Holy Crap, Friendfeed is taking over!

This may be a little bit of an overstatement, but from the talk of nearly EVERYONE over the last two weeks, Friendfeed is the next big thing. So far I’ve noticed Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Fred Wilson, and Techcrunch comment on it, and I’m sure I’ve missed or dismissed many other bloggers commenting on Friendfeed.

What my understanding of Friendfeed is, is a one stop shop for all of your information needs. Tired of having to check out your Twitter, RSS reader, delicious, etc. accounts to get all of the latest news? Now all you have to do is join friendfeed, which amalgamates all of your friends twitter/blog/everything else together so you can get updated on everything they are doing, but in the same spot.

Besides the incredible benefits and A-lister recommendations, why is Friendfeed so good? For many reasons really. One of which, is their commitment to the user. Fred Wilson had a little bit of beef with a few aspects on Friendfeed, and so created a list of things they would like changed. Shortly after he received an email from one of the founders of Friendfeed saying he had passed the list around to the employees of the company, and they liked them and immediately began working on them. Now that is customer service.

Also, Dave Winer has been very impressed with the fact that Friendfeed has done a lot of work, and relatively quickly, dealing with Twitter users on Friendfeed. Although Twitter may be an acquired taste, people who use Twitter demand that it works well on Friendfeed. Friendfeed has worked very hard in making this possible.

Thats all for now I guess.

Cheers,

David McKenna

Promote a Product by Giving It Away (from wired.com)

Three digital business models are that could change the online world of advertising. A three digital scheme is essentially free to do whatever it wants. It can charge prices to one side and the other side in whichever proportion, whichever ratio it estimates fit. Three possibility digital models are Advertiser-Supported Advertising, Advertiser-Subsidized Devices, and Just-in-Time Advertising. I think these three digital business models will take hold over the next four to five years.

I like the idea of Advertiser-Supported Advertising. If we look at online industry, it’s been already existed. Most of the companies are increasingly launching their own content platforms. For an example Budweiser, they have launched BudTV. I think till now the most effective Advertise-supported advertising is Google’s “Ad by Google”.

In addition, is consumer loves advertising? MSN ad shows the relationship between the advertiser and the consumer:

This ad is very nicely done all around with a solid script and casting. This video not only just talked about advertising executives but also shows wider audiences of marketing manager. I think in this video shows on three thing such as support, complain, and to offer suggestion or express thankfulness. At the end, it is an indication that consumers are becoming more demanding.

Customers are very intense in competitive business environment. A customer has always options to switch to competitors that offer lower prices or better offers to gain market share. Check this article details on how to attract and keep customer: IBM New Digital Media Solutions Answer Challenge to Attract Customers, Increase Sales. I think every business have to be creative (i.e, R&D department) and come out something new and attractive to keep customer. So to survive such in competitive environment, a company has to come out with a tangible difference to its customers. Now days most of the organizations are accomplish their goal by introducing information and software technology (STR) at the center of their creative process.

Finally, is “free” a business model or a tactic? Josh Kopelman of Redeye VC notes the penny gap. Fred Wilson has written on In Defense of Free in 2005: “free is a great way to make money. You just have to know how you are going to get paid for being free.” The fundamental idea of every business has always remained same: create something of value for people who will pay for it. So there is nothing free it’s just a business tactic. Free business model depend on additional services beyond the core offering. If we look at the Last.fm, it’s actually encouraging for paid subscribers with better internet radio. Same idea goes with Skype where internet calls are free but you have to pay for landline connection. Now the best way to generate money is Web 2.0 economy.

So, after the internet evolution, do you think “free” is still a business model?

–Romiz

Mashup: Good or Bad?

I found this article interesting when I was reading my feeds; it is posted on the Fred Wilson blog. What is mahsup? Mashup is originally referred to the practice in pop music particularly in hip-hop of producing a new song by mixing two or more existing song.

To create mashup song at first artist has to come up with idea (idea creation). Then simply choose two favorite track which are you want to mashup. Once you got the idea start cutting the selected song. And then start mixing selected song together to create a whole new track (obvious it is not that easy).

Check this site for how to create mashup- Guidelines.

The reason for mashup increasing rapidly is the growing blog culture of the internet and cheap remixing tools are making it easier than ever for djs to create mashups and share them with the world. Mashup is the product of internet where people easily able to create and upload it. But bloggers might be afraid of it according to copyright issues.

Lwarance lessig said that according to copyright law mashups are illegal, and increasingly, as record levels learn about mashup artists they are doing what their lawyers say that they have to do, which is to stop it and shut it down. The people producing mashup are furious. Mashups themselves no longer promote the work of the artist. Yet the existing regime of copyright says that that is absolutely obvious, that this is what you should do, and the claim of ‘they have a right to do this’ turns out to be very, very weak.

Every creative thing has a good side, and has a bad side. I think mashup is a creative idea where every artist has to spend huge amount of time to produce an attractive music or music video. Some of them are come out nicely done and some of them are really lethargic to watch or listen. But if someone really put on that good effort then sometime it is really nice to watch even actual artist would love to watch this. But the original artist and the true lover of the song might not like it unless they have control over it.

—Romiz

Fred Wilson Benefits from OpenSource and Kindness

I just finished reading Fred Wilson’s blog entry on how he made a second blog, at www.fredwilson.vc, that would be used for his mp3 and picture entries. The result of him making this switch upset a lot of people because it meant that they would now have to view two blogs instead of one.

One of Fred Wilson’s readers, known as Daryn, came to Fred’s rescue by creating a simple JavaScript application that would fit on the right column of Fred’s original blog, and would give the option of playing the mp3’s that Fred had added to his new blog. This meant that readers that only wanted to read one blog could go to his original blog and still listen to his mp3 entries for his second blog.

I think this relates to what we have looked at in class. Daryn uses his own spare time, using OpenSource software to create an application that bettered Fred Wilson’s weblog. He did this requiring nothing in return besides the recognition and pride of displaying his work and making life more convenient for his fellow reader. This leads somewhat into Chapter 3 of Wikinomic’s which my group will be presenting in class, and hopefully we will have more discussions on the benefits of OpenSource software there.

Cheers,

David McKenna