Written on December 11, 2008 – 5:34 pm Patrick Cushing, Early Entrepreneur
Newly launched Baveo is a great site for expecting parents to announce the arrival of the newest generation to the web.
Baveo allows users to post photos, videos, and text updates to a blog devoted entirely to the newest members of the family. The site is well designed for parents and family on the go. Parents can post directly to their Baveo blog via their site or their phones, and friends and family can stay updated via email or text messages.
Baveo has a number of other niceties parents will love. For one, the site is simple. Both your grandparents in Florida and aunt in Tuscaloosa can use it. There’s a countdown to the baby’s due date, and people can even give directly to baby registries from the site.
I recently had the chance to chat with Ari Greenberg, Baveo’s CEO and founder. Ari helped break down where the idea for Baveo came from, how the team came to be, what they’re up to, and a few other thoughts about being an early entrepreneur.
A life changing experience?
After witnessing a childhood friend and his wife blog about the birth of their first child, Ari’s idea for Baveo was born. Ari saw the chance to make a wonderful and important experience even better. Expecting parents deserved a better and more integrated blogging experience.
Previously at Magnify.net, Ari spent his free time exploring the project further. He had always known he wanted to start his company, but he lacked an idea worth pursuing.
Everyone works for equity
Baveo quickly became that idea, and when he realized it, Ari wasted no time building a team of three. Everyone works for equity, and Ari wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s how he knew the team believed in the idea and wanted to see it succeed. It also ensured the team would be honest with him and tell him when things weren’t going right. Both are equally important.
Mom and dad bloggers
The site is currently invite-only so the team is working towards building out new features and publicizing the site. There’s a large community of mom and dad bloggers out there for them to tap into, and they’re exploring ways for users to better capture and share baby memories.
No matter what they think now, though, the team is focused on letting their users decide where Baveo goes next. “Everything needs to be about the user,” Ari says, “Users will tell you what they want if you listen.”
For all of you expecting parents out there, sign up for a Baveo invite now. Let your friends know what’s going on with your little cherub and let Baveo know what you think of their service. They’re listening.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on November 30, 2008 – 4:43 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
On November 18th, Dutch blogger Nathalie Lubbe Bakker wrote a controversial post. She worked in a bar in New York and was rather surprised to see the Belgian minister of Defense Pieter De Crem stumbling in. According to her, he was absolutely drunk. One of De Crem’s men told Lubbe Bakker the reason to come to New York: he had nothing better to in Brussels and had never seen the Big Apple.
Of course this post was a hit in the Belgian blogosphere - with quite harsh results for Lubbe Bakker. A week later she was fired. Then the mainstream media picked up the story - as they had prove something had happened in that bar. 311 people commented on the post in which she questions the freedom in speech in 2008. Even some major tech blogs, including TechCrunch, covered the incident.
Still, the minister isn’t too pleased and made a remarkable statement about blogs (probably out of anger). He tolda journalist the Belgian house of representatives that blogging is “a dangerous phenomenon”. According to the minister, everybody can throw with mud and make random accusations. He says that the targeted person has no possibility of defending himself.
Yes, that darn blogosphere can be scary. But for heaven’s sake, hire a PR person who knows how to deal with it. Don’t start a fight, since you’ll never win it. Don’t focus on destruction mr. De Crem. Instead, try to profit from the endless source of opinions. You want to know what ordinary civilians think about your country? Read some blogs.
The campaign by Adhese might teach De Crem a lesson. Blogger Stefan asks everybody to showcase a Flash badge on their blog (pictured right). ‘Cause yes, bloggers are pretty damn dangerous - especially when they rally together. Cheers Mr. De Crem!
Written on November 27, 2008 – 7:48 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Bloggingpro reports that Six Apart has launched a beta version of Typepad Connect: a service that blends in services which are separately provided by MyBLogLog, CoComment, Disqus, Gravatar and a couple of others. Its main goal: connecting bloggers and firming the position of the blog as a platform for your online social activity.
This whole blog-as-a-platform approach creates some challenges. For example, how do you connect with your friends? By using a spiced up blogroll?
No wonder that many services try to become THE standard for interactivity between blogs. All the big players are working on initiatives that might look very different, but have the same goal in the end.
AutoMattic works on BuddyPress. Yahoo! tries to boost MyBlogLog. CoComment partners up with Retaggr. Zemanta recently added a social layer. Google attacked MyBlogLog with a similar service in September.
And now there’s Typepad. Of course. I’d do the same if I were a big blogger player. Its mother company Six Apart describes Typepad Connect as follows: makes community management easier for bloggers with the ability to track, moderate and respond to comments across multiple sites and blogs from one dashboard or via email.” Oh and here’s the interesting bit: the well-designed service is available for all of the major blog platforms.
WordPress 2.7 is still scheduled for release in November and it is going to be huge! Here are some of the planned features for this version:
Dashboard Redesign, Drag and Drop arrangements, Sticky posts, Single Insert Media button, Quick Inline Editing, Comments API, Dashboard comment replies, Threaded comments, Keyboard Shortcuts, Automatic plugin/theme install in browser and more!
in anticipation of this huge update the people at Wordpress have published a trailer highlighting some of the cooler features:
“Check out some of the upcoming new features and design changes in this sneak preview video, including how to customize your dashboard, the new comment reply feature, the new navigation system, and the customizable posting screen.”
Written on November 4, 2008 – 1:07 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
My favorite and most trustworthy resource for news and analysis about alternative search engines is Altsearchengines.com. Founder and editor Charles Knight carefully documents the revolution in search, which is going on as we speak. Those search start-ups with new algorithms, smart crowd source approaches, and different UI’s explore new frontiers.
From June 2007 till now, the site was part of the ReadWriteWeb network. Richard MacManus, founder and editor of ReadWriteWeb, helped Knight build Altsearchengines to the large blog it is now. According to Compete, AltSearchEngines.com had 40 thousand unique visitors from the U.S. in September 2008, up 92% from September 2007.
Altsearchengines meeting in San Francisco
Apart from the fine coverage, Knight regularly organizes meetings where search start-ups have the possibility to network and present themselves. I visited those at New York and San Francisco. Both inspired me to write quite a large number of articles about alt search engines. So yes, both online and offline, Knight effectively promotes the pioneers of search.
Article marketing has recession-proofed my online businesses. Now I know that is a big claim, and lots of people are talking about how to recession-proof your business right now.
Read on to discover how to really do it with Article Marketing and the article-a-day strategy.
Here are 7 ways an article-a-day can recession-proof your business:
1. Extend your reach
I like to call my articles my “international evergreen article agents.” My articles allow me to reach all over the world into many markets that I could not have reached in any other way. And they are evergreen, which means they are out there forever, delivering good information with links back to my websites and blogs. For example, just one article I has published online in August of 2005 still receives an average of 1500 unique views each month. And once you learn how to do it the right way, is is free.
2. Unlimited content
One of the things you must have on the internet is content, and lots of it. When you write an article a day, you create an unlimited stream of regular content. While most online entrepreneurs are worried about where their next content is coming from, you are creating
content everyday.
3. Repurposing
When you create an article a day, you have arrived in repurposing heaven. You can take just one article and turn it into multiple marketing messages such as a blog post, a teleseminar, ebooks, ecourses, and so much more. Repurposing leads to…
4. Even more content
Your content creation does not stop with your article creation. When you repurpose your articles into multiple marketing messages, you are creating even more content. The more content you have, the greater web presence you can create. I’m getting ahead of myself though, because that is number five.
5. Create a massive web presence
When you have a storehouse of content and turn it into multiple marketing messages, you are then able to create a massive web presence. What is the advantage of a massive web presence? Prospects find you everywhere, and you begin to be seen as the go-to-person in your niche. And remember this:
A massive web presence is not created in a day, A massive web presence is created a little bit everyday.
6. Ups your expert-ability
I define your “expert-ability” as your perceived expert status in the mind of your prospect. When you are creating article content just about everyday you will quickly be seen as an expert in your field. Even better, you come to be seen as THE go-to-expert in your
niche.
7. Rapid product creation
Another thing you need to be successful on the Internet in any economy is many products, or what can be called an information empire. As an article writer and article marketer, you have the keys to your own information empire kingdom. You can quickly repurpose your articles into teleseminars, ebooks, ecourse, DVDs, and many other information products.
And to get started with your article-a-day campaign, you can claim your free instant access to my 7 Tips Article Writing Template when you go to 7TipsArticleTemplate.com.
Written on October 4, 2008 – 3:50 pm Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
“Blogging has become a major business” says Patrick de Laive in his post about the perfect Wordpress theme. He couldn’t be more right, read on for some proof.
Bankaholic, a banking and financial blog, was bought by Bankrate for $15 million. They paid $12.4 million up-front, with up to an additional $2.5 million earn-out payment available at the attainment of certain performance metrics in the next 12 months.
One man show
That’s a sweet payment for Johns Wu, the owner and single employee of the almost two-year old, Wordpress powered blog.
Bankaholic provides rate information on savings products, such as certificates of deposit, savings accounts, and money market accounts, as well as insurance quotes and a comparison of the best credit card offers, which are currently powered by Bankrate. In addition, Bankaholic offers consumers advice and information that allows consumers to comment and rate banks and their promotions through social networking features.
Bankrate and Bankaholic had a previous business relationship and it seems Bankrate was so pleased with the results that the company decided to acquire Bankaholic. “Bankaholic is ranked high in natural search for both deposit and credit card keywords. We believe their organic traffic will increase our deposit and credit card revenue, and with a high composition of free traffic, will help to improve margins.” stated Thomas R. Evans, President and CEO of Bankrate.
Everybody wants financial info now
In these harsh economic times, everyone is seeking financial and banking information. Bankaholic is well positioned on this market, so Bankrate might have made a great deal. Compete.com shows a traffic of about 300,000 unique visitors last month from the US (double that and you have an approximate number of visitors from the whole world)
The management and operations of Bankaholic will be taken over by Bankrate immediately and the founder, Johns Wu, will be working with Bankrate until the transition is complete (and maybe after).
Too expensive?
This acquisition will inspire a lot of bloggers (financial bloggers or not). Although some say the price paid was too high. I think Bankrate can improve the blog by bringing in a team of financial journalists. More quality will probably mean more revenue.
Noah Kagan, lives in the same Berkeley dorm as Johns, gives us the moral of this story in a post titled “Bankaholic sells to Bankrate for 15 million and no one noticed”.
Focus. Johns started out just doing Credit Card rates and became the #1 term for it on Google. Then he expanded to other banking categories.
Relevance. There are 1,000s of personal finance sites. Most of the people just consume some information. You go to his site to find deals and sign up for them. That’s the point.
Monetize. Johns picked a lucrative category where clicks will pay out $50+.
Well, Noah, The Next Web noticed this and congratulates Johns, even now it’s a bit late!
Written on October 2, 2008 – 6:49 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
Blogging has become a major business.
Bloggers have become super powerful. Bloggers like Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Arrianna Huffington of the Huffington post and Geenstijl (Dutch) are influencing their thousands of readers on a daily basis.
Another indicator of the importance of blogging is the number of conferences and events about blogging. We’ve had Les Blogs in Paris, US-based Blog Her, our own BLOG08 and many, many others.
Gurus and authorities
Blogging is not only used as a news portal tool, a lot of people use their blogs to promote themselves. By sharing their thoughts on their favorite topics they became gurus and authorities in their field. Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod, Loren Feldman, Fred Wilson all became famous because of their personal blog.
Ask around what blogging have meant for the people who are passionate about it and blog on a regular basis. Tim Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Workweek said it really well when we were in Greece on a beach: “There are more currencies than money, take this as an example, we’re here because of blogging”. He is so right, although a small amount of people can actually live of blogging alone, there are a lot of bloggers who get other currencies than money out of it. They get jobs, invitations to parties and conferences, they meet people and get into situations that people who don’t blog (as passionate) miss.
Personal brands without blogging works for some as well. Photo by ∗natsu∗
Ultimate personal branding Wordpress theme
Blogging is a really important tool for personal branding. So is being present on social networks, having your photos on Flickr, share thoughts and ‘mindfarts’ on Twitter etc. etc. But here comes the question, if blogging is a must in personal branding, how come that there is no ultimate personal branding blogging theme for Wordpress?
I was looking for a new design of my personal blog. I wanted an upgrade, something that would
look neat.
would make it easy for me to update on a regular basis.
a blog that keeps track of what I’m doing all over the web, so my parents, less web savvy friends and people who are interested in me (for business purposes) get a one stop shop blog with all (interesting) info.
I couldn’t find the ultimate theme. I’ve thought about just using Facebook, but that doesn’t do it for me. I’d love to use Facebook as a marketing tool, but as a stand alone personal blog it’s just not good enough, maybe not different enough.
How would the ultimate personal blogging theme look like?
I’ve made a list of some things I’d like to see. Feel free to add your wishlist to it. I’ll get in some of the best designers and we’re gonna build this thing. If your suggestion is integrated (and you’re the first) you’ll get this theme for free (when it’s done)!!
Wishlist:
Twitter integration - show my tweets on my blog, but let them fade out and disappear after x minutes / hours (option in the settings)
Show my Flickr photos - not all but only my photos with a certain tag
(Livestream) video - Vimeo, Youtube, Qik, Kyte. I want to show the last video I uploaded to one of these services (maybe two videos, for frequent vloggers. one featured) I think this should be continues on the frontpage
Where am I - It would be cool if there is a map with my current location, but also where I’ve been traveling.
Testimonials - display at random one testimonial in a widget in the sidebar and give the opportunity to write one
Where can I be found on the web - some icons of all the services where I have presence.
All this in a stunning design (of course) and widget compatible.
Well it’s a beginning, I’ve left enough room for your creativity. What do you want for your own personal branding blog?
Written on September 12, 2008 – 10:43 am Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
Is Google finally becoming serious in approaching the Korean market? Blogging platform TNC has been acquired by Google today; making them the first acquired company by Google in Korea. (who’s counting anyway) TNC offers a blogging platform similar as Automatic. It’s fairly easy to use, and works close to the open source community. Biggest difference is that Wordpress is fairly unknown here, so they represent a big blogging market, being used by a lot of nation’s A-list bloggers.
Chang W. Kim, co-founder of the company explains that Google is the underdog in this region, but Korea is the worlds sixth largest market in terms of Internet users. The Korean users mainly use Yahoo-style portal services to do everything on the web. With the acquirement, Google created a new way to get to the customers.
The exact number on the contract stays unknown, but is claimed to be the first major Google acquisitions in the entire Asia by Chang. Another successful entrepreneur with the copycat approach!
Written on September 11, 2008 – 5:18 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Google has just challenged Yahoo’s MyBlogLog in a face-to-face battle by posting a very peaceful-like announcement on the Official Google Blog:
At Blogger we’re passionate about helping communities form around blogs. To further that goal, we’ve introduced a new feature that lets you easily follow your favorite blogs and tell the world that you’re a fan. To follow a blog with the Followers’ Gadget, simply click the “Follow This Blog” link. You can show your support for the blog by following it right from your Blogger Dashboard or in Google Reader.
So as you can tell by this message, Google starts the battle in a guerrilla manner since the MyBlogLog rip-off boxes are only featured on Google Blogger blogs. Probably just to test the service for a while and preparing it for the real clash with MyBlogLog.
Not another rip-off
I think this follow box will particularly popular with beginning bloggers (like Blogger.com bloggers). The ones who are more experienced have their MyBlogLog tracking script running and aren’t waiting for yet another “connect to your friends”-tool.
Google’s secret weapon
But.., Google has one secret weapon, a deadly feature that might after all wipe out MyBlogLog: the address book. Calender, Reader, Gmail, and Docs all revolve around this feature. That’s what gives the Google tools structure. The address book is the glue that keeps them all together. No, it’s even better. It’s the DNA of Google’s web apps collection. Whether you want to share a Google Doc, invite somebody for an appointment or tip a good article from a feed, all your contacts are easily available for your sharing-needs. And now, your blog friends are included.
Written on December 11, 2008 – 5:34 pm
Written on November 30, 2008 – 4:43 am
The latter seems to be the trend the last couple of months. First signaled in December 2007 by 
Written on November 11, 2008 – 12:45 pm
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
