Disqus - Latest Comments for Emily Williams

Re: From the Pipeline - 9.20.08

Emily Williams — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:59:49 -0000

Hi Steve, just wanted to clarify the Needish concept a bit - the idea is that companies send you their best offer for your commercial Needs, while your friends and other community members can give you recommendations and other help for all your Needs. Have you had a chance to look at it? I'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks for the mention, let me know at emily[at]needish[dot]com if you have any questions!
Emily Williams
Needish Community Manager

Re: Is Facebook’s redesign aimed at Silicon Valley, not everywhere else?

Emily Williams — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:32:23 -0000

Eric, I do agree with you to a certain extent. It's interesting - although not surprising, given the changes Facebook has made previous to this big overhaul - that they'd choose to go in the Twitter/status update direction rather than staying with the slightly more "permanent" profile that saw so much success. For me the point of Facebook is a profile I update once in a while, and I never update my Facebook status - for that I go to Twitter. And having just briefly looked at the new design, although I for one am happy not to have to scroll through a million apps on every profile, I do feel like hey, it's your profile, do what you want - and the new version allows for less customization of how your profile looks.

I don't think Twitter or Friendfeed will kill Facebook, nor do I think that by changing Facebook will kill the others. They're different, and I'd like them to stay that way!

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/06/iphone-3g-launching-in-7-new-countries-including-india-on-august-22nd/

Emily Williams — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:05:35 -0000

It's also apparently arriving in 10 Latin American countries that same day. Here's the link (in Spanish, but country names are the same): http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/528063.html I was kind of surprised to see that Estonia would be getting the iPhone before us here in Chile - glad that's not the case!

Re: The Seasteading Institute encourages floating nations, hosts conference

Emily Williams — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:46:07 -0000

And who's in charge of these floating nations? The highest bidder as king, or is it some kind of utopian collective? First palm tree and country-shaped islands, now this!

Re: Political keyword ads pissing off bloggers/readers as elections near

Emily Williams — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:01:45 -0000

The same thing was happening on my personal blog, so I just took down AdSense - I don't really make any money from it anyway, so it doesn't affect me that much. I'm just glad someone told me about it! You'd think they'd improve recognition of context, this isn't the first time ads have conflicted with a blog's content.

Re: She Geeks In Tech - Stop Using Search Engines, Start Twittering

Emily Williams — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:47:34 -0000

Hi Alana and Corvida,
I just stumbled across this post and only later noticed who it was written by! What you're talking about here is a main way that people are using Needish in Chile - soon in the US as well, we hope. Searching can get you all sorts of things, but it only gets you what other people have written before, never the exact answer to your question in that minute. By sharing what you need - whether it's a tech question or anything else - with people who for whatever reason are interested in you or a specific area (followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook or Needish, people following the word "quicktime" on Needish) you get help tailored to you.

I use Twitter more as a personal mini-blog and lately as a social media tool, both to talk about Needish and to see what other people are saying about us and about news on the web in general.

Re: Wordpress On The iPhone Needs Improvement

Emily Williams — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:06:15 -0000

I had to comment for one word alone: automagically. Love it!

(Oh yeah, and good post, I've seen lots of posts saying that this is available, but yours is the first I've seen actually reviewing the app).

Re: It’s Not Tech Blogging That’s Boring

Emily Williams — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:49:29 -0000

I feel like the problem isn't that there's no news out there, but rather that everyone's got the same stories (much as in traditional media). I understand why all the major blogs need to cover all the major stories, but since they do each have the occasional story that no one else has got, as a reader I need to follow all of them to make sure I'm not missing anything - and end up reading the same major story 5 times. It would almost be better if bloggers just posted a link to a press release or previous story with the basic info and then actually wrote out their own take on it, so that readers could get the perspective without reading the same background info over and over.

I think it's also frustrating as a start-up when you feel you have a big, interesting, NEW story but don't get any love from bloggers because you're not Google or Microsoft. I'm sure I'm not the only one in that position :)

Re: The Most Important Lesson I Learned As A Community Manager

Emily Williams — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:50:12 -0000

Corvida, I too am a new community manager, and it's hard to figure out what exactly people want in order to give it to them! I'm not in the position of a known blogger or other tech figure, so I don't have those possible misconceptions, but I still have days when I sit here wondering how I can bring more value to people. I think it's something that really broadens your horizons outside of the internet as well in terms of learning to listen to what others are talking about.

Re: 2008/04/28/twitter-brand-management/

Emily Williams — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:24:35 -0000

Great post! I've been looking for ways to maximize my use of Twitter, and this is a very useful tip.

Re: 2008/06/11/chictopia/

Emily Williams — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:34:53 -0000

Oooh, looks like another good website to feed the fashion addiction. Any clues how they'll be making money?

Re: 2008/06/10/plurk-api/

Emily Williams — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:52:39 -0000

I don't like it from what I've seen...I don't know if you can change this, but an account I saw has the latest news on the left of the screen which seems backwards to me. As far as FriendFeed goes, I've just started using it, and most of my friends aren't on it, but the UI is pretty bad in my opinion. No style, and I can't figure out how to turn off updates from friends of my friends. What about Socialthing? Haven't used it yet, but it looks like it's going to be a better-looking version of FriendFeed.

Re: 2008/06/16/twitter-killed-technorati-too/

Emily Williams — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:49:49 -0000

Summize is great, way better than Tweetscan in my experience and a hugely useful tool for listening to what people are saying about your company! Theo, I like your point about improving the relevance of results in something like Summize. If people are paying attention, I would imagine someone's already working on it.

Re: 2008/06/19/youtube-hulu/

Emily Williams — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:29:28 -0000

Maybe it would make more sense globally to compare YouTube to a site like SideReel, to get a better idea of how things are internationally. As Alfie mentioned, Hulu isn't available outside the US, which to me is such a turn off that I won't use it even when I'm back in the US. How does SideReel (or a similar site) make money? That would give an idea of how two sites with similar concepts but different content compare. I realize this isn't the original question, just an idea of another way to look at how YouTube is doing relative to competitors.

Re: 2008/06/19/contextual-advertising/

Emily Williams — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:31:07 -0000

I tend to look poorly on the site publishing the ad rather than on the company paying for it - presumably PutYourFeetUp didn't specifically ask to be included here, and I see it as CNN's job to avoid this kind of blunder.

Of course, this doesn't answer the bigger question of whether budgets would be better spent elsewhere. In my experience with Needish, banner ads aren't hugely successful, but perhaps the perfect banner could generate a lot of interest.

Re: 2008/06/19/styleshake-fashion-design/

Emily Williams — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:34:45 -0000

Very cool! Has anyone tried it out? The fact that it's over the internet still kind of scares me - I like to touch fabrics, and who knows if I'm going to pick some style that looks awful on me - but I like the idea.

Re: 2008/06/23/jaxtr-international-calling/

Emily Williams — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:16:39 -0000

I'd also be interested in learning about international rates...looks like a little investigation is required! Although my Chilean cell phone is so expensive in general that it still might not be cheap for me - that's another international complication, a lot of countries still have exorbitant cell rates, not like the US where you have all sorts of unlimited minutes, so this might only make sense for some international users.

Re: The Top 20 Firefox 3.0 Compatible Themes Worth Upgrading For

Emily Williams — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:14:58 -0000

I used to use Pimpzilla in FF2 and loved it - totally over the top, but really silly and fun. I don't think I've ever gotten so much joy from leopard print as when showing something to coworkers on my computer when I had that theme.

Re: 2008/07/16/iphone-disposable-apps/

Emily Williams — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:33:07 -0000

@Bastian you bring up exactly what I thought when I read about walking down a restaurant-filled street and being bombarded with pop-ups. That would be horribly intrusive and just plain annoying!

Maybe better organization would be something like a "relevant apps" menu - the train schedules and restaurant menus are constantly being updated there, so that you can go to one place to find the info you need without pop-ups taking over your phone.

Re: 2008/07/18/evite-relaunch/

Emily Williams — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:11:34 -0000

Am I the only one who's never had a problem with evite? It's great that they're improving it, but I also haven't seen anything incredible from any of the other party planning sites, definitely nothing that's made me want to switch. Will be interesting to see these changes in place.

Re: 2008/07/21/how-to-make-your-users-hate-you/

Emily Williams — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:04:28 -0000

YES! To both the post and so many of the comments. I live in Chile and would happily watch US TV shows through the networks' website or Hulu, but since I get that stupid message, I go through SideReel. Some nice advertisers in Japan get to promote their products to me - I assume, for all I know the characters around the video player could be anything - rather than US advertisers whose products I might actually buy! It's stupid and it turns me off to even trying to use those sites once I move back. Frankly, as a user, I don't want to think about copyrights and justifications, I just want to watch TV without effort.

And @modemlooper clearly this post doesn't suck - it has lots of comments from other people who've had the same experience. It may not affect you, but that doesn't make it some obscure thing that only has relevance on a personal blog.

Re: 2008/07/20/new-facebook-launches/

Emily Williams — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:41:24 -0000

Seems weird to me that they would make the new version less customizable - I can't move profile boxes around. Fine by me, I'm sick of scrolling through millions of apps to get to someone's wall, but hey, it's your profile, not mine. Also think it's interesting how stats updates (in "Friends") and the new wall/mini-feed (in an individual profile) have taken precedence even more than before over profiles and profile updates. More Twitter/FriendFeed answering the question of what you're updating and less true Facebook with the slightly more "permanent" profile.

Re: 2008/08/20/gmail-security/

Emily Williams — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:17:32 -0000

Thanks for the tip, Stan! Going to do it right now.

Re: 2008/09/22/socialminder/

Emily Williams — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:49:47 -0000

Interesting idea. So many times you put off contacting someone, and eventually enough time passes that it seems awkward to e-mail them out of the blue. I don't know that I would always take advantage of being told I was losing touch with someone, but I can see it helping occasionally. And the tips of what to talk about makes me laugh - can we really not come up with our own e-mail topics?

Re: 2008/09/23/g1-iphone-prepaid/

Emily Williams — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:52:06 -0000

And this is part of the reason I don't have an iPhone. Here in Chile the same 2-year contract is required - at prices similar to the US ($70/month), which is a lot considering salaries are much lower! I may still be swayed, but at the moment I'm sticking with my 3-year old basic Nokia.

Re: 2008/10/14/macbook-pro/

Emily Williams — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:47:32 -0000

Haha, thanks for the perspective, Stan. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the hype!

Re: 2008/10/17/how-to-find-a-babysitter-online/

Emily Williams — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:43:56 -0000

You can also check out needish.com! You can either post privately, to get recommendations from people you know in real life (without having to individually call them all) or post a public Need and get tips from other people in the area as well. We're just getting started, but everyone's invited to post their Needs for babysitters or anything else :)

Re: 2008/10/21/lala/

Emily Williams — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:00:49 -0000

Overall some good points to consider. But this question seems a bit irrelevant: "Why should I pay for something that might turn out to be useless or obsolete in a few years time?" The same question could be asked not only of other music forms - cassettes, CDs, etc - but of all technology. While I fully agree that there are some technologies that look as thought they'll become useless far too quickly, and Lala may be one of them, if we let the fact that things will become obsolete hold us back, we'd never move forward.

Re: 2008/10/29/facebook-invite-spam/

Emily Williams — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:02:34 -0000

Yes. Even if I've already confirmed or denied the invite within Facebook. Annoying...

Re: Slow Feed Movement: 7 Tools to Filter the RSS Flood

Emily Williams — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:14:24 -0000

Am I the only one who got excited thinking this was about a guide to sites dealing with the slow FOOD movement? Oh well. Clever title and good tips!

Re: 12 Viral Videos from the 2008 Campaigns

Emily Williams — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:41:29 -0000

I've seen this one making the rounds as well, a very funny video from Sarah Silverman about getting out the Jewish vote in Florida: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHHX9R4Qtk

Re: HOW TO: Build Community on Twitter

Emily Williams — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:19:50 -0000

Just wanted to add to what others have said - very useful post. Some common sense tips that anyone can do that will be very helpful.

Re: 2008/12/03/lindsay-lohan-robert-scoble/

Emily Williams — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:29:59 -0000

In her blog she did mention that she used a false name, so if Facebook shut down her account for that then they're in the right - although I agree that they should have some kind of verification process before just closing an account. But the real issue is that if there are several accounts with the name "Lindsay Lohan" and photos of the same person are fake clearly all but one of them (or all of them) are fake, so why aren't they doing something about that?

Re: Websites Blocking Europeans and Other Countries

Emily Williams — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:56:50 -0000

From what I've seen, it all has to do with copyrights. But it sucks. I would happily watch TV shows legally through the networks or a service like Hulu, but since they don't work for me (I live in Chile) I end up on sites that I'm sure are not giving revenue back to the programs. Globalize or lose money and viewers, simple as that.

Re: Five Tools I Use for Listening

Emily Williams — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:46:05 -0000

This deserves a comment if only for the great picture! In all seriousness though, this is a great post - as someone just starting in social media, I'm finding posts like this to be a godsend. And the fact that I was already using some of these tools gives me confirmation that I'm heading in the right direction! Thanks, Chris.

Re: How Do Realtors Demonstrate Community

Emily Williams — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:25:44 -0000

I'm in the process of buying a home right now and would definitely appreciate a real estate agent making every attempt possible to connect with me! Here in Chile, customer service is not quite what I'm used to in the US, but when I'm going to be spending thousands of dollars I think the least someone can do to earn that money is reach out to me. I have let apartments go because although they looked nice, the realtor couldn't be bothered to even e-mail me back in a timely fashion.

Aside from personal experience, it's been interesting trying to share Needish with real estate professionals. You'd think they'd jump at the chance to have clients sent to them, but instead they say "oh, I use my cell phone, I don't really work on the internet" and "I already have lots of clients, I don't need to change my style." Totally ridiculous position in my opinion when clearly more areas of life are moving online each day. Congratulations to Chris and others like her!

Re: Am I Too Naked

Emily Williams — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:22:53 -0000

Selfishly, I would have to say please keep doing what you're doing! Honestly though, I agree with what you said about giving general ideas. I find your blog hugely helpful, but it doesn't do my job for me. It gives me tools to get an idea, but I can still imagine finding myself in the position of needing some outside help - and quite possibly coming to you for a personalized approach. The fact that I find what you do share so useful and as a result happen to think you're a nice guy who knows what he's doing means that I would be far more likely to use your consulting than I would have been if I didn't have the same online "relationship" with you. So keep it up!

Re: Spectrums of Social Media for Marketing

Emily Williams — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:53:33 -0000

@KatFrench I hadn't thought of it in those ways, but you're right. Thanks for bringing it up. Obviously the investment of resources point depends on the company - on the one hand paying the salary of a dedicated community manager over a year will probably cost more than one-time banner ads, but on the other having each employee spend some time on social media for no additional cost is cheaper than paying an external designer. But I do see your point.

Personally I've found it interesting how my perspective on marketing has changed in just a couple months since starting to work as a community manager. Our own website, needish.com, has a lot of potential to be used as a social media tool - something I'd never thought of before! I previously saw it as a way to win clients but hadn't considered the reputation-building aspect, whereas now I see that as a major selling-point.

Re: Great PR Manners Go a Long Way

Emily Williams — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:00:47 -0000

Hi Chris and everyone. This e-mail looks great, but I have a question: what kind of title should go with an e-mail like this? As a community manager at a start up, I find myself in the position of sending out e-mails to people I've never talked to about a company they've never heard of. I feel like the text of my e-mail is along these lines (I hope!), but I get stuck on the title. If I put "Needish" they have no idea what that is. Something like "New company, more clients" looks like spam. "Hey X, what's up?" is unprofessional. I'd love to hear your opinions, thanks in advance for any help!

Re: Take the Tools and Run With Them

Emily Williams — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:17:11 -0000

Great post! It's very easy to get stuck in the trap of needing to "keep up to date" and "learn more" rather than actually doing things, trying things, possibly making a couple mistakes along the way but learning through experience rather than reading. Thanks for this reminder that we should be out there doing rather than observing!

Re: How Not to Be a Jerk in Facebook

Emily Williams — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:05:24 -0000

@Joe Dager, it all depends on how you use Facebook. I, like @Julie Baker, keep Facebook almost exclusively for personal things. And you can bet I have pictures of my dog :) You can have pictures of your dog as a professional user as well, it's even encouraged because it shows that you're really you and not some little corporate drone!

Chris, as far as groups go, I usually join friends' groups to show support, but if after a while I realize I don't feel strongly about the message I'll remove them. I'm not usually very active in groups, so for me the question isn't so much whether or not I've been active but rather whether or not I think that by reading the title of the groups I'm in someone could get a feel for who I am and what I believe in - whether it's that I do in fact have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin or that I think my high school was better than your high school, the important thing is that I agree with what I'm putting out there.

Re: How Corporates Should View Comment Policies

Emily Williams — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:40:29 -0000

Great point about the audience not getting to do whatever they want. I think it's easy for people online to feel like the internet is theirs and they should be allowed to act as they want, but different sites have different purposes. I wish more people would keep that in mind the next time they cry "censorship" when really it's just a case of certain postings not being appropriate for certain places.

It will be interesting to see how Pepsi moves forward from today, if they can grow from the feedback they could have a great thing going here.

Re: You Cant Just Have Peanut Butter

Emily Williams — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:10:12 -0000

Great post, even though I don't like peanut butter :) This is something that I really need to start focusing on. I think I've given myself enough time to get into the flow of the conversation, and now I need to thnk about how to measure what I'm doing. I'm learning that this is the really hard part! Thanks for this reminder.

Re: Secrets of the Annotated World

Emily Williams — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:21:20 -0000

Interesting post. At Needish we try to not only find people the answers to their Needs in that minute but also create a database of information for the future. So that next time someone in San Francisco needs a moving service or someone in New York is looking for an apartment they can see not only recommendations from other people but also what companies are joining that conversation and offering good service.

It is a LOT of information, and I'm getting used to the idea that I can't know all of it, but it's out there for whenever I need to access it.

Re: Five Things Meme- It Never Gets Old

Emily Williams — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:58:21 -0000

The book job sounds like a lot of fun, the water purification and car jobs sound like hell. I can see how that kind of background encouraged you to get into what you're doing today, which is obviously something you love.

As far as the superheros go, I've included a link to Helperman - a real life superhero :) Enjoy!

Re: Bob- The Next Chapter

Emily Williams — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:14:02 -0000

Wow, it's crazy to me that one company would do this, and reading everyone's "me too" comments is even crazier! In Chile there is very much still a culture of hierarchy and little internet use. I have had conversations with people where I say "use our website, you will get more clients for free, and they will like you because you're going to them," and the person on the other end of the phone says "no, I couldn't do that, the owner of the company is away until next month, and I can't make a decision like that on my own." Some still don't seem to realize that having a presence online is just like handing out your business card at a social event - relating yourself to your company, which people like! Thank goodness for the companies and employees that do get it.

Re: My Site Dressed in Thesis

Emily Williams — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:18:01 -0000

Ooh, pretty. Very clean, and I like that it's lighter than the previous design. Looking forward to reading in this new theme :)