Henry Dillon

Think before you tweet. The crowd-sourced patrols that are cleaning up Twitter.

Sat, 12 May 2012 12:01:38 +0100

It’s never been easier or more dangerous to be a publisher. In just a few clicks, it’s possible to create a Twitter account, post a racist comment and then find yourself jailed for 56 days.

The law, police and citizens have some catching up to do in this space. In the meantime, I was intrigued to read in the Guardian about an emerging trend of crowd-sourced patrols within social networks.

One interesting Twitter development is the work of users who take it upon themselves to patrol the site for examples of abusive messages and try to shame perpetrators by re-tweeting them.

Among them is @homophobes, which re-tweets examples of homophobic abuse to more than 8,000 followers. The abuser is likely to receive hundreds of messages challenging his or her comments.

In an e-mail exchange, the @homophobes account holder said: “I’ve discovered that many people don’t realise how public the web is. After I re-tweet people, they get defensive when people tweet to them. Many times, they’re surprised that people they don’t know are actually seeing their content. I’d estimate that roughly every one in five homophobes I re-tweet deletes their tweet.”

It can be difficult to have an intelligent debate with some people on Twitter, however I like the idea that people with a contrary view get a decent dose of counter-argument.

Or is this all just feeding the trolls?

Dealing with customers that don't pay

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:47:00 +0100

Finally! I’ve just had an 8-month overdue customer pay up.

I’m fortunate that I’ve never had too many problems with customers not being able to pay. However, whenever a customer has become a problem, I like to be pretty decisive and efficient about how I deal with it.

There’s lots of long-winded advice about how to recover debt however it can become a massive suck on your time. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re just not making any progress it’s worth knowing about a free and highly effective legal document that you can unleash. It’s called a Statutory Demand, and it’s something every small business owner should know about.

Don’t be deceived by the simple looking nature of the document. It might only be two pages of A4 but when you send a Statutory Demand to a customer, you’re effectively going thermonuclear on the debt. After 21 days of serving the notice, if the customer still hasn’t paid then you can start filing a petition for bankruptcy. You shouldn’t issue a statutory demand unless you’re willing to see it through - otherwise you undermine intentions.

In most cases when I’ve done this I’ve been paid within 5 days of the demand being issued. In some cases the debtor will claim to have cashflow problems and try to bargain with me to pay part of the debt. The dilemma is that you can either settle for less money now or proceed with the bankruptcy and be at the mercy of an administrator and many other creditors.

Either way, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you wait too long HMRC may beat you to filing the demand. They seem to have a very systematic approach to issuing their own demands and winding up businesses that don’t pay.

There are lots of templates online but I’ve made an editable PDF for a Statutory Demand which makes it a bit easier to complete. I hope you never have to use it - but if you do, I hope it helps.

How to check if you have the Mac Trojan Downloader Flashback virus

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:06:15 +0100

Via F-Secure. A simple way to check is to follow these steps.

1. Open Terminal

2. Type the following

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

If you see “The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist” then you don’t have the virus

3. Type the following

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

If you see “The domain/default pair of (/Users/joe/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist” then you don’t have the virus

Just switched my default browser search to DuckDuckGo

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:00:48 +0100

Just switched my default browser search to DuckDuckGo:

Cleaner, meaner and no bubbling.

How to filter oDesk candidates that don’t read your job description

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:22:00 +0100

I frequently use oDesk to outsource a range of tasks, however one the gripes that I have is the large number of spam candidates I have to weed through. When posting a job, I fully expect that over half of the applicants will not have properly read the job description and will have inappropriate skills.

For the last few months, I’ve been experimenting to find a simple way of filtering out these dud candidates. Here’s an example from my last posting.

Job Description

We require a web designer with HTML email experience to create a series of email templates. A copy of the requirements will be sent to short listed candidates.

The successful candidate must have:

experience working with Campaign Monitor

good HTML email skills

a keen eye for detail

IMPORTANT

To reduce the amount of spam candidates that we get please confirm that you have a Dropbox account in the first sentence of your application. This will prove that you’ve actually read the brief. Failure to follow this simple instruction will result in immediate rejection.

This last paragraph seems a bit harsh but acts as a captcha and makes it really easy to identify applicants that haven’t read the fully brief.

Does it work?

Here’s some real data from the job posting.

I received 31 applicants, of that 18 didn’t follow the dropbox instruction that’s a 58% spam/idiot rate. By doing a quick skim for the word Dropbox in the text, I can instantly see who has read the job description.

The last guy isn’t probably going to get the job, but at least I know he read the job spec.

And here’s a snap shot of candidates (for the same job) that clearly haven’t read the instructions and just pasted in a boilerplate cover letter encompassing all tech discovered to date.

This method isn’t perfect but it does help with pre-qualification and has saved me a lot of time.

A great 10 minute clip about building the team that delivered...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:00:05 +0100

A great 10 minute clip about building the team that delivered the Apple Macintosh.

Feeling a bit ill after contemplating the purchase of some Apple...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:37:01 +0000

Feeling a bit ill after contemplating the purchase of some Apple shares back in Dec but didn’t because I thought they were over valued.

Note, that price is US dollars - not cents.

Unbound

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:46:58 +0000

Unbound:

Unbound is like Kickstarter for books.

However, Unbound isn’t just a pledge bank. They have all the expertise to get the book to market too.

This has to be the leanest innovation in the book publishing industry to date. Validate whether your book proposal has any pledges before it’s even been green lit.

I’ve always wanted to understand the success behind...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:02:25 +0000

I’ve always wanted to understand the success behind MoonPig.com. I had the opportunity to go to a talk with it’s founder Nick Jenkins at the London Business School. Unfortunately I couldn’t go but here’s the video from it. It’s an hour long and well worth it in my opinion. I really love hearing success (and failure) stories like this.

If you just want a taster then you can read this summary of the talk by Rytis Vitkauskas.

Here is Go Vocab’s pitch from Webstock’s own Startup...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:30:51 +0000

Here is Go Vocab’s pitch from Webstock’s own Startup Alley. I was really impressed by the quality of pitches. Great to be there.

Lessons learnt from Recurly’s new pricing - and this time it’s all win.

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:32:00 +0000

It was only a few months ago that the recurring billing platform Spreedly, changed their pricing. Now it’s Recurly’s turn. However, unlike Spreedly’s pricing change, Recurly’s changes appear to be good all round.

Recurly’s previous pricing was based on a series of bands. What I dislike about this method of pricing is that it causes band shock. Let me explain what I mean by this using Recurly’s old pricing as an example.

Imagine you’ve started using Recurly. At some point, your transaction volume will reach the usage limit for the Small Plan. You’ll be forced to upgrade to the Medium Plan. In this scenario, your average transaction cost for processing 499 transaction is 24 cents under the Small Plan, however once you hit 500 transactions you suffer band shock as your average transaction cost doubles to 49 cents. These shock points are shown in the graph below.

Band shock is a subject that I’d like to discuss in a lot more detail at a later date, but for now we’ll define it as a customer’s reaction to upgrading to a higher pricing band but the average cost of using the service suddenly increases (rather than decreases).

What did Recurly get right?

Recurly’s pricing plan changes were smart for three reasons.

Removed the bands. One simplified plan.

Recurly’s new pricing doesn’t use bands. Aside from a minimum charge per month, their pricing is based on a percentage of sales value plus a 10 cent transaction fee. This percentage+fee approach is similar to Spreedly, except that Recurly doesn’t have bands.

Removing the bands, removes the band shock and any concerns around sharp increases in price. When evaluating recurring billing platforms, we had to factor in the worst cost scenario. It makes price comparison complicated. Shaun Chapman even created, BillingSavvy, a neat little tool that calculates the most cost effective platform to be on depending on your subscription price and transaction volume. Note: BillingSavvy doesn’t include Recurly’s new pricing.

Now that Recurly have simplified their plan, I believe they’ve reduced some of the cognitive load around pricing for potential customers.

Grandfathered their existing customers

The manner in which Recurly introduced this change was clever too. They told all existing subscribers that their existing plans were being grandfathered. As a customer, just seeing this sentence in the announcement immediately reassured me that there was no bait-and-hook going on. Grandfathering your existing customers keeps them calm and makes them feel special.

I appreciate that grandfathering isn’t always possible and I admit I gave Spreedly an overly hard time about this. If a pricing plan isn’t economically viable then you have to bite the bullet, force customers to the new terms and accept the consequences.

Introduced new features

Recurly also introduced some new features that were only available on the new plan. My favourite of this being a Subscription Retention Report. This was something I was struggling to get out of our existing database - so it’s release was very timely.

The lesson here is that if you change your prices without any visible change in the product, then the pricing change is hard to justify - particularly to existing customers. Adding new features is a good sweetener for migrating existing customers to the new plan.

Are the new plans more expensive?

It depends. Because Recurly’s pricing is now based on the value of each transaction, their monthly charge will vary.

If you’re a business selling subscriptions for less than $12 per month, then you’re almost always going to gain from migrating to the new plan. However if you’re subscriptions are charged at over $30 per month, then you’re paying more. Anyone in between these price points has a mixture.

I’ve made a Google Doc that lets you plug in your average order value (AOV) and compare the plans.

Fortunately for us, our AOV are a lower price point, so it’s all win for us. We migrated to the new plan - and now have access to a few additional features like the retention reports I mentioned earlier.

Any down side?

It’s a pity that the multi-currency features are an extra charge, it would be fantastic to have these included in the simple price too.

This clip is for anyone who is asked to do something for...

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:11:05 +0000

This clip is for anyone who is asked to do something for free. Harlan Ellison sums this argument up nicely for writers, but it is equally applicable to anyone - designers, developers and especially interns.

Probably best listened to using headphones - NSFW.

Spreedly doubles their pricing and then some

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:00:00 +0100

Update: A few commenters have pointed out that Spreedly actually do support the migration of credit card data to another platform.

I can’t quite believe the news that recurring billing platform, Spreedly have over doubled their pricing.

I’m all for fair and sustainable pricing but over doubling your prices? Something must have been going severely wrong at Spreedly HQ for a decision like this to be necessary.

I’d be pretty miffed if I was one of their 300 customers - and here’s why. A recurring billing platform is immensely sticky. Once you start taking payments through your chosen platform and decide to switch to someone else, you will have to go through the immensely painful process of getting your customers to enter their payment details on the new platform. Not pleasant. It’s like you’re dunning your entire customer base with the blind faith that they will sign up again. The process is bound to result in attrition and lost revenue.

Spreedly’s FAQs state that they’ll actually help you move to a different service:

What if I need to move to a different service?

We’ll work with you to get you a full export of data, including credit card information. For obvious reasons we have to do some high-ceremony security before releasing the data, but we will make it happen.

So perhaps this doesn’t make them as sticky as other platforms.

We had Spreedly on our short list of platforms but ended up going with Recurly (which was more at expensive at the time - now it’s looking cheap). So I’m feeling like we dodged a bullet there.

Personally, I think they should be rewarding their early adopter customers by grandfathering their plan rather than presenting them with this dilemma. In fact, one of Spreedly’s co-founders, Nathaniel Talbott, even suggested this just over a year ago when Chargify modified their pricing.

What are your thoughts on this move?

Add your comments below or add to the thread on Hacker News.

AppSumo uses death of Steve Jobs to sell deals

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:31:00 +0100

AppSumo is developing a reputation for using dodgy copy to sell deals. However their latest effort is appallingly distasteful.

On the same day as Steve Job’s death, AppSumo sent a deal containing the following subject line.

Subject lines are important, and as a copy writer you’ve got to pull out the stops to get the best open rate. But at what cost?

I’m sure that this subject line performed really well and it’s probably one of the highest open rates they’ve had. However I’m sure they’ve also lost a lot of subscribers too.

Copy writers need to be careful when writing about subjects like death. It’s one of those sensitive subjects that a I would always check with someone else.

I’ve unsubscribed from AppSumo. I think this is completely distasteful. It doesn’t even pay tribute to Steve Job’s life or achievements. It simply rides off the back of a news story.

Meanwhile, AppSumo’s Facebook Wall is quickly filling up with comments from other people who have been offended by this.

Internship applications from foreign students outnumber Brits by 2 to 1

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:00:00 +0100

We’re currently looking for an intern to take on some project work. We could easily recruit someone with existing experience, however since one in five 16- to 24-year-olds are unemployed, I thought there’s a good chance that we could hire a smart graduate and give them some valuable work experience.

We advertised for a 3-month paid internship and, within a few days, received over 50 applications. We’re still receiving a steady stream of candidates, but I was quite surprised by the low proportion that were British students. Here are some high level stats:

Only 30% of candidates were British students
Applications from foreign students out numbered Brits by 2 to 1
31% of applications were Indian, Italian or Greek students studying in the UK
The average age of candidates is 24 years old (youngest is 18 and oldest is 27)

Notice that students from Italy and Greece are in the top group of foreign applicants, possibly reflecting the employment and economic conditions they face back home.

This isn’t a case of foreign workers taking British jobs. There are over five times as many British students as foreign students. Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that out of a total of nearly 2.4 million students in higher education, about 85% are UK students, nearly 5% were from other EU countries and just over 10% were from non-EU countries.

This data tells me that foreign students (studying in the UK) are more motivated and tenacious when compared to British students. You could argue that they’ve already demonstrated this by making the ambitious decision of moving abroad to study in the UK.

Final thought

The government is calling for businesses to give priority to British workers when recruiting staff. However, when only a third of our candidates are British - that really slims down our options.

If you’re a British graduate and can’t find a job - just remember; you’ve gotta be in it, to win it.

My recommended 3-step process for producing QR codes for print

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:35:42 +0100

1. Make sure you create a long URL with utm campaign tags so that you can track where people have come from. You can do this here:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578

2. Shorten your long URL using a Bitly

http://www.bitly.com

This will also give you an independent click through counter.

3. Create a QR code for your shortened Bitly URL at:

http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator

You should choose the following options

Shorten URL - No
Error correction - L Approx 7%

Delivr.com will let you download an EPS that you can use in print.

Just watched a friend’s five-year-old son use Google...

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:30:50 +0100

Just watched a friend’s five-year-old son use Google Search. He can’t read or write yet but has no problems typing in search terms to find Trotro videos on YouTube. Quite remarkable.

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late."

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:00:06 +0100

“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

- Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn at a Churchill event (via Cambrian House)

Product Tank August 2011 - Bringing together UX and Product

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:10:27 +0100

Product Tank August 2011 - Bringing together UX and Product:

I’m looking forward to tonight’s Product Tank meet up which will be about bringing together UX and Product Management. Good UX hasn’t been a critical part of our MVP. Better to release something early than never. However, now that our product is maturing (and user base growing), good UX is now starting to become more of a priority.

DocumentCloud is like Evernote + open sourced Scribd for journalists

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:00:05 +0100

I’ve noticed that a Guardian article that used something called DocumentCloud. This is a cloud based repository that journalists can upload documents to. It’s a bit like Evernote in that the documents are OCR’ed and can be annotated. It also uses a stunning Document Viewer - which was developed by the NYT

The DocumentCloud service doesn’t take contributions from the public - you have to be an accredited publication, however you can search the catalog of documents. However what I found interesting was that they have decided to open source the project. A very noble gesture. Although DocumentCloud isn’t exactly the same as other services like Scribd or Box.net, by making this an open source project, they’ve made it easier for people to do this sort of thing for themselves.