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Investing in Paperworks Videos
Posted by: leelefever on July 9, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: business, home, lesson, paperworks, productions, video
If someone told me back in March of this year that we'd be making videos as our full time job in July, I would have said it was preposterous. What do we know about making videos? Such is the current state of affairs - we're booked through the summer doing paperworks videos on commissioned basis and feel 100% confident that this is the right direction for us.
Of course, having people paying us to make videos means we have to learn fast and make some investments in our equipment and software... Continue Reading
If nothing else, our videos have increased the number of phone conversations we have with seemingly random people. We recently had a rather bizarre conversation with Limelight Networks that still makes me chuckle.
First, a bit about Limelight. They own a network that enables them to handle/distribute huge amounts of information on the Internet - videos, audio, rich media, etc. They provide a backbone for delivering media on the Web.
They contacted us because we're making videos. Our rep "... Continue Reading
Common Craft Video Productions
Posted by: leelefever on June 12, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: business, paperworks, productions, show, thissite, video
Common Craft (the company, not the blog) is in the midst of a change. It appears that we're becoming, quite fortuitously, a video production company.
This is our story:
As many of you know, Sachi and I traveled around the world in 2006. Along the way, we started making short videos and fell in love with putting our work on the web. Towards the end of the trip, we started to think about how we could use short videos for Common Craft. In October of 2006, an idea was born: we would make... Continue Reading
Plenty of Fish and Dating Site Disruption
Posted by: leelefever on June 10, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: advertising, business, community, disruption, google
If you haven't heard about Markus Frind and his dating site at plentyoffish.com, you will.
Markus is singlehandedly disrupting the dating site industry by offering a free alternative to pay-to-play sites like match.com. What makes his story so interesting is that he is the site's only employee - he runs the whole site from his Vancouver, Canada apartment and makes millions of dollars from Google ad revenue.
Here are some of the basic facts from a recent Wall Street Journal story (via:... Continue Reading
I'm originally from North Carolina and I once learned that our state motto is "Esse Quam Videri" which translates to "To Be Rather Than To Seem"
If you ask me, this should be the motto for businesses (and individuals) who are trying to adapt to the new world of community, marketing and advertising on the web. The days of "seeming" are over and success in the future is all about "being". Really, there is no choice - the customer now decides what is real.
To Be Rather Than To Seem - it makes... Continue Reading
The Clue Unit podcast is a (mostly) weekly discussion of news and trends related to online communities in the business context with Jake McKee, Lee LeFever and Christopher Carfi.
(click here to listen - MP3)
(click here to subscribe to this feed)
Episode 14, about 30 minutes.
Today's Topic: Non-traditional Discussion of Transparency
  Spammer Contacts Jake Â
  Flickr Censors User Â
  Engadget Drops Apple's Stock Price Â
  Heather and Derek Leave JPG Magazine
As... Continue Reading
Derek Powazek Says Goodbye to JPG Magazine
Posted by: leelefever on May 14, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: business, community, flickr, Social Design, worstpractices
Wow, interesting things from community people are just rolling off the presses lately. Derek Powazek is leaving JPG Magazine and 8020 Publishing (the companies he founded) - due to a disagreement with the partners. It's so sad to see someone work so hard and be so passionate about a community project only to see it controlled by someone else. His passion made it successful, just like Matt Haughey at MetaFilter.
JPG Magazine is one of the community-based businesses that I cite most. It's a... Continue Reading
Exactly What Not To Do
Darren Barefoot pointed me to a great example of how companies should not respond to criticism in blog comments. He wrote a critical post on the email newsletter company Constant Contact and his readers pointed him to competitors in comments. Then, nearly 1 year later, this entry received 3 comments within 10 minutes, all from "people" touting their positive experiences with Constant Contact. Here's an example:
The thing is, their comments were traceable back to the company (as Darren's red... Continue Reading
I have a hunch that the world of online community ROI is shifting. More data is available to support decisions and most importantly, it appears that businesses are placing less emphasis on ROI as a requirement for community projects.
Last week I had to miss what appears to have been a great event called the Online Community Business Forum. I've attended Forum One's Online Community Summits for years and always considered it time well spent.
A couple of friends, Joe Cothrel and Bill Johnston... Continue Reading
This morning Sachi had a fun job - participating in a "sewer scoping" with someone from a company called Hydro Physics. It's like a colonoscopy for a sewer line. They feed a camera down into a house's sewer pipes to look for problems.
The whole process is video taped and before Sachi left she received a video tape (yes, VHS) of the inside of the sewer line. But the tape was not the only take home - she also received two packs of microwave popcorn for our viewing pleasure. The sewer scope... Continue Reading