Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 11th November 2008
8 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Tasty Nectar is a new startup focusing on, as they put it, “selling you’. Rather than helping businesses with their sites and promotion, Tasty Nectar have launched a service designed to make creating a beautiful personal profile site, a piece of cake.
Created by the team at Texas based creative agency Fuor, your new personal site will include a gorgeous design (supposedly well optimized for search engines) and a basic lifestream.
How Does it Work?
Select a general theme (design) for your new website and sign up. Once you’re all signed in, you are greeted with a clean UI and requested to answer some pretty straight forward biographical type questions. The next step is to insert all your social media username’s and blog URL’s, this step includes options for all the major social media sites as well as any site with an RSS feed. The final step is to include any relevant contact details such as your IM and email. Click “view” at the top of the screen and voila, your new personal website is ready. I went through the process and created mine in a matter of 15 minutes and as you can see, visually it’s rather impressive.
Pricing
Well, here is where the majority of techies will gasp. (more…)
Written on 27th October 2008
9 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Until two weeks ago, you’d regularly find articles of Robin Wauters on The Next Web Blog. The last post the next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer wrote, was titled Matt Mullenweg snaps up PollDaddy. The next day, Michael Arrington snapped up Robin Wauters. Yes, our Belgian editor got promoted to TechCrunch. Goodbye, farewell and trackback!
Well, yesterday I received the first trackback from Wauters, now it’s my time to return the favor. Not just because he’s a great guy, but mostly because he discovered a cool tool: Usernamecheck.com.
It took me or two or three usernames before I realized it’s better to have one. Not just because it’s easier to remember, but also for personal branding matters. So I chose “dutchproblogger”. I’m sure you have an alias as well: Usernamecheck allows you to see whether that nickname is still available on 68 services.
According to TechCrunch commenters, the service isn’t functioning perfectly, yet you’ll get the idea anyhow.
As you can see, I suck at registering with the right username, some are more fanatic about it:
So be ahead of the “asswipes” out there and fill in the blanks, a.s.a.p.!
Written on 16th October 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Two weeks ago, Dutch blogger Ridzert Beetstra wrote a post about a life insurance company that challenged all Dutchmen to “pimp” their funeral. After expressing his amazement, he ended the post by mentioning the song he wanted to hear on his funeral. What followed, were ten comments from people saying which song would be the soundtrack of their lives. I was one of them.
When I posted my request to family and friends, it didn’t seem then weird. But when I later thought about it, telling the world how the tunes during my farewell day will sound struck me as kind of odd. Particularly in the sense that I couldn’t imagine myself sharing something like that a few years ago.
Act normal, then you act crazy enough
The baby boomers and Generation X were raised to be modest people. Like the Dutch saying goes: “act normal, then you act crazy enough”. Sure, most western societies were pretty focused on the individual compared to most Asian cultures, yet self-expression was something that wasn’t considered to be decent. Adolescents formed groups and wore certain clothes or hairstyles to distinguish themselves, but that’s about it.
Every kid a brand
But my generation grew up with Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. Every single soul on the face of the planet could start its own brand by creating a page on one of these services. Choose your pictures, make sure you fill in the right favorite movies and books, collect as many friends as possible: every kid starts his or hers own brand.
Funeral great outlet for personal branding
When I see ten young men telling the world about their funeral song, I can’t help but thinking that we’ve become so focused on personal branding that even our burial or cremation forms a great outlet for it. I also recognize this in the marketing message of Richard Derks, co-founder of Respectance.com (a social network for the deceased):
Who dies in two years and doesn’t have a Tribute on Respectance.com, didn’t have a lot of friends
On L1veon1ine, users can, amongst other things, tag themselves to create a “digital” DNA, which floats in cyberspace forever. Gary Vanyerchuk told the Web 2.0 Expo New York audience that his biggest motivation was his online legacy, so that even his great grand children could see what he has done. Mashable’s Stan Schroeder gives four ways to deal with the Google Afterlife. You can also take the online material offline and publish it on your digital tombstone.
Taboo
Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe personal branding gave us an outlet to tell people something that used to be taboo: “yeah, I can finally share which song defines me”. However, I think it’s an interesting discussion. Did the focus on personal branding took away some of our social barriers?
The soundtrack of your life
To end this article, I’ve made a soundtrack of the funeral wishlist as posted on the Dutch blog. It might inspire you when writing your funeral scenario. Don’t forget to share your choice on Facebook.
Written on 2nd October 2008
41 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
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?
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 off, the future of the Web. (More info 
