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The Readwriteweb has a good review of the scene Down Under. I found this remotely similar to Singapore.

Other than a few exceptions (such as TVP and NEO) Australian VCs are too conservative and have little knowledge of Web 2.0 and Internet business models. For this reason a number of Australian startups - like Omnidrive, Touchstone, PodCast Network and others - are actively looking for VC funds in the US.

The Aussie scene is notable for two Techcrunch-profiled startups I read about- OmniDrive and FwdItOn. I also found this new Aussie real estate search engine, Suburbview, particularly appealing for prospective Singaporean retirees once it has developed more features like integration with existing classified listings, land valuation data, amenities listing, close-up pics or relevant legislation guidelines. A model to follow will be Zillow or Trulia. A Singaporean equivalent will be tough, even Google Earth dun quite capture the 3D effect of our residential landsape. I wonder what other vertical cities like Tokyo has in terms of Web2.0 real estate search engines.. hmm..

UK seeks to ban and criminalize companies that engage in creation of fake marketing materials like flogs, splogs or other websites and claiming them to be users/ customers’ creations. Under charges of misrepresentation, social reviews will now be regulated to ensure higher authenticity. From TimesOnline:

Online consumer reviews are playing an ever greater role in shaping shopping habits, with websites such as TripAdvisor for the travel industry being seen as increasingly influential.

However, a string of businessman in the UK and the US have been caught posing as supposedly independent customers in an attempt to boost sales.

A recent investigation found that poorly rated travel establishments could lift their reputations from one to four stars in hours by posting fictional positive reviews.

Could this be the kneejerk response following Edelman PR agency’s unsuccessful forays into blogging for their clients, particularly “WalmartGate”? And more recently Pay Per Post’s brush with the FTC guys as covered here, here and here?

What next? Is this the beginning of an avalanche of legislation by govts around the world? Will Big Brother be stepping more to regulate the blogosphere?

Church of the Customer blog has the lowdown on user-generated advertisements making it to the Super Bowl this year. But first, see this CBS News article for a view from mainstream media.

This is not good news. The shift from professionally produced to user-generated advertising makes us poorer in both economic and cultural terms. The arrival of user-created commercials at Super Bowl XLI represents the American Idolization of traditional entertainment — the degeneration of professional content into a “talent show” for amateurs.

In complement, CBS was really mournful in the rest of the reporting, with phrases like “the professional creator is being “disintermediated.”, the “tsumani” of downward pressure on wages created by new technology” because amateur productions cost a minscule fraction of professional ones.

Amid all the hoopla of traditional advertising agencies dying or making a renaissance with this new channel of ad-making, I found this excerpt from Church of the Customer insightful:

Madison Avenue is not in the business of creating fans — it’s in the business of widespread message distribution. But Mad Ave’s influence and energy are fading not just because technology-assisted creativity is commoditizing their business, but because citizen-created content doesn’t care about New York’s infatuation with status and positioning debates. The power centers of influence are shifting to Google’s server farms and thousands of online communities. The fans have co-opted Madison Avenue’s work. Super Bowl ads are a circus freak show, and that’s how about much influence they carry because the minutiae of product, brand and company discussions are being shaped in online forums, which Google follows like a studious court reporter. The points made in those forums are often carried forward to offline discussions, where they’re added to the mixing bowl discussions of personal experiences of people and ultimately, their purchase decisions. There’s your advertising.

Change is good if its for the better. The dynamic range of quality for amateur productions is undoubtedly way higher than professional counterparts. But feeling apologetic for slow-moving dinosaurs in the advertising world who do not understand the new realities of social media today is wrong.

Who feels sorry for retailers with great products who cannot afford the huge fees of ad agencies? Who feels sorry for the customers who pay inflated prices? Why feel sorry for traditional advertising when you can use web forums, blogs, podcasts to reach out and interact with your consumers directly and more personally?

An example of a user-gen ad here

The title of Joe Trippi’s book was one that really reaffirmed my faith in social media on the web. Joe Trippi was the campaign manager of Howard Dean, the unsuccessful 2004 Democratic presidential nominee for 2004, who was credited to be the first presidential and perhaps first political, candidate to use the Internet to raise his profile and funds significantly, with the Web.

Now, add the the 2008 presidential race. Today, Barack Obama launches his presidential campaign. His website is immensely integrated with social media. If you don’t know who Obama is, you might easily have mistaken his website to be another new Web 2.0 startup, complete with a blog that updates his events, speeches and appearances. There is a webcast earlier today of his announcement in the home state of Illinois where he’s a senator. His website encourages visitors to

There are highly identifiable badges, buttons and links to popular social media sites such as social networking site Facebook, photo sharing site Flickr, No1 video site Youtube and he even asks pple to create their own “parties” (more for rallying supporters than drinking). Trust me, he has been doing this for quite a while. I am a “friend” of Obama based on our Facebook profile linkups.
His campaign team obviously understands the power of the internet in reaching out effectively to the electorate, especially the young voters who might just be the swing voters this time as Obama inspires the politically disenfranchised and disillusioned voters who are sick of the mudslinging divisiveness of the “You’re either with us or against us” Bush era. Obama brings an invigorating and uplifting message. Even if he might not wind, his message is more important than the man himself - to let the people take back politics from the politicians. Using social media, get your friends, family involved in the process again of grassroots activism.

Its not just Barack Obama. The 2008 Democratic presidential nomination has seen Hilary Clinton announce her candidacy (click to see videos) on her website and video too in addition to network TV. Also John Edwards announced his candidacy with video, later uploaded on Youtube, amidst a backdrop of debris in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.

There is no better way for the Internet to demonstrate its democratized ways than through Democratic politics. The web revolution conquers the political realm and goodbye and good night, television.

Regular readers of this blog will know of the Entrepreneur27 Singapore initiative started by myself last year. We return this Feb 15 (next Thursday) with our 4th edition titled “You Are the Media”. Ahh yeah, I know, we “borrowed” that from the Time magazine folks.

I want to thank Ridzuan from NTU who has blogged a “5 Reasons why you should come…” kind of pitch for us, hence saving my work for marketing. =) He’s not the only guy and I want to thank the other bloggers for helping the word of mouth effort. Hat-tip to U-Zyn too at Ping.sg. We have 130+ signups since we started the wiki early this week. 70 more spaces to go, guys. Cant resist a commercial pitch here..

Sign up here (no entry fee). More on event here.

This time round, we have a better-planned unconference with 3 concurrent tracks. I pray it works and attendees find the range of sessions useful and not disruptive. We continue to unearth the more exciting Web2.0 startups in little Singapore, those with crazy ideas that should really sink or swim, as evaluated in front of our live audience. There’s no better way to crash-test your business model in front of the actual consumers themselves — young university students and bored young professionals with lots of free time spent surfing the web at home, in dorms and in offices. If you are keen to sharpen your sense of wit and sarcasm and practise your VC analytical skills, come sit in. Its really kinda like American Idol where the audience members are all Simon Cowells, Randy Jacksons and Paula Abduls.

Then there’s always the user-generated sessions which grants you a podium to speak freely and get your 15-30minutes of facetime in front of an audience. Talk about anything you want as long as its relevant to web2.0. Like whether Youtube is an one-off startup opportunity, whether Internet TV is a misnomer due to bandwidth issues, how to identify and find good PHP/ Django programmers, how to design a better widget, tricks to make loads of Adsense money or building the nest big thing blah blah… Eclectic topics and equally eccentric personalities is what we like. Sometimes, the crazy ideas help us get our best thinking done.

The final track is a new creation. Called “branded conversations”, we hope to let the corporates eat the E27 pie too and talk to our audience. In Singapore especially, our fledgling Web 2.0 industry means most of the subject matter experts with industry experience work for someone else now rather than for themselves. So, we hope to bring these people to share some frontline stories of battling with real customers, industry partners and share their strategic viewpoints from within their corporations. We think its also a good chance for entrepreneurs to have a direct line to talk partnering with the biggies without the hassle of calling contacts and scheduling. Join in the pre-event chatter now at SgEntrepreneurs here. The $500M Interactive Digital Media (IDM) fund guys from MDA will also be around to chat.

If you dig Web 2.0, what are you waiting for? Did i mention free dinner too if u come early? But dun leave till you contribute.

Update: The Google SEC filing and registration of the Youtube equity beneficiaries can be seen here (see page 5 onwards). Apologize for the sensationalistic title. Its not really a “cashout per se” but a “registration for (potential) resale”. 

From Reuters, this is breaking news from Web 2.0 Central in Silicon Valley.

Two of YouTube’s founders stand to divide shares of stock now valued at around $650 million, Web search leader Google Inc. said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday… Chad Hurley, chief executive of the online video sharing phenomenon YouTube, received 694,087 of Google common stock worth around $326 million, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Steve Chen gets a similar amount of $300M+.

Jawad Karim, the 3rd co-founder walks away with $64 million.

Sequoia Capital (VC Backers) - $442 million.

Julie Supan (YouTube’s principal spokeswoman) - $4.8 million. (Note to self: become a spokesman)

This coincides with the launch of Shycast, whose invite email I received yesterday. It seems I had forgotten when I first signed up for their service. A quick read through the email shows it came from Techcrunch who featured it a while back as a social network connecting people and brands. From the Shycast beta invite email:

Hi everyone, you’re receiving this because you’re on the beta notification request list for Shycast…and it’s showtime! Thank you so much for your help.

As you read on TechCrunch, Shycast is a community of people and brands; the brands we work with actively seek to connect with people from the Shycast community. We encourage them to listen to people’s ideas, and think of creative and exciting ways to engage the community over time. We imagine that when brands can see and engage the people who really love their stuff, in a safe place on common terms, great things might happen. It’s a big experiment in the way companies and people talk to each other…we’re not sure what’s going to happen but we’re glad you’re joining us in finding out.

Shycast’s unique positioning in the lucrative marketing industry is worth a study:

But Shycast does differ slightly from other forays in one significant way. Instead of going after traditional advertising, PR, direct response, or online marketing budgets, it is targeting promotional budgets, an area of marketing that typically has been relegated to the coupon and sweepstakes industry…

…It’s an interesting strategy, because most big media companies ignore promotional spending. During the 1980s when markers began upping their promotion budgets due mainly to the rise in so-called “trade” promotions, and it looked like promotional budgets were beginning to cannibalize on traditional advertising, most big media companies developed promotional marketing units to tap into the craze. But in recent years, traditional media outlets have backed away from the strategy. While plenty of integrated media deals have a promotional component, they generally are not earmarked against promotional budgets.

The full article from MediaPost is here. IKEA has essentially endorsed Shycast’s approach and is actively getting their customer to produce videos based on bed-making.

Looks like 2006 might really mark a turn in the tide of marketing with the power balance tilting back to the consumers with social media backed by the youtube phenom. I am working on a similar project and experimenting with a live marketing campaign. Lets see how that turns out.

This one is for the geeks of Singapore. “Those who code shall rule the world” appears to be the mantra that drives many other Barcamps around the world. In Singapore, we might be late to jump on this bandwagon but we are coming there.

Harish lamented the lack of geeks at the Barcamp event. I agree. I might not be a geek but I do know what Barcamp is not - another event for business types like myself. We need diversity of social events for the coders, hackers and all forms and shapes of Read the rest of this entry »

Presumptious me suggested MDA was wrong even before they officially launched their new $500M fund at the IDM Jamboree. Fearful I will end up with mud on my face, I bravely went for the event but nothing I saw made me change my mind. The event is ripe for an “Extreme Makeover” series featuring event launches of govt initatives.

My friend Justin has a terrific, blow-by-blow, review of the event here.. Great for those of you who did not go. Like he said, government agencies seem to love keywords. Short of plastering Web 3.0 over the entire auditorium, they relied on new catchphrases invented by their own staff (?), such as the initiatives of “i.Rock”, “i.Jam”, FutureScape”, “Flagship2B”. I think I came away feeling more stupid after the event because I don’t understand these terms at all. That gnawing buzz in my head told me it might be due to the painful need to read the wordy, mambo-jumbo description that came with those buzzwords. Like what many people including myself think of those hip-hop wannabes in PAP, I will say the same thing to MDA — Don’t act cool. Thats poserish.

For many of the online community that wondered whether the words Web 3.0 was coined by SGEntrepreneurs, the answer came from the event MC of the panel discussion called “Interactive Markets and Trends”. He held up Seraja.com as an example of a startup with a business model that he introduces as a Web3.0 startup. Now, I heard this myself, along with almost a hundred other people in this panel discussion. Someone might have the video, if we want to do some digital forensics study of this. Read the rest of this entry »

Riding on my “Tomorrow-ed” post earlier, also here, some good friends of mine, Chandra and his linuxNUS community and Ming Yeow, from The Digital Movement, are going to launch the first-ever BarCamp Singapore meetup on Jan 20. I thought its time for private folks like us to step away from the government loudspeakers and propaganda machine for a while to think deeply within our own circles and focus on building real products. Hence my shameless pitch here.

For those clueless on what BarCamp is,

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees should give a demo, a session, or help with one. All presentions are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Barcamp is one of many community events run by and for programmers and all other geeks in Silicon Valley. The concept has been replicated in many other countries around the world and you can find out more by clicking here. Other examples include SuperHappyDev House. I am not a programmer so my knowledge runs shallow. But for programmers in Singapore who have not succumbed to the doom and gloom of senior programmers and comp engineers in Singapore’s forlorn IT industry, the BarCamp Singapore initiative might be an eye-opener to passionate folks within our little red dot of an island. At these BarCamps, attendees discuss the latest tools and tricks of programming, design, code up fresh new applications on the fly or simply discuss anything that relates to their passion and hobbies. Common conversation centre around the Ruby on Rails, Django, MySQL or the other fascinating open-source stuff that I have lost track of but are all might cool. Call them naive or passionate, but come join us and get ready to contribute and share.

For interested folks, go to the BarCamp wiki and learn more before you sign up. Its a very attendee-driven event. The program is literally what you make of it. Thats what we call an unconference. =)