The Next Web

Andreessen backs Qik with a “significant investment”

Written on August 26, 2008 – 11:44 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

On December 17 we reported about a new video streaming service, called Qik. Scoble was their apostle, and The Next Web their platform to explain why homemade porn wasn’t welcome (it concerns the bible). In July Joop wrote about their open beta launch. Now it’s up to me to tell you Qik has received a “significant investment” from Netscape-pioneer Marc Andreessen and his favorite business partner Horowitz.

Andreessen has an impressive track record. He’s the co-founder and chairman of Ning (valued at $500 million) and an investor in several startups including big guys like Digg, Plazes, and Twitter. Horowitz and Andreessen were two of the most important men behind Netscape in the nineties.

Their advice and money will help Qik to firm up their position in the rapidly developing live video streaming market. Flixwagon, Floobs (interview), Kyte, Bambuser (review), and maybe Seesmic are all competitors who are addressing the same eager-to-share smartphone owners. With the Andreessen-Horowitz combo in their team and Scoble as their source of publicity, it’s definitely 2-0 for Qik versus the competition.

(By the way, did you know Qik also works on a jailbroken iPhone? Yeah, video!)

I hope you like that post!

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digg, investment, kyte, Marc Andreessen, netscape, ning, Plazes, qik, twitter

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Andreessen: browser is here to stay for another 20 years

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”

firefox, John Battelle, Marc Andreessen, netscape, Netscape Navigator, web20expo

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Netscape; goodbye old friend

Written on December 28, 2007 – 11:04 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Once upon a time I decided to check out this thing called the World Wide Web. I bought a modem, signed up with a local Internet Service Provider and borrowed a disk from a friend with software to ‘browse’ the Web. That piece of software was called Netscape.

Since then a lot has happened. On February 1, 2008 AOL will stop supporting Netscape. It is the end of an era and I think everybody who got online before 1999 feels kind of sad (and old?) when they hear about it.

As a small tribute to an old friend I am proudly displaying this button, one last time:

Browse with Netscape!