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The Cluetrain Manifesto

95 Theses

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.

While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.

However, employees are getting hyperlinked even as markets are. Companies need to listen carefully to both. Mostly, they need to get out of the way so intranetworked employees can converse directly with internetworked markets.

Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.

  1. Markets are conversations.

  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

  6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

  7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

  8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

  9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

  10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

  11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

  12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

  13. What's happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing standing between the two.

  14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

  15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

  16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

  17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

  18. Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

  19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

  20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

  21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

  22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

  23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

  24. Bombastic boasts—"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"—do not constitute a position.

  25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

  26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

  27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.

  28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what's really going on inside the company.

  29. Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious minds."

  30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

  31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own "downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question: "Loyalty? What's that?"

  32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

  33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can't be "picked up" at some tony conference.

  34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

  35. But first, they must belong to a community.

  36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.

  37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.

  38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

  39. The community of discourse is the market.

  40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.

  41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.

  42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

  43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

  44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

  45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.

  46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

  47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations.

  48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

  49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

  50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

  51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.

  52. Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.

  53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.

  54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.

  55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.

  56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices.

  57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.

  58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.

  59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.

  60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.

  61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.

  62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

  63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.

  64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

  65. We're also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.

  66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?

  67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.

  68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what's that got to do with us?

  69. Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall Street. You're not impressing us.

  70. If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't let you talk that way.

  71. Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze over. We don't recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we're already elsewhere.

  72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

  73. You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

  74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

  75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.

  76. We've got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we'd be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

  77. You're too busy "doing business" to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe.

  78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

  79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.

  80. Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it's not the only thing on your mind.

  81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

  82. Your product broke. Why? We'd like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We'd like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she's not in?

  83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

  84. We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and play?

  85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn't have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they'd be among the people we'd turn to.

  86. When we're not busy being your "target market," many of us are your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing's job.

  87. We'd like it if you got what's going on here. That'd be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we're holding our breath.

  88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you'll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?

  89. We have real power and we know it. If you don't quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that's more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.

  90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we've been seeing.

  91. Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.

  92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.

  93. We're both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they're really just an annoyance. We know they're coming down. We're going to work from both sides to take them down.

  94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

  95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts

Friday, March 16, 2007

Posts from the Crypt

I am pulling this link up from the distant past (last August), to share with you an interview between two of my favorite bloggers. Seth Godin answers questions for Hugh McLeod of Gaping Void. (Yes, two posts in a row with links. I spent a lot of today reading the archives, so sue me.)

Anyway, the first question and answer:

1. QUESTION: Your latest book, "Small Is The New Big", is not a narrative or a thesis in any sense, but a collection of your favorite writings from your blog and your old Fast Company column. A collection of synapse-firings, the way I see it. Is it important to you to have your work "immortalized" on paper? Do you find the internet and magazines just too ephemeral, and wanted to created something more "lasting"? Or was it just simply because, as you say, you wanted your ideas to reach beyond the blogosphere?

ANSWER: It's important not to underestimate the totem value of a book. The same way a white lab coat makes a placebo more likely to be effective (or a witch doctor's hat for that matter), a book delivers an impact that a blog can't.

While there's certainly some ego in wanting your thousands of posts not to disappear, there's also a real desire on my part to give my existing readers the ability to taunt their co-workers by handing them a book instead of emailing them a link. If my job is to make change, I need to use the best tools that are available.

It's also hard to read a blog at the beach.

I want to be clear about something I just discovered though--that there IS a theme. The title really captures what the book is about. I've been amazed that reviewers (professional and pro-am) have seemed to find something that I didn't when I was busy writing it... that acting small, treating people like people, changing like an individual, not an organization... these are attributes that are essential now, and they're on every page of the book. I think I picked the right riff for the title.
Read the whole interview. Then get ahold of the book, it is fantastic.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 11:45 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

How to Increase Traffic and Monetize Your Blog

You manage to get a guest post from Eli at BlueHatSEO.com. Check out the NetBusinessBlog and what Eli has to say:

Hello everyone. This is your captain speaking. First I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Eli from BlueHatSEO.com. I do a little SEO here and there when needed. It’s not everyday that someone like Matt offers you an opportunity to do a guest post on one of the best internet business blogs on the net like NetBusinessBlog. So I’d like to start off by expressing how extremely honored I am for the chance to write this post and demonstrate a few things to the NBB’s community. Writing about the business aspect of SEO is not something I get a chance to do very often so I think this is a great opportunity to talk about what I think is one of the toughest business transitions in the industry. The move from affiliate to full blown E-Commerce publisher.

The reason why I say that E-Commerce is the toughest transition to make is because if you’ve ever attempted it, whether you were successful or not, you find out very quickly why it’s called the big boys club. In the affiliate market industry you have several people above you. First the manufacturers. Then the suppliers.. Next the E-commerce sites. Lastly the affiliate network. Everyone above you wants you to succeed. Your success means their success. In the E-Commerce world the model of authority changes. It is just you and the manufacturer. The manufacturers want you to succeed but not so much that it hurts their real cash cows, the local retailers who will spare no time complaining about their online competition. Frankly you are nothing more than a necessary pain in the ass.

Very nice. In fact, almost enough info to become an e-book. A less scrupulous person than myself might boost it and do just that.
Anyway, I am not doing this to sell anything, except some adspace (hint) and help other beginners work toward their dream of being ranked #606,000 of 55,000,000 blogs. /sigh.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 6:50 AM 0 comments

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Lifehack is Looking for Community Leaders

The Post speaks for itself:

New Lifehack Community

Recently we have received some comments which you want to see improvements on our lifehack community. Some of you also wanted to have a place for further discussion on your productivity issues, lifestyle concerns, or simply share your tips and tricks. We heard you and now we present you with a new forums for discussion!

With near two years of experience at lifehack.org, I found out there are numbers of big topic that we concern in our life and wanted to find better ways to handle them. We have divided our discussion forum to following topics:

  • Communication: Presentation, Writing, Small-talk, Blogging, etc…
  • Productivity: Motivation, Procrastination, Time Management, Planning…
  • Management: Entrepreneurship, People Management, Self Management, Project Management…
  • Lifestyle: Health, Diet, Exercise, Sleeping…
  • Financial: Money, Investment, Debt…
  • Technology: Tools, PDA, Hardware, Software, Web Apps…

Readers, enjoy the new community! Either myself, Kyle, Craig and the community leaders will help you along the way.
I for one welcome the new LifeHack overlords...


Technorati Tags:

Posted by Stephen Smith at 6:42 PM 0 comments

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Monday, March 12, 2007

The New Nomads- Taking Your Job on the Road

I found a very interesting article at Business Week.com and would like to share it with you. The big question is: How many of you does this describe?

Do you ever wish you could win the lottery, chuck the rat race, and take off to explore the world? Heck—who hasn't? These days, however, there's a group of independent-minded, techno-savvy entrepreneurs who are turning that dream into a reality. They call themselves New Nomads, and they've transformed work-at-home into work-anywhere-you-damn-well-please.

Whether they take to the road armed with suitcases, laptops, cell phones, and Skype (EBAY) accounts, or settle in at a vacation destination every summer, this band of mobile-preneurs has learned to communicate and support each other with virtual communities like NuNomad.com and LaptopHobo.com. Several of them e-mailed their stories from around the globe to Smart Answers.


Is this is the real end-result of Web 2.0? Will the proliferation of wireless internet connections allow programmers and bloggers to travel the world, free of the constraints of mortgages and utility bills? And what are the pros and cons of this kind of lifestyle?
Spiritual and Financial Benefits

"The only downsides are that my dream has been always to have a beautiful rose garden and we both would love to have pets," Chiba wrote. Yes, there are cons to the wanderlust lifestyle, though Bolanos calls them "challenges" rather than "cons." "You must work downtime into your professional schedule when you are transitioning from one place to another," she wrote. "I have often been caught off-guard by how many days it takes me to shake jet lag and get acclimated to new surroundings before I can really be mentally available to clients. I've learned not to push too hard when we are moving."

The pros, of course, far outweigh the "challenges"—at least as far as the Nu Nomads are concerned. "I make Western wages, but spend it in developing countries, [which is] about one-quarter the cost of living of Southern California, where I'm from," Hamel wrote. "Personally, I've enjoyed being influenced by the differing communities I have visited and/or lived in, and [have benefited also] spiritually—not in a religious sense, but being able to home in on the core of my value system and learn to love more and fear less."


Or will the future of work look more like what is happening at Best Buy:
The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.

Hence workers pulling into the company's amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren't considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It's O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid.

[...]

The official policy for this post-face-time, location-agnostic way of working is that people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done. "This is like TiVo (TIVO ) for your work," says the program's co-founder, Jody Thompson. By the end of 2007, all 4,000 staffers working at corporate will be on ROWE. Starting in February, the new work environment will become an official part of Best Buy's recruiting pitch as well as its orientation for new hires. And the company plans to take its clockless campaign to its stores--a high-stakes challenge that no company has tried before in a retail environment.

Another thing about this experiment: It wasn't imposed from the top down. It began as a covert guerrilla action that spread virally and eventually became a revolution. So secret was the operation that Chief Executive Brad Anderson only learned the details two years after it began transforming his company. Such bottom-up, stealth innovation is exactly the kind of thing Anderson encourages. The Best Buy chief aims to keep innovating even when something is ostensibly working. "ROWE was an idea born and nurtured by a handful of passionate employees," he says. "It wasn't created as the result of some edict."

Now these are some work environments that I could really get into. Check out these links -

CultureRx, NuNomad.com and LaptopHobo.com.

There is even a handbook for those who want to find out how to get out of the office for good:
Quit Dreaming and Go! A Step-by-Step Manual on What it Takes to Travel the World and Support Yourself in the Process has been assembled as a practical “How To” manual for those of you who are serious about breaking out of the office and into the world. As a 135 page downloadable ebook (or 188 page printed book) it includes information on all vital aspects of travel preparation for making a nomadic work life possible.
Check it out.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 8:39 PM 2 comments

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

Feedburner and the GTD Network

I would like to send a hearty shout-out to Frank at What's the Next Action for reaching out to everyone and setting up the GTD network at Feedburner. I think that this is a fantastic new resource for keeping up with the latest GTD news and conversation. Check out the new RSS Feed button at the top-left, or subscribe to new posts via email, and be sure to click on the GTD Network panel below that for the "total experience".

You may also want to visit the Squidoo Lens and vote for your favorite GTD Blog! There is a lot of information on GTD in general, and new features are being added every day.

Check out a couple of new blogs here:
Chris Yeung is blogging on GTD,
and Kara has a very impressive blogging schedule here.

Finally, check out this page at BNET for their "Crash Course in GTD". That is all for now, stay tuned for upcoming posts on Writing Content and Natural Planning.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 5:32 AM 0 comments

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Everyone's An Expert

A review of Seth Godin's e-book about the search for meaning online.


This e-book is mainly an exposition on using Blogs and RSS to create a new online experience, secondarily it is an "infomercial" for Godin's Squidoo.com Lens Portal.

Everyone is using the Internets to find something, and "Search" has become a billion-dollar industry. However, when you are searching for something on any of the various engines, you are likely to find thousands (if not millions) of results. In which case you haven't really "found" anything! Having too much information is only a little better than not having enough. It takes a long time to seft through all of those search results to find a meaningful answer to your query. To quote Godin:

"The engineers who built the Web believed that if they presented the 'right' answer, intelligent humans would be pleased. In fact, before you get it, before you discover the meaning, there is not right answer."


The as-yet-unfulfilled promise of Web 2.0 is creating networks of meaning. Networks which are easily found and navigated in order to speed up the process of actually finding what you are searching for: a meaningful answer. Godin calls this network a place where one can go for instant context on their search, he calls it a Lens. The purpose of a Lens is to answer the question,"What do I need to know?"

"A lens gives context. When it succeeds it delivers meaning. A lens can tell you which books, records, and websites are the best way to appreciate Miles Davis. A lens can show you the ten most important things you need to know about copyright on the web. A lens can highlight the key players in the hospital crib business and give you the confidence that you need to go ahead and buy something - without worrying about whether you missed a key player or didn't understand a critical choice."


The essential point is to make the collections of lenses your starting point when you are searching for something. Because a lens provides context, rather than content. The lens is an aggregator of "pointers" on a particular subject. The components of a lens: Links, RSS feeds, Adsense Ads, all are things that "point" to content - Blogs, Websites, and even other lenses that contain trusted and meaningful information.

Here is the good news:
  • Squidoo is free
  • You can earn royalties $$$
  • You can generate more traffic to your blog & website
  • You can build credibility as a trusted guide
  • Improved SEO rankings
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? In fact it is good, and it is working. Affiliate programs have popped up all over the place to help you drive more traffic and make more money. It is also not working, in a sense, as there are quite a few people creating lenses that either do not have the time or skills required to invest in making a truly useful lens. I spent some time looking around for a meaningful Getting Things Done lens, and didn't really find a thorough one. In fact, many of the lenses, on any given topic, do not live up to their potential. My impression from reading Everyone's an Expert was that the lens would be a tool for creating a more meaningful experience, starting a new conversation and increasing the power of the Internets. Not just another sign that says "Look at me."

So I built a lens. Yes, it does have a link to this blog, but the main purpose is to give the lens value through context. The information is about Getting Things Done, and for creating your own web business and global microbrand. I also made it a very open system, with links to several other blogs that I have found to be interesting and useful. You can go to the lens and check them out, rank them by voting, and add sites that I may have missed (feel free to add your own!). You can even get the Plexo (as it's called) as a widget for your own site (see left sidebar) and increase your exposure that way.

The idea of the lens is to create a community, and give valuable information. The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index is a lens of sorts, in that it pulls together all of the RSS feeds for every blog that discusses GTD. The Hidden Dragon Lens is designed to create value, credibility, and context for the various resources that exist for Getting Things Done.

Go ahead and download Everyone's an Expert here, and get to work on your own lens. Then come back and tell about it!

Posted by Stephen Smith at 8:24 AM 0 comments

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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

This is Called Serendipity

I was reviewing the Ultimate GTD Index this morning, and I followed the link to this post ( Shift Happens ). You need to go there and watch the video. Then come back and finish reading.
It's okay, I'll wait.


You may have noticed a button on the right-hand sidebar of To Do or Else, all the way at the bottom, called Blidget Badge. The mission:

Wigetbox widgets make blogging better, smarter and easier.
We Make Widgets Come Alive

Once a widget is on your blog, you can reconfigure it to your heart’s content without going near HTML. Developers can fix bugs and upgrade your widget’s functionality without you having to re-install the HTML code.
We Make Your Blog Smarter

Widgetbox widgets can respond to your blog posts and website content. We call these widgets “Tag Aware”. Here’s some things you can do with it. We’ll be adding more smart blog features in the coming months.
Widget Panels

Widgetbox widget panel lets you drag and drop widgets onto a special panel in your blog. Never deal with widget installation again!


How very interesting. I took a few minutes to build a blidget, you can find it in the upper left sidebar. Check it out. Let me know what you think you can do with this. I will play with it some more, and give an update.

UPDATE: Lawrence Coburn at Sexy Widget posts a review of WidgetBox here:

Widget service provider Widgetbox (site, review) has just launched Blidgets – a tool that lets publishers convert RSS feeds into Flash widgets.

Widgetbox joins SpringWidgets and MuseStorm as providers of Flash RSS widgets, along with start pages like YourMinis and PageFlakes.

Converting your RSS feed into a widget with Widgetbox has a couple of advantages. For example, the Blidget tool makes it easy to add an image to your widget, which can be helpful for branding or presentation purposes. Publishing a widget through Widgetbox also signs you up for Widgetbox’s free stats package which tracks page views by date and page views by domain. Finally, there’s a distribution aspect as well. Publishing with Widgetbox automatically drops you into Widgetbox’s widget gallery, which in my opinion, is the most polished and well presented widget directory out there.

I had no problems finding the Blidget tool, which is located prominently on the Widgetbox home page. One very minor point that I appreciated – although I wasn’t logged in when I launched the tool, it didn’t direct me immediately to the login page. It let me build my widget, and THEN allowed me to login. Little things like this can make a big difference in adoption.


Read the whole thing, then pop over to WidgetBox and check it out.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 8:07 AM 0 comments

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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

The Future is Here

For years pundits and analysts have been telling us that the internet is the future, speculating on what form it would take and how people would use it. Well, the full commercialization of the internet has arrived. According to reports about $100 billion dollars will be spent over the internet on products and services (I do not know if this includes pr0n). This surge is largely due to

(Welcome readers from Hidden Dragonbiz)

an explosion of small businesses that can now advertise globally for a small investment of time and money. With UPS and FedEx able to deliver packages around the world, these 'mom & pop' style operations can reach customers anywhere.
Just a few years ago this would meant expensive, printed mail-order catalogs, postage costs for mailing them, and tracking down & purchasing mailing lists in an attempt to target their customers. Today, web-hosting is inexpensive or free , email and customer targeting are available free, so the only investments are in creativity and time.


This blog is a record of my own internet business start-up, as well as a resource for new and like-minded internet entrepreneurs to create and develope their own web-based business. Upcoming posts will review a variety of PDF Downloads that are available at the main site. The posts will feature a synopsis, evaluation, and suggestions for using the information. As always, your comments, suggestions, and submissions are welcomed and encouraged.

Submissions for posts or articles should be emailed to contact [at} stephenpsmith [dot} biz.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 11:10 AM 0 comments

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Friday, September 22, 2006

Website Tutorials for Fun and Profit

There is a fantastic website for beginning (and experienced) bloggers who would like to create a revenue generating website and have fun doing it: Tubetorial.

There’s never been a better time or place than right now online to start a powerful new business, or grow an existing one. The Internet allows you to make it happen, but only if you’re armed with the right knowledge.

We’re here to help. And we do that by delivering free step-by-step video tutorials in a quick and easy serial format that is perfect for busy people.


There are two that are of special interest to those who would ride the wave of future of internet-based business:
As of today, these multi-part tutorials are not yet complete, there are two or three webisodes remaining to be posted. I do recommend that you check them out. The latest webisodes will be in the Feed link in the sidebar.

Posted by Stephen Smith at 8:04 PM 0 comments

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