To Do List

Creating a business isn’t easy. Creating an internet startup is insane. It’s not an easy thing. It’s crazy.

Lucky I have done this before and I know exactly what to do. 

We always start with a to-do-list, colour coded.

Here’s the to-do-list for TwitterPorn

• Legal, retain a lawyer (done)
  
• Legal, create a disclaimer policy
  
• Legal, understand Copyright Laws and get acquainted with GPL and more progressive structures. (will check on Wiki later)
  
• Commercial, create a business plan (I am creating one)
  
• Commercial, create a marketing plan (creating one right now)
  
• Commercial, revenue model (not yet available until Twitter figured it out)
  
• Commercial, adopt international markets (done, Dutch and German, expecting Indonesia and US to come online, soon)
  
• Commercial, cost model (don’t know yet, at the moment, all I use are free/beta services. I don’t plan to pay for anything less than a professional service. Cut down on expenses, too).
  
• Commercial, launch plan (to be determined, after the holy month)
  
• Commercial, design logo and site looky feely (too busy right now)
  
• Market Mapping, competition analysis (non existent at the moment)
  
• Market Mapping, understand Twitter metrics and demographic (ongoing)
  
• Tech & Infrastructure, sign up to Twitter (done)
  
• Tech & Infrastructure, create a web presence (done, here)
  
• Tech & Infrastructure, create a YouTube group (done, here)
  
• Tech & Infrastructure, learning how to use Twitter (ongoing, I currently have two followers). This is an issue that will be addressed further with a firm marketing plan.
  
• Establish goals and objectives (done, I want total world domination and a boat)
  

Lots of things, I know. But I will master them all. Good books to read if you’re planning to have an internet startup would be Understanding the Media (Marshall McLuhan, he’s a prophet), Your Marketing Sucks (Mark Stevens), Cluetrain Manifesto, Gulliver’s Travel (learn to see markets differently in strange countries) and Wired magazine.

These two articles from the NY Times are particularly good in approaching Web 2.0 and how internet change relationships. Here’s Clive Thompson with the experience and differences in social networks and relationships in different media. Here’s an essay on McLuhan’s the Medium is the Message and here’s a blog entry at how the facebook crowd reacted to McCains campaign. I’m joining that group to check it out.

Now, if you excuse me, I plan to get busy again.

Disclaimer

First order of the day would be to avoide a cease and decist letter from the Twitter people. I read their terms and FAQs and stuff, and I'm comitted to follow them very closely, so i'd hate to upset them at this very early, embrionic stage. I just got the idea four hours ago. I need a disclaimer.

It's still in narrative form, but i'll convert it into a legal language soon.

The general idea is to allow for a social experiment: crowdsourcing sex. The users get their rush from twitter. 

No foul language or explicit words will be used, twitter is a respectable environment. 

It will pass most standards of morality among the neo-liberals and neo-cons alike. The users of TwitterPorn should choose to go and visit TwitterPorn in their own free will. We will only work within the exact confines of the Twitter rules and morality supervision: Twitter alone can tell me what I can or can not say.

The idea is to generate traffic elsewhere, but also without routing URLs – cause that is spamming. Beside, I think URL is obsolete with search engines and twitters, so there will be no URLs being passed around. I will chronicle the journey to get this company up and running through my blogs, facebook, YM, emails and with some of you, we will probably need to discuss real funding. I raised funds for internet startups before, so this will be fun. 

I’d like to see the faces of the VCs when I tell them what I do.  

This is a McLuhan test for Jefferson’s idea, with sex for the tabloid effect.

The company is called TwitterPorn.