vedovini.net » marketing http://vedovini.net Building software since 1985 Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:48:46 +0000 en hourly 1 Experiencing viral growthhttp://vedovini.net/2010/01/experiencing-viral-growth/ http://vedovini.net/2010/01/experiencing-viral-growth/#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:15:20 +0000 Claude http://vedovini.net/?p=507 This is something to hear and talk about it but this is something totally different to experience it, it’s thrilling, even on modest scales.

Since my LibraryThing application for Facebook is out it has clearly had a viral growth curve. So far there are only 435 users and every week I am looking for an inflection of this tendency. I know there will be one because there is a limited number of LibraryThing users on Facebook. My goal, right now, is to attract as many of them as possible on this application.

The next step will be to attract Facebook users to LibraryThing. But I know that for this I will need help from Tim Spalding and the LibraryThing team. I have always been grateful for their work but I must admit that I have been quite disappointed recently as I was trying to contact them and they constantly ignored me.

I am also thinking about open-sourcing the application, because I think it is both a good use case for people who are developing Python/Django applications on Google AppEngine and those who are developing for the Facebook platform. I still have to choose a license but the GNU Affero General Public License seems like a good match.

Anyway, if you love books, got plenty of them and want to share your readings, do not forget to give LibraryThing a try and once your are convinced, join the Facebook application, with this application you can:

  • Add a tab and a box to your profile, listing your most recent books
  • Choose the number of books to display in your profile tab
  • Choose whether you want to display them with covers only or as a list which will include your ratings and reviews
  • If you grant the application the right to publish to your stream it will publish books you add to LibraryThing on your wall
  • It will also publish reviews as you write them on LibraryThing

You can also:

  • Browse your Facebook friend’s books
  • Find books on the search page
  • Share a book you like or comment on it (those are Facebook only features and will not appear in LibraryThing)
  • Add a book to your LibraryThing collection with a single click

Enjoy :)

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]]> http://vedovini.net/2010/01/experiencing-viral-growth/feed/ 1 My Fontself is better than your fonthttp://vedovini.net/2009/10/my-fontself-is-better-than-your-font/ http://vedovini.net/2009/10/my-fontself-is-better-than-your-font/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:24:26 +0000 Claude http://vedovini.net/?p=419 fontselfFor those of you who were at the Lift conference 2008 you might remember of Fontself. Franz Hoffman and Marc Escher, the two founders of the company, were there to offer everyone the opportunity to fill in a grid with their own hand writing, scan it, and use it on the Lift website.

Today, the Fontself team has grown and is celebrating their first release of a product. Together with Netlog, the european online social portal, they are now giving the opportunity to the Netlog community members to send messages, post blog entries or post comments using personalized character fonts.

Congratulation to them, they have been working long and hard for their ideas to come out and I am proud I helped them make their dream come true.

And this also gives me some advantages, like being able to use a Fontself font on my own blog and give you a glimpse at what the future of web fonts might be!

Among other things, you will appreciate the ability to select, copy and paste the text :P

For now, the feature is only available to the french version of the platform but there is no doubt that it will rapidly extend to the rest of the 35 million Netlog members throughout Europe and that the Fontself team will continue to develop their technology and enhance the web.

If you want to stay informed about Fontself and their technology you can either subscribe to their newsletter, become a friend of their Netlog page, follow them on twitter or keep following this blog…

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]]> http://vedovini.net/2009/10/my-fontself-is-better-than-your-font/feed/ 2 Jus d’Orange ou citron pressé?http://vedovini.net/2009/05/jus-dorange-ou-citron-presse/ http://vedovini.net/2009/05/jus-dorange-ou-citron-presse/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 21:28:49 +0000 Claude http://vedovini.net/?p=323 Hier matin je reçois un appel d’un opérateur d’Orange au sujet de mon abonnement de téléphonie mobile. Je n’ai rien demandé et en plus je suis à Londres (donc ça va me coûter un bras en roaming) mais je reste poli.

La personne, très aimable, me propose de changer mon abonnement (Optima) pour prendre Maxima et me vante les mérites de la tarification, des SMS gratuits, etc.

Problème! Maxima c’est 89 CHF par mois, mais avec mon abonnement actuel je dépasse rarement les 90 CHF. J’en informe donc mon interlocuteur qui, visiblement gêné, me répond qu’il n’a pas accès à mon historique de facturation. Je le remercie donc poliment et mets fin à la conversation.

Non seulement c’est pénible de recevoir des appels non sollicités mais en plus, quand le niveau du marketing tombe aussi bas, on frise le désespoir!

Mon rêve ce serait qu’un jour on m’appelle pour me dire: “Monsieur, nous avons recalculé vos factures des derniers six mois avec notre nouvelle tarification et vous auriez pu économiser 100 CHF. D’ailleurs, si vous changez dès maintenant, nous vous appliquerons ce nouveau tarif rétroactivement”.

Ils devraient lire Seth Godin chez Orange…

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]]> http://vedovini.net/2009/05/jus-dorange-ou-citron-presse/feed/ 3 Does Google read this blog?http://vedovini.net/2009/04/does-google-read-this-blog/ http://vedovini.net/2009/04/does-google-read-this-blog/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:03:25 +0000 Claude http://vedovini.net/?p=316 Search for "me" on Google

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]]> http://vedovini.net/2009/04/does-google-read-this-blog/feed/ 0 Just Google me!http://vedovini.net/2009/04/just-google-me/ http://vedovini.net/2009/04/just-google-me/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:36:10 +0000 Claude http://vedovini.net/?p=307 Today, Seth Godin has, once again, a good point about brand marketing.

I noticed it myself on this blog as most of the Google searches that end on this blog use the keyword “vedovini”. To the point that next time I make business cards, instead of the usual e-mail and phone number I think I will just print “Just Google me!” under my name.

By the way, happy easter to everyone :)

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]]> http://vedovini.net/2009/04/just-google-me/feed/ 0 vedovini.net is on Facebookhttp://vedovini.net/2009/03/vedovininet-is-on-facebook/ http://vedovini.net/2009/03/vedovininet-is-on-facebook/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:14:43 +0000 Claude http://vedovini.net/?p=263 As you might have noticed already, Facebook as been on vedovini.net since last December. To this purpose I have been using the Sociable! fbConnect plugin for WordPress that enables visitors to login using their Facebook credentials and later comment using their Facebook identity and feature those comments on their Facebook stream.

However, I wanted a deeper integration between this blog and my Facebook profile. Here is what I have done.

In the process of installing the fbConnect plugin you have to create a Facebook application and, among other things, Facebook applications feature a canvas page and an application tab. The canvas page is the main application page, the tab can be added to any user’s or page’s profiles.

To setup the canvas page you specify an URL that will either serve FBML (Facebook markup) or pure HTML. In the latter case the page is displayed in an IFRAME.

Initially, I used the IFRAME version to display the home page but I found awkward to have my blog design mixed with the Facebook design. Additionally this technique cannot be used for tabs, that only support FBML.

Finally, I crafted special pages on this blog that serves only FBML with a special Facebook styling extracted from Foxinni’s Facebook WordPress Theme. The resulting canvas page can bee seen here and the corresponding profile tab is now featured on my own Facebook profile, here (you may not be able to see this one because of Facebook privacy control so I inserted a screenshot below).

If this is getting enough interest I might package it as a WordPress plugin. Leave a comment if you are interested or if you have additional ideas.

UPDATE (2010-03-13): This is now a WordPress plugin, see my plugins page.

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]]> http://vedovini.net/2009/03/vedovininet-is-on-facebook/feed/ 3 Non-stop 24hhttp://vedovini.net/2007/01/non-stop-24h/ http://vedovini.net/2007/01/non-stop-24h/#comments Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:18:00 +0000 Claude http://www.vedovini.net/wordpress/?p=17 Lu ce matin sur ma bombe de déodorant habituel: Non-stop 24h

Ca veut dire que les autres s’interrompent au milieu de la journée et tu sens la sueur pendant quelques heures avant que l’effet ne reprenne?

Le marketing c’est vraiment un beau métier :)

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