Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Social Networking Etiquette

I have 470 contacts at LinkedIn, 50 friends at Hyves and 114 Friends and 185 Followers in Twitter and 1096 contacts in my AddressBook. What I need is a set of rules to manage my Social Networking contacts. Unfortunately most people don't take the effort to introduce themselves in their requests to get connected. This led me to blindly accept any request I get from any of the networks. It is just too much effort to find out who these people are who invite me. even if I check their profile...

Coffee with Onno Bakker from eBuddy

Almost every morning you can find me at the terrace outside of a small coffeebar called Nero at the Vijzelgracht in Amsterdam. The Vijzelgracht is an important street and a lot of people use it to get to work. I waved at a few start-up founders (visitopia.com, eBuddy, draftworldwide) and other friends. This morning Onno Bakker from eBuddy ended up joining me for coffee. He told me this funny story about how his mother uses Hyves.nl now but once had trouble with email. She had sent him...

TwitterMail.com in 9, 8, 7…

A few months ago I posted an OpenIdea here titled "OpenIdea: twittermail.com" in which I proposed that someone would build a simple 'email to Twitter.com engine'. It took a while but 3 days ago Lennaert and Bram contacted me with a plan to actually build Twittermail. They started on Sunday and I expect them to finish the whole thing before the end of the week. In fact, it already works but they are adding some extra features and polishing the site. I have been using the service for a few...

Weblogistan.com: Sold to…

...you? I always liked that domainname! Weblogistan.com just sounds cool. Right now we are using it for the LinkCloud Widget and the ClickMyBut widget. Both have been growing steady and some Buts get a lot of clicks! But it isn't something we spend a lot of time on or have any plans for. So if you are interested in buying the domain, developing it together with us OR have a great idea for a service to add to it let, me know in the comments here. Or just go and get yourself a...

Level 3: Red Couch Video Interviews Online

Level 3 installed a Red Couch in the lobby of the Tuschinski theatre at The Next Web 2007 and interviewed a lot of speakers and visitors. They asked question sush as "What would you change on the web" and "What are you most looking forward to on the web". The complete list of people they interviewed: Cara Mascini - amsix Dick Hardt - sxip Edo van Santen - TV4B Streaming Business Daniel McPherson - The Internet Address Book Joe Drumgoole - putplace Kaj Hege Haggman - Nokia Marc...

Yahoo!

On Friday I had a meeting with the editor of Sprout magazine. We spoke about the future of search and Yahoo came up. I told him that it was funny that a lot of people in the industry considered them gone and a 'has been'. But if you look at the data they are still the number one website in the world. Don't take my word for it: try Alexa. Google isn't even number two. We talked a bit about how this was possible and what the future would look like. I said: "before the end of the year...

Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur?

Yeah, sounds like something I would come up with. But I didn't! Stuart Skorman (founder of Elephant Pharmacy, Hungryminds.com, Reel.com, and Empire Video) chose it as the title for his book: Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur: Why I Can't Stop Starting Over His PR Manager asked me if I would be interested in reading it and then sent me a copy. I am saving it for my two week vacation next month. Some of the things Stuart writes about: A large ego is not just good for an...

Benefitr.com = Minimarketing

A few months ago I came up with an OpenIdea. I named it Benefitr.com. The idea is simple: Benefitr.com is a service where people can offer marketing services in exchange for products. The inspiration for this idea came from an earlier post where I requested a Blackberry Pearl in exchange for a link on my blog. After that I read about Marjolijn who requested a Canon Eos on givemeaneos.nl and then iwanttogotothenextwebconferenceforfree.com by Roeland. I figured it would be a good idea to...