At The Next Web we pride ourselves on not just being journalists or bloggers who report on technology from the sidelines. Instead we’re active entrepreneurs working on new services and technologies. That gives us a perspective on tech news that is different from many other technology blogs.

It also means that once every few months, we have something new to announce and it will be something that we are heavily involved in. Today we’re announcing a new service that we have been testing, below the radar, on this blog and are now ready to offer to other blogs. We call it Spread.us.

Spread.us is a very simple service that makes it easy for readers to ‘spread’ news across their social networks.

Lets say I’m a huge Apple fanboy. I could set-up a filter at Spread.us to automatically tweet all stories about Apple, but only when its breaking news, and with a maximum of 4 times a day. Now, when there’s breaking news, I’m the first one to tweet that.

That is what Spread.us does.

We started testing the service a few months ago, on this blog, with a little button. Within a few weeks users were sharing our posts across their networks and right now we get thousands of extra unique visitors every day from Tweets and shares which were spread through Spread.us.

So how about spam?
That is a question some people ask when they first learn about Spread.us: Isn’t it annoying for people on Twitter to see automated tweets? The answer is that it can be, so you should be careful with that, as a user. Just like it’s annoying for people to watch you tweet every little thing you experience every few minutes, it’s annoying to see a lot of automated tweets in your timeline. That is why we take extra care to help users set up their filters in a way that isn’t annoying for their followers.

On Twitter this is extra easy because we let people do a ‘native’ retweet. That means that we don’t copy and paste the content from a tweet into a new Tweet but instruct Twitter to show the original tweet, in the users timeline. This is a standard Twitter option (that I think you are already familiar with, but you never know). The good thing about that is that if I’m following Zee and Patrick, and they both retweet the same post, I will still only see it once. So even if 5 of the people I’m following retweet the same post, I still see it only once.

The future
Spread.us is still being developed actively and we add new features every week. We have a long list of extra features we want to add for both publishers and readers.

We think that Spread.us will be a great tool for publishers to connect to their readers and for readers to share news before anyone else does it. If you want to give it a try you can try it for this blog.

If you are a publisher we suggest you sign up, or contact us so we can predict how much extra traffic you can expect from signing up.

As always, feedback and questions are very welcome.

There are a few apps on my iPhone that are there just to show other people how cool the iPhone is. They aren’t useful really, except that when people want to see the iPhone they make for a great demo. Examples for me are Weather HD, CardFlick, Compass, Heart Rate and a few games that have great graphics but which I never actually play.

It seems to me that Siri is slowly entering this area of ‘nice to show but not actually useful’. I know a quite few people with an iPhone 4s and I asked around a bit and they all almost regretfully acknowledge that they, in fact, don’t really use it anymore, once you get beyond the newness of it all.

The commercials look great and in the beginning you can still find the patience to play and experiment with it. But then reality kicks in and you find out that Siri is just too slow and although it’s probably the best voice recognition on any mobile platform, it still isn’t good enough to always understand what you mean.

It reminds me of Apple’s earlier attempt at voice recognition, called PlainTalk. It came pre-installed with with System 7 on Apple’s Quadra line of computers and it looked awesome:

I remember being excited about the technology at the time and trying it out for the first time. It worked, sorta. You had to speak LOUD and CLEAR and there was a few second delay before the computer seemed to react. 8 out of 10 times the command wasn’t recognized and I would have to repeat the sentence. Within minutes it became very clear that just typing the command or clicking the mouse was more efficient and a lot faster.

After that the only times I used PlainTalk was when I wanted to show off the capabilities of my computer. Which brings me back to the iPhone, and Siri. I know that Siri is light years ahead of PlainTalk. It is just so much more than just speech recognition. But ‘m still wondering how useful it is once you get beyond the thrill of seeing it work.

Lets find out how Siri is doing, if it is really being used, or whether it is time to say goodbye:

The Siri commercial, so you can compare it to the PlainTalk commercial.

I have been asking myself that question all day. How would I react if I owned that ship, and employed the captain that sunk it. How would you react?

We now know how Costa Cruises would react because they issued a statement, less than 48 hours after the incident, in which they say that there may have been “significant human error” on Francesco Schettino’s part. There very well may be, but I cringed when I read it. Although understandable, people are looking for someone to blame, as an entrepreneur I would have handled it differently.

Lets make this easier to digest; assume you have a startup where you offer a service to users. One day a customer comes in and says “One of your employees has been a real jerk to me. He mistreated me and I demand that you fire him”.

What would you say? Where is your loyalty? Is it to your customer? The customer is always right, right? So do you yield? And what about your employees? What about working as a team? How bad is it for morale if you just take the side of the customer without asking the employee first?

So that is what you do. You comfort the customer, talk to the employee, get all the facts and then decide.

The easy thing to do is to agree with the customer and say ‘You are right, if that is true and that is how you were treated we will fire that employee”. But maybe the reason why that employee acted that way is because you were trying to cut costs and made it impossible for him to help the customer any other way. If it turns out that there is a perfect reason for what happened and that it was your fault, who are you going to fire? Yourself?

In a way it reminds me of guys who are really negative about their ex-girlfriends. When they go on and on about what a horrible person she is I can’t help but think that also says something about them. Apparently they are incredibly bad at judging people if they hooked up with that horrible person.

The same goes for Costa Cruises. Of course all we hear right now sounds like the captain screwed up. But that is just speculation. It could very well be that the captain did a great job but the company hired only second-rate personal to assist him. Or maybe he had been begging for a new sonar installation and they wouldn’t give it to him. Either way, nobody knows exactly what happened, yet.

If I would have been Costa Cruises I would have said something like this: “we hire only the best people in the world to handle our cruise ships. Francesco Schettino one of the most experienced captains in our fleet which is why we trusted him with our 400 million ship, and the 4000 people on it. We don’t know what caused this terrible accident but we will do everything in our power to find out what happened.”

If it turns out that the captain made a grave error then you can always punish him later. But starting with throwing him to the wolves, before you know exactly what happened, is a cheap and dumb move. As an entrepreneur you have an obligation to help the customer in every way you can, but sacrificing your employees is not one of them.

Just like everybody else I receive way too much email. I’m pretty good in managing it all (Inbox Zero baby!) but it is still work. Some of these emails are from people who want something from me. They want a favor, some advice, my opinion or my money. A lot of my time is spent saying no.

A while ago I even wrote a post on how to prepare yourself for a meeting with us. It lists all the basic things I found myself repeating when having meetings. Still, I frequently get emails from people that want something from me.

I’ll get an email that goes something like this:

“Hey Boris, want to come over to our company so we can show you some of our projects? We would be very interested to get your opinion on some things”

Here is the problem I have with these emails; I don’t see what I have to gain. I would have to travel to that company, have an hour long meeting, then travel back. That takes me 3 hours in total which totally breaks up my day and concentration so it almost feels like I have lost a whole day.

It isn’t that I’m not interested in new companies, fresh ideas and thinking about the future but it just helps if people think about what is in it for me. Yesterday I received an email that made me smile:

“Hey Boris, I found out there is a great restaurant just around the corner from your office. I would like to offer you lunch there somewhere next week, when you are available, so we can catch up and I can show you a cool new thing we are working on. I always appreciate your feedback.”

Now here is someone who thought about what would put a smile on my face and what would be beneficial to me. Of course I’m meeting with this guy!

Too many emails are written without thinking about the receiving person. Instead of thinking about what you want and how to explain it best think about the person receiving your email; he or she will have a hangover, she will look at her inbox and see 80 emails that all need attention. Every single email means another todo and another favor or request. Then your email comes in. Ugh.

When you think about it you might come to the conclusion you aren’t going to send an email at all. Why don’t you go out and buy flowers and bring them over. You could say “instead of sending you another email I decided to bring you flowers. Hope they brighten up your day”.

The Palmpilot was probably the first commercially available gadget that let you transfer vCards over thin air. It used Infrared, and later Bluetooth, to transfer information from device to device. Most people who owned a Palm device tried it at least once, for the cool factor, but the process was awkward and slow so it never really took off.

Since then however there have been many declarations of ‘the death of the business card!’. I’m pretty sure even this blog wrote similar posts in the past. Every 6 months another company launches that seems to promise to ‘revolutionize’ the business card business. Still, most people I know still carry around lots of paper and I don’t see that changing very soon.

Why?

There are a couple of good reasons for that too. Let me sum it up for you real quick so the next time someone tells you that one day we won’t need paper anymore and that it is cool to have a shotcode on your businesscard or some other seemingly futuristic idea you can explain to them how that isn’t going to happen.

First of all most business card revolutionaries aren’t revolutionary enough. Simply converting the business card to a digital format isn’t going to cut it. The reason why that is is because there is more to it than just exchanging information. That is the basic error most people make. Or at least it is about more than exchanging the information printed on the card!

The whole ‘exchanging business cards’ process is a cultural phenomena that contains a few subtle meta layers of information that you can’t just digitize. Sure, a digitally exchanged business card can contain a date and GPS coordinates. That’s cool, but not cool enough.

Imagine being in an airport; you sit down somewhere, drop your wallet, the guy next to you picks it up and hands it to you, you look at each other and you realize its Bill Gates. Hot damn! You thank him, he asks you where you are going, you start talking, pitch your company and at a certain point he says “That sounds awesome, give me your card so I can have my people contact your people”.

Now you have two options: you can reach into your jacket pocket (0,2 seconds), grab a card (0,05 seconds) and hand it over, with the text on the card facing him (0,25 seconds). This whole process shouldn’t take more than a second, it won’t distract you from the conversation and it won’t require any action from Bill except sticking out his hand, an action which Bill is familiar with.

Then the magic happens; Bill looks at the card. He examines the quality of the paper between his thumb and index finger. He glances over the beautifully designed company logo and then reads your title, or the lack of one, and without effort or even being conscious about it he will form an opinion on you and make a mental note which will make him remember your name. Then he takes out his pen and quickly scribbles 2 words at the back of your card.

What happens next? Nothing. Bill Gates doesn’t give you his card. That is not his style and that is not how things work when you meet Bill. People introduce themselves to Bill, Bill doesn’t have to introduce himself to people. People give Bill business cards, Bill doesn’t hand out cards. If there will ever be a meeting again between you and Bill the initiative will come from Bill.

The other option?

Well, there really isn’t one. You can reach for your iPhone, Android (seriously, in front of Bill?) or Windows Phone and launch any of the current Business card replacement apps and ask Bill to do the same. But seriously, are you going to waste precious minutes trying to convince Bill to install an app so you can exchange business cards? No way in hell. Bill doesn’t exchange anything! You’ve got 30 seconds to make a lasting impression and you won’t do it by staring at your phone trying to find the LinkedIn app and then asking Bill to dictate you his email address.

This is all so obvious I’m surprised I still have to explain it to people. As long as the digital business card exchange format isn’t a lot richer, unless you can do it without looking at your phone, unless you can do it one way and unless you are pretty sure it is compatible with almost everybody in the world, this isn’t going to work out. Paper business cards are here to stay.

Tips for digital enhancements

Of course, there are exceptions and easy ways to enhance the whole information exchange process. A few tips:

- My personal business card contains just my name and email address, nothing more. If a contact is worth following up on all you basically need is those two pieces of information. In fact, you can also learn the company name and website from looking at the email address so that makes it 4 pieces of information with just 2 information sets. And the less information on the card the bigger the chance that people will take the trouble to follow up.

- Keep your card readable and easy to scan. A lot of people use scanners or phone cameras and Apps with character recognition to input data. Using weird fonts and combined horizontal and vertical text placement doesn’t make it easier to read.

- Shotcodes are cute but hardly anyone can read them. Use for innovativeness (not a word but you know what I mean) but not for usefulness, yet.

Apps that are useful

Then there are a few apps that are cool and useful. Lets look at three of them:

I often use Business Card reader to quickly scan business cards as soon as I get them. Sometimes I’ll scan the card while we are talking and then hand it back after I scanned it so they can re-use it.

Be careful not to appear unthankful or uninterested and make sure to mention you have all their data copied to your phone now.

The other service I regularly use is Cardcloud. I don’t often bring my paper business cards to meetings (because I’m like Bill Gates, right?) and love how their app focusses on sharing your card instead of the whole information exchange dance. If the other person has Cardcloud too you can beam the card to the other person, and Cardcloud scans

your location for other people using the app, but I mainly use it as an easy way to share my contact details, if I want to. And that makes all the difference.

I will be talking to 20 people at an event and they will likely all give me their card. They don’t ask me if I want one, they just give it to me. Maybe with 1 or 2 of those I will feel like also sharing my data with them. In those cases I will ask for their card or email address and enter it directly into the Cardcloud app. Then I can choose if I email them my personal card or my business card.

Then there is CardFlick. It is trying to recreate the experience of seeing a beautifully designed card. It might be too early to tell if the app will turn into something that will replace or enhance your paper card as I found the process of sharing the cards inconvenient and the choice of designs limited.

Still, at least they are trying to add some feeling and beauty to the scene and for that I’m thankful.

Conclusion

The focus for many ‘business card killers’ is too much on replacing paper business cards with a digital equivalent. The opportunity lies much more with enhancing analog meetings; annotating, adding notes, recording locations and adding other meta layers could be useful. But there really isn’t a need to kill anything, especially as it is performing so well.

There is still a future for paper business cards but I do see digital information exchange apps becoming more popular and growing alongside paper.

But complete replace paper? Well, don’t hold your breath…

Steve Jobs’ Business Card:

Mark Zuckerberg Business Card:

Larry Page Business Card:

Bill Gates Business Card:

Jerry Yang Business Card:

Steve Wozniak Business Card:

Does a dog have 1, 2, 3 or 4 legs?
The answer: all of the above.

Most dogs are born with 4 legs, of course, but some are born with less and some lose a few along the way. A dog with 2 legs is still a dog though. And that dog can be pretty happy too:

Another one: A philosophy professor asked this student a question for their final exam. The question was:

How are you going to make me believe that this chair in front of you is invisible?

It took all the student one hour to finish writing their answer, except for one student who only took a few seconds. His answer:

What chair?

We are all full of assumptions, preconceived opinions and we all have a talent to make things more complicated than needed.

Philippe Halsman is a very inspiring photographer who made an art of making things simpler. His mantra was to come up with great ideas for photos and then take a short cut to making them. Want to make a photo of Marylyn Monroe or Nixon floating in the air? Just ask them to jump! Want to see Dali surrounded by flying cats and floating water? Go find a few cats and some buckets!

One day Dali suggested that Halsman make a photo of Dali with dollar bills attached to his mustache. Halsman thought it would be a nice idea so arranged for a bank to come and deliver the money. An armed security guard arrived with a briefcase attached to his arm.

Dali took out the two $10,000 bills and asked Halsman ‘so how do we attach them to my mustache’ and before the security guard could react Halsman took a pair or scissors and pierced both bills. The result is the photo you see in the header of this post.

When you are confronted with questions and challenges try to think about the shortest path to a solution. What would a kid do? What would Halsman do?

For the articles right?

The reason why it’s almost politically correct to buy the magazine is because the articles are often really good. Playboy offers buyers a way to defend their purchase and I’m sure that’s part of its success.

But who is kidding who? Without those nude photos it simply wouldn’t sell as well.

The magazine is a nice balance between photos (low level entertainment) and articles (high level entertainment) with a whole range of content in between. And it needs to be that. The articles are what gives the magazine a viable reason to exist.

So what is the lesson here? Include some naked people in your marketing brochure? Well no. But do think what the range of content is that you are providing.

Is there enough entertainment to go with your serious message? Can you alternate heavy content with lighter content? Is it possible to make your customers smile every now and then?

People often think that being businesslike is all about seriousness. That is a myth. Being businesslike is about providing a useful service to your customers. Making people happy is very useful. And rewarding.

P.S. Playboy is still the best selling magazine in the US with more than 3 million copies sold every month (2010). That surprised me.

I have been taking cold showers in the morning for a few weeks now. This is what I do: I get up, take a hot shower for a few minutes and then turn of the heat and stand under the cold water for a minute. Yes, it is cold. Yes, I’m cursing a lot and yes, it feels awesome!

There are several reason why taking a cold shower is good for you. Something about your blood circulation, skin health and even testosterone levels. And although those are nice side effects I do it for another reason.

The reason I take a cold shower is to remind myself that my goal in life as an entrepreneur is not to get comfortable. My goal is to succeed in whatever I want to succeed in. If that means getting uncomfortable so be it.

The reason I need to be reminded of that is that we all have a tendency to try to get comfortable. We stay near the heater when we all know it is so much more fun to put on a coat and take a walk in the rain. We cuddle up in front of a television set when we know it is so much more rewarding to put in the effort and read a book. And we procrastinate and read a few more funny blogs when we know there are difficult decisions to be made and uncomfortable conversations to be had.

We need to remind ourselves that we want to reach certain goals, that the reward will come in the end and that hard work and ‘taking the pain’ is all part of the process. No pain, no gain.

And that is why I start my day off with a cold shower. Take the pain, forget comfortable, define your goals, fight the urge to relax, TAKE THE PAIN!!!

What is a company? Is it the people who work there? Is it the brand? Could it be the customers? Is it the product or service? Is it a combination of all of these elements?

And once you’ve answered that question; where lies your loyalty? With your customer? Your partners? The shareholders?

The older I get the more I get the impression that a company is a lot more than a fiscal entity. It is a living thing. An organism with forces pulling at it from all sides. It seems to have a mind of its own. Not like a human being has but more like a beehive. Or maybe it doesn’t even have a mind but it does have purpose.

So what is the purpose of  a company?
The obvious answer: to make money.
The real answer: a whole lot more complicated than that.

As our company grows I struggle with these questions. When we hire (or fire) someone I talk to my company in my head. I ask it “What is best for you?” and “Where do you want to go and who do you want to be?”

You can’t focus on just the shareholders, or the customers, or the employees. You will have to make decisions that are beneficial for all the components. Sometimes that will mean making sacrifices and disappointing people. Your loyalty as an entrepreneur should always be with the company.

What is your relationship with your company?
Do you ever stop and ask it what it wants out of life?

Photo credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki via Shutterstock

Finding the right people for your company is extremely difficult and important. Your company is your product, your vision and the result of your strategy but that is all just 20% of the total. The rest is made up by the sum of all your partners and employees. If the people suck, are stupid or uninterested it won’t matter how good their resumes look, you will be screwed.

Now lets assume you have put together a beautiful team of smart and ambitious people that all complement each other and strive to build the best company in the world.

Congratulations. So far so good.

One day in the future one of them will want to talk to you and announce they will be leaving the company. The reason won’t really matter or make things better. You will be seriously disappointed.

So what do you do?

How you deal with this has a great impact for the future of your company. You can scream at them, cry a bit, beg them to stay, or throw a chair at them. But in the end, by the time they confront you, you can be certain their minds have been made up. They WILL leave you.

So what do you do? You are going to lose them anyway. Might as well praise them, wish them luck, help them finish their work and throw a hell of a goodbye party. Shower them with praise make sure their last memory of your company is a great one.

So, when a partner or employee announces they will leave do the following:

• Publicly praise them
• Make sure you have a nice ‘farewell’ party
• Help them with the transition
• Don’t speak openly about their faults
• Treat their exit as a logical next step for both of you

Make sure their last memory of your company is a great one. Now check out this quote by Cardinal Roger Mahony:

“Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members.”

As a founder, entrepreneur or CEO you could say that you will be judged based on how you treat the people who you don’t need anything from.

Treat everybody well, including those departing employees, and  who knows, maybe one day they will be back with a lot more experience.