Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on November 30, 2008 – 4:43 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
On November 18th, Dutch blogger Nathalie Lubbe Bakker wrote a controversial post. She worked in a bar in New York and was rather surprised to see the Belgian minister of Defense Pieter De Crem stumbling in. According to her, he was absolutely drunk. One of De Crem’s men told Lubbe Bakker the reason to come to New York: he had nothing better to in Brussels and had never seen the Big Apple.
Of course this post was a hit in the Belgian blogosphere - with quite harsh results for Lubbe Bakker. A week later she was fired. Then the mainstream media picked up the story - as they had prove something had happened in that bar. 311 people commented on the post in which she questions the freedom in speech in 2008. Even some major tech blogs, including TechCrunch, covered the incident.
Still, the minister isn’t too pleased and made a remarkable statement about blogs (probably out of anger). He told a journalist the Belgian house of representatives that blogging is “a dangerous phenomenon”. According to the minister, everybody can throw with mud and make random accusations. He says that the targeted person has no possibility of defending himself.
Yes, that darn blogosphere can be scary. But for heaven’s sake, hire a PR person who knows how to deal with it. Don’t start a fight, since you’ll never win it. Don’t focus on destruction mr. De Crem. Instead, try to profit from the endless source of opinions. You want to know what ordinary civilians think about your country? Read some blogs.
The campaign by Adhese might teach De Crem a lesson. Blogger Stefan asks everybody to showcase a Flash badge on their blog (pictured right). ‘Cause yes, bloggers are pretty damn dangerous - especially when they rally together. Cheers Mr. De Crem!
Hat tip: Polle de Maagt
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 August 31, 2008 – 4:54 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Europe knows some language barriers, we all know that. Every time we compare the Valley with our continent, that’s the first thing which comes to our minds. But trying to break those barriers can be really worth it.
Next Web team in Paris
My Next Web colleagues Patrick and Arjen plus I tried that in the beginning of this year, when we made a road trip through Europe. We’ve visited Geneva, Brussels, Gent, London, and Paris. The latter was a particularly interesting experience, as the city has a really vibrant and cowboy-like start-up community. Anything seems to be possible there. You don’t even need an Internet connection at home, just work at a free Internet hub. Seeing all that was really interesting. We’d like to offer you a similar experience.
Therefore, we’ll give away two invites for WebDeux.Connect, a meet-up in Paris with over 400 web professionals. It takes place on the 11th of October. Some basic knowledge of French is vital, but if you have that, you’re good to go. Leave a comment and we’ll pick two winners next Sunday with a raffle.
Written on May 6, 2008 – 3:10 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
We have just installed a new WordPress plug-in that allows readers to tag their own comments. The tags are hosted on the Commentag.com server and do not interfere with your search ranking or existing comment infrastructure. It is simply an add on with some functionality to make it easier to sort through comments. Although the company has launched in early April they haven’t done any marketing until now.
The service was started by three friends; Xavier Damman (24), Arnaud Coomans (25) and Olaf Witkowski (24). Two of them live in London and one works from Belgium.
From the Commentag blog: “The idea came to my mind with a blog I created about 4×4. It fostered many comments and a journalist who wanted to know the most common arguments (either for or against SUV). Unable to provide a quick answer, we imagined a system which could deal with that particular issue.”
So they came up with a simple tool to Tag comments and a Tag cloud to quickly navigate comments. So now, when you think a post sucks you can leave a comment and tag your comment: ‘Sucks’. The next commenter will be presented with a suggestionbox for tags and one of them will be ‘Sucks’. He can then choose to include the ‘Sucks’ tag in his comment too. Or maybe he will use ‘Brilliant’.
Someone reading the post and wanting to find out how many negative comments there are can then click the ‘Sucks’ tag in the tagcloud and all comments that aren’t tagged ‘Sucks’ will be hidden. Then you can deselect the ‘Sucks’ tag and highlight all the posts tagged ‘Brilliant’.
For blogs that receive dozens of comments on each post this will be a great way to add some sense to their comments section. Being able to quickly look at all positive VS negative posts could be a great tool for reader and possibly stimulate them to comment even more.
We will be testing the Commentag plug-in here and look forward to getting a lot of tagged comments on this post.
Written on April 10, 2008 – 8:30 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.
This time we’re interviewing Sam Desimpel, founder of IntroNiche.com. That’s a Belgium-based start-up which helps webmasters and bloggers to find a match for cross-promotion. I absolutely dig this idea, since cross-promoting is a perfect way to reach your target audience…, without spending any money! It reminds me of the good old days in high school, when I owned a humor site and asked other humor webmasters to exchange links. Well, I’ve grown up, and so has the Internet. Read the interview to get to know how it look likes according to Desimpel.
How did you come up with the idea of IntroNiche?
“I used to work at eBay. I had to find low budget and credible ways for eBay to attract clients in various collectibles niches such as stamps, coins, toys, comics and so on. Indeed, eBay also doesn’t like to spend on marketing unless it has to.
The solution was usually a cross-promotion deal between eBay and a local collectibles tradefair and magazine. eBay would eg. promote the tradefair in it’s newsletter and the tradefair would give eBay visibility and a free stand on the fair. They were good win-win deals and I loved doing them.
Finding these deals however took a lot of time. So I wanted to make cross-promotion easier by creating a classifieds marketplace for cross-promotion. IntroNiche’s only purpose is to allow easier cross-promotion for freelancers and small companies.” (more…)
Written on March 19, 2008 – 1:01 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Start-up rallies can be disastrous. Take the start-up rally at Le Web 3 for example. They had installed a start-up dock over there, which was a nice place to rest for most attendees. On top of that, the jury consisted of a few ‘I’m playing with my Blackberry’-guys. So the entrepreneurs saw a disinterested crowd and turned really nervous. I couldn’t watch it.
Here at PLUGG it’s totally different. Start-ups present on the main stage in two rally’s of ten companies. They only have two minutes, short ‘n’ sweet, and were encouraged to ‘act excited’, since if they aren’t excited about their own product, who will? That’s what I’m talking about!
The guys from Bragster really got the point. It’s a service on which friends can dare each other to something incredibly stupid. And it works, the people and the press love it. Moreover, rapper 50 cent is registered as well. What more can you ask for?
One of the team members of the French Bragster team challenged his colleague Niko to ‘throw a pie in Bertrand’s face’. So guess what happened when the two enthusiastic guys walked up the stage? Exactly, Bertrand’s world suddenly consisted of just pie and whipped cream. The audience was stunned.
After a rally, this very same audience had the opportunity to rate the start-ups. I won’t be surprised when Bragster really gained some points just by bringing the idea of their very fun start-up into practice.
Update: There you have it: Bragster is one of the tree finalists at the Plugg startup rally.
More about the other start-ups in the upcoming weeks, that’s a promise!
Written on March 19, 2008 – 9:09 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Boris, Robert and me just arrived at the fancy Hotel Plaza in Brussels for ‘a European perspective on Web 2.0′. If the Wifi connection survives - it looks pretty good right now - we’ll cover this event for you. It’s up to TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher to now open the event - which is called Plugg by the way, while everybody is still having their regular conference breakfast: croissants and coffee.
After that, Rebecca Jennings from Forrester Research will address Social Computing in Europe in her keynote. To know what happens then, have a look at the schedule. If you have any requests about covering, or you want us to ask a certain question, give us a shout on Twitter.
Updates:
Butcher opening the conference by walking into the public, asking who people are
More photos by Robert or Ernst-Jan
adhese, Belgium, blog, brussels, campaign, De Standaard, freedom of speech, Nathalie Lubbe Bakker, new york, Pieter de Crem
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. (
