Drew Meyers is the co-founder of Horizon & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of Geek Estate Blog, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and myKRO.org, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
Oh Hey World enables you to instantly see other travel bloggers nearby, and receive notifications when others show up nearby in the future. If you’re interested in meeting up with other travel bloggers in person, here’s the short version of how to get setup:
Fill in a few details in your profile, including a link to your blog.
Click the “travel bloggers” link on the interests section of your profile. You’ll see a list of other travel bloggers here (the nearest ones at the top of the list).
Navigate to “settings”, and then click the “manage notifications” button to turn on either SMS or email alerts.
Pretty simple, right?
PS #1: If you need the raw registration code, it is as follows:cbf7ea57-7607-44b2-9fe1-156d8b22dafc
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
When Jeff Turner writes, I listen; he’s one of the few individuals I follow close enough to the point where I read virtually every post he shares. Jeff recently wrote “What are your ‘go to war’ values?“. I believe in the power of understanding why you are doing what you are doing, and hence, firmly believe outlining Oh Hey World’s “Go to War” values is a useful exercise…
We believe a connected travel experience is a better experience. If you want to bury your head in the sand to the world around you and remain in a silo, we’re not the travel partner for you. Sure, visiting a 4 star resort for several days every now and then is fine and dandy. But if your entire travel experience, every single time, is focused around getting pampered – we are not the right partner for you.
We believe in the power of social good. If you are reading this blog, chances are extremely high (98% or above), you have had tremendous opportunities to succeed in this world. You’ve probably never faced hunger. Never slept on the street. Never not been able to see a doctor when needed. Never needed to walk five miles for water. Nor have we. But we’ve seen and spoken to many people throughout the world who have faced all of those issue – and we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t do something about it.
There they are. Our go to wars values, right out in the open.
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
I published a post over at GeekWire about what a redefined feed reader experience looks like (hint: it involves community)…to me at least.
Go read it and come back…
Waiting…
Waiting…
Ok, let’s continue.
You’ll probably agree the Internet is great at connecting people virtually, but it does not do a great job making smart connections — at the right time, with the right context — in the physical world based on your online activity. I hope you’ll also agree that bringing people together in person is exponentially more powerful than organizing people online, as strong relationships are built in person.
Connect me with the nearby real people who belong to the communities where I spend my virtual time. Turn every online blog community, into a real life community. Who else reads Microfinance Gateway or AVC near me? I have no clue, and maybe those are not even interesting as standalone points – since I’m in Seattle with a fairly large microfinance community and most everyone in the tech community reads AVC. But, who reads Microfinance Gateway in Nairobi (a place I visited in 2010)? Or, who is part of the Microfinance Gateway community in Chiang Mai (where I lived in early 2012)? Even better, who reads Microfinance Gateway, AVC, Kiva Fellows Blog, and Jeff Turner’s blog — and within 25 miles of me, right now?
Now we’re talking.
Show me THOSE people. That is the future value to my feed reading habits.
PS: For those building the feed readers (Feedly, Zite, Digg, Newsblur, Frontpage, Intigi, etc), we happen to have an API that could help facilitate the location part of this…
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
As a consultant or public speaker, your incentive is to “touch” as many people as possible while you travel, right? You want to fill the room at your speaking gigs, or schedule quality in-person meetings/coffees/get-togethers if you’re a consultant.
Your followers are on Twitter, or are likely connected to you on Facebook in some ways. They might even subscribe to your email list.
These people want to see you, meet with you, and know what you are up to. They really do, they chose to connect via social media once because they are interested.
But that doesn’t mean they want to hear about your events in other parts of the country, repeatedly and via multiple channels.
So, how do you reach the right people, at the right time?
You can of course blast your email list; but then you risk alienating a large chunk of your list with information completely irrelevant to them. Though most email services have a geo-filter built in, these are unreliable because of the difficult of auto geo-location technology—unless they specifically set their location your geo-filter is likely inaccurate. Plus, beyond inaccuracies, those services do not solve dynamic travel scenarios (and never will).
I can tell you for a fact that I’ve unsubscribed to multiple lists as a result of getting irrelevant emails happening across the country (or even world). I’ve also unfollowed people on Twitter who broadcast events and travel plans too often. The point being, if you “touch” your network too often with irrelevant information or messages, they stop listening entirely.
With this situation in mind, we are building Oh Hey World as a way for your network to easily geo-locate themselves to you, follow your plans and only receive relevant information.
What’s coming to make this more useful to you:
Email notifications when people you are following show up nearby—meaning your clients and fans will be able to automatically receive notifications via text or email when you show up in their town (or when you plan an upcoming trip).
Using a specific tag (much like a hashtag on Twitter), your clients, readers, and network can find others nearby who share an interest in your work—this makes creating an integrated community among your followers a lot easier.
Questions? Ideas? Leave them in the comments, por favor!
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
Running 5 blogs and traveling the past 3 years, I know the pain of continually updating the current location on a blog’s about page and sidebar. My location on my various about pages and and sidebars (or headers/footers) were often wrong. I got tired of editing text widgets and footer/header/sidebar PHP code.
Hence the reason we built the Oh Hey World WordPress plugin. We now have the easiest way to update your location on your WordPress.org blog. Here are a few example of travel bloggers using the WordPress plugin…
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
During the course of building Oh Hey World, we talked to a wide, wide range of travelers across a broad range of travel profiles. Busy executives, scrappy entrepreneurs, marketing managers, travel writers, solo female wanderers, digital nomads etc. One piece of feedback we heard over and over was…
That sounds cool, but I’d never check-in because I don’t want everyone to know where I am.
We know there is a percentage of travelers who have no problem broadcasting their location publicly (I’m one of them) – but some need added privacy controls in order to share their location. Which is why we went out of your way to build “private check-ins”. Right now, you can check-in totally privately – which lets you see everyone else in the system, but no one can see you. Of course, using this private mode — you can still send text messages or emails notifying close friends and family where you are and share on Facebook and Twitter (though doubt you want to share on FB if you aren’t willing to share on OHW).
How do you check in privately?
Simple. On the check-in screen, click the “Public” icon…
It then displays as “Private”…
Click “Check In” — and you’re all set. No one can see your location except you – though you can of course still see everyone nearby and send notifications to your friends and family privately.
We hope this feature addresses the privacy concerns you may have. Let us know what questions you have, or what additional privacy controls you’d like to have.
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
You might be wondering – what are lists, and how should I be using them?
An excellent question indeed.
Quite simply, lists are the way to organize your network into groups. Likely, you’ll use them to segment into various industries as I have (screenshot to right). Of course, you can use them however you’d like. I shouldn’t have to scan my entire network of connections just to find the locations of the real estate or social entrepreneur contacts I truly care about.
The next evolution of lists?
Enabling you to add people to lists without following them (this is how I use lists on Twitter). If you have other ideas in terms of how we can make lists more useful to you, please do let us know – either via our feedback form or in the comments here.
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.horizonapp.co">Horizon</a> & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of <a href="http://www.geekestateblog.com">Geek Estate Blog</a>, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and <a href="http://mykro.org">myKRO.org</a>, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
As you know, we partnered with Month of Microfinance with the goal of organizing the world’s microfinance community into local communities. I wrote an “autobiographies of microfinance” for Month of Microfinance that was published today titled “What mark are you leaving on the world?” You can read it here.
When Jeff Turner writes, I listen; he’s one of the few individuals I follow close enough to the point where I read virtually every post he shares. Jeff recently wrote “
I published 
As a consultant or public speaker, your incentive is to “touch” as many people as possible while you travel, right? You want to fill the room at your speaking gigs, or schedule quality in-person meetings/coffees/get-togethers if you’re a consultant.
You might be wondering – what are lists, and how should I be using them?