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Yesterday was the launch of our pet project 99Tribes. 99Tribes is a discovery engine for people on Twitter.
Some background first.
Search vs Discovery
There is a big debate about what’s the big deal about discovery when we have search engines that do the job.Here is a quick explanation. We always search within the circle of of our awareness. If we are not aware of something, it’s hard to type those in the search boxes. Try it – try to search for something that you are not aware of. If it feels odd, it is!
However, there may be “gems” present outside of our circle of awareness but within the “circle of possibility” – that’s the discovery zone. That’s where 99Tribes thrives – finding people that you might not have found otherwise. And, if these people share multiple interests with you, then we have the making of the ultimate tribe on Twitter.
Making of an ultimate tribe
We bond with people that share our interests. A club or an association is formed just by matching one interest that people share. A movie club may bring people together that share movies as their passion. A book club may bring together people that love books. A bicycling club may bring together people that like to go cycling. However, some people that love movies may also love to read and also go on cycling. It’s hard to create a movie-book-bicycling club in a town.
But on Twitter, you can create a tribe however you want – in fact, you can do that without even asking people to join. How? If you can find people that match all these interests, you can follow them and then start a conversation. Until they follow back, it will be sort of one-sided but soon people will follow back and you then create an ultimate tribe.
The more matches you have with your interests, the stronger the bond.
Join in:
At the outset, 99Tribes looks like “another” twitter people directory. There are many out there and we really don’t need another one.
The easiest way to see the difference is to experience it.
You can start by typing whatever you are interested in – in the search box.
The search results page will display a set of users that match that interest. Until this time, the system behaves like any other search engine. Right on that search results page, you will notice that there are set of dynamic filters that show up on the left column. Dynamic is the keyword here. These keywords are built per search – and they are arranged in descending order of volume. Meaning the first filter on the column will have more matches than the filter down below.
You can click on one of the filters and drill down deeper to find people that match multiple interests. Every time, you click on a filter, the filter list gets updated to reflect the new search results. You can keep drilling down deeper until you run out of all filters.
You can experience the power of “discovery” with every search with the dynamic filters.
99Tribes is brought to you by ActiveGarage and powered by Rawsugar (some of you might remember the name) that has three patents on discovery. We are excited about it and hope you will be excited too.
Go ahead and please try us out and better yet, if you are on Twitter add yourself and be “discoverable.”
Note: This was originally published in an other website called THINKsulting which I am phasing out.
Questionfrom HL:
I have a potential project from a prospect. I think there are other people who have the same problem. Can we build a product in parallel as we are delivering the project?
My take:
It is tempting to attempt going after the “two birds in one stone” model. Get the customer to pay for the project but actually build a product out of this rather than just delivering the project. In reality, it’s way more complex than the way it appears on paper.
Delivering a project and building a product are VERY different. The team that is required to deliver the project will usually be a sub-set of the team that is required to conceptualize, build, market and build the product. If you don’t take care, you will end up with a sub-optimal product with an unhappy customer – meaning you will neither have the product nor the customer.
More than anything, a soul searching question will be:Is “having the project” the reason why I want to build a company or is it because I am passionate about this space?
If it is the former, chances are you are going in the wrong path.
Imagine if one of your friend came to you and said that he had a story and it goes something like this:
Jake, a paraplegic war veteran takes up an interesting assignment in a distant planet called Pandora. The planet is inhabited by a humanoid race called Na’vi which have their own culture and language. The members of the race do things very differently from humans. They don’t have planes there but they ride on big birds. Jake infiltrates the race and discovers that he is setup on a mission that will hurt the members of this race because of the greed of a human being called Parker Selfridge….
The story goes on but by this time you would have been fed up and walked away dismissing that this will go nowhere.
Those of you who have seen Avatar, would have identified the plot line by now. However, improbable it might seem, the story was gripping and when you were watching the movie, most of you would have set aside all the logic and reasoning and enjoyed the movie in full. Avatar grossed more than a billion dollars and still going strong.
I LOVED the movie and the storytelling by James Cameron.
Being a student of Robert McKee, I understand how this works ( OK, Not completely as I still have a long way to go. ) The keyword is “permission.” Let me explain. Before anything, you give “permission” to the storyteller to take you to the new world, in this case “Pandora” and learn about the tribe there. You learn about their lifestyle and sort of “believe” that such a place could exist and while you are getting familiar with the place, a “conflict” ( core problem or issue ) is introduced and the hero (in this case Jake ) is set on a mission – to fight for the cause of the tribe against the greedy establishment. By this time, you have resigned to the fact that “Pandora” is a possibility and you focus your attention on Jake and how he will resolve that conflict. You are now officially “in” the movie.
As professionals, we are telling stories and enrolling people into “our” world. “Our” world may be alien to some of our prospects and customers and partners. But they need to give us the “permission” to take them to “our” world before they follow along our story. Without that, we have lost the battle even before we begin.
The question is:
What are you doing to “earn” that permission so that you can tell your stories?
During my last trip to India I spoke at two events. In one of the events, someone complained that a bestselling author was not wiling to give thirty minutes of her time to discuss a particular issue. His point was that it was just thirty minutes – nothing much.
We had a healthy debate about why it was “just thirty minutes” for him but a series of “just thirty minutes” for the bestselling author. He is not the only person who would have requested “just thirty minutes” from this author and if she accepted all such requests she wouldn’t have time to get anything done on her end.
Honestly, I told him that if he had made a case as to why spending thirty minutes with him is an “opportunity” for the bestselling author there was a good chance that he would have got more than thirty minutes. And, if he can’t be an “opportunity” for her right now, he will be an “opportunity cost” for her.
Opportunities are taken and opportunity costs are shunned typically.
Two other people have written about “just thirty minutes” in a different context. Here they are:
First, I have to share a personal story to set the context.
This is the “behind the scenes” story of how a book series and now a book imprint was created over a dinner with a long-time friend. A friend who I respect a lot.
If I look at the entire last year (2009) and reflect on all the events that I attended and decide to pick on one event that was game-changing, it would be a talk by Charlie Rose at the Flint Center.
To be brutally honest, it was not the talk but the dinner I had with my long-time friend Mitchell Levy before the talk.
So, it was really the “pre-event meeting” that was game changing.
For the ten or so years I have known Mitchell, I don’t remember a conversation that was less than insightful. I always walk away with one or two things that makes me think and reflect and become better in one way or the other.
So, I was not expecting anything less. We talked about a number of things and over that time, I shared about my crazy idea – a book that I had written on Twitter (not about it but using it). The book was called THINKtweet. I shared with him the genesis of the idea and why the format would be increasingly relevant in the future.
For those interested, here is a quick video that provides a sneak-peek into the genesis of this project ( in less than ten minutes.)
Mitchell patiently heard me and by the end of the meeting, we had a plan to publish THINKtweet. We alao agreed that we should partner on this book series and grow it beyond this first book.
Over the next few weeks, my friends at Stresslimitdesign helped us design and package the book. Long story short – the book was published on June 1, 2009.
Over the next few months, we got serious interest from MANY people to publish their work in this format. The general consensus was that these were books designed for the A.D.D. generation.
A couple of months ago, my super-smart friend Karen Kang helped us brainstorm the branding for the series. Over the next few days, we renamed the series to THINKaha ( our books are designed to give at least a dozen “Aha Moments” in less than 30 minutes ) and also finalized a tag line which is:
As of today, we have close to a dozen books in print and more coming. You can see the entire series here:
While this story was evolving, Mitchell and I realized that we had not finalized our business arrangement. I still remember that day when the arrangement was finalized. It was in a coffee shop (Roasted Coffee Bean) in Cupertino. It was at the end of a brainstorming meeting and we were just getting ready to leave. While heading back to our respective cars, we finalized the terms and the general roles we will play. It must have taken a total of two minutes to “negotiate” the business arrangement.
In essence, coming up with a “No Brainer” arrangement was a no-brainer for us.
Why?
The simple reason is that we both trusted each other completely. Trusted that both of us will look out for each other more than we look out for ourselves.
Mind you, that this “No Brainer” mindset didn’t develop overnight. It was the result of a long friendship built over a decade.
That philosophy of creating “No-brainers for the future” has saved me a ton of time, energy and heartache over the years.
In this wonderful video by Jeff Bezos about why Amazon acquired Zappos, Jeff shares four important lessons. The short talk is peppered with stories from the early Amazon days. This is a must-see video for all entrepreneurs and want-to-be entrepreneurs.
If you don’t have 9 minutes to spend on this one, here is a quick summary of the four lessons that Jeff shares:
1. Obsess over customers: We pay attention to our competition but that’s not where we put our energy. We truly obsess
2. Invent: Really important to invent. Any time we have a problem we don’t have “either/or” thinking. We try to invent where we try to have both. We need to invent on their behalf. We also need to listen to our customers.
3. Think Long-term: It is actually much rare than you think. Most of the initiatives we take may actually to take 5-7 years to pay any dividends for us. It may pay dividends to our customers immediately but our shareholders may have to wait a long time to see the returns. It is a huge competitive advantage to think long-term.
4. It’s Always Day 1: There’s always more invention in the future, always more customer innovation and new ways to innovate over customers.
For those of you who are willing to make that investment, please click Play below and be ready to be thrilled.
Have a great Thursday!
Hat Tip: Mike Stelzner (Twitter: @Mike_Stelzner) for pointing the video. Thanks Mike.
All of us get MANY new ideas everyday. Majority of these ideas will never see the light of the day.They die in our minds. But, some ideas we choose to pursue. How do we determine which ones to kill and which ones to pursue? It’s a million dollar question, really.
Here is one model to think about what makes you pursue some ideas and what makes you abandon most of them. At each stage, there are a few attributes that become VERY important – so I have chosen to include a short note with each of the attributes in various stages.
So, here is that simple model:
1.Think: This is where you are bouncing off many ideas and determining which ones to pick
The focus attributes in this stage are:
Curiosity: Curiosity moves you from the sidelines right into the arena. It’s an entry ticket to the playing field. Without curiosity, you are a mere spectator.
Connection: You may be curious about many things but not all of them you will connect with so much that you want to spend your time, energy, money and other resources to pursue them. For example, you might think of a new kind of crib or a baby stroller but you just may not connect with the idea enough to do anything about that brilliant idea.
Conviction: You make a deeper connection when you feel it in your gut. That’s when conviction comes in. You just know that this is something that you want to make it happen.
2. Tinker: This is where you have zeroed in on one or two ideas to pursue. You are now mobilizing the resources to pursue those ideas.
The focus attributes in this stage are:
Challenge: You know it takes time, energy, money and other resources to make this work. You know it’s not going to be easy. You know that the odds are stacked up against you. You know that you may not get all the support to make this work. Yes, you know lots of things might go wrong and still, you are willing to face the challenge and pursue that idea.
Courage: You are bold enough to take the first step – this is where the rubber meets the road.
Capacity: You are able to convince enough people to build the capacity now and in the future to make this idea a reality.
3. Take Off: This is where you are off to the races with the chosen ideas.
The focus attributes in this stage are:
Creativity: Things won’t happen the way you planned out. That happens only in the movies. In real life, it’s all above “improv” – real-time re-adjustments and adaptations. You have the creativity (within yourself or within the team that you have put together) to keep the momentum going.
Change: You are not only for change but you look forward to it. You welcome it. Change is the name of the game for any idea to go from a concept to reality and you have to be able to embrace it with grace.
Commitment: You are committed to the see this through and it shows up everyday in your words and actions.
I wish you the very best with those ideas that you plan to pursue and make them a reality!
At the outset, 99Tribes looks like “another” twitter people directory. There are many out there and we really don’t need another one.
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