Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 10th October 2008
2 COMMENTS 
Toivo Tänavsuu, Next Web Estonian Web Tipr & founder of TigerPrises.com
There’s an almost unobserved but large scale Internet business being run from Estonia. It’s called Fotki. Happy tenth birthday to them!
Many people, especially from US, Canada and UK, but also Estonia, Lithuania and Iceland are familiar with the site Fotki.com. The founder Dmitri Don calls it photo-sharing, photo-printing, photo-selling and blogging website. I’d call it image-oriented social network. One that’s pretty good-looking.
Last year the site was recognized by CNET as one of the best Web 2.0 applications in the world, side by side with success stories like YouTube and MySpace.
Dmitri Don, who claims he never had to go to school to learn programming, says Fotki.com has more than half a million unique visitors and about 25+ million unique people who they serve images from their cluster. These are daily figures.
“We power the world”
But Fotki, as Don point out, is not just a website, but also web service. “We power the world, but nobody knows much about this!” Don says. The Estonian company is licensing photo-sharing software and providing hosting and storage services for digital content for huge global companies, with annual turnover over $50 billion.
One of them is Telecom Italia, the giant operator that’s active in seven European and Latin-American markets. Alice.it, its multifunctional web portal is powered by Fotki photo engine.
US clients
Another big guy Fotki serves is US retailer Sears, that operates more than 3800 shops. Sears’s home management and services portal ManageMyHome.com is run by Fotki’s photo engine. Don hurls names of US clients, one after the other - vacation organizer Mark Travel, media group Vegas.com, turism company Funjet.com etc.
Exceptional team in Estonia
Fotki was founded ten years ago in New York by Don and his wife Katrin Lilleoks (both pictured). By accident that was the exact same day some other guys founded Google! Fotki’s back-office and development team is in Estonia, Tallinn. This team is kind of exceptional, because it consists of 25 Russian-speaking Estonians, lead by Russian citizen Pavel Merdin.
“East Coast not a good place for Internet business”
This year Fotki moved its US office from New York to Silicon Valley. “The East Coast is not a good place for Internet business. People there don’t know much about the Internet. They ask stupid questions, like why do people want to upload their photos online?” Don claims.
An East Coast bank refused to open an account for Fotki in 2001. That’s because Don had said to the banker that he is running an Internet business. Don: “People from East Coast think that Internet business is porn, gambling, stealing and dirty money!”.
Fotki will raise some venture capital from Europe very soon. “Stay tuned!” says Don.
Written on 26th August 2008
1 COMMENT
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 Shafqat from NewsCred. He works from Geneva, Switzerland. Together with his Sweden-based business partner Iraj, he founded a digital newspaper that aggregates hundreds of news sources. The Newscred community votes on the crediblity of articles, authors and news sources. Iraj and Shafqat then apply their CredRank algorithms to ensure you only get the highest quality news from desired news sources. The quality is even higher than that from Google News or Yahoo News, the Swiss/Swedish company claims. I guess you can never aim high enough.
How did you come up with the idea of NewsCred?
“The idea for NewsCred originated during many late-night, coffee-fueled debates over the future of newspapers and traditional media between my cofounder (Iraj) and myself. It was the summer of 2007, and we spent a lot of time in cafes and bars on the banks of Lake Geneva brainstorming our crazy ideas. It was clear to us that the media industry was broken, and it seemed like the entire news space was one of the few traditions that wasn’t yet disrupted by the latest web technologies. On top of that, every single person we spoke to told us that they were getting fed up of news that was biased or inaccurate or just not transparent. It seemed like a big enough problem to tackle, so we decided to give it a go!” (more…)
Written on 28th April 2008
10 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
While in San Francisco I had the chance to meet and interview someone who most people won’t ever meet. And if they do, they might not talk about it publicly. The person I interviewed is known to most people only as ‘Fille deLouer’. She is an active blogger (http://filledeloyer.wordpress.com/), twitter-er (http://twitter.com/fillealouer), works in the tech industry AND as an elite escort.
Yep, an elite escort.
She has paid sex with men.
There are lots of reasons to blog and twitter and one important one is to strengthen your online presence and do a little self-promotion. This surely can’t be the case with ‘Fille aLouer’ who is very strict about her privacy and doesn’t want to get known. So why does she do it? Why do people twitter in general? I wanted to find out.
I spent some time setting up a meeting with Fille but she refused to do so in order to protect her privacy. I did end up meeting her but will only tell you about that at the end of this story. First the interview:
My first question: are you real or just a blogger having fun with an alternate identity?
hello, Boris. Before I answer your first question I’d like to clear something up. It is very important for me to safeguard my identity but I actually do use twitter to promote my blog. I don’t think “self promotion” is a dirty word. And I don’t believe for a minute that most people who twitter aren’t using it as some form of self promotion. Nobody is that interested in status updates. I mean c’mon. Do I care if someone tweets that they can’t decide what shoes to wear? Not really. I do like knowing that someone’s put up a new post on their blog though. And I like being directed to a cool article or video or product review.
So, back to your original question: am I real. I don’t think some random blogger could make up half of the things I’ve experienced and talk about on my blog. I am, in fact, very real. But having been a part of the tech industry for the last several years I’m not surprised by this question. Skepticism seems to be endemic in the community. Whether it’s a healthy skepticism I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just annoying. I’ve gotten this question a lot.
Ok, can you tell me how you got started with this? (more…)
Written on 13th April 2008
8 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I bought a white suit yesterday. For those of you who don’t know why, I’m glad to tell that it’s one of the most infamous clothings in the Valley. Ask the San Jose Mercury News, ask Micheal Arrington, ask Wired. They’re all familiar with the meaning of the suits: entrepreneurial trouble from Amsterdam. And now they’re coming back, with a slightly different team and a different mission.
This time we want to put our European Web 2.0 blog under your attention, let’s discuss the European start-up scene and its influence on the technology industry.
We’ll show up at the Web 2.0 Expo (April 22 – 25) to cover and learn about the latest developments in our beloved industry and especially to meet people who also think outside the Valley. After all, that’s what our blog is about. So are you a social media watcher whose also interested in Europe, building a start-up that aims for the European mainland or do just want to learn more about our wine-and-cheese lifestyle? Then look for the guys in the white suits.
Boris and I are looking forward to meeting you and have a good and interesting time!
Written on 8th April 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In a discussion on TechCrunch about where Europe’s own Silicon Valley would emerge, some interesting suggestions were made (warning: many links to specific comments follow). From Moscow to Lisbon and from Estonia to London.
The latter was the most mentioned location, followed by Finland and Switzerland. Finland has an USP that is their biggest pro and con at the same time: Nokia. On the one hand, it’s THE European tech company, on the other: it sucks up all the talent.
Switzerland would be a fair option, since it’s an innovative country and home of some important venture capitalists like Index Ventures. Yet a new development makes the question even more complicated: Nokia has just announced that it would establish a research center in Lausanne. It will be a joint lab with two Swiss federal institutes of technology. It will open its doors in June.
According to All About Symbian, the research agenda will focus on persuasive communications:
- Exploring new interaction experiences and technologies utilizing all the human senses;
- Services and applications based on the user’s context, such as location, and personal preferences, e.g.,
information provided by sensors within a mobile device or in the surrounding world;
- Internet services and technologies – enriching the Internet experience on mobile devices.
Nokia’s Chief Technology Officer Bob Iannucci said to Reuters that Nokia ’sees the fusing of the digital and physical worlds as a key objective in mobility.’
So, will this cause some sort of local brain drain? Kai Lemmetty from Floobs told me during The Next Conference that this is the case in Finland. Nokia just picks out the talent and makes them an offer they can’t refuse. As you can imagine, this is deadly for local start-up action. And a good start-up atmosphere is one of the most important conditions for a Silicon Valley-like area. So all you European start-up experts, please lend me your thought on this matter.
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 
