Written on May 17, 2008 – 12:21 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
Sergey Brin at Garage Geeks
Thursday night Garage Geeks hosted Sergey Brin, founder of Google, who was nice enough to answer many of our questions about Google’s past, future, and his view of the Israeli startup scene.
Garage Geeks is a “physical & virtual space for multi-disciplinary creative people to meet, innovate and build non-commercial projects that would otherwise may not come to life.” Famous Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi hosted the event.
So many questions were answered actually that my camera’s battery died at a certain point so I apologize for this video not showing the full Q & A session (though it shows most of it). Thank you to Vardi and Garage Geeks for making this event happen. Here is the video from the event:
Online Videos by Veoh.com
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Written on May 16, 2008 – 3:55 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
The people from Level 3 travel all over the world to events and conferences, put down a Red Couch and interview people about the future of the web. They try to find out what people would do if there was no web at all, what they miss in the current web and how it affects their lives.
They interviewed a lot of people at The Next Web Conference 2007 edition and again at the 2008 edition.
Those interviews can now be found online here:
http://www.level3.com/redcouch/redcouchdetail.html?id=6
Here is a list of all people they interviewed this year:
Corly Bedacht (triprtv), Minne Belger (Cellspace), Simone Burmmelhuis (iens.nl), Gary Cige (Zilok), Sam Desimpel (Introniche), Vladimir Oane Dragos Ilinca (Ubervu), Patrick de Laive (The Next Web), Nick Hallstead (Favorit), Steven Jongeneel (Symbaloo), Jan-Joost Kraal (ebuddy), Martin Källström Twingly), Marco Menato Wauw), Edgar Neo (bvit), Martlin Pannevis (Nulaz), Gil Penchina (wikia), Solofo Rafeno (Beezbox), Marc Rougier (Goojet), Arjen Schat (The Next Web), Dr. Christian Schmidkonz (andunite.com), Andrew Scott (Rummble), Bryan Thatcher (Empressr), Joe Trainor (Level 3 Communications), Reinout te Brake (The Spill Group), Louise Verschuren (wuzzon), Dr, Werner Vogels (Amazon.com), Mathijs van Abbe (Mobypicture.com) and me: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten (The Next Web).
Written on May 13, 2008 – 8:21 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
The new connectiveness might be leading the way to world peace.
Nowadays youngsters are meeting up to 5 times as many people as their parents did, we are communicating more than ever and it will not stop here as more and newer ways of communicating will be found. People can’t live without communication. The web, and technology in general, have boosted the communication wave immensely. Respect comes out of understanding, communication is the only way to understand other people, different cultures, religions and beliefs. Two years ago, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim told her dream during the TED awards; To bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film. Saturday her dream came true in the form of Pangea Day.
Over the whole world people were gathering (I was at a gathering of the Young Executive Society in Ljubljiana) to watch a 4 hour event where videos from all over the world were shown about all kinds of topics, but especially about understanding different cultures, about love, about peace, about being a human being.
It was a great experience and I can recommend you watch videos, but just in case you don’t have 4 hours, here is my personal top 5. (more…)
Written on May 12, 2008 – 3:38 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last Tuesday co-editor Boris and Johan Schaap organized a dinner for Marc van der Chijs, a Dutch entrepreneur who co-founded China’s largest video site Tudou and the Asia division of online gaming company Spill Group. In Holland and beyond, he’s well-known as a true pioneer who represents the almost endless possibilities in China.
During dinner I had an interesting conversation with him about Tudou, entrepreneurship and enormous bandwidth usage. Van der Chijs came to China because of his job with Daimler-Chrysler brought him there. Yet after a while, Van der Chijs felt the urge to do something on his own and quit his job. “I went from a car with a chauffeur to a bicycle”, he told me. “I signed up for a six-month Chinese language program and started building my first company”. Eventually he co-founded Tudou, and this is where it gets really interesting.
Tudou is one big success story as it’s world’s largest video sharing website. According to Mary Meekers latest data in Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends Report, Tudou (35 billion minutes in January) is 40 percent bigger than YouTube (25 billion minutes). An average visitor, Van der Chijs told me, stays on the site for 47 minutes: “For the young Chinese people, it is a substitute for television”. Competition is tough though, as other major video sites like Youku and 56.com also manage to attract millions of visitors every day.
As you might know, they’ve recently raised 57 million dollars. When I asked Van der Chijs what Tudou will do with this money, he replied: “Spend it on bandwidth”. No other site has a bandwidth bill which is as high as Tudou’s. He said that he could turn Tudou into a profitable business by limiting the bandwidth usage, yet then his competition would probably catch-up. So Tudou uses the recently raised money to invest in servers and its infrastructure. “We’re talking about thousands of machines here”, said Van der Chijs. Moreover, Tudou isn’t doing a bad job with selling advertisements - preloaders and banners - and preventing unnecessary money spending - “I fly economy”.
So take this from a man who knows what he’s talking about: to stay ahead of the competition, video sites like Tudou should invest in bandwidth. And one day, one day it will most definitely pay off.
Written on May 9, 2008 – 4:04 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Since the iPhone was announced Blackberry users suddenly felt less special. Weren’t THEY the ones that were always connected, always on and always in sync? Flashing a Blackberry Curve or Pearl just didn’t make an impression anymore. But there was just no way we could switch from our trusted Blackberrys and get used to that innovative onscreen keyboard that the iPhone made such headlines with. As a RIM executive said
“I could just never get the feel for it because, well, there is nothing to feel.”
Fortunately you can now get a preview of Research in Motions iPhone killer. Will it kill the iPhone? Definitely not. But it will get us Blackberry users back some self esteem:
Written on May 7, 2008 – 8:00 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You might have read about this on Mike Butcher’s TechCrunch UK: Hobnox, a Germany-based start-up that aims to become the next big thing for people in the creative industries. It’s an online music and video platform where users can watch, connect, collaborate and create. Co-founder David Noël sent me an invite so I decided to give it a shot, as his plans sounded very ambitious. What struck me the most when testing the service were the über cool flash-based audio and video Noxtools. I’ve made a screen shot of the audio Noxtool to give you an idea:
Once you’ve figured this tool out it’s possible to upload your masterworks to a personal library. You can then create a playlist that you can publish to the stage for everyone to see. There are also three Channels which are maintained by Hobnox’s own editorial team and streamed in high quality. This team is screening the work of the community to find some hidden talent.
It’s an original concept, yet I’m afraid it’s not original enough to function as a closed platform. To me it sounds like MySpace on steroids. The only part of the service I haven’t seen on the web so far are the super sophisticated Noxtools that bring the music and video editing to the browser. Therefore, the guys from Hobnox should work on integration with other services. I don’t feel like starting another blog, I’d rather import one. Same goes for pictures (Flickr), movies (YouTube), songs (MySpace), and calendar (Upcoming). If you want to show your ‘old work’ on Hobnox you’ll have to upload it all over again, or link to it from your blog.
I’ve e-mailed David to ask whether this will change or not. He replied: “Good point. We plan to add API’s to sync with other services but they haven’t been created yet. We’re still working down the list of features. Users can simply upload their content into a Hobnox profile.”
They’d better hurry, since David also told me Hobnox will launch a rather impressive marketing campaign this summer, aiming it UK, US and main-land Europe. “We will start a contest in the early summer with which contestants can win a 25K€ artist development package. We are also looking for other means of directly approaching creative people. Bar camps, trade fairs, events etcetera, all centered around music, film, and culture.”
Hobnox is one of the coolest start-ups I’ve seen lately - the design, high quality Web Tv and Noxtools certainly make an impression. If they take the walls of their garden down, I’m sure they can attract the creative crowd they’re aiming for.
Written on April 15, 2008 – 8:00 am
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Probably a lot of you guys went to The Next Web Conference. Though for those of you who didn’t, I’ve summed up the key arguments of the speakers in a two-minute a video. It gives a great overview of the speakers who attented there and shares some interesting insights. If you want to know more, browse to the live blog coverage of Anne and Ernst-Jan.
Unfortunately, it is only two minutes. So I’m afraid that you’ve to attend the full two days next year!
Written on April 9, 2008 – 9:14 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
On March 30 a bunch of girls in Florida invited Victoria Lindsay over to their house after an online conflict on Myspace got out of hand. Instead of talking things over they decide to beat the 16 year old girl up and film the whole experience with their phones and digital cameras. Victoria passes out during the fight, gets up and gets shouted at and beaten some more. After she escapes she is treated for a concussion at the hospital and has severe bruises all over her body.
The parents of Victoria talked to reporters on Monday about the whole experience. Being a father of two daughters myself and having watched the video of the fight I relate to them as parents. But unfortunately the focus of the story starts to shift from the 8 girls (now arrested) to the websites that these teenagers are using. Apparently Victoria had a profile on MySpace which got ‘hacked’ and the parents, and probably some of the viewers, seem to think that The Internet is the cause of all evil.
Understandably the parents look for someone to blame. And in this case that should be easy. 8 girls beat their daughter up and have several videos to proof it. But Victoria’s father repeatedly mentions online services as the real cause of this tragedy. He goes as far as calling MySpace “the anti-christ for children”.
I remember getting beat up (not as bad as Victoria though) as a kid over marbles and toys. But nobody ever needed to blame the stuff we fought over or the tools* we used to organize these fights. (* = We passed pieces of paper to each other in class. Not very high tech but it worked.)
One thing is clear though. Social networks are becoming an integrated part of society and as such have to come up with rules and regulations for these kinds of cases. How do you deal with teenagers (or any people) using your service to start a fight? Do social networks have a responsibility towards their users to keep them out of trouble? Can a social network claim the same position as ISPs when it comes to data traveling over their networks or services?
Some social networks are pro-active in their approach to these kinds of situations. I know of one example where a social network works closely with authorities when it comes to soldiers killed in action. The families of the soldiers are uncomfortable with online profiles of partying teenagers and would rather circulate an official portrait. Some social networks are giving in to requests to delete these profiles and the photos on them.
The question remains how far these social networks have to go in taking responsibility. If someone dies in a car accident, will they also take off the profiles? How about if someone is just very ill? Or not really ill but just a bad hair day? Where will they draw the line? They will have to decide what they think is their responsibility and what is not without making themselves vulnerable to the accusations that some people may throw at them.
Video Interview with Talisa Lindsay and Patrick Lindsay (quote at 4:15):
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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. (
