Tag Archive for 'Web2.0'

Social Media Rush….

Published
by
ron
on April 1, 2008
in Social Media
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Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later (Social Media Will Change Your Business, BusinessWeek Online)

“Blogs werethe heart of the story in 2005. But they’re just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they’ve all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. “

A good primer for business executives that are just starting out in social media initiatives. We’re just standing at the beginning of the social media revolution. In the next three to five years the entire media world will be turned upside down and advertising, communications/PR, market research, etc will be performed in ways never seen before.

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Happy 50th Anniversary!

Published
by
ron
on January 29, 2008
in International Business and Social Media
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LEGO LogoHappy 50th Anniversary for LEGO! Hearing or reading the name LEGO always brings up good memories and puts a smile on my face! During my childhood LEGO was my favourite toy! I could literally play all day with it! Yesterday was the official 50th anniversary of LEGO.

From a business perspective LEGO is a text-book example of a company that successfully transformed itself for the 21st century. Late 90s LEGO seemed to have had its best time. However it managed to blend in and fully adapt internet in its business model. Resulting in the fact that you now can first build your very own artwork online and have it delivered at your house in the famous interlocking bricks!

Furthermore, if you do a really good work in making your own LEGO artwork it can even be put in mass production by LEGO and put up in stores worldwide. LEGO gives you royalties of 5%, which in turn can make you a good living. Building and ordering LEGO bricks online now accounts for 10% of sales. So still loads of potential especially if you take in account the long tail. Building and ordering your very own LEGO artwork online is basically an unlimited supply of LEGO artwork variety.

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Spotted Consumer Trends for 2008!

Published
by
ron
on January 15, 2008
in Global Strategy
. 0 Comments

Consumer Trends 2008

Curious about what consumer trends will emerge this year? Trendwatching.com made again a fair attempt in predicting them for you. The full report can be found here (PDF).

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Wikia Search

Published
by
ron
on January 8, 2008
in Social Media
. 1 Comment

Wikia Search

Yesterday Wikia launched a new type of search engine: Wikia Search, with results that rely on users’ input and open-source software. Wikia, on the other hand, is a for-profit company cofounded in 2004 by Wales (co-fouder Wikipedia) and British Internet entrepreneur Angela Beeseley under the original name Wikicities.

What separates Wikia Search from many other Web-search tools, including Google’s, is that it will incorporate human input with methods based on computer programs. A potentially more important distinction is that Wikia will publish the code underlying the search engine. Opening the source code fits with the growing movement in the field of technology, including within Google, toward open software.

Still, Wales says it may take at least two years for the engine to reach the standard set by Google and competitors such as Yahoo! and Microsoft’s search tool. That may be too long for impatient Web surfers, says Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Search Engine Land Web site. “If it doesn’t come through the first time—that’s it,” he says. “People won’t go back again when there are so many other options.”

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Google OpenSocial

Published
by
ron
on November 2, 2007
in High Tech & Media and Social Media
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Google OpenSocial
Google unveiled its OpenSocial platform earlier this week, saying it would give outside developers tools to write programs for any of its social network partners.

“OpenSocial is going to become the de facto standard (for developers) instantly out of the gates. It is going to have a reach of 200 million users, which is way bigger than anything else out there,” Chris DeWolfe, chief executive and co-founder of MySpace, told reporters. Source

“OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”

Head on over to http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/ to find out what the buzz is all about.

>>UPDATE @ November 3rd<< Nicholas Carr gives his opinion on Google’s OpenSocial.

Google’s introduction of OpenSocial, which, as Marc Andreessen explains, provides a kind of universal two-way connector between web applications and social networks, marks an important moment in the transformation of the World Wide Web into what I term, in The Big Switch, the World Wide Computer. The internet, as Google frequently points out, is the new computing platform, and OpenSocial - whether it succeeds or not - gives us a view as to how that platform may operate. Continue reading

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Human 2.0

Published
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ron
on October 14, 2007
in Social Media
. 0 Comments

Human 2.0
“We are making exponential progress in every type of information technology. Moreover, virtually all technologies are becoming information technologies. We can reliably predict that in the not too distant future we will reach what is known as “The Singularity”.

This is a time when the pace of technological change will be so rapid and its impact so deep that human life will be irreversibly transformed. We will be able to reprogram our biology, and ultimately transcend it. The result will be an intimate merger between ourselves and the technology we create.” Continue reading

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The 50 best business blogs

Published
by
ron
on September 8, 2007
in Social Media
. 0 Comments

Times Online
Blogging is common practice in today’s society and is increasingly gaining polarity in corporate circles.

Many companies already have been forced to change policies or initiate special PR and marketing campaigns to encounter negative publicity, published by authoritative bloggers. The Times has ranked the fifty most influential business blogs, across industries, to date. This list can also be used (by newbies) as starting point in selecting your favourite business blogs to start reading frequently.

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Globalisation meets Web 2.0

Published
by
ron
on June 26, 2007
in Emerging Markets, Global Strategy and Social Media
. 0 Comments

Globalisation meets Web 2.0

We’re now at the busy crossroads where globalisation meets Web 2.0.

This presents both a challenge to the old ways of doing business and an opportunity to gain tremendous leverage via the right goods and services.

To thrive in this era, companies will have to figure out how to engage young people from all over the world when they conceive of products and services. Businesses need their help in turning concepts into finished products and, especially, in marketing them.

Another angle: Companies can follow the trail of blogs and social networking sites to find and recruit young employees all over the world. (Source: BusinessWeek cover story “Children of the web”)

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Europe’s rising entrepreneurial spirit!

Published
by
ron
on June 21, 2007
in International Business
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European Young Entrepreneurs

Here some additional musing on my previous entry (The new radar screen of VCs) which elaborates on today’s hotness of Europe’s economy!

Amongst others, owing to increasingly favourable macroeconomic conditions and the rise of Web 2.0 enabled initiatives; youngsters are flocking throughout Europe to start their first entrepreneurial advances.

Those youngsters have one thing in common, they all posses the passion and drive to utilise upon undiscovered consumer needs and enable uncontested market space. A narrow selection of twenty-five young entrepreneurs active in Europe can be found here.

BTW. Also checkout the special reports published by The Economist on European Business (February 2007) and The European Union (March 2007).

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Language learning 2.0

Published
by
ron
on June 14, 2007
in Social Media
. 0 Comments

Chinese Podcast
Are you eager to learn a new language from a native speaker but don’t want to pay for it? The new wave of so called web 2.0 technologies can provide you this opportunity by giving you access to numerous native speakers. With only a broadband connection, podcast, and Skype.

For example, the company Praxis offers free Chinese lessons delivered straight to your computer every day. The latest dialogue is delivered as a podcast on your iPod along with the Chinese characters of that day. To move even beyond this, your Skype phone is ringing and someone at the other side of the line says Ni hao to begin the lesson.

Another musing on technology: last week Google and Salesforces (delivers software through a browser) announced a partnership to bundle their powers and blend their software products. Salesforces is one of the leading companies in offering software as a service, one of the most promising technology concepts for the future. Software as a service envisions the ultimate form of delivering on demand services in order to gain business agility.

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