SxSW Music Festival and Why You Should Be Going
By Steve Poland • January 5, 2009 • No Comments »
This will be my 5th year attending. If you are at all into new music or live music — SXSW (south by southwest) is the MECCA of experiences. This ain’t no outdoor festival crap.
It’s Time for Twitter Premium Accounts
By Steve Poland • December 19, 2008 • 2 Comments »
Former TechCrunch writer Nick Gonzalez’s post “Who Owns Your Social Media Accounts“, as a reply to my Twitter Needs Better Username Policy (the ‘celtics’ fiasco), got me thinking…
This is the perfect opportunity for Twitter to start with Premium accounts. Charging whatever the price may be — $3/mo or $3/yr for example. The user then locks in their Twitter username and similar rules that govern domains are applied. First come, first served — and of course an arbitrator if there’s a trademark conflict.
A Twitter username can serve as an identity to someone, just as a phone number does. As Nick mentions, it’d be a cruel world if the phone company just swiped your cell phone number and changed it on you — wouldn’t it?
The question still remains, if my ‘celtics’ account had been all about Celtic Knots, would Twitter have confiscated my username and handed it over to the Boston Celtics NBA team? [Are they even sure it is the Boston Celtics NBA team, and not just some other person out there pretending to be them?]
Evan - Twitter needs a better policy on Usernames
By Steve Poland • December 19, 2008 • 63 Comments »
Evan,
I have a bunch of Twitter usernames — I gobbled them up in March 2007. I’d consider them some of the “quality” ones. Almost like the domain game of 1995, I grabbed some of the best Twitter usernames, because I could see value in their use in the future.
Last night, “celtics” was pulled from me. You moved my account to “bc_fan_news“. I’m running a fan account with news on the Boston ‘Celtics’. I’m not trying to impersonate them — my username’s profile clearly states it is a fan account, run by a fan, and not officially affiliated at all. In prior weeks, I lost ’stanford’ and ‘bostoncollege’. Why not give them [The Boston Celtics] the username ‘bostonceltics’ instead? Why was my ‘celtics’ one swiped? Why was anyone’s username swiped?
The USA Spoiled You- Now Pull Your Panties Up.
By Steve Poland • December 12, 2008 • 3 Comments »
It is amazing how “rich” the USA is — or at least how rich they think they are. I bet 90% of Americans that have access to a credit card, are stupid with their money. They overspend. They spend what they don’t have. Why? Because they can — the credit card companies have given them access to more cash then they should ever need in their lives.
It’s ridiculous. And it should be a crime. There should be some personal liability at the banks for the turmoil they have put people in, and this nation. There needs to be more financial independence in America.
The media and stardom hasn’t helped — nor have the parents that neglect their children and then spend their riches on them, spoiling the hell out of them. It’s a downward spiral — little Johnny comes to school in $100 sneakers, and then little Mark [who comes from a poor family] wants the $100 sneakers, because little Johnny is cooler. Little Johnny is a spoiled brat — and it’s likely because his parents shouldn’t be parents and/or don’t have the time to spend with him, so they feel they can make it up by buying him blingin’ sneakers.
There shouldn’t even be credit cards. If your car is broke and you can’t afford to fix it this week, then take the bus for a week. Suck it up. Oh, it’s an additional hour of your life each day, waiting for the bus and such? Tough shit.
I never had a financial plan. I had been in debt since I was 18, when I was given 5 credit cards from financial instititutions, while I was going to college. How did I get access to 5 credit cards? Seriously, someone should be sued. People aren’t taught financial responsibility — they are taught to spend, spend, spend! And that you don’t have to ever say no, just say yes!
I know, I know, I’m ranting here. But I’m saddened that people are in complete financial disstress and in messes they can’t get out of, without killing their “credit”.
Make a plan. Plan how you’re going to get out of debt. Plan how you’re going to sock some money away in savings, while getting out of debt. Plan for what’s going to happen if you lose your job — plan to put 3-6 months of expenses in a savings account, “in case shit” happens.
It’s amazing how rich you feel when you’re out of debt — I was paying $500/mo to credit cards on a 5-year plan through a non-profit credit counseling company. You know what it’s like to not pay $500/mo now? It’s crazy madness! Now I put that money in savings.
I make some decent money these days — my first goal was getting out of short-term debt (credit cards). I also owed my Mom some money that I had borrowed. After getting out of credit card for the first time in 11 years, it was such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Until you do it, you’ll never know what it feels like — it’s amazing. What was next? I drive a 1995 Nissan Altima with 160,000 miles on it. Of course the next thing for me to do is upgrade this car — hell, let’s get a new car under a lease.
FUCK THAT. I’m still driving that piece-of-shit car. I’m driving that sucker into the ground. It’s paid off. I have no payments on it. Your mindset changes, if you let it. You start to not think, “wow, how can I spend all this new money I have” and turns to “how do I conserve this cash”. In the case of the car — I like to say [and yes, this is inappropriate] — “I know the size of my own d*ck, I don’t need to show it off to everyone else.” I don’t need the self-esteem booster of some shiny new ride. Yeah, I know I could get one - but it’s not on my list of priorities.
My only priority now is diversifying my income streams to ensure one thing — never working for anyone again in my life. I never want to go back into corporate america.
I got distracted — because I didn’t have a plan. I’m throwing a big New Year’s Eve party in Buffalo NY for 500 people. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Throwing parties/events is not on my gameplan of diversified income streams. It’s something I’d like to do, but not for a few years, when I have full financial independence. Too late though, I’m going through with it. Lucky enough for me, it looks like I won’t lose my shirt on it (and I’ll turn a profit), but at what expense? It’s taken a lot of time in my life — a lot of time that should have been spent on my real priorities.
By the way — I disagree with the whole “I can’t make bad on debt, because my credit will be ruined for 7 years!” You know what, GOOD. Seriously, once you get to the new mentality where you’re only going to pay for what you can afford, you won’t even care about your credit being bad for 7 years — because you’ll never want to access credit anyhow. “What about a house?” — what about a house? Save your friggin money. Oh, you want one of those blingin’ homes in the suburbs? Marry someone with good credit. Or get a co-signer for that thing when the time arrives. Or get a private loan (you may need to put half down and pay like 12% on the other half, but hey, you’ll have your house). Who says a home is a good investment anyway? My buddy was telling me that he read somewhere that with all the money you put into closing costs, home improvements, mortgage interest, etc — that you’re just as well off investing that money into various securities, and just paying rent. Think about it.
Make a plan. Get out of debt. Even if it takes you 5 years to realize the end goal.
Make Money on Twitter, in minutes
By Steve Poland • December 5, 2008 • No Comments »
Good post for making money on Twitter by mixing in affiliate marketing on @esnagel’s blog: ...
50 Days to New Years Eve - Buffalo’s Party: The Ice Ball
By Steve Poland • November 11, 2008 • No Comments »
If you’re from Buffalo and looking for plans for New Year’s Eve — I’d like to recommend to you the party of the year, with expectations of 500 in attendance… The Ice Ball.
Visit the website to purchase tickets, to view the Facebook and MySpace event pages (so you can invite all your friends), and learn more about this great time that’ll be had that night.
IDEA #90 - Footer Ads in Email
By Steve Poland • November 11, 2008 • 3 Comments »
Why should Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and others, be the only ones earning money from footer ads? The user should make some money too — and it’d be fine if there was 1 more ad in the footer — maybe even a visual banner ad (a la RSS feeds).
The real question is how to accomplish this, and that is likely why it has never happened. You might need a browser plugin that would see when you send off an email — and you’d likely have a black-list of recipients that you don’t want to receive the ad in the footer.
This brings me back to my one idea about user-approved advertising (which Facebook has done now in a sense with Beacon). These ads in the footer of your email don’t have to be meaningless from you (the sender), they could be things (sites you use; products you’ve purchased) in your footer. They could be your commerce-related “tweets” from Twitter; or from your Facebook newsfeed.
Don’t forget about Outlook — this might be an easier plugin to use.
But plugins are a barrier for most people to use your service. So it might be that the service providers themselves (Hotmail, Gmail, etc) would have to give you this functionality…. unless you have another idea?
As always, all of these ideas are here to stimulate other ideas. Use the comments section to give more ideas for this idea — and by all means, if you feel one of these ideas is worthy of your precious time, then go on an execute on any one of them.
IDEA #89 - Clouds in the Sky
By Steve Poland • November 7, 2008 • 4 Comments »
Alright, I’ll admit — this idea is simple and possibly weak. It’s not even mine, it’s my buddy Bob’s idea.
How many cloud photographs exist? And have you ever looked at a cloud and saw something, and someone else saw something else? It might look like a cow, or a cat with a hat on, etc.
What about a site kind of like LOLCats that allows you to caption cloud photos? Or simply comment on them as to what you see.
Could be a fun, mindless site in a matter where you just keep clicking through each photo.
IDEA #88 - Rent Your Twitter Background & Avatar
By Steve Poland • November 4, 2008 • 1 Comment »
I’m going to put three(!) ideas in here that are quick. The Twitter API has now given access to your profile background image (update_profile_background_image), profile avatar (update_profile_image), and profile design colors (update_profile_colors). Apparently Ian Schafer already attempted doing this on a one-off basis via eBay, but it looks like eBay pulled the auction.
The advertiser side of the equation: They will want to go through a directory of users, likely categorized by # of followers, and/or by the geo-location of the user’s followers (which can be found-out via the API), and/or by keyword phrases the user tends to mention in their tweets.
The publisher (typical user that’s renting their bg/avatar) side of the equation: the user would login with their Twitter credentials and simply approve (or enable auto-approve) of ads. And/or notifications are sent to user by email that an advertiser wishes to rent their space and then easily displays to the user whether they approve for the specific amount.
Payment by PayPal would be efficient.
Unfortunately, the Twitter API doesn’t allow for easy updating of a user’s bio or user’s URL — so there’s no real way to link back to the advertiser, unless the latest tweet referred to the advertiser’s promo.
Bonus Idea #2: This is a lot simpler, but requires TwitPic to do it, or someone to duplicate TwitPic. When I send in a photo from my cell phone via TwitPic, why not allow me to send in the photo to a different email address (or the same, but with a ‘#bg’ in the title of the photo sent in) and then TwitPic makes that my new background image for my profile. Could do the same with ‘#av’ for my avatar.
Bonus Idea #3: With the API, you could create a simple 1-page website that allows a Twitter user to easily switch-out their background image or profile avatar, with 1-click. If my Twitter login/pw is stored with your website, then I could easily click on a different profile avatar image (that I uploaded, and/or that you offered up) or background image. My thought: what about a simple designation of ‘offline’ and ‘online’? Basically, you could grab my current avatar, and then create a version where the text ‘online’ is on it somewhere [show me like 4 variations and I'll pick whether I want that text in upper/lower left/right corner] and ‘offline’ is on it somewhere. Maybe ‘offline’ image is now in grayscale.
The one problem with this online/offline thing is — who is going to change their routine to click ‘offline’ before signing-off for the day?
There could be other images for holidays — this could pull your background image and apply a Halloween theme to it; or snow flakes (for winter). Or maybe it checks the current weather in your city/state/country and posts it right in the image itself for the day (or through-out the day, updating it).
It may also tweet out for the user that their profile or bg image was changed using (your service name) — so that you can get some awareness/credit and more users. [and/or post in the header/footer of the user's background image]
You may be able to apply this same idea to a user’s MySpace or Facebook profile too. You’d have to look into those API’s.
Dear Rackspace: You Pissed Me Off
By Steve Poland • October 31, 2008 • 7 Comments »
Update: Rackspace got realistic about this situation and reduced my overages charge to 1/3 of the original amount. That’s much more fair. Overall it’s been a good relationship - there have been downs, but overall they have done well for me.
Dear Rackspace,
No need to split this $1,600 payment over 3 months, just send me the bill for the overages. Talk to your management and tell them it’s fucking bullshit too. And yes, word spreads. And yes, when I’m thinking about the next 2 servers needed for my startup, I will remember this.
I take responsibility for this — but I think you share equally in this. My expectations must be out-of-whack. When my bandwidth doubles on Sept 27 [roughly that day], I’d think you’d let me know, “Steve, wtf just happened — you’re using twice the bandwidth you have been using the past 6 months of being our customer.” This is managed services I’m paying for. I’m not asking you to wipe my ass, but tell me if my bandwidth or storage amounts go out of whack. Lesson learned, I’ll be checking bandwidth reports — but it was a simple thing to correct for me; I would have corrected it back on Sept 27, instead of having 800GB in overages at your RAPE RATE of $2/GB.
Pardon the fury in this email and the language — I’m typically composed and professional. But this is disgusting. As mentioned on the phone, I feel like when I have gone over on minutes with a cell phone and then they take full advantage of you [because you signed a contract at some ass-raping number]. You replied with, “yeah, but the cell phone company doesn’t alert you either” — well is that really the standard you want to uphold yourself to?
Amazon S3 offers the same bandwidth for $0.17/gb — I have now shifted things over to them, to ensure I don’t get above my bandwidth with you each month. Don’t you think that’s a bit fucked up? I shouldn’t have to do that, especially when I’m paying 3x what I normally would for a server — because I want your “managed” services (aka “take care of shit for me; alert me to problems”). We’ll see if Amazon has any other products that might work better for me — EC2, etc. You’re making me have to look at other companies now. I really hope you lose my thousands of dollars per year account because you are greedy.
If you charged me even $0.25/GB for that 800GB overage, I’d feel better. This was a mistake and will not happen again — if it does, I’ll shut the fuck up and pay my $2/GB.
Anyhow, I have no say here what so ever. You’re not willing to be reasonable on this 1st instance of a problem. So, bill me.
Not fanatical at all. Bad taste in my mouth — and unfortunately will likely tell everyone I know in the tech world about this distaste.
Regards,
Steve Poland
