Obviously, this change is good for Instagram (and Facebook) because it provides them with loads and loads of free content that they can use and distribute (and sell) the way that suits their needs. On the other hand, this is a completely raw deal for users. Before we go too far here, I need to be clear. Instagram is a free service that users must sign up for. On top of that, users take photos and deliberately upload those photos to Instagram’s servers. Again, all completely free.

So, while I understand Instagram’s users speaking out about these massive 180 degree shifts in this service that people have fallen in love with, I have a hard time agreeing with these cries for Instagram and Facebook to change their Terms of Use back to how it was. What I do understand is users encouraging other users to abandon their Instagram accounts and jump over to some other social photo sharing site. That’s where Flickr comes in.

Flickr used to be the hot social photo sharing service on the web. Since then, Yahoo (Flickr’s parent) has, how shall I say, lacked product direction. Recently Flickr released a new version of it’s iOS app that provides a much more streamlined UI and many Instagram-like features (notably filters). This potential for mass exodus from Instagram should have Marissa Mayer and the Flickr team licking their lips. They just launched this new version and should go into complete user acquisition mode. Making it as easy as humanly possible for people to import their existing Instagram photos into Flickr for free. There is currently a monthly upload limit of 300MB. That needs to go away for people importing from Instagram. If Flickr can provide that, and then hit people up for the $24.99/yr for unlimited uploads after they have everyone signed up, by all means, do that.

This is a hanging curveball that, if Flickr can take advantage of, would change the game in mobile social photo sharing.

*** Update ***

Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, has issued a response via Instagram’s blog attempting to clear up Instagram’s position. It was a well written statement that speaks to the issues that people have regarding advertising and ownership. Flickr still has an opportunity here, but with this response, it looks like Instagram has righted the ship. The question now is, “Is it too late?”

*** Update ***

It looks like the folks at Free the Photos have jumped in and enabled users to import their Instagram photos into Flickr.

Great marketing teams must have one decider, ideally the CEO or CMO. The leader’s job is to define a process that yields the best ideas, while making the courageous decisions required to position your company to define and dominate your category. Chris Lochhead (pandodaily.com)

I couldn’t agree more. So often, marketers get a group of people together around a conference table and they collectively hash out a strategy to market their product. One word.

Stop.

Please. It’s not helping you, your company, or even the people who’s ideas and opinions you are asking for.

Leaders need to lead. Chart the course. Be the visionary for your product. Be opinionated. At the very least, it gives you a place to start the conversation. Without an opinion or point of view, you, as a so-called leader in your organization, offer no more than a marketing intern. You know the talking points of your product, but not much beyond that.

Here are some questions to ask yourself before you call a meeting to discuss your marketing plan:

• What is it that only you can bring to the marketing of your product?
• What can you delegate to enable you to focus on being visionary?
• Can you clearly and concisely articulate your marketing goals?
• Identify the people that are going to carry out your plans and then call a meeting.
• Understand what success means for you.

• Communicate the ways you would like to pursue those goals
• Give specific tasks to individual people and express what success is in each instance
• Empower each member of your team (however big or small) to be successful

How have you seen marketers water down their message and confuse their teams by failing to provide marketing leadership?

Visualizing Virality: The xx’s New Album Premieres Through A Single Fan (fastcocreate.com)
This one is a bit old, but I found it fascinating. It’s an interesting thing watching human behavior through the lens of social media.

4 explosive Instagram Growth Hacks (for Brands) (nitrogram.posterous.com)
First, I have to say, I have not used this product. I saw it in the context of a bunch of other links, so I didn’t know anything about the company. This is the best example of content marketing that I’ve ever seen.

In that vein, we will look to where I’m from, where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Can technology redefine Detroit? (growdetroit.com)
I’m not from Detroit, but I am from Michigan (and I went to my first baseball game in Detroit which counts for a lot). When the economy went into the tank in 2008, it hit Michigan very hard. I hope that Detroit can embrace the entrepreneurial spirit, and the tech sector, and flourish.

37signals invests in The Starter League (37signals.com)
I’m a longtime 37signals customer and it’s been fun and interesting to see the company grow and learn over the years. This post speaks to how they value education and are using their resources to support their values.

Forget Silicon Valley – build your startup where you live (venturebeat.com)
I don’t live in Silicon Valley and yet I have entrepreneurship in my DNA. Refreshing and encouraging that other folks see the benefit of creating  a startup ecosystem wherever you call home.

• On the client side using Javascript
• On the server side using node.js
• Locally and just serve up the CSS generated from your LESS compilation

Eureka!

What I’m looking for is a compiler that will watch my LESS files and when one changes, quickly and efficiently compile my LESS into CSS. Enter Coyote. To get Coyote up and running all you need to do is:
gem install coyote

Then create a Rakefile which will contain configuration for how you want Coyote to compile your files. And then go to the command line and run your rake command to watch your LESS files.

rake watch

After that, all you need to do is bust out your sweet LESS files, sit back and let Coyote take care of the compilation.

I’m still early on in the implementation of this and I hope to find ways to tweak this so it’s even more efficient. But, it’s nice to have a solid, dependable solution in place.

Write the way you talk. Naturally.

That’s a lot harder than it initially seems. I have noticed that when reading emails or letters from a particular friend of mine, I can hear his voice in my head. The cadence of his writing is so in turn with the way that he speaks, his writing flows in his natural voice. I’ve always admired that in him and since I noticed it have attempted to eliminate extra words or fluff to make myself sound more interesting or intelligent. I think I probably have some more internal editing to do, but it’s in my mind and hopefully as I write more will translate to the written word as well.

A while back I pledged to myself that I would write every day for two weeks straight. It was a bit of an attempt to kickstart my creative juices. Of the 14 days, I didn’t end up writing on 3 of them (21.4%). Not the best showing. So, while I have this desire to write more, I also don’t want to be an idiot and fool myself into thinking that I can jump in and bust out 800 words a day, no problem. I don’t even know if that’s a goal, but I would like to write more. To allow myself space and time to organize my thoughts, explore new ideas, lament, rejoice, learn, grow. I know that all of those things will make me a more balanced, well-rounded human being.

Do you write? What role does writing play in your life?

Hey, startups, users aren’t free (geekwire.com)
Dreams of easy and cheap user acquisition are dashed quickly by Sasha Pasulka. She lets us know that getting quality users has a cost and you better factor that in at the beginning or you will quickly come to the end.

Anatomy of a Successful Landing Page (onextrapixel.com)
Be clear, make it easy and actionable.

Crunching the numbers on a Techcrunching (fr.anc.is)
A sobering reminder that, even though all press is good press, press doesn’t always translate the way you want it to.

This week takes us to the dark side of design, get a glimpse inside the mind of a wise investment innovator and we finish up with a chance encounter with a computer pioneer.

Never use black (http://ianstormtaylor.com/)
It’s something I learned back in art school. A very interesting look at how true black doesn’t exist in the natural world.

John Bogle talks about the state of the investment industry  (nytimes.com)
I’m very much a newb in the investment world and it’s refreshing to read about John Bogle, who has been a prolific author about investment, and how he set up Vanguard as a client’s first financial services company.

A computer genius walks into a coffee shop (joelrunyon.com)
Don’t want to give away too much on this. It’s a great read.

Our portfolio has been completely rebuilt and is now working with a custom plugin. The plugin is built on a combination of Elliot Condon’s Advanced Custom Fields plugin, WordPress custom post types and WordPress custom taxonomies. We mashed all of this together to give us a quick and easy way to add and update our portfolio with recent work.

We also added a email signup form. We plan on putting together occasional emails that highlight some current trends and articles from the web. We won’t overwhelm your inbox with junk, just quality content from around the web. Let us be a curator for relevant content.

You also may have noticed a change in our logo. We have retired the old lion. He has served us well, but it is a new day and it was time to move forward. We will be delving into the process we went through in more detail in a later post.

As we have looked back at the work we’ve done and the great organizations we’ve done the work for, we realized that we have found our sweet spot. We’ve found where we think we’re a great fit. We’re focusing our efforts to help startups with their marketing presence. We think that WordPress is the best tool to use to accomplish that. We look forward to developing new relationships with founders and marketers that need help getting the word out about their new product or service.

We still have the capability to do all of the things that we did before (product development, web apps, email marketing etc.), we’re just focusing our efforts toward engaging with the community to enable startups to focus on their business and let us focus on their web site.

It’s easy to use

I ask clients why they think WordPress is a good fit for them. The biggest reason I hear is that it’s easy to use. Business people are busy and don’t have a lot of time to manage their web site. A tool that’s easy to use will help them to actually spend the time that is necessary to maintain your online presence.

When we launch a new web site for a client, we typically do a training session with the team that will be responsible for maintaining the web site. Nearly every time, the resounding response is, “This is really easy!” People are prepared for it to be confusing, difficult and too technical for them, but with WordPress, the administration of a client’s web site can be straightforward and easy.

Highly customizable

Your project doesn’t fit into the pre-baked templates. Take heart, there is no project that fits 100% into pre-baked templates. Of course, you can shoe horn your project to fit within anything, but you very quickly lose functionality and branding opportunities when you do that. There is a better way (of course there is). WordPress allows for custom themes that enable designers and developers limitless capabilities. WordPress is structured in such a way where there is a base set of code that can be built upon and customized. So whatever your project needs to look like, a custom WordPress theme can be developed to accomplish that.

Extend functionality with plugins

What about adding functionality? That is done with custom code called plugins. These are bits of code that you can install with WordPress that add features that are not in the standard WordPress installation. There is literally no limit to what these programs can do. Plugins can be as simple as change one line of code or extremely complex code that changes how your site works altogether. There are some standard plugins that we recommend and use on almost all sites we build. They are built by trusted developers that continue to support and enhance the plugins they create.

There are plugins for search engine optimization, creating contact forms, Facebook integration, Twitter integration, email marketing, and so many more. There are also site specific custom plugins that we’ve created for clients who need very specific functionality on their sites.

What’s next?

If you have a project that you’re wanting to do and it seems WordPress would be a good fit, we would love to talk with you about it and answer any questions you have.