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Generating wealth from the web. Is “follow” the new economic model poised to take on “search”?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on December 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

By: Tony Fish – Principal at AMF Ventures and member of Board of Intellectual Capital.

I wrote that Social filtering is deeply human at the beginning of November and I knew that there was more to the topic/ theme/ thought then but I could not articulate it.  Since then I have been juggling with various ideas, these have often been driven by my necessity to justify Twitter.  Twitter, get it or not, provides a function called “follow” – you can follow who you like, and you get updates/ insight/ information/ attention from them. However, can you turn “follow” into value and is following your social filter based on those you trust.

Follow has an obvious value to the person who follows the leader.  You gain free insights/ selection/ value/ updates/.  This social filter is based on trust and it is different from curators and editors who have specific agenda’s and income/ profit requirements. In the original post I quoted David Armano  “Often times the quality of links and information I get on Twitter is better than what I would have gotten from Google because the knowledge of the human feed is deep, niche, and fickle.”

Scenarios
Here are several scenarios to consider when thinking how we could turn follow into value and comparing outcomes from search and social networking, they are not exhaustive but should provide a good place to start a train of thought.

1, I am looking for a great Thai restaurant

  1. Search.   Type in “Great Thai restaurant” into Google, my mobile sends my location and Google takes a guess I want food tonight and near to where I am search, reasonable assumptions driven from our need for context and personalisation.  From the “unknown algorithm based results” that favours Google, I then read some third party reviews which I cannot judge if they are paid, biased or just vocal. Is the selection any better than walking past and seeing how many people are sitting in the restaurant?
  2. Post to Facebook and ask my friends and my network where a “Great Thai restaurant is” – there is more work to this one and I am wholly dependent on someone helping.  Size of network helps at this point.
  3. Twitter/ follow. I love Thai and I am already following others who love Thai.  I Tweet to my network of same minded followers who can deliver a recommendation.

In option 1 – Google wins.  In option 2 – Facebook wins.  In option 3 – the community wins and the person who helped me may get a discount on their next meal.

2.  I want to invest some money

  1. Search.   Type in “Great Investment fund” into Google. From the “unknown algorithm based results” that favours Google I will click on some links and read, subject to many legal notices, about the performance of various funds.  If I invest I will have watch and wait for the results.
  2. Post to Facebook and ask my friends and my network about their experiences with “Investment funds.” Not sure I would really be that happy with this for many reasons including telling the world about my desire to invest.
  3. Twitter/follow.  I love to invest and I am already following others who love investment.  I follow a service that allows me to manage my own money (never give up control) and I invest based on what the best in class is doing (www.covestor.com) To follow the best investor I share some of the upside.  No management fees, no overheads, risk on my terms, stop and start when I like.  Worth noting that J.P Morgan funds investment advice is now on iTunes

In option 1 – Google wins.  In option 2 – no-one wins.  In option 3 – the person who I follow gets a share of my upside, assuming that they want to create value over time and not destroy it once.

3.  What is hot in tech/ service/ my industry

  1. Search.   Type in “what is hot in tech” into Google. From the “unknown algorithm based results” that favours Google I will click on some links and read.  The top tech web sites are there with breaking news.  I can use various tools to determine what is hot and trending or I can use my “reader” to filter from my own favourites.
  2. Post to Facebook and ask my friends and my network about what they think is hot.  Day 1; I will get a few views. Day 10; I will get a less help and probably a polite note telling me not to ask again.
  3. Twitter/ follow. I look at what is trending and select a few “trusted” people to follow and follow updates as and when they occur.  I add value to my network by adding my own opinion, or pay to sit there and listen.

In option 1 – Google wins.  In option 2 – no-one wins.  In option 3 – the community/ cluster wins.

Logical response
The obvious contention to these three and very simple scenarios is; to Quote Paul Rodriguez who commented,  “lemmings, pied piper, following somebody the wrong way up a one way street, jump off a cliff if I told you, following the falling domino in front and having the falling domino behind follow you, following somebody you trust, who is following somebody they trust who is following somebody they trust who is following somebody stupid, the list is endless…the risk is that instead of having the madness of crowds, maybe the 21st century equivalent is the madness of tweets? Laws such as the snowball effect and the law of unintended consequences become far more amplified in an interconnected world. In which case market (and wealth) fluctuations become more volatile, but then you only *truly* make money on the gradient.”

I expect that there is a lot of empathy for the logic of this response, however, is follow (Twitter or other tech based follow services) any different from what we have today with editors/ press/ celebrity and broadcast as we all believe everything from the red top tabloids and sky/fox news!

Context
However, putting follow into context Researchers at HP Labs discovered that Twitter can predict, with astonishing accuracy, how well a movie will sell. The researches at HP started by monitoring movie mentions in 2.9 million tweets from 1.2 million users over three months. These included 24 movies in all, ranging from Avatar to Twilight: New Moon.  Then they took two different approaches, dealing with two very different performance metrics: the first weekend performance, which is largely built on buzz and the second weekend performance, which is largely built whether people actually like the movie. To predict first weekend performance, they built a computer model, which factored in two variables: the rate of tweets around the release date and the number of theatres its released in. Lo and behold, that model was 97.3% accurate in predicting opening weekend box office. By contrast, the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which has been the gold standard for opening box-office predictions, had a 96.5% accuracy. “

What should be even more alluring to business strategists and CEO’s; as Tech Review points out, Twitter might be more than just a mirror of mass sentiment – the service might also influence it. In other words, could you actually make a product launch far more successful with a really smart Twitter/ Follow strategy?   However are we measuring or observing the results of a system in motion and in the process influencing those results? For anyone with a science background this will bring up Werner Heisenberg and The Uncertainty Principle Heisenberg determined that “both the position and momentum of a particle cannot be known simultaneously.”   The dichotomy raises the mind-boggling prospect that unless we observe an event or thing, it hasn’t really happened, that all possible futures are quantum probability functions waiting for someone to notice them – trees falling unheard in a forest. Maybe this blog never existed until you searched for it and Google created it as you wanted it!

(Yes for those who have mastered QM I am confusing the observer effect of with the uncertainty principle. Technically the uncertainty principle has nothing to do with “observing”, it has to do with measuring. The observer effect is a supposed effect of observing an event and the influence of your observations on the event. No one would ever have to actually observe a particle’s position to obfuscate its momentum, the mere act of using the photons to measure its position, even if nobody ever observed it, would suffice. It’s the act of measuring, not actually observing that causes the uncertainty principle, but when observation requires something that may cause change the problems occur).

Anyway, how does this relate to the analysis and feedback within my framework of thinking about Follow?  Think about it this way:  The mere act of observing a social change, changes the behaviour of that social object.  In “reality TV” they put cameras in front of “real” people for the viewer to watch how “real” people behave, date, compete, etc.  But this in fact makes those on camera less and less real.   They’re not actors, nor are they behaving like normal people.  They are somewhere in between the two.

In the case of Twitter predicting a movie success, could an editor or critic have the same effect, if they could do it in real time and not on paper? How does Google real time search affect your searching habits and techniques.  You no longer have freedom in the web, as the recommendation is based on what the crowd says is important and therefore we are actually just lemmings.

Restating the Problem
Therefore the problem (Generating wealth from the web) is far more complex, multifaceted and inter-twangled, as there is unlikely to be a single source.

  • Do I want to be directed by people I trust but I may not be able to determine their source – Follow
  • Do I want to be directed by an unknown algorithm that can change at any time and could be biased to their own needs – Search
  • Do I want to be directed by Brands – Marketing/Ads
  • Do I want to be directed by the media/ editors/ critics where I may be able to determine their bias – Broadcast/ News
  • Do I want to be directed by the fashion/ celebrity – Sales

This complex dependency is an issue that editors and bloggers have faced time over.  Do I post based on what people want to read, based on clicks and response data or what I find interesting – are we (am I) adaptive or reactive, do we want to be individual or loved or make money or provide democracy or lead?

I really don’t need to know what you had for lunch and I don’t have to follow you.  Follow would put me in control and can seek out value from the community and not some bland algorithm that controls what part of the web I can see. However the issue facing follow is how will I pay the platform that underpins the service?

Wrapping up
This long Viewpoint started with the idea that “follow” is the new economic model poised to take on “search” and I believe that there is value in “follow.” Reading that Google offered $3bn for Twitter makes be believe that there are other strategists who are struggling with the same issues and the value!

If you would like to chat about the opportunities that digital footprint data brings, especially from the perspective of mobile and real time feedback, please contact me at tony.fish@amfventures.com.  The book is free on line at http://www.mydigitalfootprint.com/ or you can buy it direct from the publisher at the web site. There is also a summary and a eReader/ Kindle version.

We hope that our Viewpoint improves awareness, raises questions and promotes deliberation over coffee. We will respond to e-mail, text, twitter (@tonyfish)  or blog comments. http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com
Kind regards,
Tony Fish

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Zynga outpaces Electronic Arts

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SF Gate.

“Zynga Game Network Inc.’s estimated worth surpassed Electronic Arts Inc.‘s stock-market value, a sign of the ascendance of social-networking entertainment at the expense of traditional video games.

Zynga, the maker of such games as FarmVille and FrontierVille, is valued at $5.51 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies. Electronic Arts, the second-largest game publisher by sales, is worth $5.22 billion on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Started by Mark Pincus almost four years ago, Zynga has become one of the fastest-growing technology companies by using Facebook Inc.’s social network to distribute games. It makes money by selling virtual goods, such as vehicles and weapons that help players advance in games. The company has grabbed about a third of that market, which is worth $1.6 billion this year, according to Inside Network in Palo Alto.

“The valuation is not that crazy, given what’s going on in the market,” said Atul Bagga, an analyst at ThinkEquity LLC in San Francisco, who estimates the virtual-goods market may reach $3.6 billion in three years. “It’s not that terribly expensive seeing the growth prospects.”

Electronic Arts, meanwhile, faces declining retail sales of gaming hardware and software. Before Tuesday, its shares had dropped 7.4 percent since March 1. Zynga’s estimated value has more than doubled in that period.

Electronic Arts was the world’s biggest video-game publisher until 2008, when Activision merged with Vivendi SA‘s gaming business to form Activision Blizzard Inc.

Dani Dudeck, a spokeswoman for San Francisco’s Zynga, said the company doesn’t comment on its valuation. SharesPost bases its number on data from trades of private shares, research estimates and venture-financing valuations. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Redwood City’s Electronic Arts, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zynga is the largest maker of games on Facebook, with more than 210 million monthly active users, according to AppData.com, part of Inside Network, a research firm.

Zynga’s value on SharesPost was $2.61 billion in March. That’s when SharesPost introduced a new index for venture-backed companies, including Facebook, Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp.”

Read more here.

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IVP Woos Hot Web Companies Before They Grow Old

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on October 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from WSJ Venture Dispatch.

“If you think early-stage investing is the only place to be in venture capital, you haven’t been paying attention to Institutional Venture Partners.

Although it’s a senior citizen in VC with 13 funds to its name, the late-stage investor is behind two of the Web’s hottest companies, Twitter Inc. and Zynga Game Network Inc.

And while many firms struggle to hit fund-raising goals, IVP recently closed a new fund at $750 million, its largest ever, blowing by a $600 million target.

Its partners think that’s because this is exactly the right time for its strategy as the road to exiting has grown longer and early investors and founders look for liquidity.

Although the firm is not lacking competition, “the supply-demand relationship in the late stage is quite attractive,” said General Partner J. Sanford “Sandy” Miller. Fund-raising data support this view: Early-stage and multi-stage venture firms raised $3 billion and $3.98 billion, respectively, in the first half of this year, according to Dow Jones LP Source; late-stage specialists raised a mere $500 million (this amount does not include IVP’s latest fund, which closed in the second half of this year).

Miller, who joined IVP in 2006 from London-based 3i Group PLC, and before that co-founded investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners, said that although public offerings are again “a feasible alternative,” they will remain a small percentage of venture capital exits compared with M&A. Strategic acquisitions will provide the best exits for VCs as technology companies deploy their “unprecedented war chests,” Miller said.

Meanwhile, many technology companies, especially those employing the software-as-a-service model or in digital media, are investing aggressively to drive growth. IVP initially invested in both Twitter and Zynga in 2008 when they raised second rounds. Late-stage investors traditionally invest in third or later rounds.

IVP General Partner Dennis Phelps said Internet companies, because they can be launched cheaply, often can tap the late-stage market after raising little previous capital. For example, IVP in March led a $10 million Series B round for New York-based DoubleVerify Inc., which runs a brand-protection service for online advertisers and had raised $3.5 million from investors previously.

The DoubleVerify investment also illustrates another trend in the late-stage market as IVP, besides injecting fresh capital, bought Series A shares from an angel investor who was looking for liquidity. Miller said such transactions are more common now, although it is usually founders or management selling shares. Not only is it a way for IVP to boost its ownership stake in the company but it also can relieve financial pressure on company executives who otherwise might have to wait a decade to get money out of the business.

Recent IVP funds have performed well. Its 10th vehicle, raised in 2001, had an internal rate of return of 7.4% as of March, according to data from investor California Public Employees’ Retirement System. Its 12th fund, closed in 2007, had a 28.4% IRR as of March, according to California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

“We’re looking for the emerging winners,” Miller said of IVP’s investment strategy. “If you wait too long, they’re no longer emerging and they’re just very expensive situations.””

Read the original posting here.

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Ning will make all users pay

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, FaceBook, Investments, LinkedIn, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from SF Gate.

“Ning Inc., the social-networking site co-founded by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, did what many young Web companies only dream of: It got customers weaned on free services to start paying.

Since telling users in April that it would stop offering the means to build and operate social networks for free, Ning’s paid user base tripled to 45,000, with memberships starting at $2.95 a month. The privately held Palo Alto company is adding paying subscribers at the rate of 5,000 a month, three times what it was before.

“A very large percentage of economic activity is shifting online, and it makes sense that there are more services that are going to charge,” said Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape Communications Corp., who serves as Ning’s chairman. “It also means there are going to be more people willing to pay.”

Few are charging

Ning is one of the few social-media sites charging users, following a path cut by media and entertainment providers, which have experimented with fee-based services. Founded in 2004, the same year as Facebook Inc., Ning failed to turn a profit with its original strategy: offering most services for free and charging a monthly fee for extra features. Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Gina Bianchini resigned in March, and 42 percent of the staff was laid off in April.

Social-networking tools on the Web are widely available for free. Facebook, which has more than 500 million users, is expected to generate at least $1.4 billion this year, mostly from the sale of ads, two people familiar with the matter said last month. Twitter, with more than 100 million users, began running ads on its site this year.

With a large population of Web users relying on Facebook for basic social services, like keeping track of close friends, there’s an opportunity for other sites to charge for more unique services, said Lou Kerner, a social-media analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. in New York.

“Facebook has won the free social media race,” said Kerner. “What you’re seeing in the marketplace is folks who are trying to find out business models that are more niche-oriented.”

For Jive Software Inc., that niche is business. The startup, also based in Palo Alto, sells social-networking and online collaboration tools to corporations, including Nike Inc., Intel Corp. and Charles Schwab Corp. Jive’s services start at $100 per user per year, and many customers pay for at least 10,000 users to start.

“The use of social software in the consumer world has no doubt fueled the interest level” among business users, said Tony Zingale, Jive’s CEO. The company, which received a $30 million investment last month led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, expects bookings of as much as $25 million in the last three months of the year, he said.

Paying subscribers are an attractive asset to venture capitalists, who are often asked for money from Internet startups planning to cash in on advertising.

“Ad-driven is a lazy model,” said Dave McClure, a startup adviser and venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. “If there is value, then there probably is a paid relationship that works there at some point,” he said.

Business networking site LinkedIn Corp. generates some revenue by selling professional services, like tools for finding and recruiting job candidates. Meetup Inc., a service for coordinating social events, charges organizers a fee.

The “freemium” model of charging a portion of users is nothing new. One of the earliest examples is PayPal Inc., founded in 1998, which made its payment service free to buyers of products and services so that many people would use it.

“You need free users to enhance the overall value for the product,” said David Sacks, one of the founders of PayPal, who now runs enterprise social-media startup Yammer.”

Read more here.

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Tech firms making S.F. new home

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Economy, internet, Investments, Market research, mobile 2.0, Social Networks, Technology, Web 2.0, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a SF gate story that talks about high-tech growth.

“The technology industry is playing the white knight of San Francisco’s struggling office market, as startups and growing companies ink deals and scour the market for space emptied out by the financial meltdown.

Many of the tenants are swelling homegrown businesses like Twitter, while others are relocating from Silicon Valley or outside the Bay Area. As of June 15, 83 technology companies were in the market, seeking 1.5 million square feet of space, up 51 percent since the financial crash in fall 2008, according to brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which regularly tracks the market.

To be sure, that demand alone won’t turn around a market facing more than 13 million square feet of total vacancy, according to a first-quarter research report from Cassidy Turley BT Commercial. But it’s a big step in the right direction for San Francisco’s office market and employment.

“The greatest areas of job growth in San Francisco and the drivers for economic activity across a whole host of related sectors will come from those innovative industries,” said Michael Cohen, director of the mayor’s office of economic development.

One of the largest potential deals in the market is Zynga, the maker of popular social-networking games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. The company is looking for anywhere from 150,000 square feet to 300,000 square feet of space, according to various industry sources, who asked to remain anonymous because disclosure of such information could affect their business.

Zynga was on the verge of signing a lease for approximately 140,000 square feet last fall, but that deal fell apart.

“Zynga doesn’t have an update on our expansion plans right now,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to a Chronicle inquiry.

Expansion

Twitter, the popular microblogging service, expanded its San Francisco space by nearly six times in the past year. It had been looking for still more space, as much as an additional 100,000 square feet, but that effort seems to have gone quiet, sources say.

An especially encouraging trend for San Francisco business boosters, who have long lamented the exodus of companies to surrounding regions, is the relocation of a handful of Silicon Valley firms to the city in recent months.

Industry blog TechCrunch and video-streaming site MetaCafe moved up from Palo Alto, while Webcasting service Ustream and tech-consulting firm Encover Inc. arrived from Mountain View. Mobile application company Booyah Inc., also of Palo Alto, recently signed a lease to shift its headquarters to San Francisco.

In addition, gaming companies like Playdom Inc. and Playfish opened satellite offices in San Francisco, and Yammer Inc. moved to the city from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, there are a handful of out-of-state, and even out-of-country, companies touring space in the market right now, sources say.

Real estate and technology observers believe San Francisco is becoming a more attractive place to start a company or move to for a variety of reasons, including: South of Market rents that are about half of Palo Alto’s right now, the desire to cluster near success stories like Zynga and Twitter and the broader shift to the Web 2.0 world.

As Internet companies become as focused on social media and entertainment as they are on underlying technology, they want to locate near a different set of partners, customers and talent pools, several executives said.

It’s all about layering

“Tech is still the core of what we do, but you’ve got to add layers on top of this,” said David Rice, chief operating officer of MetaCafe Inc.

The company’s new address, at 128 King St., with exposed brick and a view of AT&T Park that puts their previous business-park space to shame, made it easier to tap into marketing, media and advertising expertise in the city, he said.

Other companies’ leaders say they opted for San Francisco because that’s where today’s engineering talent wants to be as well.

When David Sacks, chief executive of Yammer, asked his developers whether they should relocate the microblogging service for businesses to Palo Alto or San Francisco, the latter won hands down. This represents a distinct shift from a decade earlier when he was chief operating officer of PayPal in Palo Alto.

“There’s a lot more engineering talent living in San Francisco now,” he said. “The balance of power may have shifted.”

Web 2.0 firms also don’t need the massive research and development facilities required by the computer manufacturers and chipmakers that gave rise to Silicon Valley.

“Companies like Twitter can have incredible reach with a relatively small workforce,” said Kelly Pretzer, director of new media for the mayor’s office of economic development. “San Francisco has been able to complement that development in the industry nicely.”

Read more here.

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