Come for the Ride…

For people that don’t Twitter or know what it is, the concept of micro-blogging and live blogging may be hard to understand. After all, most social media news you read today still focuses on Facebook and MySpace and neither one has been making headlines due to their built in blogging abilities.

So what makes Twitter so popular? Well, I tried to answer that question awhile back but I couldn’t because I wasn’t a power user. However, after 4 months of using Twitter via the web (reloading Twitter.com); then progressing to twittering via IM, Twitterrific, mobile texting to 40404 and so on, I’m glad to say I’m finally getting the hang of it.

Like all social networking applications, the app is worthless if you live in a bubble. To fully appreciate the power of any social network, you need to have an established network! Once I started stalking following people, the whole point of Twitter finally made sense.

For the most part, I’ve been following social media experts and various angels and VC’s who have been the first adopters to Twitter. While I did not personally go to the Georgia Technology Summit or SXSW, the people that were there all gave a pretty detailed play-by-play of the events. What struck me was that Twitter in this usage, allowed you to pass notes to each other during the seminars! (Something I’m sure all of our inner child had the desire to do since the 4th grade.)

Another pro to micro-blogging is that it can be written closer to real time and you don’t have to sit in front of the computer for 30 minutes to draft out your thoughts. If social networks keep your close friends and acquaintances at an arm’s length, then Twitter really brings everyone closer to an earshot of a whisper. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the people I follow on a more personal level. Sometimes I learn about their trips and at other times, I can help them with simple computer issues. For the more famous people in the industry who keeps a professional front, they definitely appear to be more approachable when you follow them day-to-day.

But what if you don’t use Twitter and you simply don’t get it? Well, luckily some guy decided to produce the video below which explains Twitter in plain English.

For those of you who chooses to use Twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/wei_yang. Also, I would love to know what you use the service for.

If you are looking for another way to get your startup noticed, sign up for Startup Riot and pitch your business. While nothing has been posted on the official site, you can check out a detailed description of the event at Sanjay’s Bilgistic blog.

The schedule for this event seems pretty tight so make sure you get your entries in before it’s too late.

I got a tip from Andrew Hyde, most recently famous for VC Wear - clothes for VC’s about another business competition that’s currently accepting applicants.

TechStars.org is a different kind of business competition that doesn’t focus as much on the prize money as much as education and networking. On the surface, the deal is:

- a summer in Boulder, CO
- 40 educational dinners/seminars
- $5,000 per founder (up to $15,000) in seed money
- a hip incubator work area

…in exchange for 5% of your company.

Below the surface, there are priceless networking opportunities and coaching that exists to help you succeed - all of which seem like a great deal if you can spend a summer in Colorado.

There’s only about 22 days left for 2008’s program if you’re interesting in applying for this opportunity. If your loved ones won’t mind you taking a 3 month journey to find yourself, this program is worth checking out.

To help with product adoption, one of the things we’ve been thinking about is creating online tutorials for non-savvy internet users. Even though we try to make our service easy to use and intuitive, I’m sure some people will still have issues finding things on their first try. To help minimize the number of calls for troubleshooting, online demos (if done right), will be a huge time saver!

While I’m sure there are a number of screen capturing tools out there that can capture mouse movements and help create videos, the thought of creating and syncing audio and video in one shot seem pretty daunting; at least for me who hasn’t done it before. Luckily, a compromise between the two extremes exist in Slide Share.

SlideShare.net allows you to post your pdf’s, Power Points and some other formats to create slide shows on the web. The slides can then be embedded onto a blog or page similar to YouTube videos. You can also create slide shows with sound which is exactly what we needed. For an example, check out the slide below.

I just saw this website on KillerStartups.com and it seems to promote itself as the network for entrepreneurs and investors. One thing I like about it is that it’s easy to use and it’s free for the needy.

I never understood why other entrepreneur/investor networks charge entrepreneurs, who are the poor ones in the scenario. Granted, when you let the flood gates open, there are bound to be tons of crap mixed in with the good ideas, but at least it’ll help you build up critical mass on one side vs. none at all.

If you are looking for outside funding and aren’t afraid to publicize your idea, I’d give this site a visit.  If you have already posted your idea on there, I’d be curious to hear what kind of feedback you’ve been getting as well.