lukebj's site

Moving blog...

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:13:32 +0100

From the end of this week I'll be moving my regular blog to http://lukebj.blogspot.com.

This LifeSite will become my personal site... so will be mostly secure content.

The Long Tail of Social Networking

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:54:21 +0100

The doomesayers of social networking - by whom I mean those who tell you that the "herd" will just move from one social network to another, devouring new services before them - have evidently not been studying recent Internet trends. While Myspace may 'lose' 20% of it's members to Facebook, the majority of Facebook's members have never used Myspace (due the markedly different target demographic) and you can bet your boots that the Myspace users that do open Facbook accounts will do so in addition to their Myspace account - which they will continue to use concurrently and for an entirely different purpose.

Recent Internet developments have shown that the more choice we have online - the more we do online. So the trend is for more social networking - rather than network-shifting. Myspace and Facbook will cohabit - but the real interest will come when we have 100,000 more social networks, like the one for your street, or the one for your old school. Then we'll really see how long the tail is.

Joox and hazards: Free TV online

Thu, 31 May 2007 21:46:28 +0100

Like most people in the Internet sector, was unsurprised at the emergence of sites like www.joox.net and www.tv-links.co.uk, which provide free streaming of TV and movies to anyone, anywhere for free. Having tried them out (for research purposes only, of course), they are pretty good - though Tv-links has too many broken Tv-links for my liking.

Free streaming of TV/movies had to happen sooner or later, but I have been surprised about three things:

a) You don't even need to register - you can just just tune in, switch on and stream.

b) Where's the revenue model? They don't offer subscription services or bombard you with advertising.

c) How are they surviving? Are the networks and entertainment corporations too focused on Google/YouTube to worry about a few thousand cheapskate geeks watching 24 for free? Perhaps - actually - yeah, that's it.

TV-Links.co.uk, free TV (and lots of broken links)

Having written that - I've just checked www.joox.net and it's down. It was there yesterday. Perhaps the Eye of Sauron has finally turned their way....

And I haven't seen The Last Kind of Scotland yet either. Jeez!

Acting local - thinking global

Fri, 18 May 2007 15:52:48 +0100

Next week we have a promotion with the East Anglian Daily Times - offering each reader a special etribes package (worth £6) for free. It's nice to do something locally. We had one of our members pop in today for coffee - and tell us how we can improve the service... Let's hope we can keep this up when we top MySpace's 106 million members!

etribes gets a facelift

Sat, 12 May 2007 14:21:49 +0100

After a month or more of late nights, we launched the new look StartPage for etribes yesterday. This makes the administration of an etribes account much easier - and comes with some great new features, including SendText (send text messages straight from your etribes account), 118118 (get phone numbers) and feeds (an easy-access RSS reader for those new to RSS, or the terminally lazy). No celebrations. We'll be monitoring usage furiously for the next few weeks. A good start though!

By the Power of Zubka!

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 11:22:16 +0100

I wrote a while back about Zubka, not as you might think an evil galactic overlord, but instead a recruitment site that enables anyone to refer candidates for jobs and, if they get the job, pick up very healthy finders' fees. Far more exciting than ruling the universe, Zubka pays you several thousand pounds just for getting a friend a new job. And the great thing for David Shieldhouse (CEO) and his team is that it's a concept everyone I've told about it 'gets' immediately; after all, we've all wondered how on earth recruitment agencies have the gall to charge so much for such a menial task as introducing people to one another!

Middle-men are never well liked, and in the same way as www.OnOneMap.com and www.Zoomf.com are putting the wind up estate agents, Zubka should have head-hunters quaking in their grass skirts. The only problem I've finding is - if you tell people about the service directly, they then register and you miss out on the commission if they later get a job (or indeed refer a friend for one). So the trick seems to be to upload your address book asap, before they get wind of it, and then watch the finders fees (and finders' finders' fees) roll in. Hmmm... now that could go viral - and we know what happens then.

Fine limerick

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:27:45 +0100

"There was a young man from Dunfermline
Whose Limericks never quite made sense
None of them rhymed
And they always stopped too early"

(Pinched from a great comment on The Guardian website)

MySpace as a platform for comedy

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:51:41 +0100

Like many I was much amused by the "improvement" made to John McCain's Myspace site (below) as reported on TechCrunch . Defacing political banners has never been so easy - or so visible - and it's great to see it getting widespread coverage. I feel a bit sorry for the poor sap who created the site (using a templated created by a third party and including images over which they had no control). With the realtively new ability for anyone to publish on the Internet comes the equal ability to muck it up. And you don't muck it up much better than that!

lotsofvowelsandIstillcantrememberit.com - The search for decent domains

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:55:51 +0000

We were fortunate with etribes.com and Midentity.com, we bought them a few years back, before domain squatting became big business. Try to find a decent domain these days and you'll be forced to resort to inventing a new word in the vain hope that it will eventually become as prevalent as Google or Skype.

I mentioned www.yuuguu.com in another post - but that's just one of many that's verging on the ridiculous. It's a great service too - and there's the rub: how can new businesses flourish when they are saddled with dodgy names - simply because some irritating corporation in Seattle has bagged the best 20,000 domain names available?? Contact any of these, as a friend of mine has recently, and you'll be asked for anything between $5000 and $20000 for a domain that, had you got there first, would have cost you $6 to register.

There's not much you can do about it - and I think it's genuinely hampering creativity. I ask the question: would ebay have been a success if it'd been called oorctionaneeething.com? (which, by the way, is available). Perhaps the solution is to resort to the trusty .net or .org (like the resourceful www.upcoming.org) - since they are often still available and, in a world of Google, who types in the actual URL anyway?

The UK Startup scene is thriving. Discuss

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:55:41 +0000

Several blogs and commentators have questioned the virility of the UK startup scene. The latest to pose the question - albeit in a very positive way - was Suw charman. Having just been inspired by several UK events which were bursting with creative, exciting people (mostly funded by Benchmark Capital - it seems) who are making their ideas reality, I'm amazed that anyone has any doubts about where we're at. The great thing is - none of the businesses I've seen recently have been blatantly rubbish - which I think seriously sets the current *bubble* apart from the last one. What do you call a solid bubble? There's definitely something in the air... mark my words.

Internet People - Viral Marketing Workshop - 22nd Feb.

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:37:57 +0000

I attended an interesting event on Thursday evening - run by Robert Loch (of Internet People and, previously, Soflow.com). The idea was to get a bunch of entrepreneurs around a table and discuss the best way to grow a business virally. The "bunch" included David Shieldhouse of Zubka.com, Philip Hemsted of yuuguu.com, Paul Maitland from ConnectMeAnywhere.com, Ian Snead of VMFX.com and Jonathan Dewey of funware2000.com (at least those were the business cards I came away with) - so we had web development, online editing & publishing, communications, recruitment and social networking around the table. Not a bad start!

To get us warmed up Paul Birch - co-founder of BirthdayAlarm.com, Ringo.com, Soflow and bebo.com - gave a 10 minute explanation of how he and his team took Birthdayalarm from zero users to 47 million through viral marketing (maxing out at 150 sign ups in a day at one point). We all then pitched in and came up with some basic rules that are worth noting here:

1) Have a viral product - social networks or services that "require" members to tell their friends are inherently viral. Straight transactional services just aren't so viral.

2) Get the product right - if your product is crap, people won't tell their friends (or they'll just tell them it's crap). Get it right - and quickly.

3) Obsess about the customer experience - use multiple page testing to ensure that every detail contributes to the mission: getting people to use the service and tell others. Paul mentioned using the teachings of Taguchi on Birthdayalarm.com - if you're really up for obsessing!

4) Put viral drivers into the work-flow - ask the question "why not tell your friends?" regularly. And don't worry about being a little bit annoying.

5) Don't get mixed up with trying to *force* viral email campaigns - if you have an idea that makes sense (or you can pay someone lots of money to do so) - do it. Otherwise focus on the product and maximising opportunities for customers to promote it for you.

After producing this short yet exhausting list - and discovered that everyone was getting funded by Benchmark Capital (except etribes, which maintains it's VC virginity).

I then skipped across town to the latest mashup* - which was being guest-organised by Sam Sethi. I arrived to hear the last 15 minutes of a discussion in which Paul Walsh (segala.com) and Tony Fish, among others, were debating the merits of the semantic web. In fact it transpired that several audience members knew considerably more than the panel - so there was honest, genuine debate, rather than mere 'dot-comfort-zone' posturing. Refreshing!

Gapingvoid: Blogging to sell wine

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:10:17 +0000

I was shown this post by Hugh Macleod today. I always wondered how Hugh made money - I mean, you can only sell so many line drawings - and now I get it. Gapingvoid is the UK's most popular blog (and typically it's written by an American!) - so Hugh's using that status to propel a little known wine company from South Africa into the big time, or the bigger time, at least.

And of course, they're paying him and, of course, it's working... Their sales have increased five-fold in the last 2 years. Impressive - though I'd challenge anyone who's not a professional blogger to repeat this feat.

CHASE 2007: New Media for the Newly Terrified

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:11:57 +0000

I spoke at the Charities and Associations Exhibition (CHASE) today in place of Ivan Wainwright. Thankfully not everyone was terrified (as the title suggested) and I think we had a good session. My presentation is attached below.

Joost starts the hype. We're watching.

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:24:10 +0000

Niklas Zennstrom's new venture, Joost (formerly The Venice Project) has been gradually launched over the past few weeks in a series of interviews and soft launches. They certainly have their PR hats on today - taking up the two lead articles in the Guardian's online technology section (the best one's here).

How Joost looks today

Described by it's Chief Exec, as "the best of the internet" combined with "the best of television", Joost certainly sounds interesting and is apparently going to look better than sliced bread (which, you'll admit is a pretty tall order). So we're all waiting Niklas - better not muck this one up. Then again, with a CV comprised of having founded Kazaa and Skype (which legend has it sold to some company for more than I earn in a year!) it's probably a good bet that we'll all be Joost members in 2008 and wondering how the hell we lived without it.

Remember, you probably heard it here last.

Sync: the Digital Lifestyle Aggregators are coming

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:48:45 +0000

It was interesting at Mediatech hearing Microsoft discussing their desire to link up every aspect of our lives by technically connecting their (oops, our) various devices. When the PC is connected to the TV and your Xbox speaks to your ipod (ops - I mean PDA) and your car speaks to it all through their newly unveiled Sync, we'll be happier. At least thats the theory.

Apple have taken a different approach, realising that the future isn't necessarily in connecting up the bits of metal you already have lying around the place - but rather in enhancing the one device that you take everywhere - your mobile phone. The iPhone combines your ipod with email, web-browsing, "maps and searching" (whatever "maps" means - can't you get them browsing?) - and hey - you can also use it to make phonecalls, now there's a boon.

So 2007 looks like it is going to be the year of the DLA after all. etribes is sticking with web/PC/mobile integration for the time being - but who knows, next year we might connect it with your stereo, your fridge and your electric toothbrush. Now there's a challenge for the development team!