Winning by Sharing

NextWeb 2008: Quick roundup

  next web poster 
  Originally uploaded by ixtlan

NextWeb 2008 Event   Don't have time for a full write up, so here are some trends that caught my eye;

Aggregation.  There seems to be a trend in aggregation.  Lots of talk about FriendFeed and a couple of start ups planning either content and/or profile aggregation.  UberVu hasn't launched yet but will be a space where conversations (community) can be started around your content.  Postmachina's social hardware will synchronise and aggregate social network profiles on the web.

VC.  Venture capital is looking for BIG ideas, new approaches (to old problems) and growth sectors (e.g. mobile) - according to the founder of TheFunded - a social network for funded CEOs.

Business models.  At last! A social network that extracts value from member data.  Wakoopa is network for serious software developers and end users (.Net, Adobe, Mozilla, etc) that gathers statistics about people's usage and opinions of end user software tools.  It sells this data on to the software vendors. NetLog founder reported over 30m users and a revenue stream that is 80% advertisement and 20% premium services.  They also report massive demand for Group Pages and plan to launch a mobile, location based social network. Not bad for a company of only 43 people.

Other points to note;

Zilok seems to have gained a lot of traction.  A place to rent anything.  Proper contracts and insurance and a decent web experience for monetising everything from lawnmowers to saxophones.  Very localised (because people have to meet) so some potential social benefit by enabling relationships between parties that are previously unknown to each other.

eBuddy is bigger than I thought.  A meebo clone with tools that enable advertisers to reach the IM community.  Love the way eBuddy hosts all their press and media info on Flickr!

Adoption of Cloud Services is very high amongst west coast start ups.  The founder of Lookery, a Facebook advertsing tool says that he and most of his entrepreneur friends consider it the only way to go.

BIG hat tip to Nova Spivack of Twine who gave a "semantic web for dummies" master class. By far the most informative, insightful and profound speaker over the two days.  His entire approach to the semantic web, and indeed his entire ethos, is coincidentally very Winning by Sharing.

I missed the talk by one of the founders of Dataportability.org but wanted to enjoy Friday afternoon in Amsterdam with my wonderful wife!  Lunch at Gaucho followed by shopping and an afternoon nap back at The Grand hotel.  Nice!

Overall an excellent experience and very well organised by Patrick de Laive and his team.  Well done!

Social hardware for the masses

  Postmachina connect device 
  Originally uploaded by ixtlan

Postmachina; Fascinating exhibitor at the NextWeb 2008 conference last week, is planning to manufacture a solid state device that stores your network and personal profile. Instead of exchanging business cards or contact details via Bluetooth and SMS, users 'touch in' by briefly making contact with each other's device. Postmachina is a Dutch design studio and describes this new venture, called Project E;

"Project E is a set of integrated products consisting of wearable/mobile brandable devices. They have the ability to connect users to each other, as well as new or existing services, like social networks. The products create a bridge between the virtual and physical world, and are designed for natural, gesture-based operation."  Not sure why it's called Project E, but the product does remind one of that well known party drug, Ecstasy!

Renato Valdes Olmos, Postmachina director, told me that after experimenting with some early prototypes that used Bluetooth, they've had to design their own set of protocols to make the devices more robust.  It can be connected to a PC and its contents managed and synchronised with multiple networks (LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, and hopefully Ecademy & Xing)

It's too early to tell, but this device has great potential because it solves a lot of real world problems for networkers of all types.  Speed dating and speed networking users (night clubbers, event organisers, etc) would readily adopt this device particularly if it is cheap and preposterously easy to use.

Can you imagine how desirable these devices could be if someone like Apple got behind this venture?  Apple is probably the only company in the world that can make social hardware for the masses a consumer success story.

Robert Scoble poses with Leon Benjamin?

  Leon Benjamin and Robert Scoble 
  Originally uploaded by ixtlan

Or should that be the other way round?  In any case, Robert Scoble delivered a key note speech on day two of the NextWeb 2008 event.  It was short and to the point;  Have you noticed how social software really sucks if you don't have any friends?  When you sign up for Twitter, Pownce and other social software services your initial experience is so poor you wonder what the point is until of course, you add your friends.   Robert described this as the Friend Divide.  This is in stark contrast to traditional thick client software where everyone has the same experience (Excel, Word, etc), irrespective of the type of computer they use. 

Robert's talk only lasted 30 minutes and was designed to create more time for people to ask him questions.  An area he's investigating right now is mobile video streaming. He conducted a live demo of QIK - a new service that enables mobile phones to stream video to the web in real time.  It's also integrated with Twitter, more details at this Crunchbase article. He's off to Israel to interview the founders of a similar service - possibly more sophisticated.

This is going to seriously change news gathering and distribution because in a few years time, the quality and sophistication of devices will be good enough to deliver news programmes.