Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 6th May 2009
17 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Brian Solis was the first speaker today at Next09 in Hamburg (Germany) which we are attending and partly moderating (and moderately partying at!).
Brian asks the audience “Who do you want to be online?” in a presentation titled “Social Economy”. What you do, say and post online defines who you are and broadcasts this image ahead of you wherever you go. Some people might find that disconcerting but it seems to be the new reality.
So what and who do you want to be? How do you design your online public image? The decisions you make will influence your chances finding a job, a relationship and happiness in general. You could say that this might be one of the most important question you should ask yourself.
Having said that Brian also offers a simple improvement to Twitter. Fortunately you don’t have to wait until Twitter implements it.
The question Twitter asks is wrong. Nobody cares “What you are doing” right now. Drinking a cup of coffee? Going to bed? Getting up?
Keep it to yourself!
The question you should answer is “What inspires you?” or “What did you learn today?”.
And when you answer that question make sure you use no more than 120 characters. In fact, Brian says “120 is the new 140″.
If you can inspire or teach your followers with your tiny bits of knowledge sticking to 120 characters will give your followers a chance to retweet you and spread that knowledge.
Written on 3rd April 2009
17 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
T-Mobile Germany, iPhone’s exclusive carrier in Germany, have announced that they would not be allowing customers to use the Skype application on either the iPhone or Blackberry devices.
T-Mobile spokesperson Alexander von Schmettow told the German online site, the Local:
“It is clearly stated in our customer contracts that such services may not be used…There are two reasons for this – because the high level of traffic would hinder our network performance, and because if the Skype programme didn’t work properly, customers would make us responsible for it.”
Tech-savvy users should apparently not even consider figuring out a work-around, because T-Mobile will immediately “cut users off”.
“Those who violate their contracts can expect to have them cancelled. It’s the same with any contract. If you rent a no-pets apartment and expect no one to notice your little dog, you can’t be surprised when your landlord comes knocking.”
Skype have responded to the news in a post on the company’s blog
“This is a real shame: many other operators around the world know very well that people want to use innovative Internet applications, like Skype, and that’s the reason they pay their ISP to access the Internet in the first place. On top of that, there is no technical justification for this arbitrary blocking of Skype, and it represents a barrier to online business put in place by a private company just because they can, because they control access to the Internet.”
Ironically, Skype is currently also the most downloaded iPhone application in Germany.
Written on 27th February 2009
3 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2009, an annual conference held in Berlin, has been cancelled due to the uncertain economic climate.
The event, produced by O’Reilly Media and Techweb is one of a select few European focused tech conferences other include; TheNextWeb conference (ours), Plugg, LIFT, LeWeb and FOWA.
The announcement was made via the German O’Reilly community blog and also notes that the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco will run between 31 March to 3 April 2009. Europeans can register for the conference with code “websf09eu” and be automatically entered into a lottery to win a free entrance ticket, three nights at a hotel and $1000.
As sad as it is, there are fortunately two upcoming European conferences worth noting; Plugg in Brussels on the 12 March and our very own TheNextWeb Conference in Amsterdam on April 15th, 16th and 17th.
via:
Techcrunch, O’Reilly Germany Blog
Written on 3rd February 2009
2 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
RTL Interactive, the Internet brance of the RTL Group (German) announced their 100% takeover of Wer Kennt Wen.
Marc Schröder, the CEO of RTL Interactive responded to the takeover in a interview with a German newspaper that RTL wants to become less dependent of tv advertisements, instead they want to focus more towards Internet and e-commerce. Wer Kennt Wen currently has 5.5 million members, the transaction is estimated at 10 million Euros. RTL Interactive is not new in the Internet brance, they booked a turnover of 200 million euro’s in 2007.
Moral of the story, the memory of StudiVZ (holding 5 times less users at the time) being bought for 85 million Euros in 2007 is still fresh. Was StudiVZ worth the money? While Business Angels are utterly scared getting their hands dirty, media giants realize that Internet startups are on sale these days.
Written on 29th January 2009
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Flirtomatic is a ridiculously popular mobile social network from the UK. That makes sense, as it’s all about sex. Seduce your desired guy or gal via the mobile phone. Currently, 1.3 million folks are concerned with this act of love.
The growth of Flirtomatic is rather spectacular. It had 225,000 registered users in February 2007. What’s even more interesting, is Flirtomatic’s impressive revenue growth. According to a press release in September, it has “skyrocketed” by 475%.
Taking that in account, it’s actually interesting to hear that the service will launch a mobile beta in the U.S. of A. CEO Mark Curtis commented in a press release: “It’s a difficult time in the market, but we’re optimistic that we can enter the US successfully. It will not be easy but if we can replicate some of the success we’ve had in the UK and Germany, generating revenues within six months, we will have taken a major step towards achieving our goals.”
I think the success of Flirtomatic tells us a lot about the future of mobile: it’s gonna be exciting. Sex always leads the way, so Facebook and national networks will follow. I for one, do most of my social networking via iPhone apps.
Written on 12th January 2009
27 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Chances are pretty big that you’re 100 percent certified geek – otherwise you wouldn’t be reading a tech blog. Right? That means you might have some problems with members of the other sex. Maybe you can’t even talk to them, or wind up in the dangerous friend zone way too fast.
There’s good news for you, as the Potsdam University (south of Berlin) acknowledges that being unable to flirt is a wide-spread problem. It has started to offer “flirting courses” to IT engineers.
Reuters reports that the 440 students enrolled in the master’s degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection. It’s all about “getting someone else’s heart beating fast while yours stays calm.” “We want to prepare our students with the social skills needed to succeed both in their private life and their work life,” said Hans-Joachim Allgaier, a spokesman for the Potsdam University.
Courses are starting today. Sorry to hear you’re missing out? Or are you sticking with The Game?
Written on 12th December 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
According to yeebase, a German start-up’s success depends on the Yahoo! and Technorati API. They’ve generated a fancy algorithm that once a week pumps out a new top hundred list. Currently, social bookmarking site Mister Wong, news community Webnews, and local community service Qype are the most linked-to start-ups and thus the most successful.
Although counting in-links is a nice start – which will probably lead to more blogposts like these – it is far from enough. How can you rate customer satisfaction and engagement? The number of friends on social networks? Please post your ideas below and don’t forget to mention which start-up should have been ranked higher.
Written on 20th November 2008
6 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
According to Library House, a Cambridge based research firm, German investors among Europe’s most active VCs. In particular this one VC named High-Tech Gründerfonds Management was the most active investor both in terms of total deal activity as well as first-time investments. Sounds like they REALLY want to get rid of all their money!
With €272 million from a combination of public and private-sector sources, including KfW Bankengruppe, Germany’s federal bank, as well as corporates BASF, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Daimler, Bosch and Zeiss it might take some time before they really run out of money to invest.
Feel free to help them though! Send in those business-plans and start your “How to bluff your way into German” courses!
Do know that this fund has fixed deal terms leaving little room for negotiations. They invest no more than €500k in exchange for 15% of the companies they invest in and save some money for a second round, should there be one. So far however, 37 out of the 43 deals it completed during the period were first rounds.
If you start negotiating with Germans here are a few tips: never touch them. They don’t like it. No hands on shoulders or patting on backs. Keep things formal, even during dinner or when they seem relaxed. If they make you an offer, in general, that is the amount they want to spend. The first offer is what they think is reasonable and not an invitation to a counter offer unless you have a REALLY good reason to make one. If they seem angry during the negotiations don’t panic. That is just the way they negotiate. More tips for dealing with Germans? Leave comments!
The European Founders Fund, the investment vehicle of the Samwer brothers, founders of auction site Alando.de (acquired by eBay) and mobile content provider Jamba! (now part of New Corp’s Fox Interactive Media) is pretty busy too. In 2006 and early 2007 they did ‘only’ 6 new investments. In the past 12 months they invested in 14 new companies!
According to Library House the string of new deals by German VC firms over the past year comes as most other European VCs were scaling down their new investment activity.
Written on 20th September 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every once in a while 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 Scott Wheeler and Valentin Hussong, co-founders of Berlin-based start-up Directed Edge. They provide web sites with a recommender system. Basically they serve three different types of sites, namely social networks, stores, and informational sites. Wheller and Hussong are now ready to conquer the world with their products and currently looking for a web applications and infrastructure expert and a marketing kinda guy. Exciting times. How did they get to this stage?
How did you come up with the idea of Directed Edge?
“Many years back Scott was doing some work on desktop search. Desktop search tends to not produce nearly as relevant results as web search algorithms because it’s basically using technology from the mid-90s. The critical moment in the modernization of web search was a shift from looking at text and tags and stuff like that to looking at how information is connected. So he was really interested in figuring out how to model connected data and use that to find related content.
If we fast-foward a few years, there was this “ah-ha” moment after watching movies suggested by IMDB as related to Scott’s favorite movie and being blown away by how horrible the recommendations were. So the pieces started dropping into place — recommendations are a huge part of modern web sites, combined with the rise of social media, there was a chance to use the social web’s structure to find content users are interested in. We started pitching the idea of doing recommendations as a service to some of our friends in the local web community and they helped us — and continue to help us — refine the idea.” (more…)
Written on 16th September 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Here’s your blogger live reporting from Web 2.0 Expo, New York City – ready to keep you up to date about the latest start-ups and tech news. It’s gonna be an interesting few days, with big shots like Adriana Huffington, Tim O’Reilly, Jay Adelson, and Clay Shirky sharing their views on the next web.
After spending a few hours in the awfully cold and boring Javits center, I’ve already met some interesting start-ups. Like Berlin-based 3D chat service Smeet. Founder Sebastian Funke pitched the service to me this morning. At first I was skeptical, I’ve seen so many 3D, avatar-crazy, Flash 9-based chatting services that they doesn’t manage to tickle my fancy anymore. Yet when Funke mentioned that Smeet is completely web-based and embeddable at different sites, I realized this one could actually be interesting.
Call me on my mobile
Users on Smeet can create their own multi mesh avatar (meaning your character is wearing a shirt AND jacket, they’re the only browser-based service offering that) and join a room for a good discussion or a useless chat with other users. They’re plenty of them, although being able to speak German is quite essential (Smeet has 200,000 users in its home country). Next to text-based chatting, users can also give a ring to their mobile phone – so that they can talk with users who are standing close to them in the virtual room.
There’s where the business model comes in, as the German service makes some money out of the calls users make. Another source of income is the virtual goods shop. Habbo Hotel proved this can be a solid way of making money.
Embed a room in your site
The development team of Smeet is now working on embeddable rooms, which Funke hopes to release next week in alpha mode. This could be really exciting, as you can drag your avatar to every Smeet-supported site and start a riot. You could even watch a YouTube movie together (see screenshot).
Funke presented an impressive list part of partners that will include rooms on their site. It consisted of major media companies like RTL, EMI, Universal, and Big Brother. He told me Smeet is looking for similar partners outside Germany, namely in the States and the larger European countries.
So in the end, just another chatting service turns out to be a company with a good userbase and healthy ambitions that will probably become reality one day.
Brian Solis was the first speaker today at Next09 in Hamburg (Germany) which we are attending and partly moderating (and moderately partying at!).
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 
