MICHAEL DOWNEY

In a recent survey by Evans Data, Google gets accolades for its public cloud. IBM gets top marks from developers for its private cloud.

But what do developers want the most? They want the cloud to be simple to use. They want it to be as as easy to get your data in as easy it is to get the data out. And they want it to be secure.

Evans Data survey took a look at the whole gamut of issues related to cloud computing in an annual survey, and its conclusions focus on the dichotomies between private and public clouds.

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Google and IBM share a common denominator. Both apply the basic principles of open source to their cloud computing efforts. That makes it easy for developers to work with the platforms.

This brings up a certain issue we have with the terms used for cloud computing. It does not matter if one cloud is public and another is private. It's about getting the most developers. To do that you need to open up. Period.

ReadWriteWeb views cloud computing as a network of platforms that serve as individual ecosystems. In the Future of the Cloud, we discard the notion of public and private clouds to focus more on emerging platforms.

From the report by Mike Kirkwood:

"As an industry, we are emerging from a phase of infrastructure cloud computing that has been driven by server virtualization and scaling compute. Now we are moving to the next phase of cloud platforms where higher order jobs such as collaboration and communication services are the drivers. In this phase the action will be in how the cloud scales the work done by people, and in how an always-on, always-available infrastructure supports applications that both cut expense and generate revenue.

It's in this phase that we'll discard our previous categorization of IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS, and private, hybrid, and public types of clouds, and instead focus on platforms that extend end-to-end and enable emerging ecosystems. The foundation of the emerging ecosystem is based upon the following.."

Google is attracting developers as well as any cloud provider. The proof is in the API calls it gets. According to Programmable Web, Google is tops in the API billionaire's club.

IBM is developing an ecosystem that includes RightScale and Kaavo for deploying applications and workloads. Navajo Systems provides an additional layer of security. Silanis is used for e-signatures. VMLogix allows for manual, functional, and compatibility testing. AppFirst provides performance monitoring. And SOASTA CloudTest helps deliver load and performance testing.

Forget the technical terms. They will go away. The ideas are what matters, and those ideas will drive the innovation. Ideas are what excites developers.

What also matters are the people: attract developers through what you provide them, not by bandying about terms that in the long run no one really cares about.

But not everyone agrees. We asked on Twitter what people thought of technical terms like IaaS and PaaS.

Eric Delattre said cloud is actually the term that needs to go:

"@alexwilliams @rww the opposite, use IaaS, PaaS, SaaS instead of Cloud!"

Discuss

If there’s one thing that web startups –particularly engineers at web startups — think about a lot, it’s what they call “scale.” What they usually mean by that is the ability to take the beta service tested with a dozen friends and turn it into a globe-spanning colossus, with millions of users interacting simultaneously, all while ensuring that those users don’t experience delays in the service. But the route to those twinned goals is never an easy one, says former Twitter engineer Alex Payne, who now works for a financial startup called BankSimple. As Payne notes in a blog post, focusing on speed can not only send you in the wrong direction, but leave you high and dry when you are in desperate need of true scalability.

The impetus for Payne’s post was an ongoing discussion about a software program called Node, which is used for running JavaScript code on a virtual machine. But alongside his comments about that specific topic, the software engineer noted that many startups confuse engineering for speed with the ability to build something that can really scale. He writes that scaling is so hard that “the ability to scale is a deep competitive advantage of the sort that you can’t simply go out and download, copy, purchase, or steal.” As he noted later in his post, the availability of high-powered computing systems and plenty of bandwidth is great for speed, but that doesn’t solve the scale problem:

The power of today’s hardware is such that, for example, you can build a web application that supports thousands of users using one of the slowest available programming languages, brutally inefficient datastore access and storage patterns, zero caching, no sensible distribution of work, no attention to locality, etc. etc. Basically, you can apply every available anti-pattern and still come out the other end with a workable system, simply because the hardware can move faster than your bad decision-making.

When it comes to truly scaling to Twitter or even Facebook size, however, those stop-gap solutions don’t really work any more, Payne says.

When your system is faced with a deluge of work to do, no one technology is going to make it all better. When you’re operating at scale, pushing the needle means a complex, coordinated dance of well-applied technologies, development techniques, statistical analyses, intra-organizational communication, judicious engineering management, speedy and reliable operationalization of hardware and software, vigilant monitoring, and so forth. Scaling is hard.

Debates about scale aren’t just an esoteric discussion of interest to engineers and developers. As Twitter’s repeated issues with reliability have shown, getting the right architecture in place to grow quickly and seamlessly — that is, the right combination of both software and hardware — is incredibly important, as Om noted, because it’s very difficult to re-engineer a service as large and fast-growing as Twitter is after the fact. It’s a little like realizing that you have the wrong kind of airplane, and then trying to convert the one you have into the one you need, all while you are still flying, and without crashing or disturbing your passengers.

Twitter investor and VC Fred Wilson said recently that the service repeatedly breaks because “it wasn’t built right — [it] was built kind of as a hack and they didn’t really architect it to scale and they’ve never been able to catch up.” In the past, Twitter’s own founders have admitted that the architecture they chose couldn’t keep up with the company’s growth, in part because they didn’t expect the SMS-style service they started with to become such a widely used form of communication — used not just for personal updates, but for everything from breaking news stories to providing customer support for major corporations.

In blog post, Payne notes that Twitter has solved some of its small problems with software changes, but that the service “is still fighting an uphill battle” to scale in a more substantial way. And unfortunately for every startup that is hoping something from the NoSQL movement or a specific development language or Node will be the magic ingredient that will transform their service into one with Facebook scale, Payne adds that “there are no panaceas for problems of significant scale.” For more on how Facebook has managed to grow to serve more than 500 million users and handle 100 billion hits a day, check out this recent post from the social network’s head of engineering.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Social Networks Need to Grin and Bear Infrastructure Costs

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user jpctalbot

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crabel writes "In Java 1.6.0_21, the company field was changed from 'Sun Microsystems, Inc' to 'Oracle.' Apparently not the best idea, because some applications depend on that field to identify the virtual machine. All Eclipse versions since 3.3 (released 2007) until and including the recent Helios release (2010) have been reported to crash with an OutOfMemoryError due to this change. This is particularly funny since the update is deployed through automatic update and suddenly applications cease to work."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dale Zak has been a long-time volunteer developer on the Ushahidi platform. He created the Windows Mobile app, and has been helpful connecting and working with our other friends and partners at places like The Extraordinairies and FrontlineSMS. His work is always top-notch, and he’s widely respected within the mobile app dev circles in our non-profit space as one of the best around.

Dale has been an influential member of the Ushahidi community, dedicating many hours of his time to release top quality code for the rest of us to use, and working with the others in the dev community to get things done.

It’s because of that latter trait that we started talking to Dale and asked him to join the Ushahidi team in a part-time role as Mobile Project Manager. In this position he’ll be working not only on the WinMo app, but also coordinating and helping the others around the world who are contributing to the Android, iPhone and Java apps.

If you’re interested in taking part on the mobile apps, start with these links, and then get in touch with Dale.

• Ushahidi Mobile on our Wiki
• Ushahidi’s Github code respository

Welcome aboard Dale!

Kenya is quickly gaining a competitive advantage in the mobile payments space. Led by mobile operator giant Safaricom with their Mpesa product, the market locally sees huge value in mobile money transactions. Add to that a regulatory system that is relaxed enough for innovation to be encouraged, and you have a great space for interesting things to happen.

Pay.Zunguka

The team at Symbiotic always have more than one iron in the fire. I was surprised by their most recent release of a new product called Pay.Zunguka last week. Simply put, it’s a payment gateway and aggregator, allowing merchants, developers and content providers a way to monetize their work with the public.

There are two sources of inspiration in Pay.Zunguka (guys, we need to talk about names at some point…), that is the ability for people to utilize international online payment methods like PayPal and Google Checkout, but more importantly that users here in Kenya can do it all without a credit card, only using their phones. That’s a big deal, and it’s a nod towards recognizing that credit cards aren’t necessary, we can bypass that mess.

Mbugua Njihia, CEO of Symbiotic, tells me that their plan is to first integrate with content providers and create an easy-to-use micropayment space, charging 3% per transaction. This will be followed by a partnership campaign to work with larger organizations who don’t have an efficient payment platform for consumers.

PesaPal

PesaPal I’ve written about before. It’s a mobile payment gateway as well, but one with a specific focus online. Liko and team have made great headway recently, but not just in the technology, which is critical. They’ve made headway in some other important areas, funding and marketing.

We’ve talked about the need for local investors to buy into local technology startups. When that doesn’t happen, the international ones swoop in and take advantage of local investor myopia. In this case, PesaPal is receiving a healthy seed capital investment for scaling and marketing. With cash flow happening right now, it’s a good time to invest, and I’m glad to see someone doing so with this team.

I talked to Liko yesterday about this. Their strategy has shifted somewhat since last year, instead of just focusing on web merchants, the PesaPal team is working on relationships with educational institutions and educational book suppliers to make parents lives easier when their child starts the school year. The parent can now pay their child’s school fees using Mpesa or Zap, and then are directly linked to the list of that year’s books with the option to buy them too, and have them delivered to the school for their child’s first day. Brilliant!

This is the kind of fresh thinking that is great to see coming from tech startups: they’re not thinking or selling the tech, they’re selling a solution to a problem.

Zynde

Zynde is a new player in the space, but you’ll start to see a pattern here when you jump over to their website. Because none of the large companies are addressing the very real need for agnostic payment gateways the market is filling in that gap for them.

A quick email chat with David Kagiri of Zynde gave me more insight into their focus behind the service:

“My main driver was that new technologies existed that could enable me deliver cost effective solutions. After interaction with owners of small businesses I realized that most don’t keep track of their business finances and the cost of the available off shelf software that would help them with that was beyond their reach. I came up with a simple solution that uses the SaaS (software as a service) model so that I could deliver cost-effective solutions to them and an API that will enable creative developers to extend it to multiple mobile platforms and reach the masses.”

Zynde will have to prove themselves in what is quickly turning out to be a highly competitive space with competent players.

Opera, the Oslo-based browser company, has released its latest monthly State of the Mobile Web Report. The company is calling this month's report the "World Cup Edition," as it takes a closer look at the continued explosion of the mobile Web in Africa and declares Chile as the winner of its own "Mobile Web World Cup."

According to the report, the mobile Web in Africa continued to see triple digit growth, with page views increasing by 182% over last year, unique users by 124% and data transferred by 160%.

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The report looks specifically at the top 12 countries in Africa using Opera Mini, one of Opera's mobile browsers. Of the top 12 countries, Sudan and Ghana lead with explosive page-view growth rates of 4,645% and 916%, respectively. In Kenya, however, the mobile Web seems to have the most cohesion with users, as it leads with each user browsing an average of 639 pages per month.

"The mobile Web is critical in the region where mobile phone penetration is substantially higher than PC penetration. The widespread availability of mobile phones means the mobile Web can reach tens of millions more than the wired Web," says Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner in the report.

Opera has a stake in the mobile Web with its mobile browsers, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini, which can speed up Web browsing through data compression and server-side caching, especially on feature phones and less CPU-intensive smartphones. Opera Mini had more than 59 million users in June, an increase of nearly 125% from over a year ago.

While we didn't see Opera on the iPhone as a home run, the browser has been a much bigger success on feature phones. In Africa, Opera saw wide usage on Nokia, and the brand remains the most popular, followed by Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG.

Discuss

Ivy Bean, who was widely considered to be the oldest Twitter user, died in her care home in a small town in England at the age of 104.

The news was published on Bean’s Twitter account, @IvyBean104, which regularly informed followers about Bean’s deteriorating condition over the last couple of days.

“Ivy passed away peacefully at 12.08 this morning… Im sorry it took me so long to tell you but it was a very difficult thing to do,” the tweets said.

Bean was a popular Twitter user with more than 56,000 followers at the time of her death, as well as a fairly active one, with more than 1,000 tweets. As one might expect, Bean was also an avid Facebook user; she joined at the age of 102.

Mrs. Bean’s example showed that social media truly knows no boundaries, and that tools such as Twitter and Facebook are open to everyone who wants to participate. We’ll miss you, Ivy.

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Today saw T-Mobile finally retiring the venerable G1, forerunner to the ongoing Android revolution. I’ve been using a G1 since launch, so this is an emotional moment for me. Let’s just take a quick trip down memory lane out of respect for a solid phone.

Continue reading…

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the case of the time-management tool Chrometa and the startup's self-described "failed" launch. In its blog, Chrometa explained some of the steps it took to keep pushing product and consumer development forward.

Also answering the question, "You've launched. Now what?" is Cloudomatic co-founder Jason Baptiste who also observes that "If you build it, they won't come."

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Baptiste offers a solid overview of some of the things that startups should tackle before, during and after launch in order to help generate more than that initial launch buzz, and to ensure long term growth and success.

Before Launch

Baptiste suggests startups take the following steps prior to launch:

• Customer development: Early customers can help you build the right product. But they can also give you a good start with folks who will spread the word when you do actually launch
• Build in viral loops from line 1: As most startups have little budget to put towards customer acquisition, it's good to devise ways to market your product that work well, work quickly, and cost you close to zero.
• Build a relevant audience: Start blogging and interacting now.
• The slow reveal: Post some teasers of your product - even if they're just screenshots - before launch.
• Gather beta user testimonials: Gathering customer feedback is important in refining your product. But testimonials are good "proof" of that.
• Build an email list.

Launch Day

In preparation for launch day, Baptiste recommends the following:

• Segment your press list: Spend time on your pitch emails.
• Have the date of your launch nailed down in advance: "You should have a date nailed down for when the app is a golden master and you should have a separate date that is a little bit further in the future for doing the actual press launch. Don't just say: we're done developing+testing, let's pitch some press. Have a set day to work towards and give yourself enough breathing room to execute well. Also check your calendar for any other major upcoming events. New apple product launching? Major conference with 50 product launches? Wait a few more days."
• Embargoes Will Be Broken (Not by ReadWriteWeb, I'd like to interject here. Not intentionally)
• Try to coordinate with an event: This can be a conference or a meetup, but will help give you a larger initial audience. Do be sure that you've taken care of all the logistics, however, so that you can handle the influx of traffic.
• Giveaways: Yay. Free stuff.

After the Launch

To make sure that your launch doesn't fizzle, Baptiste suggests these steps:

• Release often: One way to combat the slump that follows from initial launch buzz is to make sure you are repeating the process frequently. These smaller scale launches should be improving your product's features but also giving people - press and users - a reason to talk about you.
• Analytics reveal new markets
• Integrate Affiliate and Partner Programs
• Platform Expansion: While you don't need to have your app available on all platforms at launch, you do want to expand to different platforms: iPhone, Android, Desktop, Facebook, and so on.
• Build an API: Making an API will help expand your userbase. And it is, as Caterina Fake says, good BizDev 2.0.
• SEO/SEM/Social Advertising is your friend: While you can hope that having built in some viral hooks that that's all you need, but you shouldn't cross advertising and SEO considerations off your list.

Baptiste's closing remarks on writing the blog post are important, as they underscore what is most important to pay attention to: "When I started writing this post I had an intro, pre-launch, actual launch, post-launch, and closing h2 tags. I filled in the different points in between, and quickly realized the list for pre and post launch far outweighed those for the actual launch period, which seems to be about right. The real work isn't that short launch period, but the work beforehand and continued work afterwards."

Discuss

It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big.

In another attempt to bring a usable computer to the masses at an extremely affordable price point, India has developed a touchscreen computing device which will cost only $35. According to a press release by India’s Press Information Bureau, the price is expected to drop even further, first to $20 and ultimately to a mere $10.

The reports about the device’s hardware vary greatly; all we can say for sure is that it’s portable and has a touchscreen, which pretty much makes it a tablet (confirmed by the image on the right).

According to Indian Express, it has a 5/7/9-inch touchscreen (we don’t know whether that means there will be several versions of the device or they’re simply unsure what the actual size is, but it looks like a 7-incher to us), and, on the software side, it sports a web browser, PDF reader, office software, media player, multimedia input/output capabilities, video conferencing (it must have a camera, then) and remote device management capability — all of it open-source and Linux-based.

Whatever hardware is running this thing, it’s ready for production, according to India’s Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal. “We have reached a (developmental) stage that today; the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything,” he said at a news conference in New Delhi.

The device, Sibal said, should be available to consumers sometime in 2011.

[img credit: Indian Express]

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Daily deal sensation Groupon has released an app for Android devices, the company announced this morning on its company blog.

The free app (unlike this one, an official one) enables users to buy deals in over 65 cities, access their purchased Groupons and find ones that are nearby.

You can also redeem deals from the app and view side deals by selecting the “More Deals” option in the deal page menu.

It works similarly to Groupon’s iPhone app, which has been out since March 2010.

Not much to add to that little nugget of news, apart from the fact that the company is keen on improving the app and awaiting feedback from Android users on how to do so.

Groupon has to date raised a whopping $173 million in venture capital, most recently scoring a $135 million round at a $1.35 billion valuation.

(Thanks to Mihir for the heads up)

A group of researchers from Northeastern and Harvard universities have gathered enough data from Twitter to give us all a snapshot of how U.S. residents feel throughout a typical day or week.

Not only did they analyze the sentiments we collectively expressed in 300 million tweets over three years against a scholarly word list, these researchers also mashed up that data with information from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Google Maps API and more. What they ended up with was a fascinating visualization showing the pulse of our nation, our very moods as they fluctuate over time.

The researchers have put this information into density-preserving cartograms, maps that take the volume of tweets into account when representing land area. In other words, in areas where there are more tweets, those spots on the map will appear larger than they do in real life.

It will surprise almost no one to learn that there is a general mood slump mid-day and mid-week, when we are most likely to be at work. Our tweets show that we’re happiest in the early morning and late evening; during the week, our mood tends to peak on Sunday morning.

Less predictable, perhaps, is the fact that West Coast tweets were “happier” than tweets from the East Coast. Although West Coast Twitter users expressed emotions in the same cycles as the East Coast users (with a three-hour gap, of course, because of time zone differences), the West Coasters didn’t dip as low in mood as the East Coasters by a significant margin.

For the infographic fans among you, here’s a lovely visualization of some of the data displayed:

You can also check out a cool video below that illustrates how Twitter mood expressions change over the course of a day in the U.S.

We’re pretty fascinated by visualizations like these; what other data or topics would you like to see these researchers tackle next? What use do you think we could get out of the current information they’ve generated?

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We've previously covered how, despite camera ubiquity, amateur and journalistic reports of police, security guards, and other authority figures of varying legitimacy intimidating harmless photographers continue to pop up. Popular Mechanics explains why this harassment isn't just wrong, but illegal. More »

Filed under: Education, iPad

This fall, the Duke University Global Health Institute in Durham, NC will embark on a pilot project using the iPad as a field research tool. Masters students enrolled in the Research Methods in Global Health Sciences II class will be broken up into groups of three, with each group being given a 3G-enabled iPad.

The course introduces students to a wide range of methodological techniques, including quantitative surveys research, interventions and evaluations along with qualitative techniques of ethnography, survey design and semi-structured interviews. Funding and assistance with the course will come from the Duke Center for Instructional Technology (CIT).

Educational tech consultant Mark Sperber, who will train students on the iPad and decide upon the selection of software, notes that the iPad will allow students to collect and analyze data while in the field, where it's most meaningful. The do-it-nowability of the iPad was written about by mobile research blogger Tim Macer.

Traditionally, field-collected research could not be analyzed until the researcher got to a computer off-site, but the use of iPads will allow data to be examined immediately. Having done my share of quantitative field research I feel that bringing immediacy to the field opens up possibilities that were never before imaginable. The primary goal, according to sociologist Jen'nan Ghazal Read who will be teaching the course, is to equip students with tools allowing them to make the most of their time in the field and master the complex methods on which they will base their research.

TUAWDuke University to use iPads for field research originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We noted last year, that many believe U.S. President Obama's push for governmental transparency has been a failure. Whether that's true, the overall tendency toward access continues to gather momentum.

The U.S. House of Representatives has announced a public hearing to explore making publicly-funded research open to the public. Legislators in both the House and the Senate have already introduced bills calling for this. If they pass, the implications could be significant and might result in an economic jump.

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The House Committee on Oversight's Subcommittee on Information Policy will convene the hearing for Thursday, July 29 at 2:00 PM in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building in D.C. The hearing will allow the Representatives on the Committee to hear input from a variety of stakeholders.

Rep. Mike Doyle (R-PA) introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act into the House on April 15. An identical Senate version of the bill was introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Bi-partisan support for public access to federal research has been growing.

The bills propose specifically that the 11 federal agencies with research budgets of $100 million or greater make the published results of their research free to the public.

Knowledge is (Economic) Power

If these 11 massive agencies suddenly were required to make their research public (with a governmental value of suddenly), it could possibly act as a shot of adrenaline to the private sector. Who knows what products and services might be launched, or improved, on the back of this research? It could result in a significant leap forward for an economy that seems at times terminally stalled.

Presumably, the government already has the research that they've paid for. (Presumably.) But a public in possession of that information might make for a much less patient public. If a government agency, for instance, knows something that could improve its services, but allows bureaucratic foot-dragging or inter-agency squabbling to slow its implementation, that agency would find itself in, let's say, a compromised position politically when an informed public realized what it was doing.

Having been in a position to listen and talk to career bureaucrats facing change, we are not as sanguine as we could be at the news. It would be surprising indeed if half the people responsible for sharing this information with the pubic didn't go limp at the first approach of torch-wielding villagers at their castle door. To work, this bill will require that the chief executive make it known in no uncertain terms that any agency head with a hitch in his gitalong will shortly thereafter find himself on the street in the company of all his closest advisors.

Discuss

One of the topics we touch on from time to time here at ReadWriteStart is the importance of solid design aesthetics for Internet startups. One of the key elements in creating a user-friendly design is A/B testing - a process by which two or more variations of a design element are tested with different groups of users. A/B testing, however, doesn't apply strictly to the visuals of a site; it can also be a useful tool for startups hoping to learn what their users like best.

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The Good: Learn About Your Users' Habits

For designers, A/B testing is a nice way to gauge user response to small tweaks, including fonts, spacing, artwork or other visual elements. Startups can take advantage of these methods to test non-visual elements of their sites, such as pricing plans, new features, and registration forms. The ability to see feedback based on two or more variations can help a young company make the best decisions surrounding its business going forward.

Just recently, Automattic - Matt Mullenweg's company behind WordPress - tested a pair of pricing options for a new product called VaultPress. In the service's sign-up form, potential users are encouraged to suggest a price they would be willing to pay as compared to a suggested figure that the site is "planning to charge." The suggested figures say $20 for some users, and $10 for others. With this test, it is likely that the company will uncover the best price point at which to sell the service in order to attract the most users.

One of the best looking tools I've seen for easy A/B testing of a webpage is a service called Optimizely. Users can drag-and-drop or click-and-drag changes to a site's design and copy. After dropping a bit of code into the homepage header, they can then view real-time analysis of site usage based on the altered elements.

It's not clear how well the service handles the testing of feature functionality on the site, as it looks geared mostly toward the look and feel of a page, but it could still be a great tool for startups. Optimizely is funded by Y Combinator and just entered private beta last week. For other A/B testing resources, consult today's Webdesigner Depot article on the subject.

The Bad: Relying Too Heavily On Perfection

Not everyone agrees, however, that A/B testing is a wise practice. Just this morning, Jeff Atwood, author of the blog Coding Horror, expressed his idea that this kind of testing is a lot like the movie Groundhog Day. In the movie, Bill Murray - stuck in an infinite loop reliving the same day over and over again - attempts to win the love of a woman, Rita, by learning as much as he can about her each day and pretending to share all of her interests.

Atwood says that this is exactly what startups and designers are doing by relying too heavily on A/B testing. While romantic relationships are certainly different than business relationships, the parallels are interesting. Even though Murray's character says presumably "all the rights things," Rita can still tell there is something odd about it. Startups should be wary of testing too many of their decisions and should instead focus on just a few key elements at a time.

Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz warned a few weeks ago against falling into the "trap of A/B testing minutiae." He says many are "tantalized" by the idea that a small change can go a long way, when in reality this is far from the norm.

"In all of these, some simple change accounted for big increases in click-through or conversion rate, leading to widespread praise and sharing," says Fishkin. "The problem is - they're the exception, not the rule. In fact, that's precisely why they're newsworthy and get so many mentions."

Fishkin also says for the small changes A/B testing often produces, the time and energy is too high. He suggests that startups focus more on testing larger changes - like a sight redesign - rather than smaller ones - like button colors.

Like many things in business, design and life, there is no one perfect answer for all occasions. A/B may be valuable to your startup, if used correctly. Or it may not be. There certainly seems to be a place for A/B testing within startups, but don't let it become too much of a good thing.

Image from SEOmoz.

Discuss

One of the keys to making an open source project work is getting feedback from users and developers about problems (bugs) in the code or system. Mozilla (the organization behind Firefox and Thunderbird) uses Bugzilla, but organizations have developed a variety of systems for dealing with this issue. For example, many cities use 311. I'm going to talk about Bugzilla and Mozilla in this case, but I think the lessons can be applied more broadly for some of my policy geek friends.

So first, some first principles. Why does getting the system right matter? A few reasons come to mind:

1. Engagement: For many people Bugzilla is their first contact with "the community." We should want users to have a good experience so they feel some affinity towards us and we should want developers to have a great experience so that they want to deepen their level of participation and engagement.
2. Efficiency: If you have the wrong or incomplete information it is hard (or impossible) to solve a problem, wasting the precious time of volunteer contributors.

I also concede that these two objectives may not always be congruent. Indeed, at times there may be trade offs between them... but I think there is a lot that can be done to improve both.

I've probably got more ideas than can fit (or should fit) into one post so I'm going to unload a few. I've got more that relate to the negotiation and empathetic approaches I talked about at the Mozilla Summit.

One additional thought. Please feel free to dump all over these. Some changes many not be as simple as I've assumed. Others may break or contravene important features I'm not aware of. Happy to engage people on these, please do not see them as an end point, but rather a beginning. My main goal with this first batch of suggestions was to find things that felt easier to do and so could be implemented quickly if there was interest and would help reduce transactions costs right away.

1. Simplifying Menus

First. I thought there were some simple changes that could render the interface cleaner and friendlier. It's pretty text heavy - which is great for advanced users, but less inviting for newer users. More importantly however, we could streamline things to make it easier for people to onboard.

Take for example, the landing page of Bugzilla. It is unclear to me why "Open a new Account" should be on this page. Advanced users will know they want to file a bug, novices (who may be on the wrong site and who should be looking for support) might believe they have to open and account to get support. So why not eliminate the option altogether. You are going to get it anyways if you click on "File a bug."

In addition, I got rid of the bottom menu bar (which I don't think is necessary on this screenƒclu given all the features were along the top as well). I also ditched the Release Notes and User Guide for Bugzilla as I had doubts about whether users were, at this point and on this screen, looking for those things)

2. Gather more information about our users (and, while I'm at it, some more simplifying)

Once you choose to file a bug you get prompted to either log in or create an account. At this point, if you want to create an account. I thought this page was hard to read with the text spanning the whole width, plus, there is some good info we could gather about users at this point (the point it feels they are mostly likely going to add to their profile).

Couple things a like about this proposed screen.

One, if you are a lost user just looking for support we likely snag you before you fill out a bugzilla account. My feeling is the bugzilla is a scary place that most users shouldn't end up in... we need to give people lots of opportunities to opt for support before diving in, in case that is what they really need.

Second, in this proposed version we tell people to read the bugzilla guidelines and suggest using an alternate email before they punch their email into the email field box.

In addition, we ask the user for their real name now (as opposed to relying on them to fill it out later). This nudge feels important as the more people with real names on the site, the more I think people will develop relationships with one another. Finally we ask people if English is their second language and if this is their first open source project.

Finally, with the extra data fields we can help flag users as ESL or new and thus in need of more care, patience and help as they on-ramp (see screen shots below). We could even modify the Bugzilla guidelines to inform people to provide newbies and ESL's with appropriate respect and support.

I imagine that your "newbie" status would disappear either when you want (some sort of preference in your profile) or after you've engaged in a certain amount of activity.

3. Make life easier for users and the triage guys

Here is an idea I had talking with some of the triage guys at the Mozilla Summit.

Let's suppose that someone submits a bug that isn't really a bug but a support issue. I'm informed that this happens with a high degree of frequency. Would it be nice if, with a click of a mouse, the triage guys could move that bug out of Bugzilla and into a separate database (ideally this would be straight into SUMO, but I respect that this might not be easy - so just moving it to a separate database and de-cluttering bugzilla would be a great first start - the SUMO guys could then create a way to import it). My sense is that this simply requires creating a new resolution field - I've opted to call it "Support" but am happy to name it something else.

This feels like a simple fix and it would quickly move a lot of bugs that are cluttering up bugzilla... out. This is important as searches for bugs often return many results that are support oriented, making it harder to find the bugs you are actually searching for. Better still, it would get them somewhere where they could more likely help users (who are probably waiting for us to respond).

Of course, presently bugzilla will auto generate an email that looks like the first one and this isn't going to help. So what if we did something else?

Here is the auto-generated email I think we should be sending users whos bugs get sent to SUMO. I've proposed a few things.

First, if these are users who've submitted inappropriate bugs and who really need support, giving them a bugzilla email isn't going to help them, they aren't even going to know how to read it.

Second, there is an opportunity to explain to them where they should go for help - I haven't done that explicitly enough in this email - but you get the idea

Third, when the bug gets moved to SUMO it might be possible to do a simple key word analysis of the bug and, from that, determine what are the most likely support articles they are looking for. Why don't we send them the top 3 or 5 as hyperlinks in the email?

Fourth, if this really is a bug from a more sophisticated user, we give them a hyperlink back to bugzilla so they can make a note or comment.

What I like about this is it is customized engagement at a low cost. More importantly, it helps unclutter things while also making us more responsive and creating a better experience for users.

4. Make Bugzilla Celebrate, enhance our brand and build community

Okay, so here's the thing that really bugs me about bugzilla. If we want to be onramping people and building community, shouldn't we celebrate people's successes? At the moment this is the email you get from Bugzilla when a bug you've submitted gets patched:

BORING! Here, at the moment of maximum joy, especially for casual or new bugzilla participants we do nothing to engage or celebrate.

This, is what I think the auto-generated bugzilla email should look like.

Yes, I agree that hard core community members probably won't care about these types of bugs, but for more casual participants this is an opportunity to explain how open source and mozilla works (the graphic) as well as a chance to educate them. I've even been more explicit about this by offering links to a) explain the open web, b) learn about mozilla and open source; and c) donate to the foundation (given this is a moment of pride for many non-developer end users)

Again, I'm not overly attached to this design per se, it would just be nice to have something fun, celebratory and mozillaesque.

Okay, it is super late and I'm on an early flight tomorrow. Would love feedback on all or any of this for those who've made it this far. I'll be sharing more thoughts, especially on empathetic nudges and community management in bugzilla ASAP.

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Web startups comprise one of the most exciting segments of small business culture.

They’re young, they’re sexy, they’re rolling in glamorous-sounding amounts of “free money” from venture capitalists, and they get to make products that people around the world end up knowing about and using.

Although not all small businesses will have the same characteristics of a tech startup, there are some lessons you can learn and some values you can appropriate into your own company, no matter what your business is about.

Here are five ways to grow your business from observing and emulating web startup culture. If you’ve learned a lesson or two from an admirable startup that you didn’t find on the list, please let us know about it in the comments.

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1. Your Company Culture Can Be Fun

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Why is GitHub’s logo the “OctoCat”? Why not? Ask the founders sometime at one of this startup’s famous drinkups.

One of the most common attributes of the web startup is an almost universal dedication to having a good time. Work hard, play hard is the mantra in this sphere; you’ll see engineers pulling all-nighters to ship a product, but you’ll also see them goofing off together during downtime, pulling shenanigans on their coworkers, or investing in “office equipment” such as ping pong tables and discreet, under-the-kitchen-counter kegs.

While not every small business will have the, um, stamina for Friday night Rock Band competitions, you can make your company culture fun and your workplace a fun place to be. Do you offer employees a place to relax? Is it taboo in your company culture to pull mild pranks or socialize during work hours? Do you ever have spontaneous outings, lunches, or games?

Perhaps one of the best reasons to foster a sense of enjoyment and camaraderie in your office or workplace is that it helps counteract clock-watching; if your staff can “whistle while they work,” so to speak, they might find that work is easier and more enjoyable, leading them to become more productive.

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2. Work Can Be Done Anytime, Anywhere

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CitySourced co-founder Kurt Daradics proved that entrepreneurship can happen anywhere — even on a cross-country road trip.

Many web startups are composed of distributed teams. Many more have very loose definitions of “office hours.” Employees might roll in at one in the afternoon; they might stay and work the night away until the wee hours of the morning, too. And a lot of the time, they get to work from home.

Many Gen X and Millennial employees see the ability to work from home as a huge benefit — for some folks we’ve talked to, it counts as much as a pay raise. If you trust that your employees can handle themselves and get their work done on time, consider letting them work from home or adopt more flexible work hours. Your night owls will appreciate the opportunity to work with all pistons firing, and your early birds will love getting home to their loved ones before rush hour traffic starts. And everyone, from CEOs to secretaries, appreciates getting to work in their PJs every now and then.

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3. You Don’t Need a Lot of Money to Have a Good Time

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The guys at isocket don’t need your fancy amusements to keep spirits high. All they need are a couple plastic or rubber projectiles and a dog or two to hang around the office.

“The lean startup” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. What does it really mean?

In the post-dotcom era, “lean” means no chair massages and sushi lunches on the company dime. It means fewer and less lavish company parties or event sponsorships. Extravagance, in the current era, is out. Frugality and long runways are in.

As a small business owner, you’re always focused on your bottom line; so what can you learn from the “lean startup” mentality? Well, even when you’re pinching the last of your pennies, remember to take care of your employees as much as you can — from salaries to benefits to culture (see #1). But also, be aware that being penny-wise doesn’t mean you’re not pound-foolish. Many startup CEOs make less than their employees. And startups also avoid the pitfall of the legacy employee who contributes little but places large demands on company resources.

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4. It’s OK to Change Your Mind

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Formspring didn’t start as a Q&A app, but this spin-off of the original product has gone viral and a half and is now the company’s core focus.

Startups often run into a brick wall when developing a product. They find out too late that the market is too competitive, that they don’t have the funding or partnerships they need, or that technology in its current state simply won’t allow them to innovate in the way they’d like.

Do they shutter and go home? Sometimes. But more frequently, a startup will “pivot” — that is, it will turn on its heel and make a shift in it its product strategy, target market, business model, or whatever the missing piece of the puzzle might be. If something is broken beyond repair, simply scrap it and start over.

As entrepreneurs, you’re often married to your own ideas. You can allow them to become too precious, and you can lose sight of more practical matters: Is it an idea other people like? Is it making money? Is it sustainable? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” don’t be afraid to change your business just enough to get it back on track. Pivoting is OK for startups, and it can be OK for you, too.

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5. A Small Risk Can Return a Great Reward

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Founding a social network while MySpace still ruled the web took a lot of cojones. But the risk has paid off in spades for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees.

Last but most important of all, web startups assume more risk than almost any other kind of small business. Their founders risk their credit, relationships, and years of their lives on something as erratic as the Internet. They do it out of passion, and for some of them, that passion pays off rather quickly. For others, it takes a lot longer.

You may not want or need to take the same kinds of risks a web entrepreneur would, but you should also keep in mind that simply maintaining a less risk-averse outlook can lead to huge benefits for you and your company’s growth and success. Certainly, there are times when you’ll need security, stability, or a tried-and-true solution. But other times, you might suffer by not taking that small gamble — for example, implementing an unorthodox suggestion from an employee or choosing an unconventional marketing strategy.

Not every risk will pay off, but ultimately, a long-term, pervasive and absolute aversion to risk can keep your business small and your profits minimal. Keep an open mind, and be on the lookout for serendipity and opportunity.

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More Business Resources From Mashable:

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- 5 Online Tools for Answering Your Small Business Questions
- Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?
- 5 Tips for Managing Your Company’s Brand on the Web
- How Real-Time Data is Changing Business Optimization
- HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power Your Business

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Reviews: FormSpring, Internet, MySpace

More About: business, company culture, corporate culture, facebook, funding, github, lean startup, List, Lists, octocat, small business, startup, tips, web startup

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Has your company spent seemingly countless hours tweeting on Twitter, networking on Facebook and writing the company blog? Have you found yourself wondering if it's all a waste of time? Maybe that last Facebook fan page contest saw fewer entries than you'd hoped for, or that last Twitter-only coupon had fewer redemptions than you'd expected, but perhaps that's not all that matters.

According to the the latest report by analyst firm Forrester, many people are looking at the face-value dollars and cents of social media marketing and, put simply, they're doing it wrong. Beyond clicks and coupon redemptions there lies a case for social media marketing that shows its value is well beyond what we see on the surface.

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Analyst and report author Augie Ray writes in a blog post this morning that traditional measurements of success for return on investment in social media marketing lead to an incomplete picture.

Many marketers can draw a straight line between investments in social media marketing and financial results, but many more cannot.  This doesn't mean social media marketing is ineffective; it just means that marketers have to recognize benefits beyond dollars and cents.  Facebook fans, retweets, site visits, video views, positive ratings and vibrant communities are not financial assets--they aren't reflected on the balance sheet and can't be counted on an income statement--but that doesn't mean they are valueless.  Instead, these are leading indicators that the brand is doing something to create value that can lead to financial results in the future.

Ray suggests that we look at ROI in terms of four perspectives - financial, digital, brand and risk management. For each, however, Ray says that we should go beyond the surface to evaluate success. Financial ROI, for example, can be measured in terms of online coupon redemption, but also in other ways. He gives the example of online retailer Petco.com. It has found that "Products with reviews have return rates that are 20% lower than those without reviews - and the return rate is 45% lower for products with more than 25 reviews - saving on shipping, restocking, and customer service costs."

Similarly, looking at risk management, Ray notes that "this perspective is not about creating positive ROI but reducing unforeseen negative ROI in the future." By estimating the likelihood and potential cost of PR issues over time, a company could also estimate how much it might save by way of using social media.

As for brand, Ray writes that "marketers don't need to reinvent brand metrics for the social media age" and that evaluating brand online is the same as it was offline. In terms of brand, it comes down to simple measurements - such as awareness, purchase intent, preference and brand association - and whether or not online efforts are helping to improve numbers in those realms.

The final perspective offered by Ray - the digital perspective - is more easily measured. Ray points to efforts by Swanson Health Products, which "improved the visibility of its product reviews to search engines" and subsequently "saw a 163% increase in search engine traffic to product pages".

In the end, the report cautions that not all social media marketing efforts will result in ROI (a term Ray implores companies to use only when speaking of directly measurable financial gain), and that we need to move beyond counting retweets and Facebook fans.

Many marketing investments are not intended to furnish immediate financial results but instead create long-term brand value. The greatest and most valuable brands weren't created in one quarter to the next but with an eye toward building lasting relationships with customers. Smart marketers are coming to recognize the way social media marketing can deliver on those same long-term values and are building programs with strategies and metrics to suit.

In short, Ray seems to be reinforcing a simple idea that many of those who are tech savvy already embrace: Social media, any way you slice it, is worth the effort and the investment.

Discuss