about everything, and especially the rest
Let me freaking pay for your service! |
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I wrote a post titled “I want to be CEO of such a service“. It was about some Twitter’s users (@jeremywright) bashing about the lack of Twitter SMS service in Canada. Jeremy was screaming out loud he wanted to pay for the service in exchange for more features.
Continue reading ‘Let me freaking pay for your service!’
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Business ideas are a dime a dozen |
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Business ideas are a dime a dozen
Pamela Slim in this interview with Guy Kawasaki.
I said it in the past, and any accomplished entrepreneur (like Charlie O’Donnell here about YouDeparted) will say the same. It’s all about execution - and risk.
Yesterday, I took a first step in that direction. Many of my friends told me they admired the risk I’m taking, and that they would love to do the same, but have no ideas.
Imagine if someone told you “Hey! Let’s build Notre-Dame de Paris in LEGOs!”. Nothing new there. However, the result is stunning (see the picture above). And is exposed for hundreds to see at the Lego World in Cologne.
That’s execution and marketing. The idea was worthless without them.
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Sprint, the Now Network |
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Just stumbled upon this amazing video from Sprint, advertising the “Now Network”.
You might have seen it, but if not, take a look at the figures, amazing!
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Google closes the loop? |
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Google Profiles are now available in results of Google name searches. Only available in the US, but that’s kind of in the line of a post I wrote a week ago: What if …? Gmail vs Facebook vs Twitter.
The differences and gaps between Google and the main social media actors will be decreasing, and if Google’s Open Social is well driven, it could well lead Google in becoming a major social network player.
I can’t wait for Google to start taking interest in ride sharing and social transportation! ;)
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Flickr is Dead |
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… or not.
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I was recently speaking with a friend about how Flickr was an amazing tool. I have been using it for years now. I love the ease of upload through the Flicrk Uploader, the flexibility of the API, the feeds for tags/sets/collections/….
However, I was also saying that for my last trip in India, I uploaded my pictures on Facebook and a specific site I did for the trip. But almost none on Flickr.
And I was arguing that on Facebook, pictures get a second life. Yes, you can comment pictures on Flickr, but that’s all. On Facebook, you tag your friends, they are notified, their friends see the new pictures, you can comment the pictures and your comment will be in your news feed, … and your pictures live longer. Numbers are here to prove it: Facebook hosts more than 15 billion pictures, as Flickr only hosts 3.4.
I was advocating for a more social use of Flickr, which hadn’t come to surface yet. Imagine if you could tag your Facebook friends no Flickr. You would benefit both from the Flickr interface and platform (dedicated to make sharing pictures online better) and your Facebook social graph.
And BOOM! Last week I read about Polar Rose and tried it this morning: powerful and great service that does exactly that. The seamless integration of Facebook Connect and Flickr Authentication makes it a brease to connect your account to your flickr pictures and facebook frends. Then Polar Rose finds faces in your pics and your can tag them.
Works pretty fine, see the screenshot below of the interface: it recognizes my father and a friend - impressive, no? I then pushes back the tags to Flickr (see 3rd screenshot). Continue reading ‘Flickr is Dead’
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Free vs Not |
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I finally took the time to watch Marc Simoncini’s interview at LeWeb3.0 (last December in Paris). Marc is the founder of Meetic, the leading European dating site that no one has heard of here in the states.
Indeed, when you look at Compete’s stats, the site comes at 20K uniques in March 09 in the US. Meetic doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page in English. When you google “Marc Simoncini”, you’ll find almost no bio in English. Talk about low profile!
However, Meetic is healthy dating site that counts more than 42M profiles in Europe, have had a steady and dynamic growth of revenues since its launch (133M€ in 2008), is present in 15 European countries and a leader in many (all?) of them.
As a comparison, Match.com has 15M members worldwide (one third of Meetic…), and eHarmony claims 20M members… If you remember well, Meetic even bought out Match.com European operations.
A longer intro than expected, as I just wanted to quote Marc. When asked by Loic Le Meur about Meetic’s subscription business model vs free dating sites (i.e. PlentyOfFish), he simply answered:
If you want to dance and can choose between the most expensive night club in New York or a free one, which one will you choose?
Makes sense. You can play the devil’s advocate as much as you want, expensive clubs are always packed.
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Motivation, perseverance and stubbornness |
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According to Alec Oxenford, OLX is now counting 80M monthly visitors (Spanish), and over 1 billion visited the site since its inception. International traffic is where OLX is really strong, and the company concentrates on developing countries. Right now, still according to Alex, there are more than 23 millions classifieds on OLX. As a comparison, Craigslist saw 50M visitors in the US in March 2009, and claims 40 million new classifieds each month.
Pretty impressive for OLX, knowing that the company just celebrated their 3rd anniversary. Again as a comparison, Craigslist launched its website in 1996!
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It’s about time! Gmail image inserting |
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I’m a Gmail user since summer 2004. At the time, you still had only 6 invites for your friends, so it was quite hard to get in. But when you did, in 2004, it was a COMPLETE revolution. Nothing was AJAX at the time, and such a seamless execution of online email was a technology breakthrough.
And, as I wrote yersterday, Gmail has been continuously improving since then. But two things has been lacking all the way. Two very Very VERY basic things: in-line imagine inserting and html signature. What this means in basic proper English is that you couldn’t insert images in the text, or add formatting / nice links / logos in your signature.
It was like traveling in a broken Ferrari with manual windows…
And finally, here comes image inserting! Woot woot hooray! It was about time…
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What if …? Gmail vs Facebook vs Twitter |
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Some random free-thinking this morning…
Gmail Labs introduced the “Sender time zone” into Gmail. It displays in which timezone the person who sent you an email is, and if you should/could call or not.
Nothing fancy, just useful.
Useful - that’s what Gmail is about, and has always been for its now 110M+ user base. And since the introduction of Labs and Gadgets, if became even more powerful. For instance, you can now share emails with embedded YouTube videos or Flickr images. You now have a full twitter client inside Gmail with TwitterGadget. You can also have Google docs right inside your sidebar. In the side bar too, Google Calendar, with private or public events. And so on.
Add to all of this the voice+video chat, that allows seamlessly to share files, videos, images, and chat one-to-one or one-to-many, and you have many ingredients for a successful social network.
Finally, Gmail status. Poorly implemented today, but it could be very powerful, and when you think about it, it’s not far from the Facebook status updates (commenting, and easier posting). Add search, which is not where Google lacks knowhow, and Boom! you have a twitter.
Would people use Gmail as they would use Twitter or Facebook? Probably not. Gmail is for emailing. Facebook to exchange pictures, videos, updates and messages with friends. Twitter for crowd-messaging.
But could they? Definitely.
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Facebook: what’s next? |
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There is a very interesting discussion today on the NextNY list about Facebook and its solidity for the future. I’ve said in the past that Facebook (as Google) is everywhere in my online life, and I’m a tech-savvy user.
Some argue that Facebook is doomed, won’t grow with its users, is too big, not financially wise, … I don’t agree. Whatever the road chosen, tech critics have to do some more empathy with the 200M+ users of Facebook. They are not the Silicon Alley and Valley technologists, they are the average Joe and might stick to Facebook because Facebook brings them what they want: friends feed, pictures, videos, emails, chat. Boom. AND Facebook evolves, changes, is solid, things that MySpace was not in 2005.
Ha. MySpace. Remember? I was on it, everyone was on it. Than it became too crowded visually, unstable, a real information chaos, music and pictures everywhere, commercial twice the size of my own pictures, and everyone flew to some other destination. Everyone? Not so fast: Facebook opened its doors to mass public (not limited to universities or companies) in September 2006, almost 2.5 years ago. And MySpace was purchased in July 2005. It’s only in late 2008 that Facebook finally passed MySpace in the US…
Then some argue that young users are going to move to new, funkier and “cooler” services. That might very well happen, but doesn’t seem to be the trend yet. And even though, the strategy of the open API and FacebookConnect might very well mean that you’re already somewhere else, and if you are you are still under Facebook’s scope.
So basically, given past choices of Zuckerberg and developments of Facebook, which I always find quite smart, I’m pretty confident in the ability of the company to either generate revenues or keep the growth appealing to investors. Beacon was a great idea, maybe poorly executed. But it’s right on track to allow advertisers to benefit of the extended and lively network.
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