Well, I can’t believe it, but we’ve soft-launched BlueSwarm.com. We’ve been working on this project for a few months now and we’re proud to finally have something that the general public can play with. This is still a relatively early beta, but it’s functional! So what is it? BlueSwarm allows you to track your brand through online social media all in one place. With BlueSwarm you can see what people are saying about your brand on Twitter and blogs (many more services to come) all in one place.

Not only does BlueSwarm collect that information and display it in one easy to use location, we also do sentiment analysis and calculate an authority/popularity score (called a buzz score) for both the author and the item. This way you can see what’s important to you. You can sort by positive or negative items, by how popular the item is or by how much buzz the item has. That way you can get to the information that matters to you most, quickly and easily.

Once you have a chance to see what people are saying about your brand, you’ll want to be able to easily respond to these items to keep the conversation going. BlueSwarm makes it easy to flag items for later follow up or to respond to them via twitter without having to leave the site (and we’re going to be adding even more ways to respond soon).

This is just the start. We will be adding more services in the next few weeks, more ways to respond, display and interact with the data, as well as more ways to collaborate and share that data. We hope that you find BlueSwarm useful, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly or anyone else on the BlueSwarm team if you have any questions, feature requests or bug reports.

When you freelance for awhile, you start to hear the same lines over and over from people trying to hire you. These are some of my favorites, and I’ve learned to just take them with a grain of salt. They’re not always untrue, but they’re cliche enough that I raise my eyebrow a bit when I hear them. Please note that clients are great people with solid ideas and we work together to create things that are special. I’m just poking a bit of fun at potential clients in general. If you can’t handle it, perhaps we wouldn’t be a good fit

“We’ve got a lot more work if you can just do this one at a discount.”
Great. So if I let you take advantage of me now, you’ve got a lot more chances to do it again in the future? Sign me up!

“We’ve gotten a lot of interest from VCs and investors…funding is pretty much a done deal.”
Deals fall through. Funding is hard and rarely happens. This is not to say that it won’t, but it’s a bad reason to take a freelance gig, in my opinion.

“This has never been done.”
It almost certainly has. Probably many times. If it hasn’t, perhaps there’s a very good reason.

“Someone will steal my idea.”
They won’t. Ideas are next to worthless. Execution counts.

“Would you be willing to work for equity only?”
No.

“This shouldn’t be that difficult.”
And yet it is. Weird.

“I’ll get that check in the mail.”

If you have any to add, share them in the comments.

In August of 2007, I quit my job as a product manager at CNET Networks and started freelancing full-time. I do mostly web development and social media consulting, and I’m really enjoying it. I thought I’d share a few of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way.

1. Working at home sucks

Maybe it would work if I was always working at home by myself, had a separate room that was just for work, and had everything setup just so. Maybe. But I find that being at home has too many distractions, from TV, to my wife, to our new puppies. I get 2x - 4x as much done at my office as I do at home. What that means in practical terms is that paying a few hundred bucks a month for a small office or co-working space is well worth the price. Even a coffee shop is usually an improvement for me over being at home.

2. Working from anywhere you want rocks

On the other hand, having the freedom to work from home, or a coffee shop, or the beach on a tropical island, is one of the best things about working for yourself, especially in the line of work that I do. My wife and I have travelled a lot over the last year, something we never could have done if we were holding down jobs.

3. Everything takes longer than expected

From finding new clients to signing contracts to finishing projects to getting paid, everything seems to take longer than you expect. I guess this is because I’m an optimist by nature, but it’s something I’ve definitely had to adjust to. My advice: make sure you always have a decent reserve of time, money, and goodwill. You’ll probably need them.

4. Process is important

I guess this isn’t limited to freelancers, but I’ve just realized how important it is. When you do development work, you find yourself doing the same types of things over and over. I find it hard to force myself to take longer the first or second or third time around to setup shortcuts and process enhancements that will enable me to do it faster in the future, but it’s definitely worth it. If you find yourself cutting and pasting the same piece of code, then making a bunch of adjustments to change minor details, consider making it a class or a library that’s more flexible. Organize, optimize, and review your processes regularly. It takes more time now, but it saves a lot of time in the long run.

5. Small gigs > large gigs

All else being equal, smaller jobs are far better than large ones, in my opinion. It’s the same reason that small entrepreneurial projects are better than large ones: they tend to get finished on time and under budget much more often. Large projects have more room for error, ambiguity, scope creep, and miscommunication. Additionally, I find that I get fatigued when working on projects that stretch on for weeks or months. It becomes more of a struggle to get excited about working on the same thing yet again, whereas for a small project, you can maintain your interest and excitement through most or all of the project. The best project is one that you can knock out in a day or two.

I’d say that the one thing I have learned is that if you’re doing a large project, break it into phases and try to think of them as discrete mini-projects in themselves. But small projects are still better.

6. This is a stepping stone for me

I never intended to stick with contract work long-term, and the last year has just reinforced that in my mind. The hard part about freelance work for me, a born entrepreneur, is that it vacillates between two extremes: either I’m working on projects that I’m not particularly passionate about or interested in, usually because they’re not going to go anywhere and I know it (and I tell the client), or I’m working on really interesting projects that I know in my heart will succeed or continue to be a success. That sounds awesome, I know, and I’m fortunate to work on more projects like that than those in the first category, but the problem I have is that I’m helping another entrepreneur achieve his or her dream, rather than achieving my own. I love helping people, and I especially love helping people accomplish their goals and dreams, but I hate the feeling of being a hired hand when I should be whipping up my own success. Does that make sense?

As a result, I’ve started aggressively pursuing more entrepreneurial projects of my own, some of which you’ll be hearing about in the coming days and weeks. I’m enjoying freelance work and I’m very grateful to all my clients for the opportunity to work with them, but I’ll be really glad to eventually be done with freelance work. It’s just not as free as I’d like

If you’re a freelancer, let me know how this lines up with your experiences. I would love to hear from anyone considering making the plunge who has questions or comments.

So I’ve got this new idea for a little social web app, and I’m really excited about it because it’s in an area that I’m passionate about, it’s got lots of viral expansion possibilities, and it’s a pretty simple idea, at least in v1.0. Really simple. Like, knock it out in a weekend simple. So I’m going to try and move forward with it over the next few weeks, but I’m having trouble deciding whether I should launch a standalone site or a Facebook application first. My eventual goal would be to have the app as both a Facebook application and a standalone site, as well as iPhone, Android, OpenSocial, and wherever else it fits. But the question remains: which do I launch first?

Arguments in favor of a standalone site first:

• More straightforward development process, whereas developing for Facebook is a pain
• Platform isn’t changing while I’m working, unlike Facebook
• I own my users
• Integration with 3rd-party services feels more natural for some reason?
• May be a better fit than the Facebook audience

Arguments in favor of a Facebook application first:

• Faster development time
• More social integration points, like News Feed, Notifications, etc
• No competition at all on Facebook right now, unlike the web, which has one with a similar idea
• Faster viral growth
• Joyent’s free Facebook application hosting

I’m leaning towards Facebook at this point, but I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on which approach I should take, and what other questions I should be asking. I’ll be sure and post my decision in the next couple weeks and I’ll be excited to hear what you all think of my little project. Thanks for your feedback below! (hint, hint

I started on a new theme for my blog months ago, but with client work and entrepreneurial pursuits and my trip to Asia, things just kept getting pushed back.  I finally spent some time to finish things up to the point that I’m ready to put it online, though everything isn’t completely done yet.  I would love some feedback, specifically around the points below:

• Do you like the design overall?
• Do you see any issues in your browser? (if so, what browser and OS?)
• Is the navigation confusing at all?
• Is there anything obvious missing?
• Are the fonts readable?

In case anyone is interested, this is a 100% from scratch WordPress 2.5 theme based on a design that my good friend Ben Lew whipped up for me almost six months ago.  So far, the plugins I’m running are just Akismet, Feedburner, and SearchEverything (to filter out pages and certain categories from search results).  The flash image slideshow is SlideShowPro with a custom script that pulls images from a set in my Flickr account.  If anyone is interested in the overall setup of the taxonomy, pages, etc, I’ll be glad to detail it all in another post.

If I had to do it again, I would use Drupal, primarily due to the better taxonomy control.  But Wordpress has worked out well and I’m excited to see things grow.  I still have a fair bit of content to get in here, especially projects.  Other things I plan on adding in the future are a specific page layout for projects, as well as leveraging tags on both posts and projects.  One other thing I would like to add is a place to list pages that fall under one of the five major areas of the site (Blogger, Consultant, etc).  Any ideas?

Anyway, I’m glad it’s finally done and I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Thanks!

UPDATE: I’m getting reports from some users who are seeing just a big empty grey box in the header area of the site, instead of the photos that should be appearing.  If you see this, please leave a comment and let me know what browser / OS you’re running and what version of Flash you have installed (if you know).  Thanks!