Written on April 14, 2008 – 11:32 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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So you’ve came here to read what’s influencing the future of the Web and I really appreciate that! Yet I do have tell you that there’s a service out there that predicts the future of…. well, everything! It’s New York-based service Edopter.com, a creation of one blue brick.
On Edopter.com, there’s some serious social trendcasting going on. This means that consumers can predict what or who will be the big next thing by launching or joining a trend. Well, not all the consumers, only the so-called early adopters. This is a term from the technology adoption lifecycle, a sociological model originally developed by Joe M. Bohlen and George M. Beal (1957) and broadened by Everett Rogers in 1963. Rogers came up with the bell curve:
The early adopters are the younger and more educated folks, who tend to be community leaders. So they would be involved with trends that are still somewhat obscure. Yet when I browse through the 195 trends, I notice trends like American Apparel, Barack Obama, Apple, Gmail and Family Guy. That seems like stuff for early majority, if not the late majority.
Anyway, without getting too negative here: it’s a well-developed and fancy service that uses the wisdom of crowds in a trendy way. The ways people can promote a trend are almost countless and when the user base grows Edopter could provide some interesting data for marketeers. However, the guys from Edopter.com do have to find a way to prevent those very same marketeers from promoting their own products. If that all works out, the early majority got itself a place to spot the next big brand, person, product or blog.
Written on April 7, 2008 – 11:15 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
This time we’re interviewing Luis Pereira, Founder & CEO Stumpedia, a human-powered social search engine that enables registered users to submit sites and matching keywords and phrases. The relevancy of search results are then ranked and rated by the community. The future is search is social, said StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp last week during The Next Web conference, so I figured I should ask Luis to participate in this start-up series. Want to know exactly how it works? Check out this extensive article on SearchRank. Want to know why Luis started this search service and the influence he expect it to has on the future web? Then continue reading:
How did you come up with the idea of Stumpedia?
“The initial idea for Stumpedia.com came as a result of another web site we launched called AskPoodle.com. Both web sites are described as being human-powered, where as Stumpedia.com is a global search engine for key-word driven searches, AskPoodle.com is a local business directory for the US market. We are in the middle of a fundamental shift in the search space. Page Rank will certainly be around for a very long time, but how people search and surf the web is changing. Social bookmarking sites are a great example of new search habits and trends that are emerging. We recognize a need in the market for web pages and web sites to be ranked based on social collaboration methods. Social bookmarking data such as tags are one important element in determining search relevancy.” (more…)
Written on January 14, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
A reservation for a table in a fancy restaurant is of real value. Some people are dying to get a table at a certain place, yet typically 20 percent of the lucky ones who DID manage to make a reservation, don’t show up. TableXchange spotted this problem and offers people a forum where they can trade the reservations.
People from New York, San Fransisco and the Hampton can sell or buy their reservations anytime, making it possible to get last minute access to a fancy place. A simple yet great idea. How did the founders come up with it?
Co-founder William Geronimo tells us the story: “The idea for TableXchange was hatched in an University Bar while being an undergraduate at New York University in 2004. Myself and a group of friends didn’t have money to eat in nice restaurants too often. But on the rare occurance that we did, we wanted to go a nice place and often realized that last minute - or even a few days to weeks in advance - they were booked up. So we would wind up eating at mediocre restaurants and still spending a fortune, which never left anyone happy.”
This all sounds sort of ‘power to the people’ to me. Web 2.0 can make is possible for everyone with a little money saved to make a reservation at the fanciest place. Right?
“In a sense, yes. We simply believe that a reservation is a “real option” to dine and for a long-time people misunderstood the value of this option or abused it by not showing up and making a million reservations. The fanciest restaurants in New York have also put up so many barriers to entry, principally by pricing their food at outrageous levels and making reservations impossible to get. From a strictly economic standpoint it is one of the few things that do not obey the typical laws of supply and demand. As with anything else, as demand for a particular restaurant spikes so should the ‘cost’ of making the reservation.”
This all makes sense. But who are the people on the other side? The guys that make a reservation, and actually sell it on the web?
“First, there is a group of people who tend to make numerous reservations for a given night at the hottest spots, and once they figure out where their friends or loved ones want to eat they would typically cancel or no-show on the others. The other big group is opportunistic young people - lots of college kids - who recognize that they can buy a few reservations and for relatively little effort make 20 to 30 dollars. Obviously we have a number of security measures in place to make sure the system is not abused.”
As you might have sensed already, I’m a big fan of the idea. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Using the web to beat those high-brow reservations managers sounds a bit like a hedonistic revolution to me. How are the restaurants facing their temporary loss? Any complaints yet?
“The restaurants mostly have been fairly mum on the subject, but we know generally they are negative on the concept. We are trying to portray to them that their no-show rate will go down with TableXchange users, because people paying for a reservation are much more likely to show after shelling out $30 for the table. Secondly, having tracked our demographics, the types of people that buy tables have significant disposable income and will often spend additional money in the restaurant: they’ll buy that $200 bottle of wine instead of the $50.”
So in the end, it turns out that both sides win. We can get into a fancy place pretty easy, while they’re making more money. The only losing here, is the obnoxious reservation manager. Yet another reason to love Web 2.0.
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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. (
