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Le Web Decompression

Paul Fayngersh — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:27:58 +0000

We (Paul and Mark) just spent two days @ Le Web in Paris and had a fantastic time. The conference was incredibly well organized and kudos to both Geraldine and Loic Le Meur (founder of Seesmic and one of France’s most influential tech bloggers) for doing such a fantastic job.

We had the opportunity to meet interesting people, network with industry leaders, hear inspirational talks (and not so inspirational ones), and rekindle some of our energy/enthusiasm about the future of the web and 2010 in general. It was surely a nice antidote for entrepreneurial burnout. Off course, some truly great food and wine and simply enjoying the beautiful City of Light doesn’t hurt either.

A lot has been written about Le Web 09 already and we don’t want to simply recycle content, but rather offer a few highlights of our personal experience:

Twitter and Square
First off, we heard the term Twitter a bit too much, but that’s not surprising. Not only was it spoken about constantly (especially rumors about a Google purchase), but it seemed like everyone were on Twitter compulsively every spare second they had. The conference started out with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, presenting his newest venture: Square. Square is a small hardware attachment for the iPhone that allows users to accept credit card payments directly in person. It looks very promising and using the headphone jack plug is a creative solution. The application’s interface seems incredibly intuitive and quite beautiful, and will likely be a hit. We also had an opportunity to watch Jack demo Square close up at a reception thrown by the Mayor at the Paris City Hall:

Russia roundtable
With:
Sasha Galitsky (Almaz Capital Partners)
Bernard Lukey (CEO, OXON.ru)
Edward Shendorovich (Managing Director, Kite Ventures)
Arkady Volozh (CEO, Yandex)

The Russia roundtable was of course especially interesting for us. The discussion was both broad and in-depth, covering topics such as Russian innovation, startup culture, search (specifically Yandex), venture investment, ecommerce (why it is failing), and what is in store for the future. The single most salient question that permeated all discussion was the paradox of a high-tech, relatively wealthy country not really developing Internet technologies on par with the rest of Western Europe and Asia. Again, Russia falls into its strange neither-here-nor-there conundrum, an existential dilemma that has defined the country since the Slavophiles and Westernizers went at it in the beginning of the 19th century. Clearly, the largest problem is not talent, but a complete lack of a startup culture or any institutional support. Taking risks, experimentation, “doing your own thing” – these are not very highly regarded in Russia and especially not in the Russian business world. So even though so much raw talent is there, and even some true innovation (for example, Yandex was in search before Google), it will require a significant cultural shift for Russia to develop the sort of atmosphere that makes Western startup hubs so successful.

It was also agreed that there is LOTS of opportunity remaining in Russia and a lot of room for growth. Take one significant example: online shopping. Currently this is suffering because of a) the terrible, unreliable postal system b) the commonplace cash-on-delivery payment method and c) peoples’ general distrust of digital commerce. All three are inevitably going to evolve – probably quite soon – leaving a ton of possibilities for developing online retail solutions. We are excited and will be keeping our eyes on future developments in the Motherland!

Startup competition
The startup competition was one of our favorites aspects of the whole conference. In our limited experience these are often really hit-or-miss though this year it appeared that all 16 companies had something real to offer. When the dust settled, Paris-based company Stribe took home the Gold. Stribe aims to provide an instantaneous social network on any site, helping companies foster conversations around their product/brand/etc. directly on their site. What’s interesting is that just before the ceremony, at the Brand Roundtable moderated by Chris Brogan, one of the key conclusions that arose from the discussion was that brands must mediate conversations directly where customers are visiting them – aka, their websites. Providing an accessible channel for customers to converse will become a priority that will separate companies open to the future, who will thrive in the new economy, versus closed off companies that will become less relevant. Stribe solves this problem with seeming aplomb.

The Silver prize went to TigerLily, another local (French) startup also operating in a similar domain. TigerLily basically pimps Facebook fan pages. Controlling and modifying the page seams extremely simple and they really did a polished job with the entire interface. The value is obvious and the improvements upon Facebook’s own capabilities are inevitable, though it is a bit sad to see the site veer away from the clean, minimalist, egalitarian aesthetic towards the realm of MySpace cacophony.

The Bronze prize went to CloudSplit, a Dublin-based startup that provides analytics to cloud computing customers. They’ve already received €100,000 of seed funding and are looking for $2M more. We don’t really know much about this industry, so all we can say is that CEO(?) Joe Drumgoole probably had the most confident, well-rehearsed, down-to-business pitch.

A few other promising startups we would like to note and encourage readers to check out: Taskly, Hyperwords, Shutl, Mendeley, Runkeeper.

Finally, we’d like to thank Gary V for the inspirational talk and reminding us how much we miss New York! Hope to be back in Paris in 2010.

Firefox, Google and The 3D Web

Mark Kizelshteyn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:01:26 +0000

This past week the Khronos Group, working with Mozilla (creators of Firefox) and Google, announced an initiative to create an open standard for accelerated 3D Web browsers. The group is leading a 12 month initiative aiming for release as part of the Canvas3D extension for Firefox 3.5.

As Virtual World News points out, “there are plenty of other developers and organizations trying to bring 3D to the Web, but most rely on plug-ins to do so, whether that’s the near ubiquitous Flash, a quickly growing Unity3D, or their own proprietary technologies. The benefit of the new standard, if it’s successful, would be that designers could include hardware-accelearated 3D graphics in their websites without forcing users to download a plugin. With OpenGL, JavaScript, and hardware acceleration available on pretty much all platforms, it could also make it easier to develop apps and environments across multiple contexts.”

People are expecting more and more of their online experience as we witness the shift from static desktop applications to dynamic web applications. The addition of 3D will add an array of new user experiences to the web app platform. Paul Jackson, an analyst with research firm Forrester, states: “…If you think about the traditional browsing experience of flat pages and links this is not a natural way to interact. People are much more used to walking around and picking things up so a 3D browser could lead eventually to a more naturalistic way of interaction…”

This standard could offer a significant shift in the 3D web by breaking down the end user barriers of entry. With the increase in web applications, people are reluctant to download bulky plug ins or software, but if the 3D environment is native to one’s browser, the potential is incredible. This team of developers and thinkers are industry leaders — allowing them to trail head this initiative will undoubtedly yield industry shifting results. I look forward to the release.

Panel discussion on approaching internet trends

Paul Fayngersh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:19:45 +0000

I dug up this is discussion from Fortune Brainstorm titled “2018: Life on the Net,” featuring Lawrence Lessig (professor of Law at Stanford Law School), Joichi Ito (CEO of Creative Commons and Chairman of Six Apart Japan), and Philip Rosedale (founder and chairman of Linden Lab, who operate Second Life). It’s from July ‘08, which in internet age can make it almost irrelevant. In this case, however, the conversation remains fresh and interesting. The funniest moment: an attendee with a Southern accent calling Joi Ito, who has 24(!) current positions on LinkedIn, a ‘venture communist.’

Topics covered include: law stifling media technology, open source, venture capital trends and ethics, the internet requiring ‘environmental protection’, 2D/3D interface hybrids, producer-driven culture, and an “internet 9/11.”

[Google Video - 2018: Life on the Net]

Google’s First Real Threat? Twitter.

Mark Kizelshteyn — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:45:41 +0000

[a bit of a non-sequitur, but funny....]

The title of this post is taken directly from Rackspace executive Lew Moorman who offers this interesting perspective.

Until reading Lew’s post, I have not been particularly cognizant of my search behaviors changing. But they are. Similar to Lew, just a short while ago I was giving Google nearly a 100% of my queries. But now, Twitter is taking a share and it’s regularly increasing. And the results tend to not only be more relevant, but a bit more interesting.

As of now, this search method is in the minority (in the non tech-community) because Twitter use has not attained the ubiquity of Google, but there is a macro lesson to draw here: Human Powered Search .

Lew sums this up well: “Twitter is building a human powered search indexing engine. It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don’t know it).

If you are a Twitter user you will quickly see this in action. The most common tweet is a link and some small insight. The value of this link and the insight (which is great context) is instantly voted on. Do people respond? Do people retweet? If so, relevance is very high. If not, well, it does not matter much.

The system of followers is a market based system that guarantees integrity. If you simply use twitter to sell your agenda, it won’t be long until you have no followers. You become noise – that no one hears. All this is data that can be harnessed to create a search system around any topic. ”

This is the web in real time.

Concretely, what does this mean? Well, for example, if you search on Google about Amazon’s recent release of the new Kindle, you will get numerous links about the release of the product — a bunch of SEOed responses. If you go to Twitter and search, it will reveal a lively discussion of the product with immediate product information, feedback, retailers et cetera. The KEY is that all of the relevant content will forge to the front (due to ReTweats) and the rest will fade away. With Google, this type of info will not get indexed for hours and you have to look hard for it.

This information variance exists across all possible queries: News, Shopping, Trends et cetera. Twitter has the opinions of millions of people on what really matters in real time. Google is not going anywhere and probably will not go anywhere anytime soon, but we will unquestionably see a change in the search methodology and the monetizing model. Google is not gonna miss the boat, but Twitter is sailing quickly.

[via LewMoorman, ZDnet]

Inauguration Day’s Impact on Social Media

Mark Kizelshteyn — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:48:18 +0000

The international nature of this inauguration was unprecedented, but the magnificence lies in the active engagement it offered to millions of people across the planet via the social web. No longer limited to the those directly around ones vicinity, people were sharing and engaged with Obama, DC and the entire world. This campaign has set a precedent for the way politics will employ social media. From the protests at Bush’s inauguration 4 years ago to the hyper-happiness and participatory culture of Obama’s — we will never see politics in the same light. Thank you social web.

One of the neatest things that happened were all of the social image mash-ups that were put together. Millions of people emailed photos to one of the many aggregators (NYTimes, CNN, et cetera), and we were able to see some incredible footage that was simply crowd sourced. CNN, thorough Microsoft’s PhotoSynth, did one of my favorites. Check it out here.

Mark Ghuneim, Founder/CEO of digital marketing agency Wiredset and social media service Trendrr, put together can excellent post on Mashable.com about the incredible impact the Social Media Sphere saw on inauguration day. Not only was it a politically memorable day, but technologically too. Check out the numbers (as put together by Mark):

Twitter — “Tweets containing “Obama” hit 35,000 per hour during his speech, and topped 150,000 for the day.”

YouTube Uploads — “There have been 332,000 new videos uploaded to YouTube with the tag of “Obama” this week, and 17,000 new videos for “Inauguration” in the last five days, 10,000 of which came in the last 24 hours [of the inauguration].”

Images on Flickr — 30,000 new uploads tagged “Obama” in last 24 hours of the ceremony.

And Blogs… — This is was just record breaking. Technorati reported 18,000 new blog entries related to Obama on that day alone.

These are all mind blowing figures. After allowing this to digest for a few days, I am left with the question of whether this all happened because of Obama or the factor of Social Media. Undoubtedly, it is a mix of both, however, what would we have seen if McCain had won. I am sure we would have also hit unprecedented social media happenings as result of technology today, but, is it the embrace of the Obama campaign that has and will keep this fervor alive?

Therapy and The Metaverse

Mark Kizelshteyn — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:51:29 +0000

In the summer of 2007, I began to investigate therapeutic initiatives in Second Life. To my surprise, the virtual world was alive with organic support groups and unique therapeutic opportunities. I was instantly drawn to explore these communities and why so many users flocked to receive support in this unconventional space.

I spent a year investigating these sites and subsequently wrote my honors thesis titled Therapy and The Metaverse: Second Life and The Changing Conditions of Therapy For Convalescent and Chronically Ill Users.

The journey was moving and opened my eyes to the needs of so many under served in our world. Based on my research, I am confident that virtual worlds will provide an improved quality of life for generations of disabled, convalescent and chronically ill users through use of a conventional PC.

A professionally edited article based on the thesis was published this month in Washington University Undergraduate Research Digest.

Click Here to download a free copy of the article Therapy and Metaverse.

Abstract:
This study examines the therapeutic utility of 3D Massively Multi-User Virtual Environments (MMVE’s), specifically Second Life, for convalescent and chronically ill users. Three major therapy related simulations within Second Life are examined: Dreams, a space for people with autism and neurological conditions; the Heron Sanctuary, a disability haven; and Wheelies, a disability themed nightclub. Since this is an abridged version of my study, only one of the five case studies will be examined as a representative account of virtual therapy. Two main results surfaced through examining the three spaces and their users: a new form of complimentary therapy and a relationship between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ well-being has been established. The first point explores how virtual worlds provide therapy forms outside of traditional and formalized setting with a medical professional or facilitator. The second point considers how virtual activities and therapies intersect with ‘real’ physical and emotional reactions. This research sheds light on a new frontier of therapeutic activities that facilitate a psychological and physical rehabilitative process through the social virtual environment Second Life.

To see the full journal, Click Here.

The Rise of MicroPayments: Twitpay

Mark Kizelshteyn — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:59:37 +0000

Twitpay is a new micropayment service where users can send money through Twitter. It’s a nifty idea that builds on the simplicity of Twitter.

Twitpay sees the service as a way to quickly settle a lunch tab or small amount of money owed here and there. Michael D. Ivey, CEO, states: “Ideally we want to enable social giving on Twitter…But beyond that, we could enable charitable giving, such as to the Red Cross. We’re very excited to be able to help people do good over Twitter.”

The New York Times did a nice little write up and explains the process: “For example, posting the update “@johnsmith twitpay $10 for lunch” would deliver the cash to that Twitterer’s Twitpay account. The company monitors the public stream of messages for the keyword “twitpay” and facilitates the exchange. You replenish your Twitpay account using a site like PayPal. Once recipients have accumulated more than $10 in their accounts, the balance can be cashed out in the form of an Amazon gift card. For all transfers exceeding $1, Twitpay will take a flat cut of 5 cents.”

Twitpay is an interesting service, and I am fairly confident it will catch on. Personally, I am not sure I want everybody in my Twitter community knowing who I owe lunch money to, however, I could have seen this program as an asset during the Mumbai crises and the heavy twitter activity then.

The third party additions to Twitter are an interesting phenomena and speak to the unique ecosystem that is building around the service. In the coming month, we will see all kinds of interesting ancillary Twitter services/products arise. As Twitpay’s FAQ page states: the app was created “because Silicon Alley Insider said it was a billion dollar business (and) a billion dollar business sounded good to us.” That sounds good to a lot of (smart) people.

[via nytimes]

Social Networks and Happiness

Paul Fayngersh — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:18:58 +0000

A fabulous article over at Edge sheds light on research regarding individuals’ happiness as a function of their social networks. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler demonstrate in a study published this month by British Medical Journal that “social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%.”

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When you're smiling...the whole world smiles with you

Working off this study they also explored 1700 college students and their connections on Facebook. In addition to verifying that happy people tend to have more friends, more interestingly they found that happiness is contagious; when visualized you can actually see clusters of “happy nodes.” They conclude that emotions are a deeply collective phenomena.

Edge: Social Networks and Happiness

Avatar cues applied to online poker

Paul Fayngersh — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:40:05 +0000

User Centric, a user experience consulting firm, posted an interesting opinion piece about online poker and avatars.

Sampling of avatars available on Full Tilt Poker

As a game designer and avid online (and live) poker player myself, I have often thought about ways in which the overall online poker user experience can be improved, and whether a move towards an immersive 3D environment will help bring gameplay closer to the casino poker room. This notion is promising, but the hurdles are many. User Centric’s dissection and interesting suggestions regarding advancements in avatar validity are worthwhile. That said, they analyze avatars out of context and don’t address the core problems of replicating live poker gameplay online.

+ What makes tells (subtle changes in a player’s expression or behavior that offer clues about one’s hand) useful is that they are UNCONSCIOUS and UNCONTROLLABLE. Avatars are both chosen and manipulated quite consciously; the choice of avatar and expression (where possible) might offer some insight into the psychological state of a player, but it would be related to the player’s DELIBERATE action rather than some inadvertent gesture. This is simply not as useful.

+ Secondly, many, if not most, players choose to NOT use avatars. Good players tend to focus on only the relevant data (see below) and ignore everything else. In fact, many players, myself included, hack the user interface to be as minimalist as possible and more usable for playing simultaneously on many tables (these modifications are widely available online). Moreover, even though a player can shut off avatar displays, other players still perceive him to have an avatar. Players would see a default avatar that obviously has absolutely nothing to do with anything; I don’t even know what my avatar is because I turned off that feature the second I installed the software.

+ Finally, and probably most importantly, there is an overwhelming amount of data available about other players’ gameplay that is SIGNIFICANTLY more relevant than their avatar choice, expression, or anything else they may choose consciously. Poker tracking software is extremely popular, even amongst novice players, to the point that it is considered necessary. Focusing on the gameplay data, ranging from general notions such as loose/tight or passive/aggressive to the extreme minutia of what players tend to do in a very specific situation, is much more fruitful.

[source: Elysium Eilde]

My current suggestion for improving online poker gameplay is to focus on information that CANNOT be controlled by the user, but rather is an unconscious byproduct of their play. For example, though not mentioned in the User Centric analysis, Full Tilt Poker displays a little symbol next to users that have achieved ‘Iron Man’ status. This means that they have played a ridiculous amount of hands in the previous month, which in turn means that they are MUCH more likely to be competent players (a bad player is less likely to sustain himself over so many hands without going broke). This symbol is automatic and can’t be hidden by the player; consequently, it is a significantly more useful cue than the player’s avatar selection. Another example that could be provided by the poker site (let’s sweep aside privacy and ethical concerns for now) is the duration someone has been playing for. Again, knowing that it is 6AM and my opponent has been on this table for 13 hours (it happens) is much more relevant information.

In general, approaching online poker with the notion that it could become closer to “real” poker sets one up for failure. As any veteran player will tell you they are very different games, for several reasons. Most pertinent is the sheer amount of data provided by tracking software afforded to players – there is nothing even close to this in live play. Players usually play multiple tables, and coupled with much faster gameplay online, see many more hands per hour. One effect of this is that online players tend to play better hands and be more patient, vastly altering gameplay and hand strength requirements.

I would of course absolutely love to partake in an online poker experience that mirrors live gameplay, but I’ll probably have to wait until players’ images or avatars can be beamed directly to a virtual table in real-time. Please don’t forget the cocktail waitresses.

Muxlim Pal Islamic virtual world launches

Paul Fayngersh — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:54:11 +0000

Muxlim, an Islamic social network and “lifestyle” site, released the beta version of its virtual world today.

Muxlim members now have a shared world that bears resemblance to the cartoonish teenage virtual world, Habbo. Aside from just exploring the world, users’ avatars have “happiness, fitness, knowledge and spirituality” ratings that fluctuate depending on what is accomplished in the virtual space.

“We are not a religious site, we are a site that is focused on the lifestyle,” said Muxlim.com founder Mohamed El-Fatatry, “From what we have seen from our market research is that most Muslims have a lifestyle that is not so different from everybody else. They all share the core values which are from Islam then beyond that they actually have made identities, they have many interests.”

To many I’m sure this sounds like an Onion article — the name “Muxlim” certainly doesn’t help. But this is real and once again shows the utility social media presents to any user base.

BBC article