Web Entrepreneurship: Does the City You Live in Matter?
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
One of the most powerful aspects of social media and the web is the fact that it isn’t specific to any location. So long as you have an Internet connection, you can be halfway across the world Skyping, tweeting, and communicating with your friends. It has broken down barriers, given people the ability to work remotely, and made it so that your location doesn’t have to determine your destiny.
Still, to discount location would be foolish. It’s where we socialize and, for the most part, where we work. We grow to love (or hate) the neighborhoods and cities in which we live. And with the rise of smartphones and GPS, location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Google Buzz have been growing like wildfire.
Thus, I’m not surprised that a new debate has been raging in entrepreneurship circles over whether it matters where your startup is based. For web entrepreneurs, the perceived epicenter has always been San Francisco and the Bay Area – often known as Silicon Valley. With a huge collection of technology companies, venture capitalists, and talented engineers, many advocate moving to the area if you’re serious about building a startup.
That mentality has been challenged recently by growing startup hubs around the globe. One of the ones making a lot of headlines is New York City’s tech scene, which has been growing rapidly in recent years and includes startups such as Foursquare and VC firms like Union Square Ventures. Boulder, Colorado is also gaining traction due to the presence of Techstars, an early-stage seed venture firm.
Why Location Still Matters
While you have a lot of good choices for where to build your company, don’t let anybody fool you into thinking that location doesn’t matter; in fact, it does. Here’s why:
• Different locations have different entrepreneurial support communities.
These are vital, because entrepreneurship can quickly become lonely and nerve-wracking without mentorship and support.
• Talent pools around location. You will simply find more talented engineers in Silicon Valley, while you’ll find a larger pool of financial minds in NYC and media moguls in Los Angeles. You can find talent anywhere, but the pool matters.
• In-person meetings are just as important as they were five years ago. Being able to grab a coffee with a potential investor or partner is still going to be more powerful than Skyping or email.
With that said, it doesn’t mean that San Francisco or Silicon Valley is the best place to start a web company.
Yes, in a lot of cases it can be because of the influx of money and talent, but there are a lot of other things you should consider, including:
• Partnerships: Foursquare, an NYC-based company, has succeeded in striking a lot of great media partnerships, including ones with Bravo and The New York Times. Their location has surely helped: NYC simply has more advertising and media companies than other locations, and Foursquare has seized upon the opportunity it presents.
• Talent: While engineering talent is prevalent in Silicon Valley, you need to consider what your startup is about. For example, Boston has a strong startup community with great scientists and academics that come from MIT and Harvard.
• Happiness: If you live in a place that you simply hate, you are not going to be as productive. If your own needs aren’t fulfilled, how can you expect to fulfill the needs of a startup and its employees? If I have any piece of advice for where to create your startup, it’s this: make sure it’s a place that will make you happy first and foremost, and then go from there.
Location matters for your startup, but it doesn’t define success. Hard work, smart execution, and the right team are far more important. Don’t compromise those things in your quest to find your perfect startup city.
More business resources from Mashable:
- 7 Essential Online HR Resources for Your Small Business
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses
- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Matejay
Tags: business, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, List, Lists, small business, startup
The Truth About the Average Twitter User [STATS]
A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active.
The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: An active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times. By that definition though, only 21% of Twitter users are active users.
There’s a great deal of interesting data in the breakdown. Only 26% of Twitter users had 10 followers or more by December 2009, while only 40% were following 10 people or more (in fact, a majority of Twitter users, 51%, were following less than five people).
In terms of tweets, the report estimates that 34% of Twitter users hadn’t tweeted even once, while a whopping 73% of Twitter’s users tweeted less than 10 times. That means nearly all of the tweets on the social network were coming from about one-fourth of the userbase. Power users dominate.
Barracuda Labs also analyzed Twitter’s growth over time, and the numbers are consistent with previous reports that show while Twitter grew like wildfire in early 2009, it has dramatically slowed down in recent months. Going back further to early 2008, the report estimates that the microblogging tool grew by just 0.31%. However, with the quick rise of media coverage and the influx of celebrities such as Oprah and Shaq, Twitter use grew by 20% in April 2009 before dropping off to 0.34% growth in December 2009.
While the news isn’t stellar, it isn’t all bad for Twitter — these metrics are moving in the right direction. A full 79% of users had less than 10 tweets in June 2009, but that number dropped to 73% by December. Eighty percent of users had less than 10 followers in June 2009, but that percentage dropped to 74% by December. If that trend continues, you’ll hopefully see a more diverse and active Twitterverse going forward.
[via MediaMemo]
Tags: Barracuda Labs, followers, stats, trending, twitter
Twitter’s Website Now Attaches Location to Tweets [PICS]
Twitter has just flipped the switch on geolocation within Twitter.com. Now at least some users can pull up location-based information from individual tweets on the microblogging website.
While attaching locations to tweets has been possible for several months now through third-party apps, Twitter.com itself hasn’t done much geolocation until today. It was first noticed yesterday, but the full rollout seems to be happening today.
It’s a simple integration: With any tweet that has a location attached to it (mostly via apps that support it, such as Foursquare and Tweetie), a small location icon will appear at the end of the byline of that tweet. Clicking on it will bring up a Google Map showing the location where that tweet was sent.
Here’s a screenshot:
It’s a simple integration, but it’s important to the future of Twitter. Location has become this year’s big trend, and with Facebook set to launch location features next month, the company can’t afford to be left behind.
What do you think: Is this an important market for Twitter to command? What location features should it launch next? Let us know in the comments.
Reviews: Foursquare, Twitter, tweetie
Tags: geolocation, twitter
YouTube Wants You to Grill the FCC’s Chairman
YouTube is pushing itself further into citizen journalism with an interview with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and just as it has in the past, the world’s largest video portal is allowing its users to submit questions via CitizenTube.
The interview, which takes place right after the release of the National Broadband Plan on Tuesday, March 16, will explore topics such as access and affordability, security, Internet in schools and net neutrality. Most, if not all, of the questions will come from YouTube user submissions.
Last month, the FCC released a report on broadband adoption that indicated that cost is the biggest barrier to widespread broadband adoption in the U.S. We’re sure this, along with concerns about net neutrality and the FCC’s new plan around it, will be hot topics of discussion.
Last month was the first edition of the CitizenTube series, where President Obama answered questions live on YouTube after the State of the Union. It proved to be a major success, with more than 12,000 questions submitted and 660,000 votes registered. While we don’t expect the same type of response for the FCC chairman, there still should be thousands of questions from concerned citizens on the state of broadband and Internet in America.
Reviews: YouTube
Tags: CitizenTube, fcc, youtube
Google Launches the Google Apps Marketplace
Today at the Google’s Campfire One event at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View the Internet search giant is launching its new app store for business, known as the Google Apps Marketplace.
Last week, we broke the story that Google Apps Marketplace would launch today, reporting that it would be an app store integrated within Google Apps that would allow third-party developers to sell software directly to Google’s business consumers.
Now, with developers gathered at the Googleplex, we’re about to learn how Google Apps Marketplace works and, more importantly, which apps are going to be available at launch.
My live notes from the event are below:
Google Apps Marketplace: The Details
- Note: you can watch the live stream of Google Campfire One on the Google Developers YouTube Channel.
- Vic Gundotra, Google’s Vice President of Engineering, has just started speaking
- Vic is talking about feedback it’s received from its business customers. Google believes that business apps should be run in the cloud. One problem: to use multiple business apps, you need to log into multiple websites, which can be messy and a security threat.
- Google Apps Marketplace announced.
- Details: $100 flat fee, no matter the amount of apps you launch. 20% revenue share. This is an important number, as most app stores charge 30% revenue share, especially Apple’s iPhone app store.
- Over 50 partners for Google Apps, including Aviary, Expensify, Intuit, and others.
- Now Google is talking about the technical details of how to get your app added into the Google Apps interface.
- Google’s diving into secure data access via OAuth. Google’s clearly thought about how to make sure that information that apps need is received from users, but that apps don’t take more information than they need.
- Google has brought up a developer, Ryan, to demo some of the code to integrate his app with Google Apps Marketplace. It’s a “Hello World” type of app.
- If you go to http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/, you’ll see the store’s future splash page.
- Intuit is demoing. They’re the people behind Quickbooks and showing off their Intuit Online Payroll app within Google Apps.
- They’re showing of integrations of Intuit’s payroll system within Google Calendar. Logging in via Google Apps seems intuitive.
- New demo: Scott from Atlassin is demoing Jira Studio. The dashboard they’ve built with Google Apps integration is very impressive. Screenshots coming.
- “Fingertip access” to Google Talk. It has Google Docs integration, and is available today. It’s a very killer apps for development management and issue tracking.
- Another demo: Manymoon.
- The key themes seem to be A) how easy it is to code integration with Google Apps, and B) How many nifty things you can do linked to Google Apps. Google Calendar will definitely benefit from these apps.
- Everything will be available tonight for purchase
- Last demo of the night: Ryan from Appirio, a cloud solution provider. It’s a tool for managing your team’s cloud applications, such as Salesforce. It’s meant to transition enterprise into the cloud more effectively.
- One interesting demo: you can trigger actions within your email with Appirio. You can, for example, get information on customers right from within your email (it’s embedded!). The embeds are called Gmail contextual gadgets, and they are really nifty.
- Example: Customers emails you saying that a project is behind schedule. With Appirio, you can access from Gmail the projects that are open with the customer vis PS Connect. It’ll show budget, the status of the project, end dates, and notes.
- Google’s David Glazer (Engineering Director) is closing the campfire session.
- The President of Google’s Enterprise division is on stage. Security, compatibility, simplicity, and more are possible through cloud apps, which is why Google has bet so heavily on it for enterprise.
- 25 million active users of Google Apps. And apparently once companies of 20,000+ employees switch to Google Apps, they don’t switch back.
Reviews: Aviary, Gmail, Google, Google Docs, google talk
Tags: app store, Campfire One, developers, Expensify, Google, Google App Store, google apps, Google Apps Marketplace, Google Campfire One, trending
HootSuite to Integrate with Foursquare and MySpace This Week
Today at the #140tc Twitter Conference in Seattle, Washington (which I keynoted this morning), HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes announced that its popular Twitter application will be integrating with both MySpace and Foursquare, starting this week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference.
HootSuite is one of the more popular Twitter applications, one specifically geared towards power users and businesses. It has been on a roll recently, launching integration with Wordpress and rolling out new updates to its iPhone and Android Apps.
While Mr. Holmes didn’t divulge many details about the MySpace and Foursquare integrations, we can make some educated guesses as to how they will work. MySpace integration will most likely look the same as it does in Tweedeck: You’ll gain access to your MySpace feed and gain the ability to update your MySpace status.
The Foursquare integration is far more interesting. It could possibly be part of the iPhone and Android apps, as Foursquare is a mobile application and not really meant for the desktop (though we won’t discount the possibility of some web integration).
We don’t know the full details yet, but being able to check in and shout via Hootsuite could be a killer use for the Hootsuite app, making it potentially even more useful than Tweetie, TweetDeck or Seesmic for mobile.
We’ll be sure to ask Mr. Holmes more about these integrations soon and get you more details.
Thanks to Shauna Causey for her help on this post.
Reviews: Android, Foursquare, HootSuite, MySpace, Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitter, iPhone, tweetie
Tags: foursquare, hootsuite, myspace, twitter
Google vs. Yahoo: Who Has the Right Social Strategy?
The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.
Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; YouTube; Wordpress: these companies, built from the ground-up, are mainstays in social media. None of them were created by a large tech company, and all but one remains independent.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, when you think about it. Large tech companies have had limited to no success creating their own social media home runs. In an era where communication is increasingly taking place on these channels, the inability of these digital giants to build social networks is rather striking.
Two titans in particular are making social media headlines for different reasons: Yahoo has decided not to create it own social network, but is instead striking partnership deals with Facebook and Twitter. Google on the other hand, not only bought YouTube, but it is attempting to carve out its own piece of the social media pie with Google Buzz.
Partnership vs. in-house development; content vs. technology; Yahoo vs. Google: which company has the right social media strategy? What are the goals of both companies in the social realm? Do either have a chance against new and nimble startups like Facebook and Twitter?
Let’s take a look, shall we?
The Yahoo Strategy: Partner in Order to Drive Traffic
In 2006, Yahoo made a $1+ billion bid for Facebook. As we all know, Yahoo failed to close that deal and the story ever since has been the rise of Facebook and the slow decline of Yahoo, who was nearly acquired by Microsoft for over $40 billion in 2008.
Now with new leadership (led by CEO Carol Bartz), Yahoo is trying to make a turnaround and bring back some of the authority it once commanded. The Internet portal is turning to social media as a cornerstone of its growth strategy, but it isn’t focused on acquiring a Twitter or building its own social network, but on creating partnerships that integrate every facet of Yahoo into social networks, primarily Facebook and Twitter.
In September 2009, Yahoo announced that it would integrate Facebook Connect in its most popular web properties. The goal was to truly make Yahoo your portal to the web by not only delivering news, email, and finances, but also your social graph and the status updates of your friends. On the flip side, Yahoo would also benefit from the traffic bump that comes with sharing articles and content on Facebook’s news feed.
Yahoo has continued to push this partnership strategy in recent months. Two weeks ago, Yahoo partnered with Twitter to give users access to their Twitter feed from within Yahoo, update their status, and integrate Twitter content into the company’s search and media properties. A few days ago, Yahoo Mail hooked up with Facebook, the first integration between Facebook Connect and Yahoo.
Yahoo seems content in partnering with the major social services, rather than compete with them. Social media efforts like Yahoo Buzz, the tech giant’s answer to Digg, which hasn’t made a dent in the social voting powerhouse, have likely left a bitter taste in the mouths of its executives. Yahoo is now focused on using social media to generate traffic, eyeballs, and engagement times.
The Google Strategy: Dominate
Google’s strategy goes in a completely different direction to Yahoo’s approach; its strategy is also all over the map.
Like Yahoo, Google doesn’t have a good record in social media. Google Friend Connect isn’t even close to Facebook Connect in terms of adoption, Orkut never made inroads in the U.S., Blogger has nowhere near the traction of WordPress, and other acquisitions such as Jaiku and Dodgeball haven’t panned out.
You’d have a very good argument if you said that Google’s only social media hit has been YouTube, and that “only” cost the company $1.65 billion. Google has a lot more social properties than many people realize, but it’s a hodgepodge of acquisitions (Blogger, YouTube, Picasa) and internally-created services (Orkut, Google Knol, Friend Connect). The company’s batting average, though, has been pretty poor, especially by Google’s standards.
That was before Google Buzz, though. With the launch of its most advanced social product yet, Google’s strategy has finally begun to emerge, and it is a good one. If Google can stir up adoption for Buzz (which it has via Gmail), keep that engagement (this remains to be seen), and launch a standalone version of its social media tool, it can carve out a piece of the (very large) social media pie. Linking or integrating it to YouTube, Picasa, Orkut, Friend Connect, and its other social tools could provide a boost to those services as well.
There’s no reason to believe Google will succeed with Buzz, given Google’s social media track record. However, Buzz is the most complete product Google has put out yet and has some strong engagement numbers. It’s riskier than Yahoo’s strategy, but the payoff could be be titanic.
Google and Yahoo Are Very Different Companies
Yahoo’s strategy is focused around integrations with already-popular social services, while Google is focused around building and acquiring its own social media powerhouses. While Yahoo does acquire social media companies (e.g. Flickr) and Google has some strong partnerships (e.g. Twitter in Google Real-time search), that’s not the focus of their respective social strategies.
The reason their approaches to social media are so different has little to do with their leadership teams or the quality of their decision-making. No, it boils down to one simple truth: Google and Yahoo are very different companies.
I argue that Yahoo is, for the most part, a content company, while Google is focused on technology. There was a point where Yahoo was known for its tech innovations, but that mantle has long since passed to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others.
I explored this phenomenon in my first Social Analyst column, Content vs. Technology: What MySpace and AOL Have in Common. MySpace and AOL were also tech giants, but at some point lost their technology edge (MySpace lost to Facebook, AOL lost to DSL and Cable Internet) and thus began to focus on ramping up content creation and driving traffic to their web properties. Yahoo falls into the same camp.
Because of this key difference between Yahoo and Google, it’s no surprise that they are implementing different approaches. Google’s is focused on building technology that will drive adoption, revenue, and information through its doors. Yahoo’s focus is on bringing more eyeballs to this content and keeping them on Yahoo for longer periods of time.
Who Has the Right Social Media Strategy?
Now for the big question: is Google or Yahoo doing better at social media? Which one has the right social media strategy?
If you’ve read this column carefully, you can probably guess that I’m not going to outright declare that one company is “right” or that one is “wrong.” What I want you to take away from this week’s column is simple: your long-term plan and company composition should determine your social strategy.
Yahoo is simply better at content than Google. Yahoo Finance is, in my opinion, simply a better product than Google’s version. Its array of hosted news content is bigger, and it owns properties such as OMG, which is doing well as a celebrity news hub.
Google doesn’t write its own news or acquire a newspaper for a simple reason: it’s just not their focus, and they wouldn’t be very good at it. Would it make any sense for Google to focus on using social media to drive traffic to its content? The answer is no.
On the flip side, Google’s technology prowess trumps Yahoo by large margins. Google can build better technical products (e.g., Search, Gmail, Buzz, Android, Chrome) in a shorter amount of time than Yahoo can, and it can iterate faster than almost any large-scale public Internet company (its rapid privacy changes to Buzz is one good example).
These things are no longer Yahoo’s strength. So does it make sense for Yahoo to try to build a social network to rival Buzz, Facebook, or Twitter? Could it really keep up with any of them over the long haul? I severely doubt it.
So here is my conclusion: neither company’s direction is “wrong” because each one requires a different social strategy to succeed. Based on their strengths, Yahoo and Google are implementing the right strategies.
Now it’s just about executing them.
Reviews: Android, Chrome, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Google, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Picasa, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, blogger, google friend connect
Tags: facebook, Google, google buzz, social media, The Social Analyst, trending, twitter, Yahoo
