newnetland

European Tech Analysis

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Lastly, the disruption of the TV will empower a new entertainment platform like no other. When you think about devices like smartphones, tablets, and PCs, we understand them to be largely computing platforms. Of course, elements of entertainment take place, but so do levels of creativity and productivity. What the three platforms I mentioned have in common from a computing perspective is a software development kit (SDK), enabling software developers to write relevant applications for these computing platforms. What excites me about the disruption of the TV is the prospect of an SDK for the TV. It would transform the TV, for the first time ever, into a platform that smart developers can write unique new applications for. We have not yet even scratched the surface of this idea. Those who have the most to lose when TV gets disrupted need not fear piracy; they should fear the SDK. When developers can take advantage of a platform, the possibilities are endless.

Why We Want TV to Be Disrupted So Badly | TIME.com

Fear the SDK.

https://newnetland.com/2013-08-lastly-the-disruption-of-the-tv-will-empower-a/

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Netflix has long puzzled the traditional TV industry by refusing to give out ratings for its original shows, despite the fact that House of Cards, in particular, seemed to have turned into a hit, both loved by critics and audiences alike. But the company has been dismissive of this kind of feedback, with Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos telling me earlier this year that the absolute number of people who tune into a single episode doesn’t matter all that much. “When you say 10 million people watch a show, that really doesn’t tell you anything,” he said when I met him at an industry conference in February. Instead, Netflix is looking to cultivate dedicated niche audiences, and is paying very close attention to the ways its subscribers are interacting with each piece of content. If they watch en episode of a show, are they opting to watch the second one as well? If they go from watching a movie to a TV show episode, does it fit into a pattern that lets you predict about what they’re going to watch next?

Netflix’s decision to renew Hemlock Grove shows its algorithms are working — paidContent

https://newnetland.com/2013-06-netflix-has-long-puzzled-the-traditional-tv/

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There’s a reason why they, and we, are confused about this. Our ideological sympathies are not good predictors at this point of how we feel about issues of digital privacy and electronic freedom. The fact that these issues don’t have a clear ideological colouration yet is important because they are among the most crucial issues of the 21st century. They are crucial because our identities and social selves, in this century, increasingly reside online. They are crucial because money, in this century, increasingly accrues to holders of intellectual property, particularly to those who control the ways we engage in online commerce—the very same companies (Google, Yahoo, Apple, Verizon) that hold the databases which the NSA accesses via PRISM. In this century, digital knowledge is the key to both property and power. Good algorithms and massive amounts of data are what you need to have in order to succeed in retail, to defend your country from attack, or to run a successful presidential campaign. Anxiety over digital rights and freedoms is a driving issue for people under 40, and it cuts across partisan and ideological lines.

Snowden: Psych! | The Economist

https://newnetland.com/2013-06-theres-a-reason-why-they-and-we-are-confused/

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I believe Berlin has the best shot in the Western world outside of Silicon Valley at becoming a place with a true tech startup ecosystem. I don’t just mean a place where one or two great companies are born — that can happen pretty much anywhere. I mean a place with an enduring ecosystem powered by a network effect that gets stronger over time. Like what Hollywood is for entertainment, London and New York are for big finance, Milan and Paris are for fashion, and Silicon Valley is for technology.

Berlin’s Network Effect Will Make It A Global Startup Center | TechCrunch by Matt Cohler of Benchmark Capital

https://newnetland.com/2013-06-i-believe-berlin-has-the-best-shot-in-the-western/

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‘Supposed to sell’, according to analysts, who, as I once said in a column for Macworld, are little more than guessers for the most part. Even if Apple’s grown since this point last year, it won’t be enough. Even if Apple announced it had in fact sold three iPhones to everyone in the world and a passing visitor from Alpha Centauri who will still be able to use the iPhone because the new antenna is now that good, analysts would grumble that, really, Apple should have sold four phones to everyone and is doomed for not securing the lucrative Proxima Centauri market.

Apple was supposed to sell X | Revert to Saved: A blog about design, gaming and technology

Public discussions on Apple have become quite strange over the last years. See also John Moltz.

https://newnetland.com/2013-04-supposed-to-sell-according-to-analysts-who-as/

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Google tries to make a business succeed through having a huge amount of _flow_ in terms of data, traffic, queries and information that is indexed. So think about this idea of them tapping into a vast stream. The more volume that is flowing through the system the more revenue they generate. As so given this very rough analogy I try to sharpen it up by saying: imagine it more as a river. And even more than a river, as a watershed, a river basin. Perhaps a giant basin the size of a continent. The business is, let’s say, capturing fish at the mouth of the biggest river, before it exits into the ocean at its delta. And so your job (as Google) is to catch fish mostly at one point. It’s the most efficient way to catch fish because you have the most flow of water at that point and building nets is not trivial. But in order for you to improve your business, to create more opportunity, presumably, you want to essentially have more water flowing. And so how would you do that? Think of the Mississippi river. If you’ve got a net down at the bottom of the river, the question is how would you engineer, through civil engineering, or shaping the earth itself, a way of catching more fish. The answer I think, in terms of the way Google might be thinking, is that they want to create more sources of water. So they would look to connect tributaries and lakes. “How about having another river join our river?” Let’s make sure that we have “everything east of the Rockies” flow into our river system.

Making rain | asymco

That is a great analogy.

Googles business model puts them in a unique position. Big parts of the web became complementary goods to Google. But that is a concept that is not easy to grasp.

https://newnetland.com/2013-04-google-tries-to-make-a-business-succeed-through/

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The company is following an Apple-like strategy. This involves finding a big market—Nest Labs reckons that there are some 250m thermostats in homes, restaurants, office buildings and shops in America alone—that has seen little innovation and then shaking it up by producing a smart, elegant device at a premium price. With its rotating stainless-steel control wheel, its sleek industrial design and its clever software, the Nest thermostat feels a lot like the first iPod in spirit. And all of this fits into Mr Fadell’s broader vision of where technology is heading. People have long dreamt of the day when the devices they bring into their homes work with one another straight out of the box. But Mr Fadell is convinced that an “internet of things”, in which smart machines can communicate easily with their owners and one another, is around the corner. “In ten years’ time it will be as mundane as a paper clip,” he claims—thanks to several trends.

Brain scan: The podfather, part III | The Economist

Life cycle questions for companies. More important than ever.

https://newnetland.com/2013-03-the-company-is-following-an-apple-like-strategy/

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Advertisers in the beta have seen lower costs per action than with traditional targeting options. Lookalike Audiences can be created after an advertiser has uploaded a list of first-party data, such as customer email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs to make a Custom Audience. Facebook’s algorithms analyze the Custom Audience and produce another audience segment that is likely to have a similar customer profile. The advertiser can then create any Facebook ad type and target it to the Lookalike Audience. No personally identifiable information is shared back with advertisers and Lookalike Audiences can only be used within Facebook, not exported for email marketing or other ad targeting.

Facebook ‘Lookalike Audiences’ help advertisers reach users similar to current customers, others in their database

Tools like this can turn Facebooks advertising offer  into a cash cow similar to Googles AdSense. Last not least because Facebook, same as with Google and AdWords and AdSense, is the only current provider for something like that on a big enough scale.

And you need scale for a matching of audiences to be attractive to advertisers.

So, this could be huge.

https://newnetland.com/2013-02-advertisers-in-the-beta-have-seen-lower-costs-per/

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Why is Netbot free?
1. Gets more people on ADN (seems to be working http://appnetizens.com/nupd).
2. Developer Incentive Program revenue has been ≫ sale revenue and we hope that as more users come in that amount grows for everyone (and obviously us).

pth: Why is Netbot free? … – App.net

Fascinating that App.nets Developer Incentive Program brings in more revenue than the direct sales of the apps for Tapbots.

This bodes well for the platform as a whole because it means popular apps run as side projects could flourish in the app.net ecosystem as this would cover the costs nicely and bring in a small to decent income as well. And with some scale it might even work for more than just side projects.

(Keep in mind that the incentive program does more implicitly for the promise of the platform to developers than it does directly via payments.)

Even if you are only slightly interested in the economics of platforms you should watch closely how app.net is evolving.

https://newnetland.com/2013-01-why-is-netbot-free-1-gets-more-people-on-adn/

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So we did the hard work and sifted through hundreds of AngelList profiles to come up with the ultimate “Airbnb of” or “Airbnb for” list. Some observations: Most common: Airbnb of car sharing, or its many variations. Second most common: Airbnb of office space (Nevermind the history of Loosecubes, which rose fast and then crashed and burned). Strangest: AirBnB for Next-Gen DNA Sequencing, for the biotech startup Cheap-Seq. Without further ado, the 75 odd companies that think they’re the Airbnb of…well.

Airbnb, coolest lingo for startup descriptions on AngelList by Skift

It is officially a trend.

https://newnetland.com/2013-01-so-we-did-the-hard-work-and-sifted-through/