Yesterday I made the trip from Pittsburgh to Syracuse to attend the Syracuse University iSchool’s SXSW Report (and to see some family, but that doesn’t make it sound as cool).  I really had no idea who these students were or why they were doing this presentation nearly a week after SXSW but I figured I’d give it a shot.  I was greeted by cool people and beer so I knew it wasn’t going to be a complete bust.  Come to find out, the SU iSchool actually paid for the entire trip for these students because they recognized how important the event was.  That completely blew me away, an educational institution that realized how important and relevant SXSW was for its students that it sponsored them 100%.

Kate Holloway (@KatiePunkin), Shay Colson (@shaycolson), and Andrew Farah (@andrewfarah) did a great job sharing their experiences of SXSW.  As an entrepreneur I was happy to hear them say that they recognized how many small companies that were there that were simply building and hustling as opposed to going after large amounts of investment to start their venture.  They said that seemed to be the theme with most of the companies, a lot of them were bootstrapped or had received a very small amount of funding to start up.  I think a lot of people are finally realizing how cheap it is to start a business and aren’t writing huge business plans, instead choosing to get their hands dirty and build it themselves.  They also confirmed that Mark Cuban is indeed an asshole all the time, not just at Mavericks games and on his blog.

It was really great meeting the people from the iVenutre Upstate Forum, I think there is a great thing going on there and I hope to see a lot more people start to contribute to the discussions.  I must say my heart has officially moved to Pittsburgh but I like to do anything I can to help create opportunities like the one I have been given from Alphalab in Syracuse, and last night proved that the right things are being done for that to happen.

Again, it was great meeting everyone last night and thank you for opening the event up to the public.  I really enjoyed myself.

I went on the YES Conference Facebook group page last night to see what type of activity and discussion there was about the event.  To my surprise there was only 23 people in the group, and a mere 4 comments on the wall.  I then started doing Twitter searches with every combination of search words imaginable to see if people were having any discussion about the event on Twitter.  Of course I found nothing again.

So I arrive at the conference today with no idea what to expect.  Walking in I realize there were only around 100 people there, 98% of which are high school students.  This event was “advertised” for 12-25 year old aspiring entrepreneurs, and only 2% were 19 or older.  On top of that, there were only 2 students from Syracuse University actually attending the event, and Syracuse University was the one putting on the conference in the first place.  That’s not to say there weren’t Students from the Whitman School of Management helping, but I found it very odd that during the keynote speaker these students who are getting “Entrepreneurship” degrees (whatever the hell that even means) weren’t even interested to hear the story of a successful entrepreneur and simply hung out in the common area.

They kicked off the conference by showing Shark Tank (if you like Shark Tank, and I really hope you don’t, please watch This Week in Startups instead because Shark Tank is reality TV and isn’t how things work) and during intermissions they had a fantastic DJ blasting beats forcing you to scream during every conversation which made networking extra easy.

Very disappointing conference, with little to show of what comes out of the EEE program at Syracuse University.  As I’ve heard many people mention, there are only 2 companies in the last 9 years that are even doing anything right now who came out of the Universities Entrepreneur program.  Not the best track record considering how many come out of the program in the first place.  However, there was some good that came out of the day.  I had the pleasure of meeting some of the smartest young guys who are very motivated and I have no doubt are going to kill it one day.  I wish I knew as much as these guys do now back when I was in high school.  It’s just very unfortunate that they will most likely be successful anywhere but Syracuse.  It’s just lost opportunities like these that make Syracuse the dying city it is.

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me this, I’d have $4.38.  Many people have different views on it.  I always hear people describe it as micro-blogging, or that it’s “kind of like an away message on AIM or like your status on Facebook.”

I think it is much more than this.  I always describe it as an open conversation about everything.  So much information flows through Twitter that it boggles my mind.  Of course whenever a new social network comes out, every tries to find ways to profit from it.  I’ve noticed, however, that few businesses have figured out how to leverage Twitter and join these conversation to connect to possible costumers.  Firstly, if you own a business and you don’t have a Twitter account for your business, you are CRAZY and simply don’t get it.  Secondly, those companies that have an account and simply follow as many people as possible in hopes that some return the follow are even worse!  If you are trying to sell something or promote something and you think that following 17,567 random Twitter users (I call this follow spamming) is going to help you, then you don’t get it either.  If you’re not genuine and you’re just looking to sell your products, promote your site, make money, etc. then you are not going to get close to the results you want.  Maybe 5 people of those 17,567 will really be interested in what you have to say.  You just wasted a whole lot of clicking for no results.  So how can you really make use of Twitter?

A lot of good companies out there that really understand Twitter have already built their brand and don’t need to do much more than be awesome to grab peoples attention.  But a lot of companies fail to really get peoples attention, or more importantly, fail to get the right peoples attention (potential customers, subscribers, viewers, etc.).  Maybe you’re just a little startup company, how do you get heard?  As I said in the beginning of this post, Twitter is an open CONVERSATION, so you need to join the conversation.  If you sell toilets, you better be using http://search.twitter.com and searching “toilet seats”, “toilets” and any other variation to find out what people are saying about them.  Why?  Because these are the people who might actually care what you have to say about toilets!  You need to engage in this conversation, @reply people, give advice, and be genuine!  Also using http://wefollow.com, which is a Twitter directory which groups people by their interests, to try and find people who are interested in your particular niche can help connect you to the write types of users.

Anyone who ends up following you in response to your help or comment is a much more valuable follower than one of the random people that might follow from follow spamming.  Engaging in conversation and being genuine will make people listen and respect what you have to say.  Use the many Twitter tools out there correctly and you will be able to connect with more valuable followers who will actually be interested in what you have to say.  Because let’s be serious, 99% of those random users who follow in response to follow spam won’t give a crap what you have to say, especially if you sell toilets (no pun intended).

I guess these big corporations just don’t get it.  Yahoo had something good going back in 2000, but now not so much.  Yahoo Buzz is essentially a Digg clone, but it lacks one essential thing.  Digg’s backbone is the community. They are constantly getting user input, and doing things to make the community aspect of the site better and better.  Yahoo unfortunately failed to realize this, which is why Yahoo Buzz is a huge failure.

This article with both Digg and Buzz buttons embedded shows it best.  The article about Windows XP’s support by Microsoft getting extended by 6 months was posted by tgdaily.com. The article had a total of 2040 diggs on Digg and 8 votes on Yahoo Buzz.  Not to mention if you look at the most dugg articles on Digg, they usually have thousands of diggs.  I’ve seen articles get in the tens of thousands of diggs.  Buzz’s top articles by vote at the time of writing included an article with 750 votes, and the next highest had 180.  It’s like comparing a PeeWee Football team to the Patriots.

Maybe next time Yahoo decides to leverage their large user base and copy another site to try to improve themselves, they should consider why exactly that other site is successful in the first place.