Likemind has exploded and is now in 36 cities worldwide. Crazy! Tomorrow, Friday, I will be attending the Stockholm version, but the Malmö one is on as usual. I hope to see you there!
Facebook launches FBFund
Now this is normally not a blog that covers too much news, but this was to interesting to pass on. At Techcrunch 40, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, announced that they will be starting a fund to support Facebook developers. The sum of money will range from $25 000-$250 000 and the only condition so far is that it is spent on developing their company within Facebook.
IMHO, this is a brilliant idea. When I held my presentation at Stanford I spoke of eight types of internet currency. Money was the last one, and Revver´s rev-sharing was my example then. Paying for content or action is somehow the final incentive as it is the most common form of it outside the internet (salary).
Setting up a fund that supports developers is just a nicer and more interesting way of doing that. Also, the buzz around each payout could become the same as major VCs investing in startups. This is a truly intelligent initiative.
tags technorati : facebook fbfund markzuckerberg fund vc internetcurrency
tags bloggar.se: facebook, fbfund, mark zuckerberg, riskkapital, internetvaluta, fond
And it only took 70 years
70 years with television and suddenly the TV channels gets how people watch it. Using several channels, not just the one that they happen to own.
It started this summer with Schibsted´s acquisition of TV.nu, a fairly basic site that lists what television programmes are on. Following this, both TV4 and Kanal5 decided to take on a new approach to what a television site could, and should, contain. Information about television – no matter what channel or torrent tracker it may be on.
Check the screen shot above – Kanal5s top story is about the rivalling channel SVT. TV4´s TVplaneten lists SVT1, SVT2 and TV3 before their own channels. Just like they should.
People that are interested in TV are interested in good programmes. Where these programmes are shown is secondary. Imagine that it only took 70 years to work that one out.
tags technorati : schibsted television tv4 svt kanal5 tv.nu tvplaneten
tags bloggar.se: schibsted, tv, tv4, svt, kanal5, tvplaneten, tv.nu
Framtidens e-handel @ Webbdagarna Malmö
I held a presentation about the future of e-commerce at Webbdagarna Malmö today. It’s in Swedish and it builds strange with Slideshare, but you’ll get the picture. Also, Fredrik and I set up a backchannel in Jaiku that you can find here.
Here you go:
tags technorati : e-commerce presentation webbdagarna internetworld
tags bloggar.se: e-handel, presentation, webbdagarna, internetworld
The State of the Nation
Stockholm University:
Create a Facebook account and make three friends.
Stanford University:
Create a Facebook application.
No wonder we’re not getting anywhere.
When to build and when to join
While I was gone three similar, but interesting, pieces of news turned up Bloglines. DN, Aftonbladet and Sydsvenskan are planning communities with the Josh XCAP platform.
It’s slightly strange that they all chose the same system, but fair enough – that’s not the interesting part. What is, is the choice to start building their own communities at a time like this. The logic follows along the lines of the classic protectionism that is often shown by media companies like these. Everyone wants to own their readers. If they instead focused on producing what the readers actually wanted, and made sure it could be placed where the readers already were, perhaps success would come eventually.
With this is mind, it might be better to produce a few intelligent and value-adding widgets for MySpace and Facebook instead. It would be considerably cheaper as well. Through portioning out your content into chunks and pieces that fit into current social frameworks, you are not as affected by the lack of loyalty shown by many community members. Instead, you can be versatile enough to change along with the times and move wherever the people may be going.
All communities aren’t doomed of course – even if Facebook and MySpace are doing a good job of eliminating quite a few competitors. But to be successful in that space you need to find an interesting enough niche, dedicate a lot of resources and/or simply design a web-app so well that it’s simply irresistible. I just don’t think any of the aforementioned newspapers will manage that.
(Transparency: We do consultancy work for Sydsvenskan but are not involved in the above project.)
A few other things I should have blogged about earlier:
* Sydsvenskan released their first original podcast today. Although we haven’t been part of the production, the idea originally came from us over a year ago. We thought HippHipp! was the perfect partner as they both have a strong connection to Sydsvenskans coverage area Skåne, and also have become national icons through their tv-series.
* “Who cares about what people think?” Fantastic (or tragic, depending on how you look at it) words from Anna Serner, the new CEO of The Swedish Newspaper Publishers’ Association.
* DI released their new design today, and kept the frames… OMG FRAMES!
* Olof wrote the entry I was thinking of writing myself. We’re ditching Plazes, sorry guys.
tags technorati : communities newspapers internetstrategy
tags bloggar.se: communities, dagstidningar, tidningar, internetstrategi
Good Old in SF
Oh yeah, I completely forgot to tell you! Not all of you read our office blog of course – shame on me.
I’m working from San Francisco this week, revamping my presentations for the autumn. If you’re around and want to meet up – let me know. And if nothing else maybe we’ll meet here, here (eh, $1695? I think not) or even here?
…And Jetset For All
Since I’ve been travelling quite a lot this year, I’ve been thinking about the way we look upon distance and national limitations. I’m half English, one quarter Norwegian and one quarter Swedish, and I live in a region that is 50/50 Denmark and Sweden. Therefore, national identity is an idea I find hard to relate to. For me, it’s all about getting to where I want to be, meeting the people I want to meet, and working the way that suits me best. Basically, we’re talking about infrastructure – both digital and physical.
An example: a few months ago I went to San Francisco for the weekend. I left Malmö on Thursday morning and was back at the office in time for lunch on Monday. The flight, one way, took approximately 14 hours (8822 km). A long way to go (and god knows the flight home wasn’t pure pleasure, SFO-MIN-AMS-CPH), but completely manageable for anyone. As a comparison, I went to Örebro and back a week or so ago. Getting there and back took me 15 hours (497 x2 km).
Both this map over at City of Sound and Personal World Map illustrates this point admirably. Living near a rail and flight hub, and having wireless broadband access, makes ones physical surroundings considerably less important. The region of Wallonia has been advertising in The Economist delivering this message. Pointing out the vicinity of Paris, Amsterdam and Luxembourg as it’s key advantages certainly gives that impression at least.
If one starts to think in terms of regions like Wallonia, or Øresund where I live, and imagine the scenario of travelling seamlessly both in between the countries within it and using the hubs to travel away – where would it make the most sense to live? And by live I mean the country and city where I’m officially thought to be most often. It would probably be a place where taxes are low and interference in general is at a minimal. If travelling a lot – I would need a private health care plan anyway, and my general involvement in domestic affairs would be at a minimal. Will there evolve states that enables people to outsource their living? Like Monaco for athletes, but on a greater scale?
Even if the above initially sounds a bit neo-liberal for my taste, I think this is the way we are heading. People will find other ways of solidarity that aren’t dictated by national borders. The engagement in NGOs on an international or idea driven level will increase. I think it will be a lot like the old “think global, act local” slogan, only redefining local to be ones surroundings no matter what countries that may include.
Øresund, Scandinavia or even the European Union are all regions aiming to link together rather than hold apart. And with globalisation so obviously integrated in the coming generation of work force, the idea of the national borders suddenly feels very old. We will want to live where we can meet the people we care for and where we can experience the most. No matter where some old kings decided to draw the border lines.
tags technorati : globalisation jetset regions wallonia øresund trend prediction
tags bloggar.se: globalisering, regionalisering, jetset, wallonia, öresund, trend, förutsägelse
Likemind reminder!
Don’t forget – Likemind tomorrow, 9 am at Solde Kaffebar. See you there!
Quote of the summer
During my holiday I tried to think offline as much possible. My work consists of so much information processing, I thought I needed a month without an active inflow. One quote stuck with me through the summer and still seems to make perfect sense. It’s from Jonathan Schwartz´s blog in June:
Media company CEO’s without a CTO on their staff should prepare to be acquired or broken up – they are fighting the future rather than monetizing it.
Often I feel management wants to stay as far away from technology as possible, instead of embracing it as a way of creating new possibilities and income. This goes for both media companies and other industries. The fear of technology, and the mistake of leaving it to technicians, may be the decisive factor regarding success in the next five years.
tags technorati : cto media technology jonathanschwartz
tags bloggar.se: cto, media, teknik, jonathan schwartz