Written on March 28, 2008 – 10:15 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
In only 5 days The Next Web Conference 2008 will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We will post short daily updates about speakers, initiatives and events here.
Erick Schonfeld
Formerly editor-at-large at Business 2.0 and currently Co-editor Techcrunch.com. We proudly present you the Next Web Conference 2008 moderator. He is a well known, respected and very connected journalist and blogger. His name is Erick Schonfeld.
If you don’t recognize the name right away don’t worry. Changes are you read his articles regularly but just didn’t notice his name before. He has been the co-editor of Techcrunch since September 2007 and has been contributing to the world famous blog (700.000+ RSS readers!) on a daily basis ever since.
Quoted from Techcrunch:
Erick has been covering startups and technology news for 14 years. At Business 2.0 he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, Next Net, which has nearly 50,000 RSS subscribers. He also does a lot of video work and hosts regular panels of industry luminaries called Disruptor Round Tables. Prior to Business 2.0, Erick was an editor-at-large for eCompany and a contributing editor for Fortune.
In 1999, Schonfeld won the prize for best information technology submission at London’s Business Journalist of the Year Awards, and in 2001 he won the prize for best space submission at the Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards in Paris. In 1996 and 1997, Schonfeld was recognized in the TJFR Business News Reporter’s list of the “best and brightest financial journalists under the age of 30.” He appears regularly on CNBC, CNN, and NY1, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Schonfeld graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1993.
Next to Erick Schonfeld we also have writers from Techcrunch France (Ouriel Ohayon) and TechCrunch UK & Ireland (Mike Butcher) who are also both media partners of The Next Web Conference. In other words: you will never get a better chance to meet representatives from every Techcrunch publication in one event. Maybe we should rename the conference “The Next Techcrunch Conference”? ;-)
Haven’t registered yet? Do it now before we are sold out…
I hope you like that post!
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Written on March 14, 2008 – 11:12 am
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
We haven’t got that much sleep last couple of nights. Working at the office, checking out startups and companies, coding the voting system (thanks Arjen), not being able to reach our deadline, but now I’m happy to announce the final nominees of The Next Web Awards. In total 235 nominations were made in seven categories. Five companies per category made it to the final.
We know that there are tons of awards out there, but we try to change the rules and distinguish ourselves by NOT building up a database (we don’t want your info, so no registration needed), by NOT nominating every company out there, by NOT having 100 categories and by NOT considering all votes equal (you can empower your vote -1 vote counts for 2- if you vote in all categories).
All this combined with our endless ambition, our super partners ( TechCrunch UK, TechCrunch France, Loogic, and Frankwatching), and the drive to celebrate European startups we hope to cast even more votes then last year (85k) and distribute the traffic back to the nominees.
The award ceremony will take place on April 4, in the Transformatorhuis in Amsterdam, during The Next Web Conference. Afterwards we will have a great party at the Odeon.
Enough said. Who will own the Social space? Who’s Europe’s Web Celeb? Who’s Europe’s Rookie of the year? What European company gives you most pleasure… I mean entertainment!. What is the one European company to rule them all? Cast your vote, empower it and give your favorite service unlimited bragging rights!
The nominees are: (more…)
Written on February 16, 2008 – 1:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After spending two days in the city of love and buying Valentine’s presents, the wildest ideas about love pop into your mind. At least in my experience they do… so here’s one! On my way to Paris I read an article in my favorite newspaper that said it started a dating service. Nothing special, since every newspaper in the Netherlands has its own dating service. They were just a little later.
Starting a dating service as a newspaper makes sense if you think about it. You choose a newspaper because you feel most comfortable with its political signature, tone of voice, cultural supplement and of course its brand experience. The newspaper I read for example is aimed at a young cosmopolitan audience, discusses broad themes instead of just the hottest news and highlights interesting and semi-intellectual stuff to do. If I were looking for a girlfriend, I would definitely want a girl who has the same ideas about what’s important in life and the world. So the perfect girl for me would probably read the same newspaper.
That’s where the dating service comes in. I could just browse through profiles of girls, without worrying whether she open for semi-intellectual stuff of not. Makes perfect sense to me. I mean, somebody who reads The New York Times would never date anyone who started the day with The New York Post. It goes for magazines too, a FHM man doesn’t want a high-brow New Yorker reader to spend his life with. Right?
If you think of it that way, blogs could easily start dating services as well. They discuss a specific hobby, passion, business or sports team etcetera and differentiate from each other by using a different tone of voice and design. If you’re an eligible bachelor in London, it mustn’t be that hard to meet an attractive tech-minded girl (correct me if I’m wrong guys), yet when you live in Liverpool you might need some help finding one. Wouldn’t it be great if a TechCrunch UK dating service came to the rescue?
Moreover, blogs have a big advantage compared to newspapers since they allow interaction between readers. You can judge on beforehand whether you like his or hers opinion on certain matters. Want some diversity? Check out an article that discusses an important topic and see if he or she has as totally different view on things.
One doubt about dating on blogs, I’m not sure about the man/woman ratio though as male readers are probably still a majority. Anyway, let me try to give you an idea what I’m talking about, here are some stereotype readers. Feel free to drop your experiences in the comments.
- TechCrunch Chick: she’s pretty straight-forward, would love to live in the Valley and is always looking for opportunities to come up with THE perfect business idea. And as no other, she knows money makes the world go round.
- VentureBeat Gentleman: killer-guy, working his ass off and likes to cut through the chase. One you thing must know ladies, he checks the business news every 15 minutes.
- Valleywag Queen: he/ she gossips the day round and has an radar for rumors. Great to drunk with, since he/she is a great story teller and knows how to crash a party. Don’t let your guard down though.
- Mashable Man: Girls, you sure gonna love his elegant and charismatic appearance. Yet after a while, you might feel a bit neglected since he’s always busy with meeting friends and keeping social contacts intact.
- ReadWriteWebWoman: Highly intelligent lady who likes to get to the bottom of things. Although her punctual and structured approach to life might start to get on you nerves.
- Loogic Guapa: For all of you who are looking for that Spanish temper, the Loogic guapa is your chick. If only all her friends wouldn’t speak Spanish all the time.
Written on January 14, 2008 – 8:33 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we select what we consider to be the most interesting posts about the next web (or Web 2.0, whatever you like) in the blogosphere. This weeks round up:
How I Redesigned My Blog on Problogger, January 8th
Guest post on Darren Rowse’s blog by Benjamin Yoskovitz. He describes in seven steps how to create a blog that leaves a smashing first impression.
Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org on ReadWriteWeb, January 8th
Last week we interviewed Chris Saad, founder of Dataportability.org, about his project. A few days later, Google and Facebook joined his initiative. Talking about spectacular developments… Yet what does the participation of these two giants actually means?
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes on Smashing Magazine, January 8th
Blogs are an important factor in the next web. Smashing Magazine is making this medium more accessible for users by selecting 100 free and really good-looking themes. Be warned though, it will take a while for the page to load.
French Press Falls For Major Facebook Prank on TechCrunch, January 9th
A young 28 year-old French man by the name of Arash Derambarsh decided to run for the Facebook presidency. He managed to get 9k+ votes and became a star in France. The press loved him, until they found he was the biggest prank in Facebook history.
Sign Of The Times: Web 2.0 Outsourcing Humor on TechCrunch, January 9th
More and more start-ups outsource their work: Outsourcing 2.0. Sandeep Sood asked an American student who is currently studying Mandarin in China to draw some cartoons about this trend.
Written on January 1, 2008 – 10:55 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Every year it takes webmasters a few days (or months!) to realize that it is a new year and they should update the copyright notices at the bottom of their websites. I know, it is trivial, but I just can’t help but smile when I see the most expensive and well watched frontpage of the world display ‘2007′ when it is actually 2008
Google and Yahoo: both wrong
CNN and Reuters: Reuters wins!
Wired and Techcrunch: both wrong
Apple and Microsoft: sorry Apple fans, both wrong
See any other funny examples of outdated websites?
Written on December 24, 2007 – 6:13 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
At last years Le Web conference in Paris a large part of the audience was not amused about the sudden appearance of first one, then two and finally three politicians on stage. Worse, they were French politicians. My main memory is one of them saying ‘Le Web est très importante’ which translates to ‘The Web is very important’. I remember thinking ‘I didn’t travel to Paris, and paid good money, to hear a politician telling ME that the web is important!’. And it seemed that more people felt this way judging from the hundreds of blogpost following that conference.
One big concern that was voiced was that these politicians were mainly interesting (if at all) to French people. For an organisation that aims to have a worldwide audience it is kind of strange to focus on local politics. Of-course the French consider France the center of the world so that explains that.
Now Techcrunch has moved into politics too. They want to ‘provide a voice for digital policy and technology issues’ which is a noble effort. They are obviously doing a very good job at it and have gained a lot of mainstream press too.
But just as at LeWeb in Paris, as an international citizen, I feel awkwardly left out. Sure, in the end, the US elections will influence my life too. But as a non US citizen I don’t don’t find it an interestingly enough subject for an international technology blog, or conference. In a way TechCrunch appears to say ‘We focus on American readers’ and this message is not very welcoming to people not from America.
It isn’t that I blame Techcrunch about their interest in the elections. They do have a large and influential following and can have an effect. And politics is a rich subject that can generate a lot of content fast. As Will Rogers said “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you”. Exchange ‘humorist’ for ‘blogger’ and you get the point.
Coincidentally Techcrunch is getting mixed up in a whole different sort of politics: copyright politics. It seems that Micah L. Sifry is not amused by Techcrunch choice of words when they picked ‘Tech President Primaries’ as a subtitle for their primaries. Sifry is Executive Editor and co-Founder of Personal Democracy Forum, a website that writes about the changing democracy in America, and he claims they started the ‘TechPresident Primaries‘ before Techcrunch came up with the idea. In a (now published) letter to Michael Arrington he insists Techcrunch rename the ‘Techcrunch Tech President Primaries’ and ‘acknowledge techPresident.com and the work we’ve been doing to get the presidential campaigns to be more internet-savvy’.
Sounds like a serious issue?
Not really.
As often happens in politics Sifry retracted his words the next day and claimed he had no choice but to ‘make our concerns public’ and ‘meant the phrase as a metaphor, not a formal legal accusation’.
I wouldn’t mind if the old saying ‘In Polite Company People Never Talk about Religion, Politics, Sex, or Money’ could be aplied a bit more to technology blogs and conferences.
Except for the Money & Sex part.
No, forget the Sex part too because as Ronald Reagan said:
“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
I’m sure that the day after Reagan said this he also said ‘ I just wanted to make our concerns public and meant the phrase as a metaphor’.
Written on December 7, 2007 – 7:20 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Businesses come and go, we all know that. May they Rest In Peace.
In the US an entrepreneur isn’t considered an experienced entrepreneur when he or she didn’t fail at least one time. The more failures, the better (hmmm.. not sure if I totally agree with that). In Europe we are far more conservative when it comes to bankruptcies. I like (as with many things) the mix between the US and European culture.
” 5 million went up on parties, scotch, hookers, blow. you know, the usual”
You don’t have to be ashamed if your company failed, but you must aim at creating a profitable business and don’t start a business just so you can fail (if you know what I mean).
Although a lot of negative things happen when a company goes out of business, there is also a bright side. The entrepreneur just learned some big lessons and has time to start a new company!
R.I.P.: Edgeio (see also Techcrunch article)
Edgeio was founded by Michael Arrington (yep, the famous blogger) and Keith Teare. I have had the luck to meet both in San Francisco. Keith is a great guy (he was the one who tipped us to wake up Michael Arrington which was covered by Wired Magazine later on :) ). Edgeio shared offices (and secretaries -Amy-) with Techcrunch. What Edgeio did..? Not totally clear to me.
Edgeio got 5 million dollar funding in October 2006 Intel Capital and Transcosmos and “burned through that money according to plan” !!!! EXCUSE ME! Guess their excel sheet predictions were spot on on the expenditures side but was a little bit off with the predictions of the revenues :)
A TechCrunch reader commented: “what exactly did you spend 5 million dollars on?” Arringtons reply is hilarious “parties, scotch, hookers, blow. you know, the usual” :)
R.I.P.: TED (no not the conference)
Closer to home, Amsterdam based TED pulled the plug. TED published a free paper for kids and had an internet concept attached to it and with TED mobile, TED TV and 25 talented people working at their office it seemed a healthy and successful company. TED was founded by Friso Jiskoot (son of former CEO ABN AMRO) and backed by Marcel Boekhoorn (Serial entrepreneur, investor in several startups -zecco.com symbaloo.com-).
I wish Friso all the best and I’m sure we’ll hear from him again as he is a true entrepreneur.
Sorry to conclude that TED is DEAD. R.I.P.
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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. (
