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Re: 10 Dirty Little Web Development Tricks › Yongfook | Web Producer and Consultant based in Tokyo

yongfook — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:38:53 -0000

excellent advice!

Re: 5 Interesting Facts About the Internet in China

yongfook — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:19:02 -0000

The way I see it though, is boutique services like Digg and Tumblr are
very western-centric services anyway. I doubt the average Joe on the
street in China cares whether they have access to these services or
not (they aren't even localised in Chinese). So that leaves a
frustrated minority of foreigners - like me - without access, but we
are a minority of people who are savvy enough to know how to get
around the GFW, I think. Anecdotally, most foreigners I've spoken to
in China know how to fumble their way round the filters even if they
are not web geeks like me.

So in a nutshell, I don't even see why services like the above are
banned in the first place. China is protecting people who don't care
about it, and the people who it affects know how to get around it
anyway.

Google search, images, news etc is a different kettle of fish though.
That's a company that has put money into China, employs Chinese
people, provides their products in the local language and continually
develops them, but is being shuttered out whilst their local
competitors enjoy seemingly fewer restrictions.

There's a big hoo-haa right now about US trade protectionism with the
tyre industry - the US is levying import duties on all Chinese tyres
to protect US tyre manufacturers and China is pretty angry about it.
Pot kettle black.

Re: 5 Interesting Facts About the Internet in China

yongfook — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:47:26 -0000

I've actually never had a problem with gmail in China, but I have noticed google search (particularly image search) being flaky at times.

Re: Superior Golden Bucket

yongfook — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:31:29 -0000

it's lovely and cheap... but I do find that it tastes a bit samey after a while.

Re: Superior Golden Bucket

yongfook — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:34:10 -0000

true but it would be so worth it. that stuff is embarrassingly tasty...

Re: 4 Benefits of Blogging for Students - A yellowhat keeps my brain warm :)

andrewkumar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:31:48 -0000

Who is the blog stalker now...?

NOTE: This comment is waiting for your approval. You may respond in the body

Re: 4 Benefits of Blogging for Students - A yellowhat keeps my brain warm :)

andrewkumar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:27:59 -0000

Who is the blog stalker now...?

Re: A Quick Note on iPhone in Japan (or iPhone vs. Softbank)

lancesh — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:59:02 -0000

Good points swint! Yes, you may be right that only using search to spot trends may be faulty for a a lot of reasons. That's also true that people may have enough info elsewhere on Softbank. But they can certainly get info on iPhone at the same place (ie. go to a Softbank shop). I think my point is that people search for things when they are new and they want to know more about them. And in this case, they are more interested in iPhone than the Softbank, the company providing the service. What this seems to say is that in this case the product brand speaks to people more than the company brand. Actually, almost the exact same trend can be seen when I compared iPhone to Apple in Japan: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=iPhone...

Thanks for your thoughts, swint!

Re: The Japanese – Wannabe Entrepreneurs

lancesh — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:25:31 -0000

Hi again Gerry.

That's good to know my MBA will be valued back in the US when I head home in the future. I agree with you about working for an international corp here to leverage my background and MBA. I'm actually currently at Amway Japan and am lucky to have a few interesting projects in the pipeline. Thanks for again for all your advice. You must make a good coach!

Lance

Re: The Japanese – Wannabe Entrepreneurs

lancesh — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:51:30 -0000

Hi Gerry.

I appreciate your viewpoint on Silicon Valley vs. Japan. I suppose the main difference is the size of the payoff if one succeeds as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. The amount of VC money appears to be proportional to the payoff as well - I've heard $2M being on the high side here, although I'm not an expert.

Thanks for the advice on the MBA blog, that's a good idea. Do you get a sense that having an MBA means anything to employers in Silicon Valley these days? I considering returning to the Bay Area in a couple of years and wondering about the value of the degree.

Best,
Lance

Re: Grow an Audience on Twitter with Peashoot

yongfook — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:10:17 -0000

Jud,

To address your points:

1) Manual controls for this will be implemented, but just so you know
there are already limits in place - Peashoot would never follow 500
people in an hour. The maximum number of people who will be
auto-followed in a day is much less than that and is IMO a good
balance between feeling organic and being generous enough to help grow
your stats.

2) That's actually something I would steer clear of, automation-wise.
Twitter calls that process "churning" and it's kind of frowned upon.
You risk your Twitter account being suspended if you indulge in a lot
of churning (i.e. if you automate the unfollow process).

Follow-back metrics are a great idea - I'm all for that. Fits nicely
into the theme of Peashoot too, as an analytics tool.

As for Tweet scheduling, yes that's on the roadmap too :)

Cheers
Jon

Re: Grow an Audience on Twitter with Peashoot

yongfook — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:15:16 -0000

Thanks! It's something I've wanted to build in for a while now and I
think it really makes Peashoot more attractive overall - especially to
companies who are maybe just starting out on Twitter. For them the
prospect of measuring ROI is nice and all, but they need an audience
to market to before they can do that meaningfully, and now Peashoot
helps them with that too :)

Re: Grow an Audience on Twitter with Peashoot

yongfook — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:07:18 -0000

Right now you can't use multiple accounts simultaneously. However,
you're not tied to the same twitter account for the duration of your
subscription to Peashoot - you can keep changing the connected twitter
account, if you wish.

Re: Improving User Retention with Achievements

yongfook — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:23:47 -0000

awesome - it's very cool to hear about this sort of thing implemented out in the wild.

Re: Improving User Retention with Achievements

yongfook — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:22:27 -0000

great example - I like the idea of "negative" badges :)

Re: Clearing Something Up

yongfook — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:19:05 -0000

In the days of Old Media you'd write a letter into the editor and gamble on being heard in a future publication (when no one will remember what the fuss was about anyway).

The benefit in this generation is that Fred has his own platform to clarify things. Which keeps everything balanced and open... but also drives traffic back to offending site... effectively encouraging bad journalism... meaning we're all part of the problem... *unplugs computer and goes to live in a straw hut by the beach*

Re: Seth Godin’s Twitter Prediction from 1999

yongfook — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:00:00 -0000

I think with a new concept such as Twitter, that's understandable. Anecdotal example - I was one of those "single post twitters" for about a year after I signed up. It took a whole year for me to revisit the service and "get it", and now I'm a fiercely loyal user.

It's that same fierce loyalty that is the interesting value proposition for marketers. The more valuable metrics are not whether the market has critical mass or not, it's whether the market has relevant prospects (for technology companies marketing to a huge volume of so-called "early adopters", I'd argue it has high relevance) and how much it costs to use - the cost in terms of hard costs and barrier to entry are very low for companies using Twitter. Compare it to email where the cost of delivery is high as well as having someone who can produce nicely formatted emails that look right across all email clients.

I wouldn't say penetration is that low either - Twitter has surpassed Digg in terms of traffic, usually lauded as one of the most high traffic information sources on the web: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cnn.com+digg.com+...

Re: 8apps.com is now closed

yongfook — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:48:11 -0000

I'm aware how much of a big deal they are - did my presentation
belittle them? Didn't intend to. They are a big, old company -
formed pre-WWII etc - and I just wanted to show that even they get in
on the mascot thing.

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:40 AM,

Re: 8apps.com is now closed

yongfook — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:31:19 -0000

thanks! keep us updated if you create a mascot :)

Re: 8apps.com is now closed

yongfook — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:30:29 -0000

yep for Nova the bunny was crucial to their branding and grabbing mindshare. probably one of the few smart things they did!

Re: 8apps.com is now closed

yongfook — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:29:16 -0000

As long as you can create a mascot that resonates with your audience, I only see positive effects. Mozilla is an interesting example - they are a foreign company and have a Japan-specific mascot called Foxkeh:

http://www.foxkeh.com/

Re: 8apps.com is now closed

yongfook — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:40:18 -0000

Actually there's a potentially really interesting discussion to be had
on this topic.

Honestly, the 21 day trial is an arbitrary number - it sounded right
and it's what I'm starting with. I'll be measuring to see if this is
the most appropriate or not. I've been asking other SaaS app founders
why they chose their trial days amount and there's never a
one-size-fits-all answer. It's the type of decision that is going to
be influenced by the type of app you have and also whatever business
parameters you have (which is where the interesting discussion is to
be had). For me, I'm admittedly new to this, so I'm going to see how
the 21 day trial pans out - and adjust accordingly if necessary.

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:33 AM,

Re: 8apps.com is now closed

yongfook — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:22:13 -0000

I think it goes without saying that you use it where appropriate.

Not all clients or products need a personality that can be manifested
into a smiley mascot. Clients are a tough sell on this kind of stuff
anyway - don't waste your energy and save the experimental / fun
things for your own projects :)

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:10 AM,

Re: Peashoot Launched

yongfook — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:59:05 -0000

there was some pretty intelligent discussion about this over at
news.ycombinator - they didn't see it as copying.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=616718

when there's a good solution to a display problem - information
architecture-wise - I think you'll do your sales more harm than good
by trying to "design yourself" towards individuality. 37signals'
method of price display is really good at what it does.

it would be like saying all those sites out there that use a grid
format to display different types of lifestream data are copying my
Sweetcron Boxy theme. they aren't - that's just a good way to show
the information.

Ultimately, the apps and target market are completely different, so I
don't see the harm. I absolutely admit the pricing plan layout is a
"homage" :)

That said, Peashoot is being upgraded to v1.1 over the weekend and
with that will come a homepage tweak - the price plans design will get
a tweak too. I doubt I will stray too far from the side-by-side boxes
format though, it just makes too much sense to me as a layout.

Re: Peashoot Launched

yongfook — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:44:09 -0000

on a campaign report there is a "Delete Campaign" link at the very
bottom of the page - it's in red. Let me know if you have any other
problems!

Jon