Tag: Social Media

Why I created a Facebook page

Inspired by Rolf Dobelli’s book, I stopped using Facebook six months ago. Mainly because I was addicted, and also because the constant social comparisons and the instant gratification treadmill became toxic for me. (I’m still using Messenger/WhatsApp for one-one-one contact.)

The downside of leaving Facebook was that I lost a distribution channel for my content, and the people who were following me on FB suddenly stopped seeing my updates.

Reading Crush It! and Crushing It! by Gary Vaynerchuk convinced me that this was not wise if I wanted to maximize my impact, which I want.

So recently I changed my Facebook strategy and created a personal FB page.

Why a FB page?

#1: More reach: 1.52 billion people use FB daily. I want a slice of that.

#2: Compatible with social media software: I am using Crowdfire (they have a completely free plan, by the way) to manage my social media channels. You can only use such software with FB pages, not with personal profiles. This allows me to manage the page without having to actually log in to FB (which is what I don’t want).

#3: I can outsource my social media management: You can give third parties access to manage pages. So eventually I can completely outsource this channel.

#4: More options to customize: I can customize a page much better than a personal profile.

#5: Reply to private messages by email: I receive an email whenever somebody writes a message trough my page. I can answer by email, without having to log in.

#6: You can boost individual posts with ads. I’m not intending to do this, but it might be a good way to promote your business.

Final note on my private use of Facebook
I’m feeling a clear pressure to log back into FB occasionally. Some of my friends publish exclusively there (e.g. in private groups for travel notes), so each month or so I log in to check the updates of those selected people.

Also, less than 24 hours since creating my page, I received the first message from an acquaintance who missed my updates (and I his). I now make an effort to occasionally reach out to those people one-to-one. Since leaving FB, I ramped up my calls/lunches/dinners/coffees, which is socially much more rewarding anyways.

Follow me on Facebook.


Twitter Early Days

I have finished reading the Twitter founding story. I remember when I signed up for Twitter in April 2007 and instantly fell in love. I loved the concept of ‘blogging via SMS’ and did it using my Palm Treo at the time.

Learnings:

  • Twitter was born because Odeo — a podcasting company — has failed and needed a new product. One reason why Odeo failed was because none of the founders and employees really used it. They weren’t really passionate about podcasting. Once they started with Twitter, everybody in the team immediately became a power user. This is an important principle: Build something for yourself. Eat your own dogfood. Watch out for the warning sign: If not even you are using your own product, this is not good.
  • The first version of Twitter was built in two weeks.
  • Odeo and Twitter were a pretty large mess internally. Lots of anarchy, no structure, weak leadership, lots of conflict, LOTS of outages (remember the Fail Whale?). I am a believer that companies die because of internal problems, not because of competition or external things. So I’m glad that Twitter managed to survive somehow, as it’s a very important service.
  • Some stories — especially descriptions of the behaviour of some involved people — were pretty irritating and scary. The author claims to have done a thorough research. As I don’t know the people personally and haven’t been there myself, I will not comment on those stories. The bottom line is: we are all human beings, and we all have our flaws. Startups are no different. You find ugly stuff there, as everywhere else. Be prepared for conflict, fights, broken friendships, struggle for power, and other ugly stuff.
  • For me the key success factor of Twitter was simplicity, usability, convenience and access. From the beginning I have used it as a microblog, and very soon it was my favourite way of blogging. The SMS part was key in the beginning. It was realtime, mobile communication in the pre-smartphone era. One time I tweeted that I was on my way to Munich, and suddenly a friend who lived near Berlin contacted me that he was in Munich as well. So we are able to meet up. Such experiences showed me the power and value of Twitter.
  • Twitter had no business model for the first 3 years. Zero revenues. At the same time they had to pay tens and later hundreds of thousands of dollars per month for SMSes alone. Not very cool. I wonder whether it is possible to build a service like Twitter or Facebook and from the beginning be cashflow positive with a sustainable business model. I believe that some sort of Freemium or Subscription business model should be possible. When WordPress.com started, people were selling subdomain names (e.g. cars.wordpress.com) on eBay for $100. WordPress.com could have sold those premium names. The same with Twitter. They could have sold 1/2/3/4/5-character user names. Or offer 10/20/30 SMS’s for free per month and if you wanted more you would have to pay. I easily would have paid $5 or $10 per month like I do for other services. I wonder whether this is possible. (My gut feelings say: Hell yes!!!). This lack of revenue generated huge pressure later on, which probably could have been avoided.
  • The goal of the current management team is to make Twitter a $100b company. Currently Twitter has a market cap of $31b.
  • The turning point for Twitter was the SXSW conference in 2007. They decided to take advantage of the conference by installing plasma screens with Twitter feeds and instructions of how to sign up. With that the critical mass was reached, press started to get obsessed by this new phenomenon and Twitter started to grow like crazy. In the first 6 months or so they only attracted a couple thousand users. So it didn’t take off immediately. However, the founders and team were already addicted and were using the service daily. This probably kept them going through the relative slow start. Again, it comes down to: Build something users want. Build something for yourself.
  • Unfortunately the book focused very strongly on the fights and personal conflicts. I would have wished to learn more about the product and the company itself, what the milestones were etc. Nevertheless a very interesting book about a product that I use and love.

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Why I started using twitter

First of all, this interesting podcast with twitter co-founder Evan Williams (and co-founder of Blogger.com) made me sign up.

Things I learned:

#1: Twitter is so freakin’ easy. It just answers one simple question: What are you doing?

#2: Twitter is like mini-blogging. Because its so easy that I can do it whereever I am via SMS, I twitter more often than I write blog posts (= more content for my blog via the twitter-widget)

#3: Evan does what he is passionate about and EATS ITS OWN DOGFOOD (= one important success factor of both twitter and blogger.com)

#4: I am definitely no early adopter (since I started blogging in august 2006 and twittering in april 2007). I have to be convinced and see real value before I try something new. Thats an interesting personal insight :-).

Example of twitter power-usage:

Robert Scoble asked his 2500+ twitter-friends what tools he should install on his new MacBookPro. The 2500+ friends received an SMS/IM/RSS-alert with this question and sent Robert dozens of tips in just a couple of minutes. Thats value!

PS: I’m sure you already saw my twitter-widget in my sidebar :-).