Archive for the ‘Categories’ Category
The Long Tail, Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More (Chris Anderson)
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 3, 2008 – 1:41 pm |
2 Comments
Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail, is one of the business books that I found really interesting and worthy of reading, in how it explains and advocates why the future of business is selling less of more, as it’s title clearly puts it.
It all started with an article Chris Anderson, who is editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, wrote in Wired that was called “The Long Tail” and that became quite popular and famous; after that he started a blog about it and then expanded his thoughts into a book.
In short the phrase “The Long Tail” is to describe certain business and economic models where products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough and the necessary filters are available to drive people to find these products. Examples of companies using such a model are Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and Google.
The book and the concept are very interesting, and with the evolution of the internet it’s easier than ever to cater to all tastes and provide all products: general best-sellers and niche products, increasing the scope of products available for sale, and obviously the opportunities to make more revenue.
If you’re selling products, marketing them or just interested in business: I recommend you read the article as well as the book; they’re really interesting and provide several examples and rich insight into how the business world and markets are changing.
# Amazon: The Long Tail
Feedoor, Central Feed Management Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 2, 2008 – 2:28 pm | 1 Comment
Feedoor, is an interesting feed management service that aims to give users complete control over their feeds, and the flexibility to do whatever they want with them.
The service is quite simple and straightforward, packing a number of features in its corners. Some of the most important and interesting of these features are the following; it gives users the possibility to:
- Combine and splice several feeds of different formats (RSS, ATOM, RDF) into one feed.
- Easily add individual items such as videos, photos or audio directly into existing feeds.
- Create feeds of random items such as videos, photos and audio; thereby creating podcasts or media channels.
- Customize the look and feel of their feed page by using available themes or creating their own themes.
And for the created feeds, the service provides detailed statistics including: Subscribers, hits, visits, and referrals.
A developer API was launched recently enabling developers to pull content from hosted feeds, statistics of a certain feed, or the number of subscribers. The API also gives the ability to build and add themes, widgets and doors (small interactive applications that can be integrated into the feed to enhance reader interaction with feed content).
For people hosting their websites on their own domain names and who want to have their feeds hosted under the same domain, the option is offered for free.
A number of publishing and publicizing options are available as well, making it easier to integrate or show off a feed’s content on several places on the web.
Feedoor currently has an English interface only, although it supports different languages in the feed content.
The service was initially launched in 2007 from Jordan by Mahmoud Mehyar.
# Feedoor
weNear Launch Location Based Applications Competition
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 1, 2008 – 8:45 pm | 1 Comment
weNear, a mobile platform for location-based services and applications, developed by Egyptian company eSpace, just launched a location based applications competition today, which is open to students of The Computer Science Department at Alexandria University, Egypt.
The competition consists in building interesting location based applications using the weNear API. It starts today, July 1st, and the final submission date is August 31st.
Those interested in being part of the competition can go to the weNear competition announcement page to find details about the weNear architecture, documentation, and some initial client/server communication code in several programming languages to help them get started.
Contestants can then submit their applications at the weNear competition sub-site.
Should be interesting to see how this works out, and what different applications come out of it.
Online Multiplayer Games Account For Over 60% Of cashU Revenue
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 1, 2008 – 10:55 am | 3 Comments
Recent numbers from Maktoob’s cashU service, the largest internet payment system in the Middle East and Africa, show that user payments for online multiplayer games account for over 60% of their revenue.
cashU was launched some years ago to provide an easy online payment system for people without access to credit cards. At first they used to provide a credit card number that people could use on all sites, even those that weren’t affiliated with cashU, but that option was stopped after some time, and now users can only pay on cashU affiliated services.
Apparently some of the people who use the service the most are young Arab online gamers, who use it to make payments on the biggest names in online multiplayer gaming – World of Warcraft, Maplestory, and Runescape, which have a multi-million user base globally, and a loyal fan base in the Middle East.
Multiplayer games have been surging in popularity throughout the world in general, and the Arab world is no exception, which is making it a target for expansion for a number of established games, like Maplestory which has a Middle East version planned for Q4 of this year, and Travian that supports Arabic.
We also reported a couple of days ago on how MBC Group is launching a new project with Chinese CDC Games, which consists of an online Arab gaming portal, in an attempt to lure online Arab gamers and get a share of the rising market.
Massively multiplayer games have explored many different distribution models, and many of them can be freely downloaded and experienced for a trial period. Typically the user only pays for a subscription fee, but there exists a third party market for virtual gold, which can be used to buy armor, weaponry, and spells.
# More: Maktoob Business
MBC Group & CDC Games Partner On Arabic Online Gaming Portal
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 29, 2008 – 12:25 pm | 3 Comments
MBC Group recently partnered with CDC Games, a global market leader in online gaming and distribution based in China, to develop and launch an Arabic online gaming web portal which will include a portfolio of massive multi-player online games (MMPOG/MMPORG), in both English and Arabic.
MBC Group aims to reproduce the success of the online multi-player game genre in the Arab world, through launching games that are customized for the region’s audience and that appeal to the numbers of Arab gamers that have been pretty limited in their choices up to now.
Online gaming has become a huge global industry with an estimated value expected to reach $13 - $15 billion by 2012. This progressive trend is clearly what incited MBC Group to develop this venture for the Arab market.
This is yet another online project by MBC Group, that is part of their strong online strategy push recently, which has produced projects such as MBC iMatter, a social networking site for Arab women, and MBC2 Movies In Motion, a video sharing and social networking service; and which Sam Barnett, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of MBC Group, describes as their “overall strategy of leading the region towards digital and media convergence.”
# More: Zawya
ICANN Approves Big Changes To Internet Addressing System
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 28, 2008 – 12:26 pm | 2 Comments
A couple of days ago, the Board of ICANN approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet’s addressing system.
Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we’ve all come to know well like .com, .org, .info; in addition to the country-specific TLDs (.uk, .tn, .ae, …etc).
The approved proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domains, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.
The expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world, enabling web addresses to be typed in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.
Upon approval of the implementation plan, it is planned that applications for new names will be available in the second quarter of 2009.
# Source: ICANN
Leading Arab Job Site Bayt.com Crowdsource New Design Online
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 27, 2008 – 9:55 pm | 2 Comments
Bayt.com, the leading job site in the Arab world, are looking to give their website a facelift, and instead of fully doing it in-house or going to some design company to work on it for them, they’ve decided to try and crowdsource the design online.
From their side, they’ve done a lot of thinking and benchmarking internally, and their staff came up with a preliminary design, that they’re now opening up to different people online to get a fresh perspective on it all, and how everything can be laid out and designed.
They’re doing this through 99designs, where they’ve posted a contest asking people to submit their designs and the way they see the website.
The initial mock-up files featuring Bayt’s own ideas and the elements they want included are provided, with a number of guidelines, what they’re looking for and need in the design, and the no-nos that designers should avoid.
The winning design gets a $500 prize.
It’ll be really interesting to see how this experience works out, and what comes out of it in the end. Really nice move from Bayt.com to try and explore different ideas and artistic directions.
The contest details, how to take part in it, as well as the already submitted designs can be found here: Bayt.com Homepage Facelift.
Middle East & Africa Online Ad Spending Will Grow 29.8% By 2011
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 26, 2008 – 6:34 pm | No Comments
IDC: Global Online Ad Spending to Hit $106B in 2011
Marketers worldwide will increase their spending in online ads at a 15 percent to 20 percent clip in the coming years, a growth rate that is “phenomenal,” IDC said Wednesday.
This year, global spending in online ads will reach US$65.2 billion, or about 10 percent of the total advertising market.
In 2011, online ad spending will hit $106.6 billion, accounting for almost 14 percent of the total advertising market, according to IDC.
[…]
The U.S. will lead the global market in online ad spending with $45 billion in 2011. But the fastest growing regions will be Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa, with average annual growth rates of 42.1% and 29.8%, respectively.
[…]
Today’s leading categories of online ads, adult content and gambling, information, electronics, and computing, will still be the top ones in 2011, IDC said.
# Source: ComputerWorld
meOwns Launch New Version, Redesign & More Features
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 26, 2008 – 11:15 am | No Comments
meOwns, the social web application that enables users to publish personal collections of the different things they own, that was previously reviewed here, just launched the new version of their service, with a new design and a set of new features and enhancements.
The new layout and design, brings increased usability throughout the website and its different sections and functionalities, looks a lot nicer, and just feels more organized.
But the new version doesn’t stop at the aesthetics, it brings a number of interesting additions as well:
- More options to navigate the website, by going through the lists of recently added stuff; recently wished for items; hot, beloved or interesting stuff; and the enhanced search and tagging systems.
- Users can now also rate items they own or that other people own.
Other features that we should be seeing on the website soon are:
- The listing of related and similar items that you might be interested in on item pages.
- Knowing who else owns a certain item that you own or someone else owns; or who wishes to get that item.
- Integration of microformats.
# meOwns
John Osher: 17 Mistakes Start-ups Make
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 25, 2008 – 5:17 pm | 1 Comment
John Osher is a “serial entrepreneur” who has developed literally hundreds of consumer products, from energy saving devices to baby products, toys and candy, and household appliances. He has built and sold several successful businesses to major companies and is most popularly known as the guy who brought the “five dollar electric toothbrush” to the world. Launched as the SpinBrush, in only fifteen months, it became the top selling toothbrush in the U.S. He started Dr John’s toothbrush company in 1999 and sold the venture to Procter and Gamble only two years later for $475 million.
Here are the “17 mistakes start-ups make” according to him:
- Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable.
- Miscalculating market size. Entrepreneurs say, ‘The market size is 50 million people. If I only sell to 2 percent, I’d be selling a million.’ But most products sell less than 1 percent.
- Making a commitment on sales projections that were wrong. Created costs that require those projections to be met. Run out of money.
- Overprojecting sales prospects.
- Making cost projections that are too low.
- Hiring too many people and spending too much.
- Lacking a contingency plans.
- Bringing in unnecessary partners.
- Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements.
- Spending half their time doing something that represents 5 percent of their business.
- Accepting that it’s “not possible” too easily.
- Focusing too much on volume and company size rather than profit.
- Looking for somebody to tell you you’re right.
- Lacking simplicity.
- Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose.
- Going after too many targets at once.
- Lacking an exit strategy.
# Source: 17 Mistakes Start-ups Make
# Via: ValleyWag
