Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 30th March 2009
4 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Jimdo is a German startup with big future, the company have just announced a major agreement with Japan’s second largest telecommunication company KDDI.
The agreement gives Jimdo exclusive rights to offer KDDI’s business clients their website creation software as part of the Japanese company’s hosting platform. The product will also be available to the Japanese consumer market under its own domain at http://jp.jimdo.com/.
Jimdo began as a product co-founders; Matthias Henze, Christian Springub and Fridtjof Detzner, offered customers as part of their consulting firm NorthClick. However, after friends persisted with requests to use the product themselves the founders offered ‘JimdoPages’ a free version of the tool.
The company have always aimed to expand the product internationally, paying careful attention to the matter during development and release - they have already released the tool in a total of 8 languages. Expansion into Asia has been carefully planned, the startup teamed up with local consulting firm Web2Asia who helped in making the deal happen.
According to a study commissioned by KDDI Web Communications, Internet adoption rates in Japan exceed 70%. However, only about 12% of all businesses have their own web domains. Jimdo look to seize on the obvious opportunity, aiming for 300,000 new Japanese JimdoFree users within the first twelve months. The company also have the 40,000 existing corporate clients that KDDI will introduce to the tool.
On face value, the startup competes head on with the likes of Weebly, Edicy, Yola and SnapPages, all very impressive tools in their own right, however none appear to have pushed as hard nor succeeded on an international scale.
Written on 23rd June 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Remember the little OpenID incident at Next08 in May? I promised Andreas Stephan from Six Groups that I would blog about his service, if he would make OpenID support his top priority. Well, so it happened, and on June 6th, Six Group integrated OpenID login. Apparently, that has inspired another big German start-up as well, since Oliver Moser from Jimdo mailed me that his service also supports OpenID now.
Jimdo is an online Ajax-based website builder, which makes it easy for basically anyone to create a slick-looking page – sort of like an online iWeb. Their list of widgets is impressive, and Alexa tells us the service has been steadily growing. Here’s what Oliver has sent me:
From today on we’re supporting OpenID – but not as a provider, just as a host. Jimdo-users can now sign into their Jimdo-Page with their OpenID. But more important, they can use their personal Jimdo-Domain as an OpenID, even though Jimdo is not the provider. So if they comment on a blog post they can use their own domain – which of course makes a lot of sense.
You may wonder why Jimdo doesn’t act like a provider. Oliver has an answer to that question too: “There are already so many of then, so there’s no need for Jimdo being an additional one. And since OpenID enables Dataportability, we can actually make great use of it.”
Last week, some people at Supernova said OpenID and Dataportability have just become press releases machines. I can see why they say that, but I also think that it doesn’t hurt anyone (apart from our email inbox) since more and people will get familiar with the idea of open data. Also the less web-savvy ones, like most of the Jimdo users.
Written on 12th June 2008
6 COMMENTS
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is a guest post by Charlie van de Kerkhof from the Ministry of Web Development
When you’re talking about German start-ups, you’re talking about Berlin. The city is booming. There are cheap offices and a bunch of angel investors of which one might help you to get that so-wanted lead investment. I learned this optimistic lesson at the TechCrunch UK/Twidox meetup yesterday. Mike Butcher had left London to find out how it feels to say ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ and to meet 15 startups – all eager to promote their business. These are my personal highlights:
Undersigned and Chris from Hiogi
Hiogi – the community answers your questions
Hiogi is a mobile search service that is based on a knowledge community. You can ask anything via Twitter, SMS or email and receive an answer on your mobile. I’ve tried it and ask for the best pizza place near Senerfelderplatz. Within 10 minutes I had my answer and I must admit, it was a very good pizza. Hiogi has just released an open API which gives you acces to the latest questions and answers that were posted. Not surprisingly, these guys have received funding this year and won a couple of prices.
Hobnox – platform for professionals from the creative industry
Hobnox is an online music and video platform where users can watch, connect, collaborate and create. The Next Web has already written about this in May 2008. They are now busy with the community feature of their product where you can download and upload the music to the site and share it with friends.
Jimdo – a personal website for everyone
Jimdo is an online website builder. You can create your own JimdoFree-Page and add several modules to it – like a blog, guest book, photo gallery, etc. The team is now working on adding social modules like Open Social widgets. Jimdo is based in Hamburg and received the first round funding earlier this year. By the way, one of their most important competitors is Webnode, who presented on The Next Web conference. (more…)
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 
