El futuro es móvil
Muy recomeadable la presentación de Morgan Stanley en el pasado Web 2.0 Summit de San Francisco.
Este año el hilo conductor ha sido Internet móvil y su enorme potencial de crecimiento, con datos que indican el camino: en Japón, el 65% de la gente ya accede a sus redes sociales favoritas a través del móvil.
Las slides más jugosas, a partir de la nº 29.
Twitter crece en España el 1591% en un año
Según datos de comScore, Twitter registró en Mayo del 2008 algo menos de 35.000 visitantes únicos en España. Un año después, supera ya los 589.000, un crecimiento del 1591%. No hay datos de Junio confirmados, pero dada la tendencia, superará con creces los 700k usuarios únicos en Julio.
Empezando de la nada no es difícil registrar tal nivel de crecimiento. Pero lo interesante es cuando se compara con otros servicios complementarios dirigidos a audiencias similares. Twitter superó en abril a LinkedIn, una red social profesional con mucho más camino labrado previamente. La diferencia el pasado Mayo superó los 300.000 usuarios únicos entre ambas webs.
Eso sí, hay que relativizar. LinkedIn es una red que da beneficios desde abril del 2008 y Twitter, con suerte, empezará a ver sus primeros ingresos este trimestre ($400.000). Si en la ecuación incluimos el tráfico de Facebook y Tuenti en España durante el último año, las diferencias son abismales.
De todas formas, las cifras de visitantes únicos mensuales sólo indican una tendencia general. Para saber qué se cuece entre líneas, es bueno analizar los datos de engagement (tiempo medio de permanencia por visita, páginas vistas…). Adrián Segovia tiene acceso a esos datos de Nielsen y los comenta en este otro post muy completo.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn CEO: “The separation of personal and professional profiles will persist”
Reid Hoffman is known to be “the most connected man in Silicon Valley”. Why? His professional profile gives some hints.
CEO and founder of LinkedIn in 2007, member of the board of directors of +10 technology firms (Zynga, Six Apart, Kiva…) and angel investor of +60 other companies like Facebook, Flickr or Digg. Few Silicon Valley execs can match that record.
LinkedIn growth is impressive: 42 million members, adding 1,7 million every 17 days. Approximately, one per second.
I had the chance of interviewing Reid Hoffman recently. The result of our conversation was published last week in El País (spanish). There were a lot of additional interesting details in our talk that I include in the following full English version.
Q. How many contacts does the “most connected man in Silicon Valley” have in LinkedIn?
A. I have 1.824 contacts exactly in LinkedIn, but my identity is not based in being connected. My identity is being a start-up CEO, an angel investor and an internet entrepreneur.
Q. You are in the board of directors of 10 technology firms, and invested in Facebook, Digg, Flickr… clearly, you didn´t need founding LinkedIn. Why did you decide to do so?
A. I saw a convergence of two trends. One was how work was changing. Now every individual is much more like a small business. People work in various companies various years, and then they need tools to work as a business on their own. I realized the Internet could provide. The other trend was that as a senior professional, part of what you do is use your network, you bring resources together to solve a problem, and that includes people, experts, information… With the convergence of these two trends, I thought LinkedIn would be an ideal tool to help professional from 22 to 65 years old.
Q. LinkedIn has achieved enormous growth over the last two years. Where you expecting this response?
A. To be honest, yes. In the fall of 2002 I decided to invest in things I thought were part of entertainment on the web and spend my live on how to help people professionally. I anticipated that, and I´m pleased with the result. We are today over 42 million subscribers globally, and growing about 1,7 million every 17 days or so.
Q. However, it´ll be difficult to maintain that growth indefinitely.
A. We have a lot of headroom. Our definition of professionals is people who improve week by week in how they do their job. They way we target our services is essentially to people who have a carrer and can progress. So that´s pretty much everyone. We think that roughly in between 20% and 25% of the worldwide population can benefit from LinkedIn. So there´s a long way to go.
Q. Only 25% of total registered users come from Europe. What obstacles are you finding here?
A. We have a lot of activity in Europe. For example, The Netherlands has the highest per-capita membership globally. Even the Prime Minister of The Netherlands is an active member. In absolute numbers, we have over 10 million people in Europe and we are adding 500.000 a month. That´s a strong performance.
Q. Do you feel LinkedIn is viewed in Europe more as a US professional network rather than a global or European service? Is that holding back your growth here?
A. I think we have the strongest brand in Europe because we are in all the countries. In markets like Germany, Xing is bigger than us there, but we are growing faster in Spain. Since we are we are global rather than German, we find that many more Spanish citizens are opting for LinkedIn. Since we launched in Spain, we´ve seen there an increase of 80% in membership.
Q. Are you benefiting from the current economic recession and rise of unemployment?
A. We are finding that usage increases as people want to take control of their own economic destiny. Also because a massive amount of the site is free, and they see the value of it because it helps them with their professional career, whether it’s finding opportunities or staying informed and connected.
Q. The average salary of LinkedIn members is a bit over 100.000$. Do you want to continue being a network for the elite?
A. We don´t try to program who uses it. It just happens that a lot of the people who find the value of it are very successful people, they tend to be early adopters. But we have everything from execs in all Fortune 500 companies to recent graduates. The reason why all of them use it is because they control who they are connected to and because they are all in the same network. If I´m an exec, I might consider hiring a recent graduate, or a PA, and the network would help me with that transaction.
Q. However, some well-known execs don´t use it. Bill Gates only has 5 connections.
A. Well, as you get to the “over-wealthy, have a complete staff around me” point, you just have a large number of people that you use as a personal army. But most of us don´t have the economics to do that (laughing).
Q. LinkedIn started more as a peer to peer professional network, but it´s more and more becoming a B2B/B2C recruiting tool. Is this they way it´s heading?
A. True, we started as a P2P tool and that´s still a strong component. But as we get larger, a bunch of different functions spike ahead of the general growth curve. One of the things that came up was that this should be the new way everyone should be doing recruiting into their company. We do have a strong growth in the use of it as a job seeking and recruiting tool, but we also see a lot of growth in many other business functions.
Q. Facebook is more and more being used as a professional network, to build contacts. Are they a potential competitor in the near future?
A. Just having a list of people you are connected to, doesn’t make something competitive. It´s really what you do with the people you are connected to what makes the difference. Over half of Facebook users do photo-sharing. Another 25% do social games. The trajectory of Facebook is not towards something that we would consider a competitor.
Q. Do you think Facebook could become an umbrella service under which professional networking, and many other types of networking, could take place?
A. There are reasons why social and professional lives are kept somewhat distinct. You meet people in conferences and you don´t show them pictures of your kids. You don´t invite all your work colleagues to your home. I think it´s best to have those types of activities under completely different brands and networks.
Q. So you don´t think Facebook would be interested in acquiring LinkedIn…
A. (Laughing). Let´s put it this way: it is extremely unlikely that I would think it was a good idea. But the Internet landscape changes every couple of years. So if you told me that a telephone company is going to acquire us, I would say “well, I think it´s very unlikely”. There are so many possibilities that I would never go “absolutely never, never, never, never”.
Q. The reason I ask is because the line between personal and professional in the Internet seems to be blurring more and more… Do you believe people will still have in the future separate personal and professional profiles online?
A. Yes, I think so. A personal profile tends to be things like, if I´m single, here´s why I´m a really attractive person to date, here´s why I´m a lot of fun. If I´m married with kids, here are my pictures with kids… this kind of stuff.
The question is, if I want to talk to you for professional reasons, and I look at your profile, do you want me to find the fact that you really like salsa dancing and all the pictures of you doing salsa dancing? Or do you want me to find your professional identity? It´s never been that social and professional was 100% divided, but that separation will persist.
Q. You´ve raised 100 million dollars in cash. That´s a lot of money for potential acquisitions. What are your thoughts here?
A. We´ve only spent 15 million. We did actually raise the money in order to do acquisitions. We are looking to interesting technology companies that would bring a lot of value.
Q. Don´t you think Xing in Europe could be a great target for you?
A. We´ve been a bit skeptical of the “networks-spying-networks”. I wouldn´t say never, but the companies have never engaged in such conversations.
Q. LinkedIn is profitable since April 2008. Have you managed to find the right business model for professional networks?
A. I think it is absolutely working for us. We have three principal revenue lines: one is people subscribing at the website to get enhanced functionality; another one is corporations purchasing LinkedIn Recruiter, which is a software package; and advertising.
Q. Why is it working then so horribly bad for personal social networks?
A. Most social networks are only dependant on consumer oriented advertising. In LinkedIn, people subscribe to make themselves professionally effective. Corporations are trying to solve talent management problems and hiring. We have a very aspirational and elite audience, which can be targeted well. But in social networks, you have tons of pages without clear business model and segmented audiences behind.
Q. People seem to get tired very fast of socializing online in Facebook, click-through rates in advertising are really low… Do you think social networking is becoming a commodity?
A. One way of dividing what sites are trying to do is either spending time, so entertainment, or saving time, so being more productive. If people get overly entrenched in spending too much time online they´ll get fatigue, and there´ll be a problem. What we are trying to do is making you effective, instead of spending your time.
Q. So I guess you don´t spend much time in Facebook, do you?
A. I have an account. My friends post pictures there and I take a look at them. But I don´t have a lot of time myself to play games, although I think it´s a great platform. I´m also connected to Mark [Zuckerberg] on LinkedIn (laughing).
Photo 1: Dave Getzschman; Photo 2: Joi
Interview with Marko Ahtisaari, CEO De Dopplr
I recently met with Marko Ahtisaari, CEO of Dopplr, one of the jewels in social media and travelling.
We had initially scheduled a 30 minutes interview. We ended up talking for well over an hour. One of the most interesting chats I had in months.
I was really surprised with Marko´s view on some topics. As I wrote in the article published this week, he´s a countercurrent man, in a counter current start-up. Two proofs:
“The kind of thinking of “sorry, I can´t talk to you now, I have to tweet this”. What´s that?! Let the technology get out of the way, please!”
“We are about letting people meet all over the world through the site, having dinner, and that´s it. You don´t have to fucking check Dopplr all the time! Does this pass the Larry Page toothbrush test? – meaning that entrepreneurs should aim to create apps that people use at least two or three times a day, like a toothbrush – Well, that´s the challenge”
Here ´s an excerpt with some of the highlights of the interview:
Question: You background is not the typical one of an Internet entrepreneur… degree in philosophy and music, lecturer at Columbia University, professional musician… do you feel an outsider in the Internet world?
Answer: No, I think everyone has their own path. While at Columbia, universities where the early adopters of the Internet. It was the time when everybody got their firsts email address. It was also early days in digitization of music. There are different types of entrepreneurship models, and I followed mine.
Q: You founded Dopplr with four other people: Matt Biddulph, Lisa Sounio, Dan Gillmor and Matt Jones? Did you all feel lonely in hotels around the world?
A: Yes, we were trying to keep track of each other. We thought: could we replace the evening alone in a hotel room typing in Facebook with meeting someone for dinner? I was also getting emails all the time asking me “when will you be there?”, “when we will meet next?”… Originally, it was really as a tool for ourselves.
Q: Dopplr has been successful among hardcore corporate travelers… but not casual travelers, tourists… was that the initial intention?
A: I think so. When we launched it, it was very minimalist. When people came to the site, all we said was: “if you travel more than five times a year and you know people that do as well, this may be for you”. We encouraged heavy travelers to try it. Today, 80% of the people using Dopplr travel for work, 20% for leisure.
Now it´s not only about where people will be, but marking the places that you visit, the restaurants, a local bookstore, a swimming pool, whatever.
Q: A lot of people like Dopplr because it´s more intimate and private than Facebook, it´s a more select club… was that the key for getting visibility?
A: I think so, we designed it to be private and polite. We used to call it a “beautility”, a beautiful utility. Quality and elegance plus privacy and politeness. In that sense, it is a very European social media.
Q: Dopplr face two big hurdles as a start-up: a deep economic crisis and being in the Facebook era. It must be very tough to convince people to use yet again another social network.
A: We are progressing very well. We have 150.000 registered accounts, growing about 34% unique users month-on-month. It´s not huge, but we focus on quality audience. Think of the readership of the Economist, 1,5 million people. That´s a good goal for us. Our users do an average of 15 trips a year, and they enter up to 75% of them in the system.
Q: There must be something we don´t know about Dopplr to have received investment from heavy-weights such as like Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters, or Martin Varsavsky, CEO of FON… Tell us the secret.
A: (He smiles suspiciously) They were just users of the service. And there is an interest in a business based on the data and travel of a certain community. Travel advice in the Internet is done now trough large anonymous reviews, like Tripadvisor. You have 1.000 reviews but maybe you check just some of them. We want to modernize that.
Q: Who gives you better advice, Hoffman or Varsavsky?
A: (Again, he first laughs, but then thinks very seriously for 30 seconds) Different advice. Silicon Valley social networks expertise versus passion for product and ramping up a business.
Q: Did they invest in Dopplr maybe because you found the trick to make money out of socializing online? Transactions instead of advertising?
A: It´s way too early to say. But the game is definitely about transactions and subscriptions. For our audience advertising is not the right model. And for Facebook-type audiences, the numbers speak for themselves.
Q: The way in which people socialize online is changing very rapidly. A year ago, Facebook seemed to be a revolution and now is losing ground to services like Twitter.
A: We are not in that real time pulse of the world, Dopplr has always been about slower travel. We are against the grain here. The kind of thinking of “sorry, I can´t talk to you now, I have to tweet this”. What´s that?! Let the technology get out of the way, please!.
“We are about letting people meet all over the world through the site, having dinner, and that´s it. You don´t have to fucking check Dopplr all the time! Does that pass the Larry Page toothbrush test?, which is that Google only look for things that are used as frequently as a toothbrush, with is at least 2 times a day. Well, that´s the challenge.
Q: Is microblogging, or real-time communications, the future of socializing online?
A: If you mean that only “status-like” companies will survive, I don´t believe that. What people do on Facebook are lightweight interactions. There´s always a counter current, private, and high quality, and that´s where we play. We don´t use the word “friend” we just say that you share your data with someone. It´s purely information. Many Americans tell me: “what you do is fake following”. What the hell is fake following, please?!
El doble rasero de Facebook: la mafia hace amigos
Gestionar una red social con casi 200 millones de usuarios únicos en el mundo no es fácil.
Pero Facebook debería dar un buen repaso a su política de gestión de contenidos que puedan atentar contra principios éticos básicos.
Recientemente, los responsables de la red decidieron eliminar fotos de madres amamantando a sus hijos por considerar que podían ser obscenas. No es la primera vez.
Lo llevan haciendo de forma aleatoria desde el 2007, cuando eliminaron una foto de este tipo colgada por una madre llamada Kelli Roman. Perpleja por la decisión, Roman decidió crear el grupo “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!“. Ya tiene 114.300 miembros que protestan por una decisión tan retrógrada como absurda.
Hoy me entero que simpatizantes de la mafia italiana mantienen grupos en Facebook en apoyo de tipos como Bernardo Provenzano, ex-jefe de la Costa Nostra, arrestado en el 2006 en una granja de Sicilia. Algunos de sus “fans” piden, por ejemplo, la inmediata beatificación del que fuera el delincuente más buscado de Italia.
También hay grupos de fans de Salvatore Riina, anterior capo de la Cosa Nostra, arrestado en 1993 en Palermo. Algunos incluso utilizan Facebook para desearle Feliz Navidad.
¿Cómo puede ser esto posible? ¿Cuándo va a tener Facebook una política ética definida e implementada de forma coherente?
