Last week we talked about managing split teams with Danny Wong of Blank Label, a site for creating custom men’s dress shirts and a startup in the growing field of co-creation. These types of startups, which have gained more traction overseas than in the U.S., run on a model of on-demand production, which allows them to become cash-flow positive in a relatively short period of time. Wednesday I had the chance to talk about co-creation with Carmen Magar, a German woman living in New York who works for chocri, a German startup that sells customizable chocolates.

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According to Magar, Germany is quickly becoming a hub for co-creation startups while the U.S. and the U.K. have been much slower to adopt them. Before setting up shop in the U.S., custom t-shirt company Spreadshirt actually began as a startup in Germany. Magar, who has spent significant amounts of time in both countries, says that while the difference in cultures has been an influence, the main reason that co-creation has taken off in Germany is the country’s smaller market which allows startups to make a larger impact.

“What happened in Germany is that there were a lot of startups doing co-creation; a lot of companies that didn’t have a production process in place that were really flexible and could talk to their customers directly,” Magar told ReadWriteWeb on Wednesday. “In the U.S., the way it was proselytized was that soon in the future every big company would change their production process to enable mass customization, but that’s actually a really risky thing to do. What I think will happen is that the startups, the small companies that are nimble, will lead the way to bring that control to the consumer.”

Another reason why co-creation and mass customization may have taken root in Germany is that the country, like many in Europe, suffers from a severe lack of seed level funding, while the U.S. has incubators and VC firms across the country targeting early stage companies. As we mentioned last week with Blank Label, most co-creation startups use a business model that lets them produce products only as they are ordered, keeping costs down and allowing the company to have an early cash flow.

In a region like Europe, the need to bootstrap businesses from the ground up like chocri (which started with €25,000) is much higher, and co-creation is a great way to accomplish this. American startups may be less likely to go down the route of co-creation because the investors are more willing to take risks on less proven businesses.

Magar, who lived in Germany most of her life and came to America to get her MBA, believes that Germany’s propensity towards mass customization is also part of what led chocri to hire her as their representative in America. The company just happened to be looking to expand their presence to the U.S. when Magar called to express her interest in the company.

“I think why they chose to have a German on the team is because I saw a lot more of this happen, and I understand more about mass customization,” says Magar. “Because I live here I’ve experienced the American market, but it was more important to them to bring in an understanding of the concept.”

This is an important concept for startups to grasp, both in the U.S. and abroad. When looking to expand overseas, it is important to find someone with familiarity in both regions who can survey the new market and who can grasp the core values of your business. As a German, Magar completely understood chocri’s co-creation strategy, and studying in America made her a great choice to help the company find a presence there.

Is co-creation finally beginning to catch on in the U.S. with companies like Spreadshirt and Blank Label? Or perhaps co-creation is more alive in America than we realize? Or is mass customization a startup model that will continue its struggle to gain traction in America? Let us know what you think about co-creation and spreading startups overseas in the comments below!

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Sergey Brin and Larry Page are going to become much closer to their financial advisors over the next five years.  Google disclosed in a regulatory filing late last week that the cofounders each intend to sell about 5 million shares of the company’s stock during that period of time.

To address one possible concern: This is no way signals that Brin and Page are abandoning Google.  Even after the 10 million shares are sold, the pair will still own 47.7 million shares between them, so it’s not like they’re cutting all ties and going home.

Also, even though their voting stake will be reduced from 59 percent to 48 percent due to this move, Eric Schmidt controls another 10 percent, so there’s no danger of the three Google execs getting overthrown.

Still, the development is a big deal.  Miguel Helft calculated, "The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01."

Google’s stock is down 1.15 percent so far this morning.  The Dow and Nasdaq are up 0.71 percent and 0.58 percent, respectively.

Related Articles:

> Wall Street Turns Nose Up At Google Earnings Report

> Analysts Give Google Thumbs Up For Diversifying

> Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast

After a predefined period designed to increase transparency and maximize user feedback, Facebook has announced that, with fewer than 7,000 user comments, it will proceed to implement its proposed amended privacy policy.

With adequate user information, Facebook hoped to become better stewards of “the unnaturally uncontrollable nature of communication,” as we called their general user-data privacy dilemma in June. And this revision also makes a nod to Canadian objections to Facebook’s policies. What’s in store for users, and how did the thousands of units of user data impact Facebook’s governance and privacy policy? Read on to get the full story.

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The latest revision of the policy can be found here, and the current policy is available here.

According to the site’s governance, fewer than seven thousand user comments, the revised policy will be shortly enacted and will be official. “While a lot of people participated,” wrote IP counsel Michael Richter, “the total number of people commenting did not reach the threshold of 7,000 that makes a vote necessary according to our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Because of this – and the fact that many of the comments were positive – we’ve decided to adopt the revised policy.”

The new method of determining policies based on user feedback stems from the site’s desire to foster a culture of transparency and engagement.

Here are the old policy and revised policy changes, which, again, will be enacted shortly:

Old:

When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information… Even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content…
Access and control over most personal information on Facebook is readily available through the profile editing tools. Facebook users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account. Information will be updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their Facebook account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook.

New:

Viewing and editing your profile. You may change or delete your profile information at any time by going to your profile page and clicking “Edit My Profile.” Information will be updated immediately. While you cannot delete your date of birth, you can use the setting on the info tab of your profile information page to hide all or part of it from other users…

Deactivating or deleting your account. If you want to stop using your account you may deactivate it or delete it. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.) in case you later decide to reactivate your account. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and in doing so are asking us to maintain their information until they return to Facebook. You will still have the ability to reactivate your account and restore your profile in its entirety. When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted. You should only delete your account if you are certain you never want to reactivate it. You may deactivate your account on your account settings page or delete your account on this help page.

Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users. However, your name will no longer be associated with that information on Facebook. (For example, if you post something to another user’s profile, and then you delete your account, that post may remain, but be attributed to an “Anonymous Facebook User.”) Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested.

Future updates will be announced via the site’s governance page.

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Google has released an extension of its Hot Trends feature, which brings some of its components to the results page when a user searches for one of the "hot trends." Now when a user’s query matches one of the top 100 trends (or fastest-rising search terms), Google will show them a graph and further information about how popular the query is.

In case you are unfamiliar with Google’s Hot Trends, it is a feature of Google Labs that shows you the top terms that Google users are searching for at any given time. You can also search the feature for any query and find how that query has performed for any set period of time over the years. It will show you analytical data on that, including the regions where the term is searched for the most.

Google has also reduced the number of trends on the Hot Trends homepage from 100 to 40. However, the new feature will still reflect the top 100. The feature is available in the US and Japan. Google makes no mention of when it may become available for other regions.

Google’s addition of the hot trends box on results page has already drawn comparisons to Twitter, for the simple fact that Twitter provides its trending topics list. Both features highlight the attention being paid to the real-time web by both users and industry players.

Google has steadily been making changes to its results pages. The biggest change this year was the addition of  "search options." More recently, they increased the font size, and began adding more links based on anchors on pages that have clear sections on different topics (Google tells you how to optimize for that here).

comScore Media Metrix released its top 50 web properties for the month of June. It’s no surprise that Google sites remain on top with Yahoo and Microsoft in the second and third positions respectively.

Facebook has moved up 2 positions to number 6 though, giving the social network its highest ranking to date. Twitter actually just made its first appearance on the list, coming in at number 46 with 20.1 million visitors.

"It’s hard to believe that Twitter.com had fewer than a million visitors in June 2008, and now attracts more than 20 million visitors a month and ranks among the top 50 U.S. properties," says Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix.

"Twitter has clearly been able to generate wide interest and cultivate a substantial following in a very short period of time," he adds. "If this momentum persists, then we will continue to see Twitter climb higher and higher in this ranking in the coming months."

Also worth mentioning is that travel sites jumped in June, although this is not incredibly surprising. "Travel sites typically see an increase in activity around this time of year as Americans look to get away," says Flanagan. "Summer vacation also means more leisure time for those out of school, leading to a seasonal increase in leisure categories including online gaming and entertainment."

Notice that career categories made gains as well. This is also unsurprising, considering the state of the economy and unemployment.

June was a great month for Google, according to new statistics from Nielsen.  In comparison to May, the search giant apparently received many more unique visitors, and also managed to keep them around for a much longer period of time.

How’s this for an increase: going from 131.3 million unique visitors to 147.8 million unique visitors in one month’s time.  That represents a gain of about 12.6 percent for Google.  Also, where time was concerned, it eked out an additional 32 or so minutes per person, moving from 1 hour and 17 minutes to roughly 1 hour and 49 minutes.

Of course, portraying an increase in time spent per person as a good thing can be misleading; the measure of a search engine’s success is generally how quickly it can send a searcher to another site.  But since more and more info is published on the first page of results, this statistic is part of a larger picture.

Anyway, Yahoo managed to keep the average searcher around for an extra 1.5 minutes in June compared to May, and attracted an additional 14.2 million unique visitors.

Bing, meanwhile, made its first appearance in this particular type of Nielsen table, and performed well enough by bringing in 9.9 million (or 9.7 percent) more unique visitors than Microsoft’s offerings did the month before.  The time spent per Bing/Microsoft user dropped by 18 minutes, too, bringing its data more in line with the industry leader’s.

The number one key to success when you’re undertaking an Article Marketing campaign is CONSISTENCY. So many times people start off with the best intentions and have high aspirations for their website’s success, but after a brief effort they lose focus and give up.

Article marketing is a great way to build links and increase traffic to a website, but in order to see the dramatic results you’re looking for you need to consistently submit articles for an extended period of time, ideally for the lifetime of your website.

If you submit a handful of articles for just a few months, you will not see much in the way of lasting results. But, if you submit a handful of articles every month for a year, you will see what a link building momentum can do for your site!

Just submit articles consistently–sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

It is incredibly easy if you’ve taken the time to plan and organize ahead of time. A little planning goes a long way–just complete the following steps and you’ll keep yourself on track for the rest of the year.

1) Determine how many articles you will submit each month.

I recommend submitting somewhere between 1 and 8 articles a month–choose a quantity that you can realistically write month in and month out. If you set your sights too high and fall short, that can be discouraging, so you may wish to start out towards the lower end of the spectrum and work your way up to 8 over a few months.

I think that submitting more than 8 articles a month is overkill. When you start submitting more articles than this the benefits go down compared to the effort you’re exerting, so I advise people to submit articles each month for an extended period of time, and submit up to 8 each month–there is no need to go overboard and submit dozens and dozens of articles a month.

2) Create a writing schedule.

After you’ve decided how many articles you’ll submit each month, take out your calendar and decide when you’ll write the articles. Write in your calendar exactly which days you will be writing and what times. Being specific like this will help you to not procrastinate (something we’re all prone to do!). If you schedule your writing on your calendar you’re more likely to actually do the work.

Some people like to write one article at a time, while others prefer to work in batches of several in a day. It’s just whatever works for you. I have done both, and I think I prefer writing in batches–that way I can take just a few days out of the month and meet all of my article writing goals in a short span of time.

I also have a special “Editorial Calendar”–basically this is a dry erase calendar board where I can mark down the days I will be writing. As I write each article, I erase it from the board. It’s motivating to see the progress on the board–I keep this calendar right beside my desk, so there’s no way I’ll be forgetful of the days I’m supposed to write.

3) Brainstorm next month’s article topics.

Have you ever known you needed to write an article, but you just weren’t sure what to write about? When this happens, you end up procrastinating and before you know it you’re behind in your writing.

I’ve found a cure for this by creating an article idea list ahead of time, before the month even starts. Just think of article topics that would be helpful to your target market. Remember, all of your articles will be on some aspect of your niche. Start writing down ideas and you’ll find that more ideas start to flow. It is much easier to think of 8 article ideas at one time than to think of one article idea on 8 separate occasions.

Develop your brainstorming list and pull it out when it’s time for you to write. No procrastinating, no agonizing, “Oh no, now what should I write about?”

All three of these steps are crucial when it comes to keeping an article marketing campaign on track. Remember–consistency is key. If you can submit articles consistently month in and month out, you can produce dramatic results for your website over the long term.

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It’s wise to invest in time saving systems that allow you to get more bang for your marketing buck, such as a trusted article distribution service. Steve Shaw created the web’s first ever 100% automated article distribution service, SubmitYOURArticle.com, which distributes your articles to hundreds of targeted publishers with the click of a button. For more information go to=> http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How To Create An Article Writing Schedule

PC World is pointing to an interesting study that has found that some popular social sites are not really deleting you photos when you think they are. When the average user deletes a photo they have posted on Facebook for example, they assume that photo is gone.

This is not always the case however. The University of Cambridge has discovered that at least seven popular sites might still have those photos live for as many as thirty days. These seven sites are:

- Facebook
- MySpace
- Bebo
- hi5
- LiveJournal
- SkyRock
- Xanga

Meanwhile, sites like Windows Live Spaces, Orkut, Photobucket, and Flickr were able to remove photos almost immediately.

In actuality, the offending sites have removed the images from their servers. It’s just that the images still resided on content delivery networks, which store them. BBC News quotes a Facebook spokesperson on the matter:

"When a user deletes a photograph from Facebook it is removed from our servers immediately. However, URLs to photographs may continue to exist on the Content Delivery Network (CDN) after users delete them from Facebook, until they are overwritten. Overwriting usually happens after a short period of time." 

Those trying to manage their online reputations are going to have to consider that their efforts might not be enough in some cases. If nothing else, this should be a lesson to think about what photos you are posting of yourself to begin with.