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For social use, unless you’re a hardened stalker, you don’t go approaching or messaging people on Facebook who you don’t already know. It’s all about communicating with those you do. Or a frantic pursuit of collecting people you've had the vaguest connection to, anyway – could we win gold in this?

For business though I want to contact people I haven’t met or who won’t remember me. I want to introduce myself, tell them what I do and see if there’s a way we can work together. However, the only way to do this is to cold message and, well, it all feels a little intrusive.

I know Facebook isn't a business network but there's some damn useful people on there, some of whom happily use it for business. Some don't, though - so how do you tell?

Do you mind being messaged cold? Or should business talk be kept to business networking sites?

Have you been mugged for your Oyster card? If you have, Transport for London (TfL) knows how you feel.

What exactly was TfL thinking about five years ago when it brokered the deal with Transys, the supplier consortium that manages its Oyster card system?

Let’s forget the software crashes, allegations of hacking, corrupted cards and security concerns. Transys paid for that this week when TfL cancelled its £100m contract.

Yet, bizarrely, it could be TfL that ends up ruing the split most. Guess who owns the Oyster brand TfL has spent five years marketing and covering the Capital’s transport network with? Yep, you guessed it, Transys.

So after giving out 17 million Oyster cards since 2003, TfL is now locked in talks with Transys over ‘how to ensure the continuation of the brand’. I’m sure a deal will be struck, mainly because it’s too palatable for one not to be, but it’s clear who holds all the, er, cards – and it isn’t TfL.

Perhaps TfL’s chiefs need to take a trip up the Victoria Line to Kings Cross, turn right upon exit and pay a visit to the British Library Business & IP Centre and read up on how to protect their intellectual property.

Needless to say, if you’re thinking of spending the next five years pushing a brand and banging out 17 million related products, make sure you own it!

Image: Flickr

What’s the first thing us Brits do in a crisis? Make a brew, of course.

That could be the explanation behind a healthy jump in profits at tea and coffee specialist Whittard of Chelsea, which appears to be making rich trade as a result of the economic downturn.

It seems caffeine addicts are saving their pennies by getting their fixes at home instead of the high street. Sales of coffee are up 15% on last year at Whittard, while coffee-making equipment is up 11%, cafetieres 7% and milk frothers 4%.

Whittard is just the latest credit crunch winner. Ryanair reported a 19% rise in passengers in July, while Travelodge and Haven have seen a jump in bookings from holiday seekers unable to afford foreign holidays this year.

Budget supermarkets Aldi and Lidl are booming, while DVD sales and pizza delivery are also on the up as 'nights in' become the new 'nights out'.

It seems the UK consumer is prepared to economise however they can – Superdrug has even reported a 15% rise in condom sales!

Image: Flickr

How come domestic energy suppliers have to publish their tariffs, but business suppliers don't? Why do domestic contracts allow people to switch every 28 days, businesses have to sign-up for inflexible long-term deals?

Two very valid questions posed by the British Chambers of Commerce, which is campaigning for new measures to help businesses deal with exploitative energy companies.

Well done to the BCC for flagging this. More than 32,000 businesses every year phone energy regulator Ofgem, seeking help and advice with their bills and providers.

David Frost, director general of the BCC, says: “With the economy slowing and energy bills on the rise it is totally unacceptable that hard-pressed businesses are left so open to exploitation.”

Here, here – let’s hope the BCC isn't wasting its energy and Ofgem and the government are listening.

Image: Flickr

The new football season kicks-off this weekend, a boon period for sports retailers as supporters scramble to get kitted out in their club’s latest replica strip. Today you could barely get through the doors of Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus (so much for the credit crunch) for the hoards of Manchester United and Liverpool (don’t get me started) kit-clutching shoppers.

The relative haven of the clearance corner, where last season’s strips are being knocked out for a fiver just 12 weeks since they commanded £35+ pricetags, tells you everything about the pace of retail change and the mark-up to be had on items of questionable quality and ethics.

That’s a different a story, though. I was more taken by the breakdown of the sale stock. Someone in Lillywhites’ buying department must have seriously overestimated the number of Birmingham City fans in London. Or, as I can safely vouch being one of what is a rare breed, the whole world. Around 80% of the sale stock were Birmingham shirts. I've seen fewer at away games.

While I can understand perfectly, having watched yet another season of dour relegation football, why the shirts hadn’t sold, I'm confused why so many were overed ordered. Did someone mistakenly slip a zero on end of the order? Two zeros?!

Product buying is a problem that blights many early retailers, yet it’s rarely spoken about as an essential skill for running a business. You hear plenty of advice about making sure your business has USPs, a target customer, markets itself correctly, drives sales etc, but rarely is the focus on buying, let alone margin.

Negative cashflow kills more new businesses than anything else. In retail it’s almost always caused by overstocking.

I was chatting about the problem recently to John Spooner, former MD of Monsoon and manager at Liberty. He's seen it all before. Start-ups commit all their money to three months of stock then can’t afford to replace what sells and end up trying to flog-off cheap the stuff that doesn’t.

The key, he says, is always keep money in reserve and try to have as many suppliers as possible who’ll do repeat orders instead of just bulk. Ideally, you shouldn't commit more than 50% of sales forward.

Spooner also says new businesses should keep product ranges simple. Don’t get carried away at trade sales and don’t feel obliged to offer a lot choice. Start with core products you know will sell then slowly test and introduce new lines.

Lillywhites, owned by giant Sports Direct? Now they should just know better!

Image: Flickr

It could have been the brilliant final scene of The Usual Suspects where we realise Kevin Spacey’s Verbal has fabricated the wondrous illusion of Keyser Soze from papers lining the walls of the detective’s office (see below) or it could be the time Microsoft told me competitors once hired a neighbouring office to try and peak at a top secret presentation, but whenever I visit a company’s office I’m always fascinated by what’s on the wall.

Indeed, you can often learn more about a big company and its processes from the remnants of meetings,brainstorming sessions or signs for staff than an interview with its PR-savvy CEO who's rattled off the same polished story a million times before.

That wasn’t the case with the media company I visited recently whose boss is lovely, but the flipchart scribbling left in its meeting room made interesting enough reading for me to want to scribble it down.
It looks like it was a summary of a management or staff training/strategy session and was titled ‘team behaviours’:

Value the team
Flat management
Acceptance of each other as individuals
Open and honest but be respectful of each other
Play to each other’s strengths
Best idea not the loudest idea
Everyone encouraged to speak
All ideas are valued
Always consider new ideas and ways
Forget past lives, enjoy the future
Embrace constructive criticism

Really healthy stuff, I reckon and definitely reflected in the relaxed, democratic and motivated feel to the office. Far healthier than the instructions for work experience students I once found in one of the UK’s largest and esteemed organisations, which began, ‘1) Don’t ask questions’.

I’ll keep reporting my nosy parker findings, but let’s hear about yours as well!

Last night’s Dragons’ Den was a classic, with two DD firsts and one poor guy being practically set alight by the dragons' fury!

First, Clive Billing was offered a DD record £255,000 for a 40% stake in his online jewellery retailer Diamond Geezer from Peter Jones, James Caan and Theo Paphitis – and then turned it down! “I’ve no regrets whatsoever, it wasn’t a fair offer,” said Clive, who was holding out for 20%, after the show.

He’s confident he’ll get a better deal elsewhere. Given Clive only made £3,000 from £1.6m turnover last year and has liabilities of approx £300,000, we’re not so sure! And fancy passing up on the opportunity of adding three dragons to your board!

The unique aspect to Peter Jones’s £75,000 investment for 35% of Victoria McGrane’s fledgling fashion company Neurotica was that she’d only asked for £56,000! While one by one the other dragons balked at Victoria’s obvious failure to budget for stock to meet supply orders, Peter readily upped his offer to account for the oversight.

While hardly a first, the dragons were also at their fiercest best. Diamond Geezer Clive got a stern reprimand from Deborah Meaden for having broken the show rules by previously contacting her, while unimpressed Duncan assured him the pleasure in their meeting was all Clive's.

The real pasting was saved for Richard Mire and his Screen Machine idea to help parents control children’s TV viewing. The dragons’ nonplussed reaction was just the start; the real action began when Richard revealed his other business made £300,000 last year.

“Get out of here. GO AWAY!” screamed Theo, repeating it several times. When the chorus of abuse subsided, James Caan spelled out Richard’s crime for him: “So this is such a amazing idea you want to put £2,500 in for 85% and I’m going to put in £150,000 for 15%?! I’m a bit disappointed that you think we’re that stupid.”

Duncan Bannatyne quickly lowered the tone again, sending Richard packing with possibly the hardest exit line in DD history: “I wish you absolute failure. I hope it doesn’t take off. I hope people don’t buy it, I hope it fails. I think it’s ridiculous.” Just in case that didn’t fully clarify where he stood, Duncan added the all too familiar “I’m out.” Harsh. But, on reflection, probably fair.

If you missed, catch it iplayer until Monday.

Brits are pitching their tents and going camping for their summer holidays this summer. Entrepreneurs will be joining in too with September marking the return of last year’s highly-successful Seedcamp, where a more familiar form of pitching will be on the agenda.

The week-long experience will see 20 selected start-ups undergo an intensive investment-readiness programme, with the help of a diverse mentor network of serial entrepreneurs, corporates, product designers, venture capitalists, recruiters, marketing specialists, lawyers and accountants.

At the end of the week, five of the companies will win €50,000 in exchange for a 10% stake. Those five then get the same ecosystem of experts for an extended three-month tutorship which, in addition to more intensive scaling up, includes two investor presentation days.

Organised by Index Partner’s Saul Klein, founder of Video Island and former VP of marketing and e-commerce at Skype, Seedcamp has representatives from Google, Microsoft, NESTA, Cisco and Mizilla on its advisory board.

If you’re an early stage idea and meet Seedcamp’s flexible criteria, you’ve got just under two weeks to apply.

Oh, and don't forget those tentpegs...

Image: Flickr

A novel idea it might be, but I can’t see the Sony Reader catching on.

The ebook that stores 160 downloadable novels hit UK stores this week. Priced at £199 and weighing 250g, every battery charge allows 6,800 page turns.

Now I might be missing something here, but when would you ever need, or more importantly, want access to 160 novels? Possibly if you were circumnavigating the globe or locked in a world of 24hr Big Brother, I suppose. And if you did why would you want to read them via screen and have to manually click for a new page every 17 lines or so?

OK so it’s easy to say it now, but MP3 players worked because they improved the alternative experience. We love being able to shuffle, flick and rotate our record collections, while 8,000 7” vinyls and a turntable always were a bit of a bitch to get on the bus.

MP3 players also worked because iPod made them look cool as funk. The ebook looks like an Etch-A-Sketch in a cheap suit.

Great ideas are solutions to problems and improve experiences. It feels like the ebook is a semi-solution searching for a problem that doesn’t exist.

Unless you’re likely to sweat profusely, turn into a jabbering wreck and alert the nation to your insanity by admitting you’ve pumped your life savings into patenting chocolate fireguards, you should seriously consider trying to get on the next series of Dragons’ Den.

And that’s whether your company needs investment or not.

When I met Gavin Wheeldon of translation service Applied Language Solutions last year I asked him if he regretted his appearance on the show where he was blasted for overvaluing his business by asking for £250,000 in exchange for just 4%.

“Not at all,” he replied. “I never expected to get invest at the rate I knew I could get it elsewhere, so it was all about the publicity. How else do you get your business on TV in front of millions of people for free?”

He’s not alone in entrepreneurs who’ve used Dragons’ Den to their advantage without raising cash. For some it’s as simple as spinning a ‘look what the dragons got wrong’ PR story.

That’s worked for Rob Law’s children’s luggage company Trunki, which has gone on to be stocked in 24 countries since Peter Jones told him: "I meet people like you all the time - you think you have something. I tell you, you don't. Within seven days I could do a better job than that. Your company is currently worthless."

And then there's Rachel Lowe who just months after admitting she didn't 'know her figures' saw her board game Destination became Hamley’s best-selling Christmas present. It's now up to its 15th edition and Rachel's held talks with Walt Disney about movie versions.

Hamfatter, the band that on Monday night did secure funding from Jones, are also basking in their 15 minutes of fame. They’ve enjoyed plentiful press coverage over the past few days but the impact was even more immediate according to Play.com, which reported the band’s downloads rocketed between 10pm and midnight on Monday.

You can apply here. Unless