Evan Williams - Ten Rules for Web Startups
Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, put up a list of ten advices + bonus advice for your startup. Please read, understand and conduct.
I particularly think this one is true and should be followed more:
#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s still undervalued and under-invested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board. Better to iterate a hundred times to get the right feature right than to add a hundred more. The point of Ajax is that it can make a site more responsive, not that it’s sexy. Tags can make things easier to find and classify, but maybe not in your application. The point of an API is so developers can add value for users, not to impress the geeks. Don’t get sidetracked by technologies or the blog-worthiness of your next feature. Always focus on the user and all will be well.
If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault
Anil Dash:
As it turns out, we have a way to prevent gangs of humans from acting like savage packs of animals. In fact, we’ve developed entire disciplines based around this goal over thousands of years. We just ignore most of the lessons that have been learned when we create our communities online.
Required reading.
Agreed. Favourite bit:
If you run a website, you need to follow these steps. if you don’t, you’re making the web, and the world, a worse place. And it’s your fault. Put another way, take some goddamn responsibility for what you unleash on the world.
When looking at Google Plus I notice that I’ve for once haven’t forsaken then native language like I used to. It’s a thing that’s always been there before, in the beginning I’ve always forged bonds with people in English speaking countries — people I’ve mostly yet to ever meet in flesh. Two weeks ago I found people on twitter not living far from here for the first time. The closer it is, the more I manage to miss it.
I’m getting better in handling both people near and far. Still though, those that grow to be my favourite people always seem to be very far away.
So I’m in the future with this Google Plus, I guess it’s true what they say: the future is always brighter in the past. I think rocket boots would have been a lot cooler but alas. Not entirely sure what to use it for yet — Google Plus that is, not the rocket boots — but I’m sure I can twist and bend it into something. (I might be able to do some inviting if anyone really really wants it.)
After looking at Google+ and the future gmail theme I’ve come to the conclusion that Google is a bit like Green Lanterns. No, not a superhero but allergic to colours. Everything is white and grey. Drying paint is more fun as then you actually can see some colours.
Re: The Personal Web is Bad for You
There’s no need to be earnest, just to prevent the Internet from becoming “boring”. Twitter is interactive and generally stays at an intimacy level that threatens no one. Comedians use it to post new material, people post links of interest, others use it to chat. A steady stream of new material, with no discomfort or untoward disclosure, chit chat to pass the time. Win-win, no?
I do agree that not everything needs to be shared. Some things shouldn’t but what is a fluid wobbly line that changes between person and person as well as age. The boundaries are the problem just as well as finding a good balance — caring too much is a just as big a problem as caring too little. We don’t have to change the whole Internet with out dreams, just a small piece of it. Because I do think that while giving up dreams and go with the flow might be a good thing healthwise, I don’t want to do that. There are these lines of dialogue in Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujlod that really resonates with me:
— Some people grow into their dreams.
— That depends on whether your dreams are reasonable.
— No, it doesn’t. It depends on how hard you grow.
And earnest is something that Internet could use more of. Too much is not true, we doubt almost everything, there are people out there doing hoaxes in order to get into the news, there’s 4chan generating far too much notice, people who can’t handle being anonymous without degrading into a waste of human genome. I want a small sphere where people mean things again, be it positive or negative.
I don’t want to use words such as true and false because I think those exists side by side depending on the point of view we have when we look at facts. What I’m trying to say about being earnest is that not everything has to be but something must be. It might be in the core or in the peripheral but if everything is chit chat and not a degree of investment then it’s just fucking noise. Not good noise like Spacemen 3, no no no, it’s radio static. Played loud.
I’m all for not being serious. I have a big problem with being able to stay serious for longer than a few brief moments. I just believe the personal web should be more accepted place and used as a side-project, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Keeping things in and just floating around is not a solution, that if anything almost killed me.
(And now I’m thinking I misinterpreted what you meant.)
Things that make me a bit unpopular, but I don’t care about the link-trail. Citing sources is great but only if they’ve contributed anything. Going through three different cross-platform curated aggregators just to find the link to the person who took a photograph or drew a picture? There’s something wrong there — especially when cross-platform. If you have to choose between the creator or where you saw it, I’d say go with the creator.
There was a time when the rail was important, there was no real reblogging to speak about so you’d almost have to see the the previous writer in order to get the context. And then that’s fine. Really. But now? When the previous is mined for just a tiny bit and context doesn’t matter? Fuck the trail. I want to see more of what the creator did, how things evolve or fit together in their narrative. I’m really not that interested in what an unknown curator fills they blog with — nine out of ten times it’s just boring, especially since most of these adds nothing themselves and all content is very random. And if nothing is added, that “contribution” doesn’t really matter.
There’s this new social holabalo called Lookup.to and all I can think of is that it must be an inverted FlockedUp. That’s the impression I’ve got from their welcome screen and name anyway. They want me to sign in with my Facebook, but no fucking way. Their logo look as it it belonged on a toy instrument, complete with different coloured letters and a very ugly outline. I have principles and standards, and god damnit occasional bursts of good taste.
A while ago, middle of the summer, I tried to find “Manual.” I had my printed version of course but that one was somewhere I was not, it was at home. Somewhere. I’m not an organized person, I admit that. I googled the Internet and every link it turned up was dead. But now! I should have known that a digital pack-rat such as Joshua would have saved it on his server.
It’s a bit old now, but the writings still fine. It has How to Make Things Easier for Everyone by Leslie and we all know there is far too little traces of her left outside of Wayback. And, this was why I tried to find it then, it has the rules of Cricket. Sort of. They might not be entirely accurate, because I’m more and more sure that Cricket is in reality based on Nomic. Someone is bound to have changed them by now. Several times.
As the follower counts fluxate up and down, it leaves me thinking about the footprints and how I use tumblr. Specifically the functions that interact with the others; the like, the reply, and the reblog.
To me, they’re sort of essential. Not as much as the post functions but it’s with them I communicate and not just monologue. When I click on that like button, I really fucking like it. It’s not a bookmark function for me.
And I don’t want to be silent, just lurking around. Perhaps weed out among what I follow — not now but later — and make sure that I actually respond and react to those I read, to make it count and not be so casual.
There’s a place for everything, but I wish I were a bit better at the two-way communication. I must, I really do must, improve.
The ones you talk to, those who talk to you. It’s those that matters. Not the number.
I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet. I shouldn’t read comments on the Internet.
But I did and now I feel bad and disgusted and really pissed off. There should be consequences for people and their stupidity.
likeneelyohara:- (by Jer Crowle)
a handful of my most important people are from the internet. from the tumblr.
And right away there is a huge difference between how the maker of this image and I see the world. To me, the Internet is people. An intellectual and spiritual Soylent Green over the distance. This does not mean that all of Internet is like that but the important bits are.
Of course, if one thinks the people and social quotient of Internet is Facebook, it’s easy to see how one could be a bit limited in scope. (There is hardly anything there made to create connections between people, only maintaining it.)
But no, to me Internet is the people behind the texts I read, the comics I follow, the twitters I skim. It’s about identifying with others experience and see things in ways I normally don’t. It’s about treating people with respect and not — to care about those I’ve never met. And if you think that random person you don’t really know in your English lit class is more important than the person whose blog you commented on for the hundredth time, then I guess the problem is you and not Internet.
(via hennnypotter)
Source: Flickr / 3
A brief note about that girl-quits-via-dry-erase-board thing from yesterday …
[…] And then other people will fume about being fooled in the first place, as though the Internet has an obligation to always be honest.
I’d like to point out that these frames of mind overlook two important points:
1.) Even though it was fake, it was still kind of funny.
2.) Hot girl in a tank top.I’m not complaining.
I’m not angry, I’m a bit sad. I want the world to be awesome and not a “fool you”-playground for marketing. I want a world where everything doesn’t revolve around exposure, i want a foundation with real feelings no matter what they are.
I want to quote two things. First is from the first issue of Warren Ellis’ Planetary: ”It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.” The second is from Bill Hicks: “By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself.”
And I do agree with your both points. Still sad though.
Crap. In the spam-department of my gmail I found this thing with the subject iTunes invoice #blahblahblah. My first thought was “Holy moley, I don’t have an iTunes-account!” But then the curiosity took over and I opened it. I had too. It was an urge to know what this me-who-isn’t-me had bought. Did we share the extraordinary good taste even though we — I assume — were parallel universes apart? But no. That was not to be.
The content of said invoice was about flabby man-sized handle bars. What a huge fucking let-down that was. You’d think they would put some care and though behind a spam that manages to get people to open it, but to the surprise of almost none that was not the case. What you’d really be is a fool and an rank amateur cosmonaut — or me. But I still wonder, what does me-who-isn’t-me listen to with that iTunes-account…
