Netizen

Thursday, June 17, 2010

How To Monetize Tumblr?

David Karp is a New Yorker I hope to meet in person at some point, I am sure we will. We know too many people between us, the biggest being Fred Wilson himself. Wilson relishes Karp the way a VC ought to relish an entrepreneur.

A few months back - and if it has been less than that sorry, I have been on internet time, time moves faster online - when Tumblr raised its newest round of money, there was some talk from various quarters on the topic. I meant to read up on those thoughts and share my own thoughts in a blog post, and I just never got around to, I am doing now. But I have not had the chance to read those thoughts. That probably is a good thing for this blog post.

Google could not have done what Yahoo was doing really well: banner ads. Google came up with its own ad platform that spoke to the Google Search experience, and Google hit the jackpot with it. Similarly Facebook could not have done what Google did. (Facebook's Ad Space Is Different) Ads on Facebook needed to be able to climb the maze of people's social graphs. Social gaming needed a newer ad platform.

The Highlight Of My Internet Week
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising

Look at how Twitter is rolling out its monetization efforts. They have introduced the concept of resonance.

The lesson from all these examples is that the monetization of Tumblr has to be unique to the Tumblr experience. And the Tumblr experience is different from the Twitter experience, it is different from the Facebook experience, it is different from the Wordpress/Blogger experience.

So what exactly is the Tumblr experience. Define. Then monetize.

An obvious thing would be to allow businesses to set up tumblogs: paid Tumblr accounts. They can run campaigns on their own outside of Tumblr to get people to show up on their tumblogs and to follow them on their own. It would be like people doling out their Twitter handles on non Twitter platforms. But if people are spending money on the Google platform to get people to their tumblogs, that is money that should have been Tumblr's. So.

You should be able to create a paid account for your business on Tumblr. And Tumblr should landgrab a small box on the top right of all tumblogs. Paid accounts would have the option to get their specific tumblogs or Tumblr posts listed there for money.

So I just put out a post about smartphones at my tumblog, maybe I will see an ad for smartphones.

And for a higher price tumblog posts that are clearly labeled Sponsored should be allowed to enter streams. This could get controversial. But there is the Twitter option where you only enter the steam when people actively search for certain terms.

Just like an ad on Twitter has to take the form of a tweet, an ad on Tumblr has to look like a tumblog post. And those posts have to compete. If you are not getting clicked upon, you are not being liked and reblogged, you lose your place in the stream, money could not get you back in. What's that word again? Resonance?

Advertising on Tumblr has to be in tune with the Tumblr experience.

Another way - perhaps a better way - would be to get the users of Tumblr to strive to earn badges and have each such badge sponsored by a major brand name. So if you can get 100 people to follow you on Tumblr, you earn the T100 badge sponsored by Ben & Jerry. Both the badge and the sponsor's logo get shown on your tumblog. The logo links to the sponsor's tumblog.

A third way would be to allow Tumblr users to buy virtual money at Tumblr with which they can buy each other gifts. You pay real money for fake money with which you buy gifts. Tumblr is the one you pay. Tumblr makes money. Get it?

Twitter: The Obvious Missing Features

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is for real. I have felt that since February 2009 when @jobsworth covinced me to get on the train. Otherwise in 2008 and before I looked down upon the service. I was a full form blogger. 140 characters could not contain me.

Twitter does not have the buzz today that it had for the first half of last year. Following the same pattern, some of FourSquare's buzz is now dying out just when it is getting better and better as a business.

Twitter had major scaling issues last year. That was a high class problem to have. But it still should have walked and chewed gum at the same time. It should have scaled well and it should have added features as well.

My belief is that the best features have to be at Twitter.com itself. I have the Twitter ecosystem in high regards, but Twitter should buy or build the best of the breed.

What are some obvious features that Twitter lacks?

(1) A Four Column View

Just like I am for four or more native inboxes for my Gmail, I am for four columns for Twitter. You log in and the four columns are the default view. Save me clicks. (Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way)

The Stream
The Inbox (@paramendra)
Direct Messages

Okay, so that's three, not four.

(2) Several Lists At Once

I want to be able to view my four favorite lists at once. I might create and follow tens of lists, but this would force me to think which my four top lists are. Give me one click on the right hand side that leads me to four columns that house my four lists.

(3) Threaded Conversations

When someone replies to one of my tweets, I should not have to right click and open up a new tab with that tweet of mine to figure out what exactly that person replied to. Again, save me clicks.

(4) Deleting 20 Direct Messages At Once

Just like I don't have to delete one email at a time, I don't want to have to delete one DM at a time. I want to be able to delete 20 DMs at a time. Select all, and delete. I also want to be able to unfollow 20 people at a time in my DM box. You sending me a DM I did not want is often a good reason for me to start unfollowing you. But if I have to unfollow one person at a time, you have the upper hand.

(5) The @ Reply Ninjas

My inbox is often flooded with people who will put my Twitter handle in a tweet and there will be no message in there, or some unwanted marketing message. Often times they will put my Twitter handle and that of 10 others. They got 10 people's attention, they think.

People who I don't follow, when they send me a tweet, instead of giving me the two regular options of reply and retweet, give me three options: reply, retweet, block person. A blocked person should not be able to show up in my inbox even if they put my Twitter handle into their tweet.

Chris Dixon On Twitter: Not Impressive
Twitter Has To Scale The Signals
Twitter Does The Deed: Ads
Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
Measuring Your Twitter Influence
Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites
Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once
Twitter For The Masses

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Indian Railways

India Broadband Spectrum Bids

Clogged Rail Lines Slow India’s Development

As the world looks to India to compete with China as a major source of new global economic growth, this country’s weak transportation network is stalling progress. ..... India must invest heavily in transportation to achieve a long-term annual growth rate of 10 percent — the goal recently set by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh. ..... the political realities of India’s clamorous democracy stand in contrast to the forced march that China’s authoritarian system can dictate for economic development. ..... A 40,000-mile, 150-year-old network, Indian Railways is often described as the backbone of this nation’s economy. And in fact it is moving more people and goods than ever: seven billion passengers and 830 million tons of cargo a year. ..... Political analysts say that the current railway minister, Mamata Banerjee, has been distracted by her party’s campaign to win elections in her home state of West Bengal. ..... migrant workers, for example, can travel from Mumbai to their homes in Bihar, 1,050 miles away, for 500 rupees ($11). ..... To subsidize passenger travel, the railways levy some of the highest freight tariffs in the world. India charges $395 to move a ton of freight one kilometer — four times what American companies charge and twice as much as in China. ..... the Delhi Metro, a 118-mile subway system.

A Rail Minister Distracted by Parochial Issues

Occasionally, she shouted back at her opponents, mostly older men, telling them to shut up and let her finish. ......... One of her campaigns forced Tata Motors, India’s largest auto company, to abandon a factory complex where it had planned to produce a new $2,500 car, the Nano. Tata has since moved the factory to Gujarat State, on the opposite coast of the country. ...... “But at the moment her main aim is to be chief minister of West Bengal.”

Indian Railways is the worlds largest employer and one of the biggest and busiest rail networks in the world, carrying some 17 million people and more than one million tonnes of freight daily. It was, however, until very recently, a loss-making organisation heading for bankruptcy. Starting his term in 2004 with a budget of just $200 million with which to save the national institution, Indian Railways Minister, Lalu Prasad engineered a dramatic turnaround. In 2007, Indian Railways revenues amounted to $6 billion. This impressive success story has also been featured in the textbooks of prestigious academic institutes worldwide as a case study. Minister Lalu Prasad is a key ally of India's governing coalition led by the Congress party. He was also the former Chief Minister of the state of Bihar which his Rashtriya Janata Dal party governed for 13 years until 2005.

My Political Resume, Reshma 2010, And September 14

Laloo Yadav: Future Prime Minister Of India
Laloo Should Be Brought Back As Railway Minister

OpenVBX: To Manage Your Office Phones

Image representing Twilio as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Fred Wilson: Open VBX

With Open VBX you get free software to build telephony services and a web based telephony cloud to provision the numbers, calls, text messages, and way more. ...... We believe that free and open software opens up markets and new capabilities much more quickly than closed and expensive software products. ........ there are a number of ways to make money with open source software. The most obvious one is the "Red Hat" model of building a services and support business on top of the open source software. Red Hat has revenues of almost $600mm per year and boasts a public market valuation of over $5bn. MySQL, which also used that approach, sold to Sun for $1bn. .......The Wordpress software is available open source. But they also operate a hosted version at Wordpress.com that is a commercial effort.

Al Wenger: Twilio Announces OpenVBX

Twilio has done it again: taken something that was previously complicated and made it super simple. This time they set their sights on business telephone systems ...... Like Wordpress, OpenVBX has a plug-in architecture that makes it super easy to extend functionality and to integrate other systems. ...... how many times have you punched in a bunch of information to an automated system only to then have to repeat all the information when you get an operator on the line? ...... I can’t wait to get rid of the existing PBX at Union Square Ventures and replace it with an instance of OpenVBX. I can then connect the foursquare plugin to let people now which city and time zone I am in!

Twilio: OpenVBX

Using Twilio's Cloud Communications platform, you never have to worry about scalability, reliability, hardware investments, or long-term contracts. You just pay as you go, and a free $30 trial gets you up and running without a credit card...... As developers, we've built websites, skinned blogs, and integrated CRMs for customers. But phone systems, that was somebody else's problem.

OpenVBX.org

OpenVBX is for companies and collaboration.

TechCrunch: Twilio Releases OpenVBX, An Open Source Google Voice For Businesses

Ever since it launched in late 2008, Twiliohas a knack for making cool products. ...... has the potential to disrupt business-oriented call routing services in a big way — Twilio is describing it as a sort of Google Voice for businesses, with more flexibility ...... integrated services, like text to speech, voice transcription, voicemail forwarding, and SMS messaging. ....... One plugin Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson showed me hooked into 37signals’ Highrise, a web-based contact manager. Using this, you could automatically check to see if the phone number of an incoming call was already in your contact database, and route the call to a certain sales rep accordingly. A second plugin (which was actually created by a third-party developer) hooks into Foursquare, allowing you to change your telephony settings depending on where you’re located........ When you use OpenVBX you’re charged Twilio’s normal rates, which run $1 per phone line per month ($2 for a toll-free number) with usage charges of 3 cents per minute (or SMS). ........ an enterprising developer could tweak OpenVBX so that it’s perfect for restaurants, and then resell it as their own service. Twilio still gets paid through their per-minute and phone line charges, and the developer can charge a hefty premium on top of it.

GigaOm: Twilio Launches Roll-Your-Own Google Voice

Twilio, a San Francisco-based startup whose platform and services marry voice to the web world, is launching OpenVBX, an open-source web application that is in essence a roll-your-own Google Voice. With it, you get toll-free and local phone numbers, which can in turn be used to route calls to existing cellphones and landlines. ..... I’m still playing around with a demo version Twilio shared with us — I’ll update the post when I’m done.

GleepLog: Virtual Telephony Changed Today

Twilio flew me out to San Francisco in March to get a look at an early version and I was very impressed. We had a weekend hackathon and created plugins for it… but more about that later. ....... It didn’t make sense for us to continue building OtherNum anymore. Instead I chose to pursue some sub-niches instead of primary PBX-like functionality and to work on plugins for VBX. ..... VBX is an open source web application that interacts with Twilio’s API to implement advanced telephony functions normally found in expensive equipment. It’s exactly the right solution for businesses with virtual offices, remote personnel and startups. ...... If the power goes it in your office your $10,000 PBX is going to go offline. ...... you’ll never have to shell out cash to add extensions or voicemail boxes...... pull it up in a browser and enter your Twilio credentials..... You want to have your PBX interact with your Twitter or FourSquare account or change its behavior based on time of day. You want your PBX to interact with Chirbit, MyCaption.com or BART. If you had a hardware PBX it would NEVER happen. ...... I wrote the plugins for Chirbit, FourSquare and MyCaption during that weekend in San Francisco. The FourSquare plugin caught the attention of a bunch of people including TechCrunch, GigaOM, Albert Wenger and Fred Wilson. My head was spinning all morning! ..... Mark Condon wrote a plugin that allowed you to define prompts in English and used Google APIs to translate your text into French, German and other languages and then speak it to the caller. ..... Jonathan Kressaty wrote multiple plugins, one of which allows you to change the behavior of your phone system depending on the time of the day. ..... I think it’s a great product in a really cool space and it’s going to push the virtual telephony world forward a few notches and in a hurry.

Jonathan Kressaty: A Warm And Long Anticipated Welcome To OpenVBX!

Ladies and gentlemen, the way you perceive a phone "system" is about to change..... OpenVBX, an unbelievably killer, deployable, web-based application that allows you to setup an unlimited number of phone call and SMS "flows", allowing individuals and businesses to have an easy to use, manageable virtual phone system. ...... "Like Google Voice has done for consumers, OpenVBX lets business users control when and how they are reached. It also provides a modern web user interface for managing voicemails, sending and receiving text messages and managing phone calls from the browser. Users can drag-and- drop custom business phone applications, such as automated attendants, menus, team dialing, and shared voicemail inboxes for their company phone numbers." ....... I was first introduced to OpenVBX in March, and even when it was in a still-pretty-rough state, it was one of the most impressive apps I've ever seen. You could do nearly anything with a phone call - setup menus, prompts, voicemail with transcriptions and email/text notifications to recipients, and what you couldn't do you could build with an extremely extensible applet and plugin architecture that requires minimal knowledge of PHP. ....... As of today, I have five applets/plugins available for OpenVBX that I've worked on in the last few months: a "scheduler" applet that lets you dictate a call or SMS flow based on the time of day, an applet called "curling" that will perform an HTTP GET request to any URL and say back the contents of the page to the caller, a "restart" applet that will send your flow back to the beginning, a "call log" plugin that shows all call activity for your entire Twilio account, and an "installer" plugin that lets you easily upload a zip file of a plugin so you can avoid using FTP in order to install new applets. ..... We've been using OpenVBX on and off at Ripstyles for a couple weeks now, and it's been amazing. Being able to have a multi-thousand dollar phone system for pennies per call makes perfect business sense, and it's honestly quite enjoyable to use.

Fred Wilson, October 2009: Business Model Jujutsu

The big moment in the history of TACODA (a company we invested in early this decade that was sold to AOL in 2007) was when they went from charging customers to paying customers.

Twilio Voice Applications with Amazon AWS S3 and EC2

View more presentations from Twilio.

SlideShare: Twilio Voice Applications with Amazon AWS S3 and EC2