Latvia is a small country in Northern
Europe, next to Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus. It has a population of 2.3
million, around 38% of whom have Internet access. The ethnicity of the population
(Latvians 60%; Russian 30%) is reflected in the small internet market, because most local
web sites and apps have 2 versions - Latvian and Russian. Following is an overview of the
most popular web apps in Latvia. The information in this post was supplied by Maksim.
Draugiem.lv is the most popular web site in Latvia. Originally it was built on the Friendster model, but now it includes services like music and video - so it is more like MySpace these days.
One.lv is the fifth most popular site in Latvia - it's mostly popular in the russian community. draugiem.lv (above) is mostly made up of latvians.
We've just noticed that Google has introduced a bit of Ajax into its main property Search, by way of integrating Maps on some searches. This feature has been around since December 2006, but the blogosphere's response was surprisingly low. Given it marks the first time Google has used Ajax in its main property, we think this small addition means a lot. The animated picture below shows the feature:
This feature hints that Google may be about to use more AJAX technology in their main property. Google has always tried to keep the Search interface as simple and lightweight as possible, and so has stayed away from using AJAX in Search. But if AJAX can be integrated into search, it probably won't take long for us to see SearchMash innovations - like the infinite scrollbar - being integrated too. Also note Google's recent push for personalization in search results. This all points to Google actively responding to its hundreds of search 2.0 competitors.
Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb.
All of the big Web companies were in the news this week, but probably the one that made the most impact (as usual) was Apple. Steve Jobs is the master of getting attention, and his call for record companies to abolish DRM was no exception. It turned out that not many commenters agreed with my stance that Apple could do more than just pass the ball to the record companies. A commenter named 'mark' noted these reasons for Jobs' anti-DRM article (comment #21):
"As for self-serving reasons: MS holds key DRM patents, which makes enhancing FairPlay for new innovative uses (such as wifi sharing) difficult unless Apple is willing to pay MS for licenses.
And there's another self-serving reason: Apple's negotiations with the labels are coming up."
But Michael Meiser seemed to agree with me that more can be done by Apple:
Written by Sramana Mitra. Note: this is an excerpt from a report written by Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley.
Worried your kid is spending too much time in front of the computer? Blame it on websites like CartoonNetwork.com, Disney.go.com, ArchieComics.com and NickJr.com, which are attracting kids with a host of interactive games and shows. The percentage of children having access to Internet increased to a phenomenal 93% in 2006 in contrast to 56% in late 2003.
With the websites becoming more user-friendly and interactive, Internet is grabbing pre-teen eyeballs at a rapid pace, placing television and radio in the back burner. 67% of teens are avid users of the Internet. The graph below gives details of Internet usage of tweens. Tweens and young teens aged between 8 and 14 on an average spend 1.5 to 2 hours daily surfing the Internet and make up 60% of the Internet users, aged less than 18.
The graph below shows the expected growth in Internet usage among the pre-teens.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
My wife and I were in the bookstore the other day and we were discussing the difference between shopping online versus shopping in the real world. We were not focused on ability to easily compare prices or instantly get to different stores, which makes online shopping superior. Instead, we focused on the basic qualitative experience - e.g. holding a book and flipping through its pages. We both felt that there is something special about this physical experience, that cannot be replaced with Ajax or PDF.
At least not for us people who first learned physics and then went digital. But we also agreed that with the race to squeeze everything into a computer, it won't be too long before we get a generation of people who might not crave the physical experience of buying a book as we do. In the meantime, today we see a lot of taking things and concepts familiar to us in our physical world -- and bringing them online. So in this fun Friday post, we look at some of these attempts and try to decipher what works and what does not.
TVTonic is billing itself as "The Internet Channel".
There are plenty of companies muscling into that market currently (the Amazon/TiVO
partnership being the latest example), but TVTonic seems more focused on being a
subscription service for video podcasts. Essentially they are trying to become a TV
station for user-generated or 'amateur' content (and a bit of professional content); as
opposed to the Apples and Amazons of this world, who want to put professional video
content online.
TVTonic is also positioning itself closely with the new Media Center capabilities of Windows Vista PCs, which I think is a very smart move. There are lots of consumers, and I have to admit I'm one of them, who haven't yet gotten to grips with subscribing to Internet TV shows. TVTonic wants to make it easy for you to subscribe to video content on the Web. Note that the app runs inside an Internet Explorer Web Browser (no other browsers are supported).
Image credit: WebTVHub
Written by Jay Fortner and edited by Richard MacManus
The New York Times has an
interesting report about companies that offer customized video advertising, such as
Spot Runner and Visible World. Marketers are excited
about this technology, because it means they can utilize demographics to deliver targeted
advertising across several platforms - including television and the Internet. It's also
less expense than traditional TV advertising and in some cases means they can route
around traditional ad agencies, by creating the ads themselves using the tools offered by
services like Spot Runner and Visible World.
So what does this all mean for the advertising world, the media industry and the ever expanding Internet?
Not only is it becoming far cheaper to produce video ads, it is also becoming cheaper to distribute and customize them. This effectively is making videos easily stored and re-used, much like digital photos and music have become in recent years. It removes a large chunk of production costs, as marketers no longer have to film the commercial themselves - Spot Runner allows you to mash-up an ad from their ad library. It also allows the creator of the content to reap the rewards for each customer that chooses their ad.
Spot Runner
- Is that a pipe in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?; as expected, geeks (myself included) are drooling over Yahoo Pipes, the new RSS Remix service. Indeed the demand has caused some outages. I particularly recommend the following coverage: O'Reilly Radar (although "milestone in the history of the internet" is possibly overstating it), Dave Winer ("Pipes users are likely to be fairly technical scripting-level users"), Anil Dash ("Yahoo has stepped up to provide an essential platform in a way that seems open and approachable"), Nik Cubrilovic ("The fact that they include Google Base as a default source in Pipes shows that the web is much more about interoperability than the desktop ever was or ever will be") and Jeremy Zawodny, who has more Pipes links than you can shake a pipe at.
- Windows Live Hotmail Announced; Microsoft has decided to keep the "Hotmail" brand in the name of their Windows Live Mail service. Also check out this comparison of web mail services over at Techcrunch, where they say that Windows Live Hotmail isn't as good as Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
- Microsoft to unveil Windows Mobile 6; in actual product news, Microsoft is set to unveil Windows Mobile 6, the latest iteration of their mobile OS, at the 3GSM trade show in Barcelona. New phones using the OS are expected in second half of this year.
- Baidu Launches Video Search; China's biggest search engine releases video search, possibly in response to a couple of their local competitors.
- IBM releases QEDWiki; described as an "Enterprise Mashup Maker", this app lets users access IBM's mashup maker to answer real-life business needs. There's also a YouTube video demonstrating it. Pretty hard core geeky, but great to see IBM exploring 'web 2.0' technologies more nowadays.
French startup Zlio.com, a service that enables any Internet user to start a
virtual store, has just launched in the US and also has plans for a UK version. It's a
free template-based system and you select the products you want to sell from a list of
pre-approved merchants. There are 75 merchants in France, 25 in US. At this time you
can't sell your own products, but that functionality is being worked on. Example shops
include a Woody Allen shop and a kids sports store. Note that we first mentioned
Zlio back in September, in our Top Web Apps in
France article.
More than 35,000 shops have been opened in the last 5 months in France and Zlio is hoping for similar success in the US. Right now they have competition in the form of MyPickList, a slick widget-based online shopping app. Loomia is similar. Also there is aStore from Amazon (only amazon products) and Shoplinc from Chitika (for people who already have a website). CafePress.com is kind of in this market too, although their focus is on customizable goods and services.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Last week there was a post on TechCrunch entitled Flixster is growing like weed, which described how a trendy new startup called Flixster has seen phenomenal growth over the last few months. Flixster is a social network based around movies. Why is it so popular? In this post we analyze Flixster's features and determine the reasons for its success so far. We end by looking more generally at the rise of specialized social networks.
Flixster proudly states its user base in the homepage - the current figure is almost 9 million users. And we know these users are active, because on average each user has rated more than 30 movies. Another interesting data point: the recent hit movie Dream Girls has been rated by 4,600 Flixter users. The same movie has been rated 5,000 times on the popular ticketing site Fandango and only 300 times on AOL Movies.
Probably the number one reason that Flixster is so appealing is its broad feature set. Movie lovers get movies, actors, photos, news, reviews, ratings, previews, quizzes, showtimes - and of course social networking. Flixster is really a one-stop shop for all your movie needs. The features are slick and a lot of thought has been put into them. At first glance, it also seems to have the same chaotic feel that MySpace has. But a closer look reveals structure and an ambition for completeness.
