A Perspective on Location Services, Mobile Entrepreneurship & Startup Life

Commercial entities like Whole Foods, Starbucks, Mission Pie, 52 Teas, JetBlue, even the Korean taco truck guy are all on Twitter—users and businesses alike are finding value.

Our question is, how can we help? What can Twitter offer for a fee that will improve the experience? Will it be account verification? Will it be lightweight analytics? Will there be opportunities for introducing customers to businesses on Twitter.

[Source:  Biz Stone, Founder of Twitter via e-mail to businessinsider.com]

To put it short: we have to think about how to make money with aka-aki. So, let’s talk about it!

For us it’s important, that aka-aki can be used for free in the future, too. But that means, there will (have to) be a form of advertising. Which form is not decided yet. That’s why we want to get you involved in a discussion about it. What could you imagine? Which forms of advertising in aka-aki would be acceptable for you? And where on the mobile screens and on the website? Which kind of advertising would be totally unacceptable for you? Or is there maybe advertising, that would even be interesting for you? Please, give us input!

[Source: Aka Aki - Even a moose somehow has to pay the rent...]

Why do I blog this?

Isn’t it strange? Companies asking how they can monetize their services is not a good sign. Either their is only a visionary business plan without any facts & figures about revenue streams or you recognize that there is/was a hype hiding some existing problems with good revenue models for sites relying on huge user bases where millions of page views needs to be monetized. I like Twitter, as well as aka-aki and their cost structures are not as bad as Facebook’s, which seems to face some trouble nowadays.

The Advertising

Perhaps most dangerously, Web 2.0 still had only one business model, advertising, and the Valley was refusing to admit that only one company (Google) with only one of its products (search advertising) had proved that the model really worked. The older internet firms, Yahoo! and AOL, were doing their best to grab a piece of the action. But the “next big things” were selling negligible advertising, often on one another’s sites. Not one of them has become an advertising success in its own right.

& The Valley

And so, as this correspondent prepares to leave, the Valley again finds itself in a curious position. It has been a boon to the world, helping people keep abreast of acquaintances on their social networks, wherever they go, and record and share much more of their own lives. But the Valley stands on ground that is as unstable, seismically and metaphorically, as it was in the earlier bust. Another bubble—this time, not of the Valley’s making—has burst. The world economy is in crisis, advertising is collapsing and start-ups are once again vanishing into thin air. Silicon Valley may be entering another nuclear winter.

[via Six years in the Valley - economist.com]

1. Pick good cofounders.
2. Launch fast.
3. Let your idea evolve.
4. Understand your users.
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
7. You make what you measure.
8. Spend little.
9. Get ramen profitable.
10. Avoid distractions.
11. Don’t get demoralized.
12. Don’t give up.
13. Deals fall through.

[via Paul Graham - Startups in 13 Sentences]