Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on October 27, 2008 – 11:02 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
About a month ago, YouTube had announced that they do not plan to enter the live streaming market. However, many broadcasters have a real need for a platform that allows them to broadcast their live shows. Shaycarl who is one of the most popular and subscribed to users on YouTube looked for such a platform and found it on Israel-based blogTV. So have others. In the last 4 months, 28 of YouTube’s 100 most subscribed to vloggers and 80% of YouTube’s contributors (who are not YouTube’s Media Partners) are broadcasting at least twice a week on blogTV.
Livestreaming another way for self-expression
Leading internet celebs such as Sexphil, Charles Trippy, Lisa Nova and Shaycarl are all broadcasting their own popular blogTV shows now. blogTV has also announced today that even ObamaGirl will be starting to broadcast on their site every Tuesday and Thursday evening. This is major for blogTV considering that elections are just around the corner. In the last year, the company’s founders have reiterated that live streaming is the next type of user generated content that end users will turn to just like they are currently using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Live streaming is yet another way for users to express themselves.
Monetizing livestreams
Yet this whole story is not just about user generated content for blogTV. The company is also monetizing this content. Fifty of blogTV’s top broadcasters are internet celebs which enables the company to sell ads in these spaces at premium prices of $10-$12 CPM. These are considered to be very high prices for a user generated site.
Leading player in the live UGC arena
blogTV is growing very rapidly. In fact, Quantcast shows that blogTV has more page views in the United States and around the world than uStream.tv. This makes it a leading player in the live UGC arena. In September alone, blogTV hosted over 20,000 different broadcasters that broadcasted their own unique shows. blogTV is reporting that in each of the last 3 months they had over 30% growth.
Each its own niche
There are a few different players in the live streaming arena and each has found its own niche. uStream and Justin.tv are dominating the TV broadcasting niche whereas blogTV has captured the UGC live streaming niche. So if you feel like you have something to say to the world, get on blogTV and say it. If not, you can still tune in to all the interesting content that other users are providing. You won’t be disappointed.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on October 21, 2008 – 6:36 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
In these difficult economic times, it is important for all companies to become more cost-efficient. One of the ways you can lower your marketing costs is by turning to social media marketing (in case you’re not doing that already). Promoting your brand on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter doesn’t cost you anything (except for the salary of the person who’s doing the job) and is increasingly viewed as the best way to market your product to your target audience. Here’s a list of 35+ companies that are using social media to carry out their brand message, amongst them, Coca Cola, Cisco, Intel, Dell, etc.
Where’s your social media presence?
According to Phantom CTO, consumers even expect a social media presence from brands:
“The highlights of the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study came out recently. The results of the study point to a growing trend in how consumers want to be reached by businesses. The study found that 60% of American consumers use social media and of those more than half interact with businesses on social media websites. 93% of American consumers who use social media expect companies to have a social media presence and 85% of them believe those companies should be interacting with consumers through social media.
Cone Researchers say that the results mean that “Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media,” explains Mike Hollywood, director of new media for Cone, “it isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.”
Some social networks statistics
Social networks ARE seen as a welcome channel for discussion by consumers. See below chart from Forrester as well which breaks down interest by age groups (Note: This research was done a few months back and percentages are probably higher by now):
Much like social networks, coverage in the blogosphere is also a great way to get exposure for your brand and targeting those bloggers who would be specifically interested in your product is the secret formula for receiving the exposure you need. Don’t forget that bloggers are opinion leaders and their “say” is a crucial factor determining your product’s success or failure. If you approach the right bloggers that you think would get added value from your product, and you are able to gain their devotion as users and writers, then you have received coverage directly targeted at the right audience, without paying a dime. (more…)
Written on October 13, 2008 – 9:52 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
During these times we are all somewhat paranoid about what the future will bring and whether we are entering a startup depression. In his newsletter dated September 27th, Jason Calacanis writes:
“It’s my belief that the economic downturn will be much worse than it is today, and that 50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working on them) within the next 18 months.”
Jason gives startups a few pointers on how to survive the upcoming days and advises them to get focused, get leaner, and ultimately get profitable.
R.I.P Good Times
Om Malik had written last week that Sequoia held a meeting of all the entrepreneuers/CEOs of its portfolio companies and advised them to tighten their fiscal belts. Attendees were greeted with an image of a Grave Stone, with the following message: “R.I.P.: Good Times“.
According to The Marker, Other VCs such as Benchmark and Carmel Ventures in Israel have not only asked their portfolio companies to make budget cuts but have also taken their own advice and fired a few employees of their own.
So you may ask, is all this paranoia justified?
Some people in the industry think differently and much more optimistically about to the situation. Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund in New York City, writes:
“But I do think Jason’s missing one important point in his email. It’s not the venture backed startups that are going to struggle the most…All startups are going to have to batten down the hatches, get leaner, and work to get profitable, but the venture backed startups are going to get more time to get through this process than those that are not venture backed. Here’s why.
Venture capital firms are largely flush with capital from sources that are mostly rock solid. If you look back at the last market downturn, most venture capital firms did not lose their funding sources (we did at Flatiron but that’s a different story). If you are an entrepreneur that is backed by a well established venture capital firm, or ideally a syndicate of well established venture capital firms, then you have investors who have the capacity to support your business for at least 3-5 years (for most companies).
Venture capital firms will get more conservative and they will urge their portfolio companies to do everything Jason suggests (and more), but they will also be there with additional capital infusions when and if the companies are making good progress toward a growing profitable business.”
Lack of IPO’s
According to VentureBeat, Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, believes there is an economic crisis in the lack of IPOs. but he doesn’t agree that so many start-ups are going to close. He believes there are still many angels who will continue to finance innovation among the seed-stage companies.
Mike Kwatinetz, founder and partner at Azure Capital Partners who invested in Bill Me Later during the post-bubble period and sold it recently to Ebay for $945 million, believes that this is exactly the time when investors should look for and target good business opportunities that they could profit from when the market revives.
He raises five good points:
- Since there’s less competition between the VCs, deals are priced more reasonably.
-
Entrepreneurs have a better understanding of how much funds they really need in order to build their business and will stop asking for $40 million.
- The entrepreneurs who will stay in the game are those that really have a passion about building their company and not those adventurous entrepreneurs who come to Silicon Valley to make a few easy millions.
- There’s less competition between companies and there are less startups doing the same thing.
-
One can hire a more skilled staff. Since the last bubble it’s been quite hard to find good people. Now this will change.
Flush out the doomed start-ups
So what do I think? In all honesty, nobody really knows what will happen as the startup world has never had to deal with such economic uncertainty in the past. However, it is my belief that the current situation will only do us good and allow those startups that have a unique offering to survive while flushing out those startups that were doomed to failure from the beginning. As Calacanis writes, companies now need to get better, more efficient, deliver more value, and use more cost-effective means to develop and promote their offerings. But this is not a bad thing. It just means that those entrepreneurs who really believe in their ideas need to find new ways to adapt to the current situation.
As Fred writes:
“I don’t think we are in a “depression” in startup land. We are in a down cycle driven by a bad global economy. I think the web and information technology is one of the few bright spots in an overall gloomy economic outlook. So if you are working on a web technology company, be happy that you aren’t working for a bank, a brokerage firm, an automobile company, or in many other industries. The tools and services that are made in the web technology business are only going to increase in demand over the next five years. But we are going to have to service that growing demand with leaner and more focused businesses and it’s time to start thinking more about profitability and how you are going to get there.”
Survival of the fittest
About a year and a half ago I wrote about the fact that we have too many startups offering us too many of the same things and that it may be time for Darwin’s survival of the fittest to take its place in the dotcom world. I mean, how many social networks do we really need?
As Stowe Boyd, writes:
“How many social bookmarking apps do we need? Is there really a place for seventeen social aggregators, or eleven blog comment plug-ins? Attention to hard numbers and real growth rates might lead hopeful entrepreneurs and investors to get smart fast and drop experiments that aren’t working, and to go back and dream something up that is really innovative instead of just-another-fill-in-the-blank application.”
Get funded one way or another
It’s time to get innovative people. It’s time to make changes. And if you’ve got a good, unique concept, I don’t think you need to be worried. You will get funded one way or another by VCs who still have plenty of dow or an angel who rather keep his money away from the Stock Market these days. Those companies that need to be worried are the ones that offer too much of the same and too little of the extraordinary. Sure, most startups will need to cut their budgets, but what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger and the extraordinary will thrive. So stop getting depressed. Stop panicking. Depression and panic will lead us no where. Get inspired. This is your time to shine.
Written on September 4, 2008 – 3:17 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
ReadWriteWeb recently published the results of a one year follow up on a study of social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US done by The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. According to results:
“familiarity with and use of blogs, podcasting, wikis, online video and social networking has skyrocketed in 2008 to nearly double what it was in 2007. 77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.”
Here are some more interesting stats for you taken from Robin Good’s blog:
1) 39% of these 500 companies are blogging currently - a 20% increase since 2007.
2) The social media that was most familiar to companies both in 2007 and 2008 was social networks. However 57% claim to be “very familiar with it” this year as opposed to 42% in 2007.
3) Familiarity with wikis jumped ahead of podcasting this year.
4) Even though podcasting was found to be the least familiar media this year, it still has a 21% adoption rate.
5) Adoption of all six forms of social media is rapidly growing. An astounding 77% of these companies report usage of at least some social media tool.
6) 44% of respondents in this year’s study feel that social media is “very important” to their business and marketing strategy as opposed to only 26% in 2007. We can see that companies are truly beginning to understand the importance of social media to their business strategy and goals.
Here’s the early majority
Given these figures, it is obvious that social media is no longer only familiar to and used by early adaptors. America’s fastest growing companies are turning to social media because they understand that by using these tools they will they be able to achieve success in today’s online world.
In related studies, Universal McCann found that half of adults in the US now use some form of social media online and the April prediction from Forrester Research is that “Enterprise 2.0″ will become a $4.6 billion industry over the next 5 years.
So my question to you is: Are you incorporating these tools yet in your business strategy?
Written on August 25, 2008 – 9:19 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
MeeMix, the Tel Aviv-based personalized internet radio community that allows users to create personalized music stations and music video channels, has just announced the launch of MeeVideo, its new personalized music video channel application on Facebook.
Similar to MeeMix’s audio channels, MeeVideo gives users the opportunity to create a personalized music video channel and discover new music that fits their musical taste. Videos are streamed via YouTube. Once you choose your favorite artist, MeeVideo will show you music videos of similar artists that you may like, saving you the hassle of trying to find them yourself. You can personalize your channel even further by marking videos that you like as favorites, blocking videos that you don’t like and skipping over videos that you are indifferent to. MeeVideo only allows users to create one video channel at a time, but users can view an unlimited number of music videos.
MeeVideo discovers personalized music videos based on a unique algorithm that takes into account song parameters and user behavior, determining and personalizing each channel based on the user’s distinct taste in music. According to CEO Gilad Shlang, “The amount of work a user must invest in order to find favorable videos in YouTube or other video applications is overwhelming.” MeeMix is able to provide a service that eliminates the hassle of searching for music videos online, making discovering new music a pleasurable experience.
CenterNetworks writes: “This is certainly an application that can seriously increase the time on site metric for Facebook if they can get a strong userbase.” I agree. I found the application to be totally addictive due to my discovery of many suggested music videos that fit my taste.
The MeeVideo application also has some neat social features. You can choose to share favorite videos with friends or post videos that you like to your mini feed. Additionally, a friend-discovery feature allows you to view other users with similar taste to yours. You can befriend them and view their favorite videos, thereby increasing your ability to discover new music even further.
MeeVideo is a great example of an application which actually gives users some added value. The only feature I would add is a search mechanism allowing me to find specific songs that I want to listen to and also share with friends. Wouldn’t it be sweeter to receive Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” song on your birthday than a picture of a flower on your wall?
The MeeVideo application is now available on Facebook and will also soon be available on other social networks such as: Hi5, Bebo, Orkut and MySpace.
Written on August 14, 2008 – 1:16 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
There are different ways of optimizing your social application’s virality. Here are 8 great tips:
1) Create an application that gives value to the user. Ask yourself: “What would make me, as a user, add this application?” If you can’t come up with a good answer, you’re probably not thinking of the right application to make. As Tom Kincaid writes:
“Unfortunately, people will not flock to put something on their profiles just because YOU care about it. People will put something on their profile because it provides value to THEM.”
2) Give users incentives to share the application with their friends. You can use incentives such as ranking or virtual money which they can use to win prizes. Don’t require users to invite 20 of their friends to join the app before they can use it. This tactic is just annoying and many groups have already emerged on Facebook boycotting such applications.
3) Don’t create a one-time use application. These applications will be the first to be removed by users from their profiles since they render no continued added value to them.
4) Build an app which allows the user to increasingly enjoy it if his friends also join.
5) Make it easy to invite friends by providing a link in a visible spot and allow for different ways of sharing the application. For example, if you created a quiz application, allow people to send their results to their friends.
6) Build an application which allows for various interactions with friends, thereby increasing its visibility and adding value.
7) Allow users to create their own content. Users will want to promote and share the content that they created.
8) Make sure people know about your application. Promote your application in the right channels. If you created a dating app, make sure you’re promoting it in dating groups and communities.
It’s all about quality, folks
Hopefully these tips will help you create a more viral app, however, at the end of the day, these suggestions will only take you so far. Above all, In order for your app to be viral, it needs to be good. I know this is easier said then done, but I believe that with enough researching, brainstorming, and planning, you’ll be able to come up with something. For more information, check out my post: What Does It Take To Become A Sustainable Facebook App?
Written on May 24, 2008 – 3:05 am
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
My dear friend Yaniv Golan, CTO of Yedda, had given a brilliant presentation regarding Incentives In Online Social Communities a few weeks ago at The Marker COM.vention and since it’s unfortunately in Hebrew, I wanted to translate it, include some of my own additions, and share it with you.
Online community participation
Yaniv Golan
Let’s start with the obvious question….Why?
Why do users comment? Why do they write blogs? Why do they upload pics to Flickr? Why do they send links to friends?
What are the motives behind user participation in social communities? Understanding why users participate can lead us to understand further how to engage users and increase their participation in online communities. Let’s first learn a bit more about our users.
(more…)
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
Written on May 13, 2008 – 11:44 am
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
One week ago Nine Inch Nails surprised their fans with a special treat giving away their new album Slip absolutely free on their website. The album is available for download in a variety of formats: MP3, lossless at CD quality and 24/96 WAVE format, which means even higher-than-CD quality. Downloaders also receive a PDF with artwork and credits. This is not the first time that Trent Reznor is sharing his music for free. Here’s a little history for you.
In 2007 NIN produced an album called The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust and made it available to fans as a free download. Many thought that Trent was only mimicking Radiohead who asked fans to put their own price on the group’s release in the same year. Though I believe that by the time you’re finished reading this post, you will see that NIN are true innovators that have achieved quite a lot since being released from their major-label recording contract last year. The fact that NIN has given away music various times in extremely high quality formats and released it online using a variety of tools shows that it is serious about this model. This is not just an “experiment” for them like it was for Radiohead who have since said that they will not be releasing online again.
According to Mashable:
Reznor called Radiohead’s effort a “marketing gimmick,” and Yorke’s latest statement does nothing to disprove it. Reznor did it right. He set out his plan very clearly, and he’s doing well, earning 1.6 million dollars from album sales in the first couple of weeks, according to him.
In March 2008 NIN released a portion of their album Ghosts for free via BitTorrent. According to TorrentFreak, the band confirmed that they had uploaded the album themselves to sites like The Pirate Bay, Waffles.fm and What.cd. The NY Times quotes Trent describing file sharing as “a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.” Trent Reznor himself admitted to downloading music using BitTorrent and being a former user of OiNK. The band also offered a digital download of the entire 36-track collection for a flat $5 from its site and Amazon.
On May 4th of this year, NIN released their single ‘Echoplex’ for free via their iLike page and told fans to check the NIN website the next day for a surprise. The surprise came the next day when fans found out they were receiving a full-length NIN album as a gift from Trent for their continued love and support. What an amazing way to cause a buzz and increase the love of fans! Everybody was twitting and digging about the free album.
NIN is truly paving the way for future artists to find new means of distributing (and profiting from) their music.
(more…)
Written on April 6, 2008 – 4:29 pm
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
Since MySpace recently launched its MySpace Developer Platform (MDP), I was looking for some statistics on the virality of MySpace apps.
According to Fred Wilson, Zynga, which has launched a couple of Apps on MDP, has done some interesting research and found the following:
1) Myspace apps are not taking off in the same speed that Facebook apps did (see below). This is probably because MySpace is currently not promoting these apps nor linking to them in any way. There is no newsfeed to promote the apps and apps are only visible on profiles. You cannot invite friends to an app and apps cannot message users in any way. For now, apps are being installed only by those users who are aware that there is such a thing as apps.myspace.com. As Wilson writes, this may be a deliberate move on MySpace’s behalf: “This may well be an attempt by MySpace to avoid the “app spam” that became a problem with the Facebook platform and has been largely eliminated with the new rules that Facebook has implemented.”
2) There are major differences between the top twenty apps on MySpace as opposed to the top twenty on Facebook (see below). It is not yet clear why these differences exist, however, I believe that it’s just too early to tell which apps will be most popular on Facebook as all this is still in development plus many of the apps on Facebook are not yet available on MySpace.
I also understand from a friend who’s working on a MySpace app that even though apps created for MySpace should supposedly work on all other OpenSocial networks, several changes are still required in order to upload the app on each of the platforms.
In spite of all this, I still believe that developing a MySpace app now has enormous potential and at some point soon, the virality of these apps will take off in full speed. I do think that players who get in on the action early will enjoy dominant positions later on. In addition, in order to stay competitive, MySpace has allowed platform developers to run ads and keep 100% of the revenue.
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
Twitter
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. (
