The last few weeks, the Next Web Blog is all about crowd-sourcing. I’m not sure why, maybe we’re just inspired by the US elections. We started with launching a GooseGrade competition (correct our spelling and grammar and have the chance of winning a Flip Video), now we’ve integrated a rating feature.
In the comments section you can let us know what you think of a certain post (see picture right). From your ratings, we hope to learn what kind of posts you guys like and which can be considered “popular”.
Don’t write for your audience, write about stuff that you find both interesting and are good at. Rockstars don’t care about their audience, they care about their music.
We agree with him.., sort of. We will always bring (European) tech news which is a bit on the edge, but still, we’d love to hear what kind of topics deserve more attention.
Khris Loux from JS-Kit supported us with his awesome ratings widget. He’s a great friend (there’s your disclosure) and it’s a pleasure to use his service for improving our blog.
Khris Loux is a special guy. He’s one of the most optimistic and energetic persons I’ve met. That was during The Next Web conference, last April. He gave a keynote about open standards and interviewed Mr. DataPortability, Chris Saad, on stage. They certainly connected, and not just on the white couch: industry visionary Saad has joined Js-Kit as a Strategic Advisor.
But Loux’s positive attitude not just serves his network, he also managed to close a second round of funding in a time that everybody seems too busy worrying about the credit crunch.
JS-Kit’s Series B was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Series A Investor TEF3. With the financial injection of $3 million, total funding of JS-Kit comes down to $4.8 million.
Thanks social media revolution, time for the next level
Next to the new strategic adviser, the funding of the social widgets provider has already enabled expansion of the development team to a dozen engineers and a quadrupling of the size of the data center. Loux: “We are now at 12 engineers and plan to continue to grow that team to support our growing user base.”
Loux also says he “has been proud to be part of the social media revolution” and that he “looks forward to taking things to the next level in the coming months and years”. Meaning that JS-Kit will also expand its commercial activities to achieve profitability in the medium term.
Nice-looking stats
When looking at both the statistics of Quintcast (cookies installed in the US) and Compete (visitors from the US), anyone can tell JS-Kit’s reach is increasing. Partly thanks to partnerships with major media players like WorldNow (good for 19 million potential users). When taking that in account, it’s actually not that surprising that JS-Kit keeps investing, financial crisis or not.
Khris Loux is CEO and co-founder of JS-Kit, a start-up company that provides widgets to easily add interactivity to your site:
Our simple, modular and fully customizable web-services, also known as “widgets”, are fast becoming the building blocks of rich, interactive online experiences for leading-edge web sites. These solutions are self-service, elegant, powerful, and easily deployed by HTML neophytes, experts and everyone in between.
Khris Loux and Chris Saad became friends because of the Next Web. During all the meetings they noticed they generally had the same interest and ideas. Not that those shared interests matter though, since Khris started the couch interview with the remark that we all have to be friends with Chris. Whether we’re publishers, entrepreneurs or bloggers, Chris Saad’s Dataportability is good for you.
Thus I’m really glad that I digitally met Chris a couple of months ago when I interviewed him for this blog. I asked him how I should explain Dataportability to Average Joe and his answer probably is a good start for this post: “A user would simply log onto a site, grant permission, and their friends, personal details and media – images, video, documents – are already populated and accessible – Nothing more complex than that.”
Just like during Diggnation, there was beer on stage. The Next Web is one rock ‘n’ roll conference
When he said something similar on the couch, the audience rewarded with a round of applause. So it’s clear that users are looking forward to get control of their data. Yet what are the advantages for the vendors? Chris: “Vendors get a broader picture of the user. Google owns the search space, yet they have no idea what books people buy on Amazon.”
This sounds good, but at the same time companies traditionally make money because they have locked in their data. So all the big guys who are joining Dataportability now, aren’t they just doing that for good PR? Chris: “If some companies joined the Dataportability group just for the PR that is just fine with us, since they do endorse the conversation. And if they don’t implement the new open standards, others will. So if they don’t implement, that’s actually great since it gives everyone in this room a chance to out-innovate them. Now, the task of Dataportability is to give the companies best practices for implementing new standards. If those companies say they will implement, but actually don’t, it’s up to the bloggers and the audience to confront them with this flaw”.
Chris then threw out some great one-liners, like: [to companies:] “You don’t own users, users own you” and “If you don’t join the standard of the time, you’ll loose”. But I’d like to conclude with probably the most important one: “The new innovation platform is data”.
By the way, the audience could ask questions on Twitter. So I asked Chris which major company is taking a lead on the field of open data standards. His answer? Microsoft! Chris: “The ones who are loosing now are very interested and they’re the ones who apply pressure to the others”.
Khris Loux is CEO and co-founder of JS-Kit, a start-up company that provides widgets to easily add interactivity to your site:
Our simple, modular and fully customizable web-services, also known as “widgets”, are fast becoming the building blocks of rich, interactive online experiences for leading-edge web sites. These solutions are self-service, elegant, powerful, and easily deployed by HTML neophytes, experts and everyone in between.
Widgets are often referred to as the “bling bling” of Web 2.0 but JS-Kit takes the next step in widget development by providing customizable services which complement and build on each other. Loux’s talk titled “Web 3.0 or Web 3D?, The Decentralization, Disaggregation and Democratization of the Web” deals with the new dimension that widgets add to the web.
JS-kit provides simple lightweight web applications, widgets, that add rich interactive features to any site or blog. This is done by simply copying and pasting a piece of code in order to experience an Amazon class service. By lowering the technical and financial bar they allow smaller companies to compete with major services. JS-Kit addresses the long tail of business so a startup does not need to spend precious money on programmers to add customer interactivity to their site. In fact, their services are so light-weight that even big companies such as Yahoo use them on some parts of their site. Yahoo developers said they chose to use the JS-Kit widgets because they are so easy to use.
The next phase on the web
If Web 1.0 was about publishers teaching the truth and Web 2.0 revolved around bloggers balancing out the web then Web 3.0 is about publishers joining the conversation and consumers becoming part of the business. The structure of the web is changing and Web 3.0 concerns itself with connecting cross-points. Loux compares the evolution of the web with the human brain which is amazingly good at connecting distributed information.
Loux presents a somewhat utopian vision where search is replaced with a process where “everything that you needed would be right there.” SEO is a treadmill because we are all playing the same game and everyone is getting better at it. We need to skip SEO and advertising and instead take the true value of the product and spread it out. Widgets allow you to spread information out and bind relevant information.
Trust
Companies need to bridge the credibility gap by making the potential buyer be aware of the status of the transaction before it is actually made. Widgets allow customers to rate products or even rate the company. Where would you rather buy your products? With a company which has been rated reliable or with a company whose status is unknown? By making the whole process is more transparent both companies and buyers win. Trust, user ratings, transparency and user interaction are important factors in the direction the web is currently taking.
Open standards
Ownership is also an important issue on the distributed web as you should have a right to you own content. Social networks trap your content in their sites and you do not get paid for it. The value of their site is their idea filled with your content but where is the download button, where is the “I want to leave now and take all my stuff” button? Loux notes that it is hard to get the legal community involved in these questions. In the long term we need a Creative Commons style licensing to have a balanced relationship with these sites. In order to prevent stifled innovation we need open standards.
As a consumer we should demand OpenID access and be able to take our data out. Loux states that we should challenge the big companies and blog about open standards. Especially start-ups should embrace open standards because they are in the long tail of business. According to Loux startups can change the currently closed social network environment by adopting open standards. Startups are the new generation based on open standards. Startups can avoid the closed business cycle by taking up the power and empower the community.
Startups in the long tail hold the power to embrace open standards and challenge the big companies.
Khris Loux is the CEO and co-founder of JS-Kit. That’s a freakishly simple, non-obtrusive, self-contained, mostly-free widget service. He’s one of the speakers and the Next Web and before he climbs the stage, Khris would like to know YOUR opinion about the subject. So go to the Next Web page he created and let him know what you think. He just told me that he will react on your comment during his keynote. So let’s reward this great and innovative idea of Khris by sending in a helluva lot comments.
Written on 7th November 2008
1 COMMENT 
In the comments section you can let us know what you think of a certain post (see picture right). From your ratings, we hope to learn what kind of posts you guys like and which can be considered “popular”. 
Written on 26th May 2008
Written on 3rd April 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 
