Today, I participated at the first Web Montag in Augsburg, my home town. About 35 web developer, designer and business people joined the event at the Capitol. The event was organized by WEKA – thanks to the organizers! The next Web Montag will be held in March and again organized by WEKA.

Despite the strong interest for the first Web Montag in Augsburg, I was the only one presenting at the event. My presentation was about social games and virtual goods. Some people from the audience asked me for the slides. So here they are:

Here is my presentation from the Xtopia 2008 conference: 

Thanks to all participants for your attention and your questions!

If something is going wrong it is and it always was popular to blame a technology for it (mostly because a technology can not response to it). The church did it for example when printing was invented and Andrew Keen is doing so in his blog post The Great Seduction: Confessions of an Internet iconoclast. He is blaming the Web 2.0 for destroying our culture and business. He is right in his analysis, but wrong in his conclusions:

The biggest financial problem is that the supposedly new media economy of blogs and YouTube videos isn’t making the content creators much money. That’s because today’s digital technology has made almost all content free, thereby undermining media’s historically successful business model of selling content to consumers. [...] The greatest losers, then, in this great cultural transformation are our traditional creative class – professional musicians, journalists, film-makers, photographers and animators — who are now struggling to monetize their talent in an advertising saturated economy where all the serious cash is being channeled to technology providers like Google, YouTube and MySpace.

Yes, people are not willing to pay for content, because the content does not provide an added value to them! In the past, information was restricted. It provided a competitive advantage or it gave you social status. In the Internet age, information is available everywhere and everytime. Thus our old business models fail and companies that relied on these old business models will fail too! That’s economy. That’s evolution. Don’t blame technology for it!

I do not agree with Andrew Keen that the creative class is suffering from these changes. The opposite is true. Never in history there have been such possibilities for creative persons to show and to monetize their work without the need of large corporations. The Internet democratizes the media distribution. Thus more people will profit, but in less quantity. It’s bad for a few, but good for many.

I agree with Andrew Keen that technology providers like Google, YouTube and MySpace profit most from the new business paradigm, but only because the existing market players are not willing to invest in new market ideas. The media companies have to overcome their fear and to reconquer their markets. They know better how to serve the consumers’ needs than a technology provider like Google. They have the content that consumers are urging for, but they have to unclose their content.

So take the risks and have a good time!

Martin

When interviewing social network users we discovered a phenomena: people collect snips of their favourite movies and clip them into their profile pages. We called this phenomena “snip clipping” and thus designate our Facebook app SnipClip. Snip clipping is all about collecting: bringing together what you like and showing the world that you like it. It’s not only about possessing things, but also about sharing common interests and exchanging things as a form of communication. In fact, snip clipping is above all a social activity and social networks like Facebook are the ideal environment for such activities.

Our app is not yet finished, but we are working hard on it. Thus, any feedback is highly welcome! At the left side you see our new logo. If you like or dislike it, drop us a message! We choose a squirrel as our logo, because squirrels are the embodiment of collecting. And here is a screenshot of our application:

If you like to take a preview on our application, leave us a comment. We’ll contact you!

Until then, have a good time!

We want to know how user of social communities think and feel and so we started some interviews of people we know. Here are some impressions of the interviews.

The people were really different. We spoke to “ungeduldige Schnellklicker” (impatient clicker), celebrators and typical anti-user. Some use the social communities to stay in contact with their friends, others organize groups on the platforms, others spent not only an evening with a good glass of wine in the social communities but also socialise secretly during work and others see no sense at all in the social networks. A lot of people are socialised in more than one community and they like it to present themselves in the web. To get a quick contact to their friends is very important for them. A lot of them use instant messaging programs. However the world of the communities seems to be separated in at least two worlds. The people often divided between their friends and their co-workers. To show how pretty and popular they are, they post even half-naked party photos on their profile in the social networks of their friends. However to present themselves potential employers they use more reliable networks. The people want to individualize their profile and to keep control about it.

We really get to know a lot of different types of using the networks, but you can bring it to the fundamental points:

1. Keep it simple. If a social network wants to be successful the network has to offer simple services.

2. Mobile phone numbers and email-adresses changing more quickly than social network profiles. A lot of people are organized in social communities and they really care about at least one profile. Profiles are planned for eternity.

Goodbye and stay tuned

Social marketing means: let the people do your marketing. And marketing not only means advertising. Primarily, marketing means to know your market! And who does know your market better than your customers? So it seems to be obvious to let the customers do the marketing.

(click here and read more…)

My Bioinformatics professor said this once. I don’t think he really believed it to be true. What he meant was that bioinformaticians (or computational biologists) know better to deal with uncertainty and fuzziness, what becomes more and more important for applied computer science these days. (click here and read more…)

Last weekend I went shopping in Hamburg. When I saw a group of teens of which one wore this typical alternative clothes, it seemed to me that you have to wear Chucks to be alternative. This is somewhat schizophrenic, because alternative means being alternative to the mainstream. However, Chucks are mainstream in the alternative culture. Let’s take this thought further …

(click here and read more…)

People don’t pay for content – but for service. This is our strongest believe. They pay for saving her time or money, for being entertained, for boosting their social status and for a lot of other reasons, but not for the content itself.

(click here and read more…)

You know this phenomena: a new music club is opening in your town and it is playing this new kind of music (House, RMB, what ever the new music style is). At the beginning, the club is an insiders’ tip. Just the hip persons go there. Then the new club becomes the new club and the VIPs are coming – or at least persons who think they are VIPs.

(click here and read more…)