This is becoming funnier and funnier. Loic just posted his RunCast with comments and and a new challenge to me as a follow-up from my previous Outsourcing My Life 2. Now I have been challenged to comment on Le Web 3 in RunCast format too! Don’t worry. A RunCast with Outsourcing My Life 3 will come too now with comments on Le Web 3.
And Loic, what about turning peoples VideoCast on Le Web 3 into an actual Advisory Cast Board?
Stay tuned to the RunCast, SwimCast and PoolCast too..
Technorati Tags: loiclemeur , leweb3 , netanel , outsourcing, entrepreneurs, video
Here is the second part of Outsourcing My Life II. Let me know what you think. Is it too long? Do you have any questions or ideas I should respond to? Now The ball is yours Loic .
New challenge to Loic and all global entrepreneurs:
To create a video serie in this conversational format to share and exchange the challenges of being a global entrepreneur. Let’s exchange ideas, help each other out and get inspired by each other. It can be very short clips on a particular idea, or any advice you might have to other entrepreneurs or just a cry for help.
Susan participated in an Avatar panel at SXSW in Austin and shared some of her notes with us on Avartars, Virtual worlds and Gaming. She also points to a very interesting academic study on Game Studies (download).
Main points:
- Games need more laughter in the slaughter
- Players want to help other players do well in the game even when the game is competitive
- Games need non-white characters who are not gangsters or criminals.
- Gamers are less social than you think they are, less social than even THEY think they are
- How do players learn to play? If it looks like a sniper, it should act like a sniper
- Gestural interfaces that make sense, make sense for specific reasons.
- You can quantify which factors matter most in immersive game design.
- There are multiple ways to approach realism
- There is such a thing as ethical videogame design
- Death matters..
Kaiser reports that the "Chinese Joost" UUSee, just received $23.5 in VC funding from DFJ’s Growth Fund, Highland Capital Partners and Steamboat Ventures. P2P is really flourishing in China with such players as Google invested Xunlei – a Maxthon partner, PPLive and PPStream. I agree with Kaiser’s prediction that it is only a matter of 3G time until we will see mobile P2P services popping up all over China
Update: Talking about the future of video & P2P, there is an interersting article on Technology Review by Hui Zhang called "Peering into Video’s Future".
Technorati Tags: China, Joost, Maxthon, p2p, PPLive, PPStream, UUSee, VC, Venture Capital, Xunlei
After a very good board meeting with Maxthon, I paid a visit to HiPiHi - Chinas answer to Second Life. This came about after I had written a short post on them earlier and got an invitation to swing by their office. Kaiser Kuo (Ogilvy) and Xinhua Liu (early investor in HipiHi & Technology Director at Burson-Marsteller).. also joined me.
Armed with camcorders, cameras and curious minds, we invaded HiPiHi physically and virtually. I must say that I was really impressed. I always felt like Second Life was too geeky and to inaccessible, and therefore had only signed in a couple of times and flied around out of boredom.
Not so at HiPiHi. They have been smart enough to realize that most of us deadly are not geeks and need a more user-friendly user-interface to motivate us enough to play around in this virtual world. Although they are just in private alpha, they have come along way with a team of just 60. The user is offered a bunch of pre-fabricated avatars, buildings, hills, rocks, objects and event water to furnish their own worlds. Should they feel for it later, the user can always customize or create any object from scratch as they see fit.
It is clear that HiPiHi has given much thought into making the virtual world more user-friendly. HiPiHi’s CEO Hui Xu (beside me on the picture above) explained to us that the service will be launched in four stages based on traditional Chinese creational mythology (read Kaisers summary for an expansion on this).
Revenues will come from virtual property sales and advertising. And I can definitely see how advertisers will love this. Especially since HiPiHi is targeting the young and cool rather than a bunch of geeks in pajamas or "social media stars".
I shot a couple of short clips of a walk-through in HipiHi-land with a simple digital camera. Comments are both in Chinese & English. More clips here.
I have a very good feeling about HiPiHi and am waiting eagerly for the public launch.
(Image above: Sunset in HiPiHi-land).
Piper Jaffray just published a fat report called "The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium". Here are some of its key findings:
- We expect global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011, representing a 21% CAGR (2006-2011).
- The User Revolution. The advertising world is going through a revolution, one that we call the "User Revolution" as it is happening primarily with the consumers, who are taking control of content consumption and branding. We believe this trend will cause a significant rise in prominence of the Internet as a major content consumption and marketing medium.
- "Communitainment." The Internet has increasingly become a principal medium for community, communication, and entertainment–three areas that have collided together and are impacting each other’s growth–generating a new type of activity that we call communitainment.
- The Internet Is Mainstream. The Internet has become a mainstream media outlet that now rivals traditional media for reach and advertising dollars.
- Media Fragmentation. The proliferation of online and offline media outlets has resulted in shrinking television audiences and an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
- The Golden Search. We believe search continues to gain ground, driven by the rise of search as the New Portal, the increasing use of search in branding campaigns, and the local search opportunity.
- We believe Google’s wide variety of non-search-related products creates a virtuous cycle of brand affinity that drives incremental search volume.
- Video Ads Could Drive The Next Wave. We believe Internet video ads could become a game changer for large brand advertisers, who are used to the 15- or 30-second TV commercial
- Internet Usage Patterns Are Changing. Portals maintain the highest reach, but the fastest growing category of destinations is communitainment sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
- Ad networks are experiencing increased demand due to increasing Internet fragmentation, desire for more targeted inventory, increasing usage of networks for branding, and increased site visibility.
- Agencies are rapidly evolving into more sophisticated, technology-savvy entities that combine best of breed offerings.
- Companies to watch: Google (and YouTube), Yahoo!, Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Microsoft, InterActive, Facebook, Craigslist, Brightcove, Yelp, SINA Corp., Baidu, aQuantive, ValueClick, 24/7 Media, Netflix, Wikipedia, MobiTV, Digg, and Hakia to be the most important players to watch.
Like my good friend Kaiser Kuo, Group Director for Digital Strategy, for Ogilvy China, mentions in this new (and great) blog " Ich bin ein Beijinger" : none of this should come as a surprise, but the report is full of eye-opening finding regarding the decline of TV viewing, changing viewing and decline of broadcast TV ad as percentage of total ad spend.
Kaiser who has a unique insight to China (and was very much responsible for Maxthon getting discovered and funded..) is confident that advertisers will flock to video ads and all the opportunities that are opening up for digital media advertising in China .However, he wonders how ready people really are for pre-roll commercials stuffed in to things they want to watch.
I tend to agree with Kaiser, although there is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers, the Internet savvy users might very well prefer to block ads if possible. This is something we have learned at Maxthon and seems to be especially true for Chinese Internet users. Al the sophisticated ad-blockers and filters that come pre-installed in Maxthon has definitely been one of the key driving factors for Maxthon success in China.
Anyway, next week I am flying down to Beijing again to talk on Piper Jaffrays Annual China Growth Conference on behalf of Maxthon. I will then have a chance not only to meet up with Safa and rest of the Piper Jaffray gang, but also to meet with Kaiser again and plot how we can deliver some interesting advertising opportunities together in China.
Thanks to Mark Pols for sending me this fat report!
Bonus: Video Interview with Kaiser I made just before he left the Red Herring.
Since I have been working together with the London-based interactive agency Hyper Happen on a number of projects, and been loosely involved as an advisor on this one, I’ve got an exclusive preview of Nokia’s new ground-breaking piece of marketing.
In the passenger, Nokia shows a new way for users to control video on the web. To support its push to be part of the growing in-car communications market, Nokia has released a super cool site which has been developed to take interactive video to the next level.
The story:
A mysterious woman is in need of your services. She needs to reach three addresses in Paris in a short amount of time. It is going to take all your driving talents to get her to her destinations.
‘The Passenger’ experience sets the viewer in the murky ‘film noir’ world of night time Paris. The video is superb, fun and coupled with great interaction.
Along the way, you have to utilise the functions of the Nokia Multimedia Car Kit CK-20W in order to reach the destination and get the pay-off of the final scene. And if you drive the wrong way, you’ll find yourself insulted by the the rude Femme Fatal in your back seat. Who reminds me of Meryl Streep in the Devil wears Prada..
Background:
The driving footage was shot with a car-mounted camera in all the streets of the iIle de St. Louis over 3 nights in November 2006, with additional scenes filmed at the Tour Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe and the Heliport de Paris.
Daniel Goodall, Digital Marketing Manager for Enhancement Products at Nokia says that “The Passenger’ mixes video and gameplay in a way that we don’t think has happened before. All the driving is real video, real streets and fully controlled by the user”. I find it really a creative way of promoting a mobile GPS device since it puts you in the right context immediately and is fun at the same time.
‘The Passenger’ concept has been developed in conjunction with digital strategy agency Hyper Happen, working with Fuel Industries & Karbon Arc on the game engine build and video production.This is actually the phone I have been waiting for since I all the time find myself renting a Garmin GPS every time I travel to California. With this kit, it’s just plug and play 
Nokia – you know how to reach me…;)
Technorati Tags: Advertising, CK-20W, Fuel Industries, GPS, Hyper Happen, Karbon Arc, Nokia, Paris, Mobile , The Passenger
This is quite amusing. It seems that the interview I gave to ReadWriteWeb a few days ago have stirred up quite some emotions. Believe it or not, Linux Journal calls Maxthon The Real Firefox-Killer...
For the real challenger comes not from Microsoft directly; instead, it’s from a new browser that uses IE’s rendering engine, Trident, but which is produced completely independently of the company. This means that it can offer all the "benefits" of 100% compatibility with what is still the dominant Internet browser, together with a host of real improvements - some of which go beyond even Firefox. This new competitor is called Maxthon..
Interesting take. I couldn’t agree more with the author. Besides the fact that we are not fighting any browser war. We are just a very good alternative. There is plenty of space for all of us, just like there is a market for more than Ford and Volvo..
BTW, read the comments – quite interesting..
Maxthon for Linux anybody?
Technorati Tags: Maxthon, Linux, IE7, Browsers, Linux Journal, Firefox, Technology
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