A Fresh Start (up)

I have been on Pownce for 2 weeks now, and I have already made a review here. As I said, the product is great but as my friends are not on it, I will definitely keep on using Twitter.

But there is one thing that I really don’t understand: why do people that I know nothing about add me as a friend on Pownce? I can understand that you follow somebody you don’t know but if  he says interesting things (I follow some people I don’t even know on Twitter, and reciprocally) but why the hell adding somebody as your friend who says nothing at all (I have posted 2 updates on Pownce in 2 weeks!) ? I receive less invites on Twitter than I do on Pownce, whereas I often update my Twitter: am I more interesting when I am silent? I hope not

So I can’t help thinking that some first movers on Pownce try to get as many people as possible in their network so that they can have a captive audience (especially since Pownce send you emails for each of your network’s updates!). In a word, I find that Pownce is becoming really intrusive, and I am impatient to see people’s reaction to that. 

If you really want to try, I still have some invites left, one comment and they are yours

Just a quick article to tell you that I will be off to Megève for a few days to milk cows and to enjoy fresh air. I am a bit worried to know that I will have no Internet access, but I hope I will survive

I have no “babysitter” for this blog so I won’t probably answer my comments (unless I spend the entire trip looking for a cybercafé, which sounds totally lame but totally like me). So apologies for the lack of update for a few days, I will come back with great articles after that!

I am one of those people completely obsessed by business, and here is my last obsession: I love Twitter, I have evangelized it among my non-geek friends, I have put their widget on this blog, I defend it against Jaiku or Powce, in a word I am one of the best customers they can expect, and… I have almost never updated my Twitter feed via SMS, which means that I have not made Twitter gain one cent. Apparently, I am not the only one as Twitter seems to be burning $116K /month.

Of course the absence of business model does not make the product bad, but I am afraid that it makes it not viable, unless… it is bought by a bigger company which will either find a business model through synergies with existing activites or just use it as a way to give a modern image to a whole portfolio. In this case, Yahoo! is probably the most likely to be interested.

But in the case of an acquisition, how to value Twitter? I read more and more articles saying that a site generating good traffic can always find a good business model, but is that really true? Of course we can’t value Twitter according to its profit or to its turnover, as it is too restrictive to include the huge potential linked with the rapid adoption. So how can someone value a company without business model?  Do we base the estimate on the number of visitors, the number of users, the number of widgets impressions? But these criteria are not worth anything unless they are monetized at least through advertising, and there is absolutely no proof that Twitter users won’t leave the service if it becomes full of ads (especially widgets).

My thought is that even if Twitter’s strategy is to increase the customer base until acquisition, they will need to find a business model before acquisition as it seems absolutely necessary for the valuation, and if they find it (and a good one), then they would have no good reason to sell. Or the company which will want to acquire Twitter will already have a secret business model in mind and in that case Twitter won’t have any strenght in the negociation.

So what do you think? Do you have an estimate in mind (or read in the press) and based on what?

 A lot has been written these days about Pownce. I have just tried it and of course I agree with all the main advantages that have been commented a lot:
- Possibility to send files, links and events really easily
- Possibility of sending private messages to a group of friends, which is according to me the missing feature of Twitter
- Better use of the “reply” function as all the replies appear as a discussion

But a lot of articles about Powce highlighted a great question: is it more important to be a better service or to be the first mover?

Of course this question is not crucial for highly connected people who can easily find their friends and networks on all microblogging websites. But it is not my case: my friends are everything but geeks, and I had to fight to convince them to register on Twitter. I won’t probably make the same effort again for another platform. So being the first mover is definitely a great advantage for people like me, because even if I enjoy Pownce, I will definitely go where my friends are, so stick with Twitter. And Powce will have to manage the flow as it has been down 3 times over 5 connexions today, and nothing irritates me more than that.

By the way, it you want to follow me on Twitter it’s here, and on Powce it’s here.

More interestingly, I have 5 invites left for Powce, and my friends are definitely fed up with my invites for all new social networks, so do not hesitate to ask for those remaining invites in the comments. If possible add a little comment on what you think about microblogging and how you use / will use it !

I know this is ridiculous, but I have really laughed thanks to this big red button, so I wanted to share it with you…  Thanks again to Michel Leblanc for making me discover it.

Put The Big Red Button on your site

I just came back from the Skaaz party at Milk, where we were presented the latest and public version of Skaaz. Again sorry for my English readers, it is a French company but you should definitely read this if you are interested in Artificial Intelligence.

A few weeks ago in my article about Voki I said that the future of avatars was Artificial Intelligence so that they can really take your place online; no need to explain that the slogan of Skaaz is “Always ON”! It is based on the Virtuoz technology, company I have already talked about as it is the provider of the virtual agent Louise in the Customer section of eBay, which was focused on virtual agents for companies. Skaaz is their mass market product.  Your Skaaz can be embbeded in your blog or MSN, and you will have to educate him by asking lots of questions so that he will be able to answer them for you when you are offline.

From the demo I have seen, it seems that it takes a lot of time to educate your avatar, but I don’t think it will be a huge barrier for teenagers (main target) as fun will prevail. Besides, Skaazs are too cute! You can discuss with mine (sorry but she is not well educate in the right sense of the word, but I will work on it and embed her to this blog when the result will be acceptable) here.

Future evolutions will include:

- Possibility of modifying your avatar after creation (not possible now, which is definitely not convenient as I had personalized my avatar really quickly during the demo, without thinking I had to stick to it!)
- Synchronization with Twitter for your avatar to answer with the most updated answer the question “what are you doing?”
- Addition of voice to your avatar
- Launch of the same service in English (would be great!) probably at the end of the year

Just as an overview, Skaaz has required 1 year and a half of development, 4 people full time, and has launched it beta version 1 year ago. This version is considered as the v3.

This is the video (in French) I have made during the presentation by the founder Pascal Levy Garboua:

Update: Apparently the same kind of service has been launched in the US, it is called MyCyberTwin. A really good article about this service can be read here. Thanks to Michel Leblanc for the info on his blog.

After having facilitated the creation of wikis, Wetpaint has just launched a great tool to foster collaborative Web art: Wetpaint Please Touch. You just have to grab one of the tools and pick a color and start your piece of art on a wall (I have always dreamt about doing that in real life). Then you will run out of paint, which incitates you to save your work and to send it (or just leave it in Wetpaint database) to let others contribute to it.

You can see here that it has produced pretty amazing things; it is both simple and fun, and I will love to see how my piece of art “Collaboration“ (the picture of this article) will evolve over time. Do not hesitate to contribute and modify it! After submitting it, I received an email entitled “Your painting has begun!”: it shows that it is really lively art, I can’t wait to see if there are enough people visiting to contribute greatly.

Someday someone told me that blogging was about being egomaniac and thinking that we can say something interesting almost everyday.

I answered that it was not my percetion at all, and that blogging was all about sharing ideas, knowledge, thoughts and visions.

After this night, I can affirm that blogging is both of them! B-r-ent.com wrote a very nice article about my blog (sorry the article is in French) and I can say two things:

• Thanks to that I have discovered a really good portal about new technologies and more, and started exchanging about some topics (including Miniville, which seems to raise a lot of questions!)
• And for sure nothing could make me happier than receiving compliments (I am a woman after all !)

So just start blogging, you won’t regret it

Only 3 months of blogging and here is the result… :

89%

 And you?

I just want to share this great discovery with you. Blogumenta is a projet launched in reaction to big art fairs taking place in Europe (ex: Documenta) and aims at proposing other ways to create an art fair thanks to social networks.

Blogumenta has created a group on Facebook to gather some art pieces and become the first Facebook art fair.

Just an explanation form Robert, the “admin”:

“There are different ways to contribute an artwork:
- upload a photo to the Blogumenta group photo section;
- contribute a text piece by writing on the Wall;
- contribute text in the Discussion area;
- there may be other ways I don’t know about yet, let me know.

Once a critical mass of artwork has been assembled, the “fair” itself will be scheduled as a Facebook event, limited by FB to one month in duration.”

You know that I am very interested in the democratization of art, and this can be an amazing evolution if it works: it will facilitate the access of artists to the mass market, and give access to everyone to great pieces of art during an event.

A lot of initiatives like that are taking place in Second Life, I will comment them for sure later on.