Written on December 5, 2008 – 12:07 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
Hyves (winner of last years The Next Web Award for Best European Company) has 7+ million members and is by far the biggest social network in the Netherlands. Today they released the Hyves iPhone app. It is immediately the number 1 most downloaded app in the Dutch iPhone store.
In many ways it looks a lot like the facebook app, which might be a disappointment for the true web savvies and mobile addicts (who were hoping to see new revolutionary stuff), but hey, let’s not complain, it is great that a Hyves App is available for the ’shiny object’ and they have included some nice features.
The app:
In short it has the basic features of the website; you see the so called buzz of your friends, there is a WWW (WhoWhatWhere) section with twitter-like updates on what you’re friends are doing. You can check out pictures and albums of your friends and you have your friends and their contact info at your disposal. What is pretty cool and can come in very handy is that you can directly call your friends (without the need to know their phone number) from the friendslist (note and call for action to all my friends: your phone number needs to be known to Hyves).
All together it is a nice to have and useful app, although it could be a little snappier.
Here are some screenshots:
The future:
My guess is that this first app will be rapidly followed up by new versions with new functionality and available on a lot more phones. They’re using this app to test how people are using it and what features should be available on all phones. One thing that has been left out (on purpose probably) of this version is the friend finder.
It makes a lot of sense to be able to see where your friends are and it makes even more sense that this will be provided by your social network, where you’ve invested hours and hours of building your network, uploading photos and using as a communication service to stay in contact with your friends. My guess is that this killer-app will be introduced in the next version of the mobile app, once there is an app that supports the majority of all phones. The rationale behind this is pretty straightforward; You want to see where your friends are and not where your friends are who have a certain phone (iPhone in this case).
Conclusion: If you’re a Hyves user you need this app.
P.S. What is remarkable is that this is an English language app aimed at the Dutch market!! Could this mean Hyves is planning to expand internationally? I leave the speculation up to you… UPDATE: The app is (of course) bilingual and depends on the settings of your iPhone thanks, Martijn, Yme and Kjeld.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on November 29, 2008 – 10:59 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
This week we celebrated a Dutch premiere: Bob Sijthoff, business man and son of the Financieele Dagblad founder sued the WikiMedia Netherlands foundation and association. He allegedly molested a Swiss banker in 2004 for which he was dragged to court in April 2008. He also bought some apartments, and one of Holland’s most well-known mobsters functioned as a mediator in these transactions.
Of course the news about these shady activities is featured on his Wikipedia page. As you can imagine, Sijthoff doesn’t dig the “insulting” texts.
So he decided to sue Wikipedia. Sijthoff wants them to remove the page as well as to reveal the identity of the author: some guy with the nickname Jacob H.
Sijthoff will be surprised by the effect of his legal action. Hundreds of blog posts and news articles about his case will appear on the web. Whatever he does, nobody can ever Google his name without stumbling upon a blog post like this. That makes his Internet reputation doomed forever.
And you know what, he’ll probably not even win the case. All the mentions on Wikipedia are based on news sources. On December 10th, we’ll know for sure.
Written on November 19, 2008 – 9:18 pm Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Seven years from now The Netherlands will be covered in a web of fiber-to-the-home network thanks to KPN and FTTH operator Reggefiber (according to deVerdieping Trouw).
Of course, the cost isn’t small: about 5-7 billion euros needs to be thrown at the task
KPN and Reggefiber setup a joint venture (KPN wants a 41% stake in Reggefiber) which has to be approved by the authorities.
The places where the fiber cannot reach will be covered by wi-fi network access.
Written on October 31, 2008 – 10:57 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Dutchman Thijs Jacobs used to be Holland’s youngest entrepreneur, by starting his own consultancy business at the age of 15. Yeah, 15. No wonder the Netherlands became small for him and he moved to Beijing. He’s now the CTO of semantic startup Linkool Labs and guess what, they’ve just launched a new discovery engine in public beta. Jacobs was kind enough to mail me before he contacted other tech blogs, so enjoy this little scoop.
This new tool by Linkool Labs, called Juice, saves you a helluva lot time when looking for online information. I could tell you all about it, but why would I considering there’s a “rocking webcast” explaining it all. Watch the first bit and you get the idea.
Excellent tool for bloggers
I’ve been using the service for two weeks now and really think this is the first great blogging tool since Zemanta. Imagine that I want to know more about Thijs Jacobs. After highlighting and dragging his name while browsing, I’ve all the info at my disposal. I can save the relevant images and videos, let the latter play in the background and browse to the next page at the same time. Awesome.
One minor downside: Juice doesn’t recognize text in text fields like the one I’m typing in right now. If they’d fix that, Juice would become even more useful for bloggers.
Robin Wauters recently moved from being a blogger for TheNextWeb.org to blogging for Techcrunch.com. Yesterday he published a post about MySpace leaving The Netherlands. This is the first comment on that post:
I know, it is JUST one comment but I showed it to Ernst-Jan and said “That is why TheNextWeb.org matters”. Techcrunch.com has 1 million+ RSS subscribers and a large part of those readers have no interest in the rest of the world.
Written on October 3, 2008 – 3:50 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Amiz.fr, a French social network with over two million members has been acquired by French Steek SA. But the buying party isn’t all too interesting if you take the selling guys in account. Two Dutch fellas, Sebastiaan Moeys (19) and Tijmen Crone (20), founded the network in the summer of 2006 - right after highschool graduation.
The service offers its members various ways of communication and self-expression through messaging, blogging, pictures, videos and music - the usual social network stuff. But like more national networks - StudiVZ in Germany and Hyves in Holland - it grew rapidly to the before mentioned two million users.
Rumors about a possible exit buzzed around on TechCrunch France last Wednesday. In a press release, Moeys confirmed them today. He told me earlier that they had been facing scalability problems but that users kept coming back anyway. Moeys: “”The network wasn’t sold at its peak traffic. But given the large base of members, the service obviously didn’t go for free”. It didn’t make him a millionaire though. Exact financial details were not disclosed.
The release also mentions that Hyves and Netlog were also interested parties, they didn’t make the cut though.
Written on August 30, 2008 – 1:29 pm 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 Chris and Adriaan Bol, twin brothers, from Cloudspeakers. This is an open music community, founded in November last year. They aggregate links to reviews, (legal) music (videos), and news. The whole music mash-up is backed by a social network where users can show their music taste. Or a lack of it.. Although I doubt those people would find their ways within Cloudspeakers, as the service oozes pure love for music. This can cause a somewhat overwhelming experience, as the site is completely stuffed with lists to music outlets. So be prepared for that.
The musicfreaks-only site recently received an undisclosed amount of funding from the Dutch Creative Industry Fund (DCIF) Veronica Holding.
Chris and Adriaan have found a cool way to answer my questions, as they quote from songs. Click on the quotes to see the music videos on YouTube.
How did you come up with the idea of Cloudspeakers?
“”It’s all like a dream. No, better.” (from Collapsing at Your Doorstep by Air France)
Before Cloudspeakers we were in doubt. Some basic questions were asked. Which way should I go, the emotional or rational path? In Cloudspeakers we saw an opportunity in which both sides came together. With the start-up of Cloudspeakers we realized our dream of combining arts with science. (more…)
Written on August 27, 2008 – 12:13 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Russia has the fastest growing Internet population in Europe, research by ComScore shows. The study about the online behavior of European Internet audiences (based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service) learns us that the Russian Internet population has grown with 27 percent past year up to 17.5 million visitors.
The total number of European Internet users grew with 8 percent during the past year to 241.8 million visitors in June 2008. Next to Russia, countries like France (up 21 percent to 31.5 million visitors), Spain (up 15 percent to 16.2 million visitors), and Ireland (up 15 percent to 1.6 million visitors) also see the Internet becoming a more important part of their society.
Internet adoption was highest in the Netherlands, where 82 percent of the country’s total population age 15 and older went online in June.
U.K. Internet users spent the greatest amount of time online, averaging 28.5 hours per user per month, while German Internet users recorded the most page views, averaging 2,906 pages per visitor.
What makes the country extra interesting, are the contradictions. While Russia has the fastest-growing Internet audience in Europe, it ranked near the bottom in terms of penetration and page views. Two conclusions can be drawn here: Russia still has a long way to go before they’ve bridged the digital divide and the Russian Internet market will become incredibly important when it has reached its full potential.
Written on July 14, 2008 – 4:26 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Dutch booking software company Libersy has finalized the last part of their €1,5 million round of seed funding from several Dutch investment funds (Flevoland Technofund, REOF Fund, Shamrock Ventures, Value Creation & Company and a few generous angels). Libersy makes it possible for small service providers to completely automatize the booking process. Imagine you want to take a tennis course because the Wimbledon finale got you all excited, you can then browse to the tennis instructor’s site and see when he’s available. To the instructor’s delight, you can also pay immediately.
The Almere-based company will take a cut out of every transaction - which sounds like a solid business model to me. I talked to founder Karin Loeffen a few months ago, and she told me Libersy is rolling out an international plan to get customers. According to the release, they’re still working on that. So far, Libersy has ran a pilot with telecommunications company KPN, which was “successful”.
I’ve described the goal of their business somewhat rude in the title of this article, but the first thing that came to my mind was “those poor assistants, loosing their jobs to a piece of software”. Yet at the same time, I welcome the idea of easy booking for my hairdressers and whatnot. I’m actually surprised that it isn’t common yet.
Written on March 20, 2008 – 12:45 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
This time we’re interviewing Rutger Docter from CreativeCrowds. That’s a Dutch startup that is fully committed to crowdsourcing. Their mission is to help companies and institutions engage the power of crowdsourcing. So they help companies embracing the social influence of their customer communities. Last week they received funding from the Dutch Creative Industry Fund, enough to keep the start-up going for another year.
How did you come up with the idea of CreativeCrowds?
“During our study at the Free University of Amsterdam co-founder Carl and I had some good discussions about the effect of the social web on companies. On the other hand we were extreme web enthusiasts with a lot of good ideas. During a Google chat (read our (Dutch) blog post about this chat) we discussed some initiatives of idea competitions. Then we had a little ‘eureka moment’: we should connect companies and crowds with good ideas! On a web platform! That will be great! Later on we got inspired by Cambrian House and Jeff Howe, who came with the term crowdsourcing. And that is what we are: a crowdsourcing startup.” (more…)
Written on December 5, 2008 – 12:07 pm
Written on November 29, 2008 – 10:59 am
Of course the news about these shady activities is featured on 
Written on November 19, 2008 – 9:18 pm
Seven years from now The Netherlands will be covered in a web of fiber-to-the-home network thanks to KPN and FTTH operator Reggefiber (according to 
Written on October 27, 2008 – 11:05 am
The service offers its members various ways of communication and self-expression through messaging, blogging, pictures, videos and music - the usual social network stuff. But like more national networks - StudiVZ in Germany and Hyves in Holland - it grew rapidly to the before mentioned two million users.
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