I stumbled across piqniq.jp in a Google Adsense banner on my own site. Google apparently is capable once in a blue moon of delivering ads relevant to the blog's “Long Tail of Web2.0” theme. I don’t have much to say about this site except how commonplace social networking features have become. Piqniq could have been executed with plain forum software like vbulletin, ipb, or phpbb without significant loss of functionality. You could still exchange information and make friends on a forum. However, the emphasis on profiles and the ability accumulate friends – seems to make the experience a lot more human. I wonder how long it will be before we see turnkey social networking software.

Anyhow, being a foreigner in a strange land, especially a homogenous and somewhat xenophobic place like Japan can be a bit lonely. Some of the discussions seem really useful such as finding a good English speaking dentist in Tokyo. (This is the kind of stuff MojoPages will be focusing on in the US.) Check it out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Whether MojoPages can challenge or supplant Yelp is another question. (“Complement” seems to be answer. Read on.) Yelp has done a great job of building a community of credible reviewers. Though Yelp’s very name is suggestive of a relationship to the yellow pages, Yelp positions itself effectively as “Real People. Real Reviews.” The problem with the notion of “community” is mostly getting credible and persuasive reviews and enough people to sign up to write them. Much as people like to parade the power of social networking, outside of the big sites like MySpace and Facebook, your friends don’t really sign up. As long as you can draw enough individuals, give them a means to express their personality, and offer an infrastructure for “social networking” it will eventually happen. Yelp wisely focused on drawing hip urbanites –- a high proportion of them opinionated women – and having them focus on key subjects such as food and entertainment. With this enthusiastic core, Yelp has a growth path for more types of people and subjects.

So it is against this background that we must evaluate MojoPages. As MojoPages is under pre-alpha wraps, we have to piece together their position. From the VEOH video glimpse of the website, the functionality seems to mirror Yelp’s. Not that Yelp is necessarily the target of plagiarism. The functionality of good social review site is a platonic ideal of sorts. The aethestic seems to be a bit more masculine. Yelp definitely has a feminine feel -- that’s a good thing as women tend to be more creative and thoughtful reviewers and make a necessary base for any healthy social function. The MojoPages entrepreneurs are pushing the yellow pages analogy really hard and suggesting that they will target services such as movers that currently lack information “transparency.” Other currently “opaque” services would be auto repair, drycleaning, kennels, dentists, etc. In Washington, DC, we rely on the Washingtonian magazine or the Consumer Checkbook for these reviews. These publications send out surveys, compile results, and publishing them periodically in special issues. MojoPages would carve out this niche and serve a space complementary to Yelp’s. I can see them colliding someday but that’s a long way off from this early market.

Perhaps they will pay for reviews like Yelp did to bootstrap. They certainly seem intent on building buzz with their blog and video activity. I find it annoying but you can’t blame them for seeking a big marketing ROI on the slim marginal cost of taping themselves doing silly things. CEO John Carder on video reminds me of Owen Wilson. The rest of the team comprises Jager Fornal, Ray Drasnin, Rand Pipp, Rodney Rumford, Frank Asaro, and Pam Bickel.

Read the rest of this entry »

The tagline is taken from Tractis, so I can’t claim credit for it, but I do wholeheartedly agree. At the same time, the legal system and the rules we follow ought to evolve gingerly for the sake of societal continuity. But while the legal system is largely monolithic, there are pockets of innovation or specialization that niche communities adopt ahead of the rest. Examples in the United States would be the business saavy Delaware Chancellory Courts that draws companies to incorporate and litigate there, the expeditious U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas that draws plaintiffs in patent cases, and the arbitration system that binds brokerages, their employees and account holders in disputes.

In Europe, a talented band of rebels -- Negonation -- is developing Tractis as an alternative platform –- technical and legal –- for negotiating, writing, executing, and litigating contracts for transnational transactions. (David Blanco is CEO; Manolo Santo developer; and Diego Lafuente architect. Other members of the development team are Juanse Pérez, Juanjo Bazán and Juan Lupión.) Software licenses, rental agreements, warranties -- or more complex contracts -- are examples of the types of contracts they see Tractis handling.

Justice for Internet

Our enemy is the current transnational justice system.
It is slow, expensive, complex, closed, uninteroperable and centralized.
It is unfair for most of us and obsolete for the Internet.
At Negonation, we want to create a better alternative.
A fast, cheap, simple, open, interoperable and decentralized system.
A system that is fair for most of us and for the Internet nation.

Befitting disruptive rebels, Negonation is building their technical platform using Ruby on Rails. Tractis software will enable collaborative authoring, versioning and execution of contracts. Disputes will be arbitrated outside the courts. Tractis relies on the legal sanction of e-signatures and binding arbitration in each of the member nations.
Read the rest of this entry »

When we think “CRM,” we think software like Seibel and Salesforce.com. These packages help corporations manage sales relationships. This traditional CRM operates behind the walls of the company without customer knowledge.

Another kind of CRM that we don’t normally categorize as such is the public discussion forum where companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and Quicken enable customers to discuss and get help for their products. Forums also serve as a channel for developers to receive feedback. (Yet another channel for feedback is through user and developer blogs.)

Feedback2.0, of France, seeks to carve out the feedback function by recasting it with a digg-like presentation and voting (and a statistical dashboard and relationship management on the backend). Feedback 20 launched a beta back in June 2006. Now it has two showcase pilot customers using the CRM platform live: the european search engine Exalead and the employment service JobMeeters. A related product positioned for internal use -- within the company or between defined stakeholders -- is Project.

If you’re accustomed to digg, the feature set doesn’t seem that revolutionary. The novelty here is packaging those ideas for the corporate domain. JotSpot lassoed the wiki for corporate use (and got bought by Google recently). The main sales hurdle facing Feedback2.0 is getting corporate customers to sign on to the notion of dealing with their customer feedback in public. Most are happy to answer emails or 800 phone calls. Hanging the laundry in public is a new proposition. Technology vendors have always been on board with their semi-public forums because personal technical support is expensive and the forums leverage community to offload the effort. They are also in competitive markets that make them necessarily receptive to feedback. Also negative feedback doesn’t seem so bad when it’s buried in the sea of genuine support issues.

Will corporations want to carve out feedback and make it a public focal point of potential negative criticism? My guess is that the same usual suspects, unconventional businesses and technology vendors, will be the easiest to sell. The typical big company that carefully grooms its image - and sells slower changing products or services - will be a hard sell.

The other issue is getting companies to sincerely buy into the program. Technology is only half the battle. ERP veterans should know the importance of melding the culture to the software. On the Exalead feedback page, someone named “Administrator” asked about the availability of an API back on August 23rd to silence from the company. Eleven other people voted on the feedback but the company never bothered to respond. That certainly looks bad.

The Project application faces similar issues and offers perhaps more reward. The French employment agency Ethique & Recrutement shows how Project can be used to hold an open dialogue with stakeholders. The result looks like a brainstorming session. I think where people stakeholders haven’t been normally solicited for input, such a system could be welcome. The hardsell is situations where information is politicized and hoarded. That’s the same problem faced by enterprise knowledgement management in general.
Read the rest of this entry »