Official Scoutle Blog » Press

Scoutle on Italian TV

Godfried van Loo — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:10:54 +0000

Although it has been a while, we just found about it. Scoutle has been discussed on Italian television. A couple of days after launching Scoutle version 2.0. The Italian user base has always been pretty large compared to other non-english/dutch languages but who knows this has helped more than we know.

If you know about any other press related ‘Scoutle moments’… let us know!

(Browse to minute 3.00)

Scoutle at frankwatching.com

Godfried van Loo — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:43:45 +0000

Today a very nice article about Scoutle has been published by the well-known Dutch blog Frankwatching.com So far, the voting (Top or Flop) goes well! So if you haven’t already voted for TOP, don’t forget to do so!

Read the article >>

Logo Frankwatching.com

Scoutle in Dutch newspaper “Financieel Dagblad”

Godfried van Loo — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:08:19 +0000

Today a big article about Scoutle has been published in the Dutch newspaper “Financieel Dagblad”, let’s say the Dutch Financial Times. A nice article I’m very proud of. They have also made a nice illustration of how Scoutle works that we may use to create one for ourselves to show (future) users.

The reporter also contacted CEO of Blogcatalog and is quoted to “find Scoutle a nice invention”.
A nice article that will get a nice place on the wall here! Buy the paper today, read it online at www.fd.nl or read it here:

Scoutle.com in the Dutch newspaper “Financieel Dagblad”

First Pitch! @ Mediapark Jaarcongres 2008

Godfried van Loo — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:26:55 +0000

Proud and nervous. Coming Tuesday I will present Scoutle to the Dutch Media specialists at the MediaPark JaarCongres. Still working on the presentation but there are so many other things to do. Hopefully, the press will start writing (in a positive way) about Scoutle so I can reach more bloggers that may not follow latest Internet trends all the time.

One month after launching Scoutle

Godfried van Loo — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:49:27 +0000

Today, June 8th, Scoutle has been online for one month. One month ago, I didn’t know how to get started. I hoped to have 2000 active users by August 8 but had no idea how I was going to get to this amount. I figured I might just had to email bloggers, like personal spamming, but I started with some posts on blogger forums. What happened can be read in previous posts.

For now, I am very happy with the result of one month. A lot of stress, a lot of opinions, hundreds of new users and a lot of press attention. More than expected. I do however know that now is the time to hurry. Current users will probably expect a lot of things to improve and if I don’t install new features, they might even just leave Scoutle again. Even though there’s nothing to loose staying in. What I need now is a community adopting Scoutle and I need to find a way to reach people that are not up-to-date on the latest Internet trends. You don’t know about Scoutle if the news doesn’t reach you.

I hope I can find less Internet related press attention. In magazines or local papers and sports clubs for instance. I also want to contact university magazines but it takes a lot of time.

Should I focus on interviews, which is more personal, or should I go for the “Scoutle explanation” stories?

Anyway, I will now focus more on non-English natives. The small group of Japanese users are meeting each other all the time now. But as long as Scoutle has not been translated into Japanese, only those who understand English can use Scoutle. But where to get the money to translate the site in Japanese? I also think about German, French, Spanish, Portugues, Chinese…

But well, in one month a lot has been reached. Hopefully, I can write even better stories in a post next month!

It’s not all about the idea itself

Godfried van Loo — Tue, 01 May 2007 08:12:03 +0000

Of course, you will have to have an idea of how your startup would look like, what it does, why people need it and why they would use it. But to get going you just as well think of how to get press attention by the time you’re online.

I started to think about new technologies and what would be cool as well. I wanted to support OpenID. Pretty new back then so I thought it would be cool for early adopters to try my startup, even though I didn’t even know what that would be by that time. I also read about guidelines. I found out that for people with sight disabilities, image controlled websites are very hard to navigate. So that made me want to have a text-based website. One that would also work in the Lynx browser. I also noticed that language is a barrier but brings people together as well –> I wanted my startup to be easy to translate in more languages.

I researched all sorts of websites, mostly those that were succesful and the ones that could have been a great success but had failed. Why? For instance, I decided I wanted a special Press Room (A reporter may like the idea of you thinking of him and help him out). I noticed that advertisements can only be done when users can hardly see them. I did not think of any business model, even though so many books told me I should.

I wrote down things I hated on websites I liked. Advertisements, obligations, privacy concerns and such. Although I may have written down a lot, most of those notes are gone. I may have lost them. But writing it down helps you think.