A little while ago we ran a tagline contest for Snagsta. Those of you that have popped by the site recently will have noticed (hopefully!) that our new tagline is ‘Your Favourite Things. Sorted.’

We’ve picked up a few valuable lessons getting there.

1. Say what you do

“Help’s you find the things Google can’t” didn’t really explain that Snagsta involved lists. It got us a lot of attention because it took on Google and because we put it out there with fun chalkboard presentation. What’s more important when you’re launching a new product is to get across what’s it’s about as quickly as possible.

2. Be careful of the big claim

Manage expections. Overpromising gets punished. Wikia’s crowdsourced search engine got a hammering when they first launched. They then admitted it would take years to fill in the gaps. But by then they’d lost the initiative. For the same reason we abandoned the search angle …and the challenge to Google. Google is our friend. The reality is that is how people find our stuff.

3. Be singleminded

We tried to be a list site and a recommendation engine at the same time. While you might think your business solves many problems simultaneously, as a marketing message this simply doesn’t work. In the milliseconds you have to make an impression… make exactly that. One impression. You can’t make three. Not when your audience has a twitter-esque attention span.

But enough pontificating, now the big moment, the winner is… Lesley, with her edgy play on words, or in this case, word: ‘Sorted’.

The finished article – ‘Your Favourite Things. Sorted.’ – is actually a combination of two of the suggestions in the comments: my brother Dave came up with ‘Your Favourite Things.’  But because Dave is helping us with other bits of the site and we don’t want red wine haze to affect his work we have decided to buy him a bottle of mineral water instead.

Lastly, thank you to all of you who suggested ideas. If we could buy you all bottles of wine we would!

A long time ago, a clever man once said, “A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions” (the Roman Emperor Philosopher, Marcus Aurelius).

This may have been true in AD150 but is it still relevant in the always-on world of AD2009? These days a more common measure of worth is your connectivity. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder) summed this up nicely when he said, “Your network your net worth.” One of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Top Life Tips is to, “go to more parties”. The express reason for this is to expand your network and expose yourself to more positive Black Swans.

A couple of weeks back we received an invite to a London networking event. The speakers were sold on the basis of the number of Twitter followers they had. This made me smile as it reminded me of recent conversations about the pressures and politics of maintaining relationships online.

Is the number of followers a true proxy for how valuable someone’s opinion is? I give you Britney Spears (903,274 followers).

My stepson Newton (694 Facebook friends) loves the fact he’s “more popular” than his younger brother Richard (389 Facebook friends). Phil (646 Facebook friends, 433 LinkedIn connections, 244 Twitter followers) and I (232 Facebook friends, 431 LinkedIn connections, 251 Twitter followers) regularly pull each other’s legs about how ‘popular’ we think we are.

To finish off this post, here’s a list of people we’ve either met or hear about regularly who are attached to the Internet scene here in London. We’ve used Twitter followers to help us measure their worth. Not sure old Marcus would agree with our methods but here you go anyway:

London’s 50 Most Networked Internet People by Twitter followers (As of 14th April 2009)

1. Jemima Kiss 10,568 followers http://twitter.com/jemimakiss

2. Mike Butcher 8.888 followers http://twitter.com/mikebutcher

3. Nick Donnelly 4,329 followers http://www.twitter.com/nickdonnelly

4. Paul Walsh 4,094 follower http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

5. Paul Carr 3,551 followers http://twitter.com/paulcarr

6. Amanda Rose 3,436 followers http://twitter.com/amanda

7. Michelle Dewberry 3,360 followers http://twitter.com/michelledewbs

8. Hermoine Way 2,431 followers http://twitter.com/hermoineway

9. Sam Sethi 2,189 followers http://www.twitter.com/ssethi

10. Nick Halstead 1,847 followers http://twitter.com/nickhalstead

11. Michael Acton Smith 1,757 followers http://twitter.com/acton

12. Richard Morross 1,246 followers http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

13. Mat Morrison 1,424 followers http://www.twitter.com/mediaczar

14. Nathan McDonald 1,362 followers http://twitter.com/nathanmcdonald

15. Joff Arnold 1,253 followers http://twitter.com/toodlepip

16. Joshua March 1252 followers http://twitter.com/joshuamarch

17. Stewart Townsend 1,246 followers http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

18. Basheera Khan 1,098 followers http://twitter.com/bash

19. Andy McLoughlin 1,069 followers http://twitter.com/robertloch

20. Benjamin Ellis 1,007 followers http://twitter.com/BenjaminEllis

21. Sam Michel 1,004 followers http://twitter.com/toodlepip

22. Ben Way 936 followers http://twitter.com/benbpway

23. Sophie Cox 890 followers http://twitter.com/sophiecox

24. David Terrar 883 followers http://www.twitter.com/dt

25. Bindi Karia 803 followers http://twitter.com/bindik

26. Alex Hoye 765 followers http://www.twitter.com/alexhoye

27. Stephanie Robesky 756 followers http://twitter.com/nerdgirl

28. Luke Razzell 736 followers http://twitter.com/weaverluke

29. Bastian Lehmann 683 followers http://www.twitter.com/basti

30. Elizabeth Varley 660 followers http://twitter.com/evarley

31. Robert Loch 656 followers http://twitter.com/robertloch

32. Sokratis Papafloratos 652 followers http://twitter.com/sokratis

33. Nic Brisbourne 643 followers http://twitter.com/pmross

34. Mario Cacciottolo 629 followers http://twitter.com/mariosotm

35. Andrew Scott 626 followers https://twitter.com/andrewjscott

36. Danvers Baillieu 610 followers https://twitter.com/danversbaillieu

37. David Langer 602 followers https://twitter.com/langer

38. James Cherkoff 600 followers https://twitter.com/cherkoff

39. Nick Bell 593 followers https://twitter.com/nickbelluk

40. Barry Vitou 557 followers https://twitter.com/bazv

41. Steve Kennedy 499 followers https://twitter.com/stevekennedyuk

42. Chris Osborne 422 followers https://twitter.com/chrsoz

43. Emma Haslett 415 followers http://www.twitter.com/emmahaslett

44. Fabio De Bernardi 399 followers https://twitter.com/fabiodebe

45. Meriem Aissaoui 375 followers http://twitter.com/mernas

46. Robin Klein 375 followers http://twitter.com/robinklein

47. Dug Falby 349 followers http://twitter.com/dug

48. Nikhil Shah 344 followers http://www.twitter.com/nikhilshah

49. Stephanie Bouchet 328 followers http://twitter.com/rougefrog

50. Paul Mackenzie Ross 325 followers http://twitter.com/pmross

The master version of  this list appears on the Snagsta website. View it here to share it with your nearest and dearest.

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South by South West (SXSW) is quite unlike anything I have ever experienced before. Here are ten things that made it unusual and amazing:

1. The Parties
   Facebook, Google, Mashable, the list continues. Each trying to outdo the next with bands, breakdancers and DJs. With the exception of Pure Volume, perhaps…where the VIPs were separated from the regulars with chicken wire!
2. Elevator Pitches
   Three times I left my hotel room and had already pitched Snagsta by the time I reached the lobby – now that’s an elevator pitch!
3. Feedback
   People were only too happy to talk through your business and make constructive recommendations. Nothing quite like getting great ideas from people smarter than you that have done it all before.
4. Content
   There was an astounding array of fascinating and relevant topics being presented and discussed on panels. At times there were up to 18 sessions on simultaneously! I only wish I could understand my notes…
5. Serendipity
   If I learnt one thing it was say hello to EVERYBODY. One of the chaps in our party, Henry Mackintosh, helped out a panelist at the beginning of the conference he randomly met in the queue.  Bumping into her later on in the week, Henry mentioned the new service he’d just launched: twitterjobsearch. Minutes later she’d tweeted in to her 4000 followers. And then one of her followers re-tweeted it to his 30,000 followers.
6. People
   SXSW is the place to finally meet all the people you’ve only ever ‘followed’, emailed or talked to on the phone. From Joe Shmo through to the Internet superheroes. I got to talk to Robert Scoble and a couple of the others and loved how genuine and approachable they all were. 
7. Panels
   The debates were current and candid. With panelist challenging each other regularly and plenty of probing questions from the audience. And then there was the UnPanel (#kebab). A bunch of Brits high-jacked a room and set up an impromptu session called ‘Not Another Social Media Panel’. Less probing but more candid. Look at what happened here (though you kind of had to be there…)!
8. iPhones
   I have never seen so many iPhones. 95% of the attendees had iPhones. Clear evidence that cutting edge mobile is currently only happening in one place.
9. Twitter
   Despite occasionally having to endure inane micro commentary, I am now convinced of the value of this tool (if used with self-discipline!). It was used to track session topics, to contribute to panel discussions, to find people, to set up meetings, to broadcast party itineraries.
10. BBQ
    You can’t come to Texas and not talk about BBQ. That and the rooftop bars are part of the quintessential Austin experience.

Oh…did I mention the parties already??

A big thank you to the companies that sponsored us and the people from the Digital Mission that helped organise the event.

Phil and Alex have left me alone while they head off to see the world (insert sad face emoticon if you are that way inclined). Well actually they have left me to go show off Snagsta to the world, but it amounts to the same thing. Alex G is alone at the controls…

On the odd occasion that I am left at home alone, I like to do the things that I usually don’t have permission to do – move things around, throw stuff out or secretly store things in the spare room, etc. These rare moments of complete dictatorship invariably lead to punishment at a later stage, but that doesn’t stop me.

What then can I do at Snagsta, while the “cats” are away?

We’ve been talking about colour a fair bit recently, with the existing purple getting mixed reviews since its inception all those months ago. Some people like it, some don’t, some call it pink, some call it mauve. Some guys like it, some girls don’t. There hasn’t been a formal poll, but I think it might be fun to see if I can’t switch it out while nobody is looking.

Any suggestions on what to change it to?

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Hide under the table!

In addition to giving up several terrible vices too horrible to mention here, one of our key resolutions for 2009 was write regular blog posts again. We haven’t quite managed either yet but, in true Snagsta style, we will persevere.

Since our last post, two rather nice things have happened to Snagsta. First, we were selected by the wonderful people at Digital Mission to accompany them to North America’s biggest Internet trade show: South by South West Interactive or SXSWi for short.

If you’re not familiar with Digital Mission it’s run by Chinwag on behalf of UK Trade & Investment. Its 5 year mission is to explore strange new digital worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations and to boldly go where no man has gone before (or something like that). SXSWi will be the perfect platform for us to shout about Snagsta and hopefully make a few more friends across the pond. A big thank you to the insightful and unbiased selection committee.

Phil leaves to conquer America next Thursday. Please Tweet him @hofmeyr if you’d like to meet him when he’s there. 

Second, we were selected to present Snagsta’s wares at Plugg which also takes place next week. Plugg is a one day conference that takes place in Brussels next Thursday (12th March). Snagsta will be one of twenty companies taking part in the event’s Startup Rally. If you’re planning on being there please send a Tweet to me via @alexandermoore so that we can arrange to meet up.

As has become our tradition, we will end this post with a list. We’ve chosen one that might be of use to someone if they have been unlucky enough to be suffering from the effects of the recession. It was donated to us by the irrepressible Robert Scoble. It offers some great advice to anyone who’s just been laid off and might be looking for a job. Hope it helps spark a few ideas for those in need of some pointers.

What to do if you’re laid off in a recession

By Robert Scoble

1. Volunteer.

Let’s say you are going to be out of work for six months. What could you do with six months of your time? Make sure you come away with it with a great project under your belt. Why not volunteer your time with a charity that could use your skills? Not only will you feel good about yourself, you’ll come away with job experience so you won’t have a hole in your resume (building an IT system for the Red Cross looks damn impressive – saying you were “on the beach” for six months does not). Plus you’ll make great friends with people who are trying to improve the world (they are typically the kinds of friends you should have anyway).

2. Do the basics.

I got my NEC job by sending a resume into a job that I found on Craig’s List. Yes, my blog helped me AFTER I got the interview, but I got the interview just by having a great cover letter and an interesting resume.

3. See if you can keep coming into the office.

This isn’t open to everyone, but at Userland I kept coming into work everyday after the paychecks stopped. That made me feel better, plus it gave me the ability to use phones, stay away from negative situations (do you really want to be around family all day, everyday, who might remind you that you need to find a job?) as well as give you a place to work hard on finding your new job.

4. Start a blog on the field you want to work in.

Want to be a PHP programmer? Start a PHP blog and make sure you put world class stuff there. Link to EVERYONE who has a PHP blog. But that’s only the beginning.

5. Do a video everyday on YouTube that demonstrates something you know.

Loic does a video everyday. If you’re laid off you have absolutely no excuses. Get a cheap Web cam and get over to YouTube or Seesmic.

6. Don’t get lazy.

It might seem dire, but if you work it you WILL find a job. Some of my friends went on vacation, started drinking, or generally just hung out with their families. Those people took a LOT longer to find a job than the friends of mine who approached their time off with these tips.

7. Take a little bit of time to work on family and health.

You probably haven’t been paying enough attention to these two things. This is the time to start some healthy habits. Give up smoking, if you’re doing that. Drink less (the temptation will be to drink more, don’t give in). Get more exercise. Yes, I should take my own advice (I went for a long walk this morning in Davos and had fish last night).

8. Make sure you spend at least 30% of every day trying to find a job.

That means working on your resume. Getting your cover letter finished. Sending out resumes. Searching the web for work. Networking. Etc. At first your time spent on these tasks should be a lot higher, but after weeks of watching the job sites for jobs and having your resume checked over by 10 of your friends you will naturally have more time to spend on other things.

9. Go where the money is.

If you are laid off and you haven’t sent your resume to Matt Mullenweg this morning, why not? People with new funding are the ones who are hiring. You want to work for them, so do what you can to at minimum get an informational interview. Why don’t you interview Matt for your blog? You never know, he just might give you an interview and that might lead to a discussion about how you could fit into his company. Even if it doesn’t, at least you get an interesting interview with someone in the industry who is seeing success. Other employers want to be like Matt, so if you have some insights to his success you might be surprised by how that gets you job interviews.

10. Go to any job networking session you learn about.

All of them were valuable to me, even though they didn’t necessarily bring me a job. Part of it is just feeling like you’re doing everything you can to get back on your feet. It’s an attitude thing. If you have an attitude that you’re going to work at this that will come across and will bring opportunities to you.

11. Don’t feel bad about taking government assistance.

You’ll need it to pay your bills. I took it and it helped me get over that tough period.

12. Always have your suit ready.

Some interviews happen fast “can you be here this afternoon?” The one who is ready will get the interview.

13. Show your friends your resume and cover letter.

Don’t have any friends? Now is the time to make some. Call up some interesting people and ask for an informational interview. This is particularly key if you work at a big company and are getting laid off. I watched people at Microsoft get laid off and the ones who had tons of internal informational interviews got new jobs fast. The key is to meet people everyday and get in front of them. Not to beg for a job, but to do research on the industry you want to work in. You’d be amazed how showing some interest in your industry will get noticed itself.

14. Do things that will get you to be recognized as a world leader in the field you want to be in.

15. Are you a programmer?

Build something and put it up! Share your knowledge on your blog (give tips you’ve learned). Are you a program manager? Those jobs will be tougher to find, but you should demonstrate that you are a great manager of people as well as that you’re expert on the kinds of things you want to do. Demo! Demo! Demo!

16. Go to every business event you can attend.

Can’t afford to get in? Me neither and I have a job! Hang out in the hallways. You never know who you might meet. At minimum you’ll get interesting interviews for your blog. Have your resumes ready.

17. Learn from Loic Le Meur.

How did he get thousands of videos uploaded on Seesmic everyday? He networked. He visited tons of journalists, bloggers, executives. He is a consumate networker (you should watch him work the halls here at the World Economic Forum).

18. Make sure you take advantage of any help your former employer is offering.

Sometimes they have retraining or other programs that might help you land an even better job.

This list is available on Snagsta here.

I was talking to one of our users yesterday and he was complaining that we hadn’t updated our blog (with the exception of Mr Moore’s posts he said he quite missed our stories).

We’ve been so busy road-testing the site we haven’t had a chance to finalise our tagline competition so the wine is still on my desk – quite a testament to our self discipline in these trying times. Reviews from our first batch of users back inside Snagsta have been fairly promising. Thanks to those of you who have sent us feedback.

The original plan was to give all our readers a Mont Blanc pen for Christmas but out of respect to all the bankers that have lost their jobs we thought something humble would be more appropriate.

Instead we thought we’d share some of our favourite lists with you.

1. Things to do in the Bay Area / Northern California (Michael Kalmar)
2. No fail date places in London (Rebeccah Rumph)
3. 5 places so good I almost don’t want to tell you about them (Steve Catling)
4. Highly recommended podcasts (Burak Alpar)
5. Clues you’re getting old (Marie Foster)
6. Picture books every child should be given (Dianne Hofmeyr)
   This user, who I might be related to, has made some great lists – check out the ones on travel. Thanks mom
7. When insults had class (Richard Pickering)
8. Things to do in and around Cape Town (Nick Pickard)
9. The best places to kiss in Paris (Vanessa Vettier)

   And finishing off with something on the racier side…

10. Food to get their knickers off (Neil Foreman)

Have a great Christmas!

A New Leader

As you may have noticed, the subject of voting has been in the news spotlight recently – yep, that’s right, it was election time in New Zealand. Plus, weren’t they doing something in the U.S. too last week?

No, of course, it was a massive deal in the U.S., but here in the Snagsta Thailand office, we decided not to endorse either candidate, partly because we try to remain suitably impartial, but mostly because we don’t have any eligible voters on staff.

Personally, I like to support the underdog, but this was tricky, because who I thought was the underdog, turned out to be the favourite and who I thought was the favourite suddenly declared himself the underdog.

Funnily enough though, the subject of voting has been in the spotlight here at Snagsta HQ, thanks to the programming team adding in some new functionality allowing users to vote on a list.

We had an interesting debate on the suitability of a voting system for us, seeing as one of our core functions is to provide recommendations based on a user’s preferences, rather than other people’s preferences. However, the over-riding factor was the probability that many of our users will not necessarily be members, so of course if we can give them a way of knowing which lists are good and which aren’t, this helps them.

To be honest, I was more concerned about how many negative votes my lists will get, but hopefully I can convince the programmers to secretly build an admin function that allows me to cast multiple votes at one time. Democracy, with a dash of corruption. It’s the Thai way.

Before I close with a list (that you will not be able to vote on!), I’d just like to remind everyone to get their entries in for the tagline competition. Some of you are amazingly creative, and some of you…not so much.

Just kidding, please do submit your own entry soon.

Finally, here is a list of my favourite online memories of the 2008 U.S. election:

The ordinary people – funny Arab lady, Joe the Plumber

The music – The Obama Girl, American Boy, Will.I.Am

The SNL skits – The Couric Interview, The VP Debate, The Debate

The Funny or Die collection – Ron Howard, Natalie Portman

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In the spirit of online collaboration we’re kicking off a competition to find the best Snagsta tagline. The most original, funny, best and worst taglines will all win a bottle of wine. Some of you may even be lucky enough to have it hand-delivered by a founder [depending on your postcode and vital statistics]. This is not a joke, you could win! Impossible is nothing.

So, what makes a great tagline?

Skype: Take a Deep Breath.
Orange: The Future’s Bright, the Future’s Orange.
Apple: Think different.
Amex: Don’t leave home without it.
Smith Barney: We make money the old-fashioned way – we earn it.
DeBeers: A diamond is forever.
Audi: Vorsprung durch technik.
Heinz: Beanz meanz Heinz.
Carlsberg: Probably the best beer in the world [even though we all know it's crap]

Some topical ones:

AIG: The strength to be there.  [I wonder how their customers feel at the moment?]
Lehmans: Where Vision Gets Built.  [And, apparently, destroyed]

And our favourite:

Heineken’s: Refreshes the parts other beers can’t reach.
The inspiration for our current tagline:
Snagsta. Helps you find the things Google can’t.

Love it or hate it [incidentally marmite's tagline] you have to admit, it’s actually true. Consider searching for restaurants in London on Google… 1.5 million results later, have you really ‘found’ any? But ask a friend for a list of their 5 favourite restaurants in London and I’ll bet you’d have one picked out in no time.

Of course Google might find a reason to hate it. Hence the competition.

So what is Snagsta? Snagsta is a recommendation site that uses lists of your favourites to help you find things you’ll like. The one-phrase benefit of Snagsta is: Find remarkable things you can trust.We need your help making that sentiment sexier and turning it into a tagline.

To get your juices flowing here are some possibilities:

Snagsta. Helps you find the things Google can’t.
Snagsta. Find things search engines can’t.
Snagsta. Find things you’ll like.
Snagsta. Take the lottery out of discovery.
Snagsta. Hidden little gems.
Snagsta. Search, refined.
Snagsta. The internet distilled by your friends.
Snagsta. Needles without the haystack.
Snagsta. List. Share. Discover.
Snagsta. List. Connect. Discover.
Snagsta. Finders keepers.
Snagsta. Better than the rest.
Snagsta. Where people in the know go.

And finally …

Snagsta. Probably the best site on the web.

Any gems in there?  Or do they all taste like Carlsberg?
Let us know and submit your suggestion in the comments.

Just do it!

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Earlier this month, we paid a 2-day visit to FOWA (The Future of Web Apps exhibition and conference) in East London.

We were in the Sun Lounge as guests of the magnanimous Stewart Townsend (the man of a thousand shirts) but a stone’s throw from a particularly excellent surf machine (Phil managed to stay on it well over a minute, me, slightly less).

Stewart invited us take part as we recently signed up to Sun’s excellent Startup Essentials programme.

Thanks to him we got to know Duncan from hosting company EveryCity, Glenn and Angela Shoosmith (husband and wife) from BookingBug (who won one of Mike Butcher’s several TechCrunch Pitch events) and Charlie and Sophie Cox (brother and sister) who have just set up Worldeka. There were also a couple of other people you might have heard of… the young lad in the photo with the halo is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. I saw him speak and was impressed with his sincerity but a little disappointed that he skirted some key issues and didn’t stick around for any questions.

The presentations were good and there were always some interesting folks wondering into the Sun Lounge. Learned a few things about Facebook Connect, Microformats and OAuth too so all in all it was a good couple of days. Thanks Stewart, we owe you one.

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This is one of the more difficult posts I’ve had to write but we thought it was time to make an announcement about the lack of progress with Snagsta. As a result of some problems with the site, we’ve changed tack and appointed a new development team to get us to public beta. Although it was a difficult decision to make, we’re confident it was the right one and are excited about how things are now moving ahead.

We have a big team coding away and the initial feedback we’ve had from them so far has been positive. As I type, Snagsta’s intrepid explorer Phil “The Hof” Hofmeyr is on his merry way to spend some time with the new development team in Asia. If all goes to plan, by the time he gets back to London we will have a new version of Snagsta to play with.

Thanks to all of you who have tested the site over the past couple of months. Your feedback has been great and we’ve been able to incorporate many of your ideas in to our plans for our next build. We look forward to sharing the new site with you all very soon. 

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