etribes 2.007
2007. Happy New Year.
It’s Tuesday the 16th January and we're already half-way through January. Things are busy as ever but with our company team-building day planned for this afternoon I wanted to take 5 minutes to look back briefly and reflect on 2006.
2006 was a busy year. We achieved a lot as a business and laid a lot of the groundwork to enable 2007 to be the year we get etribes to 'take off'.
I’ve outlined a summary below. Thanks to the etribes/Midentity team for working so hard to achieve this - I'm looking forward to the rest of 2007 as we continue to drive the business forwards.
2006
January – the Board agrees to acquire etribes Limited and to my proposed shift in strategy away from B2B licensing to a consumer ‘Digital Lifestyle Aggregator’ service called etribes. The Board agrees to my proposal to recruit and hire a great COO.
February – held mashup* 1. Agreed terms with 118118. Spoke at European Directory Conference in Rome. Midentity was a showcase company at the Innovation & Growth Forum.
March – etribes Contacts goes live with 118118 as a partner.
April – etribes made the 1st non-test version of etribes Life (then called) available. We continue to operate etribes Groups. We specify etribes Local & etribes Live (for release in Q1 2007).
May – Mark Sait joins as COO. Held mashup* 2. Spoke at 3i conference in Edinburgh. Spoke at the Blogs and Social Media Forum. etribes Life is nominated for the New Statesman New Media Awards.
June – Added mobile photo upload to etribes LifeSite.
July – we acquired etribes Limited. We held the launch of etribes – “the UK’s leading Digital Lifestyle Aggregator” - at BT Tower. Closed more private funding. Updated the office environment
August – we all took a small break. Appointed Catherine Howe from public-i as an Advisor to the Board.
September – held mashup* 3. Welcomed the return of Mark Stowe. etribes was featured in the Financial Times. Spoke at the PICNIC 06 in Amsterdam. The etribes Deskbar is a finalist for “Innovation of the Year” at the CNET UK Technology Awards.
October – Tom Bureau of CNET joins our Advisory Board. Attended the TechCrunch UK launch party. Spoke at Inside the Bubble. Held customer feedback sessions.
November – agree partnerships with Confetti. Spoke at FT World Communications Congress. Added mobile video to etribes LifeSite feature. Attended MediaTech 2.006 at which our EventSpace service is centre stage (literally).Agreed terms with Vecosys (now called) for mashup* to be run by them in 2007. etribes is mentioned alongside Myspace and Google in the Observer.
December – attend Le Web 3, held mashup* 4.
Mark Sait appointed CEO. Esther Dyson joins the Board. I am Executive Chairman and Founder. Specifically responsible for Product Strategy but as Founder (of what is still a growing business - 15 people) I have many hats. Closed more private funding. Added multiple etribes LifeSite Themes.
MediaTech 2.006
I'm at MediaTech 2.006 with a great line up of speakers and panel members. Fascinating - I'll have more to say tomorrow.
Meanwhile some pictures (courtest of Edublogger).
FT World Communications Congress
I'm at the FT World Communications Congress in London. Convergence is the principle subject how content, communications, connectivity and commerce is converging. How telcos are becoming media businesses, how commerce enablers are becoming communications providers.
IP changes everything - actually flattens everything.
I'm up at 4pm talking about "The Generation Issue" where I'll be introducing the Digital Lifestyle Aggregator (DLA) and how that service layer is becoming increasingly important for individuals, service providers, content providers, commerce enablers and communications providers.
mashup* - 13th December
The next mashup* will be held on the 13th December in central London. The theme will be Advertising 2.0 and with 60 people registering within the first hour I expect it will be a very popular event.
The last mashup* in September was a great success - etribes has lust launched it's mobile MMS Video to etribes LifeSite service - see below for an example - this is a clip from the last mashup* at BT Centre.
I look forward to seeing you there!
TechCrunch UK Launch Party
Was kindly invited by Sam Sethi to the TechCrunch UK Launch Party last night. The UK startup/tech scene is *very* active right now and it's great to see so much activity. It felt like most of the UK startups/VCs and media/telecom businesses in the UK were represented and the quality of the conversation was great. I'm looking forward to the next mashup* to continue some of the conversations...
Inside the bubble.
On Monday evening I sat on the panel at the Inside the Bubble event organised by Banner. Sam Sethi, James Cashmore, Ian Jindal, Jose Adams, Robert Hollier and I sat on the panel. It was good fun - although we initially felt we were in a boy (+girl) band - due to the layout of the stage, the seats and the mics (see the photos below). After our opening number ;) - we moved on to discuss the impact on marketing of 'Web2.0'. The principle issue that was agreed by all the members of the panel is that there is no such thing as 'Web2.0' - we agreed there has been a huge shift during the last few years in the availability, speed and cost of access to the Internet - with a similiar shift in the price and availability of wifi enabled laptops and mobile devices. This fundamental shift in the ability for an individual to "connect" to the Internet is creating a 'connected, always on culture' - which in turn is raising people's expectations of what they can and want to do. Humans are very tribal and social by nature (2 million years of evolution...) which means services that help people stay connected to "their tribe" (email, SMS, MySpace, etribes, Bebo etc.) tap into fundamental human needs - not simply fads.
The event was literally 'inside the bubble'. This is the Serpentine Gallery in London. I was hoping we'd take off but that'll have to be another venture...
Going with the flow...
Richard & I went for a paddle this lunch time. It was *very* relaxing and being on the river gives you a totally different perspective on things. We talked about the upcoming etribes Mobile Video feature (next week) and how we thought people might use it. With the recent news that YouTube has been purchased by Google, video is certainly 'hot'. Personally I think 'mobile video' is how most people will create their own videos - I've already got around 4 videos of my kids on my mobile which I've not backed up or shared with anyone (they're stuck on my mobile!) - so I'm looking forward to using it. It's key to allow people to choose whether the mobile videos album is private, password protected or public (just like we do with photos).
Now *I* know what a DLA is...
mashup* was a great success. Thanks to the team, BT, etribes - Tony Fish, Stephen Stokols, Sam Sethi, Marc Canter & Tariq Krim for speaking and sitting on the panel. I learnt a lot and really enjoyed the evening.
The photos are up at http://www.etribes.com/gallery/view/31229
Also a short (80MB though) video is available at http://www.etribes.com/sites/etribes.com/files/MOV02241.MPG (and yes we're adding inline support for Flash Playback on your etribes LifeSite - *very soon*.
FT coverage
I noticed a nice piece about etribes/Midentity today in the Financial Times. Click the photo to see the original version. What I particulary like is that the focus is moving from 'Social Networking' to 'Digital Lifestyle Aggregators' - very timely given mashup* pushed past the 200 attendees mark...
mashup* - going up...
etribes is a sponsor of mashup* which will be held on the 21st September. I started mashup* back in February when over 120 professionals attended the 1st event where we discussed 'Personal Digital Identity'. We then held a 2nd event in May themed 'Personal Publishing - beyond blogging' - which was also a great success.
This month sees the return of mashup* when we'll be talking about 'Digital Lifestyle Aggregators' with a fantastic speaker, panel and moderator. Attendance is up, in fact I suspect we'll end up turning people away - BT Centre can only accomodate 172 people. We've secured some great sponsors - BT & LogicaCMG - so thanks to the digital web teams in those organisations.
It's clear that the 'Digital Lifestyle Aggregators' meme has caught the curiosity of a lot of people in the industry so I'm looking forward to a lively and interesting evening. I'll be asking three key questions myself:
1) what is a Digital Lifestyle Aggregator (DLA)?
2) what business models work in relation to DLAs?
3) who will be the major players over the next 3 years?
Should be interesting.
If you'd like to attend please register at www.etribes.com/mashup/register
