Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on November 24, 2008 – 11:16 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
“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.
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Written on November 11, 2008 – 8:55 pm
Paul Vereijken, Next Web Journalism & Media editor
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…
MeettheBoss: could not find your user
Written on November 11, 2008 – 11:40 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
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?
Luckily I won’t have to invent anything myself. Professor Michael Rappa, director of the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, did all the necessary thinking and research and wrote a detailed document titled Business Models on the Web which describes the following models:
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.
Written on November 7, 2008 – 3:27 pm
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
Written by Paul Vereijken
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.
Written on November 3, 2008 – 11:33 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
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:
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Written on October 1, 2008 – 11:00 am
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Twellow, the ‘yellow pages for Twitter‘, has extended its usefulness with the ability to create your own biography entry of up to 2,000 characters.
As well as being able to claim your twitter profile, and classify yourself in up to 10 categories (although I’m in 14 for some reason), you can also add your social media links to your profiles on Pownce, LinkedIn, Flickr, FriendFeed, etcetera - and now add more details about yourself in a mini-profile or biography.
The search facility in Twellow can also reach into your brief summary to pick up keywords and links used there, and your biography information can also include basic HTML, so links and visual formatting can be added. The summary is indexed in search - the biography does not appear to be indexed yet.
Apart from being a great way to find people using Twitter with similar interests, and pinpointing interesting people to follow, categorized Twellow profiles are also becoming visible in Google and Yahoo searches. So I’d recommend making sure you claim your profile at Twellow and add your details and social links to ensure your online visibility and credibility stay high.
Written on September 6, 2008 – 12:00 pm
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
[ This article was originally published at Digital Biographer on 5th September ] © Copyright 2008 Clarocada Ltd. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License.
“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot masturbate” - Dave Barry
I don’t do meetings any more. I used to do a lot of meetings. But not any more. 
The change from meeting to tweeting - where a series of brief exchanges (each a maximum of 140 characters) can make up the content - has been brought about by a variety of factors over the past 15 years or so - but here are the ten factors that I think are critical.
- IN GOOGLE TIME
I no longer have a phone book, business directories or yellow pages. Those were essential when I started my first corporation in 1993. But now, I use Google. As a result, I have less patience for slow ways of doing things - I am impatient. I demand speed, efficiency, and immediate results.
- HOLA FONEROS
I have a laptop computer and a mobile phone, I can work from a cafe terrace in Banyalbufar just as easily as anywhere else. As a result, I don’t have the need to restrict myself to doing business with those who are within easy reach of where I live or work most of the time.
- HOME OFFICE DRESS CODE
I don’t need to have an office in the city centre to get my work done - I can do it from my home office. As a result, I don’t need to spend time travelling, and so I use that saved time productively. I also find wearing a suit in my own kitchen a bit pointless, so feel there has to be a very good reason to dress up to go somewhere. I like the fact that my carbon footprint’s lower with less travel.
- MY ONLINE VISIBILITY
Whereas I used to have to push information out to people in brochures, newspaper interviews, in meetings, at trade shows, I now have online profiles at LinkedIn, Xing, Ecademy, Facebook, Hyves, Flickr, Friendfeed, MyBloglog etc, and I have blogs and web sites that I can update easily in seconds. As a result, I don’t have to spend so much time introducing myself, and explaining what it is that I, or any of my enterprises provide - people find out about me before they meet me, or get to know me through following my activities online. People can meet me at airports because my photo is online. They can also decide whether they need to waste their time meeting me.
- I HATE COFFEE
I don’t really like coffee any more. And I especially never liked paying €5 for a cup of it unless it was refilled all day and came with free wi-fi. As a result, when someone says - let’s have a chat over a coffee, I say “No. Let’s save the time and money, and spend five minutes now working out if we need to meet - and if so, what items on the agenda we can dispense with before we need to have a meeting”.
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Written on August 20, 2008 – 11:11 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
29 percent of Internet users have purchased something they were pointed to via spam, according to a study by Marshal. Not surprisingly, the most commonly purchased items include Viagra and porn, but also software, and luxury items such as watches, jewelery and clothing - the counterfeit type.
622 visitors of the Marshal site took a poll, which asked ‘What purchases have you made from spam?’. Quite a tendentious question if you’d ask me. ‘Have you made purchases from spam?’, would have been a more balanced question.
Anyway, a similar poll from Forrester Research from 2004 showed that out of 6,000 respondents, 20 percent had made purchases from spam. So the problem is getting worse. A reason for this could be that Internet users have gotten more used to making online purchases. Or that spam has become more sophisticated (in a negative way), like blog spam.
If taken seriously, this study shows that spam is a matter of supply and demand. “The poll highlights an inconvenient truth,” said Marshal’s Vice-President of Products, Bradley Anstis. “Many of us often question ourselves, why is there so much spam? The answer is, enough people are purchasing products from spam to make it a worthwhile and profitable endeavor for spammers.”
Marshal’s Website poll indicates that the number of respondents who admitted to making a purchase through spam have made multiple purchases; on average, more than two different types of purchase per person. This supports the conclusion that those who buy from spam make a habit of it. My guess is that people buy stuff via spam which they wouldn’t dare to buy in public.
So spam turns out to be a rather booming business. No wonder the number of spam emails already make up for 85 percent of all email traffic. Anstis: “There are approximately 250 million people out there who are interested in these kinds of products and have made purchases from spam in the past. That’s equivalent to double the population of Japan mixed in with every other Internet user. As a spammer - how do you reach that market without knowing specifically who these people are and with the bare minimum of expense? Easy, send lots of emails to everyone.”
Written on August 11, 2008 – 5:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every Web 2.0 entrepreneur knows press releases are an outdated phenomenon. It’s something from a different era, when print media were more important than digital media. Nowadays, entrepreneurs blog to get their corporate word out. Scoble and Israel started to preach this evangelic with their Naked Conversations manifest and since then, almost every start-up has been taking their advice for granted.
Yakov Sadchikov
Yet not every entrepreneur gets blogging right. Some just post articles that look a lot like those old-fashioned press releases or use every possibility to plug their product. To inspire and help these corporate bloggers, I’ll interview Yakov Sadchikov from visual search engine Quintura (my review here) - his corporate blog managed to get links on TechCrunch, Techmeme, this blog, and many other important tech news outlets.
Sadchikov started his blog to keep the tech industry informed about the developments surrounding the Quintura business. But he also wanted to inform market observers about the latest developments and investments in the Internet, media, and technology business of Russia and its neighboring countries. This combination turned out to be a golden one.
Three stories on Techmeme in one week
“In general, the company releases a new service or version once every several months”, Sadchikov mailed me, “this is when we can do a marketing and PR push. Between those releases, the blog is an effective tool to keep in touch with the market. For instance, during the first week of August, three articles from the Quintura blog were featured on the Techmeme homepage. As a result, we’ve welcomed new blog readers as well as new web publishers who were interested in our product, the Quintura site search”.
Quintura’s recipe for successful blogging
Luckily for us, Sadchikov was willing to share his recipe for successful corporate blogging. “My advice for start-ups would be to select a segment and write regularly about news in that segment. Make sure it could be of interest for the industry and not only for company observers. The stories must be relevant for a wide business audience.” When Sadchikov has finished an interesting story, he emails it to influential tech bloggers. Because he posts relevant news, many tech bloggers seem to appreciate his work. He basically is TechCrunch’s man in Russia.
Sadchikov: “Some major tech blogs regularly elaborate on the stories that were first posted on the Quintura blog.” Like TechCrunch. Erick Schonfeld based his article about the biggest tech IPO of 2008 on this story. And Arrington found out about Google’s weird outdoor campaign by browsing on the Quintura blog.
So how many hours does Sadchikov spend on blogging?
When I talk to start-ups about their blogs, most entrepreneurs tell me they don’t have time for building a solid corporate blog. But Sadchikov proves this doesn’t necessarily have to be true. He told me he only spends half-hour a day on the Quintura blog. Talking about return of investment…
Take another look at your blog
Sadchikov’s story is extraordinary and I realize he has the privilege of operating in of the world’s most interesting and booming Internet markets. But I encourage you to take another look on your corporate blog. Think about how you can make the news appealing to a large crowd. Hunt for scoops in your niche. And if you have one, don’t hesitate to email it to me.
Further reading
Written on August 6, 2008 – 3:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The online advertising market in Russia is a good business to be in: it has been estimated at $260 million in the first half of 2008. This is an increase of 73 per cent compared to the same period in 2007, says MindShare Interaction.
The contextual advertising accounted for $161 million or 62% of total online advertising spending, while display advertising accounted for 38% ($99 million) of total online spending.
No wonder that Google recently acquired Begun, one of Russia’s most important advertising agencies. They’ve plenty of experience with contextual advertising, which might come in helpful when Google will introduce contextual pre-roll ads on YouTube.
business, Forbes, Mikhail Prokhorov, ONEXIM Group, Private equity, Quintura, russia, Yakov Sadchikov
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