How To Be #1 on Twitter.
And the future of "AllTop"
There are 16,000+ people who follow Guy Kawasaki on the Twitter. What's a secret of his success? And how to achieve better results, - How to be on the top of Twitter?!!
The Guy writes mostly about news in blogs of other people. It looks like
He Is The NEWS! In result, his tweets are as popular as the ones from mass media leaders, e.g., CNN with 27,000+ followers.
But where his news are coming from? Mostly from two sources:
1. Twitter: the Guy followes almost 18,000 people!
2. His own website, - RSS aggregator aptly named AllTop.com
You must be lucky if your blog is listed at Guy's AllTop. The site attracts millions visitors, so your traffic is almost guaranteed. Guy describes himself as
"online magazine editor". I have, however, the following question:
Do you really believe the Guy will READ YOUR website?
To begin with, calculate how long it takes simply to download each blog ... I think that at the best Guy simply browses your headlines. Well, there is nothing bad about it. However, some your bright content can be missed.
My formula for a BETTER then the AllTop project is simple:
Use Twitter as a showroom for the best posts on your AllTop-like website, but in the form of links to FAST "CONTENT-ONLY" ADS-FREE pages.
This will allow your users to
READ main content of listed blogs almost immediately! They can view it even on mobiles! And popularity of the resulting "AllTop Mini-News" will be much higher!
I think a SMALL content is the biggest factor for online success nowadays! The microblogging platform Twitter is above all a 140-characters limit on its messages. And designing mobile content for a billion+ mobile users becomes a culture and art on its own.
As experiment, I've just signed up for a free Twitter account
mininews. Currently I'm using it as a mini blog for my newest Mini-News.com. However, at the later stage it can be turned into collection of headlines for the best posts on the "All Top Mini-News".
Usually, mobile versions are associated exclusively with running on mobile devices. But approach of Mini-News.com is to use mobile webpages for desktop computers as well.
While almost for sure you loose mobile users for your oversized webpage (practically all HTML webpages are), the same amount of information split between 3 files, -
Headline,
Content, and
Ads, - may bring a lot of them to you!
The Guy's website is a huge
"digital magazine" of the Internet, while my version of it is a compact text-only "newspaper".
The conceptual difference is clear even on the level of our Twitter designs:
To see
guykawasaki Twitter page, you must start with downloading his 550K+ background image first! The
mininews initially used a tiny 5K image, - but now has NONE!
On July 20 I sent a message to Guy Kawasaki:
Dear Guy,
Three days ago I approached you to let you know about my "AllTop Mini-News" project. It may sound naive, but I thought it could be interesting for you..
I am just browsing through your Twitter messages to learn what you were doing since that:
Cooking myths... NASA Needs Your Urine... My favorite "White Trash"...
That all is good :) However, your obvious SILENCE about my ideas doesn't look very well :(
It's quite understandable you may be not very happy about my news (we all tend to make a belief our competitors simply do not exist :) However, Guy, it's a little bit childish just to ignore emerging of the competing technology for your key project!
The aim of this letter is far from soliciting any kind of financial assistance from you. (Although, in my understanding, investments in Mini-News would be a much more profitable thing then, for example, throwing money to a yet another promotion party for the current AllTop)*.
Guy, you are smart! But I don't know what words I need to use to convince you, - YOU WILL ONLY WIN from being one of the FIRST in supporting my startup!
I'm going to start a next stage of my promotion campaign soon. And would appreciate any kind of Your efforts in highlighting Mini-News ideas then. For example, in your blog, Twitter, etc.
As you understand, there are quite easy ways for promoting new projects similar to yours.
The most valuable part of your website are links for blogs. In fact, AllTop.com is a ready-to-use database of bloggers who would be interested in similar services! If someone uses the list of the websites for contacting them with a corresponding offer, new big online community can be built practically overnight!
Even if to do the job "manually", it's only a matter of time when most AllTop users will also be users of Mini-News.com!
However, it would be a quite different story if all your users will learn about "AllTop Mini-News" from YOU!
Please, think about that!
* The Guy's party for 250 people last week could probably exceed my year's income
The Guy's answer was short:
"This isn't something that I would like to get involved with."
In other words, my article "All Top Mini-News" [7] about AllTop.com project appeared for Mr. Kawasaki just one of those missed news I mentioned above. He twitted after that about many AllTop's topics, including
"Tasmanian Man Avoids Jail Time for Octopus Porn"..
Excepting the really important idea that
may change the future of AllTop.
Well, there are many people who play important role in my life, but for whom I Do Not Exist: Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jain Naveen (Infospace), ... And now Guy Kawasaki (AllTop).
"Create your life path" - proposes another Guy's web project, which simply hosts users' images, videos, and text. Meaning it would be quite enough to immortalize someone's life achievements.
I don't know about you, but I would rather develop an original web idea for that purpose. My websites are the steps I would leave in the Internet after myself. They are a part of my life, - they are me!
Unfortunately, I was unabled to see the Guy's kronomy.com in full, as my browser there becomes so slow that practically stops. Sorry, Guy.
But it's not about me. And it's not about having outdated hardware.
I'm not going to talk about chances for viewing such websites via mobile devices (that's just out of the question!). Guy simply can't see the problem, because his computers are good, and network infostructure in California is excellent. He may think he is in the future, but he is not!
Well, for me, - one of his users.
That's true, my ten years' old PC is far from perfection. However, instead of complaining, I'm trying to turn my life disadvantages into advantages. I'm launching a revolutional concept, which can overturn prevailing approaches to Internet usability -
FAST Mini Web!
This morning I found that Guy is also a Managing Director in a venture capital firm. And guess what, the firm is desperately
"looking for two guys .. who are starting the next big thing .. the next Apple, Cisco, or Google." What a coincidence!
Should I say to Guy now "Oh, I'm so sorry sorry sorry ..."
When I read details on what they are looking for, I was shocked: My project ideally fits their highest demands! And for Absolutely Unique Ideas (just like my Mini-News is), they are ready to pay from $500,000 to $3,000,000. Obviously, - if you are American.
Nevertheless, I think about contacting the firm. Just for a case :)
It's quite understandable the Guy will not support ideas that compete with his own project. However, I suppose he is not the only person in the company.
And let me repeat it clearly: I respect the Guy very much!
The most influential people of the world I was contacting to were speaking with me through their company representatives, lawyers, and even hackers ...
Guy Kawasaki responded to me personally! And that's a progress :) And I really appreciate, - this is true!, - that his last words to me were:
"I wish you great success!"
What Guy didn't get about my project is:
ITS' NOT ABOUT ALLTOP!
Or, it's as much about AllTop as about any RSS aggregator on the market!
Mini-News.com is not just a slight improvement of a particular web service. And not a copycat in any sense. This is novelty on a conceptual level, - a NEW PARADIGM!
What Next Thing can be bigger then Internet? What I'm proposing is a kind of "Next Internet", - the Ads-FREE Web!