Entrepreneur: Someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it.

Sure, being an entrepreneur has its benefits; however, I’m starting to realize that the image of an entrepreneur is skewed in the public eye.   By definition, an entrepreneur holds responsibility for creating and growing their company.  Most often, real entrepreneurs can be found focusing on the continuation and improvement of their companies no matter the role they continue to play in the business.  Who better to obsess about the state of the business than the creator knowing the ins and outs? That’s true even if they have shifted risk by taking on staff and investors as their company grew from what once was an idea.  For most, the role of an entrepreneur doesn’t stop once certain accomplishments are made. Even after a successful exit the founder is likely to stay on board under new ownership.

The twisted assumption, since the dot-com era, is that entrepreneurs have more money and time than they can manage.  When I’m approached about a business idea, unfortunately, the majority of the time I hear things resembling quotes from Clients from Hell. That was a little amusing at first but has become an annoyance.  The reality, as I see it, is that the most successful entrepreneurs are either in it for the love of the money or the love of the game, beyond the money and benefits of being their own boss. Even though we see videos of Mark Zuckerberg “icing” his buddy, he’s worth billions and still shows up to work and stands behind his company through difficult times.

When it comes down to it, most entrepreneurs are interested in more than a dollar sign and are truly passionate about the company they are growing, almost as though it is an extension of themselves.  Rarely is a blockbuster company created with the sole intent of profit and early retirement. Rather, it begins as an innovation to improve the creators’ quality of life or efficiency.  Furthermore, the chance of hitting a grand slam your first at bat is nearly impossible (never mind, bad example). The underlying issue has been, and will be, that successful companies come from relentless passion and devotion, while blockbuster companies happen to arrive to the right place at the right time while being fueled by the same passion and devotion.

For me, however, it’s been a bit different.  Both of my grandfathers were entrepreneurs.  My father’s father operated a uniform company in a small town in the South.  I think that I’ve been brought up with a more realistic, appreciative sense of what it means to be an entrepreneur.  From a young age, I’ve understood that owning a company was more about an intellectual adventure than it was about chasing luxuries.  Money is available through any profession, so being an entrepreneur was more about the excitement of facing challenges and being innovative in your field.

As for myself, I’m a self-employed and bootstrapping the development of a company.  More often than not, my life style is glorified and envied by my peers if I’m logged on to messaging programs all day/night. The reality, fortunately, is that I enjoy what I do and make myself available for my clients.  I enjoy it to the point that I often work through weekends and spend my spare time on the road focused on my work.  More than enjoying what I’m doing, I enjoy the thrill and excitement of facing challenges and building my dreams into reality.  No matter how much devotion and energy I put into what I’m building, I’m left feeling like I’m shooting for the moon on a homemade rocket.  That excites me.

As simple as the title is, “target this market now” is possibly the best advice I can give to web designers. I have looked at a lot of real estate sites in Florida and know they are poorly designed.  I am virtually certain that the problem is not limited to my home territory.  You could do real estate agents, their customers, and yourself a favor by improving those sites.

Why am I looking at real estate sites?  Because I need to relocate again.  So I’ve looked at hundreds of listings on different agencies’ sites.  I have learned first-hand how these sites fail their customers.  When I come across a house I like, within my budget, I’ll go to the selling agencies’ site to look up more information.  Too many times, I have found the site difficult to use and discouraging.  Mind you, I am speaking here as a customer, one who is looking for a specific unit to buy or rent and I need good, clear information that is easy to find.

Let me address this complaint to real estate agents, looking to make their sites more “customer friendly.”   Here are the top reasons I haven’t contacted you about the house you’re selling, for commission (if you forgot).

1. The site is purely Flash – This is not always a deal ender. However, leaving my feelings for Flash aside, some of you make it damn near impossible to share the information with others.  There are a lot of these Flash based sites that are built in a manner that stops your audience from sharing important information with others.   A house is a big purchase, usually involving more than one person.   This isn’t a music video; kill the Flash.
2. You have music playing in the background – This is always a “no.”  It’s not entertaining and almost always causes a distraction.  Furthermore, if you’re playing the melody to “Mad World,” it really gives a negative vibe to doing business with you.  Again, this isn’t a music video; kill the band.
3. You don’t make crucial information accessible – Your time is valuable, and so is your customers’.  Presenting information as clearly as possible is crucial. If I am interested, but  confused, I have to (attempt to) call you and get that information before continuing.  Worse yet, I may simply move on to another house on another website where the information is readily available.
4. Wrong Contact information – It’s a good idea to look into a site redesign if your contact information is out of date.
5. Poor use of social media – I respect the effort to use social media.  Used wisely, it can be very effective.  But tread carefully and work with Web designers who know this world.  I could go on for hours about this, from constant tweets about “amazing opportunities” to video walk through with obnoxious music in the background.   You can, and should, research on how to use social media more effectively.

*BONUS ADVICE* Your pictures contradict your written information – If I see one more listing with pictures of the WRONG house, I will get a migraine.  You know who you are, and I hope you are working to remedy the problem..

I’m not saying that redesigning your online presence will create a flood of new business, especially in this economy.  But discouraging visitors to your site is not helping. If you’re a real estate agent, please look around for a quality web designer who understands what you really need and can provide it.  If you’re a web designer, do some searches and reach out to these agencies.   You, the agency, and their customers will all benefit.

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Update (7/20/10):

Woothemes recently added a real estate centric theme to their growing portfolio of Premium themes.  Estate comes as a huge relief to someone, like myself, who’s sick of looking at poorly designed real estate sites.  Even at a premium price ($200), the theme blows away any real estate website I’ve seen to date (and I’m still in the process of buying a house) and is well worth the investment.  If you sell houses, I beg you to consider using WordPress with this theme on your site.

Last night I heard about Twitter acquiring the Tweetie iPhone application.  Tweetie, often raved as the best Twitter iPhone app, will now be offered for free instead of $2.99.  On Twitter’s blog, the company justified its acquisition, “People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they’re not finding one.”  I think they are right, and I’m happy they will be giving away the app.

When I heard the news, I was not surprised that they had released a native application, but I was surprised they had acquired another company to do it.

After waking up this afternoon (hey, don’t judge; I was up working until 10am), I was linked to this story on CNET. As the story shows, some view Twitter’s move as an attack on third-party developers and have compared it to Apple’s move with iPhone OS 4.0 (a move I do have reservations about).

To me, Twitter’s actions are significantly different from Apple’s, and significantly better for users and developers.  As I see it, Twitter is simply re-entering the market that made Twitter what it is.  It is NOT moving to block any third-party development.  The developer community is understandably nervous about any acquisitions and freebies, but, in this case, I think the anxiety is misplaced.

I’m a firm believer in competition and transparency. Twitter seems to be, too.  They have certainly encouraged developers to create external solutions through their API (application programming interface).  The Twitter API is well documented and allows access from a variety of languages and platforms, unlike Apple’s approach, which rules out anything not written in Objective-C.

Services like Seesmic go beyond a simple read/post interface and offer an expanded service (ability to post to updates to 50+ services), serving more than a generic recreation of Twitter. In contrast, Tweetable offers a generic read/post service that integrates with the admin panel of my blog, making Twitter available in a unique location.  I’m all for that.

Ultimately, innovation and improvement are the two greatest assets in any business model. Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie shows it understands this logic well.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter follows up by buying more related services or expanding internally in similar directions.

Quoting Thoreau on this blog might be a bit odd, yet the quote sums up my feeling for the plugin. When I read about Tweetable on Mashable, I thought sarcastically “hurray, another Twitter plugin.” After setting it up, being swayed by their referral, I really enjoyed it’s presence. The plugin places a quick Twitter interface in the admin panel, allowing the admin (or authors) to interact on the blogs Twitter account.

“Simplify, simplify.” – Henry David Thoreau. A quote stuck in my head after starting to read On Writing Well, by William Zinsser.

To me, it comes as a blessing. As I have been trying to force myself to concentrate on my blog, I’m excited that I now have access to Twitter without the need of another tab or application.

Along with the embedded Twitter application, the plugin publishes my posts to Twitter and places a TweetMEME icon on my posts. Two tasks which had been handled through other plugins.

While not a selling point, the posts are tagged with the application you name during setup. Which is why in the image above you see “from Michael Lipson,” named after my blog.  Just a little extra personality for the 140 character social network.

I received Gmail access to Google Buzz yesterday and had a chance to poke around with it away from a mobile platform. There’s a lot that needs to be worked out, however my opinion has changed quite a bit since playing around on the phone.

Naturally, my first impression was filled with concerns about privacy with the location tagging. From a mobile standpoint, I still feel quite the same. The difference with the Gmail based interface is that it doesn’t seem so invasive on that front. Overall, it actually functions really well (considering the hiccups with Wave) and feels more private then Twitter and smoother then Facebook.

Jason Calacanis posted a note on his blog claiming this was the end of Facebook. After receiving the Gmail access, I’d have to agree that in the long run it could be a direct competitor due to Facebook’s recent downward spiral. Naturally, Gmail has a great customer base to enter the market, but I think it has a lot more to deal with the presentation. Presentation and simplicity was the highlight to Facebook’s original success, however as the social site grew they moved in the opposite direction.

In previous posts, I’ve talked thoroughly about the simplicity of designs and ease of use being a strong point to the success of websites. Facebook had been an example, however even before the most recent redesign the networking site had fallen away from “networking” and became more of an entertainment site. With the addition of applications and games, Facebook was able to attract a whole new audience at the cost of detouring others with constant Farmville updates from peers. I remember wanting to quit Facebook over the first “best friends” invitation, because it resembled MySpace’s sparkling hearts.

Google Buzz has none of the added pizazz which attracts the easily excited. Rather, Buzz allows for peer to peer communication through a clean interface. Since there are no bells and whistles, at least distracting ones, Buzz becomes a feed from those you’re following. Almost a more business like approach to network, which is fitting because it is nested in a powerful email client almost always used for business.

Still, there are several things Buzz needs to improve to gain a faster share of the market. First, there needs to be a way to collapse or skip comments on individual and individual buzz. Second, there needs to be mobile implementation beyond browser interface that doesn’t urge location tagging. Third, and final, better arrangement of the Google Profile page. It’s just hideous.

Naturally, Google outdoes its announcement of Buzz yesterday by introducing a new service today. The announcement of their new fiber optic ISP trials, offering up to 1gb connections, comes as little to surprise to those following recent news. In the recent weeks, Google has made claims that the internet speeds in the US are lacking in comparison to where they should be. In their blog post Google even mentions that they’ve “urged” the FCC in encouraging faster speeds.

A lot of people I know are screaming “not again,” referring to Google as trying to own every aspect of technology. I see the ISP trial as a step to push regular ISP’s into offering a more competitive environment to help the end users. With the idea that by introducing the ultimate competitor, current ISP’s will be forced to improve their speeds and lower the barrier for such connections.

While I don’t see market trials forcing ISP’s to change their practices, I think it will open the demand for fiber optic at home connections.

The next question that comes to mind, is how Google plans on operating the service competitively with other carriers. Introducing a 1gb/s connection to markets limited at 15mb is going to disrupt the market, entirely, regardless of price. Most ISP’s at this point aren’t able to maintain comparable speeds on their back end, and I’m sure aren’t terribly interested in making such an adjustment.

So what are your thoughts? Is this a fair move on Google’s part? Will ISP’s change their ways after being bullied by Google?

When the announcement came through, I passed on the basic information to a friend who said “ugh, Google, stop it.” While I’m not cynical, thinking Google is out for the world, I thought to myself “what added features could Buzz really bring?” While I don’t have access through Gmail, I do have access through my Google profile and my G1. Naturally, the first step was to browse the Orlando area looking for local updates to see what people were saying. The first updates I read involved being distracted in a lecture, some friendly trash talk between friends and someone making a reference to privacy.

As powerful as Buzz seems, I think the last point is the strongest concern many will have. Google Buzz requires your Gmail credentials, most often linked to your Google profile. For a lot of people this will be discouraging, however I’d imagine managing the privacy settings on Buzz will only be more difficult for those who use Gmail as their email client (not just service). Further more, with location based updates there’s almost the immediate concern as to who is looking to see where you are.

While the intentions are certainly good, the follow through seems a bit weak. Other location based social applications, like Gowalla and Foursquare are task centric. You’re checking into a location, not binding an update your updates to a location. If Buzz was more centered around being a social network feed, it might have been a bigger hit with me out of the box.

Further note: visiting http://buzz.google.com/ from my G1 shows only considerations about Android 2.0. More on that later, though.