A Consuming Experience

How do you design a Web service which actually makes money? Jyri Engeström of Jaiku (pronounced Jay-koo) gave a fascinating and excellent presentation on that topic at the London Geek Dinner on Thursday 12 June 2007, organised by the inimitable Ian Forrester. I almost called this post "5 secrets of successful Web 2.0 businesses", because that's really what he talked about.

It was much more interesting than some others I've heard because Jyri, whose background is in sociology rather than technology, didn't really plug his Jaiku service, a Twitter-like site which allows you to add feeds (and hey Eurovision and hard rock fans, Lordi use Jaiku)!

Instead, Jyri (pronounced Yoo-ree) made some excellent and, I thought, very insightful observations on the key factors driving the takeup and success of new Net services, and there was a lively and sometimes heated discussion involving several of the attendees, notably moblogger Alfie Dennen and well known entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis. Many of the great and the good of the Net were around because they were in London for the NMK conference the next day - Dan Gillmor was there too but had to leave before the speech, sadly I never got the chance to chat with him.

I managed to record the talk and discussion. Links to the podcast and a video are further below, but if you're more the visual quick scanning, non-linear type, like I am, here is a short summary of Jyri's points in (gasp!) old fashioned text. Not necessarily in the order it happened, I've rejigged things a bit to make more sense to readers.

Jyri Engeström's Five Secrets of Web 2.0 Success - Social Objects Theory

Lots of social networking sites which emerged from around 2004 failed. What explains why some social networking startups succeed while others fail? What are the criteria that define successful Web services, which you should take into account when designing a new start-up Web service?

Jyri thinks there are 5 key guiding principles - just working principles, for now - for creating successful Web services, i.e. 5 points you should consider carefully when you're designing a new Web service.

UPDATE: Jyri's slides, from Slideshare, for the same talk which he gave elsewhere, are useful to follow his points:

1. Define the object round which your service is built.

Jyri approaches the first crucial design question from an object-centered sociology perspective. It sounds like jargon, but actually the principle is straightforward. What he means is this.

Successful Web 2.0 sites like Delicious, Lastfm and Twitter seem to be based on a new and different model. Now social networks theory believes in mapping relationships between individuals, but it assumes that the nodes are people, i.e. people connecting to other people. Object-centered sociology, social objects theory, takes the view that that ain't necessarily so - in reality, people are often connected together by shared objects: person, object, person. For example a date and a job will connect you to very different groups of people.

So you need to consider the social object round which it's assumed people will create social networks, the reason people connect to each other. With Flickr the object is the photo. Then you can imagine ways in which it's useful for people to social network around photos - commenting, tagging, geotagging etc. With Delicious, it's bookmarks. With Lastfm it's music, and YouTube videos. For a site like MySpace, Jyri believes the object is music, social networking around music is what differentiates it from other similar services, and he predicts that if MySpace ever lose sight of that core social object they will be in trouble. With Twitter the object is the tweets (similar to jaikus) - i.e. status. LinkedIn has been more successful since re-focusing on jobs as the object.

With Flickr, tags can link together lots of different photos. It's still being worked out how you generate networks through status messages. The revolution with blogs was social networking via commenting, trackback and Technorati tags. But many blogs also use the celebrity model, where the object is the person, the blogger has made a public object out of him or herself, e.g. Techcrunch or Buzzmachine.

2. Define the key verbs for that object

With Ebay the verbs are "buy" & "sell" - within 40 pixels of their logo, which he thinks is great design. With Dogster, a social networking community built around dogs, it's "Add a dog". With Flickr it's "upload a photo".

3. Make the object shareable!

The basic way to make an object shareable is to provide a permalink. This was revolutionary when it took place with blogs. Links to dynamic pages with different content on the same link is useless, yet there are still too many sites with that.

Widgets are an excellent innovative way to enable people to share objects. The most extreme example is P2P, where the objects are the files and files themselves are what get shared, which is very powerful.

4. To grow your userbase, think about what can you provide in terms of a gift users can offer their friends

For virality, a good example is PayPal. In its early days their facility to invite friends by email didn't work very well. Jyri learned from Reed Hoffman, founder of PayPal, that you need to figure out a way for the invitation to become a valuable gift that a person can offer to their friend. PayPal's virality shot up once they introduced a campaign where they credited the invitee with $10 to their new PayPal account. The gift need not be monetary, there are other forms of value. YouTube is the best example - even people still on Web 1.0 will email funny YouTube videos to their friends, giving them the gift of a smile during a boring day at work.

Another example, at an event Skype gave people not one but two headsets each, so they could give a headset to a friend - Jyri gave one to his mother, installed everything for her and taught her to use it, giving her the gift of free phone calls.

Exclusivity is another way, with many services being invite-only, so you're giving that exclusivity to your friend.

5. Work out a business model where you charge the publisher, not the spectators

The basic principle is "freemium". Joi Ito said a long time ago, well before iTunes, that there will be a time when people won't pay to consume music, but will pay to publish their playlists, tastes, recommendations - Lastfm seems to be going into that territory. Or take TypePad, where you pay for blogging services.

Habbo Hotel originally charged for a basic monthly subscription in Japan but people weren't really signing up until they changed their model (to one they now use everywhere) so that basic use was free, but once you wanted to have your own room, arrange stuff in there, invite your friends and orchestrate activities etc, then you had to pay.

That seems a fairer model - you can then bring in new cool features that heavier publishers (premium users) would want, e.g. Flickr has pro accounts.

Discussion

I'm not going into the discussion about how you prove return on investment and the like, you can listen to it on the podcast or watch it on the video, below.

Jyri also spoke on the same subject at NMK. Hugh McLeod has summarised Jyri's five principles on his blog and Kevin Anderson also blogged the NMK speech.

Podcast

So here's the podcast, which is well worth a listen. Note that the PA system didn't work at first, then it did, so the first couple of minutes isn't very clear, but just be patient. After that you can hear Jyri well, if a bit boomily. However, he had to compete from time to time with a live jazz band in the next room. I kid you not. So don't assume it was just Ian trying to introduce an interesting new kind of ambience for Geek Dinner speeches, though he is planning a Powerpoint Karaoke session soon!


Credits

• Photos taken with LG Shine cameraphone.
• Audio recorded (on medium sensitivity) to MP3 at sample rate 44.1 kHz and bitrate 64 kbit/s, using a Zoom H4Handy Recorder, my new Klingon depilatory aid - I'll be posting a full review on it ASAP. Audacity for the audio editing (compression and normalise are my friends); and Stamp ID3 tag editor.
• Hosting - Ourmedia via SpinXpress2.
  

Video

There's also a video of the proceedings, by Guy West (UPDATE: Guy has posted some other links related to this event). (Mike Butcher videoed it too I think). Here's Guy's video, thanks Guy:

Click To Play

People

I met a lot of interesting new people. Cristiano, Italian entrepreneur cum knowledge engineering student who recommends Tipit.To (I wasn't quite sure which of his many sites to link to!), Alex Watson of CustomPC, Wil Harris, Simon Collister from the interactive media division of PR firm Edelman (of London Olympics logo and, in the US, Microsoft Vista laptops for bloggers notoriety), designer and conference organiser Carolina Stenstrom (who's looking for conference sponsors by the way), Elmer Zinkhann from Hutchison Whampoa, and Tyler Crowley marketing director of Mahalo, a "human-powered search" startup with which Jason Calacanis is also involved (Jason offered me a job, but sadly only in jest as an "assistant" for the speed with which I type on my beloved Psion - I wondered whether I should have bigged up my shorthand speed too, equally in jest, but I didn't...!). I also managed to finally say a very brief hello to Hugh McLeod, I've attended several geek events he's been at in the past but never met him before.

John Dodds the ubiquitous marketing man called me fan girl for taking photos of the speaker to illustrate this post, then promptly declined to be photographed himself! And disappeared before we had a chance to catch up properly. I'll take it out on him another time...

UPDATE: More photos

Cristiano's photos are now up.

Many thanks to Ian for organising, as always. (UPDATE: and here's Ian's writeup of the event.)

Labels: making money, social geek, tips, Web

I went to the London Drupal user group meeting on 25 May 2007, at the kind invitation of Robert Castelo of Code Positive. I meant to go on to Minibar after, but stayed too long chatting... It was hosted by design company Imagination at their spiffy offices near Goodge Street, and a very nice meeting room it was too, wi fi, projector, comfy chairs. Thanks to Imagination for the drinks as well as the space and facilities. No prizes for guessing who's SuperDrupal in the pic above, but I thought I'd just keep you wondering for all of about half a second, or however long it takes you to scroll down and look at the other pics!

I'd heard of Drupal before but never used it: Wikipedia describes it as a "free modular content management framework, content management system, web application framework and blogging engine", and the Drupal site as an "open source content management platform".

The theme was very broadly, but not confined to, the use of Drupal in business - or enterprise, as seems to be the trendier way to put it. The presentations were very interesting and helpful, comprehensible (mostly!) even to a non-Drupaller like me. (Is there a generic word? Drupalites? A collective noun? Robert told me there's a Drupal song, surely there must be something...).

Below are the podcasts, in order of the speeches. One or two of the talks aren't so easy to follow without the slides, I'll try videoing them another time, but they're still well worth a listen if you missed the meeting. If the speakers would care to upload their slides somewhere, I could add the links to them? After hearing the presentations, I do mean to download Drupal and have a play, time permitting - it sounds excellent, and I like the modular nature of it, flexibility and user control are always good news as far as I'm concerned. So, here are the presentations and some pics of the speakers (UPDATE: Hmmmm. Playing the files using the Delicious Playtagger controls below makes them sound like, well, chipmunks. Sorry guys, I swear I didn't do anything, never had that happen before. Please click the MP3 links direct, or try the links on my Ourmedia page instead if you can't manage to listen for more than a few seconds without cracking up, well I couldn't! Still comprehensible though, talk about the podcast equivalent of speedread! Anyone know the fix, please drop me a line. You should still be able to tag a presentation on Delicious, though, while it's playing via Playtagger. FURTHER UPDATE: thanks to Markus Sandy who's working on Ourmedia and pointed out that Flash-based audio players only support a few audio bit rates properly e.g. 64Kb, but clearly not the 96 I used. Next time I'm switching to 64KB! ):

• Peter Brownell (see photo later below) of Code Positive - introduction:
  MP3
  

• Jonathan Laventhol (above), head of technology at Imagination - welcome and why Imagination use Drupal: MP3

• Peter Brownell (above) of Code Positive - Drupal intro, and pros and cons: MP3

• Robert Castelo of Code Positive - on his terms and conditions Drupal module (for users to accept before joining a site, including when terms change; may be hard to follow in part without the visuals): MP3
  

• Giles Kennedy (above), of Gelst - illustrative use of Drupal (may be hard to follow in part without the visuals, I didn't edit out the "technical problems" interlude, you can fast forward through that!): MP3

People I met, as well of course as the speakers - forgive me if I can't recall everyone or misspell any names. Business cards are excellent memory joggers, I collected a few, but quite a lot of people hadn't brought any. So, based on cards gathered plus my sketchy memory: Jeff, David, two guys who are / were at the Law Society (Richard and Tunde??), Barry, Mike from Imagination, Colin from Futurescape (who I'd met before at the Tim O'Reilly geek dinner, trust Colin to remember where precisely), Matt, Shanyin, Clement, Shakur, ?Mamia, Richard and Eugene, and Charlie.

There were loads of others I'd have liked to meet, but just didn't get the chance to before I left (they all went on to a nearby bar, I think; I had things on the next day so I couldn't stay late). Everyone was mostly very friendly. I think it's easier to chat to people in a nice big meeting room where there's a relatively small group, than a dark noisy huge bar with zillions of people, so if there's another clash with Minibar I'm going for this one - assuming I get invited back, that is! I'll be downloading Drupal ASAP, I will, honest...

Credits

• Photos taken with LG Shine cameraphone.
• Audio recorded (on medium sensitivity) to MP3 at sample rate 44.1 kHz and bitrate 96 kbit/s, using a Zoom H4Handy Recorder, my new Klingon depilatory aid - I'll be posting a full review on it ASAP. Audacity for the audio editing (normalise and amplify are my friends, I should have put the Zoom's sensitivity on High for a couple of the speakers); and Stamp ID3 tag editor.
• Audio files hosting - I tried to upload the files to Ourmedia, which I thought particularly apt given their Drupal connections, but it proved even more of a nightmare than trying to sign up for Ourmedia. The first file uploaded OK but still hasn't appeared on their site, 2 days later. For files after that, I kept getting "Specify valid file" even though they were in the same format as the first one. Then, I tried using their recommended software SpinXpress2 next, which took ages to install, plus I had to allow Windows Installer to accept connections from the Net, which I'm never happy with - and it wouldn't install unattended, I had to keep going Retry, I assume because the server it was connecting to was too busy. One file uploaded via SpinXpress2, but when I went back to its Publish view to upload another file, everything was greyed out. I finally managed to upload the rest via SpinXpress after contacting SpinXpress support who (thanks for replying so quickly!) said there was a bug and suggested I download an alpha of a new release, which did then work. But other than the copyright statement, the info I completed in the SpinXpress uploading wizard didn't get reflected on Ourmedia and I had to edit the details after upload (e.g. audio type, keyword, copyright holder, date created, format (stereo), intended purpose, date created). You can't in fact change date created even on editing the page for the file, it's stuck at date uploaded. Some links on the Ourmedia site to SpinXpress work (like http://www.ourmedia.org/tools from the audio upload page), but the link to http://www.ourmedia.org/tools/spinxpress on their general Upload page says I'm not authorized to access it though I was logged in. Pages on Ourmedia now don't look right in Firefox either, cut off on the right with no scrolling so you can't see the button to Browse for associated pic etc.
  My advice if you're trying to upload to Ourmedia: don't upload via their site, use SpinXpress (but use the alpha of the next release UPDATE: should be generally available today, thanks Eric), don't bother filling in more than the minimum accompanying info (metadata) as it won't "take", instead after it's uploaded edit the metadata on Ourmedia but ideally don't use Firefox (though hah the site won't even let me sign in via IE or Opera now, unrecognised user/password despite copy/pasting the same user/password as I used in Firefox!). If I sound grumpy, it's because I spent hours on a Bank Holiday weekend trying to upload the MP3s to Ourmedia and editing/re-editing the info. I tried a free file host Filenanny, and it took 5 minutes for all the files to upload successfully and they played fine. I love the concept behind Ourmedia, but there's clearly a lot they still need to sort out.

Tags: Drupal, London, meeting, user group, Improbulus, Consuming Experience, A Consuming Experience

Labels: open source, social geek, software, Web

The Minibar on Friday night was interesting. I arrived late, in the middle of the Canonical presentation of the Ubuntu 7.04 aka Feisty Fawn, the latest Ubuntu (Linux) distro, so I can't say much about that. I did catch the other presentations from startups, though.

Truphone

Truphone was intriguing. I'm very interested in telephony, as some may know from previous posts (LG Chocolate computer connectivity, Java and troubleshooting, LG Shine phone, Gmail setup on the Nokia 7710, WidSets, ConnectMeAnywhere, etc).

Free or cheap mobile calls via wi-fi with better than Skype quality with your own dedicated Truphone number seems an excellent idea. It involves a download to your phone. The steps seemed a bit involved from the demo I saw but that could be the very noisy bar being distracting. It's available in the UK, US and theoretically more generally too - so no harm downloading it and seeing if it works, if you live elsewhere (but you only get your own unique Truphone phone number if you're in the USA or UK, at the moment).

Calls between Truphone-enabled phones via wi fi should be free, but they make money from charging people who call a Truphone number. Calls via wifi with Truphone are free to local landlines till end June 2007 but not to certain countries, and at what they say is a competitive rate to other countries.

It's telling that T-Mobile, O2 etc recently disabled the ability to make VOIP internet calls on handsets that you get through them e.g. the Nokia N95, and though Truphone have complained to UK communications regulator Ofcom, for now it seems you need to use another network (unless they block it too), or buy unsubsidised a compatible phone that's unblocked.

I couldn't quite get clear from Alexander Straub's presentation in exactly what circumstances you could call or be called via Truphone and what it would cost you or the person calling you in each instance. They do have what seems to be a decent FAQ though, I haven't had the chance to look at it in detail yet.

If you're not near a wifi hotspot and someone calls your Truphone number, it'll be routed through to your normal mobile number instead (or voicemail). I've no idea what you do if you're not near a hotspot and you want to make a call via Truphone - I suspect you can't. They do suggest you can use Truphone via wi fi from home or work of course, and benefit from free or cheaper mobile calls from there.

At present you can only get Truphone for E-series Nokia phones (compatible phones info) but they've started working on making it more widely available starting with the Nokia N-series.

Truphone has potential but given that wifi isn't exactly widespread in London never mind the UK, it'll be interesting to see how popular this becomes. I shall give it a go myself - once I get a wifi-enabled phone! (I'm overdue for an upgrade, haven't decided what to go for yet).

Izimi

The founders of Izimi, which they bill as "the future of Web publishing", have raised about $5 million of funding so far, which is pretty impressive.

The idea is file sharing direct from your computer - any kind of media: photos, music, videos etc. You get a special URL off them for a file on your hard drive, give it to others and they can access it direct using that URL. So your computer is the Web server, effectively.

But of course people can only access the file while your computer is (a) on, and (b) online. If not, well I can see some people getting mighty frustrated. So, it's not for me. Paranoid, over-careful, too "oooh turn off lights" eco-conscious, maybe, but I don't even leave my PC on all the time, let alone powered up and constantly connected to the Net for bad guys to try to hack into. They did say they'd thought about security and were addressing it, but of course they would. I'm just not comfortable with the general notion of people grabbing stuff off my hard drive. Possible hassles with copyright infringement lawsuits were also raised, I think with good reason.

Maybe when almost everyone in the world is on broadband and can truly rely on being safely and securely connected 24/7, something like this'll take off. Until then, personally I think it's an idea before its time (as was e.g. the Tivo, sadly), but obviously the venture capitalists think otherwise, and good luck to them and the Izimi team.

Rememble

Now Rememble is something I'd like to explore more, and I've signed up to be considered for the beta. The idea is "clotheslines for digital memories". I assume they won't mind my hotlinking to their pics for review purposes, so here they are:


You add your "digital memories" (which they cutesily call "membles" - like emails, SMS texts, pics, audio, video etc) to a "timeline". I like the attempt to integrate different sources and media types: they're talking not just stuff stored on your computer but also what's on your phone, digital camera, Flickr etc. I think it's innovative, but also sensible and inevitable with increasing convergence. Rememble might just catch the wave at the right point.

You're supposed to be able to tag, comment, filter by media type etc, even share. Indeed, they said that they were particularly aiming for the social aspect. But you should be able to keep certain aspects private too, if you wish. The vertical height of a line represents how often you look at something and therefore how significant it is to you.

The mechanisms to be employed for adding media, and their ease and flexibility of use and customisation / personalisation, as well as striking the right pricing level, will be vital. I wasn't too clear how e.g. you upload SMS text messages. I gather it involves forwarding of texts etc. from which they'll make a bit of a turn. I know lots of people want to be able to backup or save texts, so if they can provide an easy and inexpensive way to do that online, that alone could really drive takeup.

There's minimal info on their website at the moment. If I get accepted for the beta testing, I'll report back. I want hierarchical categories as well as tags, though, or at least grouping or bundling - I'm still not giving up on my search for the ideal note-taking software and something like this might well do if I could add and easily categorise notes too.

BBC Innovation

Someone whose full name I didn't catch - Priya? - from BBC Innovation also spoke briefly, but unfortunately by then the noise level had got a bit too much. That bar is big so good for a large crowd, but the PA system probably needs turning up a whole lot more. Anyway, they're inviting new media pitches for some pretty exciting sounding projects, good on the BBC!

I've always been a big fan of the BBC, who aren't afraid to expand the boundaries of public service broadcasting to cross over to the Net in keeping with increasing media convergence, which is exactly what they should be doing - and it's not just because they let me take part in the BBC iMP or BBC MyPlayer trials. (I've recently been invited to join the BBC TV Test too, which is a systems trial beta testing the new design and infrastructure resilience of the planned successor to the iMP - the only public page I can find on the BBC TV Test is here, not sure I'm allowed to post the link to the sign up form so I won't). I'm looking forward to the official launch in May or early summer of TV downloads via the new BBC iPlayer, assuming they don't change the name again. But I do hope they'll focus as much on content as means of delivery - content being king and all that. Apart from New Tricks I confess I don't watch a huge amount on BBC at the moment, and when's Medium coming back eh?

Considerati

Open Business also launched job board Considerati, for tech jobs of course. They were offering free job postings at the Minibar. Businesses pay to advertise, but job seekers don't. Seems to be mainly Dutch or UK, at the moment. I don't see any openings for tech journalists /writers at the mo (or even manual writers, a big bugbear of mine seeing how incomprehensible and unuser-friendly too many user guides are), but you never know, I might try my luck sometime...

People

I didn't speak much with many people I didn't know already, though it was great to finally be able to have a proper conversation with Drupal guru Robert Castelo of Code Positive, a more music than techie talk for a change. Any Drupal people wanting to keep busy, never mind Considerati, you could do a lot worse than look Robert up (see, and I'm not even asking for a recruitment commission!).

It was good to see London Copyfighter Becky Hogge again, with James Casbon. Not too long ago Becky took over the executive directorship of the Open Rights Group, which is doing great things to raise awareness and lobby to protect digital civil rights in the UK.

I had an interesting chat too with BBC Backstager and Geek Dinner organiser extraordinaire Ian Forrester and Josette Garcia of well known publisher O'Reilly, about the relatively low profile of UK and Europe in technology and how it needed to be raised; O'Reilly's new European blog O'Reilly GMT will hopefully help to change that, do check it out.

O'Reilly will be co-sponsoring the next Minibar too and, prior commitments permitting (I'm not sure when in May it'll be on), I plan to be there.

Labels: social geek