Interfaces that enhance serendipity

John Hagel had a great tweet:maps are powerful interfaces focusing on relationships, not objects - applies to people and ideas, not just places - enhances serendipityThis inspired me to think about interfaces. Serendipity doesn't happen in a vacuum. It requires a medium that conveys the flow of information, the diversity of views and the connections to the edge. The interface, in fact, is a vital point that potentially enhances or limits the extend of discovery. It is the difference between enhanced serendipity and random browsing the Web.The serendipitous service of the moment is Twitter. Through the 'river of news' style of presenting thoughts,...

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Using mobile to create connections

I have blogged before about the potential of mobile to create closer connections between artists and their fans. Mobile is our most personal communication device and exploiting that to bring about real conversations is a powerful lever in exploring connections.Recently, I have seen magazine publishers tapping on the power of mobile. Variety, for example, just launched an iPhone app powered by Newsgator. People magazine is also launching an iPhone application. While useful, I feel that these efforts are missing the bigger opportunity. The mobile is not just another distribution platform. It represents a whole new way to create value for both artists and fans.This mobile pearl talks about how Interscope Geffen A&M is launching iPhone applications for five of its key artists. It is a more...

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Twitter is cooler when it becomes mainstream

Alan Patrick wrote an interesting post that touches on whether Twitter is still 'cool', given that it seems to gaining mass adoption. Personally, I think the opposite. I feel that technology can only be cool once it becomes transparent and merges into our daily lives. This is when we can start to do interesting and useful things.StockTwits, TweetDeck etc are only the beginning. They are early hints on what is possible when we move to real time, human to human conversations. In fact, we will see much more powerful changes as the web becomes more real time.How will things change when we get real time feedback about our work? What would happen when companies can tap into conversations anytime to discuss about their product designs, the pain points of their customers, the way that things should...

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The challenges from the crisis and our response to it

After talking to numerous companies and startups about how the current climate are affecting them, a couple of major issues have emerged. From these challenges, we have fine tune our Future of Media effort to address them.Lack of access to bigger playersThe crisis has bought about a bigger need to scale faster and to build a real business. One of the ways to do that is to leverage on platform players such as Facebook and iPhone. Unfortunately in Singapore, our bigger companies such as Singtel and MediaCorps are not as open.Our respond: Our Future of Media initiative brings in the bigger companies as partners. As part of the network, they are committed to open up their market access to the smaller guys. In this way, we have effectively open up our relationships with the bigger companies to...

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The economics of viral loops

Viral loops are now a big part of product design. In looking at the various ways loops are modeled in various services, I realise there is a big point of failure: the email invite.Email invites have effectively turned everyone into a spammer. In this age of increasing attention deficit, this current form of email invites cannot be sustained. The attention costs are too high such that people will ignore them all together.To create better viral loops, we need to rethink about value adding. How can we create loops that benefits the recipients, instead of imposing more costs on them? If we rethink invites as a form of advertisement, can we apply...

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Admin note: carnival of mobilists #162

The latest edition of the carnival is up, with my post on the shortcomings of mobile ebook applications being one of the selected links.http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/carnival-of-the-mobilists-1...

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5 reasons why you should start a blog before doing a startup

Here is what I always tell first time entrepreneurs: start a blog in your area first and aim to attract x number of readers before attempting the startup. To me, blogging is the best way to test your idea as well as is the ideal training ground for your subsequent entrepreneurial journey. Here are five reasons why:Blogging tests your commitment and fosters discipline If you want to attract a certain number of readers, you will discover that daily blogging is almost a must. This is where you will know whether you have the necessary discipline to sit down and do the hard work of writing every night. This is where you will stop dreaming about success...

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The live Web

Jeff Javier had a statement that was stuck in my head for a while: live changes everything - again. Together with the recent post on creative destruction by John Borthwick, they point to a real opportunity that is happening right now: the emergence of the live web.Live web is most powerful when centered around events: a plane crash, a football match, a party, a concert etc. That is why I think live web is intertwined with events web, of which their interaction holds the most interesting possibilities. Event search for example, is made more powerful when the things it is searching for is live, i.e. where can I find the most fun party to go to right now? Fred Wilson hinted at similar conclusions how live and event web generates more social interactions.Without events as a focal point, live web...

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The confusing state of Singapore government's funding schemes

I must admit, government agencies are the least customer centric organisations one can find. This is manifested very clearly in the way we offer our funding schemes, in a maze-like structure for companies to navigate. This is insane. Imagine if you are a company and your customers can't find your products, how acceptable will that be?The top issue is one, ironcally, that the web would have solve: search. There are so many funding schemes from various agencies that a company will not know where to start. Pages are not optimised for search engines so they don't show up in google searches. Even when there is an attempt to provide a one stop listing,...

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Insights from Google's Jonathan Rosenberg

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's VP for product management has written a thoughtful long post. It touches on many of the important trends that are important. If you are a startup, take notice and spot where the opportunities are:All the world's information will be accessible from the palm of every personMore than three billion people have mobile phones, with 1.2 billion new phones expected to be sold this year. More Internet-enabled phones will be sold and activated in 2009 than personal computers. China is a prime example of where these trends are coming together. It has more Internet users than any other country, at nearly 300 million, and more than 600 million mobile users — 600 million!My Comment: That is why, my dear readers, I am so hot on mobile. It is going to bring greater evolution than...

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3 shortcomings of current mobile ebook applications

I have been helping a team of young and talented developers build their business plan for an open source mobile ebook reader application. As we were researching and discussing about the current state of these applications, we noticed three shortcomings that startups can create better services around.Sharing is not enabled: We like sharing. We like to share things that are interesting and useful with our friends. Sharing enables context to be built. As Clay Shirky puts it: We like it(sharing) so much, in fact, that we are willing to reward amateur outlets that enable it at the expense of professional ones that forbid it.Current ebook applications don't facilitate sharing. I can't highlight certain paragraphs and share it on my blog or send it to a friend. Imagine what can happen if we start...

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Is there a room for an Asian Offerpal?

I have listening to feedback from my funded startups that Offerpay doesn't provide enough monetisation options for their users. Most of them have have heavy users in this part of the world. This means most of the offers in Offerpal doesn't apply.There is a delay in digital adaption by our market research firms and our advertisers in general, relative to US. For example, I still see many surveys done by face-to-face which completelyI think there is an opportunity for someone to bring together the current traditional market research companies, offer them the opportunities in social networks, and pull their survey needs for the startups in social networks to tap on as a revenue stream.Beyond survey, polls etc, the bigger opportunity is to think about creating better forms of tools to gather insights...

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What social capital can enable (Part 1)

(The following rambling is triggered by burt ronald's "social capital of structural holes")I feel that we are reaching an optimal in online communications and networking. There is only so much sharing you can do in the name of sharing. I want to leverage on the abundance of online knowledge and networks to achieve more, to learn more, to have better ideas etc. Somehow, the current crop of services doesn't cut it for me.In terms of news and information aggregation, I don't need more services to recommend me news of similar nature. I don't need services that aggregate everything either because the noise ratio is too high. What I need are services...

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Our crisis package for startups

With bailout plans announcing all over the world, I thought it would be a good time for me to write about some of the things we are doing to help our startups as well. They may not billion dollar packages but I think it is something that will benefit them more than blindly throwing money around.Generating demandAs part of our efforts to build partner networks in 6 verticals (I am responsible for phone and books), we are pooling the demand for applications from our bigger partners. What we are effectively doing is creating marketplaces akin to the AppStore across our bigger partners for the smaller startups to tap into.I think this is sensible...

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Do our startups blog?

I was checking out my traffic sources when I saw some referrals from a French site, 22mars. If you look at the image below, my post on linked journalism was the fifth item, a couple of months after I wrote the initial post.Although this is nothing new, I am still impressed by how information spreads across the web. It is much easier now to reach places and locations you haven't thought possible before.Despite this, I am still amazed by how many of our startup don't have a blog to communicate to their potential users. I want to do some research later this evening to gather statistics on the following: How many of our funded 120 startups have...

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Opportunities in the prosumer economy: healthcare edition

The prosumer economy is an invisible economy that we never pay much attention to. Our conversation of prosumer typically restricts to online activities, be it writing blogs, reviewing books, or editing wikipedia entries. Prosumer however also touches the real economy in countless other ways we have never noticed: cooking one's meals, caring for your sickly father, volunteering at non-profits, repairing your house, shopping for your groceries et al. All these activities are produced and consumed by the user and its economic value is estimated to 50 trillion.As we move to a knowledge based economy, more people are empowered to become prosumers....

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What are the business models for attention allocators?

In my previous post, I have mentioned 2 ideas that will help to better allocate the attention for users. One of the nagging concerns, however is the missing business models for these attention allocators.So far, the better attention allocators such as Techmeme, and TIOTI seem to have either no clear business models or rely on advertisements, which increases attention costs. What are the alternatives? Is it possible to charge people for better allocating their attention? Would you pay to use techmeme?Kevin Kelly believes that where attention flows, money will flow in 8 different ways. Can we use this as a basis for building business models around attention allocators? What are the current examples you have se...

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Mobile Pearls II

Here are 10 more mobile pearls that shows innovative mobile services:User generated 'explanatory' booksThe book series allows users to create their own “self explanation.” The results, the user’s own explanatory “book” can be forwarded as a text to friends and family. (Mobile novels or books will continue to gain more market and we will see more innovations such as the above in this space.)Virtual hairstyle makeoverWith this free service users simply choose a hairstyle from the modeled looks, take their own portrait photo with their mobile phone camera, and enter it into the system to receive a version of the photo modified with the new look....

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Understanding social capital: readings from the Web

My social capital readings for the weekend.1) The network structure of social capitalAt the same time that group performance is enhanced by the social capital of its members, organization social capital can enhance employee performance.2) Social capital: the key to success in the 21st CenturyThe first step is to identify the social capital in the organization3) Network duality of social capital(Check out Ronald Burt's entire research papers here)The balance between brokerage and closure is usually analyzed in terms of where to invoke the mechanisms: maximum advantage occurs when a closed network secures alignment within a team and team members have brokerage networks beyond the team.4) The network paradigm in organisational research: a review and typologyIn this paper, we review and analyze...

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Idea nuggets from the Web

Ideas can be found anywhere. From blogs to comments to Twits. Here are some of the interesting ideas I have read for today: I'd like something similar, but with a personalization layer that compares my past lifestream activity to my friends new activity and surfaces the stuff that's most relevant to my interests... as opposed to FriendFeed, which just spews everything at me in an overwhelming mess. I was working on a project in this area earlier this year, but lost my developer. I'm still convinced it's a killer concept. Originally posted as a comment by Joe Lazarus on This is going to be BIG! using Disqus.****************************** ethanb: Wikipedia is nothing if not a platform for a ton of other businesses to be built on top. I can imagine a great business that’s more or less the...

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Mobile link journalism

Link journalism is a new form of journalism that is made available by the Web. Companies such as Publish2 are providing the infrastructure that powers this new model. I believe, however that a mobile link infrastructure makes more sense because the revenue models seem clearer.Imagine you are a journalist and you provide daily headlines of what you think are important stories. Users can subscribe to your daily sms, which is offered free. However, if users want to get the whole story, they will have to pay premium sms for each click. That payment becomes the revenue model for journalists and you will get a small cut for providing the application.Mobile...

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Reading links for the day

Here is a list of links that I am reading these past few days:A Spec for the Social Feed Reader(a much more fundamental shift in the way we're consuming things on the web)This is a cool idea that addresses our attention cost problem...'Curation', and journalists as curator(If we talk about curation, we refer to more than a simple act of filtering)This is another oportunity for someone to take a crack. Again, this addresses our attention cost problemGoogle's Power Play(The search giant wants to remake the electricity grid—and do for power what it did for the web)Energy is just bits of information. I am waiting to see how the market opens up for smaller guys to playCheck Cashers, Redeemed(Inside, it’s like banking turned upside down. Poor customers are commodities, deposits are irrelevant, bad...

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Open call for a startup to help us create a business angel network

Early stage funding has been a serious problem for us for a long time. Last year, we rolled out a match-making programme for startups called i.MATCH. We gathered 69 investors to meet 12 of our companies in a single day, using speed dating format to encourage interactions between investors and companies.However, we soon found out that i.MATCH is more suited for Series A type of investments whereas many of our startups require just angel level funding. This is a problem we aim to fix this year.Here is the proposed solution: we want to form a LinkedIn equvialent for angel investors and startups. We will gather as many of these angel investors as we can find. These people will not be your traditional investors but may come from occupations such as legal, doctor, private bankers et al.We are looking...

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Advertisements as content

One of the interesting trends of advertising is its evolution into content. This is part of the bigger shift in advertising where they must evolve into something that is useful and desirable to users.The biggest example of desirable advertisement in my mind is MTV:Back in the 1970s the music recording industry was trying to capitalise on the emergence of pop music TV shows. Global artists like Queen, David Bowie, Abba and the Rolling Stones in the 1970s were finding that they could send "film clips" of their latest hits to be played on the shows, even when the artists themselves did not have time to fly all around the world promoting every new release of singles and albums. These precursors to the modern music video were very clearly developed as the promotional tools for new music. They were...

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I can't believe we are still having Digg clones in 2009! The sad state of Singapore startups

I was in shock when I read this: Breaking.Sg - Singapore’s Digg Clone .Wow, I can't believe that somebody is making attempts to do a Digg clone in 2009. I mean, didn't Ycombinator funded slinkset that enables anyone without programming knowledge to do a digg clone? I even implemented a Digg clone (see ijam.sg) for proposal submission way back in 2006 (bad idea btw).Don't get me wrong. I think attention markets, of which Digg is but one form, has great potential. Unfortunately, I don't think our guys are thinking that deep. If you are exploring these areas, the minimal you can do is at least understand what attention markets are and how are they shaped.One last comment I have. Sg Entrepreneur guys, be more constructive in your articles. Don't just report. Analyse the issues deeper. Understand...

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Why I choose to work for Singapore's government

I was contemplating earlier this year about leaving the office and start my own thing again. It was a hard choice. So, what I did was to list down the reason for staying and they turn out to be pretty compelling. I am sharing them now to maybe give you some considerations to ponder if you are thinking about leaving your current job.Basically, there are three strong reasons why I choose to remain in the office for another year:The office offers unparalleled learning experiences: As part of our work, we deal with many companies and institutions, in various forms and shapes, from startups to MNCs to investors. Each and everyone of them represents a accumulative experiences of their trials and tribulations. You can see how startups fail or become successful. You see how big companies struggle...

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Opportunities in enhancing discovery (serendipity)

I have find that Singapore is always a generation late when it comes to innovation, especially in the Web area. Hence, I am always 'listening in' to conversations around the Web, especially to people who are exploring the deep fundamental drivers that are shaping our economy and society.In one of these listening sessions, I picked up on the concept of serendipity enhancement (hat tip to Ethan Bauley). It is different and yet may occupy the same importance as search. While search is powerful when the intention is clear, serendipity enhances social connections as it leads people to connect in unexpected ways. In a economy where social capital is...

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Mobile pearls: examples of innovative mobile services

I find that real examples are the best way to communicate opportunities and concepts. Nothing beats the fact that you can see and understand. Hence, I will be doing a weekly or biweekly post called mobile pearls that links to real products/services that illustrates the 7 unique benefits of mobile and the opportunities they represent.(Note: This mobile pearl concept is from Mr Tomi's excellent ebook (which I have given up buying due to the problems in 'PainPal').Once I have collected 100 pearls, I will complied them into a free ebook for easy reference. If you have examples of mobile pearls, grateful if you can point to them in the comments section.Event based mobile commerce for fashion shows:all the fashion items featured in the shows were available for purchase via your mobile phone as soon...

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How to make company grow

I have see many startups that we funded not growing. In fact, how to make company grow is a very challenging problem. Very often, when I asked them for the reason, I hear this: we need more advertising. Somehow, I don't think that is the answer. Take a good hard look at your product/services and ask:Is your product a purple cow?: Is your product a remarkable product? Will people talk about it because it is cool, meaningful, authentic, innovative etc? Many will argue that their products, by nature, cannot be a purple cow. If that is the way you think, you are already on the wrong path.Let's take a great example: Little Miss Matched. It is a company selling socks. What can be more unremarkable. Yet, they have successfully turn socks into a purple cow by understanding what their customer group...

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Does location based services really have no business models?

One of the lessons I have learn in my previous post is the lack of a business case for location based services. I like to give more perspective on why this is so. There are currently three general categories of location based services and below are my beliefs on why they are not as viable as is commonly believed.Directory Services: There are currently tons of services that offer you information on where to eat, which pub to drink, what shops are there etc. While there will be traction on these services, I believe they will remain niches. Why?The simple logic is that we are always in familiar places. Most of the time we are either at home or at work. When we are at these places, do we need to know what is available around us? Most probably we already know, and if we don't, the more simple way...

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