Tag Archives: facebook

Chasing Croatia

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This is my fifth day on tour in Croatia with Smart Tours. We are also visiting Slovenia and Montenegro.

It was pretty amazing to find out when we first got here that I couldn’t get my daily fix of an iced Light Caramel Frappucchino. Starbucks has yet to convince this heavy duty coffee drinking country that they need to pay a few more dollars per cup for special blends.

Here is an article from the Croatian Times that spells it out.

http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/Business/2010-08-20/13237/Starbucks_%EF%BF%BDindefinitely%EF%BF%BD_postpones_its_arrival_in_Croatia_

They are pretty social in this neck of the woods. While Twitter is still not that popular, Facebook has made quite an impact. Everywhere you go you see “Follow Us On Facebook” ads.

Our young Croatian tour guide, Victoria, summed it up. “It is just a matter of time till Starbucks and Twitter make inroads here too. As much as I would like to, I can’t stop progress. I was appalled when I visited the United States earlier this year. I stopped for a cup of coffee in a Starbucks and couldn’t believe my eyes.

“No one was talking to each other. Everyone was either glued to their laptops or to their smart phones. No one looked up. Just tap, tap, tap away on their keyboards.

“Croatians are big coffee drinkers. We like our coffee strong. Unlike Americans, we also like to socialize while we drink coffee. Croatia has thousands of independent coffee shops that offer wireless but the mentality of the people here are just different. Many of us want to keep it that way.”

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TO TWEET OR NOT TO TWEET, THAT IS THE QUESTION

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 While many folks around my age bracket and older like Facebook, most have not joined Twitter. I am not sure why, other than they don’t understand the benefits. I am going to tell you in plain and simple terms why you should join. It is great for researching people and topics. Most of the younger generation is on Twitter because they use it as a vanity stage or they actually discuss important topics, both personal and business with each other. It has become their main news source and there are good reasons why. The digital community is all about participating in the making of the news, not necessarily sitting back reading about it. 

For example, one Twitter user sees an airplane actually land on the Hudson River. Instead of dialing 911, he or she posts it on Twitter and the word spreads faster than anyone can imagine. A 911 operator can even be one of the people on that person’s Twitter list. The next thing you know everyone springs into action. Everyone does their part to report the news or do something about it. You are no longer idly sitting by, picking your nose, wondering what is going on. You are now getting a blow by blow account of the developments just as if you were on a news team. Unless you have experienced this, you just can’t imagine the excitement and euphoria you get, especially if you have helped save lives. 

 

The other benefit that I think is so important, yet rarely gets talked about in my generation, is that you can search the tweets (opinions) of people you most respect and actually post your thoughts for them to see as well. All you have to do is post their their Twitter name preceded by the @ sign (e.g., @digidame for my Twitter account) on your post and when they search he or she will see your comments. Do that long enough and there is a good likelihood that those people will start following you. I almost fell over when Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and big time investor in startups, actually answered one of my tweets. I walked around for the rest of the day feeling like I was actually somebody. The important thing to remember is that @TwitterName signs are for people and #hashtag signs are for topics.

I would strongly suggest that you start using the search area on Twitter before you start discussing or ranting a topic. The search area is called Discover and it is wonderful because it features the important stories of the day, activities, trends, who to follow, categories to browse, and the place to find friends.  Just this morning I read a story that the Discover tab on Twitter is getting an update. I love learning that because that always means good things. In this case the Discover tab is going to present content that Twitter says is even more personalized and meaningful to the user. “To do this, Twitter has incorporated additional personalization ‘signals,’ including tweets that are popular among the people that a user follows. The new design shows who tweeted about particular stories/content after which the user can view, reply to, retweet and favorite said tweet. The update will be rolled out over the coming weeks.” See more information on Cynopsis.  

If you have any questions about getting started on Twitter, leave a comment on DigiDame or email me. If I don’t know the answer, I will get someone quickly who will answer you. Remember, we are all a part of the digital revolution. Getting info should be instantaneous. 

To ease you into the Twitter process, here is a story Time magazine wrote about the most important people to follow. Somehow I trust you to find your own. It won’t take you too long to get your own online circle of friends. And when you do, you will be socializing with Tweet meetups in your neighborhood, but that is just an option. I do promise you that your life reading the news is going to change forever. You will never pick up a print publication again.

THE MIRACLES OF DIGITAL FUNDRAISING

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It is amazing how the world has changed. When we were growing up, we were expected to become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, accountant, secretary or something where the foundation of the business was well established. All we had to be is smart enough to jump on the already established bandwagon. If we told our parents we wanted to become writers, musicians, inventors or artists of any kind, they would go directly to a house of worship and pray to their higher power to give us proper guidance. 

I know you are chuckling reading this, because it happened to all of us, whether rich or poor. Our parents wanted us either in the family business or settled somewhere they didn’t have to worry about. 

Jump forward 40 to 50 years. Today, parents are asking children, “Why can’t you be one of those geniuses who invent something on the Internet? Do you want to work for the rest of your life and report to a boss who will use and abuse you? “ 

Times have certainly changed. Today hundreds, if not thousands of 20 and 30 year olds are all trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Steve Jobs (Apple) and Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (Instagram).  Even if someone has a job, their minds are working overtime to come up with that one idea that is going to allow them to make a lot of money and sit at home in their pj’s all day. 

A lot of the young creative types were dissuaded over the years, because venture capitalists and angel investors require a lot of paper work and financial proof that proposed business models are going to work.  Raising money is more difficult than creating and building the invention.  You have to stand in front of the suits to prove that your idea was more worthy than the thousands of other proposals they’ve seen before. 

All that has changed as noted in the front page of the New York Times today. Kickstarter, a website that raises money from the public (the digital term is crowd funding) for creative projects (films, music, games, food projects and digital inventions, etc.). raised over $7 million in just a few days for The Pebble, a watch that was developed to work with the iPhone. You have to read the story to see how the money came pouring in. http://nyti.ms/Ixx1gj . If you know anything about fundraising, you would quickly realize that the money raised by Kickstarter for The Pebble was equivalent to a second round of capital financing. That means that The Pebble didn’t have to prove itself like others to command millions of dollars.

Kickstarter is one of those ideas that most investment people probably thought was not a going to work. Who is going to give money to a project online? Guess what? Kickstarter has raised more than $200 million for 20,000 projects so far, or about 44 percent of those that sought financing on the site. Kickstarter takes 5% of the funds raised. Amazon charges an additional 3-5%. The entire evolution of Kickstarter is amazing and what they did for The Pebble is nothing short of a miracle of the digital world.  You have to digest what I just told you about and think to yourself, “Who would have ever thought?”