Startups don’t grow linearly—this has been one of my personal realizations recently, almost epiphany-like if you will. It may seem obvious, but it really isn’t when you’re in the midst of creating a startup.
I just left a wonderful dinner with a group of people involved at Betaspring who are all some of the smartest people I’ve ever met in their various domains, and the purpose? To celebrate a failure that the majority of us have had recently. I won’t go into too many details here, but I will say that tonights dinner was the culmination of something that I’ve been personally feeling for a few weeks now and thus, the intervention, if you will, was very welcomed.
Socialping has been on a growth pattern that is not linear, but exponential. I am 100% sure that our growth pattern is like this is because of our involvement in Betaspring. Betaspring has caused Socialping to grow in so many ways that I can’t even explain, but I’ll try: we’ve changed our businesses positioning, our focus, and our goals. Personally, I’ve had to balance work and personal life, running day-to-day business, moving to a new city and getting settled in, developing new features and fixing bugs, and more, all while trying to manage this as best as I can, but as tonight showed, some things fell to the wayside.
I doubt that this is clear, but I (Joel Strellner) am one of those dreaded solo-founders. Many people have told me along the way that I need to have a team, and to that extent, I have had some awesome help along the way. I’ve had, and am fortunate enough to still have Tony Fonseca, one of the best UI/UX guys I’ve ever known to help out, and in previous versions of Socialping, I had Adam Lum, and Eric Martin helping out with development. I’ve even had teams helping out with development from India and Russia in really early versions of Socialping. Teams are awesome things to have, but still, with or without them, I’ve realized that startups don’t grow linearly and especially solo-startups don’t grow linearly.
One of the most unexpected things about being in an accelerator is how you grow as a founder is totally different than what you’d expect. You almost grow like a disease, and bear with me, but, think of the growth as being like a bunch of pimples all over your body that just continue to grow, bigger and bigger, and each one of those pimples is a nugget of knowledge that you must, will and do learn as part of being in an accelerator. You don’t just grow bigger and better, but some of those nuggets of information, or pimples if you will, grow in very painful and uncomfortable places. It’s my job as a founder, and in an accelerator to make those pimples become comfortable and that is exactly why joining an accelerator is awesome. Accelerators help you to grow in places you never though you would, or even should grow.
Sorry if this post was raw, rough or graphic. Startups, accelerators and life is sometimes that way, and it seems fitting that my publication of what has been resonating in my head, and clarified for me tonight, is too.
Twitter Lingo, What’s It All Mean?
So you’re browsing Twitter and see a RT, HT or /via, do you know what it means? Today we’re going to tell you a bit about all of the common lingo people use, and some of the up and coming ways people are attributing their sources.
So let’s jump right in:
Retweet (shorthand: RT)
Retweets are unique out of all of the abbreviations you’ll see on Twitter because there is an official Retweet method, as well as a user defined method, but it wasn’t always this way.
Back in the day, when people saw a Tweet that someone sent that they thought was important enough, cool enough, interesting enough, or anything else enough, they would copy and paste the tweet into the New Tweet field on Twitter, slap a “RT @username: ” in front of it, and send it out to their followers. Some people would even add their own commentary in front of the RT. This became so common, that eventually Twitter decided to come out with the official Retweet method that is still commonly in use today.
The downside to Twitter’s “New Retweet” (as many still call it), is that you can’t add your comments, opinion, or hashtags to the Tweet. That’s why you often still see RT in a Tweet, users did it the old school way. If someone sent a new Retweet, Twitter doesn’t put a RT in it, and instead makes it look exactly like how it would have if you were looking at the original Tweet on that users Timeline (with a small icon indicating it is a Retweet).
Fortunately, Twitter seems to be opening up to the idea of “Quoting” a Tweet, which is what many people now call the “Old Style Retweets.” You can now Quote a Tweet in addition to Retweeting in the official Twitter for iPhone app, and many third party applications also allow you to Quote a tweet too.
Hat Tip, or Heard Through (shorthand: HT)
Hat Tip’s aren’t that common, but common enough to make this list. People usually append a HT @username or H/T @username to a Tweet when that person had some influence on the subject of the Tweet.
Modified Tweet (shorthand: MT)
This is even less common than HT, but it’s picking up steam. MT is used the same as a Retweet (RT), but used when the user modified the original Tweet in some way, most likely due to the length limit of only 140 characters.
Via (shorthand: /via or VIA)
/via’s are used almost like an RT too, but are usually sent with your own commentary. For example, if you’re looking at your Twitter timeline, and you see a Tweet with a link to an interesting article online; you read it, and then decide to Tweet it. You might want to add your own commentary about the link, but still attribute the fact that you found out about it via some Twitter user. You’d do this with a “/via @username” at the end.
CC (shorthand: /cc or cc:)
/cc is similar to how it’s used in an email. If you want to make sure someone sees something, you’d CC them. Likewise, if you want to make sure that someone sees your Tweet, you’d add /cc @username at the end. If you want multiple people to be CC’d, just keep adding more and more usernames, à la /cc @username1 @username2
There are also a few other terms that you should know if you’re using Twitter, and here they are:
Hashtag
A hashtag is any continuous combination of alphabetical and numerical characters prefixed by a hash symbol (#). An example: #socialping, #awesome, #analytics. Hashtags are used to categorize your thoughts, or make it easy for people to find your tweet, in the case of it being a common search term. Hashtags are also used on TV (look in the corner of any primetime show these days), at events for Tweetwalls (check the screens, or on printed materials), or more ad-hoc, around things that happen. There is no registration process and anyone can create them, just put a #hash #in #front. Hashtags are so commonly used, that nearly every Socialping account is monitoring at least one.
Direct Message (shorthand: DM)
Direct Messages are how you can contact someone privately on Twitter. Many people have this misconception that everything is public, when in fact, there are two separate thriving and private worlds on Twitter. The first is DM conversations which require both people to follow each other, but allows you to send message one-to-one in a way that no one can see it. The second is by setting your Twitter account private (and highly advised against). Private accounts is probably topic we can talk about in a different post.
So, while there are tons and tons of abbreviations and new terminology on Twitter, the above list should give you a basic overview of what these things actually mean.
Did I miss something? If so, let everyone know in the comment section below.