I wish there were an RSS option for the search results sorted by recency. Would love to be able to see when there are new mentions for a term without having to come back and search frequently.
1,851 karma · joined January 26, 2008
You can find me at http://socialstrategist.com
E-mail: jay [.dot.] neely [@at@] SocialStrategist [.dot.] com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JayNeely
In your last link, they're talking about funds raised by VCs, not dollars invested. NY firms did have a good year in 2011 -- $4 billion raised to MA's $2.5 -- but in 2012 MA firms raised twice as much as NY firms, and MA firms have raised $1.5+ billion in Q1 of 2013 alone.
Take initiative. Find events happening that sound cool (school calendar, city calendars, local bar calendars), and invite other people out. Ask people if they'd like to grab lunch, or if you can join them at their table in the dining hall. Acquaintances become friends mainly through repeated exposure and one-on-one interaction.
>for the past three months, every Friday and Saturday night, I've walked aimlessly around campus for hours, hoping to find a friend
This is much less likely to succeed than by attending something that's meant for people to make social connections. Join clubs (activity groups, meetups, etc.). The more people you regularly interact with, the more likely it is you'll make a connection.
Your school wants you to succeed at this, and you should take advantage of the resources they provide to do so. Ask your RA if he knows of anything fun happening this weekend. Tell them you're looking to make new friends and could use some recommendations of events you should check out. Tell your professors you're really interested in connecting with people who'd like to collaborate on UX projects, and ask him if he knows any other students who are taking the class because of more than just credit. Ask people in the Student Life committee which events are most likely to have people attending who want to make new friends, rather than people attending with existing friends.
And if you're feeling depressed or having difficulty connecting with people you'd like to be friends with, talk to counselors in the student health center. Like you said, many young engineering students face problems like these -- they will have advice both specific to you and from helping hundreds of students like you.
What kind of recreation are you looking for?
The challenge for startups here has been in finding:
a) seed funding, and
b) funding for consumer web businesses
Both areas have seen significant improvements since five or even three years ago. Since YCombinator left Boston in 2009, Spark Capital (one of the main consumer web & seed-stage VCs here) has raised two additional funds of over $800 million. NextView Ventures raised its first fund in 2012 to invest in seed stage deals, and both New Atlantic Ventures & .406 Ventures raised new funds in 2008 to do the same.
Boston/Cambridge is certainly still far from the amounts of funding in Silicon Valley, but we're far ahead of anyone else, particularly when you factor in population.
- identifying your target audience (who is this for)
- determining your value proposition (why would they want it)
- finding channels to get this message to them (where are they, how can I reach them)
Ideally, you're looking not for individual promotional efforts you can make, but for repeatable systems you can automate, measure, and improve.
http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mort...
http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-...
Haven't written anything for the third yet; we may still use the tech & assets from it to move in a different direction.
Failure is frustrating, but I've learned a ton from the work each time, and way more rapidly than I have through anything else I've done.
Don't give up.
Or better yet, can you change one of the javascript resources to detect if the domain is pixanyday and display a warning?
Unlike email, Yammer or other twitter-like platforms are ambient, one-to-many without demanding each person's attention, and length-limited. It's easy to put a message out without being interruptive, and get attention to it / responses from whoever's available. I find it pretty valuable.
Excellent insight.
I wish there were a site that wasn't transaction-focused, that provided a way to find people with specific skill sets, and that provided search / profile data that was specific to freelancers vs job seekers (e.g. what's your hourly rate? what's your availability? are you looking for sub-contracting / referrals / collaborations?). And most importantly, that connected to the social graph and provided a good reputation system. If the people I've worked with before aren't available, the next best is people they've worked with before, and rated positively.
Are cancellations outnumbering new registrations because cancellations are increasing (relative to total customers), or because signups are decreasing? If the former, asking customers why they cancel is certainly something you should do. I'd also take a look at your analytics, and look for usage patterns you can draw insights from. Install mixpanel, and set a 'canceled' super-property on any user that cancels. Then you can retroactively segment their usage vs ongoingly active users.
If you want to let the service go on auto-pilot, you need customer acquisition methods that enable it. AdWords, paying someone to write / promote blog posts, a referral program, etc.
And Google's APIs: https://developers.google.com/
I think ProgrammableWeb is pretty comprehensive though.
And a couple of non-mail-related ones:
http://www.fliptop.com/ - social intelligence API
http://www.twilio.com - SMS & IP Telephony API
http://spreedly.com/ https://spreedlycore.com/
It's also nice that their pricing is all flat-fee per-transaction.
Add collapsible comments (previously done here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2680632) -- this is my most-used HN browser addition.
Refresh the 'More' links at the bottom of pages so you never get an 'expired link' error.
Add username tagging. Easily one of RES' best features.
Also, add some graphics. Text-only slideshows do not interest people. It can be simple to illustrate what your do or the benefits you provide using freely-available icons and arrows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_College
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olin_College
I also see a lot of students from Northeastern University at startup events here, and hear nothing but good things about their Co-Op program, where internships with companies (including startups) are part of your degree program: