Quote of the Week

"Like the popular kids, Facebook will end up living in a trailer —just down the gravel road from Friendster."

Ian Daly

Courtesy of Paul Freet.

Twitter Followers

Seems to me over the past week or so Google alerts has gone a little crazy.  I am getting all kinds of alerts on both old and odd news.

In order to help manage my online identity I have an alert for "Lance Weatherby."  The other day an alert showed up entitled Twitterholic.com :Stats for Lance Weatherby (lance)  which I found interesting enough to click through. 

One of the interesting tidbits I found there was 11,711th person to sign up for twitter.  But I also saw this chart with a recent large increase in the number of my twitter followers.  I have been getting lots of followings from folks who I do not know or know of.  Just bizarre profiles trolling for followers.  Followbaiters.

The graphic ain't too clear but is it obviously heading up.  I did a little investigating by merely changing out the user names of folks I followed in the tail end of this URL http://www.twitterholic.com/twitter/lance/ .  Every single one I looked at showed the same type of graph.

People have stopped starting following other people on twitter because they are personal friends or acquaintances in some way.  They have started following people to get more followers or to drive traffic.  Or put another way, for the good of themselves instead of the good of the community.  That is a bad thing for twitter.

And it is really starting to get out of hand.  How to you respond to this:

Jesus Christ (Jesus_Christ) is now following your updates on Twitter.
Check out Jesus Christ's profile here:
http://twitter.com/Jesus_Christ
You may follow Jesus Christ as well by clicking on the "follow" button.

Since I don't have a personal relationship with Jesus_Christ, I decided to delete the message.

RTEV Launches

Yesterday RTEV launched over at the Georgia Tech Conference Center.  RTEV is an electric vehicle (EV) company focused on delivering affordable electric low speed vehicles (LSVs).  The keys words here are affordable and low speed, a strategy a bit different from the high end aimed Tesla and Fisker cars that were featured in a Wall Street Journal on the same day.  Low speed vehicles are a U.S. Department of Transportation classification for cars that can be licensed and driven on roads that have speed limits of 35 MPH or less.  RTEV intends to produce such cars and sell them to short distance commuters in the $20,000 range. 

Like its fellow Georgia car company Carbon Motors, this is an interesting story.  RTEV is led by Mike McQuary.  Mike was the President and COO of MindSpring and then EarthLink (ok, he really was not the COO at EarthLink even though he had the same responsibilities, but that is a story for another day, he was also my direct boss during those seven years.).    In addition to being CEO of RTEV Mike is a partner in Ellis, McQuary, Stanley and Associates.  Those three and their associates are into all types of stuff that more often then not turns out well and one of the things they decided to do was go buy a company called Ruff & Tuff Products and convert it into an EV company.

RTEV is comprised of two divisions, Ruff & Tuff and Wheego.  Ruff & Tuff currently manufactures and distributes recreational vehicles under its Ruff & Tuff brand, all of which are easily and inexpensively converted to be street-legal LSVs.  Last year they sold about 1,000 of these at $8,000 a pop through a distribution network that they have already put in place.  In the second half of this year RTEV will introduce a line of electric scooters and bicycles under the Wheego brand, to be followed by the auto shaped LSVs in 2009, and full-size, full-speed electric vehicles in 2010. 

RTEV is essentially using the profits of Ruff & Tuff to help fund the development of Wheego.  Last fall the company raised $5 million (full disclosure: I am an investor).  They expect to go out and get a venture round sometime within the next year.

In addition to its middle market approach and distribution, RTEV claims a few technical advantages that distinguishes it from other electric vehicles currently on the market.   The company uses long running dry cell sealed (AGM) batteries, which require no maintenance and will not harm the environment.   The vehicles also feature on board high tech chargers and battery systems that can be upgraded to travel up to 70 miles on a single charge—and plug in for a recharge on any standard home 110 volt electrical outlet.   

Mike pretty much imported MindSpring's core values into RTEV and added a new one "We care about the environment and believe that if everyone does a little bit to help with preservation it can add up to a big change for the better."  In the launch announcement he said something very CEO like about "a perfect storm of macro-events."  At the event he climbed into the trunk of the prototype and rode around in there so he could pitch reporters while they test drove.  A sight to see.  Classic McQuary.

It will be interesting to see what "McQ" can do with this one.  I made my bet that he can turn it into something.

Update:  A profile on McQuary appeared in the Atlanta Journal the day after I wrote this article.

How Twitter Works

Just like they did with RSS, the folks over at Common Craft do a most excellent job of explaining twittter in plain english.

Seems like in the past month or so twitter is moving beyond a "what are my friends doing microblog" to something else.  What that something else is seems less useful to me. It feels I am currently using twitter a lot less then I was a month or two ago.  My TweetStats seem to back that feeling up.

Be Good

"Don't just not be evil.  Be good."

Paul Graham

My philosophy on both life and startups.  Hence the title of this blog.  A worthy essay to spend a few minutes reading.