Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on September 4, 2008 – 4:15 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One of the first 2.0 entrepreneurs that really made an impression on me was Scott Heiferman, CEO and co-founder of MeetUp. When I attended one of my classes at New York University in 2006, he gave a guest lecture. He told us that online services should be all about helping people. The goal of his start-up was to connect people in real life by using the web. Well, that obviously worked out fine.
But now Heiferman and his team feel like there’s the need for a second campaign. The avalanche of Twitter-like services made us screen addicts again. This awesome video says it all:
Meetup has built a funny site around this video, giving you the opportunity to unplug one of your friends with a pre-written email (you can choose from several sentences though):
It’s an epidemic. It can strike anyone. It begins harmlessly enough… maybe with a cell phone, an online social network profile, or an IM. But before long, the electronic screens invade every corner of your life.
There’s a name for this tragic and extremely annoying condition: Screen Addiction.
But there is hope. Send an intervention to someone you care about! Help them take the first step towards recovery.
I’ve always digged Meetup’s mission to connect people offline via an online service. Now they’re giving it an ever better twist by launching this (soon to be viral) campaign. It’s not boring, it’s not cheesy, it absolutely rocks.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on September 4, 2008 – 3:17 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
ReadWriteWeb recently published the results of a one year follow up on a study of social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US done by The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. According to results:
“familiarity with and use of blogs, podcasting, wikis, online video and social networking has skyrocketed in 2008 to nearly double what it was in 2007. 77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.”
Here are some more interesting stats for you taken from Robin Good’s blog:
1) 39% of these 500 companies are blogging currently - a 20% increase since 2007.
2) The social media that was most familiar to companies both in 2007 and 2008 was social networks. However 57% claim to be “very familiar with it” this year as opposed to 42% in 2007.
3) Familiarity with wikis jumped ahead of podcasting this year.
4) Even though podcasting was found to be the least familiar media this year, it still has a 21% adoption rate.
5) Adoption of all six forms of social media is rapidly growing. An astounding 77% of these companies report usage of at least some social media tool.
6) 44% of respondents in this year’s study feel that social media is “very important” to their business and marketing strategy as opposed to only 26% in 2007. We can see that companies are truly beginning to understand the importance of social media to their business strategy and goals.
Here’s the early majority
Given these figures, it is obvious that social media is no longer only familiar to and used by early adaptors. America’s fastest growing companies are turning to social media because they understand that by using these tools they will they be able to achieve success in today’s online world.
In related studies, Universal McCann found that half of adults in the US now use some form of social media online and the April prediction from Forrester Research is that “Enterprise 2.0″ will become a $4.6 billion industry over the next 5 years.
So my question to you is: Are you incorporating these tools yet in your business strategy?
Written on September 3, 2008 – 4:35 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Dutch Creative Industry Fund (DCIF) is on a roll. After its recent €50,000 investment in VIDDIX, DCIF has now invested in online identity tool RealMee. The amount of funding is undisclosed, but the Dutch fund usually backs start-ups with a €20,000 to €40,000 money stack. RealMee helps people to manage their online identity by creating a profile which will show up in Google’s top results when searching for one’s name.
When I interviewed founders Roland Carpentier and Hans Helms in February, they assured me that no tricks like cloacking and linkfarming were used to push RealMee pages up in the search results. An important part of their strategy is urging users to link to their RealMee profile from social network profiles.
The service isn’t interesting for people who’ve already built a significant web presence. But ordinary people who haven’t created any web content, will gladly welcome RealMee. Moreover, the service will soon learn these folks how to take advantage of the upcoming open standards - since RealMee will start providing OpenID services. They will also suggest users new web applications (there’s your business model).
So far, RealMee has 3000 users. That isn’t impressive number, so it won’t be surprising to hear that Carpentier and Helms will use the financial injection to attract new users. I’m pretty sure they’ll ask DCIF partners Telegraaf Media Groep and Ilse Media - large media companies - to help them gaining some traction.
Written on August 27, 2008 – 10:28 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
LinkedIn has a weird history with groups. They’re popular, that’s for sure. When the professional network launched a group directory, groups even became too popular - forcing LinkedIn to introduce a maximum of 50 group memberships per person. But their last update from five days ago was so buggy that quite a lot of the group’s functionality disappeared. A look at the GetSatisfaction LinkedIn Groups thread says enough. Complaints about a lack of search options and list styles flooded the support forum.
LinkedIn immediately promised to fix these bugs. Well, we can offer you a time schedule now, based on an email my co-editor Boris received.
First, thank you for managing your group on LinkedIn. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you devote to your members, and we know they value it. Together you have made Groups one of the top features on LinkedIn.
This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:
- Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
- Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
- Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
-
Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.
We’re confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.
Note the humble start of the email. LinkedIn obviously senses that it has to make it up with its dear Group leaders.
The new features will give the groups the potential of becoming lively communities with a lot of email traffic going on. This will filter some group members out, as they’ll consider these messages to be spam when the subject of the group isn’t relevant enough to them. Let’s see how the LinkedIn community will respond to this new, hopefully more successful, update.
The Next Web Conference and blog has LinkedIn group as well. Join 872 of your fellow readers and conference attendees here.
Written on August 11, 2008 – 12:57 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Could Wordpress be the next social network? The platform has a lot going for it:
- A blog is customizable to the max, making it a better tool for self-expression than, say, a Facebook profile.
- Plugins make sure blogs integrates with social content services like Delicious, Flickr, Twitter etc. Just like Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg wants.
- Combined with OpenID, your Wordpress identity travels with you all over the web.
- With XFN-relation tags, you can make groups within your contacts. Think of it as a blogroll on steriods.
Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency, wrote an article about this idea in December 2007, creating a hype that reached its peak with a GigaOM post. I wrote a comment as well, saying the self-hosted Wordpress edition was too complicated for ordinary users to install and use.
But now there’s BuddyPress…
The v0.2 BuddyPress release by Wordpress adds an extended social layer to Wordpress Multi-User installations. The collection of WordPress MU specific plugins offers the following list of features. Admins can select which one they want to install: Extended Profiles, Personal Blog, Private Messaging, Friends, Groups, The Wire, Status Updates, and Albums.
Avatar cropping and uploading, customizable profiles and private messaging
BuddyPress is only the first step towards the next social network
Although the BuddyPress development team thinks of their product as a community building tool, or niche social network, I can’t help thinking this is the first step towards the development of the next social network. If BuddyPress turns out to be an success, Wordpress will probably develop a version for the self-hosted installations - making it possible for bloggers to connect with each other through a global Wordpress platform.
Wordpress.com already showing the first signs
This platform will probably be an extension of Wordpress.com - which is already slowly turning into a social network. The “Possibly Related Articles” feature for example, connects blogs with each other by cross linking to relevant content. This clearly is a first step into the direction of a social publishing network.
With the integration of Wordpress.com, the masses will be reached as well. It doesn’t have the technical barrier of the self-hosted of installation of Wordpress. Therefor, millions of people are using Wordpress.com as their publishing platform. You want numbers? Here’s a screenshot from Wordpress.com:
Just imagine how gigantic the social network Wordpress will be with this active community backing it. So you may not realize it yet, but if you’re a blogger using Wordpress, you’re way ahead of the other bloggers. Together with millions of other Wordpress bloggers, you’re building the social network of the future.
Update: Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb agrees: blog platforms will be the next social web.
Written on July 30, 2008 – 1:00 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
myYearbook raised $13 (€8) million, and the social network gained remarkable growth in the teen market, exceptional given the established presence of Myspace.
A social website launched three years ago, myYearbook claims to be the third largest social network in the US. TechCrunch reports that the site is only a fraction of the size of Myspace or Facebook, and that the site may have more high school users than Facebook. According to Hitwise, the site enjoyed a 384% year-to-year growth.
myYearbook received its second funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners, US Venture Partners and First Round Capital. Norwest Venture Partners’ Sergio Monsalve will join the company’s board of directors. The total funding is currently $18.6 (€12) million. The site is going to use the cash to add extra features and marketing to reach out to new members.
The site monetizes with advertisements, but also offers a way for users to decorate their profiles. They might be able to gain income from these virutal possessions on their network, simulair to Korean based Cyworld. Will these teens move on to Facebook when they go to college, or remain true to their first social network?
Written on July 14, 2008 – 3:46 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Sometimes I dream of going to my favorite club, grab my mobile, and check who of my friends are there as well - so I won’t miss them in the dancing crowd. If I lived in Germany, this dream would be somewhere close to reality. German folks can look up their friends on aki-aki, a social network that uses bluetooth to see whose around within a distance of 20 meters. Of course I could join the English version, but there aren’t many Dutch people on the site yet. I think I’ll have to wait for such a feature on Hyves.
Anyway, enough about me. Let’s go back to aki-aki. After installing a mobile app and switching your bluetooth on, aki-aki tracks wherever you’ve been and who you’ve met. You can look up this info at the web site to see what you’ve been up to recently. Imagine you’ve ran into someone sixty times, it might be an interesting idea to meet up.
A month ago we reported they were about to receive more capital. Well, that worked out fine, as Aki-Aki has announced (translated) that they’ve received a small investment from venture capitalist Creathor Venture. The size is undisclosed. Partly due to this investment and a talented team, a diploma project at the Berlin University of Arts has grown to a real business with 16 employees.
Written on July 3, 2008 – 4:34 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our - really beloved sponsor - Wakoopa (the Last.fm of software) has launched some new widgets today. From now on, it’s possible to express yourself by showing off your software usage. To let people know you’re the Firefox-kinda-guy or a Flock-chick, you basically have three new - or improved - options.
- Badge - show your blog or social profile visitors your most popular, recently added or recently used software.
- Forum-like signature - show your fellow forum members what you’re doing beside commenting on endless discussion
- Card - small card, modeled after the famous Xfire ones, that shows your avatar and some software data, like the two most used programs (always your browser + something else)
These three types of widgets fascinate me. Apparently there are people out there who use their software data as a way to express themselves. Most boys and girls let their blog and profile visitors know who they are by showing the music they like (Last.fm) or the books they read (Amazon), yet now software enters the stage of self-expression. In a way, it makes sense. 30,000 geeky early adopters - like me - we’re already watching each others software usage within the safe surroundings of Wakoopa, so why not take it outside as well?
Moreover, just like you see fellas walking around with a shirt of their favorite band, some guys now also wear Firefox jackets or Linux hats. One thing I don’t see happening though, is a poster of your favorite app above your bed.
There’s a fourth widget too, with which developers can show much Wakoopa members use your program. Want to create your own Wakoopa widget? Here’s the API.
Written on June 30, 2008 – 10:46 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
If you’re a regular visitor, you’ve noticed the new button in the sidebar. It’s E.Factor’s, a social network for entrepreneurs. First of all, we’re really glad that E.Factor decided to sponsor us, as it allows us to write more and cover almost all the important tech conferences. I thought I owe to you, dear readers, to elaborate a bit on why E.Factor and The Next Web Blog is match made in heaven 2.0.
Next Web’s Patrick and Roeland Reinders
I’d like to coin a new term here, namely “qualitative social network”. Now I owe you a definition, which I’ll definitely give you, yet I’d like to address a negative trend first: the devaluation of professional social networks. I don’t know about yours, but my LinkedIn and Facebook contacts lists are stuffed with not just weak ties, but really weak ties. Like people I’ve met for thirty seconds in a conference hall or PR folks who have randomly added me to their spam mail list. E.Factor seems like a reaction to this, as the founders Adrie Reinders, Roeland Reinders and Marion Freijsen have built a network that focuses on quality instead of quantity.
The purpose of the E.Factor network is to connect investors with entrepreneurs. With features like live chat, video, classified ads, multimedia ads, and finance requests, members can connect, promote, and find funding. Moreover, the service has an old school business model. Marion Freijsen explains: “whilst other networks have to rely on advertising revenue or struggle introducing a sustainable business model at a later stage, E.Factor combines new technology networking with an old-school business model based on premium membership fees, technology licensing via its’ satellites, and fees for a variety of services.”
Besides generating revenue, these fees make sure that members have a feeling of commitment towards E.Factor as some sort of self-justification for the expenses. Thus a member is more active and - together with the 46999 other members, forms a happy crowd. And not just because E.Factor will soon offer them health insurance, 401(k) plans, physical lounges, and.., hopefully, a new design.
Written on June 26, 2008 – 10:29 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After a hectic day of moving to a new office, I found the time to check my a-list of RSS feeds. Checking those top blogs always gives me tons of inspiration - for example, I’ve now learned a new way of dealing with annoying readers. I’ll just tell them to get the hell out of here.
At least, that’s what Faceparty did - one of the UK’s oldest social networks. It’s a network with an attitude, trying to be exclusive by only allowing invitees to join. Why?
With our doors open to everyone, this site was attracting too many spammers, fakers, pervs, liars, haters, nobs, pedos, over-50’s-using-it-as-a-dating-site- cos-they-have-to-pay-for-match.com’s, and most of all… too many friggin’ moaners! We’d spend all day deleting them, but alas (aarrggghh!) they’d only return the next day. Not anymore… problem solved. Hooray!
However, if you’re not subscribed to this network, you can still browse around a bit. I’ve drawn one important conclusion: looks like you’re not allowed to wear a shirt on you profile picture.
Anyway, the Faceparty team organized some sort of “fancy dresses” competition last week and something went wrong there with handing out the prizes. Users thought they wouldn’t get them anymore and became pretty pissed of. So they started leaving messages like, “you should get your f*cking act together”. This caused some discomfort by Faceparty, and what did they do? They typed an angry message, shut down the site, and took off to listen to other animals at London Zoo. Seriously.
The site was down on Tuesday and my fellow European tech blogger Mike Butcher managed to make a screenshot. Here’s a part of it, see the whole pic on TechCrunch UK. Perfect marketing… I gotta say.
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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. (
