‘Cross The Breeze

I don’t know much about VC stuff and I’m fine with that, it doesn’t interest me a great deal. Therefore you won’t find much related feeds in my RSS reader - but there’s on though that I read with great pleasure. I stumbled upon The Post Money Value from ex-Microsoftie Rick Segal after we met during his tour with Shel Israel in Europe. I would recommend every start-up looking for VC money to add this blog to their reader and start by reading Rick’s last post on his experiences. My favorite:

“Don’t start the meeting with ‘we’re in stealth mode and I can’t discuss exactly what we are doing.’ I will get up a leave the room since you aren’t actually there.”

There’s more where this came from, and apparently all just experiences from the last 10 days!

I stumbled upon this fascinating research done by Microsoft Research about a year ago (disclaimer: I work for Microsoft) after Mashable picked it up this weekend.

“We present a study of anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within the whole of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging system. We examine characteristics and patterns that emerge from the collective dynamics of large numbers of people, rather than the actions and characteristics of individuals. The dataset contains summary properties of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people.”

“All our data was anonymized; we had no access to personally identifiable information. Also, we had no access to text of the messages exchanged or any other information that could be used to uniquely identify users.”

And while these are only MSN/Live Messenger users during a period in time in 2006, and miss data from the competitive services, it still gives a pretty solid idea of the ‘inside’ of the social aspect of an IM network. Here are some of the key findings.

When you compare the world population to the Messenger population you will see that ages 18-30 are over represented, and ages 10-14 and 30-34 are fairly comparative to the world population. This tells me that IM is indeed linked mostly to youth, but definitely not youth alone.

This here is another interesting finding:

“We investigate on a planetary-scale the oft-cited report that people are separated by “six degrees of separation” and find that the average path length among Messenger users is 6.6. We also find that people tend to communicate more with each other when they have similar age, language, and location, and that cross-gender conversations are both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender.”

The full report can be downloaded here.

One of the most fascinating technologies showed at MIX08 was Deep Zoom, which was used in during the Hard Rock demo of their new Memorabilia site. It was a demo done right and the technology itself is pretty fascinating as well. Later during MIX the LiveLabs team opened up Photozoom, a new web service that allows you to create the same experience with your own fotos… and embed to you site/blog if you want.

Just like many other projects based on LiveLabs technology, this is a research project for now and not officially supported yet:

“PhotoZoom is an experimental project developed by a small group of Microsoft developers, and it is definitely not an official, supported Microsoft product. Also, I cannot make any guarantees that it will be operational at all times, that it will support a large number of users, etc. This is not an official Microsoft press release and I am not a spokesperson. I can’t make any suggestions about future Microsoft product releases related to this technology or concept. In other words, I hope people will have fun with it, but please set your expectations accordingly.”

Still an interesting evolution though so make sure you check it out. I can’t embed an album here (because WordPress.com doesn’t allow me) but here’s an album I just created with some pictures of the Grand Canyon. You will need Silverlight 2 beta 1 to make it work. Oh and by the time Photozoom is rolled out more publicly, I’m pretty sure the ‘logo’ will change as well ;)

Although it seems like this is pretty much a creative idea, and nothing quite real today, I like it immediately. Good out-the-box thinking from the researchers at the BBC. Imagine how this could bring a totally immersed movie experience into your living room. Or think about gaming, COD4 to name a one for instance, now that would be absolutely amazing.

[Via David Bausola]

I’m not such a big fan of predictions like we see them all over on the web at the start of the New Year. There are a few good ones like those of John Batelle for instance, but other than that many predictions sound more like acknowledgement of something that’s already happening today or a wish-list for something we would like to see happen.

One good example is mobile for instance. It’s going to be the year of mobile since 2005 I think and as I said before, 2008 is not going to be the year of mobile either. Or talk about video, I had a discussion with someone recently about online video after a statement that 2008 would be the year online video will get big. That’s just not true, 2007 was that year already. As a counter argument I did say I believe 2008 will be the year in which online video will become more useful, of better quality, with better metrics, better advertising, … you name it.

And that’s what is happening today indeed. Yesterday Read/Write Web reported on the launch of Dailymotion HD upload & playback, including automatic bandwidth detection which allows easy switching to lower quality versions. Check out the HD example in their post. Now I can see how HD quality might not be on top of everybody’s wish-list for online video, but I do believe it’s a must have for future development of online video.

About a week ago, MIT AdverLab reported on a new innovative technology related to video advertising. The technology developed in Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs included tools for content analysis and speech recognition for advanced contextual advertising. (again disclaimer: Microsoft is my employer). Definitely take a look at the video below to get an idea of what they exactly mean with that:

Now as I am in advertising, I’m interested in this but not only for advertising purposes. If you watched the video you will understand that there are also opportunities for websites for instance to relate archived content to in-video content (think news sites) or how the technology can create automatic chapters in a video for more useful video browsing for instance. There are quite a few exciting technology usages you can think of with this new development.

A last improvement will be about making video more searchable. The technology mentioned before will definitely be able to help in that area, but quite a few startups are working in that area as well. A few weeks ago at the LIFT Venture Night we saw Viewdle showing off their approach on this, including face recogniation etc. Neat stuff as well.

Content analysis, speech recognition, chaptering, contextual advertising and content (based on the video - not on title or tags), HD, … Yes, online video is big already, 2008 will be the year in which it will get better.

Last week I went to LIFT08 in Geneva, and although it is a conference, I think you’d better describe it as an experience. And an experience I was really much looking forward to, especially after talking to Laurent Haug and Cristiana Bolli Freitas, the creative brains and organizers of LIFT a few months earlier.

Part of what makes it a really interesting experience, is all the interaction and community involvement both before and at the conference. You have workshops & open stages that be suggested and voted on. There was a Live Magazine (”Not so empty book”), the Fontself,  the creating of the LIFT song, etc etc. All very unique and interactive.

It started on Wednesday with some workshops, one during the morning and one during the afternoon:

• Fearless City: Re-routing the digital divide with mobile: I got in a bit late as I only flew in that morning, but that didn’t make it less interesting. The presenter (Irwin Oostindie) and I had a few chats later on about The Fearless City project is about digital inclusion, but looking at this issue from a technology, culture, art and community combined view. I found it quite interesting and hope I can help Irwin out with it somehow.
• Teenagers/Generation Y and technology: The second workshop related a lot more to my day job as MSN (referring to Live Messenger) is a huge part of this. The workshop ended up in being a lengthy but interesting discussion between a few teenagers and ‘the audience’. Although the teenagers present weren’t your typical average teenagers, some learnings were still quite surprising and would most probably have applied to the average teenager anyway. I’m planning on posting a bit more in depth about this on the Live In Europe blog

Thursday and Friday were the main conference days, and while I found only few presentations on Thursday to be really good, the ones on Friday made up for that. This is a list of what I liked (links to video here):

• Rafi Haladjian on the Nabaztag, watch out for Ztamps - RFID for the masses
• Kevin Warwick on his life-project as a ‘cyborg’
• Robin Hunicke (EA) on trends in designing games
• Guy Vardi (Oberon Media) on casual gaming
• Paul Barnett (EA Mythic) on the evolution of multiplaying games
• Kevin Marks (Google) on Open Social

And the open stages from:

• Stephanie Booth on Going Solo, being a free-lancer in a connected world
• Ewan McIntosh on open education through social media and calling out to all of us
• Noel Hidalgo on the Luck of Seven and his extraordinary trip around the world

Next to all of that I obviously enjoyed meeting lots of ‘old’ and new people, seeing some back after quite a while was especially great. And last but not least, the famous Fondue on Thursday night, that was really good as well.

Overall, since it’s not a web only conference, some tech related presentations interested me less than let’s say at LeWeb3 although some did as you can see above. Apart from that the uniqueness, the interaction, the warmth of the event made it a fantastic experience. One I’m putting in my agenda for next year.

Ine, Clo, this is your conference - make sure you mark it in your agenda for ‘09.

Marketers have an image problem and it’s their (our) own fault. Marketers need to become more accountable for themselves and for the benefit of the business. This words come out of a presentation from Futurelab, but they’re not the only ones to realize that accountability is exactly one of the key issues marketers have to deal with.

“We can’t compete on price. We also can’t compete on quality, features or service. That leaves fraud, which I’d like you to call marketing”
- Dilbert’s boss

A couple of months ago, Gregor Harter, Eward Landry and Andrew Tipping wrote an interesting article on The New Complete Marketer, like they called it. Apart from ‘putting the consumer at the heart of marketing’ or ‘live the new agency paradigm’ (thinking also about my agency2.0 post) they focus on the ‘make marketing accountable’:

“For many enterprises, the development of accountability follows much the same path, as marketers learn to transform raw data into actionable planning. Stage one is evaluating what is being measured and how it is being measured; stage two is condensing scores of diffuse reports and metrics down to a useful few; and stage three is creating targeted analytics and a core report to gauge performance and help determine where best to focus going forward.”

Back on Futurelab Jon Miller talked about the 5 stages of marketing accountability and asks in which stage you are with your organisation. The stages are:

1. Denial: “Marketing is an art, not a science. It can’t be measured. The results will come, trust me!”
2. Anger: “You just don’t understand how marketing works. Why is marketing held to a higher standard than everyone else?”
3. Confusion: “I know I should measure marketing results, but I just don’t know how.”
4. Self-Promotion: “Hey, come look at all these charts and graphs!”
5. Accountability: “Revenue starts in marketing.”

ANA think it’s a trend to watch in 2008 though, they think this is the year marketers will get serious about marketing:

“In ANA’s 2007 marketing accountability study, it was startling to find that, despite enormous efforts, 42% of marketers were dissatisfied with ROI measurements and metrics. In about half of the companies, marketing and finance don’t speak with one voice or share common metrics. Enough! Recognizing the critical importance of accountability, companies will appoint a czar — the chief accountability officer — to lead a disciplined, internally consistent approach to marketing measurements, metrics and productivity.”

So the question is, where are you as a marketer? I believe it is indeed something we marketers need be a lot more serious about, for themselves and the business. What’s your take?

Today I came across an interesting post on a topic that’s been the subject of quite some discussion during the last few days. Alec Saunders (CEO of iotum) wrote a post called ‘A Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Era‘ in which he states the right we - consumers - should have online which he calls the 4 principles that form a Privacy Manifesto for this new web era:

Now, what rights should you have? Here are four principles that form a Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Era (in short):

1. Every customer has the right to know what private information is being collected
2. Every customer has the right to know the purpose for which the data is being collected, in advance
3. Each customer owns his or her personal information
4. Customers have a right to expect that those collecting their personal information will store it securely

The article also shows what the implications of these principles would be on a couple of examples the author gave in the beginning. Now all interesting, but it got me thinking. This just didn’t seem all the unfamiliar to me, and then when I saw @pascalvanhecke’s reply on Twitter it hit me: of course - this is all in the European law related to the protection of personal data. Read the full text at Wikipedia, but it is interesting to see what the initial guidelines where for this law (which data from 1980):

1. Notice—data subjects should be given notice when their data is being collected;
2. Purpose—data should only be used for the purpose stated and not for any other purposes;
3. Consent—data should not be disclosed without the data subject’s consent;
4. Security—collected data should be kept secure from any potential abuses;
5. Disclosure—data subjects should be informed as to who is collecting their data;
6. Access—data subjects should be allowed to access their data and make corrections to any inaccurate data; and
7. Accountability—data subjects should have a method available to them to hold data collectors accountable for following the above principles

Again, this isn’t the actual law - but this gives you the best idea of the intention and idea behind it. Read the full text and you’ll see. Interestingly enough, Dennis Howlett wrote a post today saying ‘Did Scoble break EU law on Facebook?‘ which is talking about the same law. And I agree with Dennis, the whole ‘hack’ was appalling to say the least.

[Update: Mike Butcher at Techcrunch UK also links EU laws to data portability]

What do you think?

Well, 2 days after to be correct. LeWeb3 2007 4th edition (almost sounds like a Microsoft product name) was good, it was very good actually. The location, program, food, networking, … it was all fine. I learned about the sofa2.0, wi-fly, pesos-dollar and much more. These are my impressions… (photo from Loic).

Online identity was a big topic at LeWeb3. It started during the first panel (Web2.0:The dark side) moderated by Laurent Haug, organizer of the LIFT conference, the talks about online identity. In this discussion we heard the panel’s thoughts about online identity vs real identity, anonymity, privacy, … which sort of came back later as well during a very interesting panel moderated by Mark Canter (Bringing Social to Software) where online identity portability between social networks was one of the things discussed. The anonymity issue was brought up by Jason Calacanis in his excellent keynote as well. You should definitely check these out once the videos go online.

Evan Williams gave an interesting view on how they started looking at the initial Twitter development, looking at the features they didn’t need rather than the other way around. He also mentioned how the idea of Twitter originated from the status message that exist in IM, too bad we’re not doing more with it in Live Messenger (I did a proposal for that internally a few months ago).

Next up, Hans Rosling. I was lucky to have a beer with Hans the night before in our hotel, thanks to Tom Raftery. Both the discussion in the bar (in which we also discussed how Belgium seems to be a good experiment to see if we really need a government in the first place) as his presentation where quite good. I wrote down one quote about globalization:

“France needs the world more than the world needs France”

It basically works for every country or institution, but still ;) Next up was Philippe Starck about sofa 2.0, I’ll spare you the details, just watch the video.

I didn’t go to the Netvibes party on Monday, but we had dinner and drinks with some of the folks of Shiny Media and Jeremy Wright which was quite good. Some people have fascinating hobbies :)

On Wednesday I saw Martin Varsavsky talking about the pesos-dollar (because of Euro vs Dollar value) and how he expects acquisitions from Europe in the US because of that. Then Jason Calacanis did a good keynote about the internet pollution, talking about spam and the responsibility of every service provider to do more against it (instead of just making money off it). Jason’s solution in all this is the human involvement.

After that Yossi Vardi entertained us with the Wi-Fly which I (again) you should just watch on video when it goes live. The last keynote I saw that day was Doc Searls on what happens when the users are in charge. He made a point about something most of us know, but I think it was the way he put it that made it extra interesting:

“It’s all about the relationships, the conversation and today advertising isn’t helping you to build relationships. It isn’t building conversations. Advertising today is only trying to benefit from the relationships and conversations.”

Yes, I enjoyed LeWeb3. And as usual, apart from the presentations I enjoyed meeting new people (who doesn’t). Just like last year’s LeWeb I met a of people (old and new contacts) with whom I hopefully stay in touch. Thanks Loic, Gerladine and crew. See y’all next year.

Here are some other good write-ups:

• David Lenahan (ReadWriteWeb)
• Ashley Norris (TechDigest)
• Robin Wauters (Blognation)

Technorati Tags: leweb307, leweb3, paris, loiclemeur, conference, presentation, identity, socialmedia

This morning Gavin Heaton shared a little neat online tool with us on Twitter, called TouchGraph. In a blog post Gavin wonders if this is the tool that’ll allow you to calculate someone’s sphere of influence, which reminded me of this graph made by David Armano.

The whole thinking around influence interests me probably more than anything else, so I had to check it out. Here’s the graph for this blog:

First thought, it looks like a pretty neat application and I haven’t done testing it to be sure what exactly the benefits might be. It doesn’t look like the graphs your sphere of influence though. It sort of maps all kinds of links it can find for this url (it can do keywords as well by the way). On a personal level you see links to LinkedIn, my Blogger account, my other blog, … and as far as Kinepolis (which was my old employer). On a ‘content’ level you see links to a cluster around Sonic Youth, which is probably because the name of this blog refers to a Sonic Youth song. And then there are some more random links really only relate to some of the wordings on this blog.

So for now, a lot of random links mapped around a url or keyword if you ask me, but nevertheless pretty interesting to check out a bit more.