So, after our game of foozball at the Kimengi opening party with Mathys van Abbe (MobyPicture) we did buy the foozball table. Here I am trying to not get beat by the boy team.
Wanna follow our TattleTweets? Follow me on @jennalee and see what we are cooking. Frank Schuil, CEO of IRL Connect (IRL Corporate) is up first!
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The Kimengi opening party turned out to be a good place to chat with Amsterdam’s entrepreneurs and after a vigorous Foozball game in which I was partnered with Mathys van Abbe, CEO of MobyPicture I thought maybe it was good time to hear from the man that is leaving TwitPic in the dust. First, you must understand that I was threatened if we didn’t win, and the rules kept changing throughout the game, but in the end, we did win and I was allowed to live another day. Tattletech decided to put an end to it all and just buy the foozball table, so now it safely resides in my possession and is under new rules management.
Tattletech: What does the famous Herman Melville whale has to do with pictures? Why Moby Pictures?
Mathys van Abbe: Moby Dick was a vicious whale, biting off captain Ahab’s leg in the famous Novel by Herman Melville. Captain Ahab then spent the rest of his life chasing this whale. I think life itself is Moby Dick, and we’re chasing after it! Mobypicture helps you share your chase. Note: we made the whale smile and not so vicious….
Mobypicture is about sharing your adventures with your friends instantly, distributing your content to many social sites and services. Services like: Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, Hyves, Tumblr, Livejournal, Bebo etc.
Also whales are social animals. Did you ever hear them sing to each other under water over great distances? They’re sharing their adventures and use sonar to find food.
TT: What is your view on privacy and content rights on social media sites? How does Moby handle content rights issues?
MvA: There is a lot going on at the moment about privacy and content rights. My personal view is that I think people should be aware about what they do with their content and what the implications of publishing things online are. Not just for themselves, but also for the people being photographed or put on video. I ask my friends if it is okay to publish the picture or video before uploading. Moby is implementing the Creative Commons licensing. So the users can decide about the rights themselves.
TT: You support sharing with quite a few social media sites and networks, among them flickr – what is the main criteria for selecting which services to share with?
MvA: From a business perspective we decide on the size of the user base and the willingness and capabilities to promote our service to their users. The viral growth when implementing a new service is immense. If one user on a new social site/service uses Moby, many will end up on our website, where we have a chance to convert these in new users. Adding Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and the important blogging platforms was a no-brainer. But we’re also adding smaller local sites and services if we want to grow our user base in a certain demographic. Right now we’re implementing a platform for MTV in The Netherlands. The VJs and the users will be both able to post directly to the MTV websites.
TT: What was the most outrageous photo uploaded that you had to block/reject?
MvA: Last week there was a user who, we think, just selected a folder on his computer containing regular images. This folder contained some compromising pictures and these appeared on the website. We turned the settings for these from public to private quickly.
We don’t have a very strict policy about the content you can publish, other than that you have to abide by the Dutch laws. You distribute this stuff to YOUR social sites, so there are some things at stake! If you haven’t confirmed your account yet, we don’t show your content in the public streams like the homepage and the group and event pages.
I mostly like outrageous postings like one of a guy about to jump from an airplane (yes, with a parachute), or one of Maxime Verhagen (Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister) posting a picture of him right after he’d been reprimanded by the Dutch Prime Minister for taking a picture of the Ministry weekly meeting. Or those of newborn babies, only minutes old… Or videos of the first steps of kids etc.
TT: What are your future plans for enriching the offering? Any new features in the pipeline?
MvA: Oh, there are so many. We are now testing the video and audio additions, which is about to go live. We’re adding groups and events, for everybody to start and maintain. There are a lot of new platforms coming up, like Facebook, YouTube, Brightkite and many more. We’re working on the new iPhone App and also an Android and Windows Mobile version. Moby is integrated using our API in many Twitter clients, like Tweetie, Twittelator and Tweetdeck. I’m also really excited about the location based additions. There’s so much coming in the next few months!
– JLH and SM
Popcatcher was a Mobile Monday Peer Award winner at Mobile World Congress last week. You can read the CEO’s interview on Tattletech here.
Normally, I don’t like anyone or anything taking over my life but I must confess, I do love Facebook. I don’t even mind that it penetrates each and every part of my communication with friends, co workers, family and business contacts. I dig it. This article in CNN/Money was such a good read to me that I found it Tattletech worthy – cause now Facebook has friends in totally high places with corner offices and the White House.
But the mind blowing thing is those stats! The increase from those that update their status from 2008 to 2009 when from 4 million to 15 million. Pieces of content shared – 13 million in 2008 to 24 million in 2009.
Check out the graph about the race to mass market and tell me that doesn’t show you how far we have come and how powerful the Web still is in our lives. IRL Connect – power of the Web and location based social networking still carries a lot of weight. All mobile.. not yet. -JLH
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Last Friday, Tattletech went to the office opening of Kimengi where the CEO Lucien Burm was hosting an informal chat and cocktails on what Kimengi will bring to the blog sphere.
Tattletech: What does recommendation technology mean?
Lucien Burm: In our view, recommendation technology must deliver a technically working virtual model for how people give and receive recommendations, how they handle them and try to improve that proces by using the internet.
The ‘engine’ we are developing creates something of a dynamic blueprint for how masses of people share and interact on suggestions with people they know or encounter. The big advantage of the virtual world is, that we will be able to also leverage on suggestions, opinions and interests of people you don’t know, and there are many of them. So people’s virtual components (avatars) can create far more interactions with each other (and not limited by time) than our real-life parts can. We are going to use this fact to create better recommendations.
In short, recommendation technology needs to become much more personal, more realtime with more detail for more content. These factors are still a bit opposed to each other, due to the current state of technology. It is a real challenge to combine all four factors.
At Kimengi we have defined 5 requirements for a next-gen recommendation service. It takes little to much blog space to handle in full here, but in short they are: automation, adaption, induction, inspiration and transparency. We will say at least something about the last one in the answer to your last question.
All our ideas and models for recommendation technology are based on the following question: If your brain could handle all the information now available online in single moment, what would you want to do next? We basically try to help you get as close as possible to that level.
TT: Would you consider this technology a step towards semantic web?
LB: It is more like the other way around. The semantic web could help us a step further. We are not trying to build the semantic web, but better understanding of content and context will help greatly to determine people’s real interests. And that is the business we are in. We use semantic web technologies as an input to recommendation engines, but its the core of that engine that we are interested in. The semantic web gives us a better understanding of content and a better response to requests, which is a true step forward in the web. But the flood of information does not diminish because of it. We need a different kind of technology to help us with that. We hope our technology provides a shift the growing need for information filtering.
TT: What are, in your eyes, the most compelling features blogs can implement in order to attract more readers and followers?
LB: Well, it is all in the content of course. If you write something interesting, you’ll become interesting and people will visit your blog. The speed of your content travelling through on- and offline networks determine how many people you reach and how fast. We believe there are basically two types of networks: One type is more social driven and the other type more content driven. With more social driven we mean working with emails, social bookmarking, social networking and microblogging. Of these networks email may be the slowest and microblogging the fastest to spread your content. With more content driven networks we mean search engines, trackbacks, comments, syndication, referrals, etc.
As a strategy we think that your content could trickle down from microblogging through social networks and bookmarks to the level of content driven traffic generators. So first, you spread your content out, next you let it register deep. That could create a sustainable stream of traffic for a while. We see some blogs playing that strategy quite well. We don’t think there’s one way or feature, but how you play a combination of instruments.
There are tools available for your blog that use both types of networks. They all work if you put enough effort in it, though sometimes we think blogs are a bit crowded with tools.
With f»dforward we combine these social and content networks into one system, a recommendation network, that should create instant spreading of your content to the right people and blogs. There is no intermediary channel, like portals, search engines or bookmark sites, it works instantly from blog to blog and from reader to reader.
We once said: Content may be king, but users make the democracy. (Tattletech note: we love this philosophy) Blog well, and your readers will bring you forward. With f»dforward, we try to fuel that.
TT: Does recommendation technology offering differ when implemented by bloggers as opposed to using it for corporate blogs?
LB: Yes, it probably will, because the reasons for blogging tend to differ. Though big blogs make money as any other company, the relation to products is quite indirect while at corporate blogs the relation is more direct. Still, sometimes it can be useful to be directed to product blogs. This is where the readers come in. I can imagine that if a product blog is bluntly promoting his product instead of providing some interesting company or product insight, readers will move away from it. A good recommendation service will be able to use that immediately and adjust the recommendation for this subject, whether it be a good product blog or bad personal blog.
Still, we wouldn’t be surprised if we will offer a different kind of widget for company blogs, because they could be interested in different services than personal blogs, e.g. integration with the company website as well or options to provide product information.
TT: We are curious to know, does Kimengi have a special meaning?
LB: Yes it does, though we sometimes joke that it was the only word left which was still available as a domain. We started experimenting on the subject of recommendation more 13 years ago. At that time, people were talking about matching instead of recommendation, but it is basically the same of course. At that time we already found a direction in which we would like to develop and we came up with Kimengi as a name for it. Now that we are finally here as a company, we just thought it cool to keep the name.
All we can say is that the ‘engi’ part is from ‘engine’. You will have to figure out the rest for yourselves. It is our best kept secret. it is our pagerank, our coca-cola recipe 
Maybe we should release the full name when we release the engine, which by the way is not yet implemented in f»dforward. The current network works on currently available recommendation technologies with some twists to make it ready for our own engine.
After registering we discovered that in fact there are people with Kimengi as a last name too. So, maybe we should us a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.” 
TT: Following the huge upheaval after Facebook tried to change its terms of service, how does Kimengi handle user privacy, do you collect any data on users or users profiles?
LB: Privacy or rather ‘privacy control and transparency” are at the roots of f»dforward. We serve both blogs and their readers by being glue and a firewall at the same time. We want to provide readers with content they like and blogs readers they can serve their content to. This is why we the use of f»dforward must be anonymous. That starts with never having to register. We don’t have logins or passwords. We use your blog or homepage as an ID that you can use to administer your account on the network.
Next, we never store anything that you don’t want us to. As a standard, f»dforward registers complete anonymous sessions between opening and closing your browser and only in our network of course. If you like, we can user more sessions to provide you with better recommendations, but that is up to you. In the help part of the widget, anyone can change these kind of settings to their wishes. The help page also provides full insight into all the information we registered during your session.
We would like to win the trust of our users, by giving them complete control of their data whether you delete it, change it or enhance it. You know what we know. By gaining that trust we also hope to provide future services in dataportability as a trusted source in social intermediary. Thanks for having us on your blog, Jennifer!
– SM and JLH
Tomorrow Tattletech is going to hear Kimengi talk about how they are going to change the blogging world and give bloggers more insight into what goes into their blogs. I use Zemanta and have used it from the begnning, so it will be interesting to see what they will be able to do that tops the Zemanta experience. — JLH
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Zoran's cool APPROACH chip - 5 megapixls
Zoran Corporation who makes chips for mobile phones – and we we mean chips that make your mobile phone take a photo like a real camera, 5 megapixels. But they had the coolest stand with vignettes of Barcelona in moving photo boxes. If you get a chance, go by and see them – Hall 2, stand 2H 59.
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First, we woke dreading the crowds, the lines, the herds of people that would slow down my routes. Then we got to MWC and found no lines, no waiting and bocadillos to spare. And, taxis. Taxis everywhere! What was going on here? Was this MWC in Barcelona? It turns out, it was and is Barcelona – the lovely feel of Cannes in Barcelona. People were in a good moods, there were no annoying crowds and busines was being conducted.
Today on the list for cool things was a Dutch company called zCapes, which is making a mobile mini blog. We met them at the Mobile Monday Peer awards and they had just launched one day ago and as we move to more start ups that start with the letter Z – here is Zentym – a mobile TV advertising company based out of Madrid that we had previously met at the European Venture Summit – this time out of the gate with a powerful message and lots of operators nibbling at their toes.
One of our favorite companies from Sweden, JayCut was on of the hosts at the Sweden Mobile Association cocktail hour and proved their online video editing product has a B2B play. Another cool company from Sweden was TAT – The Astonishing Tribe. I think by far they have the coolest logo and they are 100% focused on delivering a god user interface for mobile — combining design and technology. Tattletech will post an interview with Charotta Taranger of TAT this week.
But the one thing that we believe is out of control is all the emphasis on mobile in terms of LBS. Yes we know it is a mobile show – but can we have a reality check? Forty mobile companies presented at the Mobile Monday Peer Awards today – 40! Lots of duplicates and clones and look alikes out there – the market will consolidate and in six months, many of those companies will be gone. In the long term, yes its true, all that we know and love will be on the mobile, but the Web will not go away. The lines will become blurred so this means that when we are talking about LBS – we should remember that there are more than 500 million users on Web based social networking sites and those users will want to evolve their social network.
According to Frank Schuil, CEO, IRL, the Web will not go away – the web is a natural extension of mobile and vice versa – they complete each other. Innovation will take place at the intersection of the web and mobile. The key will be to unlock the value of location for those 506 million online users and then bring them to the mobile.
On another note, there are less scantily clad women at this show – thank god for the recession. --JLH
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We ran up to Cambridge UK to get a chat with Richard Baker, VP of Sales & Marketing at ANT.
We found that Richard has a great blog, Digital Media World where he discusses all the elements of IPTV today. Our favorite part? Postcards from a Technology Enthusiast – finally someone that really likes what they do.
Tattletech: We hear a lot of talk out there that consumers just want their web content on their TV -from your position, what do you think they really want and how can your technology make that happen?
Richard Baker: There’s a lot of debate about what consumers want from their TV providers, but the fact is that it’s not as simple as bringing the web to the TV service. Over the past few years consumers viewing habits have changed dramatically and they’re pulling information and content from all kinds of sources – the PC, laptop, mobile devices. And it can be anything from live programming and user generated content to video on demand. It’s really been a time of experimentation for consumers. However, content on demand has had the biggest impact on the broadcasting industry. The ability to access specialised programming at a time convenient to you has changed the way viewers consume TV and has meant that we expect much more flexibility from our TV providers.
Meanwhile, traditional TV operators have struggled to come to terms with the challenges this presents. They are now competing with a much wider spectrum of media for viewer’s attention. So they need to be smarter and think of innovative new ways to capture audiences. Pulling web content onto the TV would seem like a good way to bring together some of the different strands of media, but unless the viewer can get an improved experience from the TV then they may just prefer to use the PC/laptop instead.
At ANT, we’ve been working with a number of operators and content providers to develop new and exciting ways to bring web content to the TV. For example, we’ve been experimenting with user interface design, formatting and usability to help our customers take advantage of this wave of change. We predict that a wave of TV providers start pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with TV over the next few years. And though there may not be one killer application or service for TV, consumers will have a yet more options as to how they view content. And that can only be a positive thing.
TT: Choice has driven the explosion of mobile applications and to a large extent how people watch content today on the Internet – why can’t TV be the same? Will we see widgets on our TV?
RB: This is a scenario the broadcasting industry has been talking about for quite some time. We’ve seen lots of interest from service providers in developing PC-style widgets, or applications, for the TV both on set-top boxes and integrated directly into the TV’s. The emergence of large HD and widescreen TVs has helped these types of services become a reality. As the price of these consumer electronic goods fall, these types of services and applications will become much more attractive to a wider audience.
Our own research has shown that applications based on RSS feeds such as news, weather and stocks and shares information, all lend themselves to this type of service. ANT has also experimented with a Twitter-style chat application that allows users to chat on screen whilst watching the same content. So you and your friends could be sat watching the big baseball game or football match in your own homes and share the excitement on screen together.
But that’s not all we’ve done, we’ve also explored local applications. For example, we‘ve developed an application that enables the consumer to set their home and work locations into the TV or set-top box, This allows it to plot their travel route to work so if they’re sat eating their breakfast and watching the news they can turn on an application which will tell them if there are any delays. The key to the success of any of these applications will be in bringing service providers on board and seeing how viewers respond to this new level of interactivity.
The most important point though is to remain flexible, operators need to have the flexibility to add new applications to existing deployments and to change, adapt and improve them based on customer feedback.
TT: Targeted advertising is the topic everyone is talking about, but still people seem afraid of it, how can it be profitable and truly targeted?
RB: Targeted advertising is still in the embryonic stages. For example, in the UK BSkyB is developing the technology but it’s unlikely to be in place until 2011. People are already accustomed to targeted advertising on the internet so taking it one step further into the home seems inevitable. Of course, to be truly targeted the subscriber data needs to be highly accurate right down to individual lifestyle preferences and viewing habits of the end-user. This will make the technology particularly valuable to advertisers because some experts estimate that between 50 per cent and 90 per cent of all television adverts are wasted on viewers who have no interest in the product.
On the other hand, the way TV advertisements are presented will need to have a dramatic overhaul. Advertisers will need to find new, creative methods for capturing viewers’ attention (see Grafitti advertising blog). For example, at ANT we’ve experimented with the re-skinning the EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) so that it can reflect the sponsor of a major sporting event or movie premier.
TT: Ants are tiny but can carry a lot of weight and get a lot done, where do you see IPTV browsers headed in this future of content on any device?
RB: I’ve been at ANT for around a year now and during this short time have already seen a massive shift in ANT’s business. The company originally enjoyed success in IPTV deployments with ANT Fresco, our first generation browser. Following the launch of the ANT Galio browser and subsequently the ANT Galio Client and Core Applications we now have the opportunity to work with a far wider selection of the industry players. As the ANT Galio Suite has evolved we have strengthened relationships with Operators and service providers. In addition to these we continue to work with hardware manufacturers, middleware vendors, CA providers and content developers. It’s these relationships that help drive our future plans. In addition to all of this of course is the fact that we’re all consumers too – we’re passionate about developing new technology that improves the way in which we consume content.
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