If I follow you on twitter, because I found you or you found me first, I don’t need you to direct message me a link to your web site or spam me with details about your product or service! Here is a tip, I know all I need to know about you right now moron!

If someone follows me, I visit their Twitter profile to see who they are. My general rule these days is that if I know them, they are an Aussie, or are relevant to what I do, then I’ll follow them back. As long as the profile, or even their last few tweets, don’t seem to be spam then I’ll likely follow them. That’s a pretty slack set of rules I know, but I do like to continue to be involved in a wider Twitter community.

However, in the last few weeks it has becoming increasingly frustrating on Twitter, because this new form of spam is happening on a daily basis. I’ll follow someone, and get a DM in reply: “Thanks for following! You can also learn more about me at http://Iamanidiot.com and http://Iamlame.com.au.”

So for the idiots that have taken to this practice, here is the rub: it is SPAM! Besides, I’ve already checked your profile, and possibly already checked your site. I don’t need more information right now. How about at some point we have a nice chat, and I can get to know you. This is basic Internet etiquette these days, moron! Grab some common sense.

Let me repeat this one more time, just to keep me happy: it is basic etiquette not to spam me with crap you think is important to me! I’ve been on the Internet long enough to know I can Google for the things I’m interested in. I’m on Twitter to get to know PEOPLE, not your fucking day trader business, or SEO company, or how I can get fit.

For all those people using Twitter, feel free to point morons to this blog post when they DM you to tell you how much you’ll love their site or company.

wall of spam

Originally uploaded by chotda

I stumbled across a blog post by Guy Kawasaki yesterday: Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter. Kawasaki is an old Apple employee that now invests in other companies, and starts a few web startups of his own. He is a self-promoter.

It’s possible that Kawasaki’s post is tongue in cheek, but having read a bunch of his stuff over the years, I’m guessing he is mostly serious. But I think his thoughts are incredibly flawed, and here is why: Twitter, and other social media, does not work if people are selfish.

Kawaski’s key point is: get as many followers as you can on Twitter, because they can serve you well.

That’s hellishly simplistic and wrong, and the only reason someone like Kawasaki can get away with it is because he has plenty of fanbois and girls. Otherwise people would would largely ignore most of the tactics he says he uses to get followers, because it’s exactly like spamming people.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the tips are great. Like creating a simple photo of your face for your avatar, establishing yourself as a subject expert (if that’s what you want to use Twitter for), and use the right tools.

However, the basis for the post and also tips like following “social media whores” (smores), sending @ messages to them, and following everyone that follows you are essentially stupid.

Personally I don’t follow “smores.” I find them useless. As he says, if you message them, they “probably won’t answer you.” This suggests they’re not that social after all, making them just whores, and without a two-way conversation I may as well talk to myself.

The reason why Twitter is so valuable to everyone is that it can be very relevant. And this is the key. Following everyone, and having a mass following does not make it relevant. Stressful, and a waste of time: yes.

People complain about email, because you have limited control over what email you receive when your email address is public. Twitter was hailed as its replacement, because there is much more control on who can send you messages. That theory falls apart when you follow everyone, and hope they all follow you.

Now “relevancy” is a personal matter. People might use Twitter to be social, while others use it for business. Each of us have a reason or two to use Twitter, and this determines who we should follow, and who should follow us back.

Here are the reasons I use Twitter:

• to keep up to date with my friends,
• occasional social banter,
• network with Australian and Chinese technology folk,
• occasional research or questions.

I’m sure I get a few other benefits here and there, but essentially that’s what I use Twitter for.

So, given that’s my aims, I have a good sense of who to follow, and who should follow me. Now I’ve narrowed my list down to something a lot more manageable, and if anyone messages or DMs me, I can easily get back to them. Hopefully this adds value to those who I follow, as well as the value that I gain.

Following Kawaskai’s suggestion will turn Twitter in to a mass chat room. I can go back to IRC for that.

Speaking of which, I wonder when Darcy is gonna release Kookaburra.

Last Thursday I prepared a presentation for Webjam 9. The aim was to keep the anti-filter message flowing. I figured it was an awesome forum to continue to promote it.

I prepared it as a video, rather than slides, because I wanted the pace of the slides to change as the presentation unfolded. It also allowed me to add a few other video snippets, and do it hands free given the 3 minute time limit.

So it made sense to add my voice over for the presentation and to upload it to the Internets, for others to see and use.

For more information, check out AWIA’s Keep Your Filter Off Our Internet.

Last week was Web Week in Perth. AWIA gave it the nickname because it now hosts several events:

• AWIA’s Port 80
• AWIA’s inaugural Edge of the Web conference
• Webjam 9
• and AWIA’s WA Web Awards.

It turned out to be one fantastic week, enjoyed by a bunch of people from WA, inter-state, and international visitors.

I’m sure there are a range of reasons why people will love the week. Personally I loved it because it brought together a bunch of web folk, who met face-to-face, and had a great time discussing the current state and future of the world wide web.

My main take home came courtesy of Chris Messina’s keynote, Facebook without Facebook, at the Edge of the Web. I’ve been involved in a bunch of things in Perth, fighting the good fight and promoting not only openness, but the web industry in general (including Blogger’s Meetup, Blog Nite, BarCamp, Silicon Beach House co-working space, and now part of the AWIA committee). But, I feel like there is so much more to do.

It all takes time of course, and it’s not like I haven’t been active, but the week just re-inspired me to keep the energy going.

So thanks to everyone for being a part of a great week. It was amazing to see you all take part, and I am really looking forward to next years. However, I’m also looking forward to doing amazing things between now and then.

I mentioned the other day that the Australian Web Industry Association was working on their response to the Australian Government’s Internet filter.

Over several days a bunch of clever souls worked on a new web site for the web industry to show its support against the new filter. It includes a press release from AWIA, example letters, and some methods for how you can take action: Keep Your Filter Off Our Internet.

It also contains some nifty web site badges, like below, that allows everyone to show their support. So, at the very least go grab the code and show your support on your blog or site.

Being modest and all (yes I’m talking to you @pixel8ted), I’m usually shy about coming forward. But I’m pretty happy that SNOBS (Social Network For Opportunistic Businesswomen) profiled me today in their Work it Baby section.

Next week is the Edge of the Web conference in Perth.

A few of the AWIA people, of which I’m on the committee, have spent months putting this together. Props to Myles and Kay for doing most of the work. They need a big hand, and many beers next week at the WA Web Awards.

It’s going to be an amazing event, and if your in some way involved in the web industry, you should be attending.

At the outset, one of the people that was at the top of our speaker list was Chris Messina. I first heard of Chris after he was involved in the fist BarCamp in 2005 — you could say he was a co-founder — and met him for the first time at BarCamp San Francisco in 2006. I also interviewed Chris for the Gadget Show a short while later.

I asked Chris a few questions via email the other day, and he was amazing in his quality of response. There are some really amazing thoughts in the answers, and I think it gives us a hint of the quality of the presentation he’ll give next week.

Read on, and I’ll see you all at the Edge of the Web.

Photo from Flickr, by roland.

Q: You’ve been involved in a bunch of amazing things, Firefox, BarCamp, coworking, microformats, etc. What’s your most memorable moment?

A: I’ve had the good fortune of being present and participating in a number of fairly significant events in recent years. The most memorable moment for me was probably the closing of the first BarCamp in Palo Alto in 2005. Everyone was pretty well spent from the weekend, but I think we were also invigorated, and even though I was reluctant to acknowledge it at the time, I think there was a shared sense that we had just created something important, and that, if we could share it forward to others, it become something spiritual and freeing.

I don’t mean that to sound trite, but you have to remember that the folks who put on the first BarCamp, myself included, had never attempted something like that before. After Spread Firefox, this was the first time that I personally witnessed the power of social media for bringing people together, in person. That was the difference here.

It was a privilege to be able to design the New York Times ad in honor of the nearly 10,000 individual contributors who helped pay for it, and that, along with my experience with the Howard Dean campaign, told me what the network was capable at internet scale. It wasn’t until BarCamp was concluding that I realized that we could also leverage the same network effects at the local level, and that snot-nosed kids like the BarCamp founders could start a movement using free and open source tools available to just about anyone at the time.

This was also the moment when I realized that open source could be applied to more than just software — it could be used to develop high-quality, relevant social institutions.

That was the moment when I think I realized the power that I had — and that others like me who were willing to realize it also had — to make a difference.

Q: You’re planning on presenting at the Edge of the Web conference about openness. Without giving the game away, do you want to give us a teaser of what to expect?

A: I think there’s reason to be extremely optimistic about the web, and specifically the health of the Open Web. There’s an increasing recognition of fundamental characteristics of the web that help it to
stay robust, malleable and highly resilient.

Whether it’s concepts like “cloud computing” or the fact that Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Yahoo! all depend on and in fact have centered their strategies around the enduring presence of the Open Web bode well for the longevity of the “information superhighway”.

But the Open Web is not without its detractors or threats. We’re seeing crackdowns in China, we’re seeing proprietary platforms like Silverlight and Adobe Air (don’t be fooled by the marketing: these are NOT open technologies) ebbing away at the mindshare the web has.

You’d hope that with something as obvious and as universally useful as the Open Web, you wouldn’t have to protect it, but that’s not the case. With developments like the Open Web Foundation and Tim Berners-Lee new World Wide Web Foundation, advocacy efforts for the web are growing up to ensure that this vital resource that we all enjoy, and to an increasing degree, take for granted, will last, and
will continue to be predicated on non-proprietary technologies that serve both the largest, and the smallest, web citizens.

I can’t say that my talk will cover all of those issues, or any of them specifically, but there are certain approaches that I’ve developed and reused many times in my work supporting the Open Web that are worth taking a look at. I’m not the same starry-eyed internet debutante that I was four years ago. In defense of openness, I’ve got some war stories worth telling, and some insights from ongoing matters that I think might hopefully be of some use of the EotW audience.

Q: How do you think corporate culture is dealing with openness?

A: Y’know, I think those companies which “get it”, especially when it comes to promoting individual freedom while demanding equivalent amounts personal responsibility, will do well.

I think a lot of people are being asked to do the same job they’ve always done, but without the benefits of a lot of the social networking tools that they’ve come to depend on for managing their social lives and interactions. In other words, sites like Twitter and Facebook are being blocked at work because they’re seen as distractions rather than as opportunities to leverage the entire social graph of an organization.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: these kinds of sites can indeed become highly distracting if you’re not careful. But if you are careful, or take on the burden of managing your time better when using these
sites, I think there’s an opportunity for certain types of work, especially information workers, to become more efficient with social networking tools. Or at least that’s the promise that apps like Yammer are counting on.

Look, the “employee” of yesterday that was interested in becoming a “company man” and getting a pension is about as real today as a three-horned unicorn. The corporate environment is going to need to go through some major shifts to deal with the upcoming generation’s manicness, its digital literacy, its time-slicing attention spans, its bursty work ethic, its free agent mentality. Those employers, like Google, that provide an enriching, challenging environment where the individual can grow and do good work among peers, and own the results of their work, in my estimation, will benefit from the changes we’re seeing now, and that we’ve seen, for instance, in the open source community.

For some, work will continue to be a mean to an end; for others, it will be the end in and of itself. Corporate cultures that show a willingness to work with and accommodate the needs of the new workforce should fare well; cultures that also demand more results but also provide a means for trading in accomplishments for local social capital I think will also do well.

Those who are struggling to “get it” need to embrace this stuff. From what I’ve seen, the changes are only going to keep coming faster — it sure as hell ain’t gunna slow down to let you catch up.

Q: Given that my company build recommendations based on people’s behaviour, I get in to a lot of conversations about privacy, and security. Where does that play in openness?

A: Well, you really need to split this conversation down along personal and technological lines.

From a technology perspective, openness can breed security, since by design, you must “show your work”. This has been the story of success in projects such as Firefox, Linux, WordPress and Drupal. Because the code is out there, just about anyone can come along and audit the source, and discover holes. This kind of distributed work can be highly efficient and highly effective, especially when it comes to response times on active projects.

If you’re talking about personal privacy and security, I think you have to approach the question by looking at the “negative space”. There are already countless companies out there that harvest
information about your behavior, cross-linking your credit card and ATM transactions, you travel behavior, your phone calls. I mean, this isn’t like some bad movie: it’s kind of the pink elephant in the room when it comes to privacy. We willingly trade access and the ability to mine this information in exchange for better service. Google’s search recommendations are a point in case here.

In your case, the question should really be: “If you could harvest all kinds of information about your behavior and then leverage it to improve your work, your productivity, your reading habits — you name it! — why wouldn’t you?” And I think this is a novel but emerging attitude. My girlfriend and I were mentioned in a Washington Post article on so-called “self-trackers”, essentially a small but growing
community of people who record random minutiae about themselves in order to better understand their habits, trends, behaviors and the like. It’s like having web stats for your life.

When it comes to thinking about this from a privacy perspective, just like with Twitter, you have to ask yourself: “why am I so vain as to think that anyone else would really care what I had for breakfast this morning?” and second “what on earth did I have for breakfast *yesterday* morning?!”

It’s not that privacy isn’t something that should be considered seriously, and that people shouldn’t make up their own minds about what they’re comfortable sharing. It’s that there’s another side to the debate that suggests that you should start collecting information about your own behavior so that you know as much about yourself — if not more! — than big companies.

Q: There’s always some form of speculation about the future of the web. What’s your current theory?

A: Wow. Well, I think there are two things that I’m most excited about for the future of the web right now: location-based services and personal social networks, cumulatively referred to, perhaps, as
“MoLoSoSo” (mobile local social software).

We’ve seen how transformative Google Maps has been. And now we’re going to see walking directions and street view coming to the iPhone. It’s only a matter of time before you can start mashing up your Brightkite checkins — in real-time — with which bus is going to get you to that cafe where your friends are at. We’re seeing a geo-location API being built into Gears and into Firefox. We’re seeing the development of open web building blocks like OpenID gaining traction (finally).

I think the web needs to get a lot more personal, and lot more local and a lot more human scale to fully begin to realize its potential. Ironically, the web learns how to scale, and the when it scales, it becomes pretty boring as the signal to noise ratio drops, and then things have to shrink down back to the scale of the individual. Which of course is the story of BarCamp and how this whole thing comes back full circle on itself.

Yes, ultimately BarCamp is the future and the past of the web as the Universe inhales and exhales, as it always has.

The other day the the SMH published a story about the Government covering up information about their plans to censor the Internet in Australia: Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics.

That news certainly got a bunch of people talking. Over the weekend discussions started on the Port80 forums, AWIA’s committee mail list, and the Silicon Beach Google Group.

Not surprising really, because anyone involved in technology realises that it is a ridiculous way to protect our children.

So AWIA is really serious about the issue, and I spent a few hours on Sunday night doing some research. AWIA plans on releasing a press release soon that outlines our stance, and also getting more active in campaigning against it.

Why bother, you say? Well, here are the main points I drew up in conclusion to my research.

1. It IS important to protect our youth. But NOT with a filter.

The Government themselves said, “Labor considers that, just as we teach Australian children about the risks of drink driving, we must also teach them how to be responsible cyber-citizens and about the importance of cyber-safety.”

That made me think of this example to explain filtering.

Filtering the Internet is like having a breath testing unit (that isn’t completely accurate) on everyone’s street, and everyone has to be tested before they can drive up their own driveway.

That would stop drink driving to some degree, but it would get false readings, slow everyone down, infringe our rights, and cost a lot of money and time.

2. It will filter innocent content, so EVERYONE won’t be able to reach some innocent material.

Think of this scenario if you have a web site. What happens if your web site gets filtered, even for a day or so, because the filter technology accidently added you to the black list. That is definitely possible with the current technology. For a business that can mean loss of business.

When the Government themselves did tests in June this year, their tests showed that on average 4% of innocuous sites were blocked. I think that’s a pretty significant number.

3. Filtering WILL slow the Internet down for EVERYONE.

Again, back to the Government’s tests. Which I should point out were not done in a real world environment, and could result in much worse performance because of the scale that will be required by ISPs.

On average, the filters slowed the bandwidth of the test network down by 42%.

4. It infringes EVERYONES freedom of speech.

The way the Government intends to filter the Internet is with two steps. The first is intended to protect children, and filter content the Government thinks they shouldn’t see. The second is on content it thinks should be banned.

Anyone of age can opt-out of the first step. Nobody can opt-out of the second.

That’s right, the Government is going to decide what we can and can’t see on the Internet, and their will be nothing you can do about it.

Lets ignore the fact that both steps should be opt-in, something you can request, rather than something that is thrust upon you. However, the Government isn’t going to even allow that.

5. It will cost EVERYONE more.

To start with the cost of implementing the technology by ISPs will be huge. It will cost them in infrastructure, as well as man power. Those costs will be handed down to customers.

Now think of the impact on you and your company if the Internet was 40% slower. What if you didn’t get some information because it was filtered incorrectly.

It’s already cost tax payers money, because I’m guessing the testing the Government did in June wasn’t free. It’s a $44.2 million policy. Money I can think of dozens of ways of putting to better use.

Overall the idea is ridiculous. It has so many flaws, and will have a significant impact on Australians, in so many negative ways, that any reasonable person will agree that it’s the wrong thing to do.

So stay tuned, because AWIA will soon have an action plan. But in the mean time, make as much noise as you can about it. Let everyone know about the negative effects.

I listened to Cameron Reilly’s paid Telstra gig yesterday (love your introduction-voice mate ), in which he interviewed Mike Hickinbotham, Telstra’s Senior Corporate Relations Advisor.

People that have heard me speak recently know of my distaste for Telstra. I believe that the company is holding Australia back. More on that one day.

Cam does a good job of asking a few hard questions, and cleverly leaves a few things for us to read between the lines. In particular they chatted about Telstra’s “blogging” on nowwearetalking.

Mike is one of the (few) bloggers on nowwearetalking. In his “The scrum” weblog, he recently asked Is nowwearetalking hitting the mark?

I think nowweraretalking is a great case study on how a corporation should not start blogging. It does a poor job, and here are my thoughts.

Firstly, lets look back at how nowwearetalking was launched. I think the press release for nowwearetalking speaks volumes about the company, and the intent of the “blog.” It’s focus is on Government regulation, not the customer.

“In addition to the hundreds of millions that regulation costs Telstra, its customers and shareholders, the cost of regulatory compliance alone is around $10 million every year – enough to upgrade more than 155 rural exchanges for broadband,” Mr Burgess said.

The press release doesn’t focus on why the blog is about engaging conversations, it’s aim was to have the Australian public help Telstra fight Government regulation. Almost 50% of the press release talks solely about how bad Government regulation is for Telstra: of a word count of 441, 214 words are about regulation, and not the weblog.

Hickinbotham confirms that intent on the podcast. Essentially it was launched so customers and shareholders could help it fight Government regulation.

That’s not a great first step in engaging conversations with your customers.

Secondly, according to Hickinbotham, any Telstra employee can get a blog on nowwearetalking if they ask. He clarifies this in a followup to his question about nowwearetalking, nowwearetalking and always looking to improve.

Upon conducting the following podcast with Cameron Reilly (www.telstraenterprise.com), I learned employees interested in blogging start by posting content in the opinions section. If they demonstrate an ongoing interest in blogging, they’ll be given their own blog.

The only other stipulation is the proposed blog doesn’t duplicate a topic covered by one of our 15 bloggers.

What an arcane process! That might explain why there are only 15 blogs on the site.

When Sun Microsystems launched their employee weblog site, they opened it to every employee, and allowed them to discuss anything. It was an automatic process, you simply needed to create your own blog account, and you could go public. No screening required. It had thousand of employees blogging within three years.

The website (lets call it that, it makes more sense than blog doesn’t it) was launched in December 2005. That’s three years ago. Three years and 15 blogs. That’s not a great result from a company point of view. I think it speaks volumes about the Telstra’s corporate culture.

Thridly, it would also seem that Telstra doesn’t have an employee blogging policy. I’m not 100 percent certain on that, it would just seem to be the case given Hickinbotham’s statement on his most recent blog post, “We are currently producing employee blogging guidelines for the same reasons indicated by Cameron.”

However, how is anyone at Telstra ever going to know what they can and can not do with respect to blogs, if the company does not have a blogging policy. It’s rule number one for corporate blogs. And they’re currently producing one, three years after the site launched.

I also found this advertisement on the Telstra site for nowwearetalking. Anyone gets to have a say about the “company.” What about what is affecting me. What about what is affecting Australia. Speaks volumes doesn’t. Telstra is narcissistic.

So, here are a few tips on launching a corporate weblog:

• Start with the customer and conversations in mind (not stamping out Government regulation).
• Allow any employee to blog, about anything they want (don’t setup a process that makes it hard for them to start).
• Have a corporate blog policy (without one, an employee won’t feel an openness to blogging).

However, the single biggest barrier to corporate blogging is corporate culture. If you’ve got an aggressive, insular, opaque culture, then you’re going to struggle to engage in meaningful conversations with your customers.

It’s a big job to change the culture. However, if that’s the case then your company has bigger issues than starting a blog. A corporate culture that isn’t ready for blogging, and isn’t open to transparent conversations with people, is in danger of losing the hearts and minds of it’s biggest stakeholders: customers.

Ooops. Look at that. Tesltra’s already lost the hearts and minds of its customers.

So, to respond to Hickinbotham’s request, “to share your honest opinion of nowwearetalking.com.au.” I’d have to say, Telstra has to change it’s corporate culture before it’ll stand a change with a blog.

Oh, and one last thing. Allow me indulge for a moment.

In the above mentioned press release, Mr Phil Burgess, the then Group Managing Director, Public Policy & Communications, had this to say.

“But there is plenty of regulation that applies only to Telstra, which means that we are subsidizing overseas based competitors.

“That gives those foreign competitors a leg-up against Telstra, and our shareholders and customers foot the bill,” Mr Burgess said.

Here is why there are regulations that applies only to Telstra. Because in any other environment it would be classed as a monopoly.

When Telstra was privatised, it was given the publicly paid for infrastructure. The copper wire and exchanges that services every home. No one else was given that infrastructure, and it would cost billions to duplicate.

Telstra now uses that monopolistic-advantage to crush competitors. It gets away with it, because it was effectively given to them by the Government and its citizens. Now, to protect the nation, we need to ensure we keep Telstra honest, by extra Government regulation.

Now Burgess has left, I can’t say it to him, but I’ll say it to Telstra in general. Stop your sniffling, and get on with the job. You got a bargain, and it would be nice if you used that advantage to look after Australia, or even your customers, not just your CEO and shareholders.

End of rant .

Recently, in the Silicon Beach Google Group, someone asked “Now I’ve launched…I’m scratching my head wondering how to attract customers.”

One thing I’ve been saying for some time now, is that many web start-ups need to adopt traditional business practices. What’s interesting is that many don’t, probably for two reasons: they’re predominantly engineers who love coding, and the web community loves to snub it’s nose at “traditional business.”

Fortunately a large part of my background includes marketing and sales, so I live and breathe this stuff.

What’s interesting is that they were inspired to start their web application after watching David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08. It’s a great presentation, but it lacks so many fundamental business practices it’s dangerous.

David Heinemeier Hansson,
originally uploaded by mathoov.

Now I’m certain if I sat down with David, he’d agree that the presentation didn’t contain all of the details that he knows. It was essentially a presentation to inspire web start-ups to make money. And that is a great thing. So many don’t even consider Price a factor, and if his presentation inspires people to think of at least that step then it’s a good thing.

He also had some other great points about starting a web company, like not panicking about releasing to market quickly, running the company as a side-business initially, and solving simple problems.

However, he over simplifies the problem of launching a business (even though he does reiterate that it all takes hard work), when he says it’s simple: Have a great application. Have a price. People pay.

In marketing there are several more considerations than just Price. In fact it’s so engrained in marketing they are known as the Four Ps:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion

In the same Google Group thread Geoff McQueen points to a great podcast/lecture by Steve Blank: Retooling Early Stage Development.

In the presentation Blank suggests that over 90% of start-ups fail because they didn’t find a market and customers. He then outlines a model, he calls Customer Development, that any start-up can adopt to launch a product. Its whole focus is on the customer.

Wow, funny how that sounds exactly like the sole focus of marketing.

Interestingly enough, “marketing” is considered a dirty word by a lot of engineers/developers .

It really comes back to the age old questions of “What customer need does the product meet?” Or, “What pain am I solving for the customer?” Which are both really good simple questions you ask yourself in the sales process.

They’re also product related, but they flow down to price, place and promotion. So if the pain you’re alleviating is big enough, the price can be more significant. Place, or distribution will depend on who the customer is, and the product. And then throw in promotion, which in itself is insanely complex.

So this is an ongoing process, that takes time to get right.

My point being, the presentation by Hansson is a good one, but the process of launching a start-up is far from simple. You can’t just create a product, slap a price on, and wait for the customers to roll in.

Saying that, if you’re considering starting a company, jump in. As Hansson suggests, run it on the side, learn as you go, launch early, try new things, and research like buggery. It is incredibly rewarding. Just keep in mind, it’s not simple or easy.

I’d love to elaborate on the marketing process some more. But it really warrants blog posts spanning several weeks. But if people have some specific questions, feel free to ask in the comments or email me, and I’ll provide my answer.