Brent Sordyl's blog

How to Get Millions of Users

January 26, 2011 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

There are two important factors which determine the first 100 people of your service:
1. How much they love your product2. How many other people on the service they have close relationships with
Back to Foursquare. When Foursquare launched at SXSW two years ago, there were a bit less than 100 people on the service at the time of their launch. Same goes for Gowalla. (100 is a relevant number because it was — I don’t know if it still is — the number of “Provisions” you could have for a beta version of an iPhone application.)

(Full Story: How to Get Millions of Users)

startups, web2.0, web2.0

is it going to rain (.com)?

July 30, 2010 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

goingtorain.com geo-locates your IP address and checks the weather to tell you, in one simple word, whether it’s going to rain (or snow) today.
(Link: is it going to rain (.com)?)

tweet, web2.0

Half an Hour: What Not To Build

December 10, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

Don’t build a destination website
Don’t build a CMS
Don’t build a platform-specific app
Don’t build a Java application
Don’t build a framework
Don’t build an educational game
Don’t build a new standard
Don’t build a new social network
Don’t build a wiki
Don’t build a travel site
(Link: Half an Hour: What Not To Build)

Technology, tweet, web2.0

Swoopo – Play to lose | The Economist

December 5, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

What makes this procedure so devilish is that while bidders are looking at what seem to be amazing bargains, the Web site is raking in the money. Because Swoopo collects 60 cents for each penny bid, its revenue is the selling price multiplied by 60. This means that if a computer you covet sells for $100, seemingly a bargain, Swoopo collects $6,000 in revenue, a very juicy profit.

Swoopo has even sold cash using this format — specifically, checks for $1,000. My colleague Emir Kamenica and I looked at 26 such auctions we found in a data set posted on the Swoopo Web site. For each of these, the average revenue to Swoopo was $2,452. Winning bidders also did well: Of the winners, all but two made money even after accounting for the cost of their bids, with an average profit of $658. Still, the important point to remember is that, collectively, bidders are losing money. Only the lucky last bidder is a winner.
(Link: Swoopo – Play to lose | The Economist)

web2.0

Moving Toward Web 2.0 in K-12 Education

September 11, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

What are, then, the aspects of Web 2.0 that translate into achieving educational goals? Let me suggest the following list of educational benefits of Web 2.0, which I hesitate to claim as exhaustive, but which I hope will help the discussion.

Engagement.
Authenticity.
Participation.
Openness and Access to Information.
Collaboration.
Creativity.
Passionate Interest and Personal Expression.
Discussion.
Asynchronous Contribution.
Proactivity.
Critical Thinking.
(Link: Moving Toward Web 2.0 in K-12 Education)

e-learning, Education, tweet, web2.0

Acrobat.com Tables – Adobe Labs

August 13, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

With Acrobat.com Tables, you can:

* Easily work with others on the same table at the same time. With simultaneous editing, no one is locked out of the table while others are making changes.
* Simplify collaboration. No need to combine multiple versions, e-mail spreadsheets back and forth, or worry about version control, because everyone has access to the latest information, online, all the time.
* Personalize the display of shared data. Use private views to display the information that is important to you, without affecting others who may be viewing or working with the same table.
* Access your data and information from anywhere. Your table is always available online so you and your team can share a data set and add to it regardless of where you are located.
(Link: Acrobat.com Tables – Adobe Labs)

excel, spreadsheet, web2.0

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Fast Company

August 11, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

“The Internet disrupts any industry whose core product can be reduced to ones and zeros,” says Jose Ferreira, founder and CEO of education startup Knewton.
(Link: How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Fast Company)

e-learning, Education, web2.0

Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On: O'Reilly Conferences

June 28, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

It’s easy to forget that only 15 years ago, email was as fragmented as social networking is today, with hundreds of incompatible email systems joined by fragile and congested gateways. One of those systems – internet RFC 822 email – became the gold standard for interchange.

We expect to see similar standardization in key internet utilities and subsystems. Vendors who are competing with a winner-takes-all mindset would be advised to join together to enable systems built from the best-of-breed data subsystems of cooperating companies.
(Link: Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On: O’Reilly Conferences)

oreilly, web2.0

Revizr – Innovative Document Collaboration

June 24, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

What Revizr does for you:
* Keeps all your revisers working together on the same copy of the document, with updates shared live
* Turns reviser edits into what looks like hand-drawn markup (but it’s usable)
* Gives you a complete history of your document including who suggested what, when
* Lets you revise documents with rich text, images, and formatting
(Link: Revizr – Innovative Document Collaboration)

collaboration, documents, web2.0

collaboration

1000 Markets is an Etsy rival with backing from PayPal founders

May 17, 2009 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

Etsy, the most direct rival, claims more than 250,000 sellers who last year sold $87.5 million worth of products through the site. There are more than 3.6 million products currently listed on Etsy, with a search for silver jewelry returning more than 300,000 results.
(Link: 1000 Markets is an Etsy rival with backing from PayPal founders)