WorldMate is huge in the mobile world -it first started as a Palm OS app back in 2000. Then, as today, they realized that “travel = mobile” and so it made sense to build a mobile application for travelers. WorldMate had an innovative approach and built what was the industry’s first on-device portal with a myriad of travel content for online/offline use. WorldMate was so successful that many PDA/Smartphone makers including Nokia, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson pre-installed it on their devices. More than 3 million people use WorldMate across the Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms.
But that was then when making mobile apps meant being pre-installed on a pre-sale phone. The world has moved on since the launch of the iPhone to a new world of online application stores. Now with after the SDK 3.0 and right before the expected launch of iPhone 3.0, WorldMate has come to the iPhone app store.
In many ways this is a huge validation of the iPhone platform, it’s one of the first dedicated for business applications of the kind that are huge in the BlackBerry world to make the platform jump to an appstore full of shall we say “less serious” applications (you can see more of this attitude in the latest WorldMate Max video embedded below).
It’s easy to see why they are coming to iPhone, the potential market is huge; there about 40 million business travelers in the US that take over 200 million trips totaling $200 billion in sales. According to WorldMate these “road warriors” are continually jostled around with 30%+ of flights are delayed or cancelled, with meeting schedules change all the time, and because there’s a lot of stress trying to make split second decisions in unfamiliar environments with a lack of relevant information. What’s more, these travelers spend on average $1000 per trip. WorldMate is the only service to that can help by effectively aggregating this disparate information. But that is only half the battle. WorldMate further distinguishes itself in that it can take this information and turn it into solutions. For example, if your flight is delayed, WorldMate will let you know and then suggest all the alternative flights you can take instead to make it to your destination on time.
WorldMate in both its free and Gold versions have both shot to the top 20 apps in the travel category and it seems that not only is WorldMate ready for iPhone, iPhone is ready for WorldMate.
The Financial Times reports that small businesses are making better use of Twitter than larger corporations, with just 19 of the UK’s top 100 technology companies using Twitter. By comparison, in the US all the top technology companies use the service for marketing or recruitment purposes.
The data comes from reports commissioned by ntl:Telewest, a division of Virign Media and by O2, a division of Telefonica. The O2 survey shows that 16 per cent of the 500 businesses surveyed said they had saved more than £5,000 on marketing and recruitment costs, while almost a third had saved more than £1,000 since joining Twitter.
Hitwise, a division of Experian which tracks web audiences, said Twitter entered the UK’s top 100 websites in March, and is now ranking at 44, competing well with popular newspaper sites.
Written on 23rd March 2009
13 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Salesforce.com is a web based customer relationship management system used by more 19,000 customers and 351,000 paying subscribers. Used mainly small to medium sized businesses, the service helps manage contacts, sales cycles and post-sales relationships with their customers.
A recently released extension to the salesforce.com service is its Service Cloud, a tool that allows businesses to monitor and coordinate conversations about their product or service across forums, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs and now, you guessed it, Twitter.
The new integration allows businesses to search twitter for mentions about their products/services, find and track conversations, track growth and easily create a database of each in their Service Cloud. Once these conversations are part of the SalesForce Service Cloud, businesses can combine these with other mentions across other networks and communities, establish connections, share knowledge across teams and most importantly, completely integrate customer service departments into the cloud.
For businesses and customers alike, we should see drastic improvements to customer service and feedback alike thanks to Twitter. With integrations on large scale customer service platforms such as SalesForce however, these improvements should be both slick, drastic and immediate.
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing What Would Google Do written by Jeff Jarvis, Designing Web Interfaces written by Bill Scott and Theresa Neil and 33 million people in the room written by Juliette Powell.
What would Google Do?
I’ve always read Jeff Jarvis’ weblog Buzzmachine about news and media with much pleasure so I was excited to find out he published a book on Google. In “What Would Google Do” Jarvis describes the world of doing business from Google’s perspective. Already published in January this year, the book provides you with a set of rules to live by with. The book describes 30 Google Rules in total, of which “Give the people trust and we will use it. Don’t and you will lose it” and “Your customer is your advertising agency” are some interesting ones. Perhaps many of the rules are implicitely familiar to all of us, but it is good to see them written down in an old styled book fashion way like this. The book is mainly a manifesto for doing business open source style andbook is fully packed with facts and useful information for doing business in this new age of openess and innovation. Opinions on Amazon vary, but since reading a book wouldn’t harm you in any way (most of the time) it is worth a read.
Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions
The web is bringing us new innovations every day. With technologies like Ajax, Silverlight, Air and many more, designing user friendly, rich internet applications is becoming more and more important. Bill Scott (great name for a blog!) and Theresa Neil understand this like no other and have written a great book on this matter: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions. In designing Web Interfaces Scott and Neil present no less than 75 design patterns for building web interfaces that provide rich interaction. The book is divided into six sections all devoted to one big design principle. These are: Make it direct, Keep it Lightweight, Stay on the page, Provide an invitation, Use transitions and React immediately. All patterns (and anti-patterns!) are explained in depth to the reader. Designing web interfaces is a must read for anyone closely involved in interface design.
33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking
Juliette Powell’s33 million people in the room: how to create, influence, and run a successful business with social networking has been dubbed “a timely crash course on how to leverage your business’s online presence”. Well that’s some introduction… Powell has written “a practical guide to social networking that empowers readers to build social and cultural capital in view of increasing financial capital”. The book is (again) densed with a wide range of case studies, as well as an exhaustive description of the success of Obama’s groundswell fundraising campaign. Fascinating about this book is it’s roots in social (psychology) network theory. With her call for ethics and authenticity and her ability to explain how to put social media campaign’s into action, Powell has written one of the most informative books on social networking to date.
As a startup in a problematic economy, we have been often asked, “Are you guys going to be around in 12 months?” It’s a reasonable question that usually comes from users who have come to depend on our software as part of their core reporting. I am pleased to provide some good news on that front today.
That’s how Keith McSpurren, president of CoveritLive, started an email to all CoveritLive members this afternoon.
“Good” is an understatement, as the liveblogging platform has raised $1.2 million investment. Flagstone Capital – their current investor – gives the service a financial injection so that CoveritLive can continue to develop their customer base and business model. McSpurren is “very grateful” and feels fortunate that he has the right kind of investors behind him.
I can only agreed with him. It’s good news that Flagstone Capital, despite the financial crises, decides to increase support in a rather successful start-up.
CoveritLive has welcomed another investor: Paul Kedrosky, angel investor, well-known CNBC analyst, and the editor of a popular financial blog, Infectious Greed. His goal? To bring a new technology to the traditional media.
“When the economy is shrinking”, Yakov Sadchikov from Russian blog Quintura writes, “it’s a good time for private equity investors to buy assets at a low valuation.” Companies from his country are doing just so. News stories about Russian funds going on a buying spree frequently find their way to this blog. According to some recent reports, ONEXIM Group is about to acquire publishing giant Forbes.
Mikhail Prokhorov
The Forbes portfolio include the famous Forbes magazine and spin-offs like ForbesAutos. These publications will soon probably be in Russian hands. The ONEXIM Group, led by oligarch and playboy Mikhail Prokhorov, is one of Russia’s largest private investment funds – worth $25 billion – with a focus on mining industry, real estate, and energy.
Surviving
If the complicated acquisition will be completed, many people might dislike the fact a Russian company owns a traditional American publishing house. Yet in these harsh times, acquisitions by foreign parties might be their only way to survive.
Ever had the feeling that you really wanted to crash the party you weren’t allowed at? When I wrote a blogpost about social network MeettheBoss.com I couldn’t let go of that feeling. MeettheBoss.com wants to be an exclusive social network. To become a member of the network you have to be a senior or top executive at a financial firm. So for a freelance journalist like me there is only one option to get in: lying.
"Your registration has been accepted."
Surprisingly lying worked out very well. All I did was fill in the registration pages. I filled in my name, e-mail address and told the site that I was working as a CCO at ABN AMRO. A few minutes later I could check out some parts of the network but still not everything.
Got kicked out eventually
I guessed they would reject me at one point. If they would have looked at my LinkedIn profile they would have known right away that I’m not a CCO. But they probably didn’t do that. One day after my registration I received an e-mail telling that the network was happy to let me know that my registration had been accepted.
How long would it take them to find out I ain’t a CCO? Not too long. My previous blogpost probably caught their eyes because since this morning I can’t login anymore. It looks like they kicked me out after all…
A few days ago I was watching a presentation in which 50 companies were asked about their online business model. They had been given only 5 options to choose from. As you can see in the graph on the right here 11% had a Subscription fee model, 24% got their revenue from Advertising, 22% had Single Copy sales and 3% used Registration fees.
Interestingly enough 39% of those companies picked ‘Different’ as their business model. I joked that maybe “None” would have been nearer to the truth.
That got me thinking though. How many business models are there on the web? Can they be categorized and determined? Are the possibilities endless or limited?
Brokerage
Brokers are market-makers: they bring buyers and sellers together and facilitate transactions.
Advertising
The web advertising model is an extension of the traditional media broadcast model. The broadcaster, in this case, a web site, provides content (usually, but not necessarily, for free) and services (like email, IM, blogs) mixed with advertising messages in the form of banner ads.
Infomediary
Independently collected data about producers and their products are useful to consumers when considering a purchase. Some firms function as infomediaries (information intermediaries) assisting buyers and/or sellers understand a given market.
Merchant
Wholesalers and retailers of goods and services. Sales may be made based on list prices or through auction.
Manufacturer (Direct)
The manufacturer or “direct model”, it is predicated on the power of the web to allow a manufacturer (i.e., a company that creates a product or service) to reach buyers directly and thereby compress the distribution channel.
Affiliate
In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, the affiliate model, provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites.
Community
The viability of the community model is based on user loyalty. Users have a high investment in both time and emotion. Revenue can be based on the sale of ancillary products and services or voluntary contributions; or revenue may be tied to contextual advertising and subscriptions for premium services.
Subscription
Users are charged a periodic – daily, monthly or annual – fee to subscribe to a service.
Utility
The utility or “on-demand” model is based on metering usage, or a “pay as you go” approach.
The different models are explained in detail on his webpage and should be required reading for any Internet entrepreneur. Professor Rappa argues that these are the basic models but the list is not definitive or exhaustive. He writes “Internet business models continue to evolve. New and interesting variations can be expected in the future.”
If you think you know of another business model not present in this list, or a combination of models, please let us know in the comments.
It sure isn’t surprising that social networks like LinkedIn are adding new users by the second thanks to the credit crunch. But read this: social network MeettheBoss.com says it has attracted 25.000 active members within two months. And those users sure aren’t the average LinkedIn member. They are senior and top executives at large financial firms.
According to their website and an article in the International Herald Tribune, it looks like MeettheBoss.com wants to become the number one network and forum for executives at company’s like Barclays, Goldman Sachs and ING.
Not just connecting
Registered MeettheBoss.com users can participate in discussions about the crisis, but also about how web 2.0 technology could be implemented in products and services. These big boys can also use (peer-to-peer) video conferencing, IM, e-mail and sms to interact and – of course – connect with other members. At MeettheBoss.tv members can watch interviews with industry hotshots and thought-leaders.
Exclusive network
The Bristol, England, based network is founded by Spencer Green, chairman of publisher and event organiser GDS International that owns MeettheBoss.com. The network was launched in September ’08 when they invited their first 20.000 members. To keep the network exclusive it intends to close its doors at 50.000 members.
Closed doors
I wish I could check if everything MeettheBoss.com promises is true. But to become a member of the network you have to be a senior or top executive. So if you’re working as a developer, web 2.0 consultant or if you’re an entrepreneur that probably means this network keeps its doors closed for you. And for journalists like me too.
Have a peak
Or wouldn’t they? Of course I tried to get in and I filled in the forms to create an account. Surprisingly I got in.
I couldn’t check out everything the network has to offer. Still I got more than just a peek. I was able to login at MeettheBoss.tv and check out some interviews with experts in the financial market. After a few clicks I was scanning the discussions between members talking mostly about the crisis. But when I tried to connect with other members the network just returned error messages telling me my account wasn’t approved yet. Damn.
Last week a new Twitter Money making scheme launched by a company named Magpie. You give them your Twitter account data and they insert regular commercial messages in between your own tweets. They get access to your loyal followers, you both make money.
You can imagine that this sparked some controversy amongst the Twitter audience. One thing the company did very well was include a simple test to find out how much your Twitter account is worth. Our results are here on the right:
Even people who hate the idea of selling their tweets couldn’t resist checking their virtual worth and sharing that with their followers. The result: everybody is talking about Magpie and I’m sure they get a lot of sign-ups. Whether they have enough advertisers is another story though. All Magpie commercial messages are preceded by #magpie and the only ads you currently see are for their own service. You can see this yourself by searching for #magpie. (UPDATE: looks like they found some advertisers. I see lots of different ads now.)
One thing a lot of people are wondering about is how many followers you would lose by using Magpie so we decided to set-up an account for our own Twitter username and will let you know what the result is in 30 days. We now have 1280 followers on Twitter and gain about 5 new followers a day. We should have 1512 followers by November 30. We will let you know how this turns out.
Here are some of the mixed reactions to Magpie on Twitter:
Written on 4th June 2009
2 COMMENTS 
WorldMate
is huge in the mobile world -it first started as a Palm OS app back in 2000. Then, as today, they realized that “travel = mobile” and so it made sense to build a mobile application for travelers. WorldMate had an innovative approach and built what was the industry’s first on-device portal with a myriad of travel content for online/offline use. WorldMate was so successful that many PDA/Smartphone makers including Nokia, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson pre-installed it on their devices. More than 3 million people use WorldMate across the Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms.
AppStore, blackberry, business, iphone, itunes apppstore, markets, mobile application, Nokia, palm, smartphone, Smartphones, Symbian, travel, Windows, worldmate
Written on 25th March 2009
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=54ceeb4f-4e48-445d-a626-aa3bab0695a8 "Small businesses save more money using Twitter Photo")
Written on 23rd March 2009
Written on 15th March 2009
I’ve always read 
The web is bringing us new innovations every day. With technologies like Ajax, Silverlight, Air and many more, designing user friendly, rich internet applications is becoming more and more important. 
Written on 28th January 2009
That’s how Keith McSpurren, president of 
Written on 11th November 2008
Written on 11th November 2008
Written on 7th November 2008
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 off, the future of the Web. (More info 
