crowdfunding: Sticknfind raises 1 million dollars via Indiegogo – #mwc13

This piece was originally written on behalf of the Orange Live Blog during a Press trip at Mobile World Congress 2013 last week

No, you aren’t dreaming! 1 million dollars were raised by Sticknfind by Jan 2013

No, you’re not deaming! The SticknFind startup raised closed to 1 million dollars on the Indiegogo crowdsourcing platform.

And The founders of SticknFind are no rookies either for they have been pioneers of Bluetooth products since 2003 and 2004 and they have been working for the automotive industry and have won many awards since then declared Jimmy Buchheim in his introduction yesterday. He and his teams have also developed the Blutracker project in the past can track various items within 2,500 ft range also funded through Indiegogo ($180,500 were raised for that project) as well as Meterplug, an intelligent plug which measures your real electricity consumption and displays the consumption in local currency (close to $128,000 on Indiegogo too). “This has been a very successful company” CEO and founder Jimmy Buchheim said. He started the new company in early December: “it wasn’t easy” he said, but he looked very pleased with the funding he got from the crowdfunding platform. Indeed, I know of few people who wouldn’t be happy with that!

Jimmy Buchheim, SticknFind CEO and founder shows the SticknFind tracker

why go through crowdfunding?

“The most obvious way, apparently, was to design our product, produce it and pitch it and then sell it to some industrialist, but this wasn’t easy for us to do. So we decided to go the crowdfunding way because the input from the users is sometimes more valuable than what you can get from a company” Buchheim said. He added “industrialists want to change the product to suit their needs and not that of their clients, and talking to VCs ends up with having too many cooks in the kitchen and this is how it starts to get bad!”

So, what is that innovation which users have found worth investing one million dollars into?

• First and foremost, it’s about an “amazing tracking feature” to put it in the words of Buchheim’s: “a lot of Intellectual Property went into the tracking mechanism” he said. What it means is that it gives users the ability to measure very precisely where an object is located : “the resolution is amazing, the system is able to measure very short distances”,
• Secondly, the find it feature which enables the sticker to send a notification if the paired object comes into range. Users get alerts on their phone if they leave the object behind them. You can place the sticker on a camera; on your car keys etc. and you can even measure the temperature of an object too (this would, for instance, tell you whether the object is outside or inside),
• Thirdly, the easy zooming capability enables one to find keys in a 150ft (45 metres) range but SticknFind was able to extend that reach to 300ft (90 metres). Based on feedback from users, they produced prototypes with 3 different manufacturers. “It took us a lot of tuning” Buchheim added, “they are made of very small parts and it required extensive work but we eventually identified the right kind of plastic so as to find the right mix [i.e. neither too rigid or too rubbery] in order to increase the reach”.

SticknFind will start shipping next week. The company started production last month, that is to say early compared to their initial promise (end of March), and the device will be available from retailers in April. This is the first generation of trackers, Buchheim said, “we are creating a new market and it will trigger huge applications. People and companies are losing a lot of money with stuff they lose” he said. What of generation 2 then? “It will be even smaller”, Jimmy Buchheim promised,h “you could even have it on your toothbrush!” in said in jest.

“This is the true Internet of things” Buchheim declared. The price for 2 stickers is $49 and $89 for 4 and there will be packs of 10 available. The app will be free and available on Google Play and IOS and it will be working on the Blackberry Z10 too (April release). And the battery lasts for two years so won’t even need to change it that often. A free SDK will be released to developers. The SDK will also be made available for Mac OSx (by March) and Windows 8 (from April onwards).

There are many applications for SticknFind, including industrial applications such as the keeping of inventory (100 and even 1000 items can be working at the same time the SticknFind CEO said).

The system, because it uses Bluetooth 4.0, only works with newer phones (Iphone 4S or newer or Samsung Galaxy SIII etc.) but no additional accessory is required to make it work. “The only way to make the battery work for 2 years was to use the new generation of Bluetooth, otherwise it wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days” Buchheim declared. As for security, pairing is limited to devices when they are 1 m apart and “you have to tap it to activate it so that it’s safer”.

This technology is really innovation at its best, it fill in a requirement, is available right now, and is both simple and ground-breaking; no wonder they raised so much money from Indiegogo.

The true colour of brands and true nature of infographics (1)

today’s selection is…

Thanks to my favourite stumble upon gimmick for finding new content and subjects, I discovered this very interesting piece of infographics about the true nature of brands according to their colour. I do not know what these graphics, beautifully crafted by the way, “[tell] about your business” as the headline says, but I certainly know what it means about the way that we read, understand and are influenced by pictures. A long time ago (2003), I published a piece on my  visionarymarketing.com website by Giancarlo Livraghi, an Italian publicist and the author of a book in Italian entitled “the cultivation of the Internet“. Giancarlo, in that piece, was describing what he called PowerPointis, a concept he had come across while seeing Colin Powell use pictures to convince the UN that the war on Iraq was justified. His point was that most of Powel’s pictures were fabricated but weren’t questioned because it’s hard not to believe pictures. This theory was accredited later in a Hollywood film based on a true story (Green Zone - 2010). I will re-publish this very important piece in a forthcoming post.

Imago ergo sum …

Infographics, mostly those like this one which are beautiful and laid out with excellent taste, go straight to the point and are easy to grasp. They are emotional and aesthetic. They appeal to our feelings. Besides because they are so simple and didactic, they are taken at face value, so much so that no one dares point out that they could be wrong. All you need is a click of the mouse and hey presto! The picture is multiplied and shared throughout the world. It is no longer cogito but imago ergo sum (see this piece in French).

Yet, infographics are also simplistic and exaggerated. They save time but at the same time, pictures tend to deprive readers from their critical eye. Most of the time they are non representative and show surprising results. They often refer to “a study the world’s top 100…” (Brands in this particular case) but who selected the sample? What are those brands? Who commissioned the study? Where are the results to be found? What methodology?… Such questions are and will remain, most probably, unanswered.

ING Orange account doomed to failure? not so not so…

A close look at the details underneath is even more enlightening. I just focused on the orange colour for a reason (disclosure: I work for Orange). As this colour is used by the company I work for, I’m very happy to realise that it is popular for high-tech according to this infographics and that the colour code is consistent with the brand values which we all like. I also read that this colour is said to be unpopular for banking whereas ING has been using this colour-code very successfully not only in the Netherlands but throughout the world and especially in the US where it is well known and associated with this colour.

I do not need to go any further. Looking at a nice picture like this makes me think of looking at a horoscope: it’s fun, entertaining, slightly puzzling, but this is not knowledge. Knowledge requires sources. Knowledge, requires contradiction. Knowledge can use pictures; but it certainly can do away with infographics.

New Innovation Blog Launched

A few years ago, I used to be a regular contributor to bnet in the UK but the site pulled out of the European market in 2010. Fortunately, a new project has just been launched and I’m very happy to embark on it. It is named innovation generation and it is sponsored by our peers from Alcatel.You can find my first piece on that blog under the following title: Governments Ease Into Cyberspace. Below is the announcement for the new website; stay tuned for more info …

We are living in a truly connected world. That’s something most people might take for granted when they make a phone call or watch TV, but when you consider how a wireless network brings books to your e-reader, an Ethernet network keeps your savings account secure, and a cloud holds most of your online identity, it becomes a pretty powerful proposition.

It is the services that run on these networks that are the lifeblood of society, and the potential for innovation here is limited only by our own creativity.

Enter Innovation Generation. It’s a generation that’s not confined to baby boomers, Gen Xers, or smartphone-toting Millennials, but rather encompasses everyone living in today’s globally connected society. Our goal here is to explore the potential for personalized, interesting, and, of course, innovative new services that can increase the quality of life and work for end users while also increasing the value of the service provider in the process.

How are service providers delivering these new services to businesses and consumers? How can they get more from their infrastructures than they already do? What are the opportunities for business model innovation? How can service providers improve the customer experience?

These are just a few of the questions we’ll strive to answer on Innovation Generation. If you’re a global communications service provider or enterprise IT leader, Innovation Generation is your guide to navigating the challenges and opportunities in creating innovative business opportunities for your company and your customers. Here, we explore innovation at all levels of today’s connected businesses, from software to services to groundbreaking business models – with an eye on what’s practical, what’s clouded by hype, and what’s going to help the bottom line.

These are services that are transforming industries like utilities, transportation, the public sector, healthcare, oil and gas, manufacturing, defense, railways, and even the government. And service providers are at the heart of it.

via Innovation Generation – Named Documents – About Us

social media API war goes on unabated (reblogged from Gigaom)

Here is an illustration for today’s talk at the French Association of Marketing on the future of social media and a sequel to our discussions with Dalton Caldwell in San Francisco last September.

What the Instagram fight says about Twitter as a media platform — Tech News and Analysis

Instagram says it is removing the ability for Twitter to embed photos because it wants users to go to its own website instead of Twitter’s to see that content. Other media companies should probably also be asking themselves similar questions about their relationship with Twitter.

Remember when Twitter was just a free and open conduit for whatever content its users wanted to distribute? Those days are long gone now, replaced by Twitter’s desire to control and monetize as much of its platform as possible, and as much of the content that flows through it. The latest skirmish in this ongoing battle came on Wednesday, when Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed that the service has removed support for Twitter’s “expanded tweets” feature, and therefore photos won’t be showing up in Twitter any more. While Instagram’s relationship with Twitter is complicated, its reasons for doing this should make other media companies stop and think about how they use (or are being used by) Twitter as well.

As noted by Nick Bilton in a New York Times piece and by my colleague Erica Ogg — and confirmed by a post at the official Twitter blog — what Instagram has done is to remove support for the expanded view of tweets that shows up on the Twitter website and in its official apps. These tweets have a special pane that displays excerpts from blog posts and news stories published by certain partners, or photos and videos from certain external services. Twitter originally launched this as something called “expanded tweets” but it has since become a much more ambitious platform called “Twitter Cards.”

via What the Instagram fight says about Twitter as a media platform — Tech News and Analysis.

Rocketspace ‘s Logan: “even Russian companies go to the US to conquer the world!” – #blogbus

Duncan Logan, founder of Rocketspace is originally Scottish and moved to San Francisco some time ago. His first venture didn’t work but 20 months ago, he then decided to found Rocketspace. Rocketspace could be described as “offices as a service” Logan said. He confided to our team of bloggers that he had read the Lean Start-up and he tested the principles he’d found in the book by creating a fake company and posting an ad on Craigs’ list. He got something like 10 requests by companies in 12 hours. Then he tried again by adding that only tech companies are wanted and he got 15 responses in 12 hours. That’s how Rocketspace, start-up accelerator in downtown San Francisco, was born. Today, Duncan Logan delivered his vision of why the Valley is the world’s most exciting place for high tech entrepreneurship. 

[note: this piece was originally written for the Orange Live Blog which I manage and created]

Duncan Logan, founder of Rocketspace delivered his 360° view of entrepreneurship

a start-up accelerator in downtown San Francisco

15 companies are hosted by Rocketspace, and there is space for 150 people. According to Logan, this is the largest “tech accelerator” in San Francisco. “30% of companies hosted here are from overseas who want to mix with the ecosystem in the Valley. 30 other co-working spaces exist but this one is dedicated to tech companies” Logan added. Spotify was hosted here for instance, but there are also companies at seed money stage.

“Overseas companies have too broad offerings” Logan said, “US companies have narrower offerings and they therefore, they are much more focused; because it’s such a huge country” he said.

co-working spaces have nothing to do with real-estate

Within about 6 weeks from creation, it dawned on Duncan and his teams that “real estate has nothing to do with co-working, and that it was all about the eco-system. It’s all about speed here, most start-uppers don’t care about privacy” Logan added. As a matter of fact, most of them don’t worry about building a sales team either. ‘The real trend behind Rocketspace Duncan said is that before, you would have to raise a lot more money and spend more time on getting yourselves organised, now you don’t”. So how much would you need to get started? “Under half a million dollars” he responded “and after 15-16 weeks, they can have large numbers of customers without spending too much money” … that is in case it takes off, but the system is such that investors know what to expect.

young people don’t want to commute … nor get into an office

“Over here, young people don’t want to commute, they don’t want to own cars, so there has been a real emphasis for young companies to be based in San Francisco [rather than Silicon Valley which is an hour away from the City] and this is why real estate prices doubled in 18 months!” Duncan Logan added. Besides, “the valley is more about infrastructure start-ups (i.e. cloud computing, storage and servers etc.) whereas “the City is about young companies” he said.

“Tech founders aren’t very social”

Most of the companies here are at “A” stage he said. For most of them, the risk is on the entrepreneurs, VCs are always pushing for more evidence of future success, and when you are a first time founder you have to think about what business can be financed vs. trying to build the most amazing business” Logan said.

the 3 pillars of Rocketspaces’s business

Now we hit what was the most interesting part of the meeting. Logan delivered his vision for Rocketspace and described what makes it special. “We see ourselves as a kind of platform” he said and he described the 3 pillars of Rocketspace’s business:

1. access to capital: close relationship with business angels, venture capitalists and Rocketspace have a very good view of deal flow, Logan said. Specially for outside companies, this is essential
2. access to talent: MIT, Harvard, Stanford etc. “talent is one of the overriding factors” Logan said. “We nurture those relationships in order to bring talent to new start-ups and we can do this for nothing” he said
3. access to customers: this is an “enormous growth item for Rocketspace” Logan said. Large companies like IBM or Microsoft are connected to the Office Space and this is what makes it possible for start-ups to connect to that ecosystem. “Smart companies are engaging with start-ups early in the process. They will come in here and they will say ‘we have a real interest in mobile payments’ for instance and we’ll start to shortlist maybe 4-5 start-ups and this is a very symbiotic way of doing business he said. IBM is working with dozens of start-ups for instance, and Rocketspace is constantly organising demo days and start-ups networking events. “Kodak, Blockbusters etc. took a different approach and refused to change the way they worked and they aren’t here anymore” Logan said.

“There are probably 250 very exciting companies around the world” Logan said, and we’d like to have them at least for Rocketspace for a year. This is our goal for the next 10 years.

How do you do networking?

We have four floors and 2 next door. We do a lot of dinners. “Tech founders aren’t very social” Logan said. We have up to 20 people at dinner and we have all the VCs that count at these dinners he said. There are 10 events going on every night on average in San Francisco and there are a lot of opportunities the entrepreneur said.

“We are not coaching hands-on like an incubator. Obviously it’s all our interest that they succeed. We never publicise who is here. We are fiercely independent. We give 3 contacts for bankers, VCs, partners etc. Rocketspace refuses to take sides.

A lot of this has a lot to do about how companies are getting funding. “VCs are aggressive. They probably see 250 companies before they invest in one. Yet, once they do they are pretty nervous. By the time a start-up is raising money, there will be up to 3-4 VCs competing with one another. So once they are committed they are pretty aggressive. It’s so hard to get in for them… Yet, for start-ups it can take them months before they can find an investor” Duncan Logan added.

I don’t think there is too much money, but the amount of money required to start a new company has dropped the founder of Rocketspace said.

why is Silicon Valley different?

There are great start-ups in UK, France and other places. But when you are in football you have to be in a environment in which you can rub shoulders with top class teams otherwise you don’t know whether you are good at the game or not. That was Logan’s way of explaining  that the premier league is taking place in Silicon Valley, this is where you compare yourself to the best companies. People like Reid Hoffmann (founder of LinkedIn), you understand that they have a different understanding of the world Logan said.

but there are other reasons why …

Scale is the issue, mostly in Europe (where there are many languages spoken and smaller numbers of users who are culturally very fragmented). Indian and Chinese companies can scale Logan said. We see copycat ideas happening in certain places like China and India and “they can crack America!” he said. You have to be in the sort of size like dropbox, airBnB etc. and India and China can achieve that kind of scale and found multibillion dollar companies”.

“Even Russian companies” he added “when  they want to conquer the world, come to America!”.

plans to expand to other countries?

“US immigration laws are ridiculous” Logan said. “We are tripling our size here in San Francisco but  it would make sense to have a Rocketspace in Europe (it could be London or Berlin) and one in Asia” Logan added. Plug and play tech centre  (where we are headed to now) were the pioneers he said, but their mentality is very commercial, and there is an obligation to fill the spaces. Roketspace sees themselves as very different from that.

4 suggested business models for Facebook to make money with its platform

by Alban Fournier (http://www.value2020.net)

QQ ID: 1557637787

Alban Fournier is a graduate from Essec Management School in Paris. He has proficiency in Management, Change Management, Marketing and Consulting services. He has worked on various engagements with Schneider Electric and Tencent, the leading Chinese Internet company.

value creation and monetization at Facebook: to succeed, other revenue streams than advertising and app revenue share should be developed now

For many, including Google, Facebook is a distraction from regular Internet surfing. The Palo Alto-based social network company firm has developed an engaging experience for users which creates some sort of addiction to the social network: almost all your “friends” are here and such a sheer volume of users is not available anywhere else.

currently Facebook data is available for free

Facebook offers its service in exchange for the right to capture and collect a huge volume  of demographic and preference data from its users. That data is extremely valuable to brands. Marketers and advertisers can use the data efficiently because it is detailed and personal.

the social graph … a core asset

The social graph is a core asset of Facebook representing people and the connections they have to everything they care about. Today, the social graph, or profile information database, is not used for business with third parties outside the Facebook website: Facebook has prevented its business partners from using the data it provides to approach users exclusively within Facebook. Through the social graph, it is possible to find and match data across different groups of people. It is also possible to produce a graph of preferences and identify people who share a common liking for a brand.

The Graph API presents a simple, consistent view of social graph objects (such as people, photos, events, and pages) and the connections between them (friendships, likes, and tags) (Facebook Inc, 2012). The Graph API also enables partners to read and write data into Facebook. Through “Facebook Connect”, a protocol also allows businesses to make all the features currently found on Facebook available on their own websites. For instance the “Like” feature, allowing user actions to show up on people’s profiles, publish actions across their friends’  newsfeeds etc.

a huge volume of data

Facebook is now building an ever bigger volume of data on how its users interact with sites within and beyond its walls. The feature called “Facebook Connect” is a win-win mechanism: the firm gives brands access to Facebook’s users’ real names, email addresses, profile pictures and friends lists. In return, the brand shares the activity of its Facebook users on its brand web pages. Both Facebook and its partners can improve their understanding of users’ habits across the world wide web.

automatic opt-in!

The Open Graph Protocol allows third-parties to access most, if not all, of a Facebook user’s data as long as he has opted in via the privacy settings. Yet, please note that by default all users are automatically enrolled into the Open Graph Protocol (Open Graph protocol, 2012)! [editor’s note: therefore it’s not opt-in]

The volume of participation is a critical component. With the right level of engagement and participation, a social circle may influence another social circle to participate in an external offering, whereas previously, I mean without a “friend” connection, that level of comfort to engage with an external site may not have existed. Brands have the opportunity to track and offer incentives for people promoting their brand.

building the semantic web

Facebook might be able to build a web ecosystem where a user’s needs can be anticipated, understood and personalised for them: it is called the semantic web. The social network firm did understand the opportunities of collecting user data on their interests much more than we could have expected.

Yet, as of today, Facebook is mainly an advertising platform but its business model of Facebook should change from a pre advertising-based model to a combined business model covering: advertising, revenue sharing, merchant, and infomediary services.

1. advertising model

Facebook sells ad space on its site. Like other Internet firms, it is offering personalisation options in online advertising. Facebook helps its clients target their ads at specific groups of Facebook users, based on elements of users’ profile data. In the online-advertising ecosystem, the brand or individual is able to collect metrics and analytics. This means that the brand or advertiser can predict the impact its campaign will have. This demand of brands for users’ data is crucial for Internet players.

One of the issue with the advertising model though is that it is prone to fluctuations due to the economic situation. With the current crisis, Google’ revenues were impacted with a light decrease in advertising revenues in the first half of 2009. However, the main challenge for Facebook is the behaviour of its users: advertising on smartphones seems less efficient than on computers. On the other hand, advertising on tablets shows some results and the growth will come from such devices too.

2. revenue-sharing model: applications and virtual goods

Facebook is getting a percentage of the revenue it generates with applications hosted on its platform through revenue-sharing agreements with developers who created and own the application. Facebook hands over a few categories of public profile data (such as sex, age, location etc.) to the app makers, enabling them to personalise the end-user experience. In 2011, Facebook got 12% out of the revenue coming from Zynga thanks to a 30% revenue share with Facebook (SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, 2012).

The business of micro transactions for virtual goods is booming. When users purchase virtual goods using Facebook payment infrastructure, the firm receive fees that represent a portion of the transaction value. The opportunity for Facebook is not only in social games. Taking the example of Tencent, virtual goods can be used for many other purposes like avatars and other online benefits internally or through other business partners.

According to the report of Strategy Analytics called “Virtual Worlds Market Forecast 2009-2015” (Gilbert, 2009), the worldwide revenue generated from the sale of virtual goods is forecasted to increase to $17 billion by 2015. Facebook currently requires the integration of a payment system in games. The firm should seek to extend the use of online payments to other types of applications and mobile tools in the near future. Its App centre will come handy.

The use of a virtual currency like Facebook credits (editor’s note: Facebook credits were discontinued in 2012 but will soon be replaced) makes easier micro transactions of real and virtual goods over the Internet. Those credits could be used both within Facebook and on partner websites. The decision to have credits in local currencies should accelerate the use of micro payments over the platform.

3. Infomediary services Model: anonymous social marketing?

Facebook could start charging for access to its user data. User data is potentially highly valuable. Facebook collects a rich set of information from its user profiles. Each profile contains not only the user’s demographic data, but also data about the user interests. Every action adds an additional piece of information: adding a friend, liking a brand, looking at a page or a video…The tastes and buying habits of the users and connections (or “likers”) are much better indications of what the user is likely to buy than are its demographics (i.e. age, sex, and location data…). As a consequence, selling anonymous user data is a good way to make money sharing knowledge of people interests, those people being potential buyers of products.

Application developers could have to share a higher percentage of revenue in order to benefit from user data.

Facebook could dissociate its users’ data from its platform and license it to web data brokers or directly to large CPG businesses, once all personally identifiable information has been expunged. External marketers and advertisers might also be interested to use the data to target ads or other content at potential customers either online or offline. A marketer from CPG firms such as Procter & Gamble or LVMH, could compare this combination of demographics and preference data, and determine similarities with people who have bought their products previously.

The sale of users’ data is a good and easy way to quickly monetise Facebook’s assets. Besides, market insights is another source of cash that could be created through Facebook. With its huge database, the firm can sell specific insights matching the needs of its clients.

4. Merchant model with e-Commerce Transactions: Facebook can become a key tool in the purchasing decision process

E-commerce is expecting opportunities to leverage the existing platform thanks to: a massive logged-in user base; insight into users’ interests; and the network’s ability to generate “word-of-mouth”. Facebook should therefore seek to build payment relationships with consumers; and promote its existing billing system. With the amount of volume of activity and users the firm has at its disposal, extending the current business model with its existing customers is easier and faster (Zhenga Lindgardt, 2009).

The firm should therefore be able to charge a fee based on a percentage of revenue sold through the platform. The knowledge of actual tastes and preferences of Facebook users makes the social network very attractive for the discovery of products and services, and online purchases. Provided Facebook sorts out and improves its mobile strategy, mobile commerce could its first source of revenue as early as 2020. The firm could indeed charge a fee per store and asks for a percentage against each transaction (1%-3% according to the product or service). We can expect Facebook to become a link between a brand and a potential customer through his or her history.

For most users, Facebook is able to carry out the promise of personalisation better than any other e-merchant and deliver a purchasing experience around the data it owns. At the time of decision to purchase or not a product or a service, the social connection gives confidence in buying if the perceived value and benefits of the products are recommended by “friends”.

Nobody knows what the future holds for Facebook, and even though the task is difficult and risky, here are two cents and a projection available from my site at value2020.net

follow in the steps of Tencent!

As a conclusion, as explained, Facebook Inc. is likely to generate much more revenue from user data through mobile & tablet commerce, and infomediary services in the years to come. The profitability of the firm could increase in case the company follows the path of Tencent, one of the world leaders in the business of micro transactions. The business of virtual goods is growing and highly profitable: Facebook should take advantage of this kind of opportunities.

Bibliography

Facebook Inc. (2012, May). Core Concepts – Open Graph – Tutorial. Retrieved May 29, 2012, from Facebook Developers: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/tutorial/

Gilbert, B. (2009, June 1). Virtual Worlds Market Forecast 2009-2015. Retrieved January 21, 2011, from Strategy Analytics: http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=reportabstractviewer&a0=4779

Open Graph protocol. (2012, March 22). Open Graph protocol. Retrieved April 12, 2012, from Open Graph protocol: http://ogp.me/

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION. (2012, February 1). REGISTRATION STATEMENT ON FORM S-1. Retrieved May 27, 2012, from SEC: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm

Zhenga Lindgardt, M. R. (2009, December). Business Model Innovation. Retrieved April 23, 2012, from BCG: http://www.bcg.com/documents/file36456.pdf

Follow me on Twitter: @value2020

this piece is also available from http://value2020.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/value-creation-and-monetization-at-facebook/

Verizon: using crowdsourcing to get products right – or wrong

A few weeks ago in San Francisco, I attended the fiftieth Blogwell presentation since the beginning. Laurie Shook is portfolio leader at Verizon, a leading US telecom operator. She is a product marketer who uses social media, not a social media expert and she even describes herself as a “marketeer with a passion for Social Media” on her LinkedIn profile.

Verizon’s Idea exchange was developed in July 2010, as a place for customers to exchange ideas about services and things that customers would like Verizon to do. The platform provides means for ranking ideas. It is “semi-anonymous” Laurie said and “gives the idea to people that they can speak freely” she added. In a nutshell, it is n opportunity for Verizon clients to express themselves and “it’s also a great opportunity for marketers” Laurie said.

HD TV high on the agenda

“Many customers comment on HD TV and mostly on TV programs. “They said for instance that they’d like to see certain channels in HD or hide channels which they aren’t subscribed to and Verizon subsequently implemented that option” she said.

There are all kinds of ideas on that platform though and some of them are content related. Customers vote and propose ideas and sometimes they even propose to vote against ideas which they oppose.

913 ideas received 280+ launched

Laurie went on describing a business case study:  the “IMG 1.9” plan; IMG is the abbreviation for “interactive media guide”. “There is one release a year, it’s a lot of work and once we’re done, we involve 100 customers before launching it” Laurie said. “Last summer [2011], we extended the HD channel guide, hid unsubscribed channels, added DVR chapter selection and made the channel guide softer and easier on the eyes. That was based on feedback : ‘made fonts bigger, change the background etc.’”

Yet, even though a majority “loved the ideas”, things weren’t so easy since there also were other users who were “very vocal and critical”. Some didn’t hesitate to post comments such as “you really screwed up your tv guide” Laurie said.

what do you do with negative feedback?

The next question is familiar to any marketer in charge of communities. “what do you do with that kind of feedback?” Should you ignore it, or make it a priority? Laurie’s answer makes perfect sense:

“You don’t respond immediately. Sometimes, people are pissed off with change and you have to wait for the dust to settle. Acknowledge the status and wait. However, the post became popular, and even the most popular on the platform” Laurie went on.

facilitation tips from Verizon

She admitted to not finding this very pleasant but you have to bite the bullet and you also have to respond she said. Here are her recommendations:

1. “Cool you jets before responding” (remain cold-blooded, there is no need to heat up and start an online battle)
2. “It’s best not to respond immediately and to respond with the medium” (i.e. Idea Exchange rather than choose another tool)
3. “a personalised response is necessary” such as “I’m sorry you are not of the same mind … and we will work to make you happy again”

are early innovators biased?

“Maybe it was an execution issue or a community bias, whereby people who join forums are early innovators and do not represent customers. Maybe the rank and file TV viewers aren’t represented?” Laurie went on “but when that guy commented, we had more people joining”. Laurie suggested that there was some sort of Hawthorne effect in reverse and that conclusions had to be drawn from that experiment with regard to crowdsourcing and how much hindsight you should introduce when conducting such projects.

on the positive side

Beyond this bias, there are some positive conclusions to be drawn from that experiment Laurie added. Here is what she thinks has worked for Verizon:

1. faster customer feedback (before Idea exchange  there were disconnects but you didn’t know why or how or how much. “With direct feedback, you know immediately and you understand much better” she added)
2. nuances of customer opinions are highlighted
3. there is an incentive for more focus on customer priorities
4. there are customer expectations of “Internet time” and this forces a large organisation to do things more quickly

Laurie added that “this example is strictly consumer-orientated, and that Verizon business is working with customer advisory boards, in a much more face-to-face format”.

e-health happening at last and coming to our homes #mwc #mwc12

This post was originally written for the live.orange.com blog, reporting live from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

E-health is no longer a dream and we had further evidence of this at Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona while visiting the “connected house” pavilion. And guess who’s behind this in terms of communications? Orange of course (disclosure: I work for Orange). Let’s zoom into these solutions of a very very near future in which our health and namely that of elderly citizens will be (ethically) monitored and surveyed at a distance.

Qualcomm is an interesting company. Its history goes back to the late 1980’s a time at which it was doing m2m (machine to machine communications) for the transportation sector under the omnitracs brand name. The early 1990’s saw Qualcomm moving into the mobile chips business (in actual fact, they even produced handsets before selling that division to Ericsson) for which it is known to all but their recent move is a radical one and it’s called Qualcommlife. Qualcommlife is an independent spin off from the main company with a funding of $100m (out of the total $500m which are part of the Qualcomm VC fund) I was told by the Qualcomm representative on their stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Qualcomm life launched towards the end of 2011 and has now signed an agreement with Orange regarding its brand new NET2 platform, as depicted in the press announcement on the Orange.com website.

health monitoring made easy

Health monitoring isn’t completely new I must admit. I remember our first demos at Orange labs in Paris more than 7 or 8 years ago! Yet this technology is slowly and surely becoming mainstream and this is made possible through the understanding that users want technology to get the job done and not spend hours fixing the wifi or bluetooth interface of their phone. This is exactly what NET2 is doing for you: “grandma doesn’t want to fiddle about with the wifi so we had to build an intelligent device which would pair automatically” the Qualcommlife representative declared. The Net2 gateway (which will be powered by Orange from a network point of view) is meant to do just that.

NET2 is a platform which enables patients to connect their devices (weight scales, blood pressure monitor, glucose monitoring device, …) directly without any complex pairing procedures. “All you have to do is plug in the gateway and it will find the patient’s device automatically Qualcommlife said.

But there are more than many ways of connecting to your GP than the NET2 gateway: standard mobile devices, embedded devices are also possible. You may even connect your treadmill to a remote monitoring device and record your data as seen in the following picture taken in the Connected House pavilion.

At last, here is a simple and promising way of enabling remote health checks, enforcing the remote monitoring and the surveying of patients with a diabetes or a heart condition for instance, in a seamless and easy way. At the end of the day, “national health authorities might even be enticed to encourage the development of such systems in order to enforce country-wide health programs” the Qualcommlife representative added.

This is a major step forward and one more proof that innovations take approximately 10 years to settle and disseminate.

first few slices of technological innovation at #mwc12

reporting live from MWC2012 in Barcelona

You certainly know you are in Spain when you can spot the Patanegra at a buffet, but the motivation for the happy few who were present and invited act the showstoppers event in Barcelona today, didn’t quite come for the quality of the cured ham. Press pass bearing delegates (including bloggers) were indeed allowed in after a short wait a little after 4pm on Sunday 26th and therefore I was able to spend two hours looking at some of the innovations which were on display. Here is a selection, enhanced with a few pictures .

It all started with Nuance, the makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking – the voice recognition giant of which I am a faithful user and (even unofficially) behind Apple’s SIRI technology – who are into the development of the next generations of set top boxes, ones which will understand you thanks to natural language recognition. For instance, you will soon just say “show me a film in which Tom Cruise is playing” and you will be shown a selection of films starring the famous actor. We’re not there yet, but it may well mean the end of EPG (Electronic Program Guides) browsing.

The next stand at which I stopped was that of Gracenote, a system mainly know by users who wish to digitalise their – legally purchased – music on their computers. Gracenote is a database containing minute details about music albums but also films. Yet, Gracenote – now part of Sony for 5 years – is making money on its APIs, not on the database itself (which is updated and maintained collaboratively by its users). The most interesting thing they showed was what they called Moodgrid which lets you choose music according to your mood as shown on the tablet of the above picture. Other potential applications exist, namely for car music systems.

A third innovation I found particularly interesting was … not really an innovation but a way of showing that sometimes, older is better than new! The company is called Emporia and is Austrian. It has been operating for 20 years but has only been active in the mobile sector for 6 years. Everything happened when Dr Albert Fellner, the CEO of Emporia, realised that each week when he visited his Mom he had to explain to her how her phone works. It had nothing to  with dementia but really with the fact that the product isn’t suited to elderly persons. So he decided to build special phones, with special features of which:

• a torch is always made available on the outside of the handset and is operated at the touch of a button
• a simple alarm button (black button hence less conspicuous)
• a simple lock button (a real button, not a complex combination of key strokes)
• a simple charger base (see picture above)
• very large buttons which elderly people can press easily. The company even works with Cambridge university on the usability of their phones

A very clever design which shows that innovation isn’t always equal to modernity.

Last but not least, I stopped by HZO’s stand, a company which is working with handset manufacturers in order to equip all phones with thin protective and invisible layers one can add on the motherboards in order to protect phones from water. Their demo was amazing as they showed phones in perfect working order which had spent up to five hours in a bowl full of water. This innovation should equip new handsets progressively, in the next 2 years according to HZO representatives who aren’t selling their solutions to the public though.

With innovations like these, should never be afraid anymore of flushing your phone through the toilets!

>> see a demo on this online video

Top Blogging Team at Mobile World Congress for Live Orange Blog

In the telecommunications industry, everybody knows about the mobile world congress. The yearly event, which has been hosted in Barcelona for quite a few years now, is the obligatory focal point for all the players in that industry: carriers, service providers, infrastructure and equipment manufacturers, software vendors etc. In a word, this is where it all happens. The 2012 edition of MWC is bound to be even more exciting for all our live.orange.com readers because we have decided to send a team of high profile bloggers on location who will be reporting live from Barcelona. So if you want to know in near real time what is happening at MWC all you have to do is tune in to live.orange.com and read our coverage of some of the most interesting announcements as well as of what is happening behind the scenes on location. Some of our partners English, some not, but most of our content will be posted in 4 different languages as usual. Don’t forget to follow our @orange twitter account for live news about this blog and our live coverage. Let’s find out who our blogging partners are in this introductory post (in no random order):

It’s not everyday one gets someone from Asia (in this case, Australasia too) in one’s team and I have thought it to be an interesting experiment to bring in a partner from China, after a discussion with our representatives at Orange lab in Beijing. Jason Lim has been an Editor at TechNode since December 2010, a prominent Chinese tech blog written in English . Jason’s area of expertise is very broad and covers are start-ups, e-commerce and emerging technologies. Jason is also the Developer Relations Manager for AppStoreConnect, a white-label Android app store in China that powers brands such as HTC, BenQ and Wondermedia Flytouch. Before coming to China,  he was a management consultant in strategy, operations and marketing as well as an accountant with Ernst & Young in Sydney, Australia. Jason currently lives in Beijing. Technode’s Twitter handle is @technodechina. for a sample post from Jason, check this piece on mobile payment on the TechNode blog

Mohamed Ali Sousissi is from Tunisia and is the facilitator of the Tunisian blog malissonline.com. Judging by the football shirt, Mohamed is bound to be a good team player. Mohamed can be traced on Twitter at @MedAliSouissi and on  Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Mohamed.Ali.Souissi. Malissoline.com is Tunisian portal written in French which specialises in local and international high tech news. Mohamed’s positioning resides in its ability to explain the high tech world in simple terms, understandable to all.

Anybody in the French-speaking blogosphere knows (or at least knows of) Eric Dupin who is the creator and facilitator of the second to none “presse citron” blog. Presse Citron has established a serious reputation in the high tech world and it is often one of the first to break the news that side of the Channel. Eric writes in French but is fluent in English. His posts will be duly translated in other languages. Our French-speaking readers can get a flavour of “Presse Citron” at http://www.presse-citron.net/microsoft-presente-le-logo-de-windows-8, a post in which Eric and his teams disclose the forthcoming Windows 8 logo. Eric’s twitter handle is @pressecitron. Eric works and lives in Lyon, in the south of France. Eric is a long time partner of the Orange team.

Leigh Geary is the editor and founder of Coolsmartphone a well famed blog in Britain with a (very) cool domain name. Leigh is of his own admission “the one who films hands-on videos in the car” but we assure him that London Police officers aren’t reading this blog. Leigh is passionate about everything mobile, be it smartphones, tablets, phone-related innovations etc. Leigh’s Twitter handle is @gears which makes him once again number one in the name coining exercise. For a sample of the coolsmartphone blog I recommend this piece on how easier it is now to take pictures with IOS5 (Apple’s latest OS for the iPhone). Well spotted!

Frederic Lardinois despite his Gallic sounding name was born in Germany and is a graduate of Potsdam. He is a PhD student at the university of Connecticut and the writer of SiliconFilter, a blog which focuses on consumer technology related to the Internet, and deals with Web apps, mobile apps and devices, as well as Web-connected TVs, cars and similar technologies. Frederic Lardinois, has written, 1,500 stories for the highly acclaimed ReadWriteWeb tech blog before starting his own venture.

[picture courtesy of Olivier Ezratty]

Philippe Lagane (Twitter handle @philippe_lagane) is the creator – amongst many others – of the Accessoweb blog. He is one of our most knowledgeable experts and having done business with him, I can assure his work and that of his teams are really top notch. Tune in to Accessoweb if you are a French speaking reader, and you want to know everything about devices, mobile services, mobility in general and all things relevant to that domain. Philippe will be teaming with Christos Ionnitis (@newsmobile) who already was one of our reporters at Le Web 2011 last December. Philippe lives near Perpignan in the South West of France, Christos in Annemasse, in the South East. Both Philippe and Christos blog in French but their reports will be adapted to other languages. French readers should check this piece on the ZTE smartphone announcement by Accessoweb (available in French only).

[picture Some rights reserved by Frédéric de Villamil]

Glenn Le Santo (@lesanto on Twitter) is our high tech events wizard. Glenn has had a very lively and varied business life. He is a seasoned reported who is passionate about technology, usage and innovation. He is the Twitter driving force behind Exeter Like Minds events (at which I met him) as well as the successful organiser of LincUpLive (check the February conference schedule here) in Lincoln, England. Glenn has been a long time partner of Orange at our Orange Business Live events as well as Le Web 2011.

Raphaelle Laubie is French but she mostly blogs in English. She is probably one of the most passionate business person I have ever met and her range of skills is amazing. She is a Health 2.0 Entrepreneur and her business – a registrar in the heath Internet industry – has even filed an application for the new dotmed “gTLD” (a new generic top level domain which will be devoted to healthcare, due to ICANN’s decision to open the registration of new extensions on top of existing ones (.com, .info, .net etc.). You are invited to check Raphaelle’s blogs on management at http://raphaellelaubie.com/category/marketing/branding-management. Raphaelle is also affiliate Lecturer at ESCP Europe and has even a Doctorate in Progress… On her spare time, Raphaelle is also helping with the Orange team with the coverage of live events.

Stewart Baines (@stewartbaines)  is both the co-organiser of our trip to MWC and a contributor to the live.orange.com blog and the Orange Business blogs.  He is one of the founders of Futurity Media with Anthony Plewes (@antonyplewes) who will also be present with us. Stewart has been writing about technology for 15 years.  His focus is in emerging technologies, social media and future gazing. As a graduate of philosophy & science, he has studied futurology & foresight to post-grad level. Stewart is bound to be our futurologist in that team and will tell us about the future trends in high tech. Check his numerous contributions on behalf of Orange Business Services on the connecting technology blog, the Orange Business Live Blog [French] or the Orange Business Virtualisation blog [French].

Yann Gourvennec (that’s me), is Director, Web, Digital & Social Media at Orange and an Internet writer since 1996. He writes in English and French on his Website (http://visionarymarketing.com) and blogs. He writes in English and French, mostly about Marketing, Web, e-commerce, Management and Change Management.

iStrategy Amsterdam : keynote on social media ROI/ROE – #istrategy

 

As announced in a previous post, I will be keynoting at the forthcoming iStrategy conference in Amsterdam on Oct. 26. In order to introduce this keynote, I have recorded a short video clip with my team which you can visualise if you click the picture on the left-hand side. 

The ROE/ROI debate and controversy is still rankig very high on the Marketing agenda as shown in this post on the Sysomos blog entitled “Is Social Media ROI That Important!”. Actually, 4 years ago, I was thinking like that too, as stated in this old blog post I wrote late in 2008 and republished in 2009 entitled “Beyond the ROI Issue”. 

Nowadays though, I rather disagree that the “numbers are so low”. We are spending more and more, and that – whether we like it not – means that there must be a shift in our attitude. So, while we need to measure things, there is a requirement for us to:

1. dissociate ROI from just sales (savings work too!)
2. dissociate ROI and ROE (which is also a valid measure)
3. know what we measure and what with
4. take all this with a pinch of salt as the goalposts keep moving and we need to adjust constantly (the “Klout” index for instance keeps shifting.

I will be keynoting on this subject in Amsterdam, and you can catch a glimpse of the slides

See you at the iStrategy conference which is due to take place in Amsterdam next week.

Pespsico: from crisps to “innovation incubator”

PespsiCo UK, the company behind famous CPG brands such as Gatorade, 7up or Walkers may not be a high-tech giant as such but it has a knack for joint innovation anyway. The company indeed created an innovation challenge entitled PepsiCo10, the aim of which is to reward 10 digital entrepreneurs in the fields of social commerce and mobile technologies out of 130 appplicants.

The challenge gives these 10 startups a unique opportunity to boost their businesses as well as “drive business value for PepsiCo“. The challenge is about creating social commerce or mobile applications related to PepsiCo products; each of these 10 business ventures will be granted the status of a “strategic business partner, working closely with [PespsiCo] teams, internally and externally”. Winners will also be awarded £10,000 in cash but PespiCo will take no equity in those businesses.

It’s such a clever idea, one wonders why a high tech giant hasn’t yet thought about it! While launching this programme in Europe (after last year’s successful creation of the US contest), PepsiCo is promoting itself as an “innovation incubator”.

There are 5 suggested categories in this challenge:

• Social Media Community-based Marketing,
• Mobile Marketing: On the Phone, Tablets and Beyond,
• Place-based Technology,
• Online Video and Advertising,
• Gaming / Learning Platforms.

Partners of this campaign include high tech experts from OMD UK, Highland Capital Partners, Wired and Mashable. Last but not least, through this challenge, PepsiCo willl be saving on the development of innovative technologies which will help them promote their own brands … a win-win challenge and a clever Marketing trick!

more information about the 10 selected start-ups at www.pepsico10.com.

free whitepaper: beyond big data, a business perspective

a bird's eye view of number crunching by Lee Schlenker and the chair of emerging technologies (photo Yann Gourvennec htt://bit.ly/picasayann)

By Professor Lee Schlenker

The emerging technologies and methodologies outlined in this paper can increase our abilities to use data to put our business into perspective. The figures are a good place to start in understanding what they reveal about our work and our work place. Frames, which shape implicit convictions about what work is all about, condition how we capture and interpret the data at our disposal. The business horizon separates the realities we see in the market today from the trends that may well define what opportunities the future holds. The case testimony using Big Data, the Cognitive Sciences, Crowdsourcing, and Social Network Analysis suggest that we can gain considerable insight in understanding how decision makers interpret the data. If work is not about doing things but getting things done, how are you using the data to incite managerial action? We know how to work cheaper and faster, but do we know that we are working on things that matter?

Download the free whitepaper entitled Looking beyond the horizon

 
@ 2011 EMLYON Business School/LHST sarl

The Chair of Emerging Economies and Technologies, established at the EMLYON Business School, coordinates applied research and pedagogy on the potential synergies between emerging forms of organization and disruptive technologies. Under the responsibility of Prof. Lee SCHLENKER, current research of this multi-sponsored Chair includes different applications of Cloud Computing, Management 2.0, Mobile computing, and the evolution of IT partner channels. EMLYON is ranked by the Financial Times as one of the top 10 European Business Schools. Devoted to lifelong learning for entrepreneurial and international management, its distinctive quality is founded on teaching innovation and an entrepreneurial approach to management education. The school offers a full range of graduate programmes in stimulating the social responsibility and the entrepreneurial approach to management of its participants.

mobile OS market share comparison (via @icrossing_uk)

There are several ways of looking at the market share comparison map by iCrossing. One is to highlight that Apple now has gone over the 50% market share mark in many countries (per below). Another is to stress that France and Australia are even the 60% bar, which is absolutely amazing. A third would be to spot that in America, their market share is only 35%, but that Blackberry is taking the plunge save for Britain (numbers per below). A fourth would be to show that Android is very strong in South Korea but still falls behind in countries like France and Spain and UK. Eventually, Nokia is still strongest in most emerging countries – countries in which feature phones are king – but time will tell whether the Windows phone gamble will work out for them. In any case, this map is really useful; a fine job.

for those who might wonder about the representativeness of the the data, it has been  collected from the http://gs.statcounter.com/ website

 

Mobile OS market shares

This map shows the popularity of different mobile browsing platforms country by country, with some interesting results.

Apple’s dominance can clearly be seen, with the iPhone and iTouch accounting for over half the market in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Japan.

via Mobile browser market share map – iCrossing.

the PC is dead … once again

today’s selection …

is Erik Sherman’s piece on the death of the PC. After all, as the late  Mark Weiser (the true inventor of tablets) originally came up with his idea of “ubiquitous computing” in the 1970′s, one may assume that this was bound to happen. Except that it hasn’t happened yet and long time tablet-owners and extensive users of these devices know for sure that, as of today, the limitation of such machines does not really help you get rid of other devices. On the contrary. Such intensive users – such as yours truly – end up carrying ever bigger bags in which you find: a Kodak portable camera (best for films), a tablet for hootsuite and Facebook (as well as serving as a portable 3G/wifi hotspot), a mobile phone (for after all, nobody uses tablets to make a phone call do they?), and … a laptop, mostly for those who edit pictures but also create text and documents and presentations and even a portable digital recorder for soundbites. We are not there yet, so I believe this isn’t the last piece you read about the death of the personal computer. 

Microsoft Insists the PC Isn’t Dead — but Doesn’t Really Believe It | BNET.

Does HP’s (HPQ) recent move to spin off its PC business underscore the end of the PC era? Not if you ask Microsoft(MSFT), or at least its vice president of corporate communications Frank Shaw. To Redmond, the PC is the hub of technical existence, with e-readers, tablets, set top boxes, and smartphones anything but PC-killers. Instead, Shaw argues on his corporate blog, PCs do a lot more and will remain vital and necessary in the future.

Read on … Microsoft Insists the PC Isn’t Dead — but Doesn’t Really Believe It | BNET.

Startups Don’t Need Marketing … Or Maybe Later

today’s selection …

Is a piece by Fred Wilson, a NYC Venture Capitalist, about why Marketing isn’t what a startup needs when its initiative is kick-started. Startups need intuition, hunches, “segmentuition” as I often say, not pricy surveys or acquisition campaigns. All of that comes later. 

You asked for it Arnold and 84 others (so far). So I’m gonna talk about marketing.

I believe that marketing is what you do when your product or service sucks or when you make so much profit on every marginal customer that it would be crazy to not spend a bit of that profit acquiring more of them (coke, zynga, bud, viagra).

A very experienced and successful entrepreneur came into our office a week ago to pitch his latest company. At the end of his pitch he showed us some numbers. Normally for a raw startup we see almost all product and engineering expenses (headcount). But his plan had a monthly budget for customer acquisition. After he left, we talked about his plan and my partners focused on the customer acquisition number. It bugged us. It felt wrong.

So a few days later, I called him. We talked about what we liked about his plan and pitch and what we didn’t like. I brought up the customer acquisition line item at one point in that call. He said “every company needs a marketing budget.” It seemed like a strong reply but in truth not one of our top performing companies had a marketing budget in their initial business plan.

Read on at: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing.html

English title of my French social media opus to be announced on June 24 on Blogtalkradio

I have been invited by Eve Mayer Osburn (aka Linkedin Queen) and Mary B. Adams for a chat at Blogtalkradio. Here’s an introductory video to the show (due to take place on Friday June 24th at 5.00pm CET) and below the video, a dump from the Blogtalkradio page’s introductory text. In the video I am describing the four main items which I will talk about on the show.

Scoop: I will also make an announcement about the forthcoming adaptation  of our best-selling French book “social media taught to my boss”

[note: intro by the organisers] Summer’s sizzling on the Social Media for the CEO Radio show. Friday 24th June 2011 please join us at 10 am US Central time / 17:00 European central time when hosts Eve Mayer Orsburn and Mary B. Adams speak to Yann Gourvennec, Director, Web, Digital & Social Media at Orange, the key brand of France Telecom, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. Our guest is also co-founder at Media Aces, a non-profit organization whose aim is to promote the usage of social media for business, to help members to help each other. In his spare time, our guest is also blogging on Marketing and Innovation and is a lecturer atUniversité Paris Dauphine. Looking to pick up some tips on internet strategy and Web 2.0 implementation, social media for business, or corporate blogging, don’t miss this show.

Our show is broadcast live from Dallas, Texas and Paris, France while simulcasting a Twitter chat onTwitter.com/LinkedInQueen and onTwitter.com/SocialMediaDel. Join us by calling +1 (347) 850-8614 to listen or to ask a question on air. Orm Tweet your questions and comments to @LinkedInQueen or @SocialMediaDel using #SM4CEO.

Zscaler: “we want to be the Salesforce.com of Internet security!”

this piece was originally written for the Orange Business Live blog

On November 15, I was invited with a group of journalist to a press tour in the Silicon Valley (a sequel to our June 2010 press tour in the Valley). Our first presentation took place in Sunnyvale, Calif. at the main office of Zscaler, a ground-breaking cloud security provider, which is also a partner of Orange Business Services.

The landscape has evolved

The security landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. Whereas most security threats (apart from social engineering) used to come from outside devices like floppy disks or the more recent usb keys, the vast majority of threats are now directly coming from the Internet. This has forced enterprises to equip themselves with a flurry of protection devices and software which have, over the years, generated  staggering complexity; and now, this complexity is increasingly getting out of hand. Traffic and policy management have become so important that the very dissemination of such rules and policies are a major pain-point for CIOs, not to mention the fact that simple techniques such as url filtering for instance are not always proving very effective. Besides, traditional security measures generate humongous log files. Something had to be done, mostly in that age of cloud computing, in which all clients are now seeking to rent their IT instead of buying it. Zscaler’s approach is therefore not to compete in the same market as traditional players, but to redefine the game plan by providing security in the cloud.

The Zscaler blog

The company is security savvy and dedicated to the Web community. To that intent Zscaler have developed a R&D blog available at http://research.zscaler.com: the blog is packed with information about Web security and you are mostly advised to download their own blacksheep firefox plug-in, a security device which will protect your device from the firesheep wifi sniffing plug-in so as to avoid that your facebook details be stolen by malicious people.

The Future?

What will be the future for Zscaler? Will the company sell itself to a bigger company? Zscaler is getting so many calls from VCs throughout the week that it would be an option if its CEO didn’t think that this isn’t one of his objectives. Zscaler is now performing so well that they think they are in a position “to build the salesforce.com of Internet Security”.

So far, the security market is a $1.2bn market dominated by a few players and then there are small players in the background. But the market is growing 30% year on year and Zscaler’s CEO think that it is still new and that “noone had ever done it properly so far”. This is why Zscaler thinks it can be a major player in that market by disrupting it and changing the ball game.

Below is a transcript of the presentation as it was delivered on November 15 in Sunnyvale, Calif. (the presentation was delivered by Shrey Bhatia, Zscaler’s head of worldwide field management and its CEO, Jay Chaudhry)

overview of Zscaler and its products

• largest standalone cloud security company protecting 800 companies in 140 countries, millions of users
• manage a cloud deployed across 40+ data centres globally
• r&d over 3 continents and own 30 patents on cloud security technologies
• with offices in 15 countries, US, Europe and APA
• positioned as the “most visionary” company by Gartner
• growing revenue by 50%
• clients include LVMH, Allianz, VW, Coca Cola, Wipro etc.
• “anyone who uses the Internet is a potential client of ours”
• in France, there are already  many clients (see slide)already, and Orange Business Services is a partner of Zscaler’s (some of the French clients quoted on that slide were closed with Orange Business Services)

market overview: examples of how security is evolving on the Internet

• Web (http protocol) has become main attack vector
• over 80% of threats coming from the Web from 5% in 2000
• It’s no longer USB disks or floppy disks
• 85% of all traffic coming in and out of all companies (all types, small or large) is Web-based, this is why threats are coming from there too

Challenges facing the world in terms of Internet security

• all content is active, live with Flash and Java, and this is what is making security threats more challenging
• filtering: most companies want to control where employees are going. But the old list-based url is not working anymore. Facebook, wikipedia have evolving urls and it’s changing all the time. Besides blocking Facebook is an issue if the same company is launching multi million dollar advertising campaigns on Facebook!
• Web 1.0 sites were read-only whereas Web 2.0 sites are now a cause for iinformation leaks: webmail, blogs, IM …
• bandwidth is a real issue. Video is 20 times more exacting than text and companies are very concerned about the amount of bandwidth which is being used by video
• Road warriers are new challenge too: people go to salesforce.com and so many online applications that the Web has become so critical. So it is of paramount importance to protect the road warriers
• the last and one of the biggest challenge is cost and complexity: CEOs impose CIOs to do 20% more with a flat or even decreased budget

What Zscaler does and how they do it

• Zscaler sits between the user and the Internet anywhere in the world, whereever they are, and whatever device they use. User goes to the Zscaler cloud, and Zscaler is the trusted third party and is termiinating the transaction to the Internet.
• This is done with no hardware, no software, no plug-in, nothing!
• This is why very international companies choose Zscaler.
• How is it done?
  • in the browser, one has proxy settings, and one has to change the proxy setting, it’s all you have to do and it can be done remotely
  • can be done at device or office level, from the firewall or router
  • Zscaler’s cloud is the most global cloud in the industry
  • The “policies” are kept in the cloud and are moved around as companies and users are moving by moving the policies to the closest data centre. This is what is called “shadow policies”
  • Latency is important, and this is why data centres have to be as close to users as possible
  • In the past 6-7 years, companies have deployed MPLS networks: the biggest benefit is that bandwidth is divided by 2 and that latency is also improved. But network topologies are changing slowly because enterprises have spent a lot of time putting all their network topology together and they are naturally reluctant to throw everything away now. Hence it’s best to let them be more comfident with the service before they change their network infrastructure and re-engineer it.

• cost-effectiveness
  • for all French customers, Zscaler is managing tens of thousands of users with just two boxes, and this is a lot easier and more cost effective than managing the complexity of myriad CPE’s (Customer Premises Equipment)
• Will it slow things down?
  • Traditional security devices are firewall devices which weren’t designed to scale
  • Zscaler had to build new boxes which are very scalable
  • Standard costs to open 1 data centre is $1m, whereas Zscaler is able to open one for a fraction of that, with 2 boxes and can serve half a million users for that price
  • nanolog technology is a special technology which compresses logs and speeds up transactions, it has been developed by Zscaler (traditional logs for an average large company are going to generate 50-100GB of data every day. none of that information can be searched or used)
• If everything is centralised how do minimise threats?
  • the goal of a cracker is to get to the user’s machine an monetise information or turn it into a bot
  • Zscaler is just a conduit, hence it’s just a bridge, and there is not much value in accessing Zscaler’s boxes
  • Zscaler spends an awful lot of time and R&D to protect their servers and make the service safe

Zscaler services

• 4 types of Services come on top of that infrastructure:
  • Web security: Antivirus and Advanced threats browser contro, E-mail security
  • Web control: url filtering, web 2.0, limiting bandwidth (i.e. ensuring that YouTube for instance will not take up more than 30% of the total bandwidth)
  • Web DLP (data leaks/loss prevention)
  • Web analytics

Benefits

• save money and time, best security and policy management, real time reporting, easy to deploy data loss protection mechanism, near-zero latency (high performance proxy and breadth of cloud), integrated email & web
• What Zscaler isn’t: Zscaler isn’t playing in the Wan optimisation space

local vs. international social media platforms: a thorough study by Sofrecom

Carlos Jordan de Urries (left) and Chrystele Bazin (below), senior consultants at Sofrecom (a France Telecom Company) have updated us on the status of Social Media in emerging markets last Monday in Cairo. In this presentation, we’ll focus less on international Social media platforms and more on what the motivations are for people to follow – or not follow – brands like Coca Cola for instance.

aim of the study

The aim of this study was not to be comprehensive either. What Sofrecom have wanted to do is to highlight the main trends in social media in emerging countries. Chrystel started with a little sketch (right) defining a “social” network showing how (virtual) networks of people can be intertwined. With user generated content (UGC), content gets published online, and even though you are not a media, there are many chances that some people are going to see your content; your contacts will see it and then your contacts’ contacts etc.

She then replaced Social networks within the slightly larger framework of “social media” (which I had covered before in my presentation). There are different types of tools within Social Media, from blogs to microblogs and wikis and, eventually social networks proper. There are 2 types of social media platforms which make up a first axis: content centric such as youtube of Flickr, and communications centric such as Facebook, Orkut etc. The two are sort of joined at the hip though because they are both about content, but the approach is radically different. Then there are 3 more types on the second axis: collaborative such as wikipedia, community orientated or deal oriented (crowdsourcing, social e-commerce for the latter catregory). Eventually, Chrystel showed us that completed matrix showing how all these tools can be spread out across this two axes (above, click to enlarge).

Twitter is an issue because it can’t really be squeezed into the “social network” box as it is more of a tool than a social network. As to crowdsourcing, there are sites like e-Stockphoto which is reshaping the photo market, as a lot of media are using them now vs. traditional agencies (we could have added fotolia, here’s a link to my page as an example).

Main trends in local services

Different countries have been investigated, it is not meant to be comprehensive though. Commercial Services and Crowdfunding have been zoomed in in the rest of Christelle’s presentation.

• Watwet (note: the server was down when I tried it, so here is the cached version) is microblogging focused on Arab populations, it’s open, whatever country you are from. Zoopy is like youtube or Flickr. The service was launched in South Africa. Now we can see that some of the videos are coming from other English-speaking countries. They are both open solutions.
• Facebook is not providing any specific value to local countries in these regions. Veepiz for is just like that. They are using the Facebook platform but provide a local service based on top of Facebook and let users be on their own environment. They do that with Twitter as well so that users have the best of both worlds. It’s coopetition. Veepiz integrates other social networks but provides local value.
  • nov 20, 2010 adendum and clarification by the owners of Veepiz: “Just to clarify, veepiz is not built ontop of facebook platform. its all hand coded and has its own unique platform. for more goto http://www.veepiz.com or our bloghttp://veepiz.wordpress.com“
• FrontlineSMS: many services, blogs etc. in Africa are becoming social. FrontlineSMS is a Yammer-like two-way SMS platform which has developed its activity for NGOs. They have created a community. The platform helps NGO employees communicate amongst themselves. The platform is free for NGOs.
• Crowdsourcing: this is about making the user at the centre of the service. It’s up to the user to decide whether he wants to collaborate. The idea is not to just let people complain about the service but to let them be part of the improvement of that service. There are 4 domains to which crowdsourcing applies: knowledge sharing, task force, real time information and funding
  • Kiva is well known and is about micro funding. People go to the web and fund a project. You don’t win anything apart from the pride of being part of something.
  • txteagle is a task force example
  • iYammobi and Kerawa are examples of knowledge sharing. Kerawa is about small ads; say if you are looking for a flat in Cameroon. It’s working in most sub-saharian countries and enjoying good success in that region.
  • Ushahidi is a sample real time information example: it was used in Haiti after the quake to map needs for medicine and or in Atlanta to inform people about robberies being committed

For small ads, in emerging countries and namely in Sub Saharian regions, ebay cannot provide the right kind of service whereas Kerawa can.  There are still many opportunities in the Middle East and Africa for services like this to be provided for local people.

Facts and figures

there are sites on which one can find interesting data about Middle East social media usage:

• Google Ad planner is the first one
• Facebook advertising is another one (Facebook provides detailed numbers about users registered in the system)

Informa analyst describes pacified m2m market

Jamie Moss, a principal analyst at Informa telecoms and media, and columnist at telecoms.com, has this interesting story about the m2m market and the positioning of carriers within this market. Moss’s account follows Informa’s “embedded connectivity event” which took place in London in September 2010 and describes what was said during a panel including representatives from three main European carriers, amongst which Orange Business Services.

Jamie Moss’s account is a good description of the m2m market as of today, in which carriers are happy to serve the market with it underlying infrastructure, as well as get themselves organised with value added resellers and service providers, without clashing head-on with any of those; on top of that, Moss adds, carriers are also allowing themselves to deliver services to particular verticals like fleet management services (click here for a link to a press release relative to Orange Business Services’ own fleet management service solution or a link to the Fleet Advanced solution (in French only)).

One of the main characteristics of this market is basically that carriers are not positioning themselves on end to end services in that area, therefore allowing for maximum cooperation with all players in the field. Moss’s point is that there is enough money for all the actors in the chain without having to compete unduly on any other niche market. Here is Jamie Moss’s account on telecoms.com, which is interesting both from a telecoms and a pure marketing point of view, because it shows how cooperation can be implemented harmoniously in a pacified high tech market:

M2M: a partnership-driven market with enough potential for all participants

Informa’s Embedded Connectivity event this September was spearheaded by an operator panel of unprecedented influence and expertise: Eric Brenneis, the Global Head of M2M at Vodafone; Emmanuel Routier, the Director of the International M2M Centre at Orange Group; and Angel Garcia Barrio, the Head of M2M for Telefonica O2. T-Mobile’s VP of Data Solutions and M2M, Mathias Elsner, was also scheduled to be present, but was unfortunately unable to be there on the day.

The Carrier Role

Read on at Telecoms.com