Written on October 10, 2008 – 3:03 pm Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Friday Flashbacks is a new article series we’re going to try and establish here on The Next Web blog, in which we look back at what happened in this week one year ago. The aim is to get some insight in what had us - “us” being tech bloggers in general - buzzing last year, and if all that noise was worth it or not.
(I was trying to make this a weekly series but skipped a few weeks. You don’t mind, do you?)
So where does last year’s buzz stand now?
October 8, 2007 - Loïc Le Meur launched his new startup, a video conversation platform dubbed Seesmic, with a review on TechCrunch. (Michael Arrington later disclosed he had personally invested in the company). The company is still going strong, even made an acquisition last April with Twhirl and recently raised another $6 million round co-led by Omidyar Network and Wellington Partners, where Le Meur is a Partner. Competitors are jumping onto the scene nowadays, examples given 12seconds, Phreadz and TokBox.
October 9, 2007 - Google acquiredJaiku, the Finland-based mobile IM and presence company. The terms of the acquisition were never disclosed. Jaiku didn’t continue to grow as much as Twitter did in terms of users and traffic, and the only posts that are being published on the Jaiku blog since the acquisition seem to be about maintenances and outages. The service was ported to the Google App Engine and moved to the search engine’s infrastructure, and they made invitations unlimited. That’s about it. As far as I’m concerned, Jaiku fell off the grid and unless Google has some major plans with it, I suspect it won’t make any headlines anymore.
October 10, 2007 - Mozilla announced they were serious about building a mobile browser. The project was given the codename “Fennec” and is still under development. Nobody really knows when Mozilla plans to release a beta version. Anyway, Fennec will face competition with IE Mobile, the iPhone and Android browser, Opera Mobile / Mini, SkyFire, etc., but based on the prototype concepts introduced last June, it looks like it might just be a worthy one.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on October 6, 2008 – 9:06 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As you might know, I’m co-organizing BLOG08 - the international blogging conference in Amsterdam on October 24 (see button in the sidebar). Edial Dekker and I have invited famous blogging heroes like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Gapingvoid’s Hugh MacLeod, and CEO of Lookery, Scott Rafer to inspire (corporate) bloggers all around the world. So far, people from Poland, the US, Sweden, Estonia, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands have purchased tickets.
Nobody from France yet, but this might change as we recently ran into French hero Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur. Business Week just called him one of the 25 most influential web people. We couldn’t resist the temptation of interviewing him. He talks about why he started blogging, how his blog developed, the Les Blogs conference, and that we should focus on micro- and videoblogging.
By the way, if you want to come to BLOG08, buy your ticket before October 10th with the “thenextweb” code. Not only will you get a 45 euros discount (price: 150 euros) but you also have the chance of winning an invite for the speakers dinner at Boris’ place.
Le Meur was in his San Francisco-based office, watching a big LCD screen where the desperate person was depicted. “People emailed us that he looked very serious”, Le Meur said, “the guy was about to kill himself, what do you do?”
So while hundreds of Seesmic members tried to convince the man to not kill himself by posting comments on his videos, Le Meur called his lawyers. “We’re a US-based company after all”. They advised him to call the police, which Le Meur did.
“We gave the police his IP address. After twenty minutes, they knocked on his door somewhere in the middle of the US”. An interesting example of a case where security is more important than privacy.
Update: check out Loic’s comment, he actually gave the email address.
Written on August 5, 2008 – 11:11 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The press loves entrepreneurial kids. Every time a young kid pulls something special off, a newspaper is eager enough to give the lad an wide-spread page. The new press, bloggers et al, seem to have the same habit. Teenage entrepreneurs like Jessica Mah (who was a speaker at The Next Web Conference) and Zooomr founder Kristopher Tate have been receiving a fair amount of attention, partly thanks to their age. And now there’s a new kid on the block. His name? Daniel Brusilovsky. His age? 15 years.
Daniel has just launched Teens in Tech, a publication platform for kids who fancy new media, in private alpha mode. Basically, it’s a Wordpress multi-user installation with a fancy layer - really cool logo - and a forum.
Daniel Brusilovsky at Supernova
As TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid notes, Daniel seems to know everybody. His board of advisers includes web influentials like Loic Le Meur, Robert Scoble (old enough to be Brusilovsky’s father) and some folks at TechCrunch and Apple. When we - meaning The Next Web team - visited the Valley in June, we met Daniel at Seemics’ HQ and Supernova.
Loic Le Meur told us he expects the young entrepreneur to create value by creating a community of young folks engaged in new media and tech and that is a great platform for companies (like Seesmic) to plug their service. The old marketing formula still works: teenagers have plenty of money to spend and they’re the future. A 1000 teenagers armed with webcams would be a welcome crowd to the Seesmic community.
Le Meur and others also know that young lads like Brusilovsky still attract enough media attention to create a hype. A young entrepreneur is just plain charming - so the group of web influentials happily welcome him in their circle of Internet fame and fortune.
I can’t respect this kid, or his company. As Luke said, its a complete joke. I have no intentions at even visiting Teens in Tech. Also, watch your acronym, people may think its a naughty site.
This post has also lowered the journalistic quality on TechCrunch.
Daniel Brusilwhatever has only been featured because of his connections. Shame on TC.
We experienced the same when we posted the announcement about Jessica Mah coming to Amsterdam:
She is 17, ok, and made high school with 15 years. 600 people read her blog, and dices will be thrown to see if someone will be talking about her in 2 years time. She is not a great speaker! (Drivingsouth)
Although some people support Mah and Brusilovsky - “I wish I was that productive back then”, the general opinion seems to be that the young entrepreneur must really have something special to offer. They get the attention, but then they have to prove they’re worth it. I’m sorry Brusilovsky, but the teenage charm factor isn’t here to stay.
Written on June 20, 2008 – 7:18 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Yesterday I speculated that Seesmic raised a Series B. The news just got out, Seesmic raised 6 million dollars from Omidyar Network and Wellington Partners. Nice detail is that Loic Le Meur also took a role in the Wellington Partners team (as a Venture Partner).
Loic is happy with his The Next Web Award and 6 million dollars on the bank.
Written on June 20, 2008 – 1:54 am Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Today we went to the seesmic office to hand out a The Next Web Award in the category Web Celeb to Loic Le Meur. We did the official ceremony in the Seesmic office (check the movie).
Afterwards we had dinner in a sushi bar and Loic told us that they were about to announce big news at Seesmic.
People are guessing what it can be and Robert Scoble was particulary interested.
So what can it possibly be? What is ‘big news’ for a startup? Well that is either an acquisition, a huge partnership or a round of investment.
I believe it is to soon for seesmic to be acquired. A huge partnership could be, but big companies don’t like it that you leak this kind of information before the big press push is going out, so my guess is that they do a series B and raise another couple of millions after their first round in February.
The common consensus is that it is getting harder and harder to raise money nowadays. So to raise some extra money when it is still possible for ‘hard times to come’ sounds feasible.
Written on June 18, 2008 – 8:57 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One of the last sessions at Supernova 2008 was about “liquid conversations” - the discussions flow away from their original source to services like Friendfeed and Facebook. Dave McClure (500 Hats) moderated the panel of David Sifry (Technorati), Bret Taylor (FriendFeed), Matt Colebourne (CoComment), and Loic Le Meur (Seesmic). I’m not sure McClure knew in advance that this would be not easy as he thought it would be. Here’s what happened.
Each panelist introduced himself and the service he was representing. After some regular introductions by Sifry, Taylor, Colebourne, it was up to Le Meur. He decided to pitch Seesmic by showing a video about the… infamous g-spot. The video was compiled of video replies by Seesmic users from ten different countries and a sex expert - the hilarious type. Here’s the video.
The video was welcomed with several rounds of laughing, although I did noticed some people were a bit shocked. Yes, that’s what happens when the French arrive. Some prejudices are actually based on something.
Valleywag reporter Melissa Gira - “Reporter, Bad Girl, Sex Nerd For Hire” - asked a good question about the video - after answering a question about g-spots. She wondered why Seesmic invites an expert to the video, when the service is all about the conversations of their users. Loic didn’t really give an answer, so I will: It’s a great marketing tool to turn the comments into a show and spice it up with a typical weird sex expert.
Now over to the liquid conversations
Enough for the sex part now, as McClure raised an interesting question about online conversations. They’re flowing away from their original source to places like Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter. Friendfeed users aren’t commenting on a New York Times article on the site itself, but express their opinion in Friendfeed. They find like-minded friends there, instead of the railing crowd at the New York Times page. The same thing happens with discussions on blogs - to the discontent of some bloggers. (more…)
Seesmic, the video conversation start-up by Loic Le Meur has just raised a cool 6 million dollars from an impressive list of investors. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about Seesmic but I am afraid to write about them because obviously I must be stupid. I mean, if Michael Arrington, Steve Case and Ron Conway all DO seem to get it, there can’t be any other explanation.
Can you imagine we will be chatting to each other in pre-recorded video messages? Do YOU use iChat video on a regular basis? Can you imagine using it in a Walkie Talkie kinda way where you talk first, then upload your message, then wait for someone to record their message which you then have to watch after which you can record a new message? Or maybe this whole video chatting this is just a cover for another business that we haven’t heard from yet?
No, it must be me. Or maybe these people just REALLY liked Loic and that is the reason why they invested 6 million. Either way, here is the press release:
Seesmic Raises $6 Million to Power the World’s Video Conversations
A-List investors are led by Niklas Zennström’s Atomico and include Steve Case, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Reid Hoffman
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - February 14, 2008 - Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), the highly anticipated new start-up from Loic Le Meur, today announced that it has raised $6 million from internationally renowned investors. The investment is lead by Atomico - an investment group founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The complete list of investors is:
Written on October 10, 2008 – 3:03 pm
October 8, 2007 - Loïc Le Meur launched his new startup, a video conversation platform dubbed Seesmic, with a review on TechCrunch. (Michael Arrington later disclosed he had personally invested in the company). The company is still going strong, even made an acquisition last April with Twhirl and recently raised another $6 million round co-led by Omidyar Network and Wellington Partners, where Le Meur is a Partner. Competitors are jumping onto the scene nowadays, examples given 12seconds, Phreadz and TokBox.
October 9, 2007 - Google acquired Jaiku, the Finland-based mobile IM and presence company. The terms of the acquisition were never disclosed. Jaiku didn’t continue to grow as much as Twitter did in terms of users and traffic, and the only posts that are being published on the Jaiku blog since the acquisition seem to be about maintenances and outages. The service was ported to the Google App Engine and moved to the search engine’s infrastructure, and they made invitations unlimited. That’s about it. As far as I’m concerned, Jaiku fell off the grid and unless Google has some major plans with it, I suspect it won’t make any headlines anymore.
October 10, 2007 - Mozilla announced they were serious about building a mobile browser. The project was given the codename “Fennec” and is still under development. Nobody really knows when Mozilla plans to release a beta version. Anyway, Fennec will face competition with IE Mobile, the iPhone and Android browser, Opera Mobile / Mini, SkyFire, etc., but based on the prototype concepts introduced last June, it looks like it might just be a worthy one.
Written on October 6, 2008 – 9:06 am
Written on June 20, 2008 – 7:18 pm
Written on February 13, 2008 – 11:08 pm
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