Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 18th May 2009
9 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The image below here shows why in the age of Twitter, Digg is starting to get less interesting to bloggers. Making it to the front page of Digg is still cool but just as hard (maybe even harder) as it was 3 years ago. Having your message retweeted is a lot easier. Also, 1 Digg doesn’t get you any traffic. 10 Diggs? No traffic. 100 Diggs? Well, only if it makes it to the ‘Upcoming’ section.
A retweet is ALWAYS good for traffic. I just checked the last 10 visitors from Twitter. They had a combined audience of 8116 followers, an average of 800 followers per user. One retweet potentially reaches those 800 followers.
In reality the reach of a retweet is a lot lower, of course. My guess is that a retweet gets an average 5% clickthrough. A link posted to 1000 followers generates 50 visitors. On average. A lot of our posts here get retweeted 50 or 100 times. You do the math.
Now take another look at the graph at the top. That graph is true for Blogs but doesn’t apply to retweets. Blogs need to be original. No point in writing about the same thing twice. Retweets are different. The whole purpose of a Retweet is to, well, repeat.
So, Tweetmeme is twice as interesting for us as bloggers than Digg. Digg is a zero-sum game. You either make it to the frontpage, or not. A retweet is always useful and it never gets dull.
The same goes for Techmeme. Making it to Techmeme is hard. You need to be first AND important enough to matter. I have always been disappointed however when we did make it (i’d say we make it to Techmeme about once a week) because although people seem to think this is a big deal I hardly ever saw any traffic coming from it.
Tweetmeme is a completely different beast. Make it to the front page of Tweetmeme and you see traffic! Lots of it! Which might also explain the surge of traffic to TweetMeme recently:
It is amazing that Digg didn’t/hasn’t/won’t launch TweetMeme functionality and the same goes for TechMeme. Just as Digg took away the throne from SlashDot it looks like TweetMeme is on track to do the same to Digg.
Of course this doesn’t mean we don’t WANT to make it to the Digg front page! If you definitely absolutely want to Digg this post we won’t stop you. Just don’t forget to retweet it too. ;-)
Written on 29th January 2009
6 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Techmeme, a site which uses both an algorithm and human editing to aggregate the best technology news and discussion from across the web have introduced a rather simple yet innovative way to find new stories.
To suggest a story to Techmeme simply send them a tweet in the following format “Tip @Techmeme” or “Tip @TechmemeFH” and yes you are able to suggest your own stories however you are instructed to do so “rarely”. Spammers or any Twitter account which becomes recognised for suggesting stories too frequently will be “quietly ignored”. However, should a story you have suggested make it onto Techmeme, you will be given credit for the share as below.
This little nugget of news comes soon after founder Gabe Rivera announced they would be bumping up the “human editing” aspect of Techmeme which had previously been known as an automated site with news selected based on a carefully calculated algorithm – looks like they’re going to be busy.
Ok so here goes nothing, my first suggestion to Techmeme…Yes yes, i know it’s mine…It’ll be rare , I promise.
Written on 18th December 2008
3 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
The UK’s most “tech savvy” news source have announced their top 100 web site (apps) of 2009. It’s a decent well thought out list with some sites getting the recognition they deserve as well as few apps which you may not have heard of.
That said, it’s pretty disappointing to not find Mixx included in the News Recommendation category, absolutely no mention of Friendfeed and to see Matt as one of the the best Twitter apps is frankly ridiculous.
Interesting categories and winners include:
Physical from virtual
Moo moo.com, Blurb blurb.com , Lulu lulu.com , Cafepress cafepress.com, Spreadshirt spreadshirt.net
Twitter, and associated
Twitter twitter.com, Monitter monitter.com, Matt themattinator.com, Twitterfeed twitterfeed.com, Twitter Grader twitter.grader.com
News recommendation
Digg digg.com, Reddit reddit.com, Techmeme techmeme.com, Popurls popurls.com, Slashdot slashdot.org
The full list can be found here.
Written on 2nd September 2008
9 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Ok, so I won’t start complaining about the Techmeme echo chamber or anything like that. I don’t even feel that way about the tech news aggregator. I just want to show how excited the blogosphere is about Google’s initiative to enter the browser market. Or.., no, let me make one suggestions. Maybe Techmeme should consider to use doodles – like Google does – as well.
Written on 11th August 2008
7 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every Web 2.0 entrepreneur knows press releases are an outdated phenomenon. It’s something from a different era, when print media were more important than digital media. Nowadays, entrepreneurs blog to get their corporate word out. Scoble and Israel started to preach this evangelic with their Naked Conversations manifest and since then, almost every start-up has been taking their advice for granted.
Yakov Sadchikov
Yet not every entrepreneur gets blogging right. Some just post articles that look a lot like those old-fashioned press releases or use every possibility to plug their product. To inspire and help these corporate bloggers, I’ll interview Yakov Sadchikov from visual search engine Quintura (my review here) – his corporate blog managed to get links on TechCrunch, Techmeme, this blog, and many other important tech news outlets.
Sadchikov started his blog to keep the tech industry informed about the developments surrounding the Quintura business. But he also wanted to inform market observers about the latest developments and investments in the Internet, media, and technology business of Russia and its neighboring countries. This combination turned out to be a golden one.
Three stories on Techmeme in one week
“In general, the company releases a new service or version once every several months”, Sadchikov mailed me, “this is when we can do a marketing and PR push. Between those releases, the blog is an effective tool to keep in touch with the market. For instance, during the first week of August, three articles from the Quintura blog were featured on the Techmeme homepage. As a result, we’ve welcomed new blog readers as well as new web publishers who were interested in our product, the Quintura site search”.
Quintura’s recipe for successful blogging
Luckily for us, Sadchikov was willing to share his recipe for successful corporate blogging. “My advice for start-ups would be to select a segment and write regularly about news in that segment. Make sure it could be of interest for the industry and not only for company observers. The stories must be relevant for a wide business audience.” When Sadchikov has finished an interesting story, he emails it to influential tech bloggers. Because he posts relevant news, many tech bloggers seem to appreciate his work. He basically is TechCrunch’s man in Russia.
Sadchikov: “Some major tech blogs regularly elaborate on the stories that were first posted on the Quintura blog.” Like TechCrunch. Erick Schonfeld based his article about the biggest tech IPO of 2008 on this story. And Arrington found out about Google’s weird outdoor campaign by browsing on the Quintura blog.
So how many hours does Sadchikov spend on blogging?
When I talk to start-ups about their blogs, most entrepreneurs tell me they don’t have time for building a solid corporate blog. But Sadchikov proves this doesn’t necessarily have to be true. He told me he only spends half-hour a day on the Quintura blog. Talking about return of investment…
Take another look at your blog
Sadchikov’s story is extraordinary and I realize he has the privilege of operating in of the world’s most interesting and booming Internet markets. But I encourage you to take another look on your corporate blog. Think about how you can make the news appealing to a large crowd. Hunt for scoops in your niche. And if you have one, don’t hesitate to email it to me.
Further reading
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 
