology, lending services, FHA, IBM

   
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  Bill Rice 7:46 am on June 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ideas (73), Software, technology (41)   

  Ignore the word Facebook and focus on Software Platform 

  First, if you have not begun reading Marc Andreessen’s blog, put it in your feed reader and start.

  Now, turn your attention to Marc’s analysis of Facebook and ignore any reference to “Facebook.”

  I often find that Web 2.0 labeled technologies’ infrastructure and philosophical value is lost in the immaturity of current users implementation. That is not to say that lowering the bar to users being able to use technology for trivia purposes is bad. It does mean that we often look at a technologies current implementation and reduce it to myopic categorizations like MySpace is for teenagers, Facebook is for college kids, LinkedIN is for business adults, and Twitter is just lunacy.

  The key point to be observed in this post:

  Veterans of the software industry have, hardcoded into their DNA, the assumption that in any fight between a platform and an application, the platform will always win.

  Definitionally, a “platform” is a system that can be reprogrammed and therefore customized by outside developers — users — and in that way, adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform’s original developers could not have possibly contemplated, much less had time to accommodate.

  In contrast, an “application” is a system that cannot be reprogrammed by outside developers. It is a closed environment that does whatever its original developers intended it to do, and nothing more.

  Technorati Tags: marc andreessen, facebook, software, platform

   
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  Bill Rice 11:17 am on May 9, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Blogging (22), ideas (73), social content (13), social networks (15), social software (6), Software   

  Twittering? 

  I must confess I don’t get (conceptually) the fascination, but I suppose I need to try it…

  Marshall Kirkpatrick » Twittering more than blogging

  This is particularly fascinating, considering the number and frequency of production software pushes we do at Kaleidico:

  Dave Winer on Twitter for Coding Communities

  Technorati Tags: twitter, blogging, software, cocial

   
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  Bill Rice 2:40 pm on May 8, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Software   

  Writing Software for Users 

  If you write software for users. This is what it is all about in one sentence:
  
  

  When we were developing Radio 8 in 2001, we set a goal that 80 percent of the people who tried it had to get to first post in five minutes. We iterated until we got there.

  Zune, Day 2 (Scripting News)

  Technorati Tags: software

   
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  Bill Rice 9:12 am on April 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ideas (73), Software, technology (41)   

  Business Intelligence Web 2.0 Style 

  Ian Landsman shows us what we can learn about our own businesses with a little Web 2.0 mashup. Mapping your customer base.