That is a short version of that story as I have talked about it a lot before. What I wanted to talk about is how similar V3.com was to TwitterCounter.com. Don’t get me wrong: they served completely different purposes and technically they were very different too but there are a few very distinct similarities which I would like to show you:

V3.com	TwitterCounter.com
Yes, both services have a button. With V3 only people who were really happy with the service (a lot!) added this button to their homepages. At TwitterCounter you could say that the button IS the service so that makes this viral growth aspect even more powerful.
generated money from advertisement	generates money from advertisement
Well, that sorta makes sense right? The funny thing is that most people (now and then) don’t realize how powerful this service is when it comes to advertising. Both services are pretty low maintenance and with every new member you get a few extra new ad views a day. All you have to do is increase membership and with it ad views will increase as well.
Disgarded as ‘funny but not a real business’	Disgarded as ‘funny but not a real business’
Not that I’m complaining here but this one keeps amazing me. When I was working on V3.com I had to defend myself all the time. When I explained the concept I would either get a blank stare or people would say “You are out of your mind, this isn’t going anywhere, who would be interested in THAT’. I never understood that people couldn’t see the potential for the service. Same goes for TwitterCounter. Yeah, it’s a funny little thing I threw together in a few hours. But with every new member I get another banner, and link to TwitterCounter generating a few more visitors a day, generating a little more advertising revenue, and new members. Repeat that last sentence 10 times and you might get an idea of the potential behind TwitterCounter.
Weak spot: Domain prices?	Weak spot: Twitter future?
Another similarity is that there was a big weak spot that is easily recognizable in both services. At V3.com it was clear that as soon as domain names would become really cheap we wouldn’t really have a business left. At TwitterCounter I am completely depended of Twitter. If they stumble, close down, change their policies and become less open, or even lose their market share because of the Next Twitter I’m gone.
Excitement: high!	Excitement: high!
I’m really excited about Twittercounter in a very similar way as I was with V3.com. It is very exciting to browse the web and just randomly see your own product featured on blogs and websites. My partner in V3 (Hans-Poul) once told me he was driving around in his car and felt slightly depressed for no particular reason. When he stopped for a red light he looked out of his side window, through the rain, and saw a sign on a restaurant. In big yellow letters they had printed “Surf.to/Shoarma” on their window. He felt a lot better right away! I get a similar feeling when I brose to Leo Laporte’s website and see a TwitterCounter (leolaporte has 51,738 followers!) displayed prominently.

Ok, I hope that gives you some insight into what I liked about V3.com and currently like about TwitterCounter.com. To finish this post I will answer a question that you might have right now: Do I think that I will sell TwitterCounter for a lot of money (or shares) just like I did with V3.com?

The answer: I don’t know, but lets find out…

For people who have been following me here I also have a special discount. If you want to visit the conference and have been reading my blog and want a good discount contact me or leave a comment here and I will send you a special promo code that will give you a very good discount on the normal €750 price.

There is an interesting discrepancy when it comes to the price of the conference. It seems that most people in the Netherlands think it is expensive and people from the rest of the world find it cheap. It is true that similar conferences are easily priced at three times ourprices and so we think the price is more than fair for a two day conference.

But I think it has to do with the relative cost of everything. People from other countries spend a few thousand on airfare and hotel and then the €750 seems relatively low. People from the Netherlands take their cars or the train and so compared to their additional cost the conference seems expensive.

Either way, we hope to meet you all at the conference in April!

1: Captchatising.com
As you might have noticed on The Next Web Blog we use the names of our advertisers instead of random characters. Easier for people to understand, great for our advertisers and just as hard for spammers. Today Diederik persuaded me to actually start a new project to develop this for other blogs too. We will build the platform and try to attract advertisers to advertise on blogs hosting our CAPTCHAs. Now we only have to find someone to build it and someone to manage it. Interested?

2: 100 SEO Tips
This project is a lot less ambitious. With every WordPress install comes a plug-in titled ‘Hello Dolly’. It displays random sentences from the famous song with the same title. I took a look at it today and figured I could do something more useful with that technology. So I started a public spreadsheet at Google Docs titled “100 SEO tips” and asked people (via Twitter) to contribute Search Engine Optimization tips there. As soon as I have 100 tips collected I will publish this Plug-in to WordPress.org. If you want to contribute (I will link to you as a contributor) contact me and I will invite you to the document as an editor.

These conference blogs are very popular the few weeks before the conference but are hard to maintain after the conference ends. We all get back to our other jobs and we know that keeping up a blog is a full time job.

But we also think we have a lot to talk about regarding the future of the web and the people building it. So we decided to take a chance and hire a full time editor for TheNextWeb.org. Our plan is to blog, a lot, about events and people that influence the direction of the future of the Web.

We won’t officially launch until January and use the following weeks to get up to speed and add features and content. I hope you can check the blog out, subscribe to the RSS feed and give us some feedback on the posts:

http://thenextweb.org

The first was that Apple sales of Leopard exceeded sales of Vista in Japan in October. Apple has been a niche player for decades but this might be a turning point:

In the six days after Leopard’s 26 October launch, combined single-user licence (46 per cent) and family pack (7.9 per cent) sales accounted for 53.9 per cent of the total OS-only market in Japan.

However, at Microsoft, Windows sales fell from 75.3 per cent to 28.7 per cent

The second announcement that made a huge impression was the launch of Amazon’s eBook reader titled AmazonKindle. The gadget allows you to read digital books on digital paper. It costs $399 and you can choose from a library of 88.000 books.

The really impressive things about the Kindle however is the fact that is comes with an always-on wireless internet connection. At no extra cost. Without a subscription. It is just there.

This is incredible to me. A few years ago we still had to dial in. Then came DSL and Cable which meant we were always online. Then came wireless in the form of GPRS, later UMTS, and Wi-Fi. And now we are making the leap to standard, always-on, wireless and free internet.

In the future you will just be connected, always and everywhere and the whole notion of being on- or offline will be gone.

And with the Kindle the future just happened.

Besides that Loïs turned 6 on Friday and we celebrated her birthday, with 9 of her friends, on Saturday. That not only impressed me even more but also turned out to be pretty exhausting.

How incredible?
Not really!

It is just the Hawthorne Effect doing its magic:

An attempt was made to measure the difference between two methods of management during the 1930s at the Hawthorne plant. The attempt failed because the workers impoved their efforts immensely for both methods. This was because they knew they were being watched carefuly. Since then, the term Hawthorne effect has been used to describe the improvement in a situation that occurs just because an experiment is being run.

The same appliesto diets. There have been hundreds (maybe even thousands. Dieting dates back to the stone age) of different types of diets. Every two years or so a new diet becomes popular that everybody swears will work and which actually works for a while.

That is, until everyone stops paying attention to his or her eating habits, gains weight again and a new diet is invented.

I’m working on my own diet. I’m going to launch it in a year or so and trust me, I can guarantee you it will work and it will make me rich! No need to mark my words, they will be right here.

The reason I am mentioning this is because the Hawthorne Effect might also be a factor to think about when it comes to your own business. Just consider the facts: if you change something, it will make people pay attention to, and aware of, their habits. What can you change about your business to make people aware of it?

Could you change your name?
Your logo?
The way you interact with your customers?

How can you use the Hawthorne Effect to YOUR advantage?

You can see who all the speakers are on the official website but here are a few examples of the challengers that will speak: Marc Schroder and Michiel Muller who founded Route Mobiel and are challenging the ANWB. Pim Betist the founder of Sellaband who is challenging the music industry with a better model to promote talent. Igor Kluin who is the founder of Qurrent which is revolutionizing the energy business. Bob Kuijs who is constantly challenging Funda with Jaap.nl, all the way to court.

I have asked the Sprout people if I could do something special for my blog readers and they came up with a great deal! The first 20 people who contact Marianne van Leeuwen will only have to pay €199 instead of the usual €599.

And it gets better.

On top of that I can take ONE person with me for free! Absolutely free! And you will also receive an invitation to the speakers dinner the evening before the event. How cool is that!

Since I can only give away ONE ticket I want you to describe to me why YOU deserve this one free ticket and how you will get more value out of this day than anyone else. Use the comments form here, your blog, Twitter, Flickr or any other means to persuade me to take YOU with me.

I will post the winner here in one week from now:

The winner: (Will be announced on Monday October 22)

As a kid I always carried a small magnet with me. It was attached to a long cord and I used it to grab small coins out of fountains or street ventilation shafts.

One day I stopped doing that. Maybe because I figured out that it wasn’t a scalable business. Not many €1000 bills can be found in fountains.

People always tell you to focus.
Focus is important.
Unfortunately nobody is able to tell you WHAT to focus on.

Let me rephrase that: everybody has a different opinion on WHAT you should focus on.

So do you focus on small change?
Would you stop for this coin?

I noticed this 20 euro cent coin this morning on my way to work and stopped to take a photo and pick it up.
(Click on the photo for a larger view of the coin)

What would you have done?
Was that a waste of time?
Should I focus on the bigger picture?

I guess there isn’t one answer to the question.
Focus is important, the big picture is important but the devil is in the details.

This morning I decided that, in this particular case, it was worth my time to stop for 20 cents.