Any entrepreneur considering building a website needs to strongly consider making it mobile friendly. Having a site that is designed to be viewed on a big AND small screen is now more important than ever. With the prevalence of iPhones, Android, and Blackberry phones among most target markets, the likelihood of a potential user visiting via mobile devise is tremendous. The real question is whether or not your site will be up to their standards.

Do you have the mindset you will need to design and keep track of such a site? If not, I would suggest you go over to LimeCuda and read their article about The Mobile Future of Your Business. The concepts, such as having realistic expectations, keeping track of statistics, having goals for mobile based usage, taking the time to gain an accurate understanding of what your users are looking for, are all familiar to the internet entrepreneur. But, that being said, there are some unique ways to implement the ideas.

Looking to schedule a meeting with some friends or colleagues? “When is Good” provides a quick and simple method for groups to indicate what times they are available so that a meeting time can be selected.

When is Good

It can be pretty confusing when a group needs to establish when their next get-together will be. Everyone starts talking at once and really nothing gets heard. When is Good has the solution — let each individual inform the group leader all at once while still being clearly heard.

How is this possible? When is Good provides a single individual (ideally the group leader) a password and a link. The individual provides the rest of the group with the link which leads to a calendar. Each individual simply selects the times that will work for them by clicking or “painting” by clicking and dragging. The single individual with the password is then able to go onto the website, input the password, and access the results (example results shown in the picture above). Times without conflicts are highlighted and all other times have the number of people with conflicts indicated with red dots, providing a clear and succinct report for the group leader to make a quick and well-informed decision.

The website is funded by advertisements and sale of premium and branded accounts which provide users with additional features and removal of the advertisements. Branded accounts also enable the user to further customize their own subdomain which is dedicated to their individual company.

A simple solution with a simple website layout to accomplish this complex task? Ockham and his pointy little blade would be proud!

Feel like a beach comber when surfing YouTube?

YouTube is one of the most successful uses of internet technology and Web 2.0 that we see today. The “largest worldwide video-sharing community” has provided procrastinating college students and bored office employees with hours of entertainment. YouTube also gives companies and celebrities yet another promotional platform, enables amateur filmmakers to easily release their art to the world and is a source of thousands of useful instructional videos. Unfortunately, YouTube has also spawned many millions of boring, irrelevant and meaningless videos. Their owners: teenagers who somehow believe the rest of the world wants to see their foot-high back yard bike ramp being put to use and middle-aged hillbillies who want to share a 10 second video of their new brood of puppies.

This isn’t a rant about me not caring about these people’s lives; it’s a statement of concern for the growing ocean of garbage on YouTube. A similar problem is the endless copy-and-paste videos! How many “Charlie Bit Me” videos do we really need? And why is an official music video buried amidst dozens of fan videos featuring nothing but lyrics or nature pictures? I fear that YouTube may suffer from the plague that so harshly affected MySpace. As more and more noise is added, the good videos that drew us there in the first place are becoming drowned out.

Perhaps YouTube needs to be more exclusive about who can upload public video. Would it be possible to automatically delete clips that have less than fifty views after the first month of existence? I have no suggestions for a quick fix, but I would like to see a higher standard enforced.

Do any readers have suggestions for improvement? Please comment below!

Zynga is a company that was created in 2007.  They have since dominated the social gaming industry.  Although they are the creators of over a dozen online games, their most popular is Farmville.  Farmville has a 5 million person user base per day.

It would be easy to let that number roll over you, so let’s put this in perspective.  Zynga is valued at over 5 billion dollars, which is more than Electronic Arts.  EA is the second largest video game company, and have wildly successful titles such as Madden NFL.

Zynga was able to reach these incredible levels in less than four years by utilizing the amazing power of social media.  The full potential of social networking has yet to be realized.

I found a fascinating video by the CEO of SCVNGR.  Seth Priebatsch is an enthusiastic Yale drop-out who is predicting the social media trend for the next decade.  He says that last decade was the development of the social layer, which includes Twitter, Facebook, etc.  This decade, a game layer will be added that includes being awarded virtual points for completing real and physical tasks.  It’s a futuristic concept, so watching the video can help to understand his vision:

Seth Priebatsch: Building the game layer on top of the world

What is the criteria to make it to be one your friends on facebook? In my mind, there are two camps: those for QUANTITY and those for QUALITY.

QUANTITY will add just about anyone. Occasionally, they will Ignore someone but more likely they will just leave the request and do nothing with it.

QUALITY is selective and Confirms only those who they desire to keep in touch with or know what is going on in their life- they choose “Friends” the same way they might choose friends.

So maybe the question is are your facebook “friends” actually your friends? Should we be more selective in who we let into our own personal lives of posts, photos, and relationships? Or maybe more notably, who do we allow to crowd our facebook with their post, photos, and relationships?