Written on October 16, 2008 – 4:38 am Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
It’s interesting to see that so much attention is going to the iTunes Application store, don’t you think? When ‘experts’ stated that applications, email and games moved to the web, I never imagined something like the Itunes Applications Store to happen with such impact. With Android coming up, we can only expect more potential for application designers, good news! Granted, we discussed a number of amazing applications for the Iphone in the last few weeks but haven’t really touched upon handheld-ready websites here. Reason for that is that the browsing experience on these new handhelds are SO good – We never had the urge to find ‘n list optimized websites for the shiny gadget. When I got my device, I started looking for links to good websites but couldn’t find that much, actually they are hard to find. Here are some applications for you to discover new websites on your shiny gadget, and please while you are at it, leave your favorite mobile website in the comments! (more…)
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A delegation of 40 Dutch entrepreneurs and investors visited China last April, they visited marketing offices, gaming companies, multinationals and telecom companies in Shanghai and Chengdu and got their eyes opened to the dynamics and potentials in China. Some participants wrote down their interesting experiences and lessons, and published them in a 76 pages counting document (Dutch) a few days ago. Here are some of the highlights in English.
A profile of the Chinese web
Dorrit Gruijters mentiones that there are 1.3 billion people living in China, and only 210 million from them had an Internet connection in 2007. CCNIC reports expectations of increase to 280 million users by the end of 2008, an indication that the Chinese market is coming up strong. Currently, about 75 million Internet users are posting actively on bulletin boards, and China counts 50 million bloggers. The average Chinese person spends about 17 hours per week on the web.
Opportunities for online advertising
Chinese are still hesitant to pay online and E-commerce in China –with a turnover of about 1 billion euros– is just beginning, says Marco Derksen. You still pay a fixed price for advertisements in China, while the western advertising world works with CPM, CPC and CPL and viral marketing is almost non-existent. Although, online advertising expenditures are expected to increase about 50% in 2008. Derksen concludes that the Chinese advertising market is growing and maturing quickly, leaving opportunities for viral and search engine marketeers.
Online gaming free and moving to mobile
Marc van der Chijs mentions that next to the Internet, the online gaming industry is also growing quickly. Last year the amount of gamers on the Chinese Internet has raised from 48 to 59 million people.
Especially the Massive Multiplayer Online games are very popular. A trend in the online gaming industry is the movement from pay-to-play to free-to-play, a situation where revenue is created with in-game items. Yuri van Geest mentions that the China is the biggest mobile market of the world, not so wierd that mobile games are increasing popularity and with 550 million users, expectations are high.
Rapid developments in online education
China will develop itself rapid in online education, says Jan Kees Meindersma. New initiatives include Bluetooth push services for educational data at the Shanghai University and online learning games for the younger generation. But most interesting is the OpenCourseWare Consortium, seeking to expand the amount and quality of online study material on the web. Currently, 10% of academic universities attent, and the TU Delft and the Open University are participating.
Written on May 15, 2008 – 3:13 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Web 2.0 is all about sharing and Steve Rubel is obviously aware of that. An 2.0 maven like him has no problem with sharing some inner thoughts, like…, well.., hallucinations. The thing is, Mr. Rubel sometimes has visions about where the web is going. No problem if you ask me, since wasn’t it acid hippie professor Timothy Leary who said that Internet is the new LSD? So please allow me tell you about Rubel’s vision on the next web.
For those of you who don’t know Steve Rubel, he’s an experienced digital marketer and influential blogger pioneer who has built a large following and is now working for one of world’s largest PR firms, Edelman. During his Next08 keynote Rubel shared some of his knowledge of marketing trends, his so-called open files. After discussing the well-known shift from mass reach to micro reach, the different types of internet users and the tunnel vision of web professionals - we think everybody is on Twitter-, he turned to his open files.
He divided the open files in three types: faint signals - the cut & paste web, rise of experts and collaboration -, watchlist - living room 2.0 and geek marketers, and - there they are - hallucinations. Steve Rubel has two of them, namely digital nomads and data leaking.
Data leaking
Corporations are losing control of their information, as it’s leaking out of their ruined fortresses. The walls weren’t build for keeping the technologies of the new digital age out. Employees are communicating through Facebook and LinkedIn, instead of using the corporate email. Moreover, they work collaboratively on Google documents. This is scary for walled organizations, as they can’t control information anymore. According to Rubel, this trend will become more salient over the coming years.
Digital Nomads
These guys quit their corporate lives to start traveling from city to city and work as consultants. They use web-based tools to work together with others. Rubel: “You can see them working in Starbucks a lot, or at those new co-working facilities.” Although a few thousand people have been adopting this lifestyle - like my friend Polle de Maagt -, Rubel calls it “worth watching”.
I think of the current lifestyles, this is one of the most romantic. Those digital nomads are the new Jack Kerouac’s and Hunter S. Thompson’s: traveling to wherever life takes them and meeting interesting people all over the world. All these experiences are documented in their blogs that inspire other people.
Share your hallucinations
I’m really glad Steve Rubel has shared his hallucinations, as it gave the audience some interesting new insights. I’m sure that I’m not alone when I say most speakers tend to repeat stuff we already know. Sometimes, they just have to leave their guard down and share those thoughts that are a little bit out there. Maybe even further than data leaking and digital nomading.
Written on April 14, 2008 – 11:32 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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 March 26, 2008 – 10:23 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You probably know the Amazon Mechanical Turk. It’s a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes up for the inabilities of computer programs. You can buy some human intelligence for prices of a few cents. Oh, and human intelligence might sound good, but most of the tasks are repetitive and boring. Combine that with the low prices and you understand why some critics call the Mechanical Turk a ‘virtual sweatshop‘.
Let’s face it, new working technologies and labor systems often arouse negative feelings. We don’t like things to change. News about outsourcing journalistic work frightens us since it doesn’t match with our beliefs about the profession of journalism.
Artist Aaron Koblin finds his inspiration in trends and changes in this information age. According to his website, the San Francisco- based artist ‘playfully turns lots of data into lots of information’ in order to raise questions.
On Wired I’ve noticed a video about his latest project The Sheep Market. He asked the ‘providers’ of The Mechanical Turk to ‘draw a sheep facing to the left’ for 2 dollar cents. He received 10,000 sheeps and combined them into one art piece. From far away, it looks like a some sort of bar code, but when you come closer you notice the small drawings: data turns into info.
Written on October 16, 2008 – 4:38 am
It’s interesting to see that so much attention is going to the iTunes Application store, don’t you think? When ‘experts’ stated that applications, email and games moved to the web, I never imagined something like the Itunes Applications Store to happen with such impact. With Android coming up, we can only expect more potential for application designers, good news! Granted, we discussed a number of amazing applications for the Iphone in the last few weeks but haven’t really touched upon handheld-ready websites here. Reason for that is that the browsing experience on these new handhelds are SO good – We never had the urge to find ‘n list optimized websites for the shiny gadget. When I got my device, I started looking for links to good websites but couldn’t find that much, actually they are hard to find. Here are some applications for you to discover new websites on your shiny gadget, and please while you are at it, leave your favorite mobile website in the comments! (more…)
Written on May 15, 2008 – 3:13 pm
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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. (
