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
Tags: Mathys van Abbe, Moby Picture
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
Tags: Facebook, Frank Schuil, IRL Connect, Presence based social networking
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
This great article in Wired Magazine about how are moving to digital overload. In essence, according Maggie Jackson, author of the book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, takes a look at our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society” on attention. The article says that it’s not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.
You know – we could not agree more and yet we can’t stop. Although recently, Tattletech was talking with a young CEO of a start up and he told us that he got an invite to Small World which was supposed to be for the “special” people inside of an online social network. One more way to connect us to people we don’t know inside of the digital world. We know of a woman in Paris who is a senior PR director at a prestigious Parisian PR firm who also got an invite and says it was the worst thing that happened to her – it was about making connections with people based on exclusivity with no real common interests. We think this is where social networking might have derailed a bit.
Tattletech has an idea – how about meeting us at Mobile World Congress in real life for a coffee? Drop us a note, we will be there and would love to meet you in person!
Tags: Mobile World Congress
Recently Google announced the launch of Latitude – which got those folks that follow trends in social networking all worked up into a tizzy. Obviously, it was the relatively new and small mobile social networks pushing Location Based Services that got their feathers all ruffled cause if Google jumps into the mobile social networking game based on LBS, it might be game over for them. Tattletech recently spoken with a number of emerging tech venture capital firms in both Silicon Valley and the UK – they all believed that most of those 85 or so mobile social networks will be gone in 6 to 9 months – we agree. You can read a great blog dedicated to LBS where they show you all the LBS companies and the ones in red are now dead (we have heard through the grapevine of a few more that are about to be red) The ones that will be left standing will be the ones that figure out a way to embrace the Web and not ignore it – like IRLConnect, Brightkite or Loopt (even though its very mobile/iphone focused).
According to Frank Schuil, IRL‘s founder he thought the Google news was not such a bad thing for the industry – of course their application is based on the Web – their application IRL Connect – Sense your Friends believes that you first have to start with the 506 million social networking users on the Web and get them used to Location and then migrate to the mobile where that market is expected to grow over the next 2-3 years says ABI Research. But the issue is value — how do you unlock the value of Location Based Services today?
This is why the Google news was so important to the industry – it isn’t about whether their system is good or bad (most Mobile LBS applications aren’t that good anyway, they are better on the web cause the devices (iphone excepted) aren’t ready to provice that rich digital experience we are used to on the web. We think that this will help to put some context around how LBS will fit into the social digital fabric of our lives.– JLH
Tags: Brightkite, Frank Schuil, Google, IRL Connect, Location Based Services, Loopt, Presence based social networking
So you know when you have those conversations with your mother and try explain what social networking is all about? And then you get frustrated and just end up telling her she will never get it so why bother? Well this blog should do th trick. Great great entry on what Twitter is all about, and how to use it to grow your business. It’s a great story with fantastic references. Read it and go forth and Twitter!
Tags: Facebook, Social network service, Twitter
Tattletech didn’t go too far to get the scoop from Frank Schuil, CEO of IRL – being in Amsterdam we found ourselves right around the corner from him and were really into his company – In Real Life (IRL) – currently in private Alpha. Their product is IRL Connect- Sense your Friends! Which lets users put friends on the map and to find, meet and communicate with (new) friend. So, we decided he definately had something to say since he is carving out new territory in the over hyped location based social networking. He believes that the next evolution is presence based social networking and explains why. We don’t know about you – but we believe him. He is about the only CEO today that actually is saying something outside of the standard vocabulary. If you want an invite to their private Alpha – @jennalee.
TT: Your company In Real Life (IRL) is really the first presence based social networking application for the Internet – why did you choose to go this route before mobile?
FS: Our initial concept for IRL Connect was actually a mobile social network application that looked a lot like all those fancy iphone apps. But when we saw the direction that the market was moving, we decided not to jump into the mobile space right away instead we chose the path of the consumer. Our current application is the bridge between the social infrastructure that exists on the web today and mobile future. IRL Connect lets you take your digital relationships and visualize them through Google™ Maps. Take your existing friends from any social network and put them on the map. See where they are, what they are doing, discover new connections.
TT: OK – presence-based social networking or location based – what is the difference?
FS: Most people think that location based social networking is presence-based social networking, but that is not true. You can have all the location features you want and not be able to get that feeling of presence and that, in my opinion, is the key to leveraging this new digital revolution in social behavior. Anyone who actively uses Twitter knows what this feeling of presence is and how it can alter your old fashioned reality.
TT: IRL Connect lets the user take our relationships in real life and actually enhance them through the digital world through social mapping, why do you think this is even necessary?
FS: If the fast moving world we live in, we have less time to spend with the ones we love and easily get disconnected from what they do and what they are. Presence-based social networking allows you to stay attached, to be in the loop with what your friends are doing and where they are doing it. We want to evolve digital social behavior. IRL believes that a new phase in the digital revolution is ahead of us. We believe that the virtual will become part of our physical surroundings and that this transformation will have a major impact on social behavior.
TT: Google is very good at mapping information, but there is really no one doing social mapping, how will this change people’s behavior?
FS: In short, it will increase serendipity. Things happen around you, but most of the time you are not aware of it. By visualizing social activity on the map, people get the opportunity to anticipate their surroundings. And with IRL Connect, you can migrate your relationships from real-life to digital to the next level on the Web.
TT: As a CEO of a new start up during these times, what do you think is your biggest challenge will be in running a start up in this market?
FS: I guess the biggest challenge in general is to get the message across that we know the market, we have the solution and we can make this business feasible. Whereas the latter should be considered an understatement. For this market in particular, it’s a challenge to explain our unique approach because everyone is on the mobile train. But, this is a crowded space at the moment because most people can envision the end point but not the path to it – except for IRL.
– JLH
Tags: Frank Schuil, IRL Connect
Over in Zurich, we found Arjen Strijker, the founder of SOMESSO and entrepreneur who saw a lot of commotion and fanfare around social corporate media, but not one event that actually brought all the parties together in its evolving ecosystem to discuss, share and add value to this high growth communication channel. So, he created SOMESSO a series of conferences centered around social media usage in corporate environments. They just finished their kick off event in Zurich and on the Somesso blog you can see why it was a success. - JLH
TT: You just held a very successful corporate social media event in Zurich last month, what made you decide that Somesso was something the market needed?
AS: In my last job, I found myself rubbing shoulders with front-office bankers and other people working in financial institutions in Switzerland. I was (and still am) meeting them on regular basis and many have become my friends. Personally, I believe in social media and like to test and discuss the latest social media tools and solutions on the Internet and found myself quite often explaining to my friends in the financial world why and how they should be using these things to make new business in a better way. Although I knew already that banks and financial institutions generally are not early adopters of such new technology, I found that many people were interested but they just didn’t know where to go and how to start. After some benchmarking, it became clear that there was a need for a think-tank discussion forum / information share point (both online as “offline”) where corporate social media related issues are presented and debated. After some more market research I launched SOMESSO.
TT: You have put on events before in both venture and technology, what was the most challenging thing about putting on a social media event like Somesso?
AS: As the SOMESSO Zurich `08 audience experienced themselves last month, the most unique feature of SOMESSO is its exceptional mix of participants. This was also the most challenging issue about organizing this event: although I strongly believe in the strength of communities, no one could guarantee that all these different groups of people would mix and interact with each other to build new bridges and synergies to each others’ worlds. The audience ranged from sales and marketing experts to recruiters, agency traditional and new media specialists, entrepreneurs and VCs. We found that even at the first break everyone was interacting. It was rare – and pleasing – to see all these different categories of people sharing their ideas about corporate social media and presenting their latest projects and discoveries to each other. We are going to work hard to keep all future SOMESSO events with this same environment so we can satisfy all of the attendees’ networking expectations while recognizing the importance and enormous potential of social media in driving companies’ business values.
TT: Do you think that Somesso has legs? In other words what makes it stand out amongst all the other social media events in the market today?
AS: Yes. The purpose of SOMESSO is to bring together a unique mix of participants from a wide range of industries to discuss and debate the corporate social media trend on continuous basis throughout Europe. Different from all general Web 2.0, new tech or new media conferences, SOMESSO is a highly focused event that covers only the corporate angle of social media. At SOMESSO attendees can find answers to questions like “how will social media change the way a company does business?”, or “how do companies start building their short-term corporate social media strategy?”, or “how does a corporate social media strategy impact employees and external networks?”.
Also, due to the strong variety of people from different industries, the networking part at SOMESSO Zurich `08 was highly valued by the audience. Both the diversity of newcomers to corporate social media, as well as the diversity of industry experts that attended the event ended up doing business together. All this at a one-day event in a European city – next up London.
TT: You are Dutch and Tattletech is very fond of Dutchman, but you live in Zurich – do you see a difference in the approach to social media by country?
AS: Yes, very much. SOMESSO Zurich was a success because we listened to our audience and gave them what they wanted to hear and learn. By example, Switzerland is still a pretty conservative country, which was reflected at the conference, as many companies – regional and multinational – had not started to look at social media tools or implementing a corporate social media strategy for their organization before they went to SOMESSO.
Furthermore, it was important for this event that we discussed the topic both from a starting point of view, as well as to provide the latest insights and fads on the subject (as the corporate social media and new media experts were strongly represented too). It was successful; the two groups complemented each other and created more discussion that could be handled in just one single day. By the way, this is why SOMESSO has also an online Twitter community where lots of continuous business is being created even now. The SOMESSO Facebook group continues to have new members request to join on a daily basis.
Our next event, SOMESSO London `09 on May 15, will have a more advanced and global character, which reflects in both speakers and topics, as well as in the general setting of the event. Due to a successful first event, we’ve caught the attention of several global industry leaders who want to participate at SOMESSO London and even SOMESSO Barcelona and Copenhagen – the other two cities scheduled for a SOMESSO event in 2009.
TT: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?
AS: This is always a tricky question… I would probably be working on one of the other business plans that I’ve been compiling over the past few years. Really all of them are (in)directly related to bringing people together to increase their business (not their love-life, in case you might ask .
Tags: Facebook, New media, Social network, Somesso, Twitter
Posted by Tattletech on Dec 7, 2008 in
Conferences,
Content,
Cool stuff,
Emerging tech,
Entrepreneurs,
LeWeb,
Sexy tech guys,
Social Networking,
Web 2.0 stuff,
What makes good news,
social media Sweet! Finally a conference that is all about love -the elements of love, the semantics of love and have it all tied to the love of entrepreneurship. Only at LeWeb 08. Tattletech will be there hoping to catch a glimpse of all types of love. Loic explains it all in this video!
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.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f633a5be-e491-484b-b63c-e232614265d1)
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