Posts About ‘startups’

Breaking out of the SEO Echo Chamber

start-up

Last week I was fascinated by Paul Miller’s story of his year without the internet. Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that I feel the internet is corrupting my soul, I have been feeling like I’m stuck in an SEO (or perhaps more accurately a search industry) echo chamber of late.

It’s not that I don’t love this industry, I do; however I’ve been making a concerted effort to change my usual reading habits in search of something new. To be clear, I’m not talking cute pictures of kittens (can you read pictures of kittens?!); I’m not convinced that those are likely to bring me much in the way of inspiration, new perspectives, or new ways of thinking.

Today I’m sharing some of the sites I’ve been reading of late, along with further recommendations from other State of Search writers and various other kind souls who responded via twitter. I’ve grouped them into categories to make the list a little easier to digest…

Ready? Let’s go.

(more…)

Dublin Web Summit 2012 – Day 2: Corporate Culture, 4chan and Yandex #websummit

Dublin Web Summit developer stage

This is a guest post by Toby Osbourn, senior web developer at Belfast-based creative agency Pierce Communications.

Last week I had the honour of attending the second day of the Dublin Web Summit held at the RDS in Dublin, Ireland. Considering that the Web Summit is really in its infancy being that this is only the third year the event has been running it is already a huge deal – touting 200+ speakers and 3000+ attendees over the two days.

The second day appealed to be because of the developer track they had running, being a code monkey I’m naturally drawn to talks by other coders, and who wouldn’t want the opportunity to hear greats such as Monty Widenius (of MySQL fame), Ilya Segalovich (co-founder of Yandex) and whilst not a developer (but I can’t hold that against him) your very own Bas Van Den Beld. (more…)

Dublin Web Summit 2012 – Day 1: Comedy and Technology, Mobile and Cloud #websummit

Dublin Web Summit

The 2012 edition of the Dublin Web Summit is Europe’s largest tech event, a two-day extravaganza boasting over 4000 attendees and 200 speakers spread across four different stages.

Some of the Web Summit’s line-up included web superstars such as Robert Scoble, Paul Sciarra (Pinterest), and David Rowan (Wired UK), as well as digital marketing elder statesmen like Jon Myers, Joanna Lord, Darmesh Shah, and our very own Bas van den Beld. (more…)

Secrets behind a Startup: This is My Jam

my-jam

Howdy State of Searchers. I’d thought I’d bring you something a little different in this post and rather than have me blathering on about SEO and the like, I wanted to delve into the mind of another far more interesting than I. So here it is… an interview with Ralph Cowling, one quarter of the wizard team behind hyped new online music sharing service This is My Jam, along with Matthew Ogle, Hannah Donovan and Andreas Jansson.

The concept is simple, what song is it that you’ve just played 5 times in a row and can’t quite stop yourself from hitting play a sixth time? Share it and find out what others share in return. Harking back to the days of buying ‘singles’, This is My Jam focuses on gems of songs that can be from any era. It’s not about new music, albums or genres of music but about telling friends about THAT song they simply have to listen to. Catching on so far through word of mouth, and automatically pulling in you details through twitter/Facebook, it is a great example of social media at work.

With plaudits from NME, The Next Web, LifeHacker and even The Guardian to name but a few, the site’s popularity has sky rocketed in the 4 months it has existed. Launched back in December, but only going into public beta in February, it truly is a demonstration of what can be achieved by a talented group of people with a great idea but not a lot of capital. Here I ask Ralph to tell us a little more about running the site, from tech to social media via analytics and of course some Jams.

(more…)