During the taping of Diggnation at the Next Web conference today in Amsterdam, Tobias van Telligen, an enterprising CEO of a Dutch startup bum rushed the stage and got in a plug for the Website he just launched today: WeColumn. He also bought 75 beers for the audience. That 150 Euros ($235) was marketing dollars well spent. Afterwards, also came and told me about his new Website.
WeColumn falls in between a regular blog and a micro-blog. You write a paragraph or two about a specific topic that you think others may be interested in and then other blogs or sites can embed the text as a widget on their own sites. For instance, Telligen’s own WeColumn (in Dutch) is about surf conditions in the North Sea. Other Dutch surf sites, such as the Holland Surfing Association re-skins the text and puts it up on their site.
One would think you would want to have an actual usable product before you start marketing it. Or at least a tutorial or two as to how to actually use your site.
$235 down the drain if you ask me.
@1 Don — technically, $235 down *75* drains.
Cheers, Mate.
free beer – there must be a catch!
Gary
http://cancerli...s.blogspot.com/
Free beer is never down the drain… but I would have preferred a nice Chablis – widget blogging? Trusting your source is important – I don’t want to end up in the perfect storm because a dutch widget blogger said 12 foot waves when he meant 12 meter waves. If your reading this Tobias (and we know you are he he) can you counter my little quibble?
Cool to have a free beer – I want some too!
Chris,
I do not counter your little quiblle.
Sorry,
Tobiaz
Hi Tobias, since we know eachother and http://www.pipodekloon.nl also embeds the surfweer widget i wld like to wish you best luck with wecolumn, you guys are going the right way with this, very cool to see !
cheers, kim (www.pipodekloon.nl)
test
Thanks for introducing We Column. As a blogger/podcaster (stirthepots and thatscapital.net) who would love to share my content and get other content to share this is a great idea. What I’m not getting is clear enough icons or language in the WeColumn posts that signal to users to pass on my column. Similarly, it would be cool if WeColumn does a bit of what Mochilla does with highlighting free content. Maybe it’s more work than they want to do. But it would involve either tagging or categorizing. At this point it doesn’t seem they’re doing that. Tobias, if you’re reading, do you have any plans to do that?
Jonathan
Dear Jonathan Field,
We are planning to do something with tagging and categorizing in a way Digg has executed the pas few years. Any support on that is welcome on wecolumn (at) gmail.com !
Tobias