Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 22, 2008 – 10:12 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When this blog just got started, Johan Pretorius tipped us about the rocking South African 2.0 community. Well, this industry just got more mature since Afrigator - a social media search engine - has launched the first ad network for African bloggers.
The network - called Adgator - is still in testing phase which is limited to a small group of South African bloggers. Kenya and Nigeria are next in 2009. The “early days” should prove whether it’s possible to make some money out of blogs aimed specifically at the continent of Africa.
What are the reactions in the South African blogosphere like? Well, pretty positive. Here’s the most triumphant one: “Adgator takes on Adsense in Africa,” writes Appfrica:
The South African social media aggregator Afrigator is taking on Google’s Adsense by offering a platform for Advertisers and bloggers interesting serving their local audience. Afrigator has a reach of 1.7 million African bloggers. Platforms like Adsense often fail in foreign markets because of their size; a significant portion of the ads they place aren’t relevant to local audiences at all. By focusing on South Africa specifically, Adgator can make sure that the ROI for advertisers remains pretty high.
[Via Global Voices Online]
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Written on November 13, 2008 – 9:36 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I’m touring around China with bloggers. I hope to give you as many updates as possible about this land of endless opportunities. Thanks to Spil Games for sponsoring me.
The China 2.0 train stopped at the HQ of 51.com this morning, one of China’s largest social networks. Last month, they counted 130 million users of whom 38 million paid the site a visit. The average users logs in eleven times a month and then surfs around for 41 minutes. On a daily basis, the 51.com adorers upload eleven million pictures, write three million blog posts, and watch 35 million music clips. These last numbers prove that entertainment is rather important at 51.com, hence the company launched an open applications platform.
Monetizing applications
VP Andy Yao told us that 51.com launched the platform last August. Since then, 149 applications have been developed. Third party developers are responsible for 130 of these nifty little apps. Every app gets used around 2 million times a day. So how do these third party developers profit from providing 51.com with their creations?
- Google Adsense - developers can place Google Adsense blocks on their pages. They can keep the revenue, as 51.com gets an introduction fee from Google for every developer that signs up.
- Via SMS premium payments, 51.com users can buy 51.com coins. These coins can also be spend on applications - revenue will be split.
Human trafficking
Beyond photoblogs and other native apps, most popular 51.com apps are entertainment-oriented. When Yao gave “Sell your friends” as an example - which obviously is a Facebook rip-off - some funny remarks about human trafficking were made. This example perfectly shows that copying Facebook really pays off in China.
Facebook-copying skills
51.com isn’t the only company who masters the Facebook-copying skills. Earlier this week, we met the founders of social network Kaixin001 - China’s hottest start-up. Their grow curve looks like a hockey stick. They went from 5 to 2000 servers in less than six months. Kaixin001 owes its success to smart copying. The founders noticed Facebook’s most popular element is the entertainment apps category. Thus they improved the top entertainment apps and launched a social network focused on white collar workers. Yao: “These visitors were shocked by all the funny little things they saw. Thanks to a smart emailing system (read: SPAM, EJP), their product spread rapidly.”
So yes folks, the copy-cat approach always pays off. Even in the rough Chinese market.
Written on August 7, 2008 – 5:26 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Google Adsense has announced some key enhancements, based on the technologies of the in March acquired Doubleclick. These improvements will offer a “better experience for users” (meaning less annoying and less privacy) and “better value for advertisers” (meaning more statistics and control):
These steps will be introduced in the coming months:
- Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.
- Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.
- Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.
- View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.
To be able to provide these new statistics, Google needs to follow your footprints through the Google Network. So Google will embed a cookie that monitors how many times you’ve seen an ad and whether you clicked on it. If this doesn’t sound like a good idea to you, there’s the possibility to opt out.
How about the not-so savvy users?
As a savvy user, you’ll be aware of this. But the majority of people browsing around the Google network still think there only is an analog version of cookies (the ones you’ll find in a jar). So how will they be able to know Google is tracking most of their online activity?
Written on June 1, 2008 – 12:32 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Feedburner has just announced that they will start offering AdSense to a small group of selected publishers. This will mean you will be able to show ads in your feeds directly. We already offer this to the publishers on The Next Web blog but we had to abuse the system a little bit. Right now we use the FeedFlare functionality to add links to our advertisers under each post feed. It was the most easy and manageable way to add a link to each feed without touching the Wordpress source files.
It would be nice to see more new features added to Feedburner in the future, something the Feedburner team is promising. One thing I would like to have is more control over the contents of the feeds through feedburner. It is great that Feedburner is adding Adsense but it would be even better if I could add AdSense, or some other content to my own feeds.
Some simple editing features would be great too. Images tend to get screwed up in feeds and it would be nice to be able to have a ‘Don’t show images’ option for feeds.
Another feature that I miss is the option to edit newsletters. Right now people can (and do) sign up for a FeedBurner newsletter from TheNextWeb.org. I can set a few options but have no control over any content. One thing I would love to do is have the newsletter sent out only once a week and then just email hyperlinked titles of posts instead of all posts.
After FeedBurner got acquired by Google they became very quiet with only a monthly update to the blog. For a while I wondered if Google was ‘Dogdeballing’ Feedburner and if it might be smart to go look for an alternative. It seems they are coming out of hiding now with some new features and updates. Just in time?
A few interesting Feedburner statistics:
Total feeds: 1,657,885
Number of publishers: 934,797
Number of podcast and videocast feeds: 229,542
Written on May 17, 2008 – 6:30 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Despite being a tech geek I have not used a mobile phone more that about 10 times in my entire life (shock horror). They just never really interested me but I guess it says more about my social ineptness than it does about mobile phones.
But an odd correlation, I had the same feeling about computers as they went through the Microsoft business tools era (Word, Excel, Quickbooks et cetera), as a developer back then computers just didn’t get me going, so I spent the nineties in electronics making audio products.
Mobile live stream battle on SXSW 2008: Scoble vs. Pistachio
Despite being an early hacker on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum at about age 14, computers really only got interesting for me with the arrival of the Internet, then when broadband arrived I got ‘really excited’.
But in the last few months something has changed the landscape so dramatically in the mobile market that I see a paradigm shift similar to the above where an entirely new species of mobile device evolves which is much more attractive than has been previously seen. Obviously I’m not alone having these thoughts, as we sit here thousands of others are having the same realizations, not least those emanating from Adobe’s crystal ball.
So after teasing Sarah Lacy I’m checking out the comments of Arrington’s interview with Lacy which was streamed live through a mobile via Qik and looking through, there’s loads of trolls getting into a twist about the quality of the stream. Being a bit of an expert in the sound department, immediately I see obvious errors and solution.
(more…)
Written on April 12, 2008 – 9:56 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Yesterday we reported that Yahoo! is thinking about partnering with AOL and using Google’s Adsense program instead of its own to boost revenue.
It is ironic that today Google AdSense is down with a “The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later. We apologize for any inconvenience” message in 27 languages. AdSense is Google’s ad-placing program. It is the program that puts ads on website and blogs. It seems that ads are being served but the site to monitor and manage them just seems down.
Google Adwords, the ad-selling system where advertisers pay money to advertise on Google or on individual websites, is still up.
UPDATE: It is a scheduled maintenance job:
Site maintenance on April 12 at 10am PDT
Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance tomorrow, April 12th from 10am to 2pm PDT. You won’t be able to log in to your account, but we’ll continue to serve ads to your pages and track your earnings as usual.
Located in a different time zone? Here’s the maintenance start time in a number of cities around the world:
Ottawa - 1 pm Saturday
London - 6 pm Saturday
Hyderabad - 10:30 pm Saturday
Hong Kong - 1 am Sunday
Canberra - 3 am Sunday
My suggestion to Google: put a link to that blogpost on your error page. Not every Adsense subscriber reads the Adsense blog.
Written on February 20, 2008 – 4:29 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Until now it has not been possible for Flash developers to embed Adsense or any other ad-networks ads into a Flash widget. Adobe have made it clear from the beginning that this is something beyond the scope of the technology which has increasingly become a thorn in the side and ‘the most serious limitation’ for Flash developers to realize profit from their applications.
There are now literally hundreds of millions of Flash widgets embedded all over the web, mostly on third party sites, where the widget developers would JUST LOVE to monitise that content with Adsense and other ad networks. So a solution for this Major Dilemma is long over due and the prize for best hackers of the year goes to Scribd who have just launched a new product (IPAPER) that incorporates the said invention. In their own words and from their site come these lovely words:
Monetize Your Documents
If you have documents on your website, you could be missing out on a monetization opportunity. You advertise on your web pages, why not your documents? iPaper integrates a sophisticated ad system by Google that automatically targets ads to the content of your documents. By switching to iPaper, you can immediately begin to monetize your documents. All you have to do is collect the checks.
Click image to see a working example Flash widget with Adsense.
Hacked Solution
Now as they have cracked / hacked a way round one of the greatest limitations of Flash widgets this is going to revolutionize the web! Specifically increasing incentives for the hundreds of thousands of developers who are using Flash to make embeddable features for third party networks such as Facebook et al.
No one has yet come up with any serious solutions for monitising Flash content to date. (more…)
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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. (
