Europe 2.0

I have always been impressed by how good the US society has been at making people from all corners of the world feel at home and see the US as their new home. The land of opportunity. You hear (people that are jews, arabs, black, white, yellow and any shade in between say (often in broken English) I AM PROUD TO BE AMERICAN. Have you ever heard anyone say the same in Europe? I have not. On the contrary I have heard third generation foreigners in Sweden still maintain that they are Turkish or from wherever their ancestors originated. In business the Americans also have some interesting traits. There are optimist and they often have an ability to think big, or as they Yankees probably would put it “the have big balls”. In the Internet industry where I am active this is especially true. From the birth of the Internet as we know it the Americans have been taking the lead and the height of ambition for most European entrepreneurs have been to be bought by an American competitor. During the dotcom boom we where seduced by the new models and ideas and we started measuring our e-maturity in how many American products and services we consumed rather than in how many European we invented and produced. Then came the downturn and fortunes where destroyed as well as the dreams they where backing. And then it was silent. The media and investors lost interest in the bruised and battered industry and the Americans pulled back their troops from the strange continent with so many languages and strange tribes.

But in the meantime something happened. It happened in the digital mines of Silicon Valhalla in Scandinavia, and in the sharpest minds in the gaming and gambling hub Gibraltar, and in the awakening German web 2.0 scene. It happened in the Mecca of mobilphones Finland and in France where the blog movement grew stronger for every blog post, every comment, every user generated opinion. A new breed of European companies and entrepreneurs (even though many of the heros of the Dotcomboom are back with new even bolder ideas) started to surface and the companies they build were no longer built on dream or US blueprints. They has innovative, often disruptive ideas. Ideas not focusing on hype and fast cash as the worst examples of the dotcom boom but making the user a little bit happier or as Skype puts it “always delight the user”.  They are European, often global and while building their companies a new European eco system started to evolve. An eco system I believe will be one of the most important corner stones in Europes digital future. In a not too distant future most of us will be knowledge workers, many of us even digital workers. Some of us doing such alien tasks as producing digital furniture to sell in online worlds or pursuing athletic careers in the booming digital sports arena. Companies like Skype, Spannish WiFi company FON, Germanys openBC, mobile content company Jamba, Finnish Habbo Hotel or Swedish free mobile calls service Rebtel started beating the incumbents as well as the Americans in their own game. When serial-entrepreneurs like the Sahmwer brothers in Germany, the French blog overlord Loic Le Mure, Skype founder Nicklas Zenström and many other successful European digital entrepreneurs exchange ideas with new entrepreneurs and  each other something happens. The same thing that made Silicon Valley so vibrant. Entreprenurial zeitgeist giving birth to companies like French Netvibes who in no time gather millions of Europeans and succeed in making even the larges portals start trembling. Something significant IS happening. We are seeing a new Europe evolving, a Europe focusing on Europe, European entrepreneurs easily manoeuvring through the diverse cultural landscape of Europe while striking alliances and flirting with the growing Asian titans India and China. Leveraging the fact that we are ahead of the game in mobile technology and bringing with them their network of European companies with them. For them the question “how can we Europeans compete with the US” is as strange as the opposite for an American. This new breed of European entrepreneurs will create jobs, wealth, inspire and make life easier, more fun and/or a lot of other things with their ideas. Maybe over time they will also make us all say I AM PROUD TO BE EUROPEAN.

Reflections on Social Networks with Danah Boyd

It’s a small world – does social networks make it better?

Facebooked…has become as common as a verb as googled. There are 1,9 million hits if you search for facebook addiction. New online communities and social networks are evolving from the most unexpected corners and directions. Futurists and analysts alike are fighting to understand what is a fad and what is a fundamental change in how we live and play. Well I had a tea with someone who knows…

But first let´s travel back in time to try to understand how the social networking craze online started. My first experience was when my good friend Eric Wachtmeister came into my office 8 years ago and said. I am going to put all my contacts online and create a club where everyone can interact with each other. I am going to call the club “the green cobra”. I must admit that I did not fully understand why it was so cool but I instinctively disliked the name and told him so. Eric is one of the most welconnected people on the planet and he is rumoured to have had 20 000 names in his rolodex after a long life as a business man, playboy and jetsetter on a global scale. Among these friends celebs like Prince Albert, Paris Hilton and a good number of the top international jetsetters. Eric came back to me shortly after and said Ola, I came up with a new name! How do you like asmallworld.net? Today asmallworld (asw.com) is the worlds leading by invitation network online with 300 000 exclusive members flirting, partying, doing business, recruiting and everything else accomplish jetsetters can think of doing togheter. As an example I was in Punta del Este in Uruguay for the first time for New Years and I was invited to six big parties by people I do not know since I was a member of asmallworld…

Asmallworld proves one of the fundamental truths of how these networks grow, the first members, the core, needs to an elite representation of what the network should involve into. Think of it as a dating site or a night club. If unattractive people are there first, no one follows. The contrary is of course also true. But is there any dangers with social softwares and online networking? If we leave a nische phenomena such as asmallworld and look at the larger networks that are growing with tens of millions of users yearly?

I had a an interesting cup of tea with Danah Boyd, who is a PhD student at the School of Information at Berkeley and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Danah has studied online networks and is one of the only academics specializing in the field.

To listen to Danah is like being showered with interesting thoughts and perspectives and a fast track to understanding more than what you see on the surface of the evolving digital society. Especially when it comes to the flood of online networks like Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin and all the copy cats. While most people are joining the choir singing the online networks gospel or admiring their own newly pimped profile Danah is a lot more critical.

Danah provoked strong reactions from the bloggers of this world and from traditional media alike when she came out with an article claiming that social software in general and Facebook and Myspace in particular creates a new class society, while at the same time reinforcing the old working class vs upper class polarization (read her papers at http://www.zephoria.org).

In Danahs view Myspace is the home for the working class which is shown not only by what people are doing for a living but also through things like interests and the manner by which the myspaces pages look (read: bling bling). Myspace pages can be the show stopper at job interviews or can even be the cause of the myspacer getting fired. Facebook on the other side, grew from the elite at Harvard, to capturing large parts of the college scene to becoming the social network of choice for academics and for the privileged class. On Facebook the well todo display academic merits, an international network, openness and a modern mindset that alongside impeccable grades and/or an evident silver spoon close at hand enforces the overall profile of the Facebooker.

Many of the critics of Danahs thesis, maybe including the companies themselves, seem to misunderstand the implications of her statements and interpreted them as Myspace having a tougher future ahead when the truth might be the opposite in a world where the rich and successful are a scarce minority in comparison with the overwhelming minority of consumption ready masses.

In Danahs vision of the future, both of the companies and many other fast growing social networks will face trouble. The notion of having everyone in the same social space is not so easy in practise. One example is what she calls the parent-child phenomena. For a 16 year old daughter the mere thought of having her mother seeing her drunk on photos from a party she should not even have had when the parent where gone is as disturbing as it is for the mother to have her daughter seeing her unorthodox sexual preferences or way of interacting with other grown-up´s.

When looking at the phenomena as such, social networks will embark on a new even more mass market oriented journey once the recipe of getting into the handsets is figured out. Today the lack of interoperability between carriers and handset manufacturers makes it virtually impossible for social media to interact in a meaningful way besides the call and the sms. This change will not come until the Telco’s change attitude or until WiFi or other technologies can bypass the existing oligopolies. Until that happens we are stuck. Glued to our computers I a world of self publishing where everyone craves 15 bytes of fame.

VideoPlaza goes international with backing from Creandum, Torstensson and Hultman

Hot Stockholm startup and SIME friends VideoPlaza that supplies online video with an ad platform announced today that they have taken investment from VC firm Creandum and business angels Henrik Torstensson and Magnus Hultman.

VideoPlaza provides tools for advertising around online video. Kanal 5, their first customer, turned their web tv service profitable very quickly using the VidePlaza ad platform. VideoPlaza says they will use the money to focus on scaling and moving to markets outside Sweden.

Trends and Paradoxes – Column in Internet World

Read this short reflection in Swedish by Ola Ahlvarsson that was published in Internet World. It’s about what trends are here to stay, and how to understand the paradoxes of the market today.

Paradoxernas Paradis – Internet World

Some interesting news from the SIME-sphere

Dopplr launches public profiles. If you want to share your trips with people, and get to know about those coincidences when you happen to be near good friends, Dopplr is the place to go. Dopplr CEO Lisa Sounio did an appreciated talk at SIME 07, and with her team she has now launched public profiles on Dopplr, so that trips can be shared with people outside Dopplr as well. The feature would have been announced at the Reboot conference, but due to illness it was released on the Dopplr blog instead.

Location social network service Plazes has been acquired by Nokia and previews new release of their web service. Nokia seems to be on a shopping spree, with recent decision to buy all of Symbian as well.

David Sifry, Technorati founder and SIME 08 speaker, has launched a new company: Offbeat Guides that will offer personalized printed travel guide books. The service is in invite only beta, but you can request an invite at offbeatguides.com.

Augmented mobile phonebook stars Zyb are hiring. They were recently acquired by Vodafone, and at the Reboot conference there were several people in Zyb t-shirts with a recruitment message, and postcards with a slogan about working in a startup environment but with the backing of a big organization. If you wan’t to work with Zyb, now’s the time to send your application.