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Heroes
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By Luis Buenaventura Last updated Feb 8, 2006
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This is a list of heroes. Not the pugilist-type, mind you, but heroes of a more geeky variety. (Heroes are as important in sports as they are on the web, after all ... sometimes even more so.) These folks are online personalities that I personally look up to and have learned many lessons from:
Jason Fried
http://www.37signals.com
Jason Fried and the rest of the (very small) team at 37Signals started out exactly like many of us did. With several years of web-dev experience under their belts, they decided to strike off and start their own studio. After a couple of years of peddling their trade this way, they began working on a project management system for communicating with their various clients. The clients that saw their system liked it so much that they requested similar systems be built for their own businesses. Fried and company discovered that they had accidentally stumbled upon a (relatively) untapped niche market, that of online project management applications. Their efforts eventually became the benchmark for the industry: http://www.basecamphq.com. Basecamp's main selling-point is its ease-of-use and a uniquely short list of features. First-timers can usually pick it up and start using it within a few minutes of being introduced to the software; compare that to Microsoft Project, for example. Basecamp is currently used by thousands of companies worldwide, each paying $12-100 a month depending on their subscription level. (You can, of course, try it for free as well.)
Lessons from 37Signals:
Simple products that solve small, specific problems are often better than suites that try to solve every problem imaginable (and usually don't).
Joshua Schachter
http://del.icio.us
The concept of social bookmarking has been around for years now, and del.icio.us was its pioneer. Currently it's been cloned by dozens of other sites that espouse the exact same "social bookmarking made easy" attitude. Del.icio.us is an example of a site where the functionality supersedes the form; it's not much to look at but it's so technologically sound that its half-a-million users don't care. What's even more amazing that it's all written and maintained by one guy, Joshua Schachter, who became a very, very rich man last year when Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us for a reported US$17 million.
Lessons from Del.icio.us:
Social software is the biggest thing on the web since "E-commerce."
Leo Laporte
http://www.twit.tv
Leo Laporte is the former host of popular TechTV shows "Call for Help" and "The Screensavers." Nowadays he's considered the pioneer of the another web revolution, podcasting. His show, "This Week in Tech," has over 300,000 regular listeners and is freely available to anyone with a computer and/or MP3 player. In many circles, podcasts are considered the next "blogs" because they allow people who are better speakers than writers to get their share of online attention. Their hour-long shows feature interviews with other great geek heroes like Cory Doctorow, Steve Wozniak, Kevin Mitnick, etc. Podcasts are becoming so prevalent these days that even TV shows such as Lost and Grey's Anatomy all have their own official podcasts.
Lessons from TWiT:
The next web revolution might require headphones.
The Arctic Monkeys
http://www.arcticmonkeys.com
This indie rock band from England were virtual unknown until 2004, when they started making their songs available online for free. By 2005, throngs of fans were singing along to their gigs, even without them having released a single physical record. Their very first 5-song EP was sold mainly on iTunes and yet they were playing at sold-out concerts at various locations in the UK. When they eventually signed a record deal in October 2005, their first single went straight to #1 on the UK singles chart. Their first album was released only a few weeks ago in January 2006 and sold over 350,000 copies in its first week, the fastest-selling album in chart history.
Lessons from The Arctic Monkeys:
Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing device known to man.
Andre Parrie
http://www.protopage.co.uk
Because the streams of information are increasing at an exponential rate, several projects are currently being built to help people organize and interact all their data. Protopage is one of my favorite examples, a wonderful bit of AJAX goodness that lets you create a custom homepage for yourself that displays all the various things you're interested in. There are only two people working on the Protopage project, and they've garnered a rather immense amount of international attention.
Lessons from Protopage:
Information is nothing if you can't sort and filter it.
Tim Westergren http://www.pandora.com
A web entrepreneur with a music background, Westergren set off several years ago on an ambitious project: to categorize all music. The effort is collectively known as the Music Genome Project, and Pandora is its consumer offering. Pandora is a music recommendation site like no other. If you type in an artist's name or song, it will dynamically generate a list of similar-sounding recommendations and play them for you one by one. You can fine-tune the recommendations further by approving or disapproving the selections it serves up, and is a great way to discover new artists. Because its library is still growing, Pandora's recommendations can be a bit slim if you're into niche genres like indie-rock or alt-country, but mainstream listeners will have lots of fun.
Lessons from Pandora:
Did I mention that the next web revolution would need headphones?
Taken collectively, these heroes are representative of where I think the web is headed over the next couple of years. People like Leo Laporte and the Arctic Monkeys are content producers who know exactly what it takes to become big online: your content needs to be free. Of course, having talent and a good reputation always help, but the first step is to stop thinking that you need to charge money to make money. People like Fried, Schachter, Parrie and Westergren meanwhile are content remixers, who allow us to cope with the huge amounts of content out there by providing us with tools that let us filter and focus our attention. The trick in this instance is to stop thinking big. People need small, simple tools that do specific, necessary things, because those are often the only type of things they can learn.
Huge online upheavals are on the way. At its forefront are a few pioneering individuals that, either by coincidence or by purpose, are redefining what does and does not work on the web. The first thing _you_ need to do is check them out.
For more info about the author visit http://www.gibbity.com
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