Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 9th December 2008
1 COMMENT 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Alright, it’s we’re heading towards Le Web (probably great) lunch while things on the stage are still going strong. Check out our previous coverage of the Parisian festivities here after you’ve enjoyed some quotes from an on-stage interview with Linda Avey.
She’s the co-founder of 23AndMe, a start-up that checks your DNA and presents the results in an accessible way. Avey has used her 20 years of sales and business development experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and partnered up with Anne Wojcicki – Sergey Brin’s wife. Their final goal? Making the human genome searchable.
23AndMe – named after your 23 paired chromosomes – is a rather spectacular, controversial, and revolutionary project. It’s now up to Resident Geek and tech blogger Cedric Ingrand to find out more about the Mountain View-based company.
Linda first explains how the whole process works. You sign up at their website, get a tube delivered to your house, you spit in it (a lot!) and within 4 tot 6 weeks you get an email with your account data and you will be able to browse through, well, yourself! All your genes, chromosomes and whatever listed conveniently on a page on the web.
Don’t worry though, everything is secure. 23 and me uses international banking standards for securing your data so they are pretty sure nobody will be able to access your data. After all, nobody ever successfully robbed a bank either. No worries there.
So once you have your genetical profile online you can play around with it. Linda does warn you that it is not her fault if you find out that your parents might not be who you think they are. How about that!
Besides genealogy you can also research your own health which might be very useful. Even more useful is that you can find out if you like Brussels sprout. Apparently the taste for Brussels sprout is genetically spread through your genes. You either like it or you don’t.
You could also connect to other people based on similar genes. As far as I can remember we are actually more attracted to people who have completely different genes. But I could be wrong there.
Recently 23 and me has lowered the price of their DNA kit to $399 from $999 for a complete genetics check. They want to become THE interface between you and your genetics. So go ahead, spit in that tube and lets connect!
Written on 11th December 2007
6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
According to the makers of Yoowalk, ‘surfing alone is so sad’. They’ve just pitched their project during the Start-up competition of Le Web 3. In exactly seven minutes they had to impress the jury with a talk about their target audience, revenue plan, market etcetera.
Yoowalk converts the World Wide Web into 3D flash-based villages (I’m sure McLuhan likes the idea). It’s a combination of the WWW, virtual worlds and social networks.
Users can walk through streets and visit houses and rooms. For example, there’s a YouTube house with a room showing the most viewed videos of last week as paintings on the wall. Also, RSS feeds of news sites are shown in frames. (I wish they made up a more creative visual metaphor for that.)
You can in addition create your own room, representing your blog or site. Make it as comfortable as you want, and don’t forget to pick your favorite music.
Main advantage is the possibility to create a 3D avatar and surf with others. I assume that it can be quite interesting to see your visitors walking around ‘in’ your blog. If you’re really impressed by the number of people walking around in your room, you can make a screenshot and embed it in your blog. A really smart move by the creators of Yoowalk, since it will probably generate a fairly good buzz.
During the presentation, Yoowalk seemed pretty simple to use, making it relevant for a large group of people. Unfortunately, there aren’t much screen shots available yet. However, I did subscribe for the private beta, which will launch early 2008. So more about this cool start-up soon.
Written on 11th December 2007
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In an on-the-couch-interview with author Sarah Lacy, Rose gave some advices for entrepreneurs. A small selection, collected by your Le Web 3 correspondent:
- Don’t start raising funds too early. Make your concept perfect, then approach those angel funds and VC’s.
- Pick partners that understand the business.
- You don’t have to be a coder to start a project which you’re passionate about.
Written on 11th December 2007
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Evan Williams, creator of Twitter, asked an interesting question:
What can we take away, to create something new?
Williams thinks that adding constraints to your service can help your users. “The more options you offer, the less often people will use it. If you look at Twitter for example, it’s a blogging app without tools as commenting and images. And of course, there is the post limit of 140 characters.”
When Twitter launched, people started building applications right away. Williams gives us two reasons for this: “Firstly, it’s text only and so integrates with almost everything. Secondly, developers wanted to make up for the lack of features. Some Twitter users even say that if services as Twitteriffic didn’t exist, they wouldn’t use Twitter at all.”
Some other examples of services that had success by leaving something out:
- Fotolog allows its users to post only one photo a day. It had a positive effect on the amount of comments. Now, the average number of comments on a single photo is eleven. Moreover, it lowered their costs.
- When Facebook started, it limited the people who could join: just college kids. They opened up later.
- A very successful dating site only shows their users a photo with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ buttons.
- When Google wanted to compete with Yahoo, they removed all of Yahoo’s functions, expect for the blank text field and a search button.
Written on 11th December 2007
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Le Web 3 kicked off with pumping house beats and an excited couple LeMeur: “We’re all changing the world, so spread the word!”. After this enthusiastic start, Le Web switched to a more critical view on the web revolution. Dan Rose (Facebook), Michel Jaccard (attorney), Jarwoong Lee (Daum Communications, South Korea) and Chris Alden (SixApart) talked about the dark side of web 2.0.
Foto by LeWeb
The four gentlemen seemed to agree: the online world is nothing more than a reflection of the real world. Alden:,,It’s the anonymity that brings the ruder side of us out. The companies SixApart is working for, now more and more often ask us to give users a profile. As it turns out, people behave more polite then”.
Online bullying
The government of South Korea is taking this approach to an extreme level. In order to stop online bullying by kids, the government wants to give their children a personal key to access all the available services. Lee doesn’t agree with this drastic way of preventing bullying: “Privacy is more important. Particularly when you consider the risks of identity theft. Moreover, bullying happens on the schoolyard as well. The government therefore should focus on education instead.”
Then all the eyes focused on big shot Facebook. Rose: ,,Half of our 57 million users comes back every day. They are part of 50.000 plus individual networks. Almost nobody uses Facebook anonymously, since our service is based on real world relationships. People won’t become your friend if they don’t know you. So Facebook loses its value when you use a false identity. Therefore, people behave the same way as they do in real life.”
Privacy
Rose also admitted that Facebook made mistakes during the launch of Beacon: “We didn’t listen to our users when they said that didn’t feel like they had control. That contrasted with our normal approach, namely giving users the options to choose who can see their info. Moreover, we did a bad job explaining Beacon. We’ve launched it together with an advertising platform. Therefore users thought it was primarily an advertising tool. It wasn’t designed as such.”
Yet, Rose still believes in the concept of Beacon. “Users still want an easy way to share info with friends. We just have to give them control when we develop a new way.”
User generated content is crap
Lee: “The talks about soccer used to only take place in café’s, now they’re also published on the web. So yes, a lot of user generated content is crap.” Alden didn’t agree, stating that we too often regard Internet as an newspaper. “We think: if information is irrelevant, it’s crap. On the Internet this is not the case, it’s more like a living space. What’s crap for somebody, is relevant to others.” Rose noticed an evolution in ugc: “The first content produced by users were the customer reviews on Amazon. Those were valuable sometimes, however you never knew who had written it. Then bloggers emerged, and we were able to put the reviews in a context. Even though we don’t know them personally. We do know our Facebook friends personal, so their reviews are most relevant to us.”
That’s probably also the reason why on Facebook, there isn’t a lot of spamming going on. The critical discussion ends with a positive note by Rose: “It’s a movement to better content”.
23andMe, Anne Wojcicki, Business development, Cedric Ingrand, DNA, le web, leweb, leweb08, leweb307, Linda Avey, Sergey Brin
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