Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 9th February 2009
3 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Earlier this month Zee explained “How to Snap Up that Twitter Username You’ve Always Wanted“. We were stuck with a
Twitter name for the blog here that, well, sucked. Our Twitter name was @NextWebLog which made sense when we registered it, as @TheNextWeb was taken, but just didn’t feel right.
So last week I decided to contact Twitter to ask if they could, pretty please, change our Twitter name to @TheNextWeb. That account was taken but never used and didn’t have any followers either. Within 48 hours I got a reply that my wish had been granted.
Since then we have been actively using it to promote the blog and keep in touch with out readers. As The Next Web Conference is approaching (only 65 days & 85 early bird tickets left!) we want to get more feedback from readers and keep everybody up-to-date on new speakers and start-ups. The blog is important for that but Twitter seems even better.
We automatically post a link to every blogpost we publish on Twitter as an alternative to RSS. people seem to like that and are now also actively retweeting those links.
We have been very focused on getting more RSS readers and even set a goal of 10.000 readers in April. It seems however that our readers are more interested in receiving notifications of new blogposts via Twitter than via RSS. RSS certainly has its advantages but right now I’m getting more interested in Twitter. Compared to the one-way communication of RSS the two-way communication with Twitter is a lot more interesting.
If you have a brand, product or blog now it the time to get yourself a Twitter account and use it to build your audience. Could you imagine a blog without RSS? No? Within a few months you will feel the same about a blog without a Twitter Account.
As you can see in the TwitterCounter graph up here we have been steadily adding Followers for the last few weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get to 10000 followers on twitter before we get to 10000 RSS subscribers…
Written on 16th January 2009
25 COMMENTS
Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
What would you do if you rule the web for one hour? [Photo credit: Thomas Hawk]
It means that you are the king of the web for sixty minutes. You rule it. You have administrator access to each and every service or the web.
For instance, you can edit Google.com, Yahoo.com or any website. You can edit, delete, and download any content or media on the web. You can change Ads on sites to link to your sites, log into anyone’s email, social networking accounts and hack ‘n crack.
Here is a contest to show off your innovative mind and imagination.
This contest is not to find ways of how much revenue you can make if you own the entire web for one hour. But, its an open challenge for participants to think ‘out of the box’ and project your imagination about how would you change the web or what would you do specifically in a time limit of one hour if you own the entire web.
Interested participants can submit their response via form. The responses will be evaluated by our team and the winner will be disclosed accordingly.
The prize
A VIP invitation for The Next Web Salon – an inspiring night with visionaries and people who change the world.
Form after the click. (more…)
Written on 21st November 2008
2 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Wow, this cartoon was made for us! We knew we did something right when we decided to name our company “The Next Web” instead of something boring like “The Web2.0 Blog”.
Found at Geek And Poke.
Thanks for the tip ellemijn!
Written on 11th November 2008
21 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Last month we bought TheNextWeb.com in an auction at Sedo.com for only $1000. It took a while to transfer the domain to our hosting provider but it worked out and today we decided to take a deep breath and switch our blog from TheNextWeb.org to TheNextWeb.com.
The .org version of our domain will always work too but now redirects to the .com url. No need to update any old links! We will also start using the .com version for our email addresses but the old ones will also keep working.
So far it looks like everything still works but we are keeping an eye on it and if you see something that doesn’t seem to work as expected please do let us know. As far as I know there shouldn’t be any effect when it comes to Search Engine Optimization but I can imagine that readers are more inclined to return to a blog that has a .com domain name. Right now almost 30% of all our traffic comes from Google so we are keeping on eye on that too!
[poll id="8"]
Written on 27th October 2008
21 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Robin Wauters recently moved from being a blogger for TheNextWeb.org to blogging for Techcrunch.com. Yesterday he published a post about MySpace leaving The Netherlands. This is the first comment on that post:
I know, it is JUST one comment but I showed it to Ernst-Jan and said “That is why TheNextWeb.org matters”. Techcrunch.com has 1 million+ RSS subscribers and a large part of those readers have no interest in the rest of the world.
We are here to serve those that ARE interested.
Are YOU interested in the rest of the world?
Written on 30th July 2008
5 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
On May 27, 2008 I reported here that we had received 32,000 unique visitors in the last 30 days. Since then we have written another 266 posts which brings our total to 824. Those posts are attracting more visitors every day. In the last 30 days we attracted 95,000 unique visitors!
Today we also passed another milestone: 4000 feed subscribers!
Check out that graph. How many subscribers will we have in 12 months? If you haven’t subscribed yet you can do that now by clicking here.
The most popular search terms:
1: nasza klasa
2: nico nico douga
3: the next web
4: leah culver
5: nasza-klasa
6: photofree
7: snagfilm
Our top 3 most viewed posts. Not sure if that is the same as ‘popular’ but it is the only thing I can find easily:
1: Reality in Sweden: download a HD DVD in two seconds
2: 3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia
3: Nasza-klasa: Polish example of the copy-cat approach
We are getting a lot of views from StumbleUpOn and news.ycombinator.com lately.
I would have loved to include more detailed graphs about our stats but I guess this one just sums it all up better than any other graph I can think of:
Keep reading, commenting, sharing and sending in tips and thanks for sticking with us…
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 
