Super distribution may be upon us

The concept of distribution has been around. Umair Haque termed it as viral revenue chains in 2005 and deem it as one of the important models for content distribution:

viral revenue streams are almost a foregone conclusion, because they are a dominant solution for the public goods problems the radically decentralized and open economics of the www creates. They're, pretty simply, the most rational and efficient solution to what people think is a messy problem - dealing with digital property rights.

This was echoed by Fred Wilson in 2007 when he wrote about how superdistribution will become a new model for content and revenue distribution:

Superdistribution means turning every consumer into a distribution partner. Every person who buys a record, a movie, reads a newspaper, a book, every person who buys a Sonos or a Vespa becomes a retailer of that item. It's word of mouth marketing, referral marketing, but with one important difference. The consumer is the retailer.

Superdistribution hence seem be an important mechanism/model for next generation marketing. At stake is a new ideology of how distribution in a networked economy will look like. But before we go deeper into the subject, let's get back to basic: what is superdistribution?

Clay Shirley has defined it well and also added in its importance to our connected culture:

This is superdistribution — content moving from friend to friend through the social network, far from the original source of the story. Superdistribution, despite its unweildy name, matters to users. It matters a lot. It matters so much, in fact, that we will routinely prefer a shareable amateur source to a professional source that requires us to keep the content a secret on pain of lawsuit. (Wikipedia’s historical advantage over Britannica in one sentence.)

Given how important superdistribution is, why are there so few real life examples? The answer is that it is tricky to operationlise these revenue chains. To make superdistribution a reality, we need (i) analytic services that can track beyond first level referrals and (ii) a payment infrastructure that is well embedded into our interactions such that we don't notice it at all. Both are difficult to achieve in critical mass on the Web.

Now however, there is an interesting device that has both of these characteristics: it is called the mobile. Mobile is our most personalised device and it knows information about us right down to the indiviudal. That can produce insightful analytics about who we share our content with and to what extend does that content gets filter through the social network. Mobile also comes with payment embedded, which is necessary to enable revenue sharing.

Hence, I was pretty excited when I read this article about Google and Apple enabling superdistribution-like features for their mobile stores:

Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone 3.0 software includes features that, if activated by Apple, may let users share software with one another, according to a person familiar with the technology. Eventually, iPhone users may even get a commission when they've induced someone else to make a purchase

If they get this right, we are going to see new models of distribution being created right before our eyes. The value this is going to release will be tremendous. I can't wait to see how this unfolds.

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4 rules I used in my startup to leverage on the networked economy

The new networked economy requires new rules. As a startup in this new economy, I constantly looking for ways for my company to be part of the network. Here are the 4 rules of thumbs I always used to ensure that what I do leverages fully on the networked economy

Many touch points
I want my service to touch as many networks as possible because the value increases exponentially by the number of networks the action flows through. In practice, this means open APIs and confirming to open standards such as microformats and Open ID/Facebook Connect. The aim is to make it as easy as possible for my service to get in and out.

Tapping/Coordinating existing networks
Rather than creating new networks, I am always on the lookout for ways to leverage on current networks. More significantly, if my service can help to coordinate or bridge different networks, the value is even greater . Take the simple example of commenting systems like Disqus. It rides on the blogging networks to scale its users. However, because it works across different blogging networks, from blogger to Wordpress, the value it creates becomes much more significant.

How to benefit others
Networks become more powerful when more value is flowing through them. Hence, I would want third party developers or suppliers to come aboard my service and create new things using it. Therefore, thinking about ways to create benefits for network members is actually very productive. This cannot be accomplish by simply having an open API. I need to consider pricing tools, ability to collect payment, how to surface and promote the best third party services etc. Such support structures must be there to truly benefit other members.

Feedback Loops
There is a viral effect for networks. I want to create high viral coefficients so that my service can spread itself faster. Conversely, I want to be aware of negative feedback loops as well so that it doesn't dampen my growth. One important factor here is the fees. Rather than charge as high as you can, Tom Evslin famously said that networks should charge as low as they can bear to maximise growth. Pricing in this case is an important viral factor.

These are my rules of thumbs. I watch for these in many of the startups we funded. Do you have any rules of thumbs to leverage on network growth?

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The rise of the network economy

In 1998, Kelvin Kelly wrote about the network economy in one of my favourite books: New Rules for the New Economy. The central thesis of the books describes how the economy is transforming into a network-like structure, where different strategies and business models are needed to thrive. This is exactly what we are seeing today, across different verticals and industries.

Network of Farms
a Bay Area startup has launched a service to make it easier and cheaper for restaurants to buy food from small, local farms. With a suite of mobile apps for use in restaurants and on farms, FarmsReach wants to create an online food marketplace that would directly connect farms with restaurants.

Car Infrastructure
His vision of building networks of battery-exchange stations in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia to increase the driving range of electric cars.

Patient Care Medical Network
by creating a marketplace for health service transactions to occur, I believe that Carol now becomes a new style of provider network. As a consumer, Carol becomes my new provider network of preferred practitioners who are willing to bundle their services, display relevant differentiating aspects of how these bundled services are delivered, and transparently post their prices.

Talent Network
To fully realize the potential for talent development in broad, cross-enterprise networks, companies will need to deploy even more ambitious pull platforms that scale easily to large numbers of companies.


It is a testatment to the author's intelligence that much of what he says is still thought provoking and relevant, 11 years after the book was published. What other networks have you seen developing?

Community interactions as business models for the Consumer Web

We are still struggling for business models in the consumer Web. NYtimes has an article that says how Web startups are looking beyond advertising for revenue streams:

Now advertisers have cut back their online spending. So Web start-ups are searching for new ways to make money, like selling real, or virtual, goods or asking customers to buy subscriptions.

Related to it is another article that describes how a TV network is failing to monetise the Susan Boyle's web fame:

FremantleMedia Enterprises, a production company that owns the international digital rights to the talent show, hastily uploaded video clips to YouTube in the wake of Ms. Boyle’s debut, but the clips do not appear to be generating any advertising revenue for the company. The most popular videos of Ms. Boyle were not the official versions but rather copies of the TV show posted by individual users.

While both articles pointed to the difficulties in generating revenue through advertising alone, they also hinted at a much bigger opportunity: business models that focus on community interactions.

In the first NYtimes article quoted above, it talks about how a startup in online gaming is earning revenue by enhancing the community interactions:

When YuChiang Cheng co-founded World Golf Tour, an online golf game with high-definition graphics, he wanted to make money from every player. Only 5 percent of World Golf Tour’s 250,000 players pay for things like $1 putters in the virtual pro shop or an $18 tournament entry fee, but it gets two-thirds of its revenue from such purchases. The other third comes from ads, including banner ads and tournament sponsorships.

Another example of a business model build on community interaction is Nico Nico Douga:

Japan’s second largest online video portal - Nico Nico Douga - has succeeded in engaging its target audience of young Japanese consumers.

Nico Nico Douga - a homegrown video-sharing community - grew to 7 million registered members between its January 2007 launch and July of 2008.

I have written about this before and here is what I said:

They have also show that it is possible to build a business if you give people the ability to converse, to personalise their conversations and to integrate the conversations around social objects.

So, in summary, are community interactions the path to substainability and profitability for consumer facing applications? What are your views? If you have startup in this space, does this make sense for you?

Adding value to aggregation

Continuing from my previous post on democratizing aggregation, I want to elaborate about the value beyond bringing all the information together. That is only the first step. In fact, it is one of the least value adding aspect of aggregation. The important thing is what you do with the information you have aggregated. Here are three ways that you can add value to any aggregation service:

Search and coordination
Aggregation is mainly about data but search transforms data into information. If you add in the ability to coordinate actions, such that deals or actions can be closed much more effectively (food aggregator allows you to book restaurants etc ), then aggregation becomes a much strong value proposition.

This is why scraper models for jobs, like Indeed, create economic value: they transform "data" into information - in fact, they do so at the moment you do a search. Conversely, this is why Craigslist is getting devalued - it's more data, and less information (ie, I can personalize it less/receive less stuff that matches my preferences, expectations, etc, than elsewhere).

Aggregating context
A bit of context goes a long way. Aggregating context is just as important as the information itself. Outside.In for example aggregates posts from local bloggers and filters them according to locations. An aggregator will need to think about how to add context that is useful to the users they are serving.

Allowing the cream to rise to the top
The power of StockTwits is its understanding of this principle. We can see this in their announcement of a premium blog network. That is a brilliant strategy. Surfacing the best of the community and then giving them tools to let them do what they do is a powerful demonstration of edge competency. It is equivalent to a music label picking up promising artists, except with a much more effective cost structure and software. This also points to a new path to profitability for community powered models. Every aggregator, from food to fashion to health, should seriously employing this in their community.

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Interactions that can enrich our social networks

Continuing from my previous post, I want to be sharper in drawing out the opportunities in social networks. More specifically, I want to suggest some possible interactions that have missing in many of the current social networks that we see.

The current way we conduct commerce is very inefficient. One of the contributors is the amount of resources we spent on blind advertising. Social networks can replace the inefficiencies by becoming a powerful referral network that recommends the right products and services for their communities, taking into account the members' context. It can potentially transform commerce and become the default way we buy and consumer stuff. That is the true potential of social networks.

To accomplish that, we need richer interactions that goes beyond what our current social networks offer. We need to learn from offline communities about the institutional innovations they have put in place that grows and strengthens communities. Below is a list of initial thoughts on what kinds of richer interactions are needed.

i) Celebrating the achievements of the community through awarding of status
Offline communities such as religion, or hobbyists groups celebrate achievements. They have rituals that celebrate new members as well as the contributions of current members to the community. We are missing all these in our current social networks. We need to be able to see and highlight members' contributions through explicit status (gold, sliver, bronse membership) that are given when they:

-bring in new members
-brought publicity to the community
-highlight false members i.e. companies trying to pass off as real people
-have a perfect record of attending every offline meeting
-bring in strategic partners that bought revenue to the community etc

ii) Marketplace
Social networks should come with a list of service providers for the community that can be ranked and compared. This is how social networks can become powerful referral network. A social network for startups for example should have a list of legal, rental, administrative, hosting services etc that allow members to rate and review. Similarly, a community of DIY homeowners should have a list of DIY service providers.

iii) Allowing members to reward each other
Our current way for members to reward each other is through social gestures. We can be more explicit. Why not allow a tipjar on each of the profile page so that members can give real money for the good that particular members have bought to the community? If a member has bought in 50 new guys, why can't I reward him for it by tipping him $1?

iv) Membership identifier
How can we better identify with our communities? In real world communities, we have tshirts, baseball caps etc that identify us with certain groups. Why is that missing in our social networks? The opportunity here is use virtual identifiers that can scale much more efficiently as well as create new kinds of value. Think about, for example credit cards with virtual currencies that allows members to purchase real goods and servcies.

v) Real time info on how the community is growing
People care about the communities they belong to. They want to see how it is growing, in which segments and locations, the growth of members' contributions, the total revenue generated by the community etc. Seeing growth has a motivational effect of encouraging members to be more active. However, I don't see this in many social networks. The most often used marker is the number of registered users. I think there is room for more innovations.

Is there money in social networks?

Social networks have a very bad name. Whenever some startups open their pitch saying: we are a social network for XXX, many people would roll their eyes. I was one of those people. I thought that the social networking game has already been won. However, after reading the book "the social network business plan", I realise we may be on the blink on seeing what social network can unleash.

One of the reasons we write off social networks is the narrow perception we have of them. We have a fixed view of the kinds of interactions that social networks enabled . Typically, we are restricted to think of interactions such as friending, poking, updating profiles etc. That is too limiting.

If we expand our view to include 'social networks' such as Threadless, PatientsLikeMe etc, the scope for powerful interactions will increased. The opportunity then is to apply these interactions to new markets that required such organisations. Think of markets as radical as fighting terrorism, conducting medical research etc.

One way to spot these markets are the gross margins of current companies in that market. A high margin might suggest some form inefficiencies that the companies are using to exploit the consumers. Social networks are a way to shift the power back to consumers.

The value of links in next generation media

We all know now that Media is in a state of flux. Every part of the media value chain has been democratized. Rather than a rigid flow through, media is now a complex web of production, distribution and consumption. It flows everywhere and understanding that flow is key to value creation and capture in next generation media.

One critical piece that connects the web of media is the link. This is the mechanism where media is distributed and aggregated. The link is the facilitator of the flow. New value creation has to start at the link.

Surprising though, I have seen very little such attempts in building models on top of links. An exception are link shorteners. Bit.ly in particular has been very thoughtful about the importance of links, which is why they are the first (correct me if I am wrong) to offer real time tracking of clicks on your links. Analytic however is just a first step towards building the foundational blocks for links.

I think we need the following:

i) Better metadata for links: I don't mean services that pops out stuff everytime you browse over the link. I am referring more to ambient type of awareness. Things like colour or font differences according to some metadata. For example, why can't links appear in different colour according to whether the people you follow has clicked on them?

ii) More actions for links: Imagine a a Bit.ly for music (we already have a wordpress for music, a dropbox for music, an alexa for music) where clicking on the link click plays the music rather than taking you to a page. Why do we need media players? Why can't we enable the link to be the player? If we can accomplish that, is the link equivalent to the media?

iii) Transaction capabilities: Why can't I transact on the link like buying a song? Can't we bundle distribution and payment into an easy to use service? Imagine if every link allows certain transactions to be done. What will happen then?

I think more can be done to understand the importance of link-based distribution and the kind of new models it enables. What I am saying is just very rough thoughts. I am very open to comments and pointers to other sources of information.

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Building businesses on platforms

I recently saw a comment by Fred Wilson saying 8 out of 25 of his portfolio are building on platforms. It is a rather high number and I wonder about the risk on riding on a single platform. On close inspection though, you will realise these 8 businesses tend to span across platforms. This implies that the value may lie, not only in leveraging on platforms, but in bridging the different platforms.

This goes in line with what Tim O'Reilly was saying about building your software above a single device. In this case, it is building your businesses above a singel platform. The benefits of doing so are obvious.

First, building across platforms achieves network effects faster.

Second, servicing multiple platforms allows aggregation. Disqus is a great example. Now, I can see my comments whether they are in blogger or wordpress.

Third, it spares you the problem of being dependent on one source of success. If you are dependent on Twitter and it goes down in service, your business will be badly affected as well.

Fourth, bridging platforms has the potential to unlock new value. This is the most important. Advantage in this network economy comes from the flow of information. By building bridges across different platforms, you are allowing information to flow more smoother. That is a big strategic advantage.

So, if you are building a startup on top of a platform, is it better to build on one or across different platforms?

What social capital can enable (Part 1)

(The following rambling is triggered by burt ronald's "social capital of structural holes")

I feel that we are reaching an optimal in online communications and networking. There is only so much sharing you can do in the name of sharing. I want to leverage on the abundance of online knowledge and networks to achieve more, to learn more, to have better ideas etc. Somehow, the current crop of services doesn't cut it for me.

In terms of news and information aggregation, I don't need more services to recommend me news of similar nature. I don't need services that aggregate everything either because the noise ratio is too high. What I need are services that show me who are the good bridges who can connect me to other stuff that are outside of my current specialization. People who are good in relating one industry to another.

One good example is reBang who does a great job in bridging between industrial design and virtual world technologies. Another one is Jordan Furlong who specialises in bridging between the legal industry and our web world.

I need a Mr Tweet that recommends such people to me. People who painstaking draw the connections between different areas, who tease out the subtle relationships and to paint the possibilities that such relationships & connections can enable.

These are services I want to have right now.

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Mobile link journalism

Link journalism is a new form of journalism that is made available by the Web. Companies such as Publish2 are providing the infrastructure that powers this new model. I believe, however that a mobile link infrastructure makes more sense because the revenue models seem clearer.

Imagine you are a journalist and you provide daily headlines of what you think are important stories. Users can subscribe to your daily sms, which is offered free. However, if users want to get the whole story, they will have to pay premium sms for each click. That payment becomes the revenue model for journalists and you will get a small cut for providing the application.

Mobile journalism can also be more immediate and that immediacy may be a value that users will pay for. Imagine a journalist covering crisis events through mobile. Users may pay for the latest coverage through their mobile.

What do you think? Is mobile link journalism a more viable path to unlocking a new model for journalism?

3 random ideas from the Web

I came across these 3 interesting ideas and wanted to share them with you.

Distributed research for the financial sector: Ethan Bauley says he intends to make a killing based on the idea that research business will be more distributed. I don't doubt him.

Research is another form of digital information. Just like all digital information, it demands to be free and be produced and consumed from anywhere. Any services that facilitated such movements will be successful. See Stocktwits.

For your industry, think about how information is created and distributed. Can you make it more distributed? Can you create services that connects people who produce information with people who wants them? Can you help information flow anywhere?

Online identities: Fred wilson talks about the importance of identities and how it creates opportunities to provide service around what the major players like Facebook is providing. A major component of identity is your avatar. Fred rightly points out that this avatar is your online brand.

If you take the brand example further, you realise that like all brands, it needs constant refreshment and reinvention. That is why we like to change profile pictures, so as to constantly improve our brand. That is also why services like photofunia is taking off. The next evolution will be to let your brand be remixable. How can you facilitate people to interact with other people's online brands? (Hint: this is part of the answer).


Look at non-profits for inspirations on areas that needed transformation: O'reilly's ' making stuff that matter' message has been broadcasted around. His recent post on learning from non-profits is actually a great idea.

If you think about it, non profits arise to solve problems that corporations, as a form of organisation, is unable to do so. They are a different way of organising resources. However, it is important to remind yourself that they are not the only form. In fact, that is where the opportunity is. To solve the problems that non profits point to, but using different forms of organisation that can yield ecnonomic returns as well.

If you come across other interesting ideas, do share them as well.

Organisation innovation, and its opportunities, are vastly understated

We are shifting from the industrial to the hyper connected economies. The latter is marked by high speed changes that are affecting how we live, communicate, consumer, produce, distribute etc. Unfortunately, most of our current institutions including corporations, government et al are ill-configured to handle the changes that hyper connectivity has brought. The end result is an implosion. Witness how:

- Our family system still caters for one-size-fits-all nuclear family when it is commonplace to see long distance relationships, divorces, single parents, elders living by themselves et al

- Our education system still takes a factory-style approach to learning when creativity , innovations, thought independence, collaborations are going to be key survival skills for the 21st century

- Our companies are getting into more and more serious decay when they choose not to engage with their customers on what they really want

- Our government, with its command and control system, is facing difficulties handling the loosely networked cell-organization of terrorists.

Going forward, the command and control systems need to give way to new forms of collaborations, and here lies the opportunity. Imagining news ways to coordinate and organise resources in our new economy can potentially yield rich returns. It is not that this has not been done before but we underestimated and under celebrated their contributions.

Take for example, the invention of the limited corporation. It was world changing (can you imagine our world economy without it?) but hardly anyone remembers the inventor. Similarly, the first cooperative, the first mutual fund, the first insurance, the first auto club etc were all organisation innovations that has a remarkable impact on our lives but we don't remember who their investors are.

So, there is a great opportunity for clever and bold enterepreneurs to rethink new forms of coordination that create better value than what our current insitututions are providing. Need examples? Here are several models that I think are radical

- Australia's Department of Human Services pioneered a programme where a group of coordinators helps the government to buy and allocated a mix of services for familites with kids with disabilities. This reinvents the notion that family services have to be one-size-fit-all.

- Guild in MMORPGS are a powerful examples of how people can self organised to solve chaleenging tasks. They have big implications on how work teams and even learning will be managed in the future. Imagine classes organised in such a manner.

- Threadless is a classic example of a community powered way of organising how goods can be produced and manufactured.

- Kidney exchange is a using a market approach to solve the issue of allocating scare resources. ReceviablesExchange is using this approach to create liquidity for short term assets.

There are many more examples if you look hard enough. If you want a rich area for innovation, rethinking new organisations and new ways of coordination is a good mine.

Personal network enablers

As I understand more and more about the power of network models applied to businesses (see this article by John Hagel and John Seely Brown for business examples), I begin to see parallels for bringing the benefits of such models to a personal level. This is exciting as it implies a scalable model for microbusinesses.

The current crop of social networks have amplify our ability to connect and maintain more social relationships. Within this limited scope, we have already seen the scale and success they have achieved. Imagine taking that to the next level for personal productivity and innovation.

There are many specialised social networks like Coroflot (designers), Flickr (photographers), DeviantArt (digital artists) et al that has excellent network of freelancers. Unfortunately, most of them are structured like Facebook, rather than Li Fung. With some modifications, these network can become powerful markets where jobs are transacted. In the process, a new class of personal networks enablers (PEN) are needed.

The PEN should enable individuals to form temporary working teams from a network of partners to work on ad hoc projects that require different skill sets. From this perspective, the current social networks are woefully ill-equipped to enable this new form of networks to take place. What is missing?


Helping individuals to identify and build relationships: Enables individual to find working partners that have complementary skills and background, and build the necessary trust. This can take the form of the current 'friend' recommendation system, but focusing on creating complementary capabilities.

Creating loose networks: PEN should allow individuals to specify the protocols and guidelines that they are looking for in a network. Li Fung has the 30-30 rule. Similar options should be provided to the individuals to allow them to create a working network that they desired. It should be noted individuals are able to create and join different networks.

Enabling learning and capbability building within the network: This require data on job performance to be collected and shared among the working partners on a job. Such feedback loops allow individuals to understand their strengths and weakness, and also provide a good way for them to upgrade the necessary skills.

A reputation system that drills down to points for specific skills might also be necessary to encourages specialisation within the network.

I think PEN is one way that microbusinesses can scale. It is exciting to me as I think that people should do what they loved in a manner that can reap satisfactory financial benefits.

Idea generation #61: Expert networks

The Web has a given us a platform for experts across all areas to emerge. They can range from medicine to technical support to legal. How to identify and enable fluid access to these experts may be the next opportunity in social media. I think peer production only goes so far: sometimes you need expertise beyond what your immediate social circle offers.

This brings me to an interesting discussion I read today about measuring Twitter's authority. Able to identify authority is a first step to establishing experts. The next step would be to be able to reduce friction in terms of search costs to allow

What kind of businesses can be built from this? Roger Ehrenberg has identified one such segment: financial research. These buyers in particular are particularly willing to try out hard core technology in order to get more and better information faster than anyone else. So, for example, if you are derive meaningful insights from the conversations of these different experts using Twitter, there might be a market ready to purchase such insights from you.

I wonder what other subtainable business models can be build around the concept of expert networks.

Sharing links

People powered news are nothing new. We have seen the likes of Digg, Hackers News, Meta Filter et al becoming important venues for us to get our daily dose of important or interesting stories. The problem with these existing news aggregators is the lack of focus. On some days, you get really good reads. On others, it is just noise.

Yesterday, I tried Publish2, an infrastructure for links sharing that is targeted at journalists. I found this list of links regarding the future of news very relevant to myself. The high relevance is probably down to the the people contributing to it (a small group of experts) and the focus nature of the topic. Why can't such an infrastructure for sharing links be applicable to the entire Web, beyond journalism.

For example, I would love to be able to maintain a reading list regarding social capital that is contributed by the likes of Taylor Davidson, Ethan Bauley et al.

I don't think we need more platforms to produce links. We have enough of such tools in the form of Del.icio.us, Tumblr, Twiitter, your bookmarks et al. What we need are simple ways to share these links between groups of people regarding a common focus area.

I believe such a link sharing infrastructure will become an important part of how we consume news in the future.

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A loose network for exchanging traffic

One of our invested companies is in the area of analytics for applications including games. In the course of our discussion in developing a unique value proposition, we realise that current analytics don't do much beyond reporting statistics. That is all fine and good but we think there is an opportunity to do more.

We realise that many developers, including those we funded, do not cross leverage on each other's traffic. We think that if the right infrastructure, mechanisms and incentives can be developed, we can enable an open exchange where developers can collaborate to cross promote each other.

Our starting point is to treat analytics as a social object that can be shared. An exchange can then be built on top where developers can ask the relevant partners to grow their traffic. For example, say you are doing well in Singapore but is seeking to further your growth in Taiwan . From the exchange, you noticed another startup that is doing well in Taiwan. You click a button to offer to promote his application in exchange for him to do the same thing. The taiwan developer receies your offer and checks out your analytics. He thinks it is worth an exchange and clicks ok.

These are our current hypothesis. We are not sure this makes sense or not. However, we think that enabling developers to help each other grow is a good direction. While there are currently such deals being made privately, we think an open and transparent exchange can bring greater value.

Idea generation #59: Blog clipart as advertisements

Blog clipart as advertising: Dave Winer has an absolutely cool idea: make it easy for bloggers to make use of your company's logo, product image et al. This is another great example of making your advertisements useful for your users.

There are several things you can try as a startup to build on this idea:

Aggregate: aggregate all the logos, products images et al of companies and tag them with useful metadata. Link your service to content recommendation service like Zemanta so that they can help to channel your images to bloggers who want to use them. Create a affilitate link whenever possible to each of the images. That will be the revenue model.

Analytics and Brand Monitoring: You can also provide analytics service for this new form of 'product placement'. Beyond providing basic stuff like viewership, click rates et al, what is more interesting is to be able to let companies know whether the sentiment of the blog that uses the company's images is positive and/or negative.

Using Image as Context: Create a metalayer for more information and even discounts that can be tagged onto the image. For example, browsing over the image might bring up other blog posts that use this image or news articles that related to this company. The important thing is to use the image as a context to filter the rest of the information.

What other things can you think to build on Dave Winer's idea?

Startup Idea #102: Democratizing games

The Internet has the ability to push the power from organisations to individuals. MetaPlace is providing such a platform for game developers and is threatening to do to the game industry what blogging did to publishing industry.

If we think about blogging and the changes it bought, it goes beyond replacing the publishing industry. Rather, it brought about an entire new ecosystem of products and services such as publishing platforms (wordpress, blogger), comment aggregation (Disqus, IntenseDebate), recommendation services (Zemanta), community services (MyBloglog), blog advertisements (Federated Media), delivery services (Feedburner), aggregation (techmeme), search (Google, Technorati), verticals (seeking alpha) et al.

Is it possible then to think that platforms such as MetaPlace will bring about a new gaming ecosystem as well? If so, what are the products and services that this new ecosystem will need?


Techmeme equivalent: if tens of thousands of games are being made, how do you know which game is the most interesting to play?

Zemanta equivalent: if we are to encourage a non technical person to develop a game, we need to make it easier to give him the right set of codes, images, models et al. This is where a recommendation service will be the most useful.

Last.fm equivalent: games are social in nature and there is a need for a social layer to be added onto the games people play. This means an opportunity to build a community service such as Last.fm where users can see who are similar to them in gaming tastes, what games are their friends playing, the top ten games of their social network according to the different genres et al.

TargetSpot equivalent: for the ecosystem to thrive, we need monetisation mechanisms. They can be in-game ads or virtual items or merchandising. Whatever the revenue models, we need someone to provide an easy way for a non-technical person to profit from the games he made through simple APIs.

Disqus equivalent: Rather than comments, users might need a score aggregation services to keep track of the scores from the different games he played. Based on the scores, a tournament service can then be developed where players of similar scores can compete.

Aggregating Verticals: serious games, advergames, educational games. All these can be aggregated and filtered to give players an easy way to navigate to what they want.

For the new gaming ecosystem to be developed, we will need lots of parts to be built by lots of gaming fans. If you have ideas or feedback, do leave a comment below.

Idea generation #52: Internet of things

The Age has an interesting article on the Internet of Things. I deeply believe that as more and more atoms become connected to the web, it makes it easier and easier for virtual to affect the real and vice versa. This is kind of amazing becasue we can start to build things that really matters, that will help improve people's lives in the real world. Fitbit is one interesting example.

To prepare for the Internet of things, we need new foundations.

On the infrastructure side, we need a new backend to support data transfer between physical and virtual. As more and more data becomes connected, a new form of GNIP will also be necessary. Finally, we also need new ways of identification and security.

On the browser front, we need to create a new form of browser fot this Internet enabled world. Currently, the barcode reader/scanner acts as a form of browser. It is easy to imagine how to improve this by simply doing an open source barcode reader/scanner akin to what Firefox has done for the web broswer. However, the bigger opportunity is to recognise that RFID or barcodes are simply one way of connecting atoms to bits. How would a browser for other forms of physical-virtual connection look like? What would it display and how would it display?

On the social side, we need to create new forms of sharing mechanisms. These mechanism will enable more powerful sharing than ever before. If sharing information can get us wonderful things like Wikipedia and PatentLikeUs, what would sharing atoms or information about atoms enable? Can I now share with my travel history as recorded by my car? Can we form online relationships based on the paths taken by our pets as recorded by their collars? Can we build better safety models for home patients based on their life route data as recorded by the home itself? Can we organise the world's energy information based on what each and every smart energy meter is sharing?

I am excited about where all these can lead to. If you have thoughts about this, do leave a comment.