Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 4th May 2009
30 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
A few weeks ago I met a magazine publisher. We spoke about the future of publishing and the web. It was an interesting discussion because he knew a lot about publishing and I knew a lot about the Internet.
At one point he asked me what magazines and newspapers I subscribed to. I thought for a moment and had to admit that the only magazine I read is Wired magazine which I buy at a newsstand every month. Then he asked me where I got my news from and I explained that I am subscribed to several local and global news sources online. Did I pay for any of these, was his next question. No, I didn’t, I answered. He smiled, and said:
“Don’t you feel guilty for getting all that content without paying for it?”
Of course I explained to him that I didn’t and that although I didn’t actually transfer money to any of these sources I did pay with my attention to their advertisements and that I might even, at one point, consider paying a fee for certain content.
Although the discussion moved on after that the ‘guilty’ question kept lingering in the back of my mind. Somehow I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer. In his line of thought I was guilty of the demise of the newspaper industry, and I had admitted as much. It is all my fault.
Today Reuters reports (for free) that Warren Buffett is giving up on the newspaper industry. In an incredible reversal of fortunes he goes so far as to say that “the reeling industry may never recover because it lacks a sustainable business model”.
Wow. That is what most newspapers are reporting about most Internet companies. No sustainable business model? Really? There is more: “Twenty, thirty years ago, they were a product that had pricing power that was essential,” said Buffett. “They have lost that essential nature.”
Yes, they lost it, and are proud of it.
The editor I spoke with proudly proclaimed that he didn’t get a computer until about a year ago. He refused to check out Twitter, thought blogs were just a waste of time and regarded email as a mere nuisance.
Then it hit me; I couldn’t find an answer to his question because it was the wrong question.
I don’t feel guilty for getting my news online just as I can only assume nobody felt guilty for trading in their horse and carriage for an automobile in 1910. I’m sure the local farrier wasn’t too happy about the whole thing but blaming the customer surely didn’t help.
As it turns out the newspaper industry had a healthy lifespan of about 300 years. Their business plan worked out fine. It just wasn’t sustainable.
Was this inevitable?
No, it wasn’t. They owe it to themselves. They didn’t cause their own demise but stood by, ignorant, arrogant and too proud to do anything about it, as the world changed.
Ask yourself this; if ads are so damned important to newspapers, why didn’t any of them invent Google Adwords? Or buy into them when they were just getting started?
If classified advertising was such a huge cash cow, why didn’t anyone buy eBay?
The answer is because these newspapers refused to evolve. They refused to acknowledge the fact that the world is changing. They thought they were big, powerful and strong enough to stay relevant.
Unfortunately for the newspaper industry survival of the fittest isn’t about strength but about who is most adaptable to change.
UPDATE: also read this latest post on Techcrunch on the future of newspapers. one quote: “It’s not the “paper” part of newspaper that’s the problem, it’s the “news.” As in, newspapers are way too slow at delivering it in the age of the Internet. People are unsubscribing from newspapers because what’s the point of reading something in print a day after you’ve read it online?”
Written on 12th April 2009
2 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Blogger Mike Morgan started a blog just a few week ago titled “Info, Comments, Opinions and Facts about Goldman Sachs” at GoldmanSachs666.com.
In that time Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has written a number of posts related to Goldman Sachs, other banks and the banking industry as a whole.
On April 8th, the bank instructed Chadbourne & Park to contact Morgan with a cease and desist order (viewable here), making clear that legal action would be taken if he didn’t shut down the site immediately – the same old stuff really.
Not without a fight
Investment banker Morgan has made clear he isn’t disappearing any time soon. He points out that the site meets all legal requirements and clearly states on the header of the homepage that he isn’t affiliated with Goldman Sachs at any level.
He makes clear, again on the homepage:
“Yes, I am short Goldman Sachs stock. I believe this company is evil and should not exist. We need to begin to break up companies that have as much control over world finances as Goldman Sachs.”
(Hence, the 666 in the blog’s domain name.)
A section of his blog is specifically devoted to the matter, where he accepts that he is likely to end up in court. Morgan notes, should the blog be shut down, he has a number of other domain names registered that he plans to make use of.
Written on 30th March 2009
34 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
As you might have noticed The Next Web blog has been growing steadily over the past year.
February 2008 we generated:
49,541 pageviews (25,073 unique visitors)
February 2009 we generated:
272,991 pageviews (175,020 unique visitors)
The increase in visitors and pageviews also means that we are getting more interesting for advertisers. We are seeing more and more interest in our 125×125 button in the sidebar here and are spending more time in finding new advertisers now.
At only €99 a week for 75,000+ pageviews we have a very attractive proposition too.
We are planning a new blog design with more integrated ads after the conference, which will have room for a larger horizontal banner in the header and a skyscraper in the sidebar.
So far so good.
Right now we have an advertiser in the sidebar which you might want to take a look at. It is an ad for a gambling forum. The advertiser asked us if it would be appropriate to advertise on our blog and frankly, we didn’t have an answer.
In today’s economy you would be a fool to turn away money. On the other hand, we don’t want to show inappropriate ads and scare away our audience. The advertiser, NoLuckNeeded, explained to us that they support responsible gambling and good causes like Earth hour. They do not spam and only promote good online casinos.
So, where do we go with this? Do we accept ALL advertisers, no matter what they sell? Should we accept only ‘good’ advertisers that fit our audience? Should we just take the money and run? Who can say?
Your feedback is appreciated, as always…
Written on 3rd March 2009
18 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The title of this post is a quote from Wittgenstein which kept popping into my head as I was traveling through Europe these past weeks. I visited France on a ski trip, stopped over in Vienna by airplane and then traveled to Budapest by car.
I speak Dutch, some English, a little German and unfortunately only know one word in Hungarian. The conference I’m visiting only had 4 English presentations: my own, Ernst-Jan’s and two more. Unfortunately none of the other presentations used the only Hungarian word I know.
Hungary has a population of about 10 million people. After WW1 the country got split up and Hungary lost 72% of its land (a sensitive subject even now) which means that there are about 14.5 million people who still speak the language.
In Europe we tend to compare ourselves to the US regularly. We are jealous of the great start-up cultures in cities like San Francisco and the entrepreneurial spirit that so many Americans seem to have. But how much difference is there really between these two parts of the world? Lets take a good look at some statistics.
Population
The US has a population of more than 300 million. Compare that to Hungary and you aren’t too well off. Compare it to Europe as a whole and the figures look different. There are more than 700 million Europeans. That is twice as big an audience as the US?! Suddenly I don’t feel so alone anymore.
Language
Those 700 million people are divided by language, right? They all speak different languages so it is too difficult to reach them? Well yeah, there are 23 official langauges in the European Union and 65 languages and/or dialects in total. That sure sounds fragmented.
Everybody in the United States at least speaks English, right? Well, almost. English is not the official language of the United States but more than 82% of the population speaks it as their native language.
Lets look at Europe again: 51% of all europeans speak English as a second or first language. That actually means that there are more people who speak English in Europe (357 million) than there are people in the United States, in total!
Money
It isn’t really about the language is it? It must be about the money. The United States is a richer market. But is that really true?
It looks like the GDP of the US was about USD 14,330,000 in 2008 and USD 18,930,000 in Europe (In millions of dollars).Yep, Europe is doing a lot better than the US when it comes to GDP. Maybe GPD growth? Is the US growing faster than we are? I don’t know what the results will be of the current economic crisis but when you look at from 2006 till 2007 the United States GDP grew 4.9% and our GDP grew 16%.
Maybe you say I’m making these numbers up as a biased European? Nope, they are from the CIA World Fact Book. Surely the CIA can be trusted on their own numbers?
The more I think about it the more interesting Europe becomes to me:
- There are more people in Europe
- More people speak English in Europe than there are people in the US
- We have more money in Europe than in the US
- We are growing faster
I have to admit, all these ‘facts’ are based on statistics. And we all know how trustworthy those are. But I do suggest you do your own research and look at what you can find out about the differences between Europe and the United States before you pack your bags and move to San Francisco.
Now all that is left for me to do is convince all the Internet Entrepreneurs in Hungary, and Europe, to actually start speaking English…
Written on 23rd January 2009
10 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Oprah Winfrey once said “You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, even if you weren’t being paid for it.”
If this is true then there must be millions of bloggers on the road to success right now!
Surely we love our job and would do it even if we weren’t paid but it is still extremely satisfying to make some money of off the work we do here. To that end we have professionalized a few things in the past few weeks.
We now have an Ad Management system that works very well, gives us lots of options to customize everything and which makes it very easy for advertisers to get your advertisements on our blog.
In fact, it takes less than 2 minutes to get your 125×125 button in our sidebar!
Since yesterday we also started selling simple text links. We received some requests from readers to introduce this format and because it is a cheap and simple way to attract visitors and easier to set-up than designing a Button we decided to start offering it.
So, if you have a site which you want to promote you can now order a 30 day link to your site for just EUR 50-.
It is displayed in the right sidebar on the bottom and I put up a few examples in there to show you how it works. The first paying user is Best Web Hosting.
Related post: “Buy our ads or the dog gets it…“
Written on 13th November 2008
3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
I just received an email from Tom Batten (at London and Palo Alto based) DN Capital with some good news!
“DN Capital recently had the first close of its second fund GVC II and is actively seeking investments in European software and digital media companies requiring growth capital.”
In other words: we have money and want to give it to you. Tom is looking for profitable companies with quarterly revenues of at least €750k who are growing 30%+ pa.
That rules most of us out unfortunately.
If your company is doing well and you are seeking capital for growth, founder liquidity, or change of control, don’t hesitate to contact the kind people at DM Capital!
I wish I would get more of these emails!
Here are two examples of investments that highlight DN Capitals growth strategy:
Written on 11th November 2008
7 COMMENTS
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 27th October 2008
11 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last Friday, Amsterdam was the scene of Holland’s first international blog conference BLOG08. Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Loren Feldman (1938media.com), Hugh MacLeod (Gapingvoid), and Scott Rafer (Lookery) all crossed the ocean to tell the European crowd how they could turn their blog in a successful one. Two of them, namely Cashmore and Rafer, focused on monetizing blogs.
Nobody wants money?
When the Mashable founder asked the crowd about monetizing, something noteworthy occurred. Anne Helmond reports:
When asked, hardly anyone in the room actually wants to monetize its blog. Pete is kind of surprised, especially if he asks the same question in the US where everyone raises their hands.
Language barriers
At first, I wasn’t really surprised. After all, most BLOG08 attendees report for a rather small group compared to bloggers who write in English. A Dutch blogger for example, only has an audience of 17 million people. Americans have a crowd of at least 300 million readers at their disposal.
What did struck me as odd was the reluctant attitude of most visitors towards money. Like it’s some kind of crime.
More revenue means more time for blogging
I’ve been blogging for a year before I made some money out of it. And ever since I started doing that, my blogging skills improved. More revenue means more time for blogging. I was able to quit my sorry day job and spend more time on reporting about tech.
A precondition on making some money with blogging is writing in English. Simply because you can reach a larger crowd. That’s not something I came up with. No, one of Holland’s most remarkable journalists, Nico Haasbroek, once told me that.
Write your articles in English, German, or French, so you can sell them to any magazine or newspaper.
Content producers should not be involved with advertising
Sure, my English isn’t perfect yet. But thanks to the euros earned, I can soon start following some English lessons. While I’m doing that, I keep another rather important lesson in mind. As read in Michael A. Banks’ Blogging Heroes, stated by Ken Fisher from Ars Technica:
Content producers should not be involved with advertising, to avoid even the appearance of advertised-influenced content.
So, work your ass off, create great content, and find an advertising partner like Federated Media as soon as you can make money out of your blog.
[Photo credit: Floris Dekker]
Written on 5th October 2008
5 COMMENTS
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Following on from Patrick’s wish for a specific tool to edit the theme of Wordpress blogs, I want to introduce a company that I would love to use and have been drooling over but can’t because it is PC only and I am strictly a Mac man. However, they do solve a very real problem that I am constantly grappling with, they make money, and they could make a ton more if they designed a Wordpress plug in that solved Patrick’s problem and pain.
To edit a website’s design is currently a real hassle, as a developer you have to constantly fath about in a sort of trial and error mode, adjusting one color or parameter at a time. Of course once you change one, that changes everything so you often end up going around in circles for hours until you no longer know whether you’re coming or going (in my case it’s mostly the latter).
Styling is a very time consuming task which generally causes many arguments and frustrations between developers as they try to attain a unique, fresh and interesting look for their projects. With a product like Stylizer this pain is alleviated and the cream works in minutes. One can control the styles in a live fashion seeing how they change the overall look while simply turning knobs and watching the changes take place before your eyes.
As a nuts and bolts developer I personally struggle tremendously with creating a fresh clean look for my own projects. Only after attempting to create graphics yourself do you really gain respect for graphic designers. Earlier in my design carrier I have been constantly disappointed with graphic designers thinking they overcharge, are slow, produce substandard work, etc. In many cases it is often true and one area where I struggled to find a outstanding professional artist. Though I did eventually it is clear to me they are few and far between.
What is now also clear to me is how frustrating and difficult this task really is, I am certainly in the market and will pay good money for an elegant solution to this personal pain, hint, hint, Stylizer Mac version please!!! It is also a little odd that there is not a Mac version of this software (unless there is by someone else and I dont know of it?) given all graphic designers I have ever worked with only ever used Macs.
So if your in the same boat, struggling with creating a shit hot look and feel for your own sites and you use PCs, give Stylizer a shot and let me know if this software is really as good as it looks! Do also do let me know if there something out there similar for the hardened Mac users.
P.S. This article was written by a human not a machine and following on from last weeks huge outcry about the automatic article generating software, we at The Next Web have pledged never to use such software, but the question remains! are the top blogs actually using it? As many sources I have spoken to still think they are :).
Written on 14th August 2008
14 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Earlier today we wrote about Twitter’s decision to stop sending text messages to phones outside the US, Canada, and India. Due to an essential difference between business models of US and European mobile operators, the costs became too high.
How Twitter and mobile operators make money in the US
The difference is how these operators handle MT and MO Text messages.
- A MO message is sent from a mobile phone (to for instance Twitter).
- An MT message is sent from a server to a mobile phone (the Twitter update message).
In the US you pay for sending a text message, but also for receiving a text message. Parties like Twitter who send massive amounts of text messages generate a lot of money for the SMS gateways (or mobile operators). Twitter has a lot of bargaining power and can manage to get 1) the outgoing message for free and 2) a kickback on every delivered message. In other words, the consumer pays for receiving the updates, the carrier earns a bit and Twitter gets a tiny kickback.
A European user costs Twitter up to 7.5 to 10 euros per week
In Europe you only pay for sending the text message. So Twitter is bleeding with every message sent. The costs of sending huge amounts of messages still is around 3 a 4 euro cents per message. So every European Twitter dude can cost up to (250 times 0.03 cent) 7.5 euros to 10 euros per week! That’s obviously not a scalable model.
Option 1: reversed billing
European SMS gateways do offer the possibility to charge the receiver via a so-called reversed billed SMS. The process to charge people via a reversed billed SMS is that you send a message to a short code (e.g. Twitter on to 4200). But the huge disadvantage here is that the total costs of these messages are way higher. A reversed billed SMS costs the receiver normally between 0.25 and 1.50 euros (determined up front by the value added service -in this case Twitter-). Twitter would get a kickback of about 50% of the amount charged, but you can imagine that there are less then zero people willing to pay 25 cents per tweet!
Option 2: a kind mobile operator
Another option is to partner with the operators who would allow Twitter to send the messages for free – hoping that people who receive the message would send one back (to generate revenue). I don’t think that there is one mobile operator who would want to do this, because there is an inter operator charge to deliver a message on a different network of around 1.5 euro cents. And the possible ‘extra’ revenue is far from guaranteed.
Option 3: a pro account
The only viable option I can see is to offer users a PRO account. It makes perfect sense to me: get me some extra cool features and I’ll pay Twitter for it.
Why use SMS anyway?
One more thing. Why use SMS anyhow? It is the most expensive way of transporting data and there are free alternatives. What about twittering per email or via mobile web (For iPhone users there are tons of solutions to work around SMS).
A few weeks ago I met a magazine publisher. We spoke about the future of publishing and the web. It was an interesting discussion because he knew a lot about publishing and I knew a lot about the Internet.
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 
