ReadWriteWeb

Business 2.0's latest print issue has a nice feature on Web 2.0 apps around the world. From Nooked in Ireland to Zoho Writer in India to Gnoos in Australia - it's an excellent overview of some of the web action happening outside of Silicon Valley. The Business 2.0 article isn't online yet, but you can view it via Olive ActiveMagazine (pg 106).

As the article notes, a lot of worldwide web 2.0 apps are copying successful Silicon Valley products (a point I made in my recent posts on German and Dutch web apps). But also there's a lot of innovation from these international startups - "taking a familiar idea to the next level", as B20 puts it. The start pages market is a good example, as Netvibes (French) and Pageflakes (German/Aus) are leading the field in terms of innovation.

Via Nooked blog

Following on from my post at the end of last week listing the top German web apps, R/WW reader Mark Schoondorp sent me a list of Dutch web apps. Mark himself is the designer of Wat vinden wij over (meaning 'What do we think of'' / 'What is your opinion on' / 'what do we find'). It's a social bookmarking site, which Mark says focuses on the user as much as the bookmarks - i.e. it makes recommendations and rewards experts.

Mark also told me about 5 other Dutch web apps, all of which resemble US web 2.0 poster children. Cloning of web apps is a common occurrance all over the world - including in Silicon Valley itself. Once a successful formula has been created in a 2.0 market segment, there's a market for a local version - particularly if that country's language is different. But even here in english-speaking NZ and Australia (my neck of the woods), there are local versions of Flickr, del.icio.us, MySpace, YouTube, etc.

Hyves.net - a dutch version of LinkedIn

eKudos - a dutch digg clone 

http://linklog.nl - a del.icio.us clone 

http://superdudes.nl and http://sugababes.nl - social networking for boys and girls 

qport.nl - like Netvibes, but dutch (i.e. personalized start page)

I'd love to get similar info about other international markets, so contact me if you'd like to contribute your country's top web apps.

Update: Robert Gaal, who works on eKudos and Linklog, also has a list of Dutch web apps.

So I promised to start profiling more innovative, boundary-pushing Web tools on R/WW. The problem with this strategy is that a lot of innovative tools are hard to grok - which means more work for me. What have I gotten myself into? :-) Recently Thomas Bate of British data visualisation company Visokio contacted me, to tell me about his company's product Omniscope. It's essentially a data filtering and manipulation tool for the desktop (Java-based), but has some excellent Web integration too. They also have a product called FeatureFinder, used for creating data-driven Flash files to embed in websites.

So why is OmniScope special? For one thing it has advanced structured data capabilities, which may have implications in Structured Blogging and may even be an alternative to RDF (yikes, don't tell Tim Berners-Lee that!). Thomas explained that Omniscope takes the most commonly-used structured data functionality of MS Office (Access, Excel, PowerPoint) and "adds data visualisation and an Adobe Acrobat portable file dimension." In other words, instead of manipulating your data in an Excel spreadsheet - which a lot of us do - you can use Omniscope to manipulate your data. The benefit is that it can also be integrated into web services and websites.

To see Omniscope in action, I downloaded the Omniscope 2.0 app and then went to the Demo page. I clicked on 'Mobile Phones' and was able to easily play around with the data there. Indeed it would be a great way to sort and filter mobile phone data on a phone retailer's website.

Manipulating mobile phone data with Omniscope

A good example of Visokio's technology in current use is on the London Stock Exchange website, which uses Omniscope to publish company and member data.

London Stock Exchange data on Omniscope

Thomas Bate also told me about the structured blogging and 'datacasting' implications of Omniscope, which I will have to leave for another post - as it gets complicated! But here is Thomas' final word about why Omniscope is potentially highly innovative in the Web world:

"We really believe that a scaleable desktop viewer/container for portable structured data that anyone can use (with no SQL or coding) will be the unsung hero and key enabler of the accelerating on-demand or Read/Write Web trend."

I can attest that Omniscope is easy to use and its visual and colorful interface for manipulating data is very compelling. I can see a great many uses for this on any data-driven website. In fact I'd love to see it in action on one of the big e-commerce sites like Amazon or eBay!

With so much data on the Web these days, we need tools to easily filter and sort that data - and personalize it. Omniscope seems like a big step forward in making that kind of data manipulation available on the Web.

RealNetworks had their Q2 2006 Earnings Conference Call on Thursday evening (PST) and the transcript from SeekingAlpha makes for interesting reading. The two main points that came out of it, from a product and market perspective, is that 1) RealNetworks is exhibiting very strong growth in the gaming market; and 2) they see Microsoft's Zune announcement as a big opportunity to take market share with their own "end-to-end music" strategy, which emphasizes partnerships with hardware makers.

On the games side, Real had revenue of $21.2 million in Q2 from games - up 55% from Q2 last year. In fact games now represents 24% of Real's total revenue, up from 17% a year ago. Music in Q2 brought in $30.1 million, up 21% from a year ago. So when you look at those numbers, you see that games generates 70% worth of the revenue that music brings in for Real - which surprised me, because I always think of Real as a music company.

In terms of music subscription, Real now has 1.625 million paid subscribers in the quarter - "up over 41% from last year."

Games

So where is this gaming growth coming from? A lot of it is in the PC casual games business. Real's strategy is "participating across all parts of the casual games value chain -- developing, publishing and distributing games." CEO Rob Glaser spoke about this more in the Q&A part of the call:

"We think we are number one as a publisher, in both U.S. and Europe in the PC casual games business. As we said, in terms of our own distribution, we are tied for number two. The only network that has nominally bigger distribution is Yahoo!, but even there, we are pretty sure, based on all the metrics we have seen that we download way more games than them, but they have more advertising-free web traffic."

They claim to deliver over 750,000 game downloads a day. Real is also exploring advertising in games (the interstitial model), which they see as a growth area.

RealNetwork's answer to Microsoft Zune

To the music now, where Real is talking tough about Microsoft's apparent conversion last week to Apple's "proprietary vertical platform" strategy.

"Apple's success with the iPod and iTunes has raised a fundamental question -- is this going to be an industry based on proprietary vertical platforms, each from a single company, like the video game console business, or is the industry going to be based on interoperable platforms that separate hardware and software, like the PC, CD and DVD players?

This issue got even more focus last week when Microsoft in effect announced that it is flipping its strategy from the latter to the former, i.e. from horizontal to vertical. It is one of only three companies in the PC space with end-to-end media distribution technology."

A comment later in the call by Glaser emphasized this:

"...the fact that Microsoft has in effect abandoned all of these guys and said “We are doing it all ourselves. We are going to follow the Apple iPod model, the Xbox model” -- we think is a great gift from them and we are grateful for it, and we intend to fully capitalize on it."

So Real thinks Microsoft has "literally thrown the baby out with the bathwater." Real thinks it can compete with both Apple and Microsoft by pursuing an end-to-end music solution which has an "interoperable platform" - meaning partnering with hardware makers. This is where Real's Web Services platform will come into play, which Read/WriteWeb profiled a couple of weeks ago.

RealNetwork's message here is pretty simple...

"Indeed, Microsoft's decision to join Apple in the vertical camp provides us a great opportunity to partner with a number of other companies who make excellent hardware and who are open to integrating it tightly with our Rhapsody software platform."

..., but I suspect difficult to implement, given Apple's market share and Microsoft's market clout. Another concern would be Real's DRM - which David Freeberg calls "some of the worst out there." Real probably has a fair bit of PR and other work to do, to make their solution a viable alternative to Apple or Microsoft Zune.

A final note that the subscriptions model will remain Real's main driver for their music strategy:

"Our primary focus will be on delivering subscription-based services end-to-end, including with grade portable devices. An important secondary focus will be marketing and enhancing Rhapsody as a Web 2.0-based platform that can be integrated into any web application or service."

Software distribution

Also mentioned in the call was Real’s software distribution platform. With 750,000 games a day, plus downloads of RealPlayer "and other products" Real claims to distribute over 2 million pieces of software daily. Real says this makes them "the Internet's third-most popular destination for software downloads."

Real intends to expand this distribution channel over the coming months, "both as a platform for distributing new products from Real and selectively expanding our partners."

Summary

It's interesting to see Real ramp up their gaming business, while at the same time fighting some fierce battles on the music front. Not only do they have Apple to contend with now, but Microsoft Zune. I was impressed by their new web services initiatives, but I'd like to see them make the Rhapsody service easier to use (e.g. the sign-up process is a pain and requires your credit card). Also Real obviously has some work to do in terms of DRM. But they're showing good growth and RealNetworks is definitely on my list of companies to watch.

The text of Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie's speech at Thursday's Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2006, makes compelling reading. To me it sums up why we've moved far beyond the Web 2.0 trend and into something much deeper and richer. Web innovation, which is primarily what my blog explores, is no longer just about Flickr, del.icio.us, the latest video sharing site, or the latest social network on the block. Those things have their place - and other blogs cover them well. But the real action nowadays is where Microsoft, Google and some under-hyped startups are headed... a world of many devices, all connected and managed by the Web. As Ray Ozzie put it near the end of his speech, we'll look back on this time as when "software and servers and services became enmeshed and intertwined".

Ozzie recognizes that the Internet is at the center of Microsoft's vision now. Their particular Internet platform is called Windows Live and this passage from his speech gets to the nitty gritty:

"The services offered up by the Windows Live platform are available to Web sites and also to client applications and also to mobile applications. And this is key to our strategy. Because it's our aspiration to create seamless Web, desktop and mobile experiences for all activities relevant to users and customers in all our markets.

And our model for doing so is to use our Windows Live services platform as an experience hub, and to use the PC, the browser and mobile devices as different experience-delivery mechanisms for the value we aspire to deliver.

In other words, Microsoft is using Windows Live as a hub to bring it all together."

The Hub Diagram, from Ray Ozzie's speech

The phrase "experience hub" has gotten a lot of attention these past couple of days, but the main takeaway is that Windows Live is the platform that Microsoft will use to base its entire business on over the coming years.

Indeed Ozzie explicitly calls Microsoft "a platform company" near the end of his speech. Remember, in Gates' era they were a software company - although Steve Ballmer has also called Microsoft a media company in recent times. But a platform company is definitely the best description of Microsoft now, even though software remains their trump card.

I was also intrigued by Ozzie's use of the term "optimization" to explain what essentially has been a central tenet of the Web 2.0 trend. Ozzie said:

"But beyond infrastructure services, what's most unique and valuable about a very large-scale services platform is what I'll refer to as optimization. By optimization I mean the monitoring and utilization of both collective end-user behavior and individual behavior to rank content for the user. That ranked content might be the order of advertisements in a search or e-mail window, or the order of relevant news items or playlists or video clips or items in a marketplace that are presented to the user.

We see the power of optimization every day in the relevancy of search engines and on Web sites such as Digg or Reddit and YouTube and Amazon."

This is Microsoft's way of saying they'll aggregate collective intelligence, filter and rank it, personalize it, yada yada (we've heard this song many times before over the past year or so). But actually I like the term 'optimization', because of its software connotations.

The term 'seamlessness' also pops up a lot in Ozzie's speech, recognizing that there will be a multitude of devices in this new services world. Note that I personally still think the Web browser has a big part to play in this world, as it is our lowest common denominator Internet-connected device (I ranted on that topic in a ZDNet post yesterday).

So in summary, I'm impressed by Ray Ozzie's vision. I love that Microsoft is spelling out their vision to the world too - and IMHO lifting the whole 'Web 2.0' concept up a notch. Of course Google is also pursuing the same kind of vision, only they leave it up to us to figure out what they're up to. Yahoo, Apple and others like Amazon.com are also players in this Internet-based services world. Plus a whole host of startups - and I'm not talking about social bookmarking sites or blog search engines! I'll be exploring some of the truly innovative and interesting startups in the coming months on Read/WriteWeb.

The Museum of Modern Betas is an excellent resource for finding out trends in (beta) web apps. A new list that caught my eye recently was the Beta Quotient for Germany - i.e. a list of 100 web 2.0 apps from Germany (betas and non-betas).

Germany has a beta quotient of  "more than 50%", but what I really wanted to know was: what are the top web apps in Germany? I asked Markus from MoMB, who actually lives in Germany, what he thought the top german web apps are. Based on his responses, here is my summary:

According to Markus, openBC and spreadshirt are "the poster children" of web 2.0 in Germany and probably ranked 1 and 2 in terms of native web 2.0 sites. Both have a german language interface when you come from a german IP address.

openBC is a business-focused social networking app - at first glance similar to LinkedIn. It is also multilingual, with an eye on the international business market. I was able to look around the english version of the site and it seems to offer a bit more than LinkedIn - e.g. over 2,000 groups to get access to specialist knowledge and expertise.

spreadshirt is what appears to be a tee-shirt printing online shop. It looks similar to CafePress, the US website that does the same thing.

Other top German Web 2.0 sites are:

studiverzeichnis - a Facebook clone that claims to have 250,000 users. Apparently Facebook plans to enter the german market soon though...

lycos iq - similar to Yahoo Answers.

qype - user generated reviews of locations; currently 5000 users, but gaining steam says Markus.

sevenload - a Youtube/Flickr hybrid.

hitflip - a social media (cds, dvds, games) trading site.

photocase - photo sharing site.

mister wong - social bookmarking (excellent name!).

yigg - a digg clone that has a hamster for a logo.

Thanks Markus for all the info about the German 2.0 market!

I'd love to get similar info about other international markets, so contact me if you'd like to contribute your country's top web apps. The tech blogosphere gets so insular about the US sometimes. It's good to remind ourselves now and then that a whole world exists beyond Silicon Valley.

The latest version of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice was officially launched today, a month after the beta was released. This is version 8, which includes plug-ins for the first time. Third-party developers can create plug-ins (aka widgets) for the platform. This has already proven to be very popular - since opening up the plug-in platform on June 20, third party and Yahoo! developers have developed 180 plug-ins worldwide.

The most popular plug-ins for Y! Messenger are currently utilities like Pando (a way to share large files and folders), YEmote (emoticons), an eCards widget, an iTunes "remote" and a drawing/photo tool.

Y! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger comparison

Also Yahoo shared with me (and no doubt some others) a comparison chart between Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. Yahoo and Microsoft announced earlier this month that the two services are now interoperable, creating "the world’s largest IM community" of around 350 million accounts combined. This interop is still in beta, as part of the phased-roll out. But I'm told that Yahoo! Messenger has opened up the limited beta interop program to "even more users worldwide".

Here is a comparison chart between the two products, supplied to me by Yahoo... so you know who it's going to favor!

Source: Yahoo!

If this chart is to be believed (and I'd be interested in getting Microsoft's view on it!), it's pretty obvious why Yahoo wanted to team up with Windows Live Messenger - because they're certain they have more features and the better product all-round. AOL is still the number 1 IM client in the market, but MSN is second and Yahoo third. So looks like Yahoo has ambitions for that number 2 spot...

I actually don't know enough about the two product lines to judge which is better, but I do know that in my household Yahoo Messenger is the preferred IM client by everyone except me (I'm a Skype man myself). Indeed I know of a lot of 'non-techie' people who use Yahoo Messenger and email, so the new plug-ins and things like avatars and Phone-to-PC will be be well-used.

When I profiled new broadband video portal Gotuit earlier this week, I was surprised by the negative feedback in both my comments section and in the Slashdot story comments. Some of those criticisms were technical - e.g. Mind Booster Noori pointed out that Gotuit requires Flash > 7, which means that Linux users are excluded. But more importantly a lot of people didn't buy the "No Buffering" part. Noted one sarcastic Slashdot commenter:

"Wow, streaming video without any need to buffer -- it just starts playing with 0 bytes. And look! You don't even have to download it -- the video must just automagically appear on your hard drive or something."

I do love Slashdot sarcasm though - you can tell real techies by their sarcasm. Anyway all I can say in my defence is that the streaming was very fast in my testing - and I still think it is much better than the average broadband media site. But your mileage may vary.

Of course there are other broadband video offerings on the market. BroadRamp was mentioned by R/WW commenter Raoul Nachi, who called it the "best streaming video i've ever seen". Also a VideoWebTown.com rep popped into my comments to pimp their product. Other broadband video services include broadbandsports, Brightcove, blip.tv, Limelight Networks (which Markus Frind ridiculed in his latest post) and of course YouTube.

Also recently come to my attention is a new initiative called Open Media Network, which "lets you download, watch and listen to educational and public service programs." This service comes with a free player (Windows or Mac - sorry once again to Linux users!). PBS has announced it is using Open Media Network for its "download to own" initiative. This enables PBS fans to purchase episodes of PBS programs on demand - each episode is $1.99 for unlimited playbacks, except for NOVA which is priced at $7.99 per episode.

Community news site Reddit is integrating its software into Slate.com, the venerable Webzine currently owned by Washington Post. The goal is to give Slate readers "a new way to find and discuss its best content." Slate.reddit recently went live, "as the first step in bringing the reddit format to Slate readers (integration with the Slate website is on the way)."

Slate.reddit is populated automatically via Slate.com's RSS feeds - so there are no manual submissions, as on the original reddit.com. All that Slate readers need to do is vote and comment.

I asked Alexis Ohanian what led to the deal. Alexis told me that "the relationship with Slate began when their articles started popping up on reddit shortly after we launched last June." That was followed by numerous other front page stories on reddit, at which point emails were exchanged between Reddit management and Slate.

Reddit's Recommendation Engine

What I like about Reddit is that it aims to be a 'recommendation engine'. As it states in the Help section:

"reddit is a source for what's new and popular on the web -- personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you'll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes."

Personalization is of course the holy grail for Web apps, which we've established before on R/WW is a difficult thing to achieve. But it does seem to be a point of differentiation for reddit, from digg and Netscape - both of which focus more on community recommendations rather than reddit's personal recommendations. And reddit does have some smart people working on this. Aaron Swartz announced today the new version of reddit's recommendation system:

"One major improvement is that it's faster than ever before -- it's practically live. Head to your recommended page and vote on something and the recommender should whisk it away and give you a new recommendation within seconds."

I'll have to test that out! In any case, it strikes me that at the very least Slate.com will get to understand what articles on their site appeal to readers the most (provided the new reddit tool gets sufficient take-up over time). That extra feedback loop, via reddit, will be a valuable source of data for Slate.

Alexis from Reddit told me there are some other similar white label projects in the works, but this is their first announcement. Personally I think it's great to see these community news apps being white labeled to media organizations, where I've always felt they belonged.

Written by Ken Yarmosh and edited by Richard MacManus.

In the real world we usually keep the professional and personal parts of our lives separate - e.g. when you meet someone you might hand them your business card, but you probably won't tell them about your Star Trek obsession or the details of last night's date. From its inception, this level of relational granularity has not been present in the Web social networking space - your private data often becomes public. This is the reason why many people have had trouble with their MySpace pages, because what's displayed on one's MySpace page isn't necessarily a positive thing from a career perspective. 

But what if there was a way to put access controls around your personal details, so that only people you trust can see it? There's a new type of SNS arising that enables exactly that....

"Smart" Social Networks - A Better Way to Connect

Smart social networks are bringing intelligence into the network. Similar to the real world, they are helping users describe their online relationships. Let's take a look at some of today's evolving "smart" social networks: Facebook, imbee, Vox, and Mulitply.

Facebook

While Facebook doesn't have the reach of MySpace, it's actually quite a refined service. Facebook connections are primarily based around networks. For example, if you went to ABC University, you would initially be placed within the ABC University network. From there, you can determine who in that network can see your profile - friends, friends of friends, or everyone - as well as what contact information is available to each one of those groups.

Unlike other services I've seen, Facebook does data mining very well (to be fair, maybe other services do too - but just don't share this info). Users can look at the "Pulse" of their network to see what music, movies, television, books, etc. are most popular. The "Did you know?" sidebar of the Pulse page also includes interesting stats such as "x% of ABC University has read the Tipping Point" or "x% of ABC University has moderate political views."

Selling Point(s) - Good privacy options, "Pulse" feature

Imbee

Don't talk to strangers! How many times did you hear that growing up? Probably one too many. But that rule hadn't translated over into social networking until imbee came along.

Imbee is the "first secure social networking and blogging destination for kids." Users can't just connect with each other by browsing profiles. They need to know the e-mail addresses and/or imbee user names of other imbee members.

Kids cannot join the site without a credit card being on file (and not necessarily charged), meaning that someone - probably a parent - is going to have to be involved from the start. Parents can also control the way their kids interact on the site. New messages, connections, and other profile changes get put into a queue for parents to approve - depending on the approval rules put in place.

Selling Point(s) - Kid friendly design, parental approval rules/queue

Vox

Vox is a new venture by Six Apart, which is set to launch later this year. It is aimed at serving the personal blogging market - and while focused on blogging, they've added a twist by making it feel much more like a social network.

Besides making it easier to integrate web services like YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, and others, Vox's big push is about privacy:

"We've learned from the best bloggers in the world - our customers - that there's a time for publishing to the world and a time for communicating with just friends and family. Many people still don't blog because they don't want to post private stories and photos and have them viewed by outsiders."

Vox users can define those in their "Neighborhood" as a general acquaintance, "friend", or "family" connection. Also when creating content (text, photos, audio, video, etc.), Voxsters can select who can view or comment on it.

Selling Point(s) - Easy integration of web services, can determine connection types on a case-by-case basis

Multiply

Multiply is an exciting social networking site that provides an incredible amount of control over how relationships are defined. Not only can users categorize contacts through three different groups, they also can specify the particulars of that relationship - husband, roommate, business contact. Even second-cousin!

Interestingly, Multiply directly targets MySpace in its homepage blurb: "Want to show your profile to millions of people you don't know? Use MySpace. Share your photos, video, music, blogs and more with the people you already know and love: Join Multiply." Take that MySpace!

In terms of viewing a Multiply profile, users can choose who has access to it - "Everyone", "Your Network", "Your Contacts". A network is defined as friends, friend of friends, friends of those friends, etc. Multiply categorizes relationships by Contacts - Close, Medium, and Distant. Those outside of Distant are not part or "Your Network".

One of the nice features about Multiply is that lists can be created based on Contacts. So if a user wants to send messages to family members or to b-ball buddies, they can create and save the list for future use.

Selling Point(s) - Granularity of relationship definition, saved mailing lists

Conclusion

Some people might argue that services like Mulitply limit network growth - but I think those kinds of features actually make social networking sites better. Users previously afraid about privacy issues might join something like Vox and parents might actually let their kids join imbee.

Note that none of these services force users to limit what's viewable on their profile, or the content and contact information they share. Relationship/contact definition is simply a choice. But it's a choice that makes social networks smarter and more appealing, meaning that smart social networks have the potential to cater to larger audiences in the long-run. 

Indeed the MySpaces of the world will probably evolve to be "smart" social networks, making them even more powerful. You can see this trend already starting to happen in the big social networks - for example TagWorld allows users to block users, manage who contacts them, define who can comment on posts/pictures, and remove their profile from the search index.

Smart social networks may well be the next big thing, as the Web becomes increasingly personalized as well as social.

Ken Yarmosh blogs at Technosight and is an Internet/web consultant.