It’s been a long time since I last posted staff to this blog.
Looks like the Web 2.0 phenomena and my new baby tom made me a little bit tired but now I am back.
After more than a year of development we, at logia group, released the first version of 8hands mobile.
With this cute tiny client we bring to the mobile phone
Users can easily access there network, as well as send messages to there friends.
Enjoy.
k.
Microsoft announced today that Windows Live, and especially the Messenger & Hotmail services will be part of Nokia’s next handset. Nokia is the leading handset manufacture of the world, with strong aspiration to be an internet player as well.
With this deal, I think Nokia’s strategy is becoming quite clear: to offer the next generation mobile portal.
They have the tools (Messenger, mail…), they have Flickr, they have their own music service (Loudeye) and they have a user generated content video service - Twango.
If I could place a bet, the next cooperation would be with a global media company like Newscorp, that can offer Nokia with branded video content all over the world.
This move is going to put a threat the on mobile operators’ premium content revenues estimated at around $20B world wide. They will become pipe-only like the Internet service providers (isp).
k.
One more sign that Facebook is growing in a way that might put the domination of MySpace on hold is a new study by Comscore . According to the study, Facebook achieved 270% growth in the last year and MySpace only 72%. 114M people were visiting MyApace on the last month, and 52M were visiting Facebook. Myspace is still more than double in traffic, but last year it had 4 times the traffic.
If I can predict, next year we will see them neck to neck. Bebo, by the way, is far away with only 18M visitors, but it still is the strongest site on Europe.
k.
It’s been a while since I last wrote. It’s so hot here in Israel that I can’t even connect the words into one sentence…
I wanted to announce that 8hands, our amazing social network aggregator, is gaining more and more users and popularity. We are now supporting MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and any RSS feed. Coming soon – Gmail.
We are improving 8hands on a weekly basis and this is a great opportunity to tell all of you – please download it and give us your feedback.
Looking forward to hear your comments.
k.
Nokia announced today the acquisition of Twango: a photos, videos & music sharing site. Last September they bought Loudeye, a company that provides music services especially for mobile phones.
With a market cap of $113B they are looking on Google’s market cap, $160B – after the last stock fall, and can’t find something else to be jealous at.
So they are making steps in order to become internet players.
The only question left is how would the mobile operators, which are the clients of Nokia, react to this threat? Will they agree that Nokia will sell them handsets that take the traffic and the users outside of the mobile operators portal?
We are getting close to the point of a war between those 3: Google and large internet brands, Nokia and other handset manufactures (Motorola added a Google button on their handset) and the mobile operators.
Quite interesting to see who will win.
K.
A day after Google missed Wall Street’s predictions and finished a quarter without growth in the advertising business, the company is making one more step to conquer the internet. The company announced today that they are willing to pay $4.6B for wireless spectrum in order to have the ability to provide mobile customers with internet on the go – on their mobile handsets.
Google and the mobile operators are fighting on the next generation mobile portal. Few months ago Vodafone, the largest mobile operator in the world, refused to allow Google’s search engine into the companies handsets. But Vodafone had finally surrendered, and now Vodafone customers, especially in UK, can access the popular search engine.
If the Federal communications commission will allow Google to buy the spectrum, the mobile operators might loose their market. Customers will be able to enter into a consumer electronic shop, buy handsets with Google search engine and Gtalk (Google’s VOIP & IM application) and use it for voice and data services without the need for mobile operators.
There is still a long way to go – but this small step for Google is a large step on the way to kill the mobile operators.
K.
Ok. It’s been a while since my last post. Lots of work, business trip to the affiliate summit in Miami. Since I last wrote here, I added about 30 new friends to my Facebook buddy list. Facebook grew dramatically in the last few months and there is a reason why they will do to MySpace the same thing MySpace did to Friendster.
- Facebook is a much safer place to live in
- The UI and the design are superior
- The applications are good – MySpace has no such features, as for now
In the future, the Facebook user profiles will have the potential of being the real personal homepage; No need for i-google or Netvibes.
This is the reason why we are launching a commercial alpha version of 8hands today – the social aggregation client – with a new option to collect all the information from Facebook as well. Hope you all will enjoy it.
k.
For all of the journalists, bloggers, analysts and commentators that say we are in a “bubble 2.0″ : please take a look at Alexa. Among US top 100 sites, 18 !!! are web 2.0 sites that didn’t even exist in 2003. In less than 3 years, about 20% of the largest American web sites lost their position in the top 100 for new, innovative, fast movers companies that all of their models are based on user generated content. 3 of them, MySpace , Facebook, and Youtube are among the leading 10 sites !!!. In the list you can also find Flickr , Digg , Wikipedia and many many more. It’s not a bubble. It’s a new economy. All of these sites, and many more, are aggregated by our newly and amazing web 2.0 aggregator client – 8HANDS.
k.
I was wondering: can the mobile really be a tool for blogging? I can’t see myself writing a full post from my mobile phone. Why should I? it’s not convenient and it will never be. When I think about mobile blogging, Twitter comes to mind, along with a picture or a short video clip attached.
I am standing in an event. I am taking a picture, and then I want to upload it to my blog or page with a short comment. Take a look at the pictures from our largest Israeli client, Cellcom. Today they launched their summer campaign, Volume 2007, connecting music handsets with Volume label (the first mobile label which we at Logia are managing for them), with shows around the country and with a big closing festival by the end of the summer (including the final show of Star is Born – the Israeli American idol).
I took some pictures and video on the press conference, uploaded them directly from my mobile phone with a very good WAP interface offering the ability to upload the full picture (without the stretch of MMS) and added some remarks. Here are the results - http://www.heep.co.il/heep/member/2811. Soon we’ll be launching an English version of the product.
k.
The headline of this week’s Economist cover is “Israel’s wasted victory“. 40 years after the Six Days War, the magazine analyzes the history and gives his amazing, new and brilliant conclusion: Israel has wasted the victory. Can something be more obvious than that? Since Israel’s great victory on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, there is a peace agreement with 2 of them. But the main conflict, with the Palestinians, is under fire even in these moments.
During those 40 years, Israel had developed in every aspect. The country is definitely the region’s leader in terms of economy, technology and military. But in the eyes of the Israelis, or more important - the Israeli leadership, it is still a small country, with a lot of enemies around, like in the days before the war. Only if Israel will give up this perception, there is hope for real peace. Only if the leaders will understand that Israel is the strong part of this conflict, the part that has the power to give up without being weak, there is a hope for a new spirit in the middle east.
What’s really amazing is that even with this conflict, Israel had become a technology leader with a great economy. Just imagine what the future can hold if peace will finally come.
k.
kobi marenko
