Why are some internet businesses successful and others fail? The web is more fascinating than ever and it is only just starting to grow. From large-caps like Google, Yahoo and Amazon to mid and small caps like IAC, Monster or SeLoger, I will try to sort out interesting bits of news and insights from the net-economy.
To start off, let me reassure you – no, I will not become Techcrunchy. Too many blogs will just copy and paste headlines from Techcrunch, Mashable, Readwriteweb, and the rest of the bunch.
But I will post about what I believe are great ideas. Startups in the digital sphere usually pick up on one central idea, the solution to a problem of future customers. If that value proposition is really compelling, I will share my thoughts.
Meet Shopit, a copmany that has just received a moderate $2.5mio funding infusion by little known (at least to me) Emerson Ventures.
Here's what Tradevibes has to say about the startup: “Shopit is a simple to use commerce platform that enables efficient sharing and publishing of products and information anywhere online.
Products and Services can be directly linked, from Shopit to any site, including popular destination properties like MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga and many more.
Shopit enables users within these networks to buy and sell goods and services. Shopit's free commerce platform provides 100 percent Identity Management/Security features, Shipping Management, and the Moderation of the products, services and content published by its users. Shopit's free service is compatible on most social networks, blogs, and traditional ecommerce sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo Stores and Amazon. The service also supports communication with LinkedIn and Plaxo.”
So let's have a closer look:
What problem does Shopit solve?
I always listen up when I hear about revenue models that are built on digital products. And I always listen up when I hear about harnessing productivity of users by letting them participate in the success of their contribution. The business model of iStockPhoto has been impressive to me since the first time I saw the site - because it is a platform for digital products that presents users an option to make money online. Good money, serious money.
Got a web2.0 service or a small project going but fail to reach the masses? Or you have a mass market product but fail to grow into the market occupied by traditionalist clients? No wonder, your small project is probably a geek thing and your mass market product is likely so stuffed with options that simple work tasks are hardly explicitly supported. Don't be offended - that's just brilliant - but just not enough. You will need to get to the late adopters if you want to grow! in this post I will tell you how.
In one of my last posts I have talked about the importance of attracting late adopters to an online service. Late adopters are usually very loyal customers and show a high reluctance of switching to other services once a product allows them to get simple tasks done effectively. In the post, I highlighted how important it is that this audience is presented a clear use case that is ideally related to "real world" routines or activities. The best case thereof is email: Email can be very well related to traditional mail - there are inboxes, outboxes, messages, each message has a recipient and a sender. That's it.
I've just ran by a study by hitwise intelligence, a company that offers web analytics. The post looks at the question whether Yahoo! would be worth more in parts than as a single entity. This is not a new discussion but right now becomes another boost the the Microhoo negotiations. Instead of picking up the same question I'd rather highlight that this chart quite interestingly shows the late adopters service consumption behavior.
In this post I will look at some revenue models of SaaS providers. This model is interesting in several dimensions: On the one hand, the SaaS business is a "Purely web-based" model, meaning that these are typically digital revenues only. On the other hand, as more businesses will look at how to produce digital revenue, these models show some typical levers of such business models. In a first post, I have briefly looked at the Salesforce.com business model. Salesforce is a public company and issues publically available information which can be used to assess a potential business logic that can be built upon an SaaS model as well as the typical cost structures to expect in typical SaaS companies.
In this post, I will briefly look at some SaaS providers, in particular from the sector "online collaboration tools". Let's first investigate the products that are sold, and the forms of monetization.
From the Huddle Website: "Established in November, 2006, Huddle.net is based in London, UK. Huddle combines online collaboration, online project management and document sharing using social networking principles. Its customers include Mastercard, John Lewis, Boots, Edelman, O2 and UNICEF and a number of government organisations and charities. Huddle.net is backed by Eden Ventures Partners. Huddle has been chosen as one of top 20 UK Web 2.0 companies by Web Mission 2008 sponsored by UK Trade & Investment department and one of 100 top UK start-ups by Startups.co.uk in 2008. Huddle is also a Microsoft Global Emerging Technology Partner. Young and dynamic, growing 40% each month, Huddle is home to 21 staff. Huddle’s leadership team hails from lastminute.com, Library House, dunhumby, Fibernet and Jeffries Broadview."
Salesforce.com is the leading SaaS software for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The company is often quoted as one of the pioneers in he field of on-demand software and is growing steadily in terms of users and international reach. According to the 2007 10-K, Sal.com is used by approximately 41,000 customers worldwide to manage their vital customer, sales and operational data.In this post, we shall briefly look at some details about:
A new interesting fact comes from Jeff Kaplans blog (ref): IBM is taking big leaps into web2.0, especially considering their new web2.0 features in the notes products. The potential in efficiency gains is quite significant I believe; especially when you look at the last parapraph below I think it is even understated.
Enjoy the reader:
"This past week, IBM used the occasion of Google's rollout of its new on-demand, enterprise application suite as a convenient time to announce that it would be the first major vendor to bring Google Gadgets™ -- an assortment of previously consumer-oriented web utilities -- into IBM's WebSphere Portal. This is the latest in a series of moves as a part of a low-profile alliance between IBM and Google which could have far-reaching implications for the software industry as well as corporate customers and consumers."
"As a result of this new integration, users can leverage any of the approximately 4,000 Google Gadgets into their corporate environments. The Gadgets include language translators, package delivery tracking, Podcast searches, Wikipedia information, and YouTube postings ."
"On first glance, many of these tools may seem irrelevant to a corporate environment. However, just as Instant Messaging (IM) has become a common corporate communications and productivity tool over the past year, many of the Web 2.0 Google Gadgets are being tested to determine how they can enable increasingly dispersed workers or complex supply-chain partners to work better together. "
The WebWorkerDaily blog had a very interesting post on privacy issues you should be aware of when using online office software. The post is not exhaustive but merely lists a few noticeable extracts which I think are worth sharing 1:1.
In one of my last posts I have talked about the importance of attracting late adopters to an online service. Late adopters are usually very loyal customers and show a high reluctance of switching to other services once a product allows them to get simple tasks done effectively. In the post, I highlighted how important it is that this audience is presented a clear use case that is ideally related to "real world" routines or activities. The best case thereof is email: Email can be very well related to traditional mail - there are inboxes, outboxes, messages, each message has a recipient and a sender. That's it.
I've just ran by a study by hitwise intelligence, a company that offers web analytics. The post looks at the question whether Yahoo! would be worth more in parts than as a single entity. This is not a new discussion but right now becomes another boost the the Microhoo negotiations. Instead of picking up the same question I'd rather highlight that this chart quite interestingly shows the late adopters service consumption behavior.
Mail is big, as explained a concept that anyone understands. Another concept that anyone understands is that of the start page: What page is loaded once you start your browser. Then there is search: enter a search keyword and receive results - easy to understand. All other properties are not the mass market champions.
Just a quick feedback on TradeVibes, which I am currently “test-driving”. The site promises to become a viable source for company information. In particular, I find there is a large number of public and (important!) non-public companies in the tech sector captured. The quality of the pages to each company is limited at present, nevertheless, they are a good starting point for further analysis.
Please feel free to comment on any article and I will try to respond as quickly as possible. Your feedback is always appreciated.
Best,
Martin
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