How to Increase Traffic to your Blog for Free

There is a new strategy in town to get more visitors to your blog. It's called Copromly and it promises to increase by 10 the reach of your social campaigns by using collaborative growth.

The Collaborative Era

The Internet has equipped itself with collaborative mechanisms to solve one of it's main challenges, namely, the creation of high-quality content. Wikipedia, Stackoverflow and Quora are just three examples of successful collaborative content creation tools.

Another major challenge is the distribution of that content, and collaborative growth seems to be a very promising mechanism to tackle it. Copromly is the first of a new generation of tools that exploits the combined social influence of a group of collaborators for their mutual benefit.

How Copromly Works

This is how Copromly makes use of collaborative growth to provide bloggers with a 10-fold audience reach in their social campaigns. If you are a blogger who wants to promote a blog post for free, the process is quite simple:

1. You submit your post to Copromly
2. Copromly provides you with a magazine featuring your post and presenting some posts from other bloggers. 
3. Other bloggers promote their magazines. Some of them show your post.
4. You promote your magazine (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, E-mail campaigns, Google+)

Thanks to step 3,

for every view of your magazine Cogrowly is able to provide you with 10 views of your post in other bloggers' magazines.

A Free Tool?

It is not clear if Copromly is going to remain free forever, but one thing is clear, right now they offer free lifelong licenses while they are in beta. I just gave it a try and here you have my magazine for this post:

A Legal Version of the Pyramid Scheme

Illegal Pyramids

According to Wikipedia

A pyramid scheme is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public

The problem is that the scheme cannot go on forever, because there is a finite number of people who can join the scheme. People are deceived into believing that by giving money, they will make more money; however, no wealth has been created, no product has been sold, no investment has been made, and no service has been provided.

For this reason pyramid schemes are forbidden in many countries, including the U.S.

But what if...

1. you neither had to pay money to participate, nor got money from other people in the pyramid
2. the pyramid was truncated far before getting too big

Then it would certainly be legal, but with no money involved and a truncated pyramid, what would be the point?

A Legal Pyramid

At Dialective we have been thinking about this for quite a while and we think that we can make a legal version of the pyramid work for our users. 

Dialective offers small businesses a simple and affordable way to create engaging catalogs about their products or services. Users can easily distribute their catalogs on their social networks. 

To help our users promote their catalogs beyond their social network reach we have implemented a pyramid-like invitation system:

• A Dialective user invites several friends to become Dialective premium users
• Win for the invited person: Each invited friend gets a heavy discount of 80% for becoming a premium user that can invite more friends
• Win for the person who invites: User X gets to promote her catalog on the catalogs published by a pyramid of friends of L levels. If an invited friend doesn't want to show promoted contents, then she simply pays the whole premium fee and stays out of the pyramid.

Let's run some numbers. If every user invites 2 users in average and we truncate the pyramid at level L=15, then the head of the pyramid will promote her catalogs in the catalogs published by her 2 invited friends, by the 4 friends invited by them, by the 8 friends invited by them, and so on until 15 levels of friends. That's 65.535 friends!

In general, if every user invites N users in average and we truncate the pyramid at level L, then the catalogs created by the head of the pyramid are promoted on the catalogs created by (1-N^(L+1))/(1-N) people (it's a geometric sum). That's an awful lot of traffic. 

The best part is however, that every user becomes the head of her own pyramid. This is a direct consequence of enforcing a pyramid truncation at level L. This truncation enables us to share the pie. Instead of having one large pyramid we have many small truncated ones.

Recruiting

We are about to launch this functionality and are recruiting heads of pyramids. If you are interested drop us a line at info@dialective.com. We are offering our heads of pyramids the same 80% discount that their invited friends will get, but without having to promote other people's catalogs in theirs. This offer is only for a limited period of time, don't wait until tomorrow!

Are browser extensions dead?

A browser extension is a piece of software that get's installed in your browser and that can expand its functionality to unlimited levels. For instance, extensions can provide you with engaging experiences that encompass a whole browsing session, whereas the software that runs in a website will always be limited to that website.

However, browser extensions are not mobile friendly and that's a serious hurdle in a world where mobile has become mainstream. As a consequence of that, for every browser extension that you know, I'm sure you can think of at least 5 mobile apps.

But that doesn't mean that browser extensions are useless, that they have no market, or that it's impossible to build awesome ones. To prove this point, I'd like to share with you three new cool ideas for browser extensions.

 Browsite - The People behind a website

Browsite tells you all you need to know about the people behind the website you are visiting. See their smiling faces, find out where they live, what company they have, where it operates from, what other people think about them, and much more. Check it out!

 Browsetribe - People matter

Select a person's name from a website and get a full personal profile. How does this person look like? Where does she/he work and live? What do you have in common with this person? Check it out!

 Browsetabs - Manage your tabs

Tired of searching for the right open browser window or tab? Browsetabs shows you which open tabs you may want to switch to depending on what you are looking for. Check it out!

LinkedIn Introduces Product Showcase Pages

Millions of companies use their LinkedIn Company Pages to share content and opportunities. The best way to stay up to date with those updates is to follow the companies you’re interested in. However, some companies have a variety of brands and products. How can you tell Cisco you are particularly interested in their Enterprise Network Solutions, Security Products, or in their Internet of Things initiative?

 Starting this week, LinkedIn members will be able to follow the specific brands and products they care most about that have Showcase Pages.

 Showcase Pages are designed for building long-term relationships with members who want to follow specific aspects of your business, and not for short-term marketing campaigns. It makes sense to create a Showcase Page when you want to establish a dedicated page to represent a brand, business unit, or company initiative. Before creating a Showcase Page, ensure that you have a plan for maintaining an active presence.

How to Create a Showcase Page

Here's how to get started:

1. Identify business areas that need a Showcase Page
2. Click the "Edit" menu on your Company Page.
3. Select "Create a Showcase Page."
4. Now you're ready to start sharing you content

For questions check out LinkedIn's Product Showcase FAQ 

I think the feature is interesting, but it looks the same as a regular company page. I would have expected them to provide the possibility to embed iframes, so that companies could get more creative in presenting their product. 

Protecting your Ideas without a Patent

One does not always have enough money to protect all the ideas with a patent, and not all the ideas meet the criteria for patentability.

I recently came across the Public Electronic Document Dating List (PEDDaL), which can be used to get an extra layer of protection for your ideas when you can't or don't want to patent them.

When to use PEDDaL

Here are some use cases of PEDDaL:

1. You have an idea, you want to disclose it to a company or person, but you are concerned that this company or person might attempt to claim the idea as their own.
2. You have an idea, you have no intention of disclosing it (it's a trade secret), but you are concerned that another company or person might disclose the same idea in the future, and then sue you for trade secret theft or patent infringement.
3. You file a patent application and identify an improvement, but have no money or interest in filing another patent that covers the improvement. Still, you want to avoid that someone else does file a patent that covers your improvement. 

The Idea behind PEDDaL

In all the use cases mentioned above it's vital that you can establish the date upon which you had the idea. 

So, how does PEDDaL help you prove that you had the idea at time X? The process is very simple:

When someone challenges you

Your best defense in all the use cases mentioned before is to be able to establish the date upon which your idea was conceived. PEDDaL helps you helps you prove this. So, what happens if you get into a lawsuit with a company over your idea?

This is what you can do:

• You and the company agree on a neutral third party arbitrator or mediator, or else, if a lawsuit has been filed, the judge appoints one.
• You give copies of the zip file containing your description of the idea plus the PEDDaL® disk containing the generated record to the third party.
• The third party independently creates a record from your zip file, and finds a matching record in the PEDDaL® database edition on the disk. That means the documents must have existed prior to the creation of the database edition that is on the disk, and also that the documents have not changed even the smallest amount since that date.
• The third party goes to the local library to retrieve a copy of the newspaper from the archives. The record he's created matches what he finds in the newspaper at the library. That means the database edition must have existed prior to the newspaper publication date, and also that no new PEDDaL® records have been added to the database edition since that date.
• The third party concludes from the previous two points that you had the idea prior to the newspaper publication date. 
• The company, unable to challenge your defenses of prior development, drops threats of a lawsuit. Or alternatively, even if the company is rabidly insistent on a conspiracy of theft, the company will be unable to find any law firm that is willing to risk its own financial interests by taking the case on a contingency fee.

Is PEDDaL Secure?

• My record is publicly distributed. Can someone reverse-engineer it and get to my secret idea? No, generating a record from a zip file usually implies losing information because the record is much smaller. Moreover, the hash functions SHA-512 and SHA-1 are designed to scramble all the bytes of information in your file so that it's impossible to reconstruct your documents from your record. 
• Can anyone create a record R, send it to PEDDaL, then wait for you to have a great idea and try to create a document describing your idea that precisely generates the same record R so that they can pretend to have had the idea before you? It's possible but so extremely unlikely that it's completely ridiculous to think of it as a security threat.
• Does the whole thing work even if PEDDaL ceases to exist as a company or if it's not trusted by the third party? Yes, and this what's great about the solution. You can use any publicly available implementation of the SHA-512 and SHA-1 hash functions to generate your record. This means that PEDDaL cannot maliciously alter their record generating software for any purpose, because it can be easily double-checked. Moreover, you (not PEDDaL) have the CD with your record, and the third party can check the local newspaper records to establish the date of your idea, even if PEDDaL does not exist anymore.
• How do I know if this is really going to help me when it comes to a lawsuit? PEDDaL was made by legal experts. That's why their web page doesn't rock, but it's also why you can be sure that their solution will protect you in a lawsuit. 

The process is flawless, but if you think otherwise, the guys at PEDDaL are willing to give you money if you are able to find a security problem. Just contact them regarding the challenge they have proposed.

Conclusion

PEDDaL is an affordable, secure and easy way of protecting your ideas whenever you don't have the money for a patent or your idea doesn't meet the criteria for patentability.

Advice for Entrepreneurs visiting Silicon Valley

I recently went to Silicon Valley (SV) for several weeks as a part of the prize we won with our startup Dialective at a startup competition . Now that the dust has settled, I'd like to share my experience with anyone who would like to know how it's like to visit this holy land for entrepreneurs.

I wrote a post about practical advice for foreigners travelling to SV.
This post is about advice for entrepreneurs that applies to both, US-citizens and foreigners.

Advice for Entrepreneurs visiting Silicon Valley

There are many things for an entrepreneur to do in SV, but most of them require planning. I'll describe here the main things you can do and how much planning they require. 

Events

How: Use Eventbrite and Meetup to find interesting events about marketing, sales, lean startup, leadership, legal matters, investing, pitching, you name it.  You can go to the events by car, even if it is in San Francisco, since most events take place after 6:00pm when parking is free. 

Planning: Plan at least 2 weeks ahead, because the most interesting events are very popular and they run out of tickets easily. If you find all tickets sold out don't give up and write your name down on the waiting list because you might get a last-minute spot. 

Networking: If you come from Europe you may not be used to the kind of straightforward networking that is done in SV. Here's a crash course: If you see three or more people talking in a group, don't hesitate to join them and introduce yourself. Don't feel shy, everybody does that all the time, it's perfectly normal. 

Pitching: there are events where you can pitch about your startup. Sometimes in front of investors. Get ready to deliver pitches of various lengths (1-sentence, 1-minute, 3-minutes) and in various formats (with powerpoint, with your mobile device, or without any kind of technical support).

Price: Many events are for free, others cost from $10 to $50. But the best thing is that most of them offer food and drinks, so the ticket includes dinner. 

A Dark Secret: There are events not listed anywhere to which you can only go by invitation. Those tend to serve the best food and drinks. Also, the best networking. Your only chance to get there is to know someone who extends her/his invitation to you. 

Meetings

A great complement to the events is actually having personal meetings with people in SV. If you know someone there, this is the time to pick up the phone or send an email and arrange a meeting. Everyone is very well connected in the valley, so even if this person is not interesting for your startup you should go and talk to her/him. If you don't know anybody there, keep on reading.

How: You can arrange meetings in the valley with people you've never met before. This is what I did: I used LinkedIn to look for entrepreneurs (mostly from my country) who live there, then I invited them to join my professional network writing a personal message in the invitation. In most cases I got a new contact and a meeting because this is the great thing about SV, everyone is very busy but willing to give you some of their time. 

Planning: This might take some time, so I would recommend starting at least 1 month in advance. 

Cafes

Have some extra time and would like a nice place to work? You can go to Paris Baguette or University Cafe, both in Palo Alto. You'll find there Wi-Fi and roumor has it that investors sometimes go there to meet entrepreneurs. I don't know about that but I met a guy in one of those secret meetups who told me he was working in Paris Baguette and suddenly came this other guy and invited him to the secret meetup.

Planning: No planning required. 

Visits

Want to visit Google, LinkedIn, Apple, Twitter, Wikipedia, NASA, HP, Stanford, you-name-it? Hmm, unless you know someone working there it's not going to be so easy. Different companies/institutions have different policies towards visitors though. Let's see about some of them:

Google: In Googleplex you can walk around the complex and visit the shop. If you are attending an event there (look for instance for Startup Grind events) you'll obviously get to see more. 

Twitter, Apple and NASA are not very visitor-friendly. We got there only because we knew people inside. 

Intel: You can go there, they even have a public Intel Museum at their main location (Robert Noyce Building on Mission College)

Stanford is a must-see, and I also recommend attending one of the many Stanford Events.

What to Expect from the Trip

According to my experience you can expect to get the following from your trip: 

• Knowledge: yes, tons of it
• Professional contacts, friends: yes, many
• Investors/money: I would say it's difficult (although not impossible). Most investors want the founder's team to actually be located at a 50-min driving distance from where they live. 
• Mentors: yes
• Lawyers: yes
• Employees: it's full of awesome ones but they are very expensive (>$100.000/year) 
• Technological Insight: yes, about what's coming next (check out the Singularity University).

Practical Advice for visiting Silicon Valley

I recently went on a trip to Silicon Valley (SV) for several weeks as a part of the prize we won with our startup Dialective at a startup competition . Now that the dust has settled, I'd like to share my experience with anyone who would like to know how it's like to visit this holy land for entrepreneurs.

This post is about practical advice for foreigners travelling to SV.
The next post is about advice for entrepreneurs visiting SV that applies to both, US-citizens and foreigners.

Practical Advice for Foreigners Travelling to Silicon Valley

Getting there

• Buy your ESTA (your authorization to travel to the US) at least two weeks before your trip. It costs a few dollars, paid with a credit card. Check here if you are a citizen of a country eligible for an ESTA. 
• If you are flying via New York or any other US city, be sure to have at least 2:30h time to transfer to your flight to San Francisco. When you land on US soil you'll have to pick up your luggage and take it to custom clearance, where the security personnel at the airport will take their time to open and search through it. On your way back home this is not necessary because there is no custom clearance. 

Accommodation

• Expect very basic hotels even if you pay $100 per night. 
• We stayed in a hotel in Redwood City. This city is cheaper than many others in the valley and is half-way between San Francisco (30-45 min by car) and Palo Alto and Mountain View (15-25 min by car). 

Transportation

• Public transport: caltrain (connects all major cities in the valley and beyond), bart (connects all major cities in the valley), SFMTA (in San Francisco only) and buses. 
• But I really recommend you to rent your own car with GPS because the public transport is neither very efficient nor cheap.
• Choose your gas station wisely, because I've seen significant differences in the price per gallon. Avoid tanking in touristic places such as in Highway 1 in Big Sur ($6/gallon vs $4/gallon in other places). 
• Parking is usually free after 18:00h, during the day you may park your car for free on a shopping mall parking lot.

Phone

• Both T-Mobile and AT&T offer SIM cards for tourists.
• With $50-$70 you can get 1 month of data access + national phone calls, and for an additional $10 you get unlimited international phone calls to landline numbers. 
• Be sure to bring an unlocked cell phone with you.

General Advice

• San Francisco can be cold with temperatures below 15ºC, even in summer.
• Weekly budget: $700 (hotel + car) + $280 (food + gas + parking)

Subjective Impressions

These are some random thoughts that came to my mind when I visited SV

• San Francisco is full of crazy homeless people
• People are really nice
• Mobile data connection speed sucks
• Food is really good
• Internet connection speed sucks
• Kids are not 24/7 attached to a smartphone or tablet, they actually play and talk
• It's full of smart people
• It's full of people from everywhere
• You can speak Spanish almost everywhere