Written on December 12, 2008 – 11:53 am Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
She wants me to invite her. Should I do it?
ASmallWorld is one of those famous social networks for the rich and famous from all over the world who help each other out on a lot of stuff. Although I’m rich nor famous I got an invite to the network about 2 years ago anyway. Must be my good looks. ;-)
I started using it and build my profile and my network. After my buddy list on Skype, friends on Hyves, business contacts on Linkedin, marketing business and German contacts on Xing, my international friends on Facebook and my Twitter follow list it was just another network where people could find me.
Different than other Social Networks?
Is it any different? Well, not really. The user interface is poor, usability idem, but in the end it is about the people who are on that network. The network has been ‘invitation only’ since the start and invitation rights are hard to get. Exclusivity is the main driver of the network. The main difference would be that the average income of the people in the network is probably a factor n higher.
I got invites!
Last june I got invites to ASW and now I can invite up to 10 people in the network. I blogged about this on my personal blog and I was surprised to find out that that particular post got 22 comments (make sure to check them) of people begging to get an invite and more than double the traffic I normally get (My mom is the only one reading my personal blog normally).
Today I got an email with this subject:
I offer EUR 500 for an invite to ASW
What!!! I must say it is very tempting, but I think I’ll skip this one. Unless someone has a higher bid?
I hope you like that post!
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Written on December 10, 2008 – 1:23 am Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
Today, Amsterdam based Twones launches in private beta. Twones is a new Music service that tracks the music you’re playing on your computer (iTunes, WMP, Winamp) AND on 18 web services (Youtube, Last.fm, Myspace, Muxtape etc.). Disclosure: The Twones guys share offices with us and we have a minor stake in the company
Read also what Techcrunch wrote about Twones.
The service collects the songs and destinations you’re playing and shows your songs and the songs your ‘friends’ are playing in a twitter like interface.
Screenshot of music stream:
Screenshot of Heavy Rotation (most popular songs)
Legal
Twones might have the answer to the legal problems of most online music services. Twones directs the traffic to the source where the song is played in first hand, the service itself does not play or embed songs and just collects and displays the data of which songs are played on which site. Twones could be seen as the Delicious of music, it drives traffic to other sites.
Earlier this year Twones received seed funding from a group of European Live Nation informals, the world’s largest concert and music promoter.
Check the 3 minute intro video: (notice the avatar :) )
Written on December 5, 2008 – 12:07 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
Hyves (winner of last years The Next Web Award for Best European Company) has 7+ million members and is by far the biggest social network in the Netherlands. Today they released the Hyves iPhone app. It is immediately the number 1 most downloaded app in the Dutch iPhone store.
In many ways it looks a lot like the facebook app, which might be a disappointment for the true web savvies and mobile addicts (who were hoping to see new revolutionary stuff), but hey, let’s not complain, it is great that a Hyves App is available for the ’shiny object’ and they have included some nice features.
The app:
In short it has the basic features of the website; you see the so called buzz of your friends, there is a WWW (WhoWhatWhere) section with twitter-like updates on what you’re friends are doing. You can check out pictures and albums of your friends and you have your friends and their contact info at your disposal. What is pretty cool and can come in very handy is that you can directly call your friends (without the need to know their phone number) from the friendslist (note and call for action to all my friends: your phone number needs to be known to Hyves).
All together it is a nice to have and useful app, although it could be a little snappier.
Here are some screenshots:
The future:
My guess is that this first app will be rapidly followed up by new versions with new functionality and available on a lot more phones. They’re using this app to test how people are using it and what features should be available on all phones. One thing that has been left out (on purpose probably) of this version is the friend finder.
It makes a lot of sense to be able to see where your friends are and it makes even more sense that this will be provided by your social network, where you’ve invested hours and hours of building your network, uploading photos and using as a communication service to stay in contact with your friends. My guess is that this killer-app will be introduced in the next version of the mobile app, once there is an app that supports the majority of all phones. The rationale behind this is pretty straightforward; You want to see where your friends are and not where your friends are who have a certain phone (iPhone in this case).
Conclusion: If you’re a Hyves user you need this app.
P.S. What is remarkable is that this is an English language app aimed at the Dutch market!! Could this mean Hyves is planning to expand internationally? I leave the speculation up to you… UPDATE: The app is (of course) bilingual and depends on the settings of your iPhone thanks, Martijn, Yme and Kjeld.
Written on November 14, 2008 – 4:50 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
In 1987 we had a major stock market crash, ten years later (1997) another correction of the stock prices made us shiver and in 2001, still fresh in mind, the bubble burst, resulting in a vaporization of almost all Internet related stocks. We can say that 2008 is a dramatic year for stocks, but also for the worldwide economy.
We, the people, lost huge amounts of money (wealth) during each and every of these crises, but many people earned their fortune during these bearish times. The difference between a good economy and a very bad one is that during a good economy the wealth of a lot of people increases, during a bad economy Joe and Jane Schmo loose wealth but there are still big winners. You could argue that under certain circumstances the stock market is a zero sum game, meaning that for every dollar won someone else lost 1 dollar (conventional economics state that the stock market is not a zero sum game, it is not easy to understand and goes beyond the scope of this post).
Lots of professional traders for example earn money when stock goes up or goes down, the higher the swings the better, as long as the market moves these volatility traders earn money. Lets translate this to the web. We could say that there a loads of companies going after gold but are actually poorly managed, have the wrong/right people in the right/wrong place, or anything else that makes it that a company doesn’t work (the Joe and Jane Schmoes of this world). On the other hand we have some professional traders in the embodiment of professional and healthy companies that know there way around, build stuff that people want and earn money. Those are the companies who have the opportunity to grow and come out even stronger of this
The good things of a bad economy
Employee loyalty
Your employees will love you if you nurture them and can give them security that they can keep their job. As it becomes more difficult to find another job, your employees are more likely to stick with you then to try finding another job at another company.
Fire badly performing employees
First of all a bad economy urges companies to think over their strategy and their right of existence. If you have a company and you have employees that do not blend in very well, the crisis is a good excuse to use to lay off some staff. In Europe it is really hard to fire someone, but during the crisis even that is possible. I’ve heard some companies saying that they don’t need to lay off people cash wise, but do so because if there is a time to say goodbye to some people who are more happy somewhere else, that time is now. Everybody understands it.
Down to earth
Second, companies and their employees get down to earth again and focus on stuff they are good at (and makes money). No more wild and excessive parties, no more buying every gadget we think we need. No more Salmon and caviar for lunch (or is this a bad thing..). The message the economy sends us is clear. Hold your horses and go back work.
Less competition
Third, a lot of companies that are badly managed or are underpricing their services in the hope to get some market share will not make it through the downturn. This is good news if you have a company and have positive cash flows. You’ll survive these turbulent times, you might even come out stronger and you might loose some of your competitors along the way!
Internet services might find new clients
Fourth, I think companies are looking for a way to reduce costs, they’ll go over all costs and might find qualitative equal but cheaper ways to get the job done. In general this is good news for Internet companies (you need to have a good product or service though). A senior manager at Amazon mentioned that since the economic downturn they see an uptake in the use of their web services. I wouldn’t buy Amazon stock in the blind based on this info, but see it as an example how high-quality-low-costs services find new clients.
Buy things cheap
Of course, you need to have cash in the bank, but you can buy stuff or companies cheap now. We saw acquisitions in the banking scene (e.g. the Dutch government that bought the healthy part of Fortis, including ABN AMRO, for less than the price Fortis paid a year ago for ABN AMRO alone). But what about buying Yahoo! for almost 1/10th of the price you’d pay 8 years ago (Apple… maybe). And there are a ton of nifty startups out there that build a sweet service and are up for grabs for the bigger fish in the sea (publishers, wake up I’m talking about your chances here).
Buying companies now allows you to grow and will create you a stronger position after the crisis, if all goes right.
Written on November 11, 2008 – 5:26 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
The biggest social network in Germany, StudiVZ announced a partnership with Rotterdam based Nimbuzz.
Basically it comes down to this:
1. Nimbuzz enters a commercial partnership with social network StudiVZ (12 million users), bringing real-time web and mobile communication to their social networks.
2. They have agreed on a revenue share that will start generating income from adverts sold on StudiVZ in ‘09
3. Nimbuzz will add the following features to the StudiVZ community: location sharing, SIP calling, Personal Message and they have support for 11 languages.
Nimbuzz claims to grow at 10k registrations a day and they have a 25% active user base in over 200 countries worldwide. More distribution deals will follow.
It seems like Nimbuzz has found a way to tap into existing social networks in stead of building one of their own. I think that is a smart move. They have received over 25 million in funding from amongst others Mangrove and Holtzbrinck Ventures.
Update: Holtzbrinck gmbh, bought StudiVZ a couple of years ago. Aha…. that explains part of the deal. If you are wondering what to spend 25 million on finding on here is one example. Yes, it is a Nimbuzz sponsored Porsche. That explains the 10k sign-ups a day!
Written on October 12, 2008 – 5:06 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
If you have a hard time understanding what is going on nowadays and you have some time to watch world’s most known investor George Soros, you’ll get a good basis for all chit chats tomorrow at the office.
Bill Moyers interviews Soros, who has been warning years ago of a financial melt down fueled by easy credit and sleepy regulation. If you ask me these for words are a spot on explanation for the crisis.
Written on October 10, 2008 – 4:24 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
The financial crisis becomes more and more pervasive and a lot of people have been hit hard by falling stocks. Everybody is facing tough economic times, but the people who have their money in stocks have even less reasons to smile.
Today is again a bearish day, indices are falling again (Amsterdam -5%, London -9%, Frankfurt -9%, Paris -5%, Brussels -5%).
In recognition of these bearish times, the Blog08 conference, organized by Ernst-Jan and Edial and cooperation with The Next Web, came up with a special financial crisis offer. Only today people who know people that have been hit by the crisis can buy one ticket and get their friend a free entrance pass. Help a friend!
Written on October 2, 2008 – 6:49 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
Blogging has become a major business.
Bloggers have become super powerful. Bloggers like Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Arrianna Huffington of the Huffington post and Geenstijl (Dutch) are influencing their thousands of readers on a daily basis.
Another indicator of the importance of blogging is the number of conferences and events about blogging. We’ve had Les Blogs in Paris, US-based Blog Her, our own BLOG08 and many, many others.
Gurus and authorities
Blogging is not only used as a news portal tool, a lot of people use their blogs to promote themselves. By sharing their thoughts on their favorite topics they became gurus and authorities in their field. Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod, Loren Feldman, Fred Wilson all became famous because of their personal blog.
Ask around what blogging have meant for the people who are passionate about it and blog on a regular basis. Tim Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Workweek said it really well when we were in Greece on a beach: “There are more currencies than money, take this as an example, we’re here because of blogging”. He is so right, although a small amount of people can actually live of blogging alone, there are a lot of bloggers who get other currencies than money out of it. They get jobs, invitations to parties and conferences, they meet people and get into situations that people who don’t blog (as passionate) miss.
Personal brands without blogging works for some as well. Photo by ∗natsu∗
Ultimate personal branding Wordpress theme
Blogging is a really important tool for personal branding. So is being present on social networks, having your photos on Flickr, share thoughts and ‘mindfarts’ on Twitter etc. etc. But here comes the question, if blogging is a must in personal branding, how come that there is no ultimate personal branding blogging theme for Wordpress?
I was looking for a new design of my personal blog. I wanted an upgrade, something that would
look neat.
would make it easy for me to update on a regular basis.
a blog that keeps track of what I’m doing all over the web, so my parents, less web savvy friends and people who are interested in me (for business purposes) get a one stop shop blog with all (interesting) info.
I couldn’t find the ultimate theme. I’ve thought about just using Facebook, but that doesn’t do it for me. I’d love to use Facebook as a marketing tool, but as a stand alone personal blog it’s just not good enough, maybe not different enough.
How would the ultimate personal blogging theme look like?
I’ve made a list of some things I’d like to see. Feel free to add your wishlist to it. I’ll get in some of the best designers and we’re gonna build this thing. If your suggestion is integrated (and you’re the first) you’ll get this theme for free (when it’s done)!!
Wishlist:
Twitter integration - show my tweets on my blog, but let them fade out and disappear after x minutes / hours (option in the settings)
Show my Flickr photos - not all but only my photos with a certain tag
(Livestream) video - Vimeo, Youtube, Qik, Kyte. I want to show the last video I uploaded to one of these services (maybe two videos, for frequent vloggers. one featured) I think this should be continues on the frontpage
Where am I - It would be cool if there is a map with my current location, but also where I’ve been traveling.
Testimonials - display at random one testimonial in a widget in the sidebar and give the opportunity to write one
Where can I be found on the web - some icons of all the services where I have presence.
All this in a stunning design (of course) and widget compatible.
Well it’s a beginning, I’ve left enough room for your creativity. What do you want for your own personal branding blog?
Written on September 30, 2008 – 1:14 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
It cannot be that you haven’t heard of the financial crisis. Bailout, crisis, Dexia, Fortis, etc. are buzzwords discussed on Twitter and are all over the financial news.
What happened and will it affect Internet companies?
It is a very complicated story, but with my financial economics master of science degree, my experience as a broker on the Amsterdam Exchange (10 years ago), and the fact that I lived in Argentina during their major financial crisis, I’ll do my best to share my thoughts on this economic turmoil.
The first problem
The American economy has shown a deficit on the balance of payments for something like 50 years in a row. Meaning that they import more then they export, or in other words they sell more dollars than dollars are bought. According to economic theories a deficit on the balance of payments should lead to a weakening currency. A lower dollar makes import more expensive and export more attractive and this would turn the deficit into an excess on the balance of payments. The problem… this never happened.
The dollar stayed strong. How is that possible? Well on the other hand a lot of capital investments got into America, people/companies investing in American companies, but foremost it was China that kept on investing / lending money to the US government. This way China bought billions of dollars (to keep the dollar strong in comparison to the Yuan, so that America would keep on buying Chinese export products). America financed their growing economy with borrowed money, mainly from China.
The second problem
In the US, real estate prices were soaring. The American economy lived on the rise in housing prices. It was easy to get a mortgage (and a second one) to finance houses, cars, holidays, burgers etc. Because the prices of American real estate kept on rising, people could borrow money based on their property. People kept on borrowing and now most Americans live in debt. All those mortgages need to be payed off, but a lot of Americans can’t pay the rising bills. Some banks were highly exposed to ‘bad mortgages’ and needed to borrow huge amounts of money (from other banks) to ‘keep things alive’. Interbank rates rose because the risk got higher. Then the first banks started to fall apart and nobody exactly knew which bank was exposed to this new threat. Trust is the main driver of our economic system and trust began to fade.
The people on Wall Street took outrageous risks (and reaped outrageous rewards) hoping and counting on a safe parachute (the government) to land when things got bad. A failure of the American economic system would lead to a worldwide depression and that is not what the government would let happen, bankers thought.
Well things got out of hand. People are panicking, there is no trust in the banking system and everybody is dumping their stock.
The bailout plan got refused, stocks are going down and we’re on the verge of the biggest financial depression in the history of mankind.
What does that mean, how will it affect us?
This is really hard to predict. As long as there is no trust and people believe it is better to put their savings in ‘a sock underneath the bed’ we all have a big problem.
But okay, lets see what’s kind of easy to predict:
The financial sector will be hit hard, that is for sure, but as Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer said earlier today “No one is immune from this financial crisis”. Financial issues are going to affect both business spending and consumer spending. So we’ll see a downturn in the global economy.
For the Internet industry, this is also bad news. The next one or two years will be tough ones for startups in search of investment. Investors will take less risk, and will invest in startups that already have a proven business model in place. The time of throwing money at entrepreneurs who claim to have “a great Internet idea where people can share…. social… ” will be over. We’ll see a shake-out of small Internet services who can’t find a way to get their users paying for their service. I believe that it will be essential for small startups to charge money as of day one to make it through this financial crisis. (If there is no money available from investors, who else is going to pay salaries?)
In the short term, we will see a decline in advertising budgets for all companies, but in the medium term I expect an increase in budgets for web advertising. Companies will have to spend their money more wisely, so I expect a bigger shift of budgets to the web, at the expense of TV and Newspaper advertising.
In the end, our economy is all about trust, trust in the banking system, trust in the people you work with, trust in the companies you work with, etc. The web ,and everybody working in the sector will notice the crisis, but new opportunities will arise and the web will come out stronger.
Written on December 12, 2008 – 11:53 am
The financial crisis becomes more and more pervasive and a lot of people have been hit hard by falling stocks. Everybody is facing tough economic times, but the people who have their money in stocks have even less reasons to smile.
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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. (
