A common complaint amongst Twitter developers has been that Twitter’s OAuth, the authentication process you see when you click the Twitter login button on a 3rd party website and go to a Twitter-looking page with a “Allow” or “Deny” button, is too complicated.  Mainly, from a user experience perspective, users are required to leave the 3rd party site completely in order to log into Twitter, then get redirected back to the 3rd party site again.  If anything breaks along the way, the user is left wondering what to do, and valuable logins, purchases, or registrations could be lost.  Facebook has solved this by enabling users to do all the login process via Javascript they provide that produces a popup.  Users can log into Facebook without ever leaving the 3rd party site.  It appears, based on a thread on the Twitter developers list, that Twitter is planning to one-up Facebook by allowing users to log in to 3rd party sites without ever even needing a popup or any type of redirect, and they’re already testing it with select partners.

The topic came up when other developers noticed that the site, TwitPic.com, was allowing direct Twitter logins right on their own website and somehow posts from TwitPic were showing up with the TwitPic name and link next to the post on Twitter.  This normally isn’t possible without enabling OAuth login because Twitter has disabled the functionality for any non-OAuth produced Tweet.  In fact they have said in June of 2010 they will be completely removing the ability to login through Twitter on 3rd party sites via plain-text authentication.  So how is TwitPic doing it?

According to Raffi, an Engineer on the Twitter API platform team, Twitter is currently working on a new “OAuth Delegation” standard that will allow applications to allow users to log in via Twitter on their own sites, while still maintaining the control over Apps that OAuth gives providers and users.  So, on TwitPic, for instance, you can log in to TwitPic.com with your own Twitter username and password right on the TwitPic site itself, yet you’ll still have full control on Twitter.com to revoke access to TwitPic at any time you want to.  In addition, Twitter, at any time, can remove TwitPic’s ability to publish or access the Twitter API since they still have to use OAuth to make Twitter API calls.

If the hints in the developers list thread prove true, developers will be able to take the plaintext username and password, still store them somewhere, but in order to make calls through the Twitter API they’ll have to somehow send an OAuth key with their requests to Twitter along with some way of identifying the user.  My guess is, in essence, the app will send a one-time login on behalf of the user to Twitter (most likely via a secure SSL encryption channel or similar), and Twitter will return to the app an OAuth token to make API requests with on behalf of that user in the future.  In my opinion, this is still no different than storing an OAuth Token in a database that would give apps the same access as their Twitter username and password.

Security Concerns

While storage may be no different, I’m sure there will still be those concerned about this approach.  For instance, what happens when users get used to entering their Twitter usernames and passwords on 3rd party websites and decide to do so on a malicious website?  We’ve seen how used to entering Twitter credentials people get with websites that look like Twitter itself with the rampant phishing attacks recently.

Maybe Twitter is feeling comfortable enough that they can be proactive about such misuses and password collection.  The risk is still there though and hopefully the OAuth Delegation Twitter is getting ready to launch will cover this problem.

Partners

Thus far, it seems TwitPic is one of the partners testing this new delegation standard Twitter is working on.  Several others were mentioned in the developer discussions about this as well.  For instance, Seesmic Look is also taking similar credentials without any OAuth redirect, yet still shows the “Look” source in Tweets generated with the app.  One developer pointed out the information that could be retrieved from the new requests, and the security of it all is a little concerning.

Whatever it ends up being, the winners will be desktop and mobile client developers.  Right now developing a mobile or desktop app involves deep integration into the browser in order to legally get the user logged into the app.  It is why we see so few native desktop clients and so many AIR apps.  AIR is a browser-based solution.

I’m very interested to see what happens.  The Twitter team is supposed to announce more details very soon and I’d like to find out more about what this means for developers, how secure it is, and how much recoding I’ll have to do to enable it in my app.  Whatever it is, you can bet it will be one step simpler than the currently more-simple solution which Facebook provides.  This is getting very interesting!  Let the API wars begin…

Recently here in Salt Lake City we had the opportunity to have Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google visit. While I didn’t have the chance to see it, reading about it, he seemed to talk about a common worry I hear throughout this State. Here in Salt Lake City and around the area we have a lot of successful businesses! From my Uncle’s Freeservers.com, to Omniture, to Mozy, to Novell, Wordperfect, and many others, there’s no shortage of success in this area. It’s a hotbed of talent and technology the world doesn’t give enough credit for. The problem is that we have no Yahoos or Googles or Facebooks or Microsofts to give us credit for that success. We have no home-grown success story that didn’t eventually sell out for big bucks to one of the big West Coast companies.  I think this is a common problem for many areas.  Why is this?

Eric Schmidt tried to come up with his own reasons in response to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who (Hatch) stated, “We get a corporation going and it has some tremendous ideas and all of the sudden someone comes up from Silicon Valley and buys it and takes it back there.” Schmidt responded, saying, “I don’t know whether [improving the situation means] globalizing the business. I don’t know whether we need more venture capitalist presence in Utah or maybe just more experience building the businesses from the startup. It’s not that businesses aren’t getting started, it’s that once started they aren’t growing the businesses fast enough.” So what is it that keeps the Googles or Microsofts from staying in Utah (and other states) rather than staying here and growing to compete with the big guys?

I’ve suggested the PR problem before. That’s just one problem Utah has – a lack of enough tech bloggers to get the word out to Silicon Valley. One other common problem I see in Utah is we get greedy. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing. Too many Utah startups are focused on the money rather than an underlying cause that motivates their revenue stream. That’s part of the reason Utah businesses have been successful – we have some of the smartest business people in the world right here. Even Eric Schmidt confirmed that, stating that “Utah is one of the best places to do business.” We know how to make money! Unfortunately that’s what differentiates us from the West Coast companies like Google however.

I argue it all revolves around cause. Let’s look at Eric Schmidt’s company itself, Google. Everything they do centers around one central cause, “Do no evil”. It doesn’t even matter if they have purpose. Everything they do must be done “the right way”, even if they lose money from it. Some even argue this has become a PR pitch for them as well. Google is willing to lose money for their cause, yet they are also making money because of it. It’s an amazing strategy.

Facebook also does this well. I’ve done a lot of work with Facebook with 2 books on the company and several apps written around their platform. When you interact with them and their employees, you get a common theme from them: They are doing all they can to enable people to share in bigger and better ways. Their vision is to help you share without risking privacy. Everything they do revolves around that – their revenue model is built around their cause.

Twitter is building “the pulse of the internet”.  They want to enable better communication between anyone in the world. They’ve forgone revenue to ensure that takes place (yet they’ve been able to raise a ton of capital, I realize, but I argue that’s part due to their cause).

I see the same thing from company to company in the Bay Area and even up in tech hotbeds like Seattle (home of Amazon, Microsoft). These guys all drive revenue based on purpose! While there are currently a few exceptions, I don’t quite see this in Utah and other states, especially amongst the larger startups. It’s all business.

Eric Schmidt also stated that “It’s not an attitude problem, it’s an availability problem. To me, it’s recruiting new talent into the state and growing new talent. It’s really people and expertise and that’s the way to make it happen.” Guess what drives and keeps talent? Motivation. If people have cause to work for they come, and they stay, and they work hard at it.  I remember at BackCountry.com (a Utah company), our mantra was “We use the gear we sell”.  Employees loved that because all kinds of incentives were given to get employees using their cool gear, and the employees loved that!

80% of Utah’s population is in the Salt Lake City area. Schmidt suggested this was an incredible opportunity for people to connect. I think we just need motivation to encourage that connectedness. Motivation is what makes the Googles and Facebooks and Microsofts of the world.

If you’re a startup, anywhere, what are you building on top of? Where are your foundations? Are you building for money or for purpose? I know as I build my business I’m going to be thinking much, much more about changing the world and less about the money I make as a result of that. The money will come naturally. That is how you build Google, and keep it there.

What’s your cause? What businesses do you think do this well? Please share in the comments.

EDITORS NOTE: 2 Companies in Utah that I think are doing really well at this are Phil Windley’s Kynetx and Paul Allen’s FamilyLink.  When you interact with them you can sense their cause.  It bleeds through the company.  People are sacrificing time and money just to be sure their cause is getting through.  As a result, Paul Allen’s company was recently ranked one of the fastest growing companies on COMScore, and recently, according to Compete.com, surpassed his old company, Ancestry.com in traffic.  Cause eventually pays off!  I encourage you to learn what they do – they won’t be going away any time soon.

Source of Eric Schmidt Comments: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13630231

I just got an email from Google stating that starting March 1st, their web applications will no longer support older browsers, instead, pushing the new HTML5 standard. Here is what they said;

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser

I applaud this. As a web developer, trying to create sites that work with a dozen web browsers is nearly impossible. I hope more companies take this stance, and help push new technology along. Google has a strong enough presence with their own applications (i.e. GMail and Docs), that they can control what browsers they will support and which they won’t. Here’s hoping others will follow.

Marketers seem to never learn.  Time and time again they have tried to sacrifice loyal relationships with customers in order to take the easy road in hopes to get the small percentage out of millions that might convert into one-time sales.  Affiliate marketing is ripe with these people hoping to “get rich quick”, without regard to how it is done.  I some times wonder if these people would sacrifice their own souls in order to gain a quick buck.  It would certainly seem so as we have been inundated with junk mail and e-mail spam, viruses, worms, porn, and other tools intended to spread what they’re selling to mass audiences in as fast a manner as possible.

Technology has sought hard to stop such problems.  We have anti-virus solutions that stop the malware, but evidently it’s not good enough, because viruses and worms and malware still spread.  Google’s Gmail has excellent spam filtering software for e-mail, as do other services such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.  Yet, I still get spam e-mail.  There are even services which try to stop the amount of junk mail you receive, yet even that isn’t fool proof.  It seems no matter how much technology we throw at it, the spammers will always find a way to circumvent the process.

Government is doing all they can do as well.  Here in the United States, CAN SPAM act makes it easy for government to prosecute against spammers.  The act was meant to thwart the problem in the early 00’s where e-mail spam was running rampant.  The marketers all complained, claiming it would reduce the amount of money they could make, worries of economic crisis ensued.  But after the act went into place, marketers began to realize they were actually seeing more money than before because they were actually focusing on people that were interested in their product, rather than people that weren’t.  I admit a lot of my spam went down at that time.

Enter 2010.  Twitter is almost a standard.  Facebook is almost a standard.  We are seeing the era of micro-messaging take form, and it doesn’t seem this era is going away any time soon.  As with any new communications technology, so come the spammers that come along with it.  As I can attest from my own company, the spammers are now out of control on Facebook and Twitter and almost any other service that enables micro-messaging, and they’re fighting their best to stay on top of it all.  I admit they’re probably doing all they can, too.

On SocialToo in just the last month, we have already automatically marked near 3,500 DM messages as spam out of a total of 3,500 users that utilize the service. Since we implemented the service just a few months ago we’ve marked near 8,500 DM messages as spam. And that’s just DMs on Twitter! Considering there are in the 10s of millions on the service and DMs aren’t the only means of spam, you can see the problem Twitter and Facebook are facing.

It was this reason I added these spam filtering services on top of SocialToo.  I too want to do what I can to help kill these problems.  I’ve seen it all – even people abusing my own service to increase their numbers and in return spam those followers with things their followers never intended to receive.  It was this reason we complied with Twitter’s request to remove automatic unfollow of those who unfollow you recently, and frankly I agree with Twitter on the move – they’re doing the best they can to thwart spammers, and I want to support them in that process.  Look at this video I found on Youtube recently – in it, a man is demoing software that uses a combination of your desktop and outsourced workers in India (likely through services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk) to quickly create accounts, send a few tweets each to increase, gain, and grow followers, and spam those followers with affiliate links. It’s appalling the way he says this is a “secret” only a “select few” marketers know about – the fact is I already knew about it – it’s no secret:

Source: http://www.boblallyblog.net/?p=776 (http://twitter.com/boblally and http://twitter.com/successtoolme)

This guy’s software is just one of many, and I argue it does this the hard way.  Now we have the ability for applications to sit on top of the browser and completely control  the context which a user views the web.  Applications like GreaseMonkey, extensions and plugins, and even Kynetx, while they can be used for good, could all be used in this way with just simple HTML and Javascript to create accounts and spam with them.  There’s not much Twitter or Facebook or even the makers of GreaseMonkey, Firefox, Chrome, IE, or Kynetx can do about them (although Kynetx at least has a controlled user directory through which they can at monitor these things).  There are already tools like Hummingbird out there that do this for relatively cheap, and there will be more.

It’s time Government step in and put an end to this.  CAN-SPAM was written for long-form communications, but it needs to be modified to allow for the short-form. It specifically mentions e-mail and cell phone communications, not micro-messaging services.  Recipients should still have the opportunity to opt-out of the messages they receive. Perhaps the enablers of such communication such as Facebook and Twitter need to provide a means for message senders to provide an opt-out location that attaches to their messages.  That’s just one idea – I’m sure there are many other ways of doing this.

CAN-SPAM needs a provision which specifically targets the micro-messaging space.  It needs communication which specifically says what marketers can do on these services, and how people can opt out.  As I know very well, this will not stop all messages, but it will cut off a large majority of messages, which I know are being used by legit Lawyers and Doctors and business owners everywhere in the US to cost Twitter thousands of dollars and waste the time of countless people.

We need to do all we can to stop this nonsense. I want to see these micro-messaging spammers prosecuted.  It won’t happen unless the US Government modifies CAN-SPAM.  How can we do this effectively in the micro-messaging space?

Here we go, please take a ride with me as I search out the ultimate mobile developer machine. Why mobile? Because I hate being tied to a desk. I have desk top machines, but I want something with equal power I can take with me. Here is what I am looking for:

Nothing larger than a 15 inch screen. Yes, 15 inches. Any bigger and it’s like lugging around a desktop.
At least 8GB of memory. I would love to have the ability to upgrade to 16GB or even 24GB. Memory is a developers best friend. Next to CPU speed, it’s the key to all goodness.
A hard drive fast enough to keep up with the RAM. I really like what is happening in solid state drives (SSD).
A CPU, well, let’s look at 4, that will allow me to compile in a split second, let me stream video, rip a DVD, all at the same time.
I would love to have built in 3G connectivity, but the more I think about it, the more I would hate to be tied to a specific carrier. So maybe just a USB card will work.
Ability to read just about any memory card. At least 4 super fast USB ports.
Lightweight. This is a mobile machine, remember?

Honestly, that’s about it. Nothing spectacular. The real trick here will be to find one that doesn’t weight as much as your Mothers Cadilac, and doesn’t cost as much as my last Child.

There are really two flavors, an Apple Mac, like a Mac Book Pro, or a PC which can run Windows or Linux. Since I do a lot of Windows development, Linux probably isn’t a viable option. And I don’t want to own a MBP just so I can run Windows on it. You think the simple choice is to go with a PC. But there is more too it than that. I have to make some additional choices, to make the right choice.

First, will I choose to stop developing Windows applications. Honestly, that’s the key question. I can develop everything but Windows applications on a Mac. I know, I know, running Parallels or VMWare Fusion gives me a Windows machine on the Mac, but I don’t want to do that. It doesn’t work all that well on my iMac, and I know it doesn’t do any better on a MBP.

Throw my hat in a ring, and stay there for a while. Honestly, I’m not sure 100% which ring the hat will fall in today. OK, enough of that, off to find The Ultimate Mobile Developer Machine.

What would you recommend?

Buy my LinkedIn DVD at 50% off (while supplies last).Some people just don’t get JibberJobber. I know we need to do a better job communicating what it is and how to use it, and then we’d have more testimonials like this:

I wanted to let you know that I’m only backing away from the premium subscription for a little while.  I start a new job tomorrow, one that I was able to land in no small part because of your JibberJobber career management software.  I was able to track several submissions I’d made to this particular employer, giving me a valuable history of my interactions with them.  That history allowed me to connect a few dots and that gave me an advantage I needed during the interview process.

This is the response he gave me when he downgraded from Premium to Regular.  I love it – last week I’ve had three JibberJobber users change their status from unemployed to I FOUND MY DREAM JOB!

That really thrills me.

JC ended his message to me with this:

[JibberJobber is] a great tool that I’d be proud to help plug for.

Thanks for sharing JC, and best wishes at your new gig!

Not on JibberJobber yet?  Sign up here.  Get on our next user webinar tomorrow morning (register here).

Twitter has been initiating a crackdown of sorts on sites that offer “automated unfollow” services such as my own SocialToo.com.  Since we announced we were removing it on SocialToo, at least 3 other services have also been asked to remove the functionality, which enables people to automatically unfollow others that unfollow them on Twitter.  I have also noticed Twitter is now cracking down on Twitter accounts that perform this practice.  When chatting with Twitter, their reasoning is that auto-unfollow “perpetuates the idea that Twitter is about follower counts”.  Assuming that this is the real reasoning behind the request, I’d like to suggest a more effective means of killing that idea: kill services that allow proactive follow in the first place and follower churn will go away.

Let me first explain what proactive follow is.  There are many services out there right now that enable you to find new followers based on keywords.  You specify search terms, perhaps based on your brand, and these services then go out and find people Tweeting with these keywords, and the service follows those people.  Some will even send a public @mention or DM if they meet your search criteria.  The entire hope is that those people will follow back (note that not everyone does this automatically), increasing your follower count and potential reach.

The problem with this method is that Twitter has limits in place.  As people unfollow you as you are increasing your numbers in this way, soon you will be following way more people than are following you back.  Twitter has a limit right now, in which if you’re following around 10% more of the people that are following you on Twitter, you will not be able to follow any more.  So what happens is these people using these “get more follower” services then use legit services like my SocialToo to unfollow all of the people that have stopped following them, bringing their ratio back in check.  It’s a direct rebellion against Twitter’s rules and regulations, and I don’t blame Twitter for being concerned about it.  In fact, I refuse to allow proactive follow on SocialToo just for this reason – we are not a “get more followers fast” site.  We’re a utility that enables you to manage your Twitter stream better and easier.

So Twitter has come up with the best solution they can come up with – “let’s kill the sites that are providing automatic unfollow and the follower churn will go away”.  The idea being if users can’t unfollow those users that have unfollowed them after they proactively went out and followed everyone, it’s a lot harder to game the system and break Twitter’s rules.  Based on my experience with what users are telling me on SocialToo, this breaks Twitter for many big brands using the service in a legit manner though.  Let me share a few use-cases people are telling me about after we removed it on SocialToo:

Legit Use-Cases for Auto-Unfollow

Some Brands Just Have Big Numbers — On SocialToo we service some really big brands.  Let’s face it: these brands have a lot of followers.  Following those followers back gives their followers a sense that the brand is listening to them.  It’s a PR move, as well as a customer service move because their followers can now DM them.  For instance, I followed @PCSki the other day, hoping to be able to get a spot in for my wife’s and my Ski Vacation to Park City Utah.  Because they followed me back, I was able to keep our conversation private.  This reciprocal follow is an important piece for Brands looking to communicate better with their followers and customers.  @PCSki got a sale (and future blog post) out of me because of that relationship.

Now, assuming we’re dealing with millions of followers, or hundreds of thousands of followers, or even thousands of followers it is absolutely impossible to continue following back the people that follow you based on Twitter’s 10% ratio limit.  If I want to follow everyone back, the fact is about 1/3 to 1/2 of those people I follow back will unfollow me at some point, and my ratio breaks.  I’m then stuck waiting until more people follow me before I can follow back more.  This is bad for brands, especially those with bigger numbers.  If you think numbers aren’t important for a brand, you’re flat out wrong.

Auto Unfollow Kills the Churners — The main reason I created automatic unfollow on SocialToo was because it’s another effective technique at combating spammers if you do auto follow (see above for some good reasons to auto follow as a brand ).  For a good auto follow service to occur, it’s the natural thing to do to offer auto unfollow services as well in order to keep out the spammers you might follow unintentionally.  This is also the reason we offer DM filters and other filtering services on SocialToo.  For those gaming the system, the minute they unfollow me to hope their numbers stay up, I immediately unfollow them as well, and their numbers don’t increase at all.

Auto Unfollow Enables Steady Growth, Despite Friends Unfollowing — if auto unfollow were not available, a typical brand or person wanting to enable auto follow on their account would go as follows: Number of friends increase. Number of friends stay stagnant until ratio is met.  Number of friends increase again.  Steady growth is not attainable with Twitter’s current ratio limit and the lack of auto unfollow.

The Solution

So what can Twitter do?  I understand they’re between a rock and a hard place here.  They could remove the ratio limits, but then the churners (or gamers) would take over again.  They could kill automated unfollow services, but other services will still take over – I can already think of  a good way to create a browser extension that does it on a user-by-user basis if we wanted to.  Also, killing automated unfollow removes the ability for users to defend themselves against the churners.  Twitter could just let the churning happen, but then jealousy happens and people complain (not sure that’s a bad thing as I think people can see through the fakes, but I understand their viewpoint).  Twitter could remove the numbers, only enabling them in private for each individual, but that would remove some of the fun and competition of Twitter.

The only decent solution is to kill the services that are enabling proactive follow.  Disable those enabling the ability to search by keyword and follow based on that keyword.  This is a pure API-based service that Twitter can shut off at the source pretty easily.  Once these are gone, churning, and the “Twitter Game” will be over for those abusing the system.

The Fact is Twitter is About Numbers

While I don’t think Twitter wants people gaming the system to create more numbers, I think Twitter knows that the only way to grow the service is to enable people to increase their number of followers and grow an audience.  If you don’t think that, you’re lying to yourself.  Everyone wants more followers, especially if you’re a brand or business.

Twitter prominently displays follower counts on each user’s page, along with a list of who’s following them, the number of lists they’re on, the number of lists they’ve created, and the list goes on.  Twitter has a Suggested User List  - the entire goal being to give people a larger number of people those people can follow and find interesting things from.  Users get higher prominence in Google if their numbers are higher on Twitter.  Numbers are everything to Twitter, let’s not kid ourselves.

Twitter Needs to Kill the Proactive Follow

The only way Twitter is going to fix the problem they see at hand is to kill services enabling users and brands to go out and proactively find new followers.  Killing the unfollow isn’t going to fix this.  Killing the proactive follow will.  My hope is that, assuming this is the real reason Twitter wants to kill it, Twitter will realize this and give freedom back to their users to continue maintaining their accounts.

As I said on the SocialToo blog – in the meantime, we’re in Twitter’s world and we’re subject to their rules, so until then I’ll do what they tell me.  Let’s hope they’re listening though.  SocialToo provides many more services than just this though, so I’m not worried – I am worried about our users however.

Are there use-cases I’m missing?  How were you using auto-unfollow?

I didn’t expect this move from Amazon until the Kindle had a color screen and a touchscreen. Apparently, they’re going to open kindle up for developers. I’ve been hoping this kind of move will help developers to implement some more powerful education tools into the Kindle.

I’m starting a new series on this blog. I occasionally travel places that I really like, and others I don’t. As a Geek I’m a bit picky on the places I visit – whether that be they have sketchy internet, plugs in the wrong places, or just plain, normal annoyances a geek might have, I decided these things needed to be shared. This thought came to me last week as I stayed at Circus Circus during CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, so I thought I’d begin sharing these adventures as a travelling geek with you, hopefully either inspiring you to visit, or warning you in the event you are visiting and you need to know where to stay. Consider this my first post in the series. We’ll see how this goes.

Circus Circus, Las Vegas, Nevada

Las Vegas is filled with places to stay.  This time of year, many of those places are actually quite cheap.  But when staying during an event such as the Consumer Electronics Show, finding an affordable hotel, especially at the last minute, can be quite an adventure!

Circus Circus saved my day at CES.  Starting at a price tag of around $29 minimum per night, and $45 maximum per night, I was able to find an affordable place to stay on the strip within just a week from the start of CES.  Other hotels on the strip were selling for around $400/night!

The place I stayed was in their newly renovated West Tower building.  Previous visits to the hotel landed me and my family in an old, musty hotel room, leaving us wanting.  Not this time!  My hotel room was brand new almost everything, had a big screen, flat LCD TV, a great view of Las Vegas, comfortable, clean beds.  It was an entirely new experience for me at the hotel!

Atmosphere

The atmosphere of the hotel you can tell is targeted towards families.  The interior is the same old interior you’re used to if you have been at the hotel before, and I admit could probably use a bit of renovation itself.  You see the Casino right near the entrance, but if you have kids you can mostly avoid the Casino, ride the roller coaster rides at the AdventureDome, go shopping, and more, all without exposing kids to too much gambling or alcohol or cigarette smoke.  If you opt to take them around the Casino, you can also take them up to the second floor where they can play Midway games and win stuffed animals or see the Circus acts and clowns.  Even going by myself without the family, this always ends up being much more rewarding than the Casino hall down below, and I get stuff to take home to the kids when I’m done!  There’s even a McDonalds on the second floor.

Proximity

The best part about Circus Circus is its proximity to the Las Vegas Convention Center.  If you wanted, you could walk there.  As a geek, since often a lot of events happen at the Wynn, you can also walk over to the Wynn, and I found myself doing that a few times.  If walking is too much, the monorail also stops somewhere near the Circus Circus (I admit I have not been), so you can always take that as well.

Of course, Circus Circus is still at the end of the strip, meaning if you want to go to the Bellagio or Paris or any of the more traditional hotels further down the strip it’s probably going to be a Taxi or shuttle ride over, or maybe even a Monorail trip.  I was driving my own car though so it didn’t matter.  One thing to note if you do bring your own car – Valet parking at all the hotels is free, and the expected tip is usually between $1-2, unless you’re feeling generous.

The Internet

One important part of staying at any hotel for me, as a geek, is the internet, how fast it is, how easy it is to get set up, and how expensive it costs.  I plan to include this in each of my future Geek Travel reviews.  At Circus Circus, the internet is all wireless.  Therefore, if you want to set up more than one computer, it’s going to be around $10 per night, per computer (MAC Address).  Unless you have a router that can bridge pretty easily, you’re probably going to be paying if you’re sharing the room with another person.  Speed for the internet was acceptable, although not fast enough for my tastes.  I was however able to upload about 5 3-5 minute HD videos to Youtube overnight.

The Plug Test

One annoyance of mine at hotels is the proximity of the plugs to the bed, where I often do my work.  There were a couple of plugs on the desk, which is fine when I need to sit at the desk. (one on the lamp, and another on the wall)  To get a plug for the bed, I had to disconnect the alarm clock to have a place to plug in my laptop.  While it works, I think it’s a hack.  I don’t understand why hotels don’t just put more plugs on the nightstand!

The Website and Twitter Test

From what I can tell, Circus Circus has no Twitter account.  Communicating with them should you have an issue or question during an event will require a (gasp!) phone call or in-person visit.  They do have a website at http://www.circuscircus.com, but visiting the site without “www” returns an error.  It seems they don’t put much focus in their marketing on the web, which is a bit of a bummer.

Conclusion

Overall, due to the new room, I was quite impressed with Circus Circus!   It had all the amenities I needed (Circus Circus, unlike most hotels on the strip, even has vending machines on each floor! ($2 for a Coke)).  The rooms were clean.  Internet was pretty acceptable.  The low prices make it appealing.  The proximity to the Convention Center sealed the deal.

If you’re on a trip for a convention in Vegas this year, I highly recommend trying out Circus Circus – bring the wife and kids if you feel like it, but even as a geek on your own I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.  I’ll be considering it for my next stay.

This weekend I’m visiting the Wasatch Back in Utah with my wife, swimming in Geothermal craters, Cross Country skiing, visiting 2002 Winter Olympics sites, and more – the next few articles I write in this series I hope to share some of the wonders that are in Utah where I live should you consider visiting here in the future.

When I write articles I often look for media – videos, audio, etc. to support the content I write.  The additional content provides some entertainment value, while still driving the point home for others to remember.  I’ve seen this similar technique used by other bloggers such as MG Siegler, Chris Messina, and others.  While at CES last week, I had the opportunity to meet with the founders of MovieClips, a company that makes it easy to share these little quotes in video form in a nice, legal, and searchable format.  Check out what they do in their Intro video below:

MovieClips has partnered with almost every major label to provide users with a database of 12,000+ short clips from movies which you can share with your friends.  Have a scene from a movie you just love?  Simply type in a phrase in their search box, and chances are that clip will appear.  You can then share that clip with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, and even your blog with just a few clicks.

MovieClips is founded by a dream team of Movie fanatics and Web geeks.  CEO, Zach James, is a former investment Banker, as well as brother of Omniture founder Josh James, and co-founder, Rich Raddon, is former Director of the LA Film Festival.  Its Advisory board includes members such as Josh James himself, Wordperfect’s Clayton M. Christensen, Sony Music’s Ryan Wright, and former Marvel Studios President, Michael Helfant.  There’s no doubt they’re going somewhere.

I had the chance to interview James and Raddon at CES with my brother, Luke Stay (Tripod Productions) behind the camera.  They showed me how easy and unique it was to include their clips with my blog posts.  I was so excited I immediately included one in my Steve Ballmer post.  Here’s our interview:

MovieClips is such an easy service to find any clip you like and share it with friends.  The most significant use for me though is the ability to add a little “Pizazz” to my blog posts.  I can’t wait to start diving in as I write future blog posts to add a little “spice” with entertainment using their service.

Of note, the reason I was holding my iPhone was because I was recording the interview on CinchCast.com to upload immediately after the interview.  It turned out to be a great way to get an additional, high quality MP3 of the interview, as well as a close-to-live upload of the interview shortly after it occured.

Disclosure: I have consulted for MovieClips in the past

From Nick O’Neill’s “‘I’m With CoCo’ Spreads Like Wildfire on Facebook” article, I noticed this ad by Woot.com in my Google Reader today:

Smart move by Woot.com to hit an audience that loves humor.

In an unprecedented move, Laura Fitton’s OneForty.com launched their own app store for Twitter today, enabling Twitter developers to finally have a platform to sell and promote their apps in a single location, to a large audience.  The company, with apps that you can purchase for Twitter, will become like iTunes or even Amazon, in enabling developers to sell, and Twitter app seekers to find and purchase, in a virtual Twitter marketplace.  My startup, SocialToo, is proud to be one of the companies launching with OneForty in this effort.

We know with the launch of the iTunes app store that bringing developers to a single location that others can search, find, and purchase apps, has proven to be a lucrative business for developers.  This launch will make Twitter itself a similar breeding ground for new entrepreneurial ideas and business opportunities that were previously not thought of.  The completion of an app store is the icing on the already baking Twitter ecosystem cake that should seal the deal for many entrepreneurs and developers in why they should write Twitter apps.

What can you purchase from SocialToo?

Until now you have already been able to purchase several features on the SocialToo website – those include the ability to unfollow everyone you’ve followed on Twitter at once, catching up those who followed you before joining SocialToo that you want to follow back, along with a powerful daily e-mail that includes stats as to who followed you and stopped following you the previous day on Twitter.  In fact, we just announced an affiliate program which enables anyone with a Twitter account to gain a cut of the revenues just by sharing with their friends on Twitter!

With today’s launch with OneForty, we are starting by allowing users to purchase our daily stats e-mail that sends you a digest of who followed you and who stopped following you the previous day on Twitter.  Because our current services are one-time for life, it gives us a unique opportunity to offer one-time purchases like this on 3rd party sites like OneForty.  The specific stats e-mail we’re offering on OneForty sells for just $20, and you get it for life.  In fact, because you’ve already given your e-mail address to OneForty, once you’ve purchased, you don’t even have to ever visit SocialToo.com (although we always appreciate the visit!) – you’ll start receiving stats e-mails the very next day.

I’m excited for this new development.  OneForty has already proven to be one of the best ways to find apps in the Twitter ecosystem.  It can only get better now as developers are able to now start monetizing their offerings through the directory.

So if you get a chance, go on over to OneForty and try out the SocialToo stats e-mail.  Be sure to leave us a review!  This is an incredible opportunity I’m proud to be a part of.

I find myself regularly pointing people to three of my most favorite features in JibberJobber.  In this post I want to share how JibberJobber interfaces with five outside tools:

1. LinkedIn – in various places in the JibberJobber experience you can tap into your LinkedIn network.  You can do a quick search on LinkedIn for companies or names, or you can see who is in your LinkedIn network by company.  I want to do LOTS MORE with LinkedIn, but their terms of service is too restrictive (sorry, talk to them about it). Need LinkedIn help?  Check out my LinkedIn DVD.
2. Twitter – I mentioned in that things I love post about how you can quickly add a contact by putting their Twitter handle in.  There is MORE coming… super cool stuff!
3. Skype – I use Skype for my business phone… when I’m in JibberJobber I can easily click an icon and initiate a phone call through my headset.  It’s one-click easy.  I can also click an icon and initiate a chat message through skype.
4. Google – just like I can do a quick search on LinkedIn, I can also do a quick search on Google. I thought this was just a cute “we did it because we could” feature, but I have used it more than I thought I would recently!
5. Anagram - people continually thank me for this feature – you can copy-and-paste contact information into a box, click a button, and then the information (names, phone #’s, etc.) is parsed into the correct boxes on the form.  It’s really quite brilliant (you can buy it for your PC, if you want, but you don’t have to have that to use the feature built into JibberJobber).

We would love to do more interfacing with other systems – send me a message and let me know what you’d like to see us interface with (and how the interface would work).

Overall the Consumer Electronic Show of 2010, while amazing and overwhelming and definitely worth my time, has been a disappointment when it comes to innovation. The big things of the show have been 3D, new consumer video devices, and, well, that’s about it. So I’m at a bit of a conundrum as to who or what my favorite technology at the show is. If I were to pick one though, it would have to be the demo by TCL (The Creative Life) of their 3D TV Technology that doesn’t require glasses.

Passing by the booth you can’t miss it – they’ve surrounded 4 TVs by mirrors (no relation to the technology), and when you look at the TVs, you do a double-take. You’re seeing 3D, just as you would in traditional 3D glasses, but without the glasses! I never knew this was possible!

The technology revolves around basically mimicking the 3D glasses technology right on the TV screen itself. That, and an optical illusion of just the right flicker with the speed your eyes process information, and they’re tricking your brain to thinking there’s full 3D objects inside those monitors!

I saw a lot of 3D technology at CES. Some are special 3D TVs that you have to buy the TV to get the full 3D experience, but they require glasses. Others are adapters you hook up to your Sony PS3 and you can play games in 3D (due EOY 2010 Sony told me – I’m actually excited for that one and may buy a PS3 because of it). I talked to a guy in the elevator at my hotel that works with devices you put right up to your eyes like glasses to get the experience.

However, no one wants to buy a new TV right now. I just can’t see consumers buying a TV just so they can put on glasses and watch TV through those glasses. These new 3D TVs without the glasses enable you to do that, no glasses required, and I think they make much more sense.

While the TVs aren’t available for probably at least another year, there are still a few issues though. For one, you can only watch 3D on the TVs. They’ve either got to make a dual mode so you can watch either/or, or consumers will have to get used to watching nothing but 3D television, something not everyone in the industry is sure consumers will want. Also, the videos they were showing had to be custom-made for the TVs. They don’t yet work with traditional 3D movies and I think that will be required.

What I liked about this technology though is that they were showing what could be. They’re thinking to the future. That’s what I wanted to see at CES this year. Everyone else is looking to the present and past from what I’ve seen so far. Kudos to TCL for making me think forward this CES.

Here’s some video I shot – of course you can’t see the 3D in the video, but at least it gives you an idea. You can follow all my raw, unedited footage on my personal Youtube channel.

Anyone who knows me realizes how excited I am about reflective displays for computers, laptops, ereaders, phones, etc. I bought a Kindle and a Motorola F3 just because they use eInk.

I love the Marisol screen technology that I read about a month ago but rediscovered in the CES news this week.

Apparently, it reflects much better than the Pixel Qi screen.

The only problem with this demo is how bad it makes me want one of these screens.

I found a competitor,  to the Pixel Qi screen before Mary Lou Jepsen was able to get a product out the door. It’s called Liquavista.

I have yet to see a product that is launching soon with any of these technologies, but I’m considering the Entourage Edge as a useful alternative. It provides an eink display and a color display in a book form factor.

This week I am at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada to see what’s happening with the latest in consumer gadgets.  The show kicked off on Wednesday, where I was just barely able to make it to the Steve Ballmer keynote, where he talked about what was supposed to be the “future” of Microsoft.  The problem was, as compared to the Bill Gates Keynotes of the past, there was little “future” about it.  Ballmer focused on previous products, some that have been out for years now, making the Keynote, as I said earlier on Twitter, well, boring.  Based on his Keynote, with all the launches Google and Apple are doing lately, I think Microsoft may really be in trouble!

A very large portion of what Ballmer talked about was focused on Windows Media Center, showing the capabilities it has in the Home Media Center.  This is something I have said before that Microsoft has long had a strength in and I wished they would focus on more.  I am thinking they’re finally realizing this and trying to get more eyes on it.  The problem is, there was no innovation in this area, making the demo a bunch of technology that I’ve been using already for 3 years now!  Perhaps I’m the only one, making this “new” to most people.

The rest of the keynote was spent demoing the already-launched Windows 7 and the various types of PCs that run it.  There were no real announcements other than the fact that Natal will be launched the end of this year (even though they had no Demo), and that there would be a new version of Halo.  Beyond that, nothing.

The Future for Microsoft

Based on the content of Ballmer’s keynote, I have to worry about the health of the software giant for the future.  Will they be able to keep up with their competitors, who are already releasing some extremely innovative technology?  Microsoft has a lot of potential – I just wonder if they’re behind on getting to that potential.

For example, one of the things they did cover in the Keynote was the capability to download Zune and Media Room videos and play them anywhere – on your TV, on your computer, or even on your phone.  I think the full experience is something Microsoft can leverage.  Being able to play this stuff anywhere (and I would argue that anywhere should also be my iPhone), is a powerful point for Microsoft!  Let’s hope they push this further – from the tablet PCs to the TVs to even the Cars with Sync and other Microsoft technologies I should be able to pass this content around (and preferably in an open manner).

What Will We See From Microsoft?

After this keynote, if I were a Microsoft investor, I would be a little worried right now.  There was very little innovation announced the other night!  Let’s hope, alongside Natal (Microsoft’s controller-less body-controlled gaming experience) and Halo, that Microsoft can fully integrate their technologies across the board into many parts of each user’s life.  Microsoft needs to start embracing their Zune brand more (which, the hardware wasn’t even mentioned during the keynote).  They need a brand new, Microsoft-branded phone that they have control over similar to the Xbox.  They need a completely brand new interface that integrates Bing, Zune Marketplace, Windows Media Center, Sync, and many other Microsoft technologies that works on Mobile.

If Microsoft can do this successfully (which they were close, but were unsuccessful at portraying during the Keynote), they would have a pretty serious product on their hand.  However, I don’t know what Ballmer was thinking during this Keynote.  Based on the content, you would think that Microsoft the company was just like the power at the beginning of the keynote – dead.

Do you like designing on whiteboards?  I do.   Colorful markers against a clean, white surface inspire all kinds of creativity and fun.

Recently David Crossett of Ready Receipts gave me a great tip.  He told me that instead of going to your local OfficeBOX superstore and paying $200 for a 4×8 whiteboard, just hit HomeDepot instead and get a $12 piece of showerboard.  It works just as good and if you need a smaller size they will cut it for you on site for no additional charge!  At that price, you can line your walls with thinking space.  Power to the Consumer–thanks David!

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

In this post I’m asking you to take a few minutes to recommend JibberJobber to the U.S. Department of Labor.

This is like “voting” for JibberJobber, but it’s not for a web award, or to be listed on a blog… I’m guessing the implecations of this recommendation will be that JibberJobber will be recognized by the government and broadcast as a job seeker resource to many workforce service departments.

In short, I think this can be the think that legitimizes JibberJobber to the US Government, which will be a big win not only for us but for the people who need something like JibberJobber.

I’ve had many talks with government people, but the problem always comes back to one thing: since there is an OPTION to upgrade, they say they can’t recommend it.  I think this is either a super-lame policy, or a misunderstanding of policy.  Nonetheless, many government people I talk to say something like (I really heard this):

I LOVE this!  I’m going to tell my daughter, who is just graduating from college, to get on and use JibberJobber.  But I can’t mention it at my office because there is a fee (NO, there is an OPTIONAL fee).  And we can’t endorse anything that is for-profit.

Oh. My. Gosh.  Choke me now.

Guess what… LinkedIn has an optional upgrade.  Monster has optional upgrades (or levels).

A major disappointment when I first started JibberJobber was seeing a great divide between the government trying to create their own stuff, and not promoting anything else, and private industry creating really strong, powerful tools.

Guess who lost? Anyone who went to a workforce services office who wasn’t told about what they really should have been using as a resource.

Okay, didn’t mean for this to be a rant… let me get back on track.

I think, I hope, that if JibberJobber gets enough recommendations then we’ll finally get that quasi-endorsement from the government that will help hundreds thousands millions know about this very useful tool.

Here’s a quote from a comment from yesterday’s post – I found this to be really powerful:

I just “stumbled” across JJ today. After 9 months in the job search, talking with “career coaches” and recruiters as well as other job seekers and this is the first I’ve heard of it. This should be the first place a job seeker is led to.

Thank you, Gary Donnelly, for sharing that (see his entire comment here). It is a damned shame (says Steve Gallison) that he had not been pointed to it earlier.

We have tens of thousands of signups, but with last year’s economy we should have had millions.

Please recommend JibberJobber to the DOL and hopefully we’ll get the respect we deserve, and job seekers won’t have to waffle around for almost a year before they “stumble upon” this very helpful resource.

To recommend JibberJobber simply:

1. Click on this link (or any link on this page, they all go to the same place)
2. Click on the Recommend Tool Image on the DOL page
3. Click Signup on the top of the popup window
4. Apparently you have to click the Recommend image again (thanks @ecaron for the heads up on this fourth step)

Follow the process from there. I’m guessing it will take you all of three minutes.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

A recent blog post by Anil Dash has everyone talking about what I thought was a long-assumed fact that just because someone is on the Twitter Suggested User List (or SUL) and has a million followers doesn’t necessarily mean they actually have all of those followers listening to them.  Dash, who recently had the opportunity to be on the Suggested User List himself, cited examples of various other Twitter accounts put on the list that saw absolutely no additional response after being added to the list.

I’d like to take this a bit further though and suggest something that, because of its open nature as compared to Twitter, just hasn’t been talked about much. That is the fact that, just like Twitter followers, a blog’s subscribers is also subject to this phenomena.  I’d like to suggest that despite that number in the upper-right-hand corner, it means absolutely nothing in the sense of how many people are actually reading that content.  It’s just a number.

Speaking From Experience

Let me start with this blog, since I vowed to be more transparent.  If you read the Feedburner number in the upper-right section of this blog it says I have over 7,500 subscribers.  Let’s start right off with the fact that 6,030 of those are because FriendFeed includes its subscription counts in with my Feedburner stats.  I have 6,030 subscribers on FriendFeed, and those are part of that 7,500 you see above.  If you subscribe to me on FriendFeed, that increases the number.  Still, that 6,030 still has potential of seeing my content.  It’s still just a number though.

Now, let’s assume those FriendFeed numbers don’t count.  That leaves about 1,500 subscribers  that assumedly subscribe to this blog through some sort of Feed Reader (Google Reader, Newsvine, etc).  I don’t believe that number at all.  I’d bet that at most, half of those actually read the articles I publish, as I usually average between 2 and 5 comments on each blog post I write.  As for traffic, any time I post I get around 200-500 additional visitors per post.  On a really good day that could be in the thousands.  The thing is that most of those come from Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed, as well as other blogs that provide commentary. Those numbers aren’t even reflected in my subscriber count!

The Big Guys

If that’s my experience, I can only imagine the accuracy of those with hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers.  I know their numbers can’t be accurate, not only based on my experience on this blog, but also after being linked numerous times by them.  I must admit that, directly, I usually average 100-300 visitors from the millions of subscribers on each of these blogs.  I’m very grateful for this traffic, and that they’re talking about me – the fact that they’re writing about me has much more impact and influence than just traffic (as I’ll show later).  However, the fact that only 100 out of over a million subscribers are clicking seems to imply a very similar truth to what Dash is implying with Twitter subscribers and what I’m seeing on my blog: while a few hundred thousand may be reading each and every article, the rest are simply casual bystanders skimming headlines if anything at all.

Let’s add to that how many of these blogs are on FriendFeed’s default list and other services, adding to their numbers there, along with how many are the default on the Kindle, or many RSS Readers out there.  Many users just get subscribed to these blogs by default.  Sure, some casually discover the blogs and start reading, but there is a strong possibility that many of those subscribed to these blogs never even read them, some perhaps not even aware that they’re subscribed!

Yet, Numbers Still Do Matter

As Dash implies with Twitter, the number still has an effect.  He mentioned the possibility of brand managers getting raises because their bosses see the number of new subscribers they were able to get for their brand.  From my own personal experience, I’ve seen this on both Twitter and my blog.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been introduced as “influential” because I’m one of “the most followed Twitter users in Utah”, or “he has over 7,000 subscribers to his blog!”  Like it or not, many opportunities have opened up because of this.  All that and I don’t even have a million subscribers!

Let’s add to that the fact that I can sell it for money too.  On my blog I can sell ads for more because of this.  People are more likely to subscribe and tell their friends because beyond just content, they see that number as “influential”.  I’ve been introduced to many consulting opportunities because of this.  Of course I insist on proving myself beyond the numbers (I sincerely hope no one would hire me or anyone else based on numbers alone!), but numbers do matter!  For instance, if you have more subscribers than anyone else you get to say you are the top blog on the internet – that’s a powerful statement!  You bet it works.

Numbers also lead to better content.  As I consult for others I can’t tell you the number of people that want to pitch to blog X or blog Y because they have more subscribers than the others.  Having more people pitch to you means you get the scoop on more and better content, and you’re given more control.  The articles written may not bring much traffic, but the fact that “a big blog wrote about you” also means you can feature this in Press Releases, on your company blog, or more, giving the entrepreneur more attention from VCs, big businesses deals, and potential acquisitions down the road.  But if you’re looking for traffic some times it’s better to pitch to numerous smaller blogs than one or two big blogs.  If you want influence pitch to the bigger blogs.

Organic vs. Inorganic

There are many bloggers like Scoble, Chris Brogan, Louis Gray, and others that have built their audiences by working to build relationships with their readers, one-by-one.  Yet, others that have built their entire business model around blogging do it by creating business relationships, signing contracts, and then interacting with their readers as they have time.  I think both types of bloggers have similar trust with their readers.  Producing lots and lots of good content vs. building relationships with content are both good strategies, and both can produce similar results in how they affect those that read their content, as well as individual opportunities for the bloggers.

I think in the end it comes down to which is most rewarding.  I’m not going to say which one that is as that’s a matter of opinion – can a pure focus on numbers and subscriber counts vs. building relationships and organically building your audience be more or just as rewarding?  In the end we know one thing – that little number up there doesn’t mean what you think it says.

Or does it?

I love reading updates from my peers, particularly in Utah where I live, as well as other States and Nations that have great blogs. I subscribe to them, in part because I enjoy receiving their updates and what they’re up to, but also because I love to see them post new things and I want to support that practice. I love to see people write, especially amongst my peers because that is how the world can learn about them. A blog, as opposed to a Facebook update or Twitter, gives me the opportunity to see much more of who they are, what they are up to, as well as learn more about their expertise in the areas they like to share.

I see a trend amongst my tech peers here in Utah as well as other places though that I think may be limiting their potential. Many of them are writing for their local state’s or area’s audience, or perhaps even their family and friends, rather than seeing the potential that others outside of their inner circles could be reading their blog.  I admit I am guilty of this.

I went through this early on with this blog if you read over the history. There was awhile I wasn’t quite sure of who my audience was. I wrote my blog as more of a way to get my thoughts recorded for myself, rather than consider that others could be reading this down the road. Some times I would write very techie stuff documenting my progress on a few projects I was working on. Some times I would write stuff about my close family, or maybe even local events that a national or worldwide audience may not be quite as interested in. Occasionally I would delve into religious topics. All this is okay, so long as I recognize that those are the audiences I’m targeting. I’m not sure at the time I did.

It wasn’t until I started recognizing that this blog was more than just a local blog for me and my close friends that this blog began to start getting traffic and taking off.  Once I began seriously researching and writing topics, acting as though it were a blog for a national or worldwide audience, people started to listen.  Sure, it was and still is and will always be my personal blog, but I have changed my perception of who my audience is, and who it could be.   I treated it as how it could become.  Because of that I’m achieving my original purposes of sharing things I learn with even greater impact than ever before.

When you’re writing, you should consider who you’re writing for:

If you’re writing for your close friends and family, that is who will read it…  If you’re writing for just people in your local city or state, that is who will read it…  If you’re writing for your religion or faith, that is who will read it…  If you write for a national or worldwide audience, that is who will read it… If you write for TechCrunch or Mashable or Scoble or Louis Gray or Guy Kawasaki, that is who will read it…

Do you want more eyes on your content?  Which of the above audiences will bring the most eyes?  What are your purposes for your blog?  Look long and hard and spend some time determining this.  Which one will have the biggest impact on achieving your goals in the long-run?  After you do so, look at the above audiences, and then determine which one you need to start writing for.

Most importantly, start writing!  Something is always better than nothing.