The value of links in next generation media

We all know now that Media is in a state of flux. Every part of the media value chain has been democratized. Rather than a rigid flow through, media is now a complex web of production, distribution and consumption. It flows everywhere and understanding that flow is key to value creation and capture in next generation media.

One critical piece that connects the web of media is the link. This is the mechanism where media is distributed and aggregated. The link is the facilitator of the flow. New value creation has to start at the link.

Surprising though, I have seen very little such attempts in building models on top of links. An exception are link shorteners. Bit.ly in particular has been very thoughtful about the importance of links, which is why they are the first (correct me if I am wrong) to offer real time tracking of clicks on your links. Analytic however is just a first step towards building the foundational blocks for links.

I think we need the following:

i) Better metadata for links: I don't mean services that pops out stuff everytime you browse over the link. I am referring more to ambient type of awareness. Things like colour or font differences according to some metadata. For example, why can't links appear in different colour according to whether the people you follow has clicked on them?

ii) More actions for links: Imagine a a Bit.ly for music (we already have a wordpress for music, a dropbox for music, an alexa for music) where clicking on the link click plays the music rather than taking you to a page. Why do we need media players? Why can't we enable the link to be the player? If we can accomplish that, is the link equivalent to the media?

iii) Transaction capabilities: Why can't I transact on the link like buying a song? Can't we bundle distribution and payment into an easy to use service? Imagine if every link allows certain transactions to be done. What will happen then?

I think more can be done to understand the importance of link-based distribution and the kind of new models it enables. What I am saying is just very rough thoughts. I am very open to comments and pointers to other sources of information.

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Comparison of local startups using Alexa

I know Alexa ranking is not the best analytic software around but it gives me a quick and dirty way to know how my funded startups are doing. I recently did a sample comparison and thought it would be interesting to share the tidbits that I picked up just by looking though the rankings. Here is the ranking. Note that I only focus on the B2C type of startups. Also note that I personally may not have invest in any of them if I have a say in the investment decision : )

Viwawa (Social game): 6,057 (not funded by us)
XiaXue (Local blogger): 28,223 (not funded by us)
BattleStations (Social network game): 43, 834(NUS)
Fresbo World (2.5D virtual world): 139,839 (FrontEdge)
iHiPo (International Internships): 197,558 (Thymos)
Cherry Credits (Game payment): 215,449 (not funded by us)
GoThere (Local search): 224,099 (not funded by us)
ZopIM (Live chat for ecommerce): 258, 074 (NUS)
Mr Brown (Local blogger): 284, 612 (not funded by us)
Phlook (Making photos interactive): 437, 860 (Thymos)
HomeSpace (Real estate search): 812, 756 (NUS)
Spree2Shop (Shopping review): 910,466 (Thymos)
Motion Element (Stock Animation): 1,106,654 (Thymos)
Stockalicious (Stock portfolio analysis): 1,198,149 (FrontEdge)
Eteract (3D speed dating): 1,769, 180 (Thymos)
Jamifi (Interactive sound): 4,387, 905 (Expara)
MyWobile (Mobile social networking): 7,593, 129 (Azione Capital)

A couple of interesting things stood out for me:

i) The most successful startup is not funded by us! Moreover, our top blogger is even more successful than our supported companies. A one woman blogger (without any funding) attracting more viewers than our $50k startups. What does that say about our startups and incubators? More importantly, what does that say about Web businesses (which leads to my next point)

ii) The Web is truly a different. Startups that tried to build their online businesses the traditional way will find quickly that individuals are outflanking them. Individuals who have a deep sense of how the Web works and what are the true value drivers (making deals vs having true conversation with users, cultural vs business like, creating value vs capturing value etc)

iii) The more successful startups in terms of traffic seem to be games. Moreover, all of them are social casual games, rather than the hardcore platform games. Going forward, I expect to see more such startups especially in the mobile gaming space.

iv) How do we compare B2C businesses in different platforms? During the course of doing the comparisons, I had trouble getting numbers for virtual world and mobile startups and this inevitably will skew the rankings. A recent startup called BuUuk for example seem to be gaining traction on the iPhone but I have no way to compare it against the startups here.

v) Is there any disruptive ideas you see in the all the companies above? When Umair Haque talks about revolutionaries not revolutionising anything, it is exactly how these startups have been doing:

But a huge part of the problem is entrepreneurs. The current crop of entrepreneurs just isn't thinking big enough.

There are no shortage of massive problems next-gen media plays can help solve. Global hunger? Check. Healthcare? Check. Moral hazard across the financial system? Check. The loss of social cohesion? Check. The massive shift of global labour from town to megaslum? Check. Exploding demand for energy? Check.

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The endless possibilities offered by iPhone's accessories API

The most exciting opportunity for the iPhone OS3 is the opening up of the accessories API. This means hardware developers now have the potential to open up new markets:

Developers will now be able to create apps that work directly with their proprietary accessories, which is something that was previously not supported. Examples given: an FM transmitter extension with an app for changing stations; a blood pressure gauge with app for tracking, organizing, charting blood pressure data.

The possibilities are truly endless as smart hardware developers now have the chance to disrupt many expensive hardware-based markets like medical devices, toys, home monitoring, car entertainment etc with some cheap hardware and smart software. Across the Web, articles have spring up that imagine what kind of new hardware and applications are now possible. If you are looking for cool ideas, the list below is a good place to start:

Ivor Kovic: Details how iPhone can become powerful devices for doctors with additional accessories and applications

Kontra: Talks about how the accessories API is a powerful advantage for the iPhone platform and lists the potential areas where innovations in hardware accessories can take place

Mark Johnson: Thinking about iPhone as an accessory to other devices, rather than the other way around. He then goes on to list the areas where such innovations are feasible

The biggest opportunity however is in forming an innovation network like Li & Fung with the community organisation mechanisms of Threadless. Imagine groups of users designing and voting for their hardware in vertical markets. The most voted will then be made using the supplier network similar to that of Li & Fung. Whoever can pull this off can remake the value chain of how hardware is produced and consumed.

What other potential do you see in the new accessories API offered by the iPhone OS3?

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My startup journey with GameRenkei

I have been pretty active advising a startup we funded called GameRenkei. It is an idea that I am fond of and something that I thought was worth my time. However, as we progressed through the product development stages, things started to be undone. It was heartaching to watch something so promising fell apart.

The first thing we didn't expect was the fall off of the development team. The technical brains behind the team left and the business guys were stuck with an unfinish product. They did what they could, mainly through outsourcing but it was never going to replace the people who left. That is why I always believe in having technical competence for a web startup.

Once we were stuck with an outsource partner, everything changes. Costs escalated and features were cut to bring the expenses within the budget. The original idea was discarded. What replaced it was simply a casual game site. However, to give credit to the team, they stuck it out. Even with the troubles they have, they still manage to get a product out and I have high respect for that.

I still believe in what they originally wanted to do. I hope some success comes their way and they can bootstrap their way to their dream.

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Why I like Nokia's Ovi Store

I attend Nokia Code Camp 2009 today. This event is to prepare developers for the upcoming launch of Nokia's Ovi Store in May. I was quite privileged to be invited as one of the speakers.

As I saw the unveiling of the Ovi Store, there are a couple of things that I thought was a marked improvement over Apple's App Store:

Tapping into device APIs: this turns out to have many useful implications such as saving your the information from your air ticket directly to your calender

Social recommendation: recommending what your friends have bought or downloaded

Country specific recommendation: recommending applications that are relevant to where you are

(and I foresee)

Device specific recommendation: recommending applications that suits a device's main demographic user.

All these boils down to the fact that Nokia is giving applications context, which is something the App Store sorely needs. Applications are like content. They need context to make them more relevant and useful to the users.

What I hope Nokia can do is to push that thinking further and allow for user generated context.

-How can I create and share my 'playlist' of applications with my friends?
-How can I know when and why my friends download certain applications?
- What other meta data can I add onto the applications beyond reviews and ratings?
- How can Nokia aggregate all these context and develop new ways of recommendations and search?
- What kind of applications can startups built to take advantage of context to help users navigate the huge number of potential applications coming up?

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How I gather my news

Increasing, my consumption habit of news has been changing. Traditional, it was always straight to aggregators like techmeme as well as front pages of newspaper sites. Now, my source of news has become more distributed and are coming from trusted rather than generic filters.

It all starts off with my igoogle page. This is where I can get quick updates on my favorite blogs such as Fred Wilson, Taylor Davidson etc. These posts are typically long and well written. They deserve the effort of jumping to their blogs and to participate in the discussions.

On my iGoogle are also what I call link recommenders. These are typically Tumblr blogs like Scott Rafer, Betaworks, Ethan Burley etc. What they do is highlighting interesting quotes or snippets from articles around the Web. From these sampling, it gives you a good sense of whether you want to read the full articles.Effectively, they are becoming my trusted filters.

These trusted filters extend beyond my iGoogle to other services. Twitter is becoming a powerful news recommendation system. People like O'reilly and Michael Parekh tweets daily links to interesting and relevant stuff that most aggregators will miss. Disqus is also becoming very useful as the blog posts that my favorite commentors are commenting on are typically very interesting reads as well.

Based on my current reading habit, the distribution of new is undergoing massive changes. How to surface relevant news based on your trusted filters seems like a powerful way of distribution. My current approach seem primitive. Is there a better way to do this that I am unaware of or is there room for new services to be developed?

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A different paradigm for assessing contextual information on mobile

It is funny but when a couple of your trusted filters talk about the same thing in different context and time, you tend to sit up and pay attention. This is what has happened.

JP Rangaswami blogged about a Shazam for image in the context of a bird recognizing application. This was echoed by Fred Wilson a couple of months back when he suggested a similar application for tourists. Finally, Tomi Ahonen also talks about a interesting mobile service in Japan that 'uses the camera on the phone.... to read words (and) ..does a dictionary look-up and displays the word in Japanese on the screen.

All these suggested a big opportunity: creating a different paradigm for assessing contextual information:

-What happens when you can now assess the contextual information embedded in things around you?
-Can we see who else has retrieved the same information?
-How can we add more information to the image, wikipedia style?
-Will we see a big debate over privacy if I can now assess your information by snapping a picture of you?
-Can we now tell better stories or leave deeper memories if our images comes with the relevant information?

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