Written on March 8, 2008 – 12:03 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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These days everybody is talking about the ‘open’ trend on the web. So do I, since it’s huge. Yet I also notice another trend: finding similar persons. It looks like people finally discovered that the web is an ideal medium to meet like-minded people. Last week I discussed matching service Lovest.at, today it’s all about a German service that turn search engines into meetingplaces: andUnite.
The service launches in an English and German version tonight, and by then you’ll be able to find people with similar interests, based on your search terms. You can sign up (anonymously), install a plug-in that creates a social overlay on Google & Co and the service automatically starts collecting your search terms. The advantage for the founders is obvious: valuable information. Yet what’s in it for us?
I’ve asked co-founder Bernd Storm van‘s Gravesande: “Christian Schmidkonz and me were both frustrated with the boring and lonely process of web search. We thought that it would be always more useful to be able to ask someone who knows something about a problem or question instead of browsing though pages and pages of more or less interesting search result links. We thought that the value of a search term must be much higher than just being used for retrieving links from a database.”
Bernd and Christian were also curious what happened when they’d collect search terms in a profile: “Would the collection really represent our interests or even characters? And would we be able to get to know interesting people if we match our profile with the profiles of others? So, basically we started with an experiment but already with the first prototype it turned out to be a intriguing and addictive tool we created.”
“Most people don’t want to change their favorite search engine.”
They hired Christoph Fuchs, a ‘highly talented’ student, to help them developing the service. Now, it’s all about promoting their special concept. “We have to convince the users every day, that andUNITE offers a unique service which is not only useful but also fascinating and as already mentioned addictive.”
AndUnite immediately reminded me of Jimmy Wales’ plans to build a Google-killing social search engine. So far, people don’t seem to be really excited about Wikia Search. Why would andUnite do any better? Bernd: “Well, Jimmy Wales tries to set up a completely new search engine where users have to participate actively in the so-called social part of Wikia in order to make it lively. With andUNITE we sit on top of Google, Yahoo! or Live. We think that this approach will be more successful because most people don’t want to change their favorite search engine.” (more…)
Written on March 3, 2008 – 5:05 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As the major social networks are working their way into Europe, interesting news about localization features keep popping up my feed reader and mail inbox. The two major headlines today: Facebook launches a German version and LinkedIn is partnering up with a big French job listing service.
The one million German speaking Facebook users now have access to an interface in their own language. I’m sure they appreciate that, since the German voice-over business has been a booming industry since the rise of television. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that 2000 German users voluntarily fixed the translating job in less than two weeks.
It’s only the third language version of Facebook. The choice for a German version is kind of weird if you consider the fact that Germany or other German speaking countries are not listed in the top 10 countries for Facebook users. After the United States, Britain is number two with 8 million active users and Canada is third with 7 million users. Turkey is fourth, followed by Australia, France and Sweden. So if you just consider the user numbers, Turkey would have been a more logical choice. Yet Germans have more money to spend, and in that light, a French version will probably be next.
In that country, LinkedIn did a pretty good job expanding their market reach. TechCrunch reports that they partnered up with Apec.fr, a job listing site that claims they have about 1.2 million unique monthly visitors, 600,000 registered users and 35,000 registered companies. Those users can now register for LinkedIn and start using the service without leaving the French interface of Apec. If I were working at European LinkedIn competitors Viadeo and Xing, I’d be scared.
The way LinkedIn and Facebook approach Europe - just offer language support - is pretty effective. One of Europe’s largest social networks Netlog can certainly confirm that. They hired two two Turkish students to translate the service for a 1000 dollars. It took the students a week, four months later the Turkish version had 2.5 million users.
Yet I prefer the MySpace approach. They are already based in France, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and soon in Russia and Turkey. When they launch, they install a local team who knows what’s hot and what’s not in the country and throw a great party. I’d thought I would never say this about a company owned by Murdoch but here we go: It feels like MySpace respects the cultural differences more and really wants to make an effort. I hope it will pay off.
Read this post by Patrick de Laive about possible Facebook acquisitions in Europe.
Written on February 22, 2008 – 11:11 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I recently started working on a personal blog, just to aggregate all my online content in one place. So let’s say that we meet for the first time and you want to know what I’m doing, I can just tell you to surf to one spot where all my work is presented.
During the designing process, I soon faced the problem of integrating all these services like Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Del.ico.us etcetera etcetera. How can I aggregate all those different types of content without turning my blog into widget paradise?
The answer turns out to be simple: use an escaloop badge. It’s nothing more than a feed aggregator that presents the content in a clean and simple way. Just like the visualization of the service:
Escaloop is a personal side project by German Yahoo coder Carlo Zottmann. I hope he supports his side project with a pretty solid server, since escaloop might get a bit more popular than he thought it would.
By the way, if this article brought you in a lifestream-state-of mind, check out this useful lifestream post on ReadWriteWeb.
Written on January 16, 2008 – 4:20 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Kopy Kat Kidz, German Internet entrepreneurs Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer, have invested in Facebook, reports TechCrunch this morning. They’re famous for bringing international successfully concepts to German soil - hence the Kopy Kat nickname - yet now they seem to have changed their strategy. So here comes the European money, Silicon Valley!
It fits perfectly in the trend of US based social networks developing local editions of their pages. Facebook probably just wants their knowledge and local market insights, which the Samwer family definitely has. Some examples of their copies of international success stories:
- Back in 1999, the Samwer brothers created the German auction site Alando, basically a Ebay rip-off. Ebay solved it monopolist-style and bought the site months later for 43 million dollars.
- After that they started Jamba, a ringtone company. Millions of people still hate them for the irritating, yet successful, Crazy Frog ringtone. I don’t think the Samwers care though, since they sold Jamba to US based company for 273 million dollars in 2004.
- They’ve invested in German Twitter look-a-like Frazr.com
- German student networking site StudiVZ also got some help from the three Samwers. Before they sold it to a German publishing group for 100 million euro they reportedly tried to sell it to Facebook in return for a five percent stake.
So they failed in their last try, but now they’re back using their knowledge of the German market internationally. Is this the beginning of a trend: European investments in US based companies in order to create local sites?
[WebTipr: David Petherick, United Kingdom]
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