Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 29th January 2009
0 COMMENTS 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Flirtomatic is a ridiculously popular mobile social network from the UK. That makes sense, as it’s all about sex. Seduce your desired guy or gal via the mobile phone. Currently, 1.3 million folks are concerned with this act of love.
The growth of Flirtomatic is rather spectacular. It had 225,000 registered users in February 2007. What’s even more interesting, is Flirtomatic’s impressive revenue growth. According to a press release in September, it has “skyrocketed” by 475%.
Taking that in account, it’s actually interesting to hear that the service will launch a mobile beta in the U.S. of A. CEO Mark Curtis commented in a press release: “It’s a difficult time in the market, but we’re optimistic that we can enter the US successfully. It will not be easy but if we can replicate some of the success we’ve had in the UK and Germany, generating revenues within six months, we will have taken a major step towards achieving our goals.”
I think the success of Flirtomatic tells us a lot about the future of mobile: it’s gonna be exciting. Sex always leads the way, so Facebook and national networks will follow. I for one, do most of my social networking via iPhone apps.
Written on 20th January 2009
30 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Only a few hours to go till Obama can strike away the “elect” bit of his title. An important reason for why he came this far, is his excellent use of Web 2.0 technologies during his campaign.
On Twitter he has 144,000 followers, not to mention the thousands and thousands of admirers on Facebook and other social networks.
To my co-editor Boris’ disappointment (and probably many other’s), Obama stopped tweeting after his historical election. Ever since he won the elections on the 5th of November he stopped updating. So Boris started a Twitter campaign, which was quite a success. Have you seen this message as well?
But now, at the eve of his presidency, Obama is back on Twitter. He asked you and me to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr by volunteering in our area. Let’s hope this Twitter strategy will be part of his presidency’s resolutions – if he gets to keep his Blackberry.
Anyhow, let’s encourage him by welcoming Obama back on Twitter. Send him the following message RIGHT NOW:
Clicking that link will produce this tweet:
@BarackObama, ask not what Twitter can do for you, but what you can do for Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/9yh3su
Update: Follow our little campagain live on Twitter Search.
Written on 14th December 2008
47 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
It’s funny and sad. The tech scene is an industry where people travel the whole world for conferences and meet-ups, so you’d expect most to be global citizens. McLuhan’s global village and all that. Yet right after Europe’s largest web conference, almost everybody who has the guts to speak up is ranting about each other’s countries.
A-listers start a discussion – Michael Arrington criticizes Europe’s work ethic, Loren Feldman “bans” France, Loic Le Meur finds himself defending Europe all the time -, and a large group of followers starts to bash anyone whose not from their country.
In the TechCrunch discussion, it took about twenty comments when Godwin’s law was once again proved. At Loren Feldman’s, some people used vivid and hostile examples to fight prejudice: I’m French and you’re right, I shower only once a week. Right after I bang your wife. Plus, in the heat of the discussion, Loic le Meur and Michael Arrington just broke up.
Screw all that.
I’m lucky to work for this blog. The Next Web team send me all over the world. Everywhere I came, from London, San Francisco, Geneva, Paris, Krakow, Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai, and even crazy Kathmandu – I found people to level with. Guys and girls who are working to make their dreams come true.
Maybe they’re taking a two hour lunch – but they might as well skip some sleep to work.
Maybe their English is terrible, but they’re helping out millions of people world-wide who speak the same language.
Maybe they don’t have a passport, but thanks to the web they appear more like global citizens to me than most tech people.
Written on 18th November 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
We’ve something to celebrate here: the Internet in Europe has been around for twenty years and one day. At 2:30 pm, on November 17th, 1988, system supervisor Piet Beertema from the Amsterdam Centre for Maths and Information received an email saying his organization was now connected with the National Science Foundation Network (NSFnet).
As you might know, NSFnet was the successor of CSNET, a network that linked academic computer science departments, in 1981, the NSF aimed to create an open network allowing academic researchers access to supercomputers (cited rom Wikipedia).
After the connection in Amsterdam, the Internet out to the whole of Europe. Amsterdam always remained the central connection point with AMS-IX.
In 1993, the Internet became available for everybody. And now, fifteen years later, I’m sitting in a Nepalese coffee bar, typing this post and sending it through the air by using the wireless network. Quite a digital revolution, right? (though I still wrote this article one day too late)
[Via Webwereld (Dutch)]
Written on 8th October 2008
0 COMMENTS
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 I’m interviewing Jordan Goldman, founder and CEO of Unigo.com – a student-generated guide to North-American colleges. When I read an article about him in the New York Times magazine a few weeks ago, I was struck by his inspiring story. Jonathan Dee wrote the stunning piece like only a reporter from Eight Avenue can. It’s starts like this:
Born and raised in Staten Island, he graduated from Wesleyan in 2004, spent two post-grad years in England and, upon his return to his native city, lived in 16 different sublets in the next two years. His own parents referred to him as the Wandering Jew. “I was ordering Chinese lunch specials and dividing them into three,” he remembered recently, “and that was my food for days. My mom thought I was nuts. She kept saying, ‘Get a job,’ and I’d say, ‘No, Ma, I have this idea.’ ”
Let’s hear the rest of the story from the Wesleyan graduate himself. It’s kind of long, but I promise, you’ll be entertained.
How did you come up with the idea of Unigo?
“When I was 18, I created a series of 100% student-written college guidebooks, called Students’ Guide to Colleges’, that was published in a couple editions from Penguin Books. About a year after I stopped doing Students’ Guide, I started thinking about the limitations of print guidebooks – each college only got a small number of pages, with no photos, no videos, no interactivity …
For a four-year, $50,000 to $200,000 decision, one of the five most stressful decisions of people’s lives … I realized high school students and parents needed more accurate, authentic, honest information. And college students needed a place where they could really represent their college lives – if they loved their school, if they had issues with it, if they were someplace in-between. The internet provided the opportunity to create an enormous, comprehensive and totally free resource that could help everyone.
But it was really important that we create something that was actually representative. That we didn’t just sit back, open a review platform, and hope people came. (more…)
Written on 3rd October 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
“Who dies in two years and doesn’t have a Tribute on Respectance.nl, didn’t have a lot of friends”, says Respectance founder Richard Derks in a press release issued today. He sure knows how to get attention, as you simply can’t ignore a statement like this. Let me explain you the situation here.
Richard Derks
Respectance.com is a social tribute network that offers people the opportunity to honor the lives of their deceased loved ones. That sounds more stylish than the no-friends argument and honestly, the site also ousts the loving family sentiment (with flowers, pictures of grandma – while she’s still alive, and clouds – a metaphor for eternity) instead of the “don’t die without friends”-one.
Anyhow, the reason Derks has sent out a press release is because he has launched a Dutch version of Respectance. It’s their first step in conquering Europe. Why Holland, you might ask – since it only has 16 million citizens. Well, it’s Derks’ home country.
Respectance’s launch in Europe is going to highlight some interesting cultural differences. Derks already told me about one when I interviewed him in November 2007:
“Even though we have no marketing activity going on outside the US, 55 percent of the visitors are foreign. Especially in Latin America and Scandinavia, Respectance is really popular. This reveals some pretty interesting cultural differences. For instance, a Norwegian web site for parents who lost their child, advised its visitors to visit Respectance. My American employees were shocked by the pictures of babies, and asked me to remove them. Naturally, I didn’t do that, since our slogan is ’share your memories’. Everybody is allowed to do so”.
Grandma is still alive now, but when she’s dead, I’ll make a tribute on Respectance.com
Written on 28th August 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Football in the US
By the headline of this post, you might guess this article concerns the American way of football. But no, I’ll actually discuss the sport to which Americans refer as “soccer”. The sport that their youngsters play. The sport that’s only known for Posh Spice’s boyfriend, David Beckham. But unpopular or not, there IS an US-based company that gets football. OleOle.com is an online football empire that offers fans the ability to share their truth about football, ’cause “nobody knows more what you love about football than yourself”.
OleOle users have a lot of freedom. They can write articles, create team pages, watch and upload videos, check live scores, comment on each other’s pages, join and create groups, and write bio’s for teams and players.
This model seems to work fine, but maybe needs a little refinement. You know, Web 3.0 is coming up so people will sooner or later demand an expert layer. Therefore, the Beverly Hills-based company is acquiring fan blogs. In the last couple of months, OleOle has acquired ArseBlog, The Lord of the Wing (Celtic), Chelseablog, Harry Hotspur, Fans del Real Madrid, Real Madrid Talk and Boca Juniors Fans. Yesterday, the football community added AVFC Blog, fan blog of Aston Villa. Its writer gives an interesting insight in OleOle’s business.
The fast growing football website basically incorporates the blogs. They move the blog to their own servers and put the blogger on the pay roll. Or, like AVFC blogger Damian describes:
On Wednesday night, at about 11pm UK time, the site will be taken off line for a few hours. While it is off line, it will be moved and become part of another site, namely OleOle.
(…)
Well, basically they sort of offered me a job. The job isn’t doing anything that I’m not already doing but the guys at OleOle are actually going to pay me to keep the blog running.
So while OleOle users can still write as much content as they want, official bloggers will function as experts. These US chaps might have found the perfect way to combine community and editorial quality. Not bad, for a bunch of soccer fans.
Written on 27th August 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
A report by Dow Jones VentureSource has a pessimistic conclusion: venture capital firms have invested significantly less money in European start-ups during Q2 than during the same period last year – the amount declined with 35 percent, to $1.3 billion. They’ve invested in 167 young companies, which is 42 percent fewer than last year. This year’s Q2 was the worst since at least 2000, when VentureSource started tracking European data.
The worst sector of all? Information technology. I assume that concerns our beloved Internet industry as well. The British IT industry, former leader, had to take the hardest punch, venture investment declined with a stunning percentage of 49.
Ram Srinivasan, a venture partner with European firm Wellington Partners explained to The New York Times what’s causing the slowdown in funding: “Europeans are wary of investing in start-ups until the United States markets stabilize and economic and political uncertainty recedes”.
The US venture investment also declined, yet not as sensationally as in Europe. The investments fell with 19 percent.
Written on 20th May 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The idea of Robert Scoble wandering around in an African village, looking for another child to adopt with his lovely girlfriend Angelina Jolie might sound odd to you. But according to Picitup’s Celebrity Match it wouldn’t be all that surprising. This service finds your celebrity look-alike, and matched Scoble’s face with Brad Pitt. Oh and not just him, as our web celeb also looks like Danny deVito, Jim Carrey and John McCain. Scoble sure has universal looks.
Celebrity MatchUp is an initiative by the Israeli-based visual image search engine Picitup. Smart move, as celebrities always attract a huge crowd. Why do you think I’ve mentioned Jolie in the first place? They’ve got some bad coverage on TechCrunch, so a little media hype won’t hurt them. But why isn’t there a Facebook app? With services like these, adding a Facebook app is almost like 1 + 1 = 2.
Picitup allows you to specify image search by requesting similar images. You can also filter by color, landscapes, products and faces. Although the service linked Arrington’s face to Obama and McCain’s at the same time, the matches aren’t always that bad. For example, when I uploaded quite a manic picture of myself in which I jump around, Picitup matched me with the always-shouting and acting all ecstatic Asthon Kucther. I wonder when Demi More will drop by my house.
Written on 5th May 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The New York Times business section opens today with an interesting story about mobile TV. For those of you who think this is a service born for the niche – except for Asia, you seem to be mistaking. Alright, in the US it is: Verizon Wireless has been offering this service since March 2007, but it has fewer than 100,000 paying viewers. However, some European countries have adopted the service entusiastically — in Switzerland, 40,000 people watch news broadcasts on a daily basis, and a million Italians pay 19 euros a month to watch a dozen mobile TV channels.
Several American and European investors have started to expand the infrastructure on which mobile TV relies, which the New York Times describes as “special transmission towers that beam to tiny receivers in the mobile phones.” In the UK, France and Germany, mobile video services like these are on their way. AT&T is shaking things up in the US by launching a mobile TV service as well.
These rapid developments exceed the expectations of experts. A year ago, research firm Screen Digest predicted that the adoption of mobile TV services in the UK might have to wait until 2012, due to a shortage of spectrum. The new infrastructure might speeds things up.
The big question remains though: who will watch mobile TV? People stuck in traffic jams or public transport? And still, when caught in a situation like this, wouldn’t you prefer an episode of Seinfeld or anything but a news broadcast? I suspect that people have already found their sources for news: the TV bulletin in the morning, mobile news sites, screens in public transport and for that matter, the newspapers. Who would want to pay another 20 euros for 100 seconds of news broadcasts?
flirtomatic, germany, Mark Curtis, mobile, mobile phone, social network, united kingdom, United States
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