Written on June 7, 2008 – 1:30 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Some start-ups have simplicity as their unique selling point. The founders take an existing idea and then simplify it, cherishing the hope that the masses might find it easy enough to use. Dutch social bookmarking service Bemba is a good example of this. It’s like Delicious with a Digg flavor, aimed at teens and young adults who want to share fun stuff on their social networks via Bemba. I wrote a short article about them when founders Arne Dibbits and Aaron Peters launched Bemba. Back then, I complained that they were only offering integration with Dutch social network Hyves and Twitter. But since this week, the service has some international potential as they’ve launched a Facebook app.
Of course they already offered Twitter integration, yet people who microblog are likely to use a social bookmarking service by now. The people Bemba is aiming for have probably never heard of social bookmarking before.
When these not so web-savvy people register, they’ll see a cool feature I haven’t seen on Delicious so far: personal stats. Users can track how many people clicked on their shared content and from which platform. Smart move by Dibbits and Peters, as it’s a pretty sticky feature. Dibbits told me that since they’ve introduced this feature, traffic has increased by 100 percent. Let’s see whether this service goes viral or not.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on March 24, 2008 – 12:15 pm Reinout te Brake, online gaming expert
The last few days I had some time and look around over the Internet. As you know, there is a lot of news about companies like Facebook.com and Google. Their success is the motor of a whole industry, they are the fuel for lots of new business ventures. In loads of business-plans you will see entrepreneurs compare their ideas against that of these companies. It is very difficult to create and come up with something unique, I grant you that, but what is it that these companies mentioned above have in common? The answer is; simplicity! Already I hear loads of people wonder if I lost it, but let me assure you, I didn’t.
During the last years I have come in contact with many VC-companies and they all are looking for companies that look like Bebo.com, Facebook, Google and MySpace. The “why” is simple too, these companies re-present high valuations today and therefore the investors who backed these companies made a great “return of investment”. These VC companies contact me if I know entrepreneurs with similar good ideas. In most cases I do send them info about young companies that look for funding. And then it starts; benchmarking! The business plans are going to be compared to the successful companies of today. After a while I have come to believe that VC-companies want something they can understand and compare, they want it too; simplicity! (more…)
Written on March 5, 2008 – 3:58 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
With the open beta launch of Bemba today, the web has another service for your sharing needs. This one is all about keeping things simple and wants to work on top of social networks. When I was at Le Web 3 in Paris, I met the founders Aaron Peters and Arne Dibbits. They told me that they were aiming to develop a service that is easy to use for the not so experienced Internet users between 18 and 30 years old. How will they achieve this?
Peters: “People like to share websites and videos with their friends, but it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. And while funsurfing the web is gaining popularity, people find it difficult discover entertaining new content. Bemba provides the easiest way to share web content with friends, on any social network or (micro)blog. This way we make the web more fun.”
Peters and Dibbits’ first day at the Bemba office
After users have installed the Bemba plugin - there’s no bookmarklet - , users can share anything entertaining they find on social networks with two clicks. Well, that’s the plan. So far it’s only interesting for people who use Hyves - the largest Dutch social network with 5,5 million users - and Twitter. Bemba has developed a fancy gadget for Hyves and sends shared pages to Twitter with an URL shortener. Integration with MySpace, Facebook, Netlog and other major social networks is on its way. And it should be, if they want to leave a good first impression these first months.
As more smart European start-ups do, Bemba will translate its service in Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Dutch before the end of May 2008. But why not in Turkish? There’s a huge market in Turkey, since the number of young people exceeds even the most populated countries in Europe. 2.1 million of these youngsters is using Facebook, another 2.5 million uses Netlog.
I’ve tested the service and must admit, it IS simple. I hope for the guys of Bemba that users like their sharing apps, so that it will become viral. Only then they might manage to convince people to not click on ‘Share with Facebook’ but on ‘Share with Bemba’.
Written on January 24, 2008 – 11:48 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Two weeks ago we ran a story about the main problem of Facebook: monetization. Dave McClure, an internet expert from the Valley, wrote an extensive post about this matter. Now Lightspeed Ventures discovered a good flow of Facebook cash: those corny digital gifts.
Lightspeed tracked the number of available gifts for a seven week period to better understand the sales rate of digital gifts. They excluded the free gifts, and found out that the average number of sales per week for a gift was 846. Since there were 322 different gifts available this means that 272.412 people are making other people happy with a 60 by 60 pixels birthday cake, hugging teddy bears or a freaky clown.
It’s easy to make fun of the concept, yet the numbers are pretty good. The price of a gift is 1 dollar, that implies an annual run rate of just under 15 million dollars.
My advice for European social networks, introduce this concept right-a-way. We have the euro, so you guys would even make more money per gift. Find a slightly different locally-adapted format and start monetizing. What about an (extended) cupid service on Hyves? For a few euros, the social network sends a iTunes love song to your secret love. I’m sure some users would be interested in such services.
Giving presents is an important aspect of the social discourse, so why wouldn’t the social networks make some money out of it?
Written on December 17, 2007 – 5:19 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last week, General Manager of VC LGiLab Ouriel Ohayonannounced an investment in Bahu, a European social network for young students across Europe. Bahu (French slang for High School) is focusing on promoting talents and mainly popular in the south and east of Europe. Only four months after they launched they’d already welcomed a stunning amount of 2 million unique visitors from 6 different countries. Bahu is another chapter in a book about successful European social networks. And trust me, it’s a big book.
Consider Hyves for example. Launched by a group of friends in October 2004, aiming at the Netherlands, a country with only 16 million citizens. Earlier this month they threw a party because they counted five million users. Four million of them are Dutch.
You want another example? No problem! Let’s go south of the Netherlands: Belgium. This even smaller country is home to Netlog, an extremely successful social network that is offering 8 different languages for its 29.8 million users and counts 4 billion page views every month. When Netlog wanted to expand in Turkey, they hired two students to translate the site for 1000 dollar. It took them a week and four months later the Turkish version has 2.5 million users.
The big question is: how do all those European networks, despite the Facebook and MySpace hegemony, manage to attract so many users? There seems to be no space for competitors in the US, but there most definitely is in Europe.
The answer to that question is actually quite simple. Whereas Americans just use one global network, Europeans also use a local version. If I look at my own social network usage, I use Hyves for my Dutch friends and Facebook for the contacts I’ve met during
international seminars and conferences. A lot of my friends and colleagues do the same thing. It’s exactly that kind of usage that adds pages to the Big Book of Successful European Social Networks.
Written on December 6, 2007 – 4:49 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Sure, discussions about the Web 2.0 bubble are here to stay. Sometimes however, a social network proves the critics wrong. For example, the Dutch equivalent of Facebook, Hyves, is welcoming its fifth million user today. Four million users are Dutch, which is a huge number considering the fact that the Netherlands have 16 million citizens.
To celebrate the occasion, Hyves is throwing a party in Amsterdam. The location offers space for 800 ‘Hyvers’ to party with the crew.
And this is where the really amazing fact comes in: over 30.000 members subscribed for a place on the guest list! Some active network that is. If so many members want to party with each other in ‘real life’, Hyves must have some value.
Next Web bloggers Patrick and Boris will attend the party and promised me to bring back some pictures to show you how we party in Amsterdam. [here they are!]
Written on June 7, 2008 – 1:30 pm
Written on March 24, 2008 – 12:15 pm
During the last years I have come in contact with many 
Lightspeed tracked the number of available gifts for a seven week period to better understand the sales rate of digital gifts. They excluded the free gifts, and found out that the average number of sales per week for a gift was 846. Since there were 322 different gifts available this means that 272.412 people are making other people happy with a 60 by 60 pixels birthday cake, hugging teddy bears or a freaky clown. 
Last week, General Manager of VC LGiLab 
You want another example? No problem! Let’s go south of the Netherlands: Belgium. This even smaller country is home to 
Written on December 7, 2007 – 8:49 am
Sure, discussions about the Web 2.0 bubble are here to stay. Sometimes however, a social network proves the critics wrong. For example, the Dutch equivalent of Facebook, 
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