RevaHealth.com Blog

There has been a lot of talk about Skype for the iPhone, which got released to the world today. Some people have been saying it is a game changer that threatens the network operator’s very business model. Others have been saying that the operators will block it to avoid all you can eat 3G plans canabalising voice revenue.

It won’t because Skype for the iPhone will be hamstrung by restricting voice communication over WiFi and not 3G giving it less functionality that Fring or Truefone that have been available for months. Both of these applications allow voice over IP communication on the iPhone and are interoperable with a host of messaging clients such as MSN, AIM, Skype, etc. So does Skype bring anything to the party? Well, yes – it brings a great brand, market presence and unsurpassed usability.  These factors should combine to provide a massive boost to non-cellular voice communication on the iPhone.

On the issue of the operators blocking the application, although this is technically possible it really isn’t up to the operator at all. It is up to Apple. Apple has such a stranglehold on the market that they can impose pretty much whatever terms they like on operators. So if Skype convinces Apple that letting users use skype over 3G is a good thing then Apple stand a decent change of forcing the operators to follow suit.

The fun police have been patrolling overtime lately, telling us that the average (bored) office worker is wasting two hours and twenty minutes per day online, sending emails and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter. This apparently wastes tens of millions of Euros for employers every year. We all know people who work in those lame offices where they are constantly blocked from visiting any interesting or fun sites. And I’ve heard some sordid whispers about workers who have NO internet access at all!

Having lived the last few years of my life completely oblivious to Twitter, I was introduced to the wonders of the social networking tool when I started working here at RevaHealth (BTW, you can follow me here, Phil here and Caelen here). While I was rather underwhelmed with it to begin with, I soon realised how addictive Twitter can become. The only problem is, when you’re using Twitter as at work, you run the risk of being fired by those inconvenient boss type people. Here are my top 5
tips for making the most of your time on Twitter, and letting your boss think that what you are doing constitutes work.

1. If the place you work for has a website, list the URL on your profile and upload the company logo as your background. Then you can convince your boss that more and more people will visit the site and learn all about your fascinating company.
2. Embrace the 140 character limit. It is pretty useful as it help you focus in on exactly what it is that you want to say. Twitter forces you to reduce longwinded paragraphs into short, succinct
   sentences. You can then tell your boss that Twitter is making you into a better writer.
3. Twitter helps you make new friends. You can use stuff like search.twitter.com and Nearbytweets.com to find out what people are tweeting about. I especially like Twitter search. It’s very easy to use, which is great for someone like me who is rather limited technically! If you have a topic you want to hear people’s views on, just bash it in and scroll down through the search results. Nearbytweets.com lets you see what people in your area are tweeting about. Once you’ve built up a lovely big coterie of followers you can tell your boss that you are using Twitter to improve your interpersonal and communication skills!
4. Get used to using all the various apps associated with Twitter, like Tweetdeck, Tweetstats,Twitterfeed, Twitterrific, and the rest. Then you can show your boss how proficient you are at using them and how they are improving your IT skills. Don’t over-do it though, or
   you’ll find yourself suddenly the IT expert of the office- fixing theprinter and replacing the paper in the fax machine.
5. Use Twitter like Google. If your boss has a question, try asking your fellow Tweeters, rather than heading straight over to the “Big G”. Think about it, Tweeters love to talk about themselves, so mining their experiences and knowledge could prove really
   useful. This means that you’ll be able to provide your boss with a very detailed answer to his question lickity-split and be his personal hero for a least a few more hours.

And remember, if all else fails, and your boss sees through the whole thing, you can use Twitter to find a new job! Just don't copy this dude.

After BizCamp Dublin, I blogged about my tips for seeking angel funding by building up trust. Then at BizCamp Limerick, I was struck by the number of entrepreneurs who were planning to set up small businesses, but simply couldn’t find the capital to get things moving. The same questions kept coming up, “How can I get angel investments?” “What government agencies will provide me with grant assistance or seed capital?”

The majority of people aren’t looking for large scale investment; they need €20K, €50K or €100K. They also aren’t looking to reinvent the wheel. They’re hoping to build businesses that would provide real value to their customers and a reasonable standard of living for them and their families.

The problem is that, while government agencies can provide some funding if you fall into a specific business category, they don’t have any more money now than they did last year. They can’t hope to fund the glut of new businesses. The same goes for the few angels in the country. There aren’t any more of them than last year, in fact there are probably significantly fewer, as a large percentage of their wealth would have been hit by either the property or the stock market crash. A lot of aspiring Irish entrepreneurs need to look at new avenues for raising capital.

So where can people turn for funding?

This may sounds drastic to some, but I think the answer lies in people’s pensions. Allowing entrepreneurs access to their pensions now would require a change in the rules, but that is something the government can, and may well need, to do. In the United States, this is nothing new, people can “invest in themselves”, using their 401K funds to build up their business, without incurring any nasty financial penalties.

This isn’t a solution for everyone, but a lot of Irish people have a reasonable sum of money, that they can’t get their hands on, locked up in their pensions. Typically, this money has been invested on their behalf by a fund manager in a combination of stocks and bonds – mostly overseas. I think that it makes sense, in the current economic environment, to bring this money back home and get it invested in indigenous businesses that can provide real growth for the country.

For those who think this is a drastic solution, let’s bear in mind that we are in drastic times and investing your pension into your business is a normal thing for entrepreneurs to do. It’s what I did and that was during the boom years. I deliberately didn’t pay into my pension for 7 years, saving the money in order to have the capital to set up RevaHealth.com.

Of course this isn’t without risk – for those who fail it means the loss of a lot of money, intended to provide for their future. However, for others, it offers up the possibility of building a future for yourself that is within your control, not that of a pension manager.

As well as taking part in a panel discussion at BizCamp Limerick on Saturday- see pic below- Caelen also gave a talk about one of his favourite topics- How to be Wrong Everyday and Still be Right. Check out the full talk and slides:

Pictured with Caelen are: (from l-r) Evert Bopp of Greenhouse Business Incubator, Ted Vickey of FitWell LLC, James Kennedy of Piehole.ie and Pat Phelan of Cubic Telecom.

Caelen and Owen headed down to BizCamp Limerick at the weekend, and as promised, it was a very productive Saturday. Owen has put together a review of Anton Mannering’s (CEO of social network platform Udoogoo) talk:

There was a great buzz at Bizcamp Limerick this weekend which took place in Kemmy Business School in University of Limerick.  One of my favourite speakers at the event was  Anton Mannering, who runs the All Island Digital Media Network and is CEO of Udoogoo.  He gave a talk on networking and emphasized the importance of giving first when you met new people.

I thought Anton verbalized what networking is at its best- meeting new people, helping them when you can and asking for help.  Anton gave us practical advice on how to think about networking, emphasizing the importance of reciprocity, in other words, find ways to return the favours that other people do for you. He showed us that networking in this way helps you grow your business and develop new opportunities.

I came away from the talk inspired, ready to shake hands, meet people and help whoever I could.

Watch this space for more reviews and pics from BizCamp, and a video exclusive of Caelen’s talk!

(Oh, also, BizCamp Belfast has been pencilled in for Saturday 16th May, and Caelen will be there. You can follow BizCamp Belfast on Twitter).

Understanding users’ behaviour and expectations for web search can be very valuable for site developers and web workers. While many SEO techniques rely on the actual actions of the user, for example mouse clicks or query streams, eye tracking can give us more detailed observations about how users actually interact with the information in front of them.

The fact that the top search results get the most attention from users is self-evident. But a study by Google backed up claims that strategies for scanning search results are different for different task types. These two task types are defined as transactional and informational. It means that you must understand which of these terms describes your website before deciding on SEO and SEM activity.

This is the standard and well known ‘Google Golden Triangle’ 

You’ll notice an ‘F’ shaped scan pattern. The eye tends to travel vertically along the left hand-side of the results, looking for relevant words and then scan to the right if something catches the
user’s attention.

This is the eye-tracking result for a transaction-oriented query:

and for an information-oriented query:

The difference is considerable, with the eye scanning further downwards along transaction oriented sites, looking for several options, and scanning across for information oriented ones, seeking more information about a particular result. These images present rather bad news for informative websites. While transaction
oriented sites can afford to be further down the search listings, information-oriented sites cannot.

Microsoft conducted a similar study on how users respond to a set of search results. They also looked at two kinds of search tasks: navigational (where users are seeking a specific Web page) and informational (where users seek specific information). The analyses showed not only what people mainly look at, but also what they select. Of course, it is clicking rather than looking that has a major effect on the performance of a website.

This table illustrates the percentage of people who looked at the result (in black), versus those who clicked on it (in red).

For navigational search, everyone looked at the first result. When the target was position 2, this dropped to 89%, then down to 56% for 8th, which isn’t so bad.

For informational search, the chance of looking at the item drops further from 94% for position 1, to 22% for position 8. Microsoft results correspond nearly exactly with Google’s triangles.

The decreased probability of clicking on the item is obviously related to the probability of looking at it. However, the dramatic fall for informational search from position 1 to position 2, is explained by the strong confidence users have in search engine performance. Participants were fairly likely to look at the
results for position 2 and lower, but were extremely disinclined to click on them.

So what conclusions can be drawn for information-oriented websites? If people trust the ranking determined by search engines like Google more than their own judgement, we should actually optimise our websites for the ‘Big G’, not for the users. All we need to do is to look reliable as, when their goal is to acquire some kind of information, searchers generally don’t care where that information is found, so long as the destination site looks authoritative.

In light of these studies, it seems that I have no excuse anymore when Caelens ays that the position 3, or even position 2 in the SERPs isn’t good enough. He is right! Being in position 2 is worse by as much as 56% than being in position 1. A SEO worker’s strategy for increasing traffic needs to be: Get to the top or die trying!

Many thanks to blogstorm for publishing this article.