Written on July 3, 2008 – 4:34 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our - really beloved sponsor - Wakoopa (the Last.fm of software) has launched some new widgets today. From now on, it’s possible to express yourself by showing off your software usage. To let people know you’re the Firefox-kinda-guy or a Flock-chick, you basically have three new - or improved - options.
- Badge - show your blog or social profile visitors your most popular, recently added or recently used software.
- Forum-like signature - show your fellow forum members what you’re doing beside commenting on endless discussion
- Card - small card, modeled after the famous Xfire ones, that shows your avatar and some software data, like the two most used programs (always your browser + something else)
These three types of widgets fascinate me. Apparently there are people out there who use their software data as a way to express themselves. Most boys and girls let their blog and profile visitors know who they are by showing the music they like (Last.fm) or the books they read (Amazon), yet now software enters the stage of self-expression. In a way, it makes sense. 30,000 geeky early adopters - like me - we’re already watching each others software usage within the safe surroundings of Wakoopa, so why not take it outside as well?
Moreover, just like you see fellas walking around with a shirt of their favorite band, some guys now also wear Firefox jackets or Linux hats. One thing I don’t see happening though, is a poster of your favorite app above your bed.
There’s a fourth widget too, with which developers can show much Wakoopa members use your program. Want to create your own Wakoopa widget? Here’s the API.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on June 24, 2008 – 11:52 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Yoono, often referred to as the French Flock, closed a round of funding, led by AGF Private Equity. The score? €2.6 million. The goals? Attracting more users and offering more widgets. Competition is tough, as Flock and Minggl in general terms offer the same service: a social browser experience. Here are the latest numbers on their battle:
Of course, the real deal is the number of downloads. According to Firefox add-ons Yoono has 13,885 weekly downloads (1,354,484 in total). There are numbers available about Flock and Minggle. But these traffic stats give an idea of Yoono’s challenge: take over Flock.
Yoono just got started, and when in private beta - Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch predicted that Yoono would success in its mission to become the most important social browser experience tool - as you don’t have to download a new browser (like Flock requires). A few weeks after that enthusiastic review, Yoono opened its gates to the public.
Yoono’s new sidebar has some new features like, filtering friends into groups, upload pictures and poke to Facebook, send Twitter messages, comment on Friendfeed, comment on Flickr pictures, browse Digg video, chat via Gtalk, and use MySpace.
Written on April 24, 2008 – 5:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Web 2.0 Expo took off today with a classic on-the-couch interview. John Battelle from Federated Media Publishing asked Marc Andreessen a couple of questions about his Netscape adventure, the industry landscape and browsers. Andreessen is a famous software engineer and the brains behind Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and co-founder of Netscape. When building what turned out the foundation of the Internet - the browser - he and his team didn’t expect the future of the browser would look so bright.
“It’s far better than anybody thought. Many of the early ideas have lasted - like javascript -, which has been amazing. Cookies for example, we made that up during a weekend. When we tried to figure out how we could check whether a visitor had visited the website before, we asked “What about this cookie thing?”. And after a couple of years it became popular and caused discussion whether they’re a big threat to user privacy or not. It was a very rapid implementation of something that lasted really long.”
Andreessen continued with giving some examples, and I have one absolute favorite: the back and forward button. Andreessen: “We just needed something to navigate with and created these two buttons. We expected somebody would figure out something better later. But now everybody uses it, it’s even integrated in applications like iTunes and Mac OSx.”
Generally, Andreessen said that creating the browser was a half-way step. “However, the persistence of the browser has been amazing. For now, there’s no incentive to create a service that is not accessible through a browser, as you’ll take a big chunk out of your possible audience. (..) There’s a whole generation of kids communicating through browsers with services like Facebook. I think it will be another fifteen to twenty years before another step is taken”.
Predicting the future of such an innovating industry is quite a bold move. Yet when we take in consideration that early adopters have moved the largest part of their digital life to the browser, there’s all the reason to be excited about Firefox and co. Not feeling it yet? Have a look at the most used software at the statistics page of our sponsor Wakoopa to see the impressive numbers.
Although there’s always the chance we’re all missing something. Like Andreessen said: “The one thing I’ve learned from that hectic period with Netscape, was that big shifts and revolutionary developments are never foreseen, by anybody and everybody”
Written on January 30, 2008 – 12:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
On-line research institute XiTi has published a study about Firefox’ market share in Europe. I think I speak for most web developers, if I say that the more Firefox users, the better. Well, ‘we’ won some more souls:
After a period of stabilization from June to September 2007, Mozilla Firefox’s visit share, for the average of European countries of the XiTi perimeter, is again growing at the end of the year. Thus, over a one year vision, it gains 5 points in order to reach 28% in December 2007.
The growth isn’t spectacular though and in some countries the user rate of Firefox is actually shrinking. In Denmark, Firefox usage falls back with 0.6 percent. In Ukraine this is in 0.3 percent and in the country where The Next Web Blog is based - The Netherlands - it’s 0.1 percent. To make it even worse for me and my fellow Dutch developers, we’re the country with the lowest user rate. It’s only 14.7 percent.
Maybe web developers should move to one of the three leading countries in Firefox share: Finland (45.4%), Slovenia (44.6%) and Poland (42.4%). Or the Internet community should try to create a ‘Spread Firefox‘ revival. It would save us all lots of time:
Taken from: theMaablog: Where Does a Web Developer Spend Their Time
Written on December 28, 2007 – 5:19 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In case you haven’t noticed yet, the early adopters are moving their workspace from the desktop to the browser. Sure, we all use Google Docs once in a while. But these guys have everything on-line, even their hard disk. Erwin Blom, a Dutch new media pioneer who brought the ‘2.0′in public broadcastings’ web, explains on his blog why he has his tools and documents on the web:
- Always available, wherever he is, even in his favorite bar.
- Always up to date. You don’t have to install or update, the owners of the web applications will deal with that.
- Professional back-ups. Blom admits he’s too unorganized to back-up his stuff, so why not let the professionals take care of that important job?
- Sharing & publishing, he wants to be able to publish his Twitterposts and blog articles from whatever place.
- Cooperating, Blom calls it a ‘major advantage’ that you can work on documents together, without being in the same place.
- Mobile, more and more of those web applications offer user friendly interfaces on mobile phones.
In the field of web applications, Google is dominating. They simply offer rather good services, that work together like a charm. Their greatest force though, is the address book. Whether you want to share a Google Doc, invite somebody for an appointment or tip a good article from a feed, all your contacts are easily available for your sharing-needs.
Google’s hegemony must be quite frustrating for browsers. Since the browsers are becoming more and more important, yet they don’t seem gain a lot of web applications users. With the shift to web applications, the number of users of software like Apple Mail, iCal and Outlook is drastically lowering. The browsers however, are getting used more. Need some more convincing material? Have a look at the most used software page of our friends from Wakoopa. Since the browsers are THE tools that matter now, it’s about time they show up to claim their part of the web applications pie.
For instance, why on earth is there a service like del.icio.us? Bookmarking was a browser’s thing. Yet by creating the social factor, services like del.icio.us conquered that part of the market. Will the browsers ever be able to take it back?
That’s where Mozilla comes into play. They’ve just launched a prototype of Weave. The 0.1 version offers Firefox users the possibility to save browser related info, such as bookmarks, surf history and passwords and synchronize this info with different computers and mobile devices. The data is encrypted and saved on the servers of Mozilla, and can be accessed from computers all over the world.
Hello Google! Somebody wants compete with Browser Sync! And you, Delicious! You’re warned as well: in the 0.2 version - expected early 2008 - Weave will also go social.
Are these the first steps of a browser that wants to conquer with web applications, especially Google? Will the next step be a smashing good rss reader? Or a spectacular user friendly text processor? It looks like a mission impossible, yet users love the brand Firefox, and isn’t everybody a little afraid of Google, considering the privacy issues? And what if Microsoft joins the battle?
Mozila versus Google, hopefully it’s just the beginning.
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
