BBC embraces Web 2.0
Further evidence that Web 2.0 may be more then just a passing phenomenon.
The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.
three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts – “share”, “find” and “play”.
“BBC iPlayer is going to offer catch-up television up to seven days after transmission,” said Mr Highfield. “At any time you will be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone to watch it when you want.”
As OM Malik sais, “the BBC is betting the farm on user generated content”. Interesting to see how it develops.
Taking a Break
I was going to try and do a post on property website proposals this weekend, but I'm not really happy with what I've got. I think I may have been overambitious in my expectations. Anyway, for personal reasons I don't think I can commit enough energy to this project, so I am going to take a break from it for a while. I will continue doing some posts on the blog, but they will be more lightweight posts than essays. Apologies if i raised expectations.
Shoot the middleman?
I suggested in a previous post that I was going to talk about the idea of developing a property website using google mashups. At first, I was reluctant to use this as a business idea, as property sites are not a very exciting subject, I guess, for developers. As a business idea, I want something that not only has the potential to make money, but also an idealistic side to it, so that people will be motivated to stick with it. I think such projects have the most potential for bringing people on board in the kind of collaborative framework that I suggested in my Web 2 Association post.
Then I thought, what if we were to try and subvert the conventional model of property website development. Property sites typically are owned by Estate agents or by companies who work in partnership with estate agents. While they provide the consumer with some convenience regarding the searching of property, they don't really challenge the high commissions charged by Estate Agents in any significant way.
If you look at the Travel industry, and the disintermediation brought about by online travel booking engines, resulting in lower commissions for the travel agents and lower prices for the consumer, one wonders why something similar doesn't happen in the property market. Some of you might point out that booking a flight is not the same as buying a house, in terms of financial risk. People are less likely to take a chance when buying a house? This is true to an extent, but I'm not totally convinced. Look at online investing. There are a lot of online brokers today that specialise in low commission transactions (eg Ameritrade). They provide the basic functionality to trade to the consumer without any intermediary advice from a broker. These companies are flourishing, which suggests to me that a lot more people have the confidence to do things for themselves when it comes to investing large sums of money, then we imagine.
Having done a little bit of research on whats happening in the States, this does seem to be the trend. Charline Li of Forrester Research has reviewed some of the latest property sites and comes to this conclusion:
Overall, I believe all of these tools are still in their infancy. Realtors have by and large embraced using technologies like email and digital photography to update their business practices. But the central premise of realtors and also of the MLS is that they control the data, and hence, the process and the power. But as tools like Zillow tap into public databases – and more importantly, into the information that consumers themselves enter, that power will pass into the hands of the real estate consumer communities. This is yet another example of social computing taking its toll on traditional business models.
I am going to suggest a number of possible application models, many of them involving some form of disintermediation, over the next few posts. When I finish each post I will paste them into the Web 2.0 (the word that dare not speak its name) wiki and if people are interested they can add or subtract as they see fit.
I guess its fair to say that house prices are one of the top 3 problems in Ireland today. So I guess the idealistic goal, would be to bring down real estate commission rates and empower consumers more in the buying and selling process.
Bear in mind that I am only trying to set a conversation in motion here. If people are interested in it will take wings hopefully, else on to the next hairbrained idea. This is not meant to be market research or a definitive proposal for a business start up.
Web 2 bloggers and entrepreneurs get together in Australia
Looks like we’re not the only one thinking along these lines:
Web 2.0 Association?
Ok some of the Ideas I make below may be naive, I’m not sure, but I reckon I have to take a risk anyway if this blog is going to be a success.
I was reading James Corbetts post on the possible takeover of BusyBeeDVD by Netflix and it brought me back to a post I made on the business Experiment Forum for new business Ideas. My suggestion was to set up a business that specialises in monitoring fast growing startups in the US and then try to import them into our own market. I used Netflix as an example. Netflix has had phenomenal growth in the US in the last few years, yet nothing comparible has happened here. I know that there are 2 online DVD rental companies in Ireland, but neither of them has reached mainstream consciousness yet. I suggested that the reason for this might have been poor marketing , due to the fact that these companies will probably have been small startups with little in the way of resources and business savy. No disrespect to the people involved, I do admire them for what they have achieved and it looks like both companies are now going to be gobbled up by larger international competitors, so I am sure these entrepreneurs will do very well out of it. But how much better would they have done if they had a substantial organisation and support behind them?
There are alot of Web 2.0 projects out there, I am sure, that are fronted by 1 or 2 people. This lead me to the conclusion that we need to set up an association, that supports and fosters projects such as these. This could also be a setting where people can organise collaborations. Small projects could merge and form bigger, more robust business entities.
Paul graham states that startups should have 2-4 founders ideally.
Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear. Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder. But you don’t want so many founders that the company starts to look like a group photo. Partly because you don’t need a lot of people at first, but mainly because the more founders you have, the worse disagreements you’ll have. When there are just two or three founders, you know you have to resolve disputes immediately or perish. If there are seven or eight, disagreements can linger and harden into factions. You don’t want mere voting; you need unanimity.
Nowadays, we have all the collaboration tools that we need to form effective virtual businesses. We do not have to be in the same geographical location to start business partnerships. All the software that we need can be got cheaply or for free. Think of skype conferencing, open source project management and tasking tools, public intranets like jotspot, wikis for document/business plan collaboration, etc. The only thing stopping collaboration is trust. Yet most of us have blogs. As James Corbett points out: “If a picture is worth a thousand words a blog is worth a thosand resume pages”.
Lets take a closer look at the advantages of setting up this kind of Collaborative infrastructure/ association.
My first suggestion would be to set up a virtual brainstorming forum , that would allow associate members to post questions on some specific area of their business that they require feedback on. All members would be alerted about the question and would have to reply with their own ideas. This idea is inspired by the recent post on Web 2 Ireland, where Alan O’Rourke made a constructive criticism of the user interface on Walter Higgings new web app PXN8. Walter took Alans ideas on board and the result was an excellent new user interface for the application. My idea would simply be to formalise this kind of interaction. If all members are alerted everytime a member raises a brainstorming issue then everyone would be encouraged to respond. This I believe would be a tremendous feedback mechanism and beneficial to all.
Another idea would be the setting up of a web 2.0 portal. This portal would act as a stage for promoting web 2.0 projects in Ireland and also act as a resource for information, news, advice and ideas for new startups. As suggested by James Corbett and Emmet Connolly, we could also set up a job site for startups.
What about introducing a barter system for exchange of services? For example, one project may have great programming talent on board but no designer. They could then borrow a designer from another project. That other project in turn accumulates points, which they can use for another barter in the future, and so on. I think there are applications out there for this? I would have to look into that.
There are Web 2 projects going on in most major cities in Ireland. What about sharing each others facilities when we need to move around. Would this tie in with Om Maliks Bedouin idea as cited by Eirepreneur:
By focusing almost exclusively on service-based infrastructure options, a business could operate as a sort of neo-Bedouin clan – with workers as a roaming nomadic tribe carrying laptops & cell phones and able to set up shop wherever there is an Internet connection, chairs, tables, and sources of caffeine.
Sharing Stands at Demos. I am not sure about this, as I have never been involved in Demos. Would it be possible to share the costs of renting stands at shows. Just another idea?
Sourcing new Ideas. The aim of this blog is to source new ideas for startups in Ireland. Obviously this could be incorporated in the goals of the association. A quick example of this might be looking at the success of Zillow and Trulia and trying to assess the possibilites of porting this kind of app to Ireland. I will have a look at this idea in my next post. Maybe we could get a number of the projects that are currently working on google mashups to come together on this and try to create something similar to these apps. I think, of all the areas that are being explored in the googlemap arena, this has the most potential for making profit and reaching mainstream consciousness quickly. An early adoption of a google mashup like this will also give a boost to other mashup projects, as the mainstream will have a better understanding of how to use google maps. (One possible weakness of this idea, might be the difficulties in getting house price data. This I would have to look into. )
I think if the association were to succeed in realising some of the ideas mentioned above, we could look at developing it further and using the associations bargaining power to get better deals on legal, marketing and accounting fees for all members.
I think the association should be open in nature and not a closed circle or cosy arrangement. The focus will be on collaboration and support and membership will be open.
I know a lot of you guys will be meeting up at the blog awards. I won’t be able to make it but good luck to all involved. Hopefully my ideas may strike a chord with some of you? No more essays for a while, I promise!
An Introduction
I don’t know if I am a bit of a chancer but, I’ve decided to start this blog focused on exploring Web 2.0 startup ideas for Ireland. I’m going to approach this from 2 angles. One will be to look at fast growing Web 2.0 ventures abroad and assess whether they would fit well in an irish context. Two will be to look directly at the irish web/software scene and try to come up with original ideas for startups.
What I’m hoping for is that other people will join in the conversation, and put forward their own ideas. I know some people may be reticent about putting their startup ideas out there. All I can say, is that the fruits of doing so may outweigh the risks. See recent collaboration between Walter Higgings and Alan O’Rourke emanating from a Web 2.0 Ireland post. I’m not really well known in the blogging scene, so I don’t expect anybody to coming rushing in on this. Let’s just see how things evolve, I guess?
An inspiration for this blog, has been the intriguing Business Experiment venture founded by Rob May. The project is trying to set up a business by applying the collaborative, peer to peer development methodology more commonly associated with software development. The project has just under a thousand members from all corners of the world.
At the beginning, lots of Startup ideas were discussed openly on the business experiment forum and a winning idea was then chosen by use of poll voting. Alot of the ideas generated in the forum were really strong IMHO, and hopefully we can achieve something similar here.
If anybody wants to do guest posts on this Blog, please let me know.
BTW I am not going to catalogue existing local web 2.0 ventures as Web2.0 Ireland is already covering that very well.
Startup Ireland 