I decided it was time to update the website with a new look. Most importantly, The Mayo615 site now supports Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), an open source initiative, enabling pages to display quickly and optimally on mobile devices. Have a browse and leave me a comment on what you think.
Amidst news of LinkedIn being bought by Microsoft, one mystery remains: Where have all of the “Super Connectors” gone? It appears that the website built on making connections might frown upon having too many.
Most users on LinkedIn have under 500 connections. There is a subsection of LinkedInusers who are connected to hundreds of thousands of people. Individually Steven Burda and Zura Kakushadze have accumulated more connections than the majority of people in your office combined. Their accounts, along with a slew of others have vanished.
It’s impossible to determine exactly how many of their accounts were deactivated, mostly because outside of LinkedIn messages nobody knows how to reach each other. Their voices have been lost. While they wait in limbo for an answer as to when their accounts will be reinstated, we can only make assumptions as to what the real reason for their disappearance is.
Kakushadze earned his Ph.D in Theoretical Physics, has over 11 years of experience in quantitative finance, and has published over 100 scientific papers. Burda has a background in finance, IT, and accounting but feels at home as a social media consultant. To say that their loyal followers are missing out on their teachings is an understatement.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I wanted to know why they were deleted. Did they violate the terms of service? Did they somehow game the system, lie, cheat, or steal? I was able to contact the top two most connected users to get their side of the story.
LinkedIn is built on the expectation that you can build your professional identity and discover opportunities online. Mutual friends on LinkedIn introduced me to these two Super Connectors who felt as though they had grown too large of a following, and were banned because of it.
When I was a child I cared for a friend’s pet hamster while she was away. I knew I had to feed him, but I didn’t know how often. One day, I emptied the whole box of food into the cage and let the hamster eat as it pleased. I came back to check in on little Hammie, and to my dismay he had passed away.
I later learned that he had eaten himself to death. He didn’t know any better, food was good, it helped him to survive.
The same goes for LinkedIn users whose businesses thrive on the platform. Why were they given the ability to make connections only to be slapped on the wrist when they had too many?
The top ten Super Connectors have all been denied access to their accounts. In fact, when you go to their pages it simply says, “Sorry, this profile couldn’t be displayed.” Most claim that their emails asking for help from LinkedIn have gone ignored.
L.I.O.N: LinkedIn Open Networker. These people usually have the most connections, and currently it’s not known why some people are capped at thirty thousand while others aren’t.
I have nearly 30k connections and 8k open requests that I cannot accept. I use LinkedIn to advertise my business, Bikini Luxe, and to connect with like minded people. These days it’s all about who you know, not what you know.
When asked how they amassed such a following, Kakushadze said, “Painstakingly. You either receive a connection request or you send one. One at a time.”
We can only speculate as to what the motives are, but the vague wording of the LinkedIn Terms of Service leaves a lot to the imagination. According to Kakushadze he doesn’t market, advertise, or make any money from LinkedIn. His main purpose on the website is to popularize his research and spread knowledge.
His papers on quantum finance, cancer research, and theoretical physics make my head spin. Why anyone (or any Social Platform) would want to halt someone like him from educating others entirely for free is beyond me.
Steven Burda spent ten years carefully cultivating his LinkedIn connections and growing his business. Will people still be interested in attending his LinkedIn Workshops if he isn’t actually on the platform any longer?
What I have found is that this could happen to anyone, for any reason. What we are led to believe to be our virtual property is not really ours at all, and it can be taken away at any time.
In a world where who you are on Social Media is all that matters, when your popularity online grants you access to more clientele and deems you as valid, having that stripped away when you’ve worked hard to achieve it must be devastating.
Hopefully this comes as no surprise to many, but for some, alas, I am afraid they have yet to get the email. It’s yet another case of the 1% versus the 99%. Only one percent of Web app developers have made any real money, the other ninety-nine percent are SOL. Forty-seven percent of those, make absolutely no money or less than $100 on their app. Not surprisingly there are now over a million apps on the Apple store, and when you add all of the other sources for apps, you can see that the problem is coming to a head. I saw this coming over two years ago and wrote about the problem on this blog, citing a New York Times story published about that time, describing the dark underbelly of the Web app development culture. In a satire of the problem, last year The Onion published a gag story about a new app called “Squander” that enabled users to “geolocate others nearby who had also wasted $2 on the same app.”
Hopefully this comes as no surprise to many, but for some, alas, I am afraid they have yet to get the email. It’s yet another case of the 1% versus the 99%. Only one percent of Web app developers have made any real money, the other ninety-nine percent are SOL. Forty-seven percent of those, make absolutely no money or less than $100 on their app. Not surprisingly there are now over a million apps on the Apple store, and when you add all of the other sources for apps, you can see that the problem is coming to a head. I saw this coming nearly two years ago and wrote about the problem on this blog, citing a New York Times story published about that time, describing the dark underbelly of the Web app development culture. In a satire of the problem, last year The Onion published a gag story about a new app called “Squander” that enabled users to “geolocate others nearby who had also wasted $2 on the same app.”
Read more: App development boom’s depressing underbelly, November 18, 2012
Read more: Silicon Valley’s misguided love affair with an app for everything, March 4, 2013
Reblogged from ValleyWag, July 25th, 2014
The new American Dream was going so well: drop out, make an app for sending emojis that disappear after 5 seconds, and collect your check. But it turns out the app gold rush is brokenfor almost everyone.
A new, giant survey of 10,000 app developers from around the world reveals a hugely depressing reality: your app will almost certainly not succeed. Maybe it’s a given that in such a crowded market, standing out is a tough feat. But the numbers are terribly dismal: 2 percent ofall app developers pull in over 50 percent of all app revenue—”The revenue distribution is so heavily skewed towards the top that just 1.6% of developers make multiples of the other 98.4% combined.” A staggering 47% of app developers either make literally no money, or less than $100 per month, per app. Hardly Instagram money, or even decent-Instagram-knockoff money.
It’s easy to understand why. There are well over a million apps in Apple’s App Store alone, and unless you’re in the tippy-top of tippiest-top, odds are nobody will even notice you exist. Of course, the fact that it’s considered gauche to even try to make money as a software business doesn’t help:
VisionMobile, which conducted the study, concludes that “It seems extremely unlikely the market can sustain anything like the current level of developers for many more years.”
Good. The fewer people chase dreams of becoming the next Yo (a sentence that makes me want to sever my fingers, one by one), the more young talent can dedicate itself to building the next Washboard.
Full Event Information and Tickets Here: Okanagan Marketing Summit Website
The morning session is Okanagan Focused, with emphasis on how to reach your Okanagan audience through traditional, digital, social and other channels.
The afternoon session is being put on by Canada’s largest Social Media Camp organizers, and is focused solely on Social Media. Speakers will discuss why Social Media is an important component to your overall strategy.
Enjoy both sessions for a full-day learning experience than can help you with your online, and offline, marketing.
Step 1: Define your message. What you say and how you say it will greatly impact how your brand is perceived. What outcomes are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to reach? And most important, what do you want them to do once they hear you? Always respect your brand.
Step 2: In today’s world there are numerous channels available to communicate our defined message. From traditional, digital and social, we explore the channels and clarify which are best for your situation. Proper synergy of channels can increase your ROI dramatically.
Step 3: If you don’t have the tools or the right systems to measure your marketing investment, how can you refine your message? We’ll demonstrate how to develop a solid plan for measuring accurately.
Step 4: Once you have measured your results, now is the time to refine the message if necessary. Communication channels may also need to be modified, increased or changed.
The morning session is focused on the real world of marketing your message in the Okanagan. We’ll answer how to best define your message to incite action and which channels to use and why.
What is the purpose of marketing, and why do many of us spend so little time doing it right, failing to measure the results of our efforts? Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
How do we define the message? Is it an offer with a good call to action? Is it information sharing, brand awareness, or a budget that we just need to spend? Does the message suit your brand, and more importantly, do you have a brand? In today’s world the message must captivate very quickly and have a purpose.
Once we have determined the message, how do we best communicate the message? The variety of channels available to us now makes the selection of the channel just as important as the message itself. If the only tool you use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We explore the channels from an Okanagan perspective.
Your website is one of the most important channels most businesses now have. Most advertising, whether traditional or new media, tends to drive to your website. Does your website coincide with your message? Is there a Call to Action that corresponds to the message? Is your website ready for the variety of devices that are viewing the information? Your digital property is being viewed from desktops, tablets, mobile phones, gaming consoles and televisions.
Dallas Gray from Newcap Radio will look at the science behind successful radio usage. Five key points will be discussed, including how to assess the value of each new customer to your business and how to set realistic goals for your advertising. He’ll also present information on how often a business should advertise, the science and formula behind the most successful radio advertisers, and what and how to “say it” on the radio effectively.
Advertising on Television has the power to reach out to more of your existing customers while also introducing your company and service to new customers. With all the media options that you have to choose from, there is still no single media that we spend more time with than television. Learn about Television as an important element for your next marketing campaign.
Karen Hill & Bruce McAuliffe will talk about today’s perception of newspapers, and specifically how community newspapers are thriving. There will be discussion on readership and how to market your business by speaking to our readers. Sometimes less is more; we will help you decide when to brand or include a call to action within your advertising space.
Advertising on local websites includes a wide variety of choices. We explore some of those options. Google Adwords, Coupon sites, eNewsletters are just a sample of other online marketing options.
This will be one of the fastest growing components for many Okanagan businesses. This one is an easy add-on to complement your existing channels. We will discuss digital signage and other passive sales techniques.
We all hear how we have to be more touchy-feely with social marketing, but how do we make money with it?
Over a year ago now someone on the UBC campus, who was thinking of developing an app, told me about this cool application for capturing cards into your contacts by photographing them on your smart phone. It was Cardmunch. It turned out that the application was only available on the iPhone at that time, but as luck would have it, the company had just been acquired by LinkedIn. Voila! It would obviously only be a few months at most before I could obtain it for my Samsung Android smart phone, right? Wrong. That was over a year ago.
UPDATE May 8, 2014: LinkedIn is Killing Cardmunch and wil partner with Evernote business card service
LinkedIn is making this announcement without much explanation. IMHO the amount of time LinkedIn frittered away on this left them no option but to kill the app. While LinkedIn may argue that Evernote provides its users with a superior solution as justification for their decision, if LinkedIn had moved promptly when they had the opportunity, partnering with Evernote would have been unnecessary. There is also the matter of the money wasted on Linkedin’s original acquisition of Cardmunch, though the Cardmunch founders may feel they dodged a bullet, and probably now own LinkedIn stock.
Read more: LinkedIn Killing Cardmunch Bizcard Scanning
My original story from 2013:
I need to first explain that I have no particular special insight into this marketing mystery. I have no insider information whatsoever. I did post a question on Quora last week on this topic, but so far I have received no answers, to help me unravel this mystery. All I have is the observation of an informed technology marketing professional: me.
Over a year ago now someone on the UBC campus, who was thinking of developing an app, told me about this cool application for capturing cards into your contacts by photographing them on your smart phone. It was Cardmunch. It turned out that the application was only available on the iPhone at that time, but as luck would have it the company had just been acquired by LinkedIn. Voila! It would obviously only be a few months at most before I could obtain it for my Samsung Android smart phone, right? Wrong. That was over a year ago.
Common sense and the acquisition of Cardmunch by a major social media player, would say that addressing the Android market opportunity is not only an obvious huge potential revenue stream, but an imperative if Cardmunch is to survive as a major competitor in the card capture space. Not only that, being “agnostic” about OS platforms is the mantra of this market. The Android market is now dominant worldwide, and growing. Relinquishing the Android market to the competition, Cardmunch would lose literally millions of dollars. Surely Cardmunch and LinkedIn would not fail to act.
Over the year and a half since this issue first arose, questions have appeared on the Linkedin and Cardmunch support sites, and other websites as well. Where was Cardmunch for Android, and why is it taking so long? I did find one “mealy mouthed yada yada marketing speak” answer allegedly from one of the Cardmunch founders. The answer was boiler plate words about “serving our customers to the best of our ability,” wishing to “be responsive to our customers,” and most interestingly, something about needing to be able to provide sufficient servers to support the large increase in demand from Android users. Obviously, this all sounds like complete nonsense, considering the scale and big pockets of LinkedIn, and the amount of time that has been frittered away.
Cardmunch internal politics and strategy no longer matter. Not surprisingly, after leaving open a window of competitive opportunity as big as an aircraft carrier for more than a year, the market has responded. A competitor, CamCard has appeared with a vengeance. A year ago there were no acceptable alternatives to Cardmunch. Today, if you go to Google Play, you will find perhaps a dozen Android card scan applications, in addition to CamCard. IMHO, and others, CamCard appears to be the best of the lot.
To me, a Silicon Valley veteran, this sounds like a story with much more to it than is being made public. Silicon Valley is legendary for feuds, fights and odd, eccentric personalities. No one seems to be talking publicly, but if someone does know the full true story of this marketing debacle, I invite them to come forward. I am only guessing, but this is one of those things that might make a good book.
The bizarre burning unanswered question is why did Cardmunch and LinkedIn allow this happen?
In this presentation, I briefly summarize tactical and strategic marketing and their inherent tension, then evaluate traditional and emerging new alternatives in the sales development process, focusing on strategic marketing control and coordination. The presentation should enable you to better understand how to optimize the coordination of sales performance with a strategic marketing plan.
New Penguin 2.0 Google Search Engine Results Page is a boon for small local businesses. Find out how to exploit this new SEO local search engine results (SERP) feature.
New Penguin 2.0 Google Search Engine Results Page is a boon for small local businesses. Find out how to exploit this new SEO local search engine results (SERP) feature.
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