Mark Evans

The Weekly Wrap

The week that was in MET:

Highlights:

- Moderating a panel at the Communitech Leadership Conference featuring Monster co-founder Jeff Taylor, Chris “Long Tail” Anderson, venture capitalist Rick Segal and Chris Sacca, who resigned from Google to become a start-up consultant and VC.

For anyone interested in being an entrepreneur, Sacca’s keynote was insightful as well as entertaining. His advice to start-ups: focus on the user, solve problems, follow feedback and keep evolving. Another tip: don’t assume you know what’s good for your users. Case in point: Facebook’s Beacon program, which Sacca suggested showed Facebook’s “hubris” because it took the approach it knew what users wanted.

- Who Uses Twitter?: At the conference, I conducted a poll on who was using Twitter. Of the 300 people, a dozen people raised their hands. In contrast, 75% of them are using Facebook. Prediction: Within a year, at least 50% of them will be using Twitter. Of course, there will likely be a new and exciting tool that make will make Twitter look a lot like Facebook does now!

- Finally meeting Mike Pegg, who’s being transfered by Google to Silicon Valley from Waterloo to work for Google Maps. Pegg is a classic blogger-done-good story. While working for Slipstream, he started a blog called Google Maps Mania, which covered Web sites, mashups and tools based on Google Maps. The site became so popular that Pegg was invited to present at a Google conference in Silicon Valley where he discovered many of Google’s senior executives read his blog. One thing led to another and he was hired by Google.

Most Popular Posts

1. Communications 101: How to Communicate. A post written in April 2007, its continued popularity makes me think may I should start a blog on effective communications.

2. Attention Digital Peasants: Rogers will bring the iPhone to Canada this year but no details about when and, more important, data plans. If Rogers’ introduction of Nokia’s N95 is any indication, people shouldn’t get their hopes too high.

3. Atta Go, Twitter: Rumors have it that Twitter is raising $15 million to $20 million. If investors want to hand over the cash, go for it.

4. Twitter’s Success: The Ecosystem: Looking at how the growing number of related-services is making Twitter increasing useful and popular.

Mystery Solved:

- Feedburner subscribers bounce back to “normal” after mysteriously dropped by 20%.

Wordpress:

- The new theme, Statement, is great, although it needs a little more tweaking. In the wonders-never-cease category, I was able to help someone on how to make the theme work with WP Stats.

Credit: Cartoon by Gaping Void

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Google , Google Maps