Bill Rice

Tagged: twitter RSS

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  Bill Rice 1:11 pm on November 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: analysis, counts, Data, Data Mining, Data structure, lists, nodes, twitter   

  List, Counts, and Nodes the Power Tools of Analysis 

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  I’m really tired of line graphs, pie charts, and other analytical eye candy. I can’t do anything with the questions they present. It is always impossible to drill into the data that creates these confusing images.

  I have been analyzing complex data for years. I have have crunched data to understand everything from signals intelligence to sales performance. Ironically, the most useful methodology always boils down to three distinct concepts that work beautifully together.

  1. Lists-Discrete elements neatly listed. These could be URLs, Twitter users, contacts, songs, keywords, or any of an infinite number of data items. By breaking data into its discrete element we can see patterns and trends more easily. Simple, easy to scan and sort, lists become  agile frameworks to manipulate and analyze.

  2. Counts-Frequency, scale, reputation are all potential revelations from the simplicity of counting occurrences. Counts make it easy to reveal what is most relevant in data sets. What’s more counts create relevant lists of associated elements.

  3. Nodes-Where is the data coming from, going to, or inter-related? This is a powerful way to gauge the quality and accuracy of information. There is a tendency for associates to exchange data and that exchange tends to be consistent. Therefore, following nodes and relationships can help you locate the right data.

  These three data structures give you all the elements quickly and powerfully analyze very large data sets. Next time you are building an analytics dashboard start here and don’t necessarily go beyond.

  Everything else is pretty, but probably far less useful and ultimately frustrating.

  (Hat tip to Dave Winer. Most of this revelation came from 40-Twits.)

  

   

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  Bill Rice 6:31 am on August 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 140char, Blogging (22), rss (4), twitter   

  Dave Winer is Bringing Back Blogging 

  As Om Malik says, Dave Winer has again sounded a couple of his prophetic warnings. Both of which seem to point back to the importance of the evolution of blogging.

  The common thread to these warnings: the danger of a single company being the sole provider of Web plumbing, infrastructure, or coral reefs.

  Twitter and URL shortening services have been the most recent warnings and both have show their frailty in the last couple of weeks. Naturally this is triggering a rethinking of how this plumbing is provided, maintained, and serviced in the Web ecosystem: Anil Dash’s Pushbutton Web, Google’s PubSubHubBub, RSSCloud.

  The even more interesting trend is that it is bringing people back to their blogs–little corners of the Web they own. Maybe in all the fever of compressed attention spans we had forgotten that humans still need/want context. This is Om’s point that struck me–maybe we just misapplied many of these services function:

  Late last year, following the Bombay terrorist attacks, I wrote about Twitter’s growing influence as a source of breaking news and how, in order to make sense of it all, we need more context. The best place to provide that context is now in blogs. To be sure, most people view Twitter as a microblogging service, but I’ve always seen it as micromessaging service — and the more I used it, the more I realized what a disjointed conversation it can produce.

  It will be interesting as we sort it out. After all we always do. Dave Winer is leading the charge to have that sorting take place on our blogs, with #blogpostfriday.

   
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  Bill Rice 10:48 am on July 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: dave winer (5), Social Media (3), Software (13), twitter, 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 6:11 am on June 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: #140conf, fred wilson, lead generation (42), SEO (3), twitter   

  3 Fundamentals of Making Money on the Internet 

  

  Image via CrunchBase

  Fred Wilson, a VC and Principal at Union Square Station as well as an investor in Twitter, made some very important and often missed observations about making money on the Internet.

  Fundamentals of Making Money Online

  His whole talk at #140Conf can be boiled down to the 3 Funadamental Rules of Making Money on the Internet:

  1. “Links are the currency of the Internet”
  2. Links yield consumer traffic (revenue) in a variety of ways
  3. Passed links are the most valuable (conversion) links

  Why Social Media Traffic is Better

  Assuming those fundamentals, there are some very important and significant observations that should be made about Twitter, social media platforms, and online lead generation.

  Fred Wilson articulated those Internet money making observations very well:

  1. Passed links are generally delivered via email
  2. Social media platforms allow passed links to be scaled
  3. Passed links convert better than search or paid links
  4. Social media referrer traffic is already significant and growing

  Online Lead Generation Opportunity

  This would tend to lead to the conclusion that social media traffic, as it scales to a meaningful size will yield better lead generation ROI – assuming you can design a capable, viable social media lead generation business or business unit.

  Is anyone trying this?

  You can and should watch Fred Wilson’s remarks:

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  Take a moment to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. If you are looking for a better way to manage your leads, generate more sales leads, or beat your competition to the sale visit my company at Kaleidico.com.

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  • What’s Twitter Doing With its Dough? (markevanstech.com)

  

   
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  Bill Rice 8:23 am on April 16, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: communication, joel on software, pecha kucha, stowe boyd (2), twitter   

  Growing Appreciation for Simplicity, Brevity, and Clarity 

  Maybe my increased use of Twitter or the more hectic my life continues to become has contributed to this affinity for tightly packed, well thought out, communication.

  Examples:

  • Stowe Boyd, /Message, TwitPitch Me!
  • Pecha Kucha via Business of Software by Joel on Software

  Brief me: http://twitter.com/billrice

   
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  Bill Rice 8:17 am on April 15, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: contact management, social apps, Social Media (3), twitter   

  Contact Management for Twitter 

  No more excuses for not staying in contact with friends, family, and business contact. Now you can have social contact management that works seamlessly with your existing Twitter.

  Here is the idea and what to do:

  

  1. Get Twitter or have Twitter, who doesn’t have Twitter yet?
  2. Follow salestwit
  3. Sign-up for a “closed” beta invite at http://www.salestwit.com
  4. When you get your invite sign-up at http://salestwit.com/twitup.php using your invite code
  5. Once signed in load your contacts from gmail, yahoo!, outlook, apple mail, or any other address book
  6. Set the interval you want to contact folks in the settings link
  7. Wait for you first twit from your address book, and surprise you first long lost friend or business contact

  If you like it share your invite code, talk about it, and give us feedback for the future.

   
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  Bill Rice 9:09 am on April 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: andrew badera, contact, people, social (2), twitter   

  Call Someone Today for No Good Reason 

  Reach into your address book today, pick a random person, and call or email them. Your life, and maybe even your business, will be richer for it.

  Inspired by @andrewbadera, on Twitter:

  

   
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  Bill Rice 9:17 am on April 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bill rice (5), chris brogan (2), dave winer (5), inspiration (3), joel spolsky (3), seth godin (2), stowe boyd (2), twitter   

  Who Inspires You? 

  I have been running hard this week. Early wake-ups and late shut-downs. Running out of gas…

  So, I popped open my RSS feedreader looking for inspiration (I suppose).

  And, I found it in Chris Brogan’s “Inspiration and Origins“:

  My big point: none of us are originals. It’s okay. And I’ve DEFINITELY done it myself, where I’ve thought something WAS my thought, only to find out that I was synthesizing something I read a few days back, or a conversation I had (Did that famously badly once, to a friend I love, and had to rescind). But if you KNOW you’re going to riff off someone, give a little link love and be done with it. Fair?

  This is who inspires me:

  • Dave Winer: I hate his politics. I often hate the way he treats past or non-friends. But, he has an amazing genius to him. I read every word. I love his pictures on Flickr. He seeds thought and software. He gets user-first design. I wish I knew him better.
  • Stowe Boyd: I love his brevity. Master of 140 character poetry.
  • Seth Godin: A storyteller. Creates simple, short stories that if absorbed yield big results.
  • Joel Spolsky: Hero of the ISV (Independent Software Vendor). Master of effective software development methodology.
  • Twitter: I find more who inspire me everyday.

  Who inspires you?

   
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  Bill Rice 8:07 am on April 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: api, application development, Software (13), twitter   

  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 2:35 pm on April 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: china, protest, tibet, twitter   

  Just When You Thought Twitter Wasn’t Important… 

  Twittered and documented live…