reflections and gems

I recently finished reading “Rework” by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson and it has been a breath of fresh air in the world of learning about business.

In their own words, Rework is about…

“We have something new to say about building, running, and growing (or not growing) a business.

….

They say you can’t possibly compete with the big boys without a hefty marketing and advertising budget.  They say you can’t succeed by builidng products that do less than your competition’s.  They say you can’t make it all up as you go.  But that’s exactly what we’ve done.

They say a lot of things.  We say they’re wrong.  We’ve proved it.  And we wrote this book to show you how to prove them wrong.”

Reading “Rework” while working on 37signals has redirected my development of hashtagd.  Below I highlight two lessons from the book and how they affected hashtagd.

out-teach your competition

Teach and you’ll form a bond you just don’t get from traditional marketing tactics.  Buying people’s attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing.  Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection.  They’ll trust you more.  They’ll respect you more.  Even if they don’t use your product, they can still be your fans. 

the goal of our company blog is to tell stories and educate users about hashtags.  one community aspect of twitter is talking about a certain topic (a hashtag).  people use hashtags for an array of uses; events, jokes, subjects…etc and we highlight these stories on our blog. 

half not half-assed

Take whatever you think your product should be and cut it in half.

during the conception phases of hashtagd we ran into a decisive foe, thinking without constraints.  as our discussion continued, our list of features and benefits spiraled out of focus.  after throwing everything off the table and looking at our product in a fresh light we decided we wanted to create a product that “shows people the best tweets for non-news worthy hashtags”.