Vinny Lingham’s Blog

Many people still don’t know what Twitter is. For those who don’t - think of it as Peer to Peer IRC (Internet Relay Chat - the stuff that chat rooms ran on years ago). It basically allows users to speak to each other in public view (if they want). It’s like SMS’ing for the web, but it all gets logged. Twitter is really becoming a protocol for short messaging online - and many companies are now integrating it into 3rd party applications. Here are some helpful articles on how to improve your Twitter experience!

Beginners Guide to Using Twitter

5 Tip to grow our Twitter presence

Voice to Text on Twitter

How to find friends on Twitter

I’ve been here for nearly two weeks now - and it’s been really unbelievable how well things work around here!

I’ve bought a car, shoes, groceries, electronics and just about anything else you can imagine online. With my car, I selected the vehicle through Edmunds - received 4 quotes, selected one and the dealer delivered my car to my front door (literally!), without me even meeting him - within 48 hours - complete with insurance. And I bought it on a Sunday!

Shopping online also resulted in the most savings for products that I’ve been purchasing. I’ve been using FatWallet to take advantage of affiliate discounts and coupons, without having to go through the hassle of applying to each merchant program, etc.

I met with a recruiter on Friday to start getting resumes in for the positions that we have to fill in San Fran - and this morning I received 8 resumes for highly technical positions as well - it’s amazing how large the skills pool here is!

We’ve met with about 3 PR agencies here, and all 3 were impressive - some very tough choices ahead in this category. I’ve also had the time to mingle with a couple of valley CEO’s - and the network effect is already starting to happen as I get introductions to new people.

That’s probably the single biggest value that you get out of living and working in San Francisco - the tech circle is humongous and the ability to network with fellow tech startups is probably second to none. I’m also struggling to keep track of all the various activities around here, but it seems that Yelp is very popular!

My apartment is across the road from our offices, and down the road from AT&T park - in South Beach - it’s really a great place to be and I even get to walk to work for like 2 whole minutes :-).

We have a total of 8 people now working out of San Francisco and trying to hire aggressively, so check out the SynthaSite Careers page. We also recently made the following local San Francisco hires:

Chief Financial Officer: Trevor Harries-Jones (Joining us from OpenTV, previously PWC)
Vice President of Marketing: Randy Almond (Joining us from Walmart.com, previously Accenture)
Vice President of Product Development: Sean Crotty (Joining us from Mpire, previously eBay)

And here is a pic of our new offices (yup - looks like a startup office!)

Things are really beginning to move over here - we just got Internet access installed at the office - that was probably the most frustrating thing - AT&T have proved to be utterly useless - it’s taken 3 weeks and we don’t have a T1 line installed yet - and we are using a DSL. Comcast took me one phone call and 48 hours to have it installed - 16mb line - blistering!

One of the nicest services I discovered by OpenDNS - which doesn’t really work well outside the USA or Europe. OpenDNS basically gives the public a very quick DNS lookup server (the server that allows you to find a website on the Internet) - and anyone can use it - it’s very easy to setup. I HIGHLY recommend it for people living in EU & North America.

All in all, living here has been great so far and aside from missing family & friends, I’m loving it!

It’s great living out here in San Fran - especially because you get to watch movies before they’re released! Michael Arrington of TechCrunch invited local readers to a preview showing of Iron Man - and in the process nearly had Marvel up in arms - long story.

I had read some reviews, which said that it was boring - what do the critics know! It’s certainly one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen! Here is the trailer:

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

Also, afterward we went across the road to a local bar - was great to meet up with some old friends and have a drink. San Francisco is really just about networking - it’s great that there are so many other tech entrepreneurs in such a relatively small area. I’ve spent the past week getting settled, but the longer I’m here, the more I realise what a small community it is - everyone knows just about everyone, so to speak!

Google is now going into TV Advertising! This is not an altogether unexpected move. YouTube is arguably the world’s biggest TV station, after Google acquired them for $1.6bn, it was expected that this would be the next move at some stage, to help monetize this business. I’ve been using Apple TV lately to watch YouTube - and it’s pretty impressive, I must confess.

What is Google TV Ads?

Google TV Ads is a flexible, all-digital system for buying more accountable and measurable TV advertising. Using the familiar AdWords interface, you can launch a TV advertising campaign in minutes.

Google is trying hard to diversify revenues away from it’s core, being Search (and AdSense) - and after it’s lacklustre foray into Print Newspaper advertising, Television offers similar opportunities which are worth exploring. It’s too soon to draw parallels between the two - as TV is now a digital medium and print newspapers are a totally different beast.

I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to report on this story, so technically, it’s a scoop!