Joost won an award at thenextweb in Amsterdam, no one from the
company was there to take the award, so I took charge of it. It has made a very pleasant trip in Amsterdam (take a look at the slideshow) and now he is back to its right proprietary (le joost propriétaire). In the hands of Eric Clemenceau (European Sales Director)
Joost is very impressive company, the pitch was perfect, the way they present their EPIC future is so brilliant. They will succed. Their vision of advertising is the new revolution. If you work in advertising you should apply (the european team is 3 people only at the moment). They are a real possible Google of video, they have the power, they have the car they will have the girl (as a car ads used to say // [Bob] you should apply).
A lot of people from the media landscape at this great presentation
(thanks HEC Media) and many of them are already scared by this new possible monster and they are able to say it at loud ;-)
To convince Media they have a pretty simple pitch. Our guys have done Kazaa ! That’s what you can call weapon of mass dissuasion… pretty efficient.
I had a feeling of Steve Jobs … the iDay is larger than we think. People are also queuing for joost (20k a day)
Dealer is the new Portal*
And since i am at it … the next web is also Kevin Rose. Pownce is killer because it’s exactly my core value for twitter (read the first comment)…. Dispatching and pownce will bring it to the next level. I’m in like with you is for Like minded people. I also need to mention Mahalo as well as Lijit (just raised) for the People Inside (joost has it too)!
The next web is here !! What I want from media / What I want from my friends. How i want to live …
The iDay is … a cleaner Dealer who knows what I want
–> Give me a shoot quick !!
*and U.[lik]
is clearly gonna be part of it. A personnalized dealer* is always better ;-) Especially when you can deal everything you like !!
A lots of post about facebook recently. Why it will faill, why they should pay API developpers … I even done one two days ago. Danah Boyd has written a piece called viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace where she explained based on her observations that the gap between the two Social Networks could be a class division thing.
It’s a must read because she points to something that could matter a lot. The post has drawned a huge amount of attention, a lot of criticism … but a lot of folks (like me) do think she has put the finger on something real at the right moment. Bourdieu is quoted in the comments and there is a reason. Social Networks are about identity, identity is a social mirror. Social mirror is society and society is and always will be divided wether you form groups by political ideas, by respects of norms or even tastes. You can agree or not on Danah’s terms (like subaltern) It doesn’t change a thing. Enjoy the reading.
And let me dedramatize it with a joke about myspace and facebook from Casey Corbin:
This video about Prosumer is excellent. Olivier Ezratty (a BA in U.[lik]
) has been using the word since last year … and I agree with M.Arrington it’s great term.
This video is using the EPIC format of travel trough time to show the changes of the media world. (see all my post about an epic vision -Mainly in French-)
There are some very great ideas in it, like :
Amazon! buying yahoo (even better than Google buying Amazon) Content will rule, software is something else (Google buy Microsoft)
"Advertisement is choosen by the content creators, by the authors themselves and becomes infromation, comparison and experience" I agree so deeply !
Prometeus and plaze are even closer than we think probably in 5 years.
And the last thing that I love .. Voice = P.K.dick Avartar ;-)
BRILLIANT ! An EPIC Vision as i like them. Enjoy the video just below :
The Next Web Conference : Good & Bad things at the same time. (Disclosure: I paid the conference with my money which I think make a huge difference, so keep that in mind)
I really enjoyed Saul Klein ’s one about seeding Europe (see my previous post),
Tapan Bhat (Yahoo is currently exploring the micro-filtering +/- suggestion +/- not too much stay open stuff) slides were really about the next web and I need to find them (while waiting Read/Write has a great podcast). I would love to have their data analysis.
Identity 2.0 from Dick Hardt, at the beginning i thought it was the same presentation i’ve taken some ideas from, but at the end it’s a relly new presentation, the subject is deaper and the new product presented sxipper is great. That’s fantastic to see a vision become deep and real.
I enjoyed the "relationship bricolage" from Deborah Schultz.
Badges were smart = calendar + map to go to the dinner.
Mixed blessing
Having Kevin rose (see below on the read more)
Not having Michael Arrington
the wifi not working
Bad things
The price of my steack for the dinner ! 65€ ! My wallet never paid has much, ever !
The US style they’ve tried to create. It goes from having a timmer when start-ups were presenting coupled with the grumpy old men (even if it was really good sometimes). Awards were a really bad idea, we should put on stage great European company, not celebrating Youtube, Techcrunch or Linked In.
Jason calacanis canceled !
Booths were really small and alleys overcrowded during the breaks.
I missed the VC round but this one is on me !
No open plugs to refuel the laptop.
So at the end of the day it was a really good conference but we should have more quality time with people. Investment should pay more and we should leverage more the People Inside.
What I would suggest is having a day and half conference where we could get more of every thing and not try to outpace everything. We have the best capitals possible (I love Amsterdam, it’s a newly Hall of Fame city) we should be able to enjoy the place and the food while having more quality time.
08:00 to 11:00 The morning have an open coffee in a LARGE area !
11:00 to 12:00 Get Inspiration (No CEO nor partners)
12:30 to 14:30 Lunch : let a bunch of connectors have 5 cards to invite who ever they want to lunch (and add 2 open seats available on contest - why i should come to this lunch).
Afternoon = start-ups (not the ones funded by the local, even if i get the why) and put a huge speaker in the middle so people will attend.
Evening dinner = same process as for lunch or a self organized based on previous networking
Morning = Get Inspired again
Closing Open coffee / lunch with buffet and Large room (maybe booths too)
Go back home / Continue the talk with a really interested people / Enjoy the capital.
The idea of having a network prior to the conference is very good. Larger and deeper ecosystem
First let’s start with Saul Klein presentation @ The Next web conference.
Europe can lead in various internet domains (as said by Saul & Jeff Clavier) like mobile and broadband and probably open source and P2P. That seems to be a fact now.
Europe is lagging behind the US, but it’s actually great news. We have time for us. Time in our transparent world is knowledge and as we all know time is also money !
Time to see what happens over there in terms of new products and results. You can launch a copy of twitter, but you can also spend sometimes fixing the idea or the model, twitter guys are running after scaling (and hey are not currently translating it, it will cost in scaling ;-)).
Time to evaluate. Facebook make a huge announcement and like always it’s the rush in europe. You need to develope something quick … get on board as fast as possible ! Even if i agree that it is a great distribution opportunity, I want to know why last.fm hasn’t taking part. I want to evaluate if i can scale, I want to consider the product carrefully to get it right the first time. Why I can wait ? Because i was the only one in my facebook networks until a few weeks ago. When I look for HEC (my shcool) all the registered users will graduate in 2008 or 2009 (they are only 200 of them and they poped up recently). So facebook it’s just starting to break in France -31k users in the france region- (I know it’s more in the UK).
We learn from the US because they are transparent ! As Google Scholar says it "On the shoulders of the giants". We have been studing last.fm development plan and for scaling U-lik (that contains mainly photos) we use the scaling strategy of Flickr. It’s Priceless !!!
But most of all, Europe is a unique place because it’s plural.
Unifing Europe is more painfull, but it can be the best entry barrier you could ever come up with. And we are the all ones really capable of doing it quickly. Skyblog has beaten Myspace in many European languages, we have our leaders from Netlog to bebo or event Piczo. Try adding your school in Facebook, it does not exist… they have only 6 high Schools for Paris!
Think about Kelkoo and last.fm.
Cultural lifestyle can make it difficult for americans. Europeans don’t love stats has much as americans. We are more interested in quality relation than by having the largest number of friends. It’s no big deal but it means that we can create more value elsewhere in the chain.
Building a european large website make you closer to a universal model. Look at Amsterdam, people from all continents live there because they were once colonized. That’s an excellent spreading base for non european growth.
When Saul ask : "So what about Europe ?" he gave many examples:
we’ve always had creative prodigies (s20)
We still create global entertainment … (s21)
brands that define global luxury… brands that disrupt markets globally (s22 &23)
–> It’s all about entertainment, culture and high quality. This were we could make the difference.
European companies think big and entrepreneurs take huge risk and I agree with Gary… don’t need to blame entrepreneurs too much … we also need a better ecosystem. Saul gave a great help with the open coffee, but we need more. More quality !! I’ll get back on that one in my next post about conference in Europe.
We have time, we have exist startegy (it’s easier for an american to buy it’s way in Europe - again look @ kelkoo and Last.fm or we can go the other way and get quoted there -vistaprint-), we have entry barriers, we have quality stuff and we are closer to a universal apporach.
Ecosystem is getting better everyday and we will see more & more European successes … that’s for sure !
I love EUROPE and you get amazing insights from this various cultures (I have plenty of example from the conference). I’ll be happy to have your views on this.
—> Then it followed us on the saturday (& only me on the sunday) for an amelie poulain road trip. From what I can tell he had a lot of fun. All pictures are geotagged in Flickr so you can make the trip too.
I had an incredible time with thenextfrenchweb (hey guys that’s the tag we need to use).
I will write 3 or 4 posts when i come back. - why we had so much fun - why this conference wasn’t efficient enough - why europe rocks. - probably more fun.
Joshua Porter wrote a great post on circles of relationship a few days ago. It has generated many great responses and a new post that summarize all these contributions. Since it’s a subject we have been working on with my partner, i would like to share a very concrete approach of it : U.[lik]
First let’s have a look at the circles evolution from Ben Schneiderman (via Joshua) to People like us from Alex Mather:
The Schneiderman representation is clearly a pure social approach.
Alex Mather one is a pure Social Network approach mainly focus on the 18-30 years old group. According to him there are two main points that organize the circles:
Self, Friends, and “Those Like Us” are in a protected area.
Friends and even “Those Like Us” are more important than Family!!!
–> I agree at 100% !
The next step is from Sarah Cooper (Visual designer at yahoo) who introduces the idea of Collaborative Micro-Filtering. She has designed a quick demo of what it should look like. She also tries to build the specs for such a service.
The whole idea is to be able to get the right recommendation by using the right people for each different subject. Her mom & danna for clothing & Joel, jim and rashid for movies. –> Again I agree @ 100%.
That’s exactly these kinds of ideas that we have been working on over the last 2 years.
Implicite recommendation have a lot of advantages … mainly it’s effortless ! But it alsa have many problems. The list is quite long but it could be sum up with "making mistakes". That’s something user would not accept especially if it’s a mistake that a five year old boy wouldn’t have made. It’s a bit like, in the old days, altavista not finding its own website when asked.
Joost won an award at thenextweb in Amsterdam, no one from the
