EirePreneur

AOL upgrades antispam

I'm relieved to learn that AOL has bought a 'challenge-response' antispam company (Mailblocks) because their current anti-spam measures cause us more grief than you can imagine.

Everyday dozens of potential new customers sign up for trial membership on GlobalGreyhounds.com and unfortunately a large proportion of them use an AOL address. For some incredibly frustrating reason AOL regularly blocks email from our message board platform even though it doesn't block messages coming directly from our desktop originated email of the same domain. This usually results in a hair-pulling email exchange with an annoyed new enthusiast of our greyhound racing portal who thinks we have no interest in their custom.

Hopefully AOL won't just add Mailblocks to their existing system (as the CNet article suggests) - if they've any sense they'll replace it completely. Yes, of course the challenge-response process is of itself a nuisance but nevertheless a preferable one to the existing mess.

Irish web metrics

Gosh it's been a busy few weeks! I'm slowly catching up on some great blog postings I've missed recently, including Bernie Goldbach's excellent analysis of web metrics studies in Ireland.

Bernie brings up a number of excellent points about shortcomings of existing methodologies and in particular with regard to how the blogosphere might aswell be a blackhole-osphere! Little wonder I pay no attention to most of these reports. Anyone who does should make Bernie's blog a daily visit. They'll learn much more there about the real (Irish) internet than from most of these commissioned reports IMHO.

Being cautious on April 1st

There appears to be numerous interesting stories out on the net today, a number of which I'm confident are true (like Nick Denton's Kinja for example) but many others that are either April Fool jokes or badly timed to cause a huge amount of confusion (such as Google's new GMail service).

It's all great fun but not a day for serious blogging! ;-)

PS. Congratulations to Google on a brialliant PR job if this turns out to be real.

Irish brand-as-verbs?

Jena McGregor of Fast Company Now points to the use of yet another brand-as-verb -

I had lunch today with a former editor who was talking about a recent trip he'd made to the West Coast. "So I 'JetBlued' out to California....," he said nonchalantly, with little notice of the verb he'd just created. Like "Googled," which implies not only the search tool used, but the better search experience, "JetBlued" says he'd done a lot more than fly on the booming low-fare airline. Rather, he'd flown while eating his choice of snacks, watching TV in a comfy leather seat--and spending much less.

Is this a distinctly American phenomenon? I can't think of any case where an Irish brand has achieved such status as to slip into the vernacular. Are you 'Ryanairing' to London for the weekend? Or maybe you're going 'Guinnessing' tonight?

Dublin based Promotional Products company

Bookmark: Easyway Incentives Promotional Products

The Market Share Myth

Rob accurately describes a younger, much more naive version of myself when explaining The Market Share Myth. I must admit that my first 'serious' business plan did indeed proclaim something along the lines of - "Our widget can capture 0.1% of a 10 billion pound market." Ah dear, the days of innocence......

Transparency and honesty makes the customer happy.

I didn't notice it but apparently the publishing service behind this website, TypePad, was very sluggish yesterday. So, did they try to hide it and pretend it never happened in the hope that it won't harm business by frightening away potential customers? No, quite the contrary in fact. They tell the world about it, apologise that its just not good enough and express the sincerity of their regret by crediting all customers with 3 days free service.

This is a perfect example of how Six Apart, the microbusiness entrepreneurs behind TypePad have become one of the hottest small companies on the planet. And its also a reason why I'm a very happy customer.

Internet advertising growth

MarketingWonk draws attention to a report which shows that Internet advertising in the UK has surpassed Radio advertising -

Online marketers spent almost $150 million in Britain in the second quarter of 2003, showing consistent double digit quarter-on-quarter growth.

Advertising on our microbusiness website is a large part of our business and we've seen similar growth rates.

Viral Marketing Blog

This is what I love about micro-publishing. Only in the blogosphere could you find a website (blog) dedicated to the ultra-niche subject of Viral Marketing.

Naming a product or company

On Tuesday I advised that we should choose a company name wisely with the future in mind. Startup Skills gives some excellent tips on the same subject, the first three of which are -

1. suggest something about the product benefits. Example: EVault
2. suggest the product or service category. Example: Microsoft
3. suggest concrete, “high imagery” qualities. Example: Groove Networks

Of course this blog isn't exactly a product but I chose the name because I felt it capture succintly the fact that it sets out to be a resource for Irish entrepeneurs.