Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Today is my first blogging anniversary!

On July 29, 2006 at 5:43 pm I posted my first blog post on bomega.com titled “The Internet Entrepreneur“. Since then I have written 571 posts (an average of 1,5 posts per day) and received 1,572 comments (an average of 2,7 comments per post). My posts have received 77,686 unique visitors in the last 365 days.

I still get a lot of satisfaction from blogging. It helps me get my ideas out there and I enjoy all the feedback I get from people. I fully intend to keep blogging here and hope you keep reading and commenting.

There are also a few things I have learned in the past year.

1: Readers remember and like the longer posts but will only comment on shorter posts.
2: It is more important to be original than fast. Breaking news isn’t nearly as important as telling an original story.
3: Google ratings are overrated; I do great in Google but for the weirdest queries. Search for ‘My First Vibrator‘ and I’m there on result number 5. These kind of posts sure attract a lot of people but they stay exactly 3 seconds and are gone again.
4: Don’t ever use your blog to vent your frustration about people. Frustration about things is great but getting mad at people won’t do you much good.
5: ‘Hyperlinks are little acts of generosity’ –David Weinberger; the more I link to other sites the more visitors I get and the more my blog is appreciated.

Next to having learned these simple truths my blog also got me a lot of other things. You might remember my Blackberry Pearl post which got me a free Blackberry Pearl within a few hours. But I also met various people and made a few deals after I got in touch with some of my readers. I also speak more often and get paid more since I started blogging.

All in all I can honestly say that blogging works for me.
I hope it works for you too…

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This is just a quick experiment: a public Twitter account which everyone can use to post anonymous updates. Simply email your thoughts to we_are_all@twittermail.com and it will appear online.

Check this page to see the first results: http://twitter.com/we_are_all

Ever watch Seconds from Disaster? Then the term ‘Structural Integrity‘ might sound familiar. It happens when the structure of an airplane or building is damaged. Instead of a solid structure it becomes a collection of disconnected parts often leading to some kind of disaster.

The term kept coming up while I was putting together some IKEA furniture this weekend. I don’t want to complain about IKEA and generally love the whole concept. No problem here with missing screws or unclear instructions.

But one thing is kind of annoying with the IKEA stuff: it seems that as you are putting the furniture together there is absolutely no Structural Integrity until you screw in the last screw in or pull the last string or attach the last piece of cardboard. Then the whole thing turns into a solid mass.

That is until you find out that section 3a should have been attached to section 6b the other way around. You simply unscrew some elements resulting in the unstable state you were in 6 steps ago. Then it seems like the unscrewing of a few screws leads to a total loss of structural integrity which you will never, ever regain. Even if you put all the screws and sections in the right place. Some things aren’t meant to be disconnected.

The same can happen with projects. You have a plan, a team and the right resources. But something happens. It might be good, or bad or just unforeseen but it forces you to re-evaluate your fundamentals. Then you find out that removing or changing one of the assumptions from your plan changes everything down the line. Suddenly the whole project loses its structural integrity. People will shout ‘Well, if we do that we might as well change everything!’ or ‘That isn’t what this project is about! I thought we were doing it for…’.

Yesterday I found out that I had placed one side of my new bookshelf upside down. I removed a few screws and tried to just fix that one part. Halfway through the whole thing started coming apart at the seams and I had to give up. There was no other option but to take the whole thing apart and start all over.

Sometimes you just have to respect structural integrity and build things up from the ground.

Often when we launch new projects (Recently TwitterMail.com and TwitterMSN.com) people want to know if it is a serious plan and how we plan to make money with it. Often I don’t have an answer to that question and some people hate that. I receive comments that my plan will surely fail because the commenter can’t see a way to make money with it.

It is easy to ignore these comments and I usually do. But I was browsing through my Quotes file (4000+ quotes) this morning and found this classic one from Isaac Asimov:

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …’”

New ideas are usually strange and at first seem unrealistic. If your idea is new enough people won’t flock to it but rather dismiss it at first. As P. B. Medawar puts it:

“The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.”

We often launch ‘nice’ ideas which don’t sound that serious but which might become serious later. There is also a quote from Paul Graham which he received lots of criticism for but which I like very much:

“…figuring out how to make money from something popular is a lot easier than making something popular…”

My point is that we aren’t necessarily looking for the next Google, YouTube or Skype. We invent stuff and if it is easy to build we just do it. Then we launch and see what happens. Or, as John Maxwell says;

“Fail early, fail often; and fail forward.”

After all, it isn’t all about that one good idea. For that to happen you need to do a lot and make sure you can get lucky enough to try to the right thing at the right time. That wouldn’t be luck but serendipity. Surround yourself with crazy, overly optimistic and unfounded plans because, as Thomas Edison said,

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

Almost More than 1000 people use TwitterMail.com right now and more than 4000 messages have been posted to Twitter.com with TwitterMail. Time to introduce something new!

Lennaert and Bram have been working on a ‘MSN to Twitter‘ service and just launched their product (in beta, of-course) named TwitterMSN.com. I have been testing it today and it works flawlessly.

This is another feature that was sorely missing from Twitter.com and it is great that it is available now. Twitter.com also agrees and now adds the ‘TwitterMSN’ tag to every update that they receive via TwitterMSN.com.

If you use Twitter and MSN Messenger check it out: TwitterMSN.com.

Read all about the OpenIdea that led to TwitterMail.com.

What people are saying about TwitterMSN:

The Museum of Modern Betas
http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/beta/twittermsn

AccessoWeb: Twitter maintenant sur MSN
http://blog.accessoweb.info/post/Twitter-maintenant-sur-MSN

Nawak! le blog de Super Chinois: Twitter sans compter grâce à TwitterMSN
http://nawak.unotherblo… …e-a-twittermsn.html

Mashable: TwitterMSN Lets You Tweet from Your Chat Tool
http://mashable.com/2007/07/19/twittermsn/

HongKiat: How To Update Twitter Via MSN / Windows Live Messenger
http://www.hongkiat.co… …-windows-live-messenger/

FEEDMYAPP: TwitterMSN
http://www.feedmyapp.com/p/a/chat-tools-web-20-applications-sites-twittermsn/1031

Alcides Fonseca: One (more) good reason to twitter!
http://alcides.ideias3.com/blog/78

MiTripleW: Actualizar Twitter desde MSN
http://www.mitriplew.com/index.php/internet/2007/07/19/actualizar_twitter_desde_msn

StumbleUpOn: We received over 400 visitors from StumbleUpOn in less than 10 minutes.

KillerStartups: TwitterMSN.com - Tweets From Your MSN
http://www.killerstartups.com/WebAppTools/twitterMSN–Tweets-From-Your-MSN/

Adictos Web: TwitterMSN: Twittea desde el MSN y recibe las actualizaciones de tus amigos
http://adictosweb.blogspot.com/2007/07/twittermsn-twittea-desde-el-msn-y.html

Wappblog: TwitterMSN：让Twitter支持MSN
http://www.wappblog.com/50226711/twittermsnieetwittermsn_106528.php

playpcesor.blogspot.com: Twitter Mail and MSN：傳送、接收、增強你的Twitter
http://playpcesor.blogspot.com/2007/07/twitter-mail-and-msntwitter.html

BigBlueBall: TwitterMSN, actualizando Twitter desde MSN
http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/noticias-en-mi/40761-twittermsn-actualizando-twitter-desde-msn.html

BigSignals: TwitterMSN, twitteando desde el Messenger
http://bitsignals.com/2007/07/19/twittermsn-twitteando-desde-el-messenger/

ChemstudioWEB: Even MSN Is Able To Update Twitter
http://www.chemstudioweb.com/even-msn-is-able-to-update-twitter/

BNOX: MSN to Twitter
http://www.bnox.be/2007/07/msn-to-twitter.html

Geekissimo: TwitterMsn: inviare i messaggi su Twitter da Msn
http://www.geekissimo.com/2007/07/20/twittermsn-inviare-i-messaggi-su-twitter-da-msn/

Technology News Daily: TwitterMSN.com allows Tweets From Your MSN
http://news.techvine.org/2007/07/22/twittermsncom-allows-tweets-from-your-msn-3/

Windows Live: Twitteren via Messenger
http://livelog.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F22E9E9D8F70E526!827.entry

Patrick did an interview with Los Creador. It is a blog which publishes a new interview with a internet company founder every week. This week Patrick talks about Fleck and how it was inspired on a story written by Vannevar Bush way back in 1945 and how he got a vision to create a two-way internet. It is an in depth interview and focuses on vision a lot.

Go and check it out and don’t forget to digg it too…