Today many people are protesting the SOPA and Protect IP Act legislation that threatens the internet. This threat is real, as this legislation breaks some fundamental things about how the internet works. If you are interested in the technical details and arguments against this legislation, many have written about them. Here’s an interview with my friend Elliot Noss on CBC Radio talking about why his business has “gone dark” today.

This is a big issue, so I’m going to share some of my thoughts on why the internet is so important.

The Internet Is Made of People

From my early days on “Usenet”, what drew me was real people and their ideas. Usenet was a big distributed forum for people to talk about subjects ranging from computers (comp.sys.sgi) to rock climbing (rec.climbing) the game of go (rec.games.go). People on computers all over the world, connected on the internet and with dial-up UUCP connections, would talk about these topics, and it fascinated me. There were THOUSANDS of people out there!

Fast-forward to the early-90′s and this new thing called “The World-Wide Web” came along. I was at SGI when I first saw it, on an Irix machine running a browser built by some guys at a university. The Web quickly grew so big that whole businesses were created just to index it all.

The internet grew all sorts of businesses, many of them crazy. But for me, it was still about people. When I came to Silicon Valley many years ago, I knew I was going to be surrounded by brilliant people. Now, with the internet I can find them wherever they are… no matter where I am — The people AND their ideas.

The Internet is Made of Ideas

My internet wanderings have always followed my interests. I found people out there talking about topics that interested me. It was wonderful! But no group of people ever stays “on topic”, so over time you get to know people and understand their ideas about the world. Exposure to new and different ideas makes your world bigger and richer.

My wife an I are aficionados of “Podcasts”. They are really just radio or TV shows, but packaged for the internet. But you don’t just watch what’s on, like we did back when there were just three channels on the TV. You get to pick! We love to listen to smart people talk about interesting ideas, so we listen to TEDTalks. I like computers and tech, so I listen to shows from the TWiT network and 5by5, and we both love good story telling, so we listen to The Moth and This American Life.

All over the world there are people with something to say. More than any other invention, the internet allows people with ideas to be heard; to spread their ideas. I believe this will make the world a better place.

Because…

The Internet is What We Make it

What we do, say, and look at on the internet makes it become what it will be.

Let’s use Google Search as an example. Google’s original search algorithms considered page linking structure as an indicator of value and intent. It was a way of measuring what people thought and what they valued. Google’s PageRank algorithm also considered that a link from a page with a high PageRank conveyed more PageRank forward to the linked page.

a page can have a high PageRank if there are many pages that point to it, or if there are some pages that point to it and have a high PageRank

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html – Brin & Page,

In the intervening years, the Google algorithms have been improved and changed. Many of the changes are intended to reduce the influence of certain cynical forms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that seek to raise search listings artificially. Notably, the Google Panda update use machine learning algorithms to detect non-useful sites and reduce their search ranking.

At its best, SEO is about optimizing websites so that they are easy for search engines like Google to catalog and rank, and so that they earn the strong ranking and visibility they deserve. But there is a lot of SEO that is really just tricks to try to get attention. When the search engines fight back, the internet gets better. They all try. And when people choose quality content over link farms, they can succeed.

Quality content comes from real people. Whether they are making a funny cat video or writing an important essay, real people are behind the best on the internet.

The  Internet is Important, But…

What is really important is US. You and Me. The ideas we share, the things that make us laugh, cry, and think. For this, the internet is just a medium. But it’s a medium that connects us throughout the world in a new way, spreading ideas and culture and making the world a better place. (Yes, that’s a long video, but Joi’s talk is worth every minute.)

The internet is under attack by corporations that are trying to protect their failing business models. They want you to believe that the internet is a problem to be fixed. Don’t believe them.

The internet is for making people heard, for allowing us to connect to one another. Don’t let the non-people take that away from us.

It starts with Yahoo! Facebook allows exporting of contacts to Yahoo!, reportedly through a lucrative arrangement. You will need a Yahoo Mail account, but they are free: ? http://www.yahoo.com/ – and click “Signup” if you don’t already have an account.

in your Yahoo mail, there is a Contacts selector in the left column. it looks like this:

Once you have selected Contacts,  Select Tools -> Import, as shown:

You will get a dialogue like the one shown below. Select Facebook:

Facebook will ask you to confirm that you want to share contacts with Yahoo!, click “Okay”.

Yahoo! will report success, including the number of contacts imported.

Now you export the contacts, using a very similar method. This time, select Tools -> Export, as shown.

Choose an export format in the dialogue shown below. Yahoo! CSV works best for importing to Google.

Yahoo! checks to see that you are a real person by asking you to transcribe some mashed up letters:

Once the export is complete, open and log into Gmail, select Contacts, and then More Actions -> Export. You will get an “Import contacts dialogue like the one below.

Choose the file, and I recommend also adding these to a special group at the same time, which will help you see them all. Google seems to do a pretty good job of merging duplicates, but having them in a special group will help you check and fix any problems. (I had no problems from my import.)

Congratulations! Your Facebook friends’ contact info are now all in your Gmail!

Joe Andrieu is showing his brilliant and simple tool “I Shared What?!?”. Login at http://isharedwhat.com/ and see what gets shared with apps on Facebook when you allow them access to your account. Just go through the signup and permission process as with any faceook app, and then use the tabs on the right side to see all the information you’ve shared. You can even change the sharing permissions and explore the changes.

Here’s what it looks like… (I chopped off all the juicy stuff below. Go look at your own!)

Great quote from Jeff Bezos on the connection between great products and meaning:

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

Excerpt from: Jeff Bezos’s mission: Compelling small publishers to think big – Fortune Tech

The Enthusiasm you need is really a deep love for what you’re doing. This is the kind of enthusiasm that gets you up early full of energy and ideas.  A quote from Siegler’s TechCrunch piece:

… When co-founder Biz Stone says he thinks Twitter can change the world, it may sound crazy, but it’s not, because he believes it.

[From The Importance Of Enthusiasm In Any Product]

This kind of Enthusiasm goes beyond just the rush of being part of something successful. It’s a belief in something that’s not only bigger than you, its bigger than your product or even your company. The best kind of Enthusiasm comes when you truly believe that what are doing matters.

In the most stark form, the wrong kind of enthusiasm is the kind that comes only when you are growing and successful. This celebratory enthusiasm is cheap. It will not focus your effort on making great products, on working diligently for your customers, or on building a great team. It certainly won’t sustain you through any rough patch in your business. When you are successful, growing, and getting a lot of fabulous press, it’s very hard to separate the enthusiasm for success from the Enthusiasm for what you are doing.

Enthusiasm and passion are so important, no matter what you do. If you don’t feel like you have that towards the company you are with, you should seriously consider leaving.

Better yet, if you have the power in your company to start something that you are passionate about, do it.

[From The Importance Of Enthusiasm In Any Product]

This isn’t just about making it easy to go to work every day. It’s not just about keeping your energy high. This deep Enthusiasm brings that elusive “focus” that often seems a cliche’.

When you are truly Enthusiastic about what you are doing, you have a deep understanding of what you are creating and why it’s important. You are constantly refining that concept of why your company and product matters.  It helps you make the right decisions for customers. It informs your marketing and sales efforts with that sense of purpose. And it makes all the difference when you need to make those tough choices about what you are NOT going to do.

Enthusiasm is the real “Focus.”

Managing your own filter is critical. The other kind of filter that lets things in vs. preventing things from coming in.

[From Dean Shareski on attention.]

A filter is a screen that keeps things out. My information problem isn’t solved by keeping things out. What I need is to bring the right things to me, and that’s different.

What I want is not a filter, but good editors that bring me the news that I need to see. These editors could be a staff of professionals, but there’s also a role for technology in bringing my news to me.

There are already several services that try to do this, but none of them is really as easy, ubiquitous, and natural as I would like them to be. WIll someone solve it?

Today I’m writing about one of my favorites. This Week in Startups has only been around for 13 episodes as of this writing, but it’s proven to be one of the most interesting, entertaining, and useful PodCasts that I follow.

The host is Jason Calacanis, a serial entrepreneur with a no-nonsense approach and a New Yorker attitude. He attracts some great guests, all entrepreneurs themselves.

Episode 13 is a particularly good one. It features Matt Mickiewicz, founder of Sitepoint.com and 99designs. Matt’s been an entrepreneur since he was 15 years old. Amazing guy with some great insights.

One small complaint… There is a trailer for the movie “We Live in Public” that was just too long. If you agree, just hang in there, or skip over this section to get to the good stuff.

My favorite part of TWiSt is the “Ask Jason” segment, where people can call in to ask advice. Well, it has been so far. In Episode 13, they introduced “Jason’s Shark Tank”, where they allow two entrepreneurs two minutes each to pitch Jason and his guest. It was great and if it has legs it’ll be a great addition to the show.

Part of what I like about this podcast is that it’s not all hard-nosed business advice. Jason, the guests and the whole crew have a lot of fun during the taping. In this episode, Jason gives dating and marriage management advice that’s just classic, with some great stories illustrating how to put a little extra thought into the time you spend together.

I also appreciate all the companis that sponsor all these Podcasts that enjoy, and following Jason’s lead I’ll fulfill my “Giri” and give my thanks to these great companies that sponsor TWiSt:

So check out TWiSt, and let me know how you enjoy it. If folks like this review, I’ll do more.

ciao!

Tall order. But we all know this is right, because it’s what we all want. But it’s too expensive to deliver that sort of service to everyone, right?

Wrong.

Delivering effective support is more cost effective than any alternative. It solves problems the first time, eliminating call-backs and telephone-tag. It understands the problem, and takes the right actions to document the work-around, file the right bug report, and make the right change to the documentation. It gets that understanding built into the product, making the product better and more valuable.

You want the virtuous cycle, or the vicious one?

The key is to create a virtuous cycle of great support, product improvement, and customer loyalty & recommendations. It’s a virtuous cycle of good will. Here are the steps:

- Do a great job of supporting your customers and understanding their problems

- Build what you learn back into your product

- Repeat

This is simple, but it’s not easy. And this isn’t just the job of the support team. It takes a whole company focus.

Great Tech Support people are:
– Problem solvers
– Friendly and they like helping people.
– Communicative
– Confident enough to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”

This last point is very important, and too often overlooked. It’s critical in Tech Support to have a team that will respond well when presented with something they don’t know. Every one of them should not only be comfortable with it, but should relish the opportunity to figure something out.

Tech Support folks should also be friendly and like helping people. They should be communicative both inside the organization and with customers. Don’t just expect your team to “be professional”. That admonition is at the core of the wooden, scripted responses that frustrate customers.

“Knowing the answer doesn’t scale. Hire Tech Support people who can figure things out.”

Why didn’t I include something about technical qualifications? While a foundation of technical expertise may be important in your business, a candidate who is a better problem solver and better with people will still be the best choice, even if they lack experience in some aspect of your product or market. The best Tech Support people learn very quickly, and learn best while solving real problems.

Knowing the answer doesn’t scale. Focusing on “knowing the answer” is part of the “Quick Resolution Paradox” – it puts you on that treadmill that brings ever growing costs and support staff burnout. If you know the answer, you should be working to make sure you never get that question again, first by putting the answer at the fingertips of your users, and then by fixing the product so that this problem goes away forever.

Knowing the answer is a side-effect of providing good support, not its goal.

To make a great Tech Support team, the right hiring is critical. The right folks, with the right skills, will build your reputation with your customers with every call.

For tech support organizations I think it’s very useful, in two primary ways:

1. for “eavesdropping” on people who are talking about your company or product, and starting a conversation with them

2. as a signaling mechanism – a way to get a short, simple status message or announcements to an interested group.

For a tech support organization to actively go out into the world seeking customers with questions and problems may seem strange. Most support organizations work very hard just to respond promptly to the customers who are submitting their problems directly. But we all know that if you can identify a problem early, you can respond better and minimize both the work and, more importantly, the impact on customers.

Twitter is great for eavesdropping because of its format. The short comments in twitter make it a great vehicle for the quick response, or the snide comment. The re-tweet makes it easy for any idea to “go viral”, moving quickly through twitter to thousand of people and creating a wave of related commentary. A viral tweet is a good early warning for any emergent problem of course. But the responses may surprise you. Some of your customers may even come to your defense.

Good news is that Twitter allows you to be proactive in your support efforts as you can monitor/eavesdrop on different conversations and engage with these users, providing helpful suggestions and answering their questions.

This requires a lot of effort on a part of support team, as they need to actively reach out to the people tat mention you brand and find the right balance between helpful and annoying or even creepy (a lot of people don’t realize their Tweets are public and searchable).

[From Jure Cuhalev » Blog Archive » You should do Tech support on Twitter]

Tools such as CoTweet and HootSuite  are on the way to help you team be more effective at watching the twittering world and coordinating your response. Both are currently in Beta.

Tech support teams should also use Twitter as their own signaling tool. Think about what sort of notices would be useful to your customers. If you are an electrical utility, like PG&E, some of your rural customers may want to subscribe to outage notices for their area. If you are an ISP or web-hosting provider, it may be security notices or maintenance schedules. if you are running a beta-test of a new version of your software product, it may be revision release announcements to your beta testers.

Various integration tools available allow Twitter to even be useful to people who don’t use Twitter. You can connect Twitter to you organization’s blog or support website so that anyone with a computer can see the Tweets. You can make your tweets an RSS feed that your customers can receive with the tool of their choice. I’ll write more about some of these tools in the coming days.

So I’m curious. How are you using twitter now? What are your plans? I’ll be writing more on how to use Twitter and other tools, so where should I start?