Tom Nixon

links for 2008-04-29

• Better B2B Landing Pages: A Case Study
  (tags: landingpages SEO conversion)

The significance of what has just begun

I joined a guided walk around the City of London on Saturday, taking in some well known, and some lesser known sights. We stopped at the spot where Wynkyn de Worde (apprentice of William Caxton who brought the printing press to England) set up his press and gave birth to an industry on Fleet Street.

This got me thinking about the new revolution that has just begun on the web, and this excellent essay by Clay Shirky sums it up perfectly. If you haven't got time to read it (or indeed his book, which I just started this weekend) then here's the central idea:

There's a new generation of media 'consumers' who aren't actually just consumers. To the new generation, a screen without a mouse attached to it is plain broken. This generation is creating content, mashing it up, sharing it and living it. This generation, unlike the one before, won't spend all of it's free time just watching TV, but it's not the drop in TV viewing figures that's interesting, it's what this generation might do with their time instead.

Shirky has calculated that about 100 million hours of human brain time has been invested in getting Wikipedia to its current state. Now, if just 1% of the time Americans [the world's Internet users] spend watching TV is diverted into new forms of creative media and not just consumption, we'd have enough time to create 10,000 Wikipedia's every year. It's quite mind-boggling when you think about how this is going to change us.

Sometimes it feels like the phrase 'social media' is already getting a bit tired, but we are actually just at the beginning of an incredible new stage of our development as humans.

Business deal basics

1. The goal of a win/win result, defined as such by all parties
2. The skill of understanding the position of all the parties
3. A keen appreciation for the relative value which each party brings to the equation
4. The use of reliable, authoritative resources
5. An “I may not know it all” attitude
6. The willingness to have “facts” challenged
7. Finely tuned listening skills
8. Consideration of all points of view
9. Impeccable integrity
10. Transparency and honesty
11. Keen analytical faculties and good judgment
12. A mature sense of fairness
13. Compliance with high legal, ethical and moral standards
14. Clarity of both oral and written communication
15. Timely replies/responses in the exchange of information
16. The ability to “disagree agreeably”
17. Humble acceptance of the required modification of one’s position
18. Patience to do it right the first time so it doesn’t have to be done over
19. Equitable compromise without the sacrifice of principles
20. A long-term perspective which looks beyond the near-term benefits
21. Respect, respect, respect

[Copyright and thanks to Wilson "Bill" Katter. Via David Maister]

Widdecombe of the week: Got the T-Shirt

Geekier readers will remember the Widdecombe of the Week feature in the weekly email newsletter NTK (sadly not published any more, and much missed)

A 'Widdecombe' is a web page where lazy programming means you can make your own text appear in the page by stuffing it into the URL.

CNN have a fantastic example of this. They have an online shop where you can have any of the day's headlines printed on a T-Shirt. However you can edit the text in the URL to make the headline whatever you like. Cue much hilarity:

(click for larger image)

[via 37signals]

Tabmix - my favourite Firefox extension

If you're anything like me, you often end up with shedloads of tabs open in Firefox. It gets unwieldy after a while as you reach the maximum number that can fit in the window and you have to scroll left and right to get to your other tabs.

I have long wanted the ability to have multiple rows of tabs, and it's on the list of requested features on the Mozilla site.

But now there's Tabmix, a neat little Firefox extension that does exactly this plus a load of other little tab tweaks. It's a bit pathetic I know, but I feel like my life has suddenly been made a bit easier.

Big thanks to Edd and Telmo for sharing this.

links for 2008-04-10

• The ROI of Social Media | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network
  (tags: roi socialmedia charity)

A little announcement from me

I made the decision recently to put my plans for a sabbatical on ice, so I’m afraid that the UK is stuck with me for the foreseeable future. Sorry if this disappoints anyone :)

When I first decided to take a sabbatical it was always on the basis that me going away for a year would not be to the detriment of NixonMcInnes. I’ve worked too hard for too long to see it suffer, and it wouldn’t be fair on those who were left in the business.

The original idea was that by me going away, Will would have a chance to develop further as the sole MD of the company instead of the role being split between us. At the same time, I would be getting a whole load of new experience from living and working overseas which I would be able to bring back to NM a year later.

The plan was to hire at least one new director who would bolster the board while it was a man down, and stay on for the long term. I would then re-join the team a year later.

So it all sounded good, and do-able at a very high level, but like so many things in business, the devil was in the detail and we hit a few blockages.

First of all, we underestimated the cost and complexity of hiring a new director. There would have been a six-month overlap period when the new director and I would both be working at the same time. When our finance manager, Lasy, showed us what the cost of this would be, it made a significant dent in our bottom line. There was also the issue of shares. We wanted a new director to have some shares in the company, but as anyone who has ever done this before will know, it’s complicated to work out an arrangement that’s attractive and fair to the new person, whilst still protecting the interests of the company and the other shareholders.

At the same time, Will and I were discussing how the arrangement would work between the two of us because everything up until then had been a straight 50/50 agreement, but me not being around for a year would obviously change this. We worked through 101 different options, thinking about how the rewards would be split, what our roles would be, whether the share ownership would change. But try as we might, in spite of it being a shining example of a principled negotiation, we were struggling to come up with a solution that worked for both of us.

All of this was happening at time when the company had recently rebranded and re-focused on social media. What the business needs most at this time is for the directors to be out there networking, marketing and talking to new clients. All of the discussions around a new director, and a deal between Will and I were becoming a big distraction from the task in hand.

So it made sense for me to shelve my traveling plans and get 100% stuck back into the business. I do feel disappointed to be missing out on the sabbatical, but the rest of the world will still be there when the time is right. And it feels good to re-commit to the business and to the amazing team that we have built – I know we have an exciting few years ahead of us.

How the Google platform will play out

Following the news that Google is beginning the roll-out of scalable web application infrastructure services, I've been thinking about this is going to play out.

It’s pretty obvious that the Google platform will be built out to incorporate cloud computing and all of the other components needed to host and scale a web app as Amazon are doing with their own suite of web services. Google will then have a piece of the action at every point:

• Driving traffic to the site (Google Adwords)
• The hardware and software infrastructure (BigTable and other services)
• Reporting (Google Analytics)
• Maximizing conversions (Google Optimizer)
• Taking money (Google Checkout)
• Monetizing page views (Google AdSense)

Unlike Amazon, who charge for the use of their web services, Google will be able to make money from a blend of these services - some offered free and others paid-for, and also make a profit for the application developer. I think this will make it an unstoppable proposition.

The next logical step will be for Google to extend this further with pre-built application design patterns and templates. I can imagine a web interface where you’ll be able to assemble your application online, then use all of the Google services above to turn it into a business. You'll be able to sell online and make ad revenue, and Google will take its cut.

What's more, it’ll be a piece of cake for Google to acquire any applications that become successful because they’ll already be designed in the Google house style and hosted on their infrastructure so integration costs will be insignificant. This potential exit route will make it an appealing choice for entrepreneurs.

Overall I think this will lead to a huge amount of innovation with new web applications, but a Google monopoly is definitely something we should be concerned about.

links for 2008-04-03

• Reviews of Diving with Great whites in Gansbaai, Western Cape, South Africa - World Reviewer
  Must do this on holiday!!
  (tags: shark diving southafrica)