Bojan the Top7 Dog

It has been a few weeks now since the team started making high pitched noises, indicating that they were starting to work on something more seriously. Since then I have been speaking to some of the other dogs in the valley to find out what phases start-ups go through when they are being launched, and what I can expect of the human team in the months to come. From the looks of it, they have now reached the first phase I was told about; “The Alpha Phase”.

Alpha is a Greek letter, and I’m not sure what it means. As far as I know no one on the team is from Greece, so the reason for using Greek letters is quite a mystery to me.  Ronaldo (one of the dog’s in the valley – known for his fancy footwork) told me that humans often do this, because they think using a Greek letter makes something sound intelligent and official.

Other than the silly name, the “Alpha Phase” seems like a good idea, as there are still many problems with the site that the team have not picked up on (despite my attempts to guide them). Slowly, slowly they are letting users come onto the Top7 website and play with the features. Slowly, slowly the number of high pitched noises coming from the human’s increases – both in terms of frequency, and volume. It does make me a little sad to see them going through all this pain but, unfortunately, this is the only way they seem to learn. The user interface is constantly being updated and improved, and they are constantly talking about fixing “bugs”, although I haven’t found any in the office apart from one spider (which was very tasty).

The team wants to add lots of different topics to the website, that people will be interested in ranking. I have been giving them a few pointers, but if you have any thoughts do let me know and I’ll try and pass it on! Each topic is ranked using a unique, Top7 Pyramid. Why the number “7″ you ask? Well, that’s another story that I will relate to in a future blog post, but one of the cool elements of the number 7 is the fact that it splits into levels very easily. When people rank things, they generally have their “Top pick” in mind (level 1). But there’s normally also 2 other picks that were close, and didn’t quite make the grade (level 2).  Then there’s a few other picks that they like, but were never in the running for the top spot (this is level 3). All of this information is captured in the magic of the Top7 pyramid, and this is one of the reasons we love the pyramid concept so much…

I’ve put a picture of one of my favourite topics below (Rank Your Top7  Family Dog Breeds) – so you can get an idea of how these things look.

Another bit of news is that a lot of strange people have started coming into the office. It looks like they want to hire some new people. I am quite hesitant about strangers and will be smelling each one carefully, but it is possible I will let some new people join soon…….so stay tuned!

Top7 is a new startup that has created a cool gadget to let you rank just about anything you want, in a creative, visual way, and share it with people through social networks, blogs and websites. I’m Bojan, currently the only dog in the office, although I hope to grow my department in the near future…… but more about that later. First, let me explain how this all began.

About a year ago I realised that my master, Shai, seemed to be spending a lot of time at home. All my friends’ owners would get up in the morning, and not return til night, but Shai would be in the house for many hours a day, staring at a book that was made of a bright light, and tapping the table with his fingers (he calls this book a “laptop”).

Whilst Shai’s presence at home had some benefits in terms of additional feeding opportunities, I was curious about why my master was different from the others, and what he was doing all of this time! After discussing my problem with some of the more sagely dogs in our pack (dogs understand every piece of information seven times better than humans – a little known part of the “dog years” theory), I began to get a better picture of what was going on.

It seems that my owner had decided to enter the wacky world of “internet start-ups”, and start a website called Top7. Although a lot of what he and his team do is very silly, they do seem to have hit upon quite a good idea.

The idea is that everything in the world can be ranked. And what’s more, the way that you rank things says something meaningful about you. Top7 will give its users a creative, visual way of ranking any topic their heart desires, and then allow them to share it with their friends through social networks, blogs and websites. By doing this you will be able to see what your friends think about the same topic, and find people you didn’t even know, who have similar preferences to you. This can help you make discoveries about what people think, and about things you might like.

I try to tell Shai when he comes up with a good idea, but I don’t think he always understands what I say. Often times he responds by trying to tickle my tummy, which makes me doubt whether he took my feedback seriously. However, he must have understood some of the things I’ve been telling him because recently Top7 has gone into overdrive, and started coming up with lots of changes, and really good ideas.

As I am now quite an expert on the internet, and technology startups, I have decided to begin writing a blog to keep you updated with the latest developments in the world of Top7. I can’t vouch for everything that the team do (they are an unpredictable bunch), but will do my best to let you guys know in advance of any developments they plan to make. If it’s going to happen, I will try to make sure you hear it here first.

Welcome to Bojan’s Blog. A Dog’s adventure at an internet startup!