….

There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?

Warren Buffett

The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, “I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it.”

Seth Godin (via dpstyles)

Copenhagen Bound (Taken with Instagram)

I’ve been very enthusiastic about Klout since I first discovered it last fall. Together with Spotify, Airbnb and Foursquare, it’s one of the companies I follow most closely. Others have also seen the potential in Klout, and here are some of my thoughts about what they could do in the future.

The benefits of rating influence are pretty obvious by now, and I believe the average Klout-score of “randomly selected winners” is increasing every day. Still, I believe that Klout can become even more relevant.

The last two months, we have been renting out several apartments via Airbnb. We haven’t had any troubles worth mentioning, but that’s not always the case. Even though Airbnb has received a lot of criticism for how they handled that case, I still love the concept of helping home owners paying their rent, while at the same time giving travelers a better, richer and/or more affordable experience. But as Airbnb and other similar sites grow, there will be more accidents. 

As a host, you are never completely certain that a potential guest is the nice person s/he claims to be. References, reviews, other social media accounts and phone numbers can help “verify” a potential guests, but how do you know that these don’t belong to fake users? Even if an account is real, it could still be a criminal on the other side. This summer, we’ve only had one couple from Norway. The rest has been foreigners, and it is not very easy to prosecute foreigners if they’ve done damages for less than a couple of millions ($).

Still, we have chosen to accept many guests with very little verification. . As mentioned above, we haven’t had any accidents, as most people are honest, decent people. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to be feel more safe about the people we accept to stay in our apartments. As Airbnb grows, more criminals will see try to “make a living” using the site. 

This is why I believe Klout should try to make a (in lack of a better word) realness-ranking as well. A ranking that tells how possible it is that an account is real. The more other social media accounts it is connected to, the higher realness-ranking. The higher Klout-score on these, the better. 

There are several challenges/possibilities with this. If an account is real, but somebody accuses the user for vandalizing a property – should this be listed on a “Klout-record?” (If they choose to do this, Klout should also store every persons network, meaning that if a user is caught, and decides to create new profiles on many social networks, Klout could warn that a user is “suspiciously” similar to someone with a criminal Klout-record.) If an accident occurs, which “court” decides whether or not the user actually is guilty? And what’s the punishment? 

I can not say that I have all the answers, but I believe that there will be a need for something like this in the future. It could be relevant not only for Airbnb-users, but also for users of Ebay and other partially offline p2p-services. And I furthermore believe that Klout should try to do this, as they have a huge head start with their influence rating. 

Never gets old…

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Rent apartments in Bergen – StayAtMy: Updates

Written by me on our StayAtMy-blog. Our schedule is packed for the next 6 weeks, so there probably won’t be much updates here or on my twitter feed. Follow StayAtMy on facebook and twitter for updates on my summer!

stayatmy:

The first StayAtMy-summer started in the end of June, and we’ve already checked out several guests from several different apartments. The days are packed with tasks and challenges, and it’s a lot of fun!

We will try to update you all on what we do throughout the summer, but we will primarily do…

Bijan Sabet: Five year development plan vs 6 months

bijan:

When we interact with our phones we get to interact with applications that are often built in less than a year. Many times these apps are built within 6months.

That’s the gift Apple gave to the world.

It was that long ago when VCs and entreprenuers dreaded the idea of building software for…

Checking out Napoli/Naples (Taken with Instagram)

Summertunes!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)