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Cloud providers will do everything they can to attract the largest developer pool they can, as that will inevitably presage the victors in the cloud provider wars.

Loosely coupled application topologies are the hallmark of Web-scale companies.

Developers will be the most strategic mantra for third platform competitors in 2014 – for the next two decades, the biggest winners in the industry will be those that can capture the hearts and minds of this next generation of innovators over the next two years.

Read more about the coming war for developers

1. Surveillance: Hovering over adults. Making them feel like they're constantly being watched. The risk taking and creative urge hides.
2. Over Control: Constantly telling adults how to do things often leaves them feeling like their originality is a mistake and any exploration a waste of time.
3. Competition: Putting adults in a win-lose situation, where only one person can come out on top, does not foster creativity. Collaboration Does.

Your app should take sides

Some people argue software should be agnostic. They say it's arrogant for developers to limit features or ignore feature requests. They say software should always be as flexible as possible.

We think that's bullshit. The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides. When someone uses software, they're not just looking for features, they're looking for an approach. They're looking for a vision. Decide what your vision is and run with it.

And remember, if they don't like your vision there are plenty of other visions out there for people. Don't go chasing people you'll never make happy.

A great example is the original wiki design. Ward Cunningham and friends deliberately stripped the wiki of many features that were considered integral to document collaboration in the past. Instead of attributing each change of the document to a certain person, they removed much of the visual representation of ownership. They made the content ego-less and time-less. They decided it wasn't important who wrote the content or when it was written. And that has made all the difference. This decision fostered a shared sense of community and was a key ingredient in the success of Wikipedia.

Our apps have followed a similar path. They don't try to be all things to all people. They have an attitude. They seek out customers who are actually partners. They speak to people who share our vision. You're either on the bus or off the bus.

copy from: http://gettingreal.37signals.com

Include viral marketing techniques

• Virtual postcards a good way to get people to send more people to your web site
• Word of mouth, such as “Tell a friend,” “Send this coupon to a friend,” or “Recommend this to a friend”
• “Tell a Friend” button; under articles or press releases: “E-mail this article to a friend” button
• Pass it on, when we receive an e-book, cool tool, or funny video, and then forward it to friends 
• Product or service based, when a free tool is used online and that tool includes an embedded marketing message, such as Hotmail.

Sign-up

• Get as many visitors as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings - do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, "what's new", notices of changes to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways.
• Loyalty among visitors-do this by having a members - only section of your Web site that has special offers for them as well as discounts or freebies.

Recurring events

• Create “stickiness” - daily advice column, "what's new" (should be accessible from your home page), descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to yourproducts, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter.
• Providing a Tip of the Day to Encourage Repeat Visits - they can be from one sentence to one paragraph long - Encourage people to send the tip to a friend.

Freebies & product samples

• Giving things away is a great way to increase traffic - if you give something different away each week, you are sure to have a steady stream of repeat traffic (to find these listings of free stuff, simply go to a search engine and do a search on “Free Stuff Index” or “Free Stuff Links”) -tTry to have your logo and URL displayed on the item. “We change our free offer every single week! Keep checking back” or “Click here to be notified by e-mail when we update” also works well. "Tell a friend".
• Samples of your product/service - ask the people who received a sample what they thought of it, if they had any problems, and if they have any questions. Direct the samplers back to your Web site for more information and discounts on purchasing the regular version of the product plus ask for their emails to be notified about more samples.

Coupons

• If people liked the sample, give them a coupon to purchase the regular version at a discount. If they like the regular version, they may purchase it again at full price or recommend the product to a friend - email for updates. Coupons provide ideal viral marketing opportunities—for example,“Send this coupon to a friend.” CoolSavings.com is an online coupon network where businesses can advertise and place coupons for their products and services

Promotions

• You might consider having a special promotions section on your Web site. Click here if you’d like to be notified when we update” or “Click here to receive our e-specials weekly".

Calendar

• A comprehensive, current calendar of events related to your company or your industry can encourage repeat visits. ask people if they’d like to be notified via e-mail when you update your calendar of events.

Contests & Gamification

• Contests and competitions are great traffic builders. It is also a great way to find out about your target market by requesting information on the entry form. Not too many questions!
• Having your own Site of the Day or Site of the Week listing means a great deal of work, searching the Internet for a cool site to add or looking through all the submissions.
• You can host anything from a Star Wars trivia contest to having guests play an interactive game with other visitors. Allow visitors an easy way to “Tell a friend” about your game.

Employment opportunities

• Creating Useful Links from Your Site - Place them down a level or two after the visitors have seen all the information you want them to see before you provide the links away from your site. Try exchanging links with others so you receive a link from their site to your site. As long as the links are of value to your visitors, people will come back to see if you have found any new and interesting sites for them to visit. - notification on updates of links list

Chat

• If you have a chat forum on your site, make sure that the topic relates to your business and that participants are likely to be your target market. To encourage repeat visitors, you could change the topic from day to day or week to week, invite famous people (You should try to post the topics of the discussions at least a week in advance).

Reminders

• Display “Bookmark me now!” or “Bookmark Us!” call to action, nine times out of ten you will at least consider it.
• Sending reminders about important dates or events related to our service. 

Surveys

• Inviting Visitors to Contribute with Surveys - For people to want to fill out the survey and see the results, the survey topic must be interesting. To encourage input, consider having the survey results available to participants only. Your surveys should be short and to the point. Let people know why you are asking them to do the survey and when the deadline is. Make your questions clear and concise. The responses should be Yes/No or multiple choice. When reporting the results, don’t just put them on your Web page; post the results to newsgroups and mailing lists that would be interested.

Hapiness

• Keep Them Happy with Cartoons & Jokes
• Benefiting from Humor with Jokes and Trivia - People enjoy trivia, or a Thought of the Day - make sure that whatever you include as content on your Web site is appropriate given your objectives and target market. The Daily Motivator allows you to sign up to receive your daily motivation via e-mail and also encourages others to put the Daily Motivator on their sites; Women.com has a joke of the day that you can view on-line.

Advice column

Testimonials

• If you are marketing a service online, it is difficult to visually depict what your service is all about - include a page on your site that lists testimonials from well-known customers.

Site design & maintenance

• Avoid “Under Construction” pages on your site; they are of no value to the visitor - When you have information, post it; until then, don’t mention it.
• Include security information - explain to your customers when transactions or exchanges of information on your Web site are secure.
• Almost 80 percent of Web users scan text online as opposed to actually reading it - make your key points quickly and succinctly; use lots of bulleted lists, headers, and horizontal rules to create visual breaks in the content. This keeps visitors interested; if they are faced with huge blocks of text, most visitors are overwhelmed by the quantity of the information and are too intimidated to read your message.
• Never have dead ends where viewers scroll down a screen or two of information only to find that they must scroll all the way back to the top to move on (because you have no links at the bottom of the page).
• Your visitors should be able to get anywhere they want to go on your site in three clicks or fewer.
• Font types, headers, footers, navigational bars, buttons, bullets, colors, and so on, should be consistent throughout the site to maintain a polished, professional look.

So, did you check out CoolSavings ?