The World According to Daytum
As 2008 came to a close, I found myself reflecting on what I had done during the year, and realized that I had a pretty shaky overall picture of the defining experiences of the previous 365 days. The only reliable data I had about my life in 2008 was a basic Google spreadsheet of what books I had read. How to summarize the rest of it?
There’s no shortage of applications and Web sites that would like to help me track nearly every aspect of my life. I use Mint.com to keep up with my bank accounts and credit cards, and numerous iPhone apps and Web sites will track every bite of food I take, every mile I run, and every pound gained or lost. With an application that is sure to horrify procrastinators everywhere, RescueTime tracks every single application you use and every moment you spend on every Web site you visit, so that you can then sort this data into different buckets to determine your productivity levels.
Indeed, it seems that as a culture we are a bit obsessed with the notion of tracking and quantifying various personal data points for a pre-defined end result, be it to better manage money or time, or lose five pounds. Although this Web 2.0-fueled tracking can be illuminating and indeed quite helpful (Mint.com’s budget tool is especially good), what about tracking the miscellany? The random stuff that makes us who we are? To this end, I returned to a post I had read on one of my favorite blogs, Kottke.org, about a beta service called Daytum.
Daytum describes itself as “a home for collecting and communicating your daily data.” Its potential is brilliantly displayed in site founder Nicholas Felton’s gorgeous annual reports. These are heavily visual, consisting of the numbers that constituted his year (i.e. 33,817 iTunes Tracks Played), an annotated atlas (i.e. Best Mackerel at Yu Zen in San Francisco), and charts (i.e. a pie chart of beer brands consumed). A post-modern approach, certainly, but one that is the most compelling summary of a year or a life I’ve ever seen. After all, isn’t there a cliche about how it’s the little things that count?
My first foray into Daytum didn’t get off to a great start because I didn’t really know what to track. I started by counting my breakfasts, but soon became exceedingly bored with myself since I pretty much eat either oatmeal or granola every day. With Daytum, you can specify exactly what you want to track and how you want to display it, whether in a stacked line chart, as an average, with the greatest number first, etc. Currently, I have a pie chart of all the restaurants I’ve gone to this year, which is heavily skewed towards Soup Freaks, a list of goods baked, and my favorite books of the year (so far).
As one of Daytum’s goals is to communicate daily data, nothing you record is private. The home page displays what others are tracking at that moment, offering surprisingly personal looks at other people’s lives. For instance, you can look at graphs of alcoholic beverages consumed, lists of nail polish colors, pie charts of swear words or nails clipped by finger, and statements like “Best Book Read: Bangkok Tattoo.” Through these glimpses of daily data, you’re able to get a uniquely personal view of what matters to people and what random pieces make up their lives. Today’s Internet, whether or not you attach a name like the “connected Web” or the “social Web,” is at least partially about finding and creating communities. Facebook lets users put up traditional information about who they are and what they like, but Daytum uses broad strokes to enable people to quantify and communicate what really matters to them on a mundane, but incredibly fascinating, level.
Why 24 Hour Fitness is the Salesforce.com of Health Clubs
I firmly believe that if fitness clubs modernized their systems for recruiting and keeping members, they would grow dramatically.
After all, whether we like gyms or not, we all would like to have the option to exercise from time to time and fitness clubs provide a fast and easy way to get in a quick workout.
Like many other people in New Year’s resolution mode, I recently spent time researching local fitness club options. In San Francisco, there are many, from the lux Sports Club LA and NY transplant Equinox to the Starbucks of gyms, 24 Hour Fitness .
What struck me in my research is that the process of joining a gym is much the same as it was 10 years ago . I can’t help but think that the industry is like the enterprise software space was 10 years ago, only the latter has experienced a tectonic change, spawned by the Software-as-a-Service phenomenon which led to new pricing and delivery models and fundamentally reshaped how businesses use software.
At the heart of this stagnation is an overly high-touch, time intensive process and complicated contract structure that acts as more of a barrier than an aid to helping new members join.
Like old school enterprise software, most gyms have a longer than necessary sales cycles, seek high upfront initiation fees and make ending the relationship costly and overly punitive. Ultimately, they are designed to drive most of their revenue from new user fees and penalties that make it hard to leave.
Salesforce.com revolutionized the software industry by offering a new way for customers to try, buy and deploy software. Through its Software-as-a-Service model, Salesforce used the web to both sell and deliver its software, ending complex sales cycles, costly implementations and licensing schemes that effectively lock customers into long-term commitments.
With Salesforce.com and other SaaS innovators like LaunchSquad clients SuccessFactors, Daptiv, ShareMethods and InsideView you can be up and running quickly with minimal interaction with sales organizations, you pay as you go and its easy to use software can deliver value from day one. As Trident Capital’s Evangelos Simoudis points out, if you’re not getting value, you can quickly and easily move on.
Shouldn’t joining a gym be that easy?
Fortunately, 24-Hour Fitness has modernized its membership systems and to me is the Salesforce.com of the fitness industry.
Here’s how it works:
· Like many other software-as-a-service companies, 24 Hour makes it dead simple to try their facilities. Via their website, you can sign up for and print out a 7-day pass to any one of its hundreds of clubs.
· Once you’ve evaluated the gym, many of the club’s deals and packages are posted on the site and can be purchased immediately without a sales pitch. In my case, I got a great promotional rate of $29/month with $29 initiation. What’s more, there’s no penalty for cancellation.
· Also, like SaaS, the switching cost is low. If I’m not happy with the experience, I can cancel at no cost and move on.
The beauty of the 24 Hour model is that its predicated on delivering the basic services that most customers want. You don’t pay for bells and whistles you don’t need. And, because customers pay for value, not frills, on a monthly basis, it forces 24 Hour to focus on delivering a quality product day in and day out.
Other companies in the fitness industry should look to 24 Hour as a model for how to model their membership programs. Sure, 24 Hour is not without its challenges, but with all the new members they’ll be signing up thanks to their progressive sales model, they’ll have the cash to do something about them. Which is more than the other gyms can say in this economy.
Internet and TV to Join in Holy Matrimony?
The idea of the convergence of Internet and TV is not a new one. In fact, it’s old – really old. Even though we have had high-speed Internet for years, nice, big, shiny flat screens mounted on our walls, and a massive amount of online video sites with high-resolution content, very little has been done to get that video onto your home TV. That’s disappointing.
Yes, there are expensive set top boxes and add-ons to televisions that can get some of that content onto your TV, but that’s not the solution. Why has this convergence not happened? I don’t know, but in a week filled with inaugural hope and progress, let’s forget about the past and look into the future – because something happened in the beginning of 2009 that hopefully signified change …
At this year’s CES, LG unveiled televisions that allowed an Internet connection to be plugged directly into the TV. This was coupled with a partnership announcement with Netflix that lets people watch streaming movies via that connection. A great first step, and proof-of-concept, with a widely adopted service like Netflix.
What’s next? Yahoo also announced their “Widget Channel” with Intel, which makes it easier for people to get Internet content through their TV. They are going to be announcing consumer electronics partners soon. Maybe this will be the service that takes off, maybe it won’t, but it’s getting us closer to an iPhone-like approach to television.
Imagine your TV is like an iPhone and you can download applications, using your remote, from YouTube, Hulu, broadcast networks and even publishers like The New York Times. A simple click on each one brings up their online video content in an easy-to-use user-interface, and it can all be watched on demand. Sounds simple doesn’t it? This seems like the most logical and lucrative approach to Internet and TV convergence. The content is already there, it’s just a matter of building a simple application to search and access it.
The difficulty would most likely come in getting TV manufacturers to build affordable Internet-ready TVs and enabling a platform that can host these applications (that would most likely have to come from a software partner). But if big media companies make a push in this direction, you would think the manufacturers would be quick to follow.
Internet and TV convergence seems like a lofty goal, but is it? The pieces of the puzzle are there and we’re not talking about anything too complex from a technology perspective. The number of people who watch television shows on their computers has tripled over the past few years according to Genevieve Bell at Intel (see this WSJ story), but I’d have to imagine that these viewers would abandon their small laptop screen in a hurry if they could watch the same content on a TV. I know I would.
Social Media Renovation Study: DIY Network
In the age of content creation and proliferation, broadcast networks like DIY Network (“Do It Yourself”) are still playing by old rules and missing out on big revenue and branding opportunities. DIY Network has tons of great programming on home improvement projects, renovations, gardening and landscaping with experts offering quick tips on everything from techniques, to new products, to new tools.
Please sir, may I have some more…
Current strategy: Focus on the wallet, provide expertise, then drive traffic to the site and…keep them there somehow. Here’s part of the revenue model so far: broadcast advertising spots, product placement sponsorships, and online ad revenue (if that pop-up was from DIY Networks…disappointment).
From the consumer point of view: Say you’d like a tile backsplash, but you want to save money. Catch a DIY show on tiling yourself to save on labor and increase your home’s value. Just that episode isn’t enough and even if it was you’d have to drag the TV and cable box into the kitchen to follow along (see where I’m headed with this?). On to DIY Network’s website for more detailed instruction and although the message boards are a start, they seem rigid and out-of-date, even the name “message boards” seems stale.
Here I am baby…
Here’s where social media kicks in: Subscribe to a tiling blog, find pictures of styles you like and tons of links to things like new products, techniques, and cutting edge tools from sponsors that can make your job easier. Find conversations centered around the blogs where people can comment, share pictures and ideas, and link to other pages or products they have experience with. Subscribe to a kitchen renovation podcast or pay to download whole episodes for more ideas and tips on how to improve your home’s resale value (custom or stock cabinets, granite, marble, tile, laminate, or concrete countertops, etc). Take a page from The Handyguys Podcast and blog.
The dream: have customers rely on your content enough to have their ipods streaming your podcasts while they work, clicking through your blogs to find tools to buy, sharing content with friends, and generally consuming all of the content you’re providing, creating revenue streams from multiple new sources and building your brand as the “go-to” place for DIY. All of a sudden, consumers have a reason to stay on your site, download your content, drive up your advertising revenue streams and solidify your brand at the same time.
FriendFeed: The Fuss
I never thought of myself as an early adopter for anything. I believe the URL of my FriendFeed account says differently: http://friendfeed.com/megan. Here’s the problem though, after adopting it, I never added any feeds, never checked on it. It was one of those sites that after my social media feeding frenzy was sated, I abandoned, which makes me the dead-beat mother of an early-adopted social media service.
I was recently called out on this by Zee M. Kane, a London-based Creative Director at WeDoCreative who, among other online activities, contributes to The Next Web and ReadWriteWeb. After connecting on Twitter, he noticed that I wasn’t too active on my FF account. After some evasive responses, I finally admitted I don’t see what FriendFeed’s good for. When a fellow LaunchSquadder used our office Yammer to ponder the same thing about FriendFeed, I realized, I might not be the only one wondering.
‘If he thinks it’s so good, he can tell my why!’ was my thinking when I posed these questions for @Zee, in an effort to clear it up.
Zee: Personally, I feel if you’re involved in the tech industry, particular consumer services – Friendfeed is the place to be. For research, people’s thoughts, general opinion and the scope of types of content on there…you’re not going to find many better places.
In addition to the research/feedback motive, the site is a great tool… People forget that and, in my opinion, it’s as useful as Google Reader which has clearly become an integral part of most social media heads and other types of people too. To explain without going overboard, with “rooms”, the speed at which content is imported into the site and the various notification options it’s a fantastic way hear/read about the news the second it breaks.
You’ve also got the incredible range of service integrations which make it also unnecessary to visit the other sites.
Finally and quite possibly, most importantly, the community and discussion capabilities are wonderful. The people I’ve met on there I have genuinely become closer to than on any other “early adopter” community but this is quite possibly due to the commenting system in place on Friendfeed. Twitter you are @replying here & there, whereas on Friendfeed being able to comment and have a (relatively) structured discussion is a big plus… You’ll often have conversations lasting days! However, as wonderful as the community may be, you have to give in order to receive on there. You can’t just use the site, sit back and expect the community to revolve around you, you need to get involved.
For a better list of my reasons for using Friendfeed though, read this: http://thenextweb.com/2008/11/12/what-makes-friendfeed-special/
MS: I understand FriendFeed (and have been describing it) as “an aggregator of all of your social media activity and that of the people you follow.” Is that correct? Am I missing anything?
Zee: Yes, it is an aggregator at it’s very core…But I would really start off with the idea of the Facebook “news feed” when explaining it to someone else. Friendfeed, for me, is like the Facebook news feed on steroids. You’ve got a better commenting feature, more active users and a great way to control the content you want to see. It’s also super fast and it’s not just your friend’s information or network (like Facebook) but also major news sources too…so it becomes more of a news feed than Facebook’s news feed, if you see what I mean.
There are many ways to use it though. For example,I have private chat rooms set up for friends & clients on there. I also have a support room for a small startup we’re working on. I have our team discussion forum in another room where we share thoughts, links and work we’ve completed. I blog too with a couple of teams and we have a room to share content and ideas for posts there too. There are many more ways to use the site here: http://www.inquisitr.com/2287/friendfeed-is-google-bait-24-great-ways- to-use-it/ . But yes, at it’s very core – friendfeed is a content aggregator.
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Alright. I guess I buy it. The initial conversation between us prompted me to start a FriendFeed visit once a day for a month just to see what I was missing out on, to make it a commodity in my social media life. So far it’s been very cool and lived up to the praise that Zee gives it. I agree that it has a greater value than the output of information and two-person-conversation limitations of Twitter. The conversation is where the value lies for me.
Zee has listed his blogposts on FriendFeed above and they’re definitely worth checking out. This, is just the quick and dirty version.
Many thanks to Zee M. Kane for his insights here! They’re much appreciated and I think we all came away better people.
Mr.Tweet: All Hype?
A few weeks ago, I was excited to find out about a new personalized Twitter ‘consultant’ of sorts called Mr.Tweet. I immediately started following the company on Twitter (@MrTweet), and anxiously anticipated the report that I would be sent. A week or so later, I still had not gotten my DM. Did I crash Mr.Tweet?
As it turned out, the company lost a whole slew of Twitter followers (I, of course, was one of them). I got a friendly note informing me of the debacle and shortly after, finally received my report. When I think of an assistant, I imagine the little Word paper clip or a virtual video guide. Mr.Tweet wasn’t exactly that.
The report, which Mr.Tweet apparently updates every two weeks, is broken down into two categories: followers I am not following, but should be, and influencers beyond my network. Looking over the list, I saw a lot of familiar names: journalists with 10,000 followers that never follow you back, social media experts, tech company founders (including Evan Williams — @ev and @kevinrose) and some prominent food bloggers (@bakingandbooks, @candyblog). Mr.Tweet offers up interesting statistics alongside it’s list of users: Tweets per day, follower to followee ratio, percentages of links and conversations, Web sites and locations. Also, Mr.Tweet points out users that “usually follow back” — eliminating potential feelings of rejection.
I was interested to see what I (@kfleisher) offer to the Twitterverse: I update about 3.2 times/day, am “talkative” (44 percent of my Tweets are conversational) and link generously. Apparently, I usually follow folks back, too (so don’t be shy!).
Generally speaking, I wasn’t very much surprised by most of the recommendations. Sure, Mr.Tweet recommended a folks that are worth checking out, but most of them could hardly be missed in the Twittersphere if you’re already following at least a dozen influencers. Perhaps I’m not spending enough time analyzing my results — my immediate reaction was to follow all 238 people in and out of my influencer network. But, in the end, I followed a few people back and left the list starred in my Gmail. I’m still learning about the etiquette of Twitter and look forward to seeing what other features Mr.Tweet will add to its service, as well as what other services might continue to pop up. At this point, it looks like most of us are still trying to figure out what all of this information means and how it can help us personally and professionally.
iTunes Makes Me A Better Music Chooser. And Thus A Better Person.
It is now 2009 and as such, time to shed old habits and adopt new behaviors. My resolutions include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. Getting (by whatever means necessary) out of the country for two weeks.
2. Stop watching “The Hills” – Yes, “accidentally” staying in the living room when my roommate turns it on, counts as watching it.
3. Cook more often and with greater courage.
4. Listen to and buy more music and expand the breadth of my current library.
This last resolution should be manageable because LaunchSquad is lucky enough to have a resident music blogger, Corey Lewis – @CeeLew on Twitter, on whose wisdom I can rely for great advice on the up-and-coming and oldies-but-goodies, despite a odd (and unyielding) lack of enthusiasm (knowledge) on the genius of Goldfrapp. I am not entrenched in the music scene, (indie vs. mainstream, R&B vs Hip-Hop, tomato vs. tom-Ah-to) and thus, Corey’s blog, The Stranger Dance, is a resource to me, adding to my sonic arsenal which consists of Pandora, the iTunes store and the radio to tell me what music is available to me. Yes, I know it’s pathetic.
Since becoming gainfully employed and graduating from the college lifestyle – and along with it, maybe-not-so-legit means of attaining new music – I’ve started buying all my new music on iTunes, so I was confused when I this article from CNet which discusses Apple’s recent announcement that they’re going DRM-free. This is a huge shift for Apple, since iTunes is notorious for its closed system that service/device-agnostic people like me (who acquire their music from various outlets in addition to iTunes) had to work around. The music provider also set up a new pricing format – 69 cents for older, less popular songs and $1.29 for newer, more-popular hits – as a concession to the record labels whose music they sell.
In the already monstrous debate in the digital music age, with royalty fee policies and lawsuits and those terrible piracy PSAs – it’s a huge mess. I don’t know why you’d want to get involved, and yet look at all the companies that have emerged in the last decade since that foreshadowing Napster debacle (yeah, remember Napster?!): Rhapsody, Amazon Music, mp3.com, eMusic.com, legalsounds.com, musicstacks.com, iLike, etc. My head hurts.
What does this news mean, coming from iTunes, easily the go-to source for new music in purchasing and industry trends (I mean, how many of us bought Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” single after seeing that amazing iTunes ad? – or acquired it from other maybe-not-so-legit places)? Analyst Carl Howe of the Yankee Group says that this news indicates huge changes in the digital music industry: First, it makes DRM-protected music a “losing strategy,” which makes sense since there are so many other ways to get music that can be played on any device and any location. Let’s face it, most music is now available sans DRM. Secondly, subscription services like Rhapsody and Napster that are DRM-focused will need to rethink how they’ll compete. This also changes the game for video media companies and the model they’ve seen from digital music.
So what does this mean for me? I suppose it allows me to better live up to my resolution to expand my musical breadth and taste – with greater ease: At $0.69 cents for older and less popular songs I’m more inclined (if we’re talking fiscal motivation) to give the indie artists a try than I would the newest Kanye album – which is, by the way, in no uncertain (and pitch auto-corrected) terms, a JOKE and likely to cost me more money. So unless mainstream music gets better than its current offerings, I’ll be saving about $0.30 a song. Unfortunately, the catch is, if I’d like to convert all of my iTunes-purchased music so that it’s DRM-free, it’ll cost me that same amount per track.