Friday, November 28, 2008

Past4Ward Licences Rome Reborn

Last week I blogged about Google Earth starting to explore the 4th Dimension by adding a special layer on Google Earth featuring ancient Rome. A few people had the idea they'd seen it somewhere before, like my chum from Ambling, Al Kronos:

AlKronos @vjburns Looks like the Virtual Roma DVD that was made a few years ago (got a copy somewhere). I assume they've decided to "re-purpose" it.

Well, he was absolutely right according to this article on Virtual Worlds News:

Past4Ward Licenses Rome Reborn for Educational Virtual World

Past4Ward announced this week that it had licensed Rome Reborn for use in a supplemental educational platform, games, and virtual worlds. I haven't written anything about Rome Reborn because, so far, it's been more about mapping and building a detailed virtual re-creation of the ancient city, but I've been following it with a lot of interest. As it stands, Rome Reborn includes over 7,000 buildings and covers more than 13 square miles of a city modeled strongly on research. You can check it out in a recently added Google Earth layer.

Past4Ward plans to incorporate it into a product for middle and high school students "featuring game play similar to a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) title as well as other Virtual World techniques that will be integral parts of the design, which will map to existing curriculum standards."

As the license for video games is exclusive, Past4Ward also plans to make it available for licensing by game developers and publishers. The educational project appears to be in conjunction with Past Perfect Productions, which is also working with the Virtuality Group and Parco Colosseo to launch 3D Rewind Rome, an "edutainment center" near the Colosseum based on the Rome Reborn model.

“We are extremely excited to be working with Past4Ward in providing the historical architecture that will become a new format to teach kids about ancient Rome,” Joel Myers, CEO, Past Perfect Productions, said in a statement. “A video game of this nature, used in classrooms, combines a stimulating and entertaining learning process with the strengths and familiarity of communications tools students use in their everyday lives, from PlayStations to the Internet.”

New, or old, it still looks good

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Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Meta Crunch Continues: Reuters bails out too

After the global Credit Crunch, recession kicks in in the metaverse as well. We've seen this one coming a year ago though. After the media hype in 2006/2007 brought dozens of companies into the virtual world of Second Life, the brain drain started in august 2007 when wanna be hotshot marketeers failed to digg how Virtual Worlds worked and companies bailed out of their virtual ventures.

Last week we saw Google pull the plug on its shortlived Lively project and this week saw the bankrupcy of Sun, a Japanese Second Life development company and the Register reports that Reuters pulling out their embedded reporter Adam Pasick. The Reuters Second Life website has been silent since september 30th. This probably won't be a big surprise. The buzz in and around Second Life has died down over the past months. Even I find it hard to find Second Life related news to blog and am straying away to other worlds and I'm not the only one. Here's a selection of my former reading list:

  • Ambling in Second Life has been quiet for four weeks now.
  • Digado has been dead for two months as well.
  • The Belgian Second Life Crew has made its last post in July.
  • Second Life Blogo, once operated by Second Life Development Company Lost in the Magic Forest has even ceased to exist.
  • Dutch SL Community site NL0031 (formerly known as Second Life NL) has been silent since July.

A number of CEO's from virtual worlds have said to me that Second Life may have done the Virtual World industry a bad service while trying to ride that wave of media and corporate attention which now results in not just a fading hype, but the start of a real Meta Crunch. They may have a point, but in my opinion this is a needed shake-out. The space is getting too overpopulated with hundreds of startups trying to get a piece of the pie without bringing innovation into the arena. We've passed the "Yet another Social Network" stadium and moved into the "yet Another Social World" phase. Somehow the picture of the "Dungeon Master" came to mind, a wise old game-guide. We might need one to show us the way in the Metaverse and help us out of trouble.

It's turning into a grim story now, with the Metaverse being sucked up into a black hole. The universe had a big bang, exploded, expanded and now contracts again and diminishes into yet another very very niche market. Chris Williams at The Register put it quite boldly:

Last one to leave, turn off the flying penis

I don't think it is that drastic. It's time for a good old shakedown. Get rid of the cowboys that dream of getting rich faster than you can make instant coffee. There's tons of schools, universities and other institutions out there in the Metaverse (including Second Life) who are still exploring, still paving the way for the masses in finding cool, real and usefull applications of Virtual World technology. We just have to be patient. Explore, accept failure, rejoice in small victories. Keep it going. We'll get there, but have a long road ahead in which we must innovate.

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Meltingdots starts Weblin-based-services

Meltingdots, a Tokyo based company which specialize in virtual worlds, has supported many companies to get a Second Life presence (for example, Suruga Bank which we blogged June 2007 at MindBlizzard).

Recently they partnered with Weblin, one of the web based avatar chats, and started to offer several interesting services using Weblin. Recently they have live-streamed a video of a concert. Fans who couldn't attend the concert joined together at a website as Weblin avatars and enjoy chatting with other fans while viewing the streaming-video.

I asked Hiroshi Asaeda, CEO of Meltingdots, about Weblin and the future of Second Life.

Q:Now you're focusing in Weblin. What's the advantage of Weblin?

Easier to join, on a web browser. As we were working on Second Life, I noticed the most important part for SL wasn't 3D, but real time communication. SL still has a huge barrier to join, and I thought Weblin was one solution which could bring in more normal people (meaning computer users who are not geeks) to experience online communication. Using Weblin is just like using Skype, and is easy to download for these people. Also, Japan has a culture of not wanting to show their real identities, and prefers to use avatars. As long as people aren't desperate to use cool 3D designed offices, I thought it was good enough to communicate using a web browser.


How was the Weblin + live streaming?

The Weblin live streaming with Denpa worked out pretty well. Even though it was a daytime real club event, the people who lived away from Tokyo attended the virtual live.
Although we had some trouble in the live streaming itself, we thought there are huge opportunities to do events with Weblin.

What do you predict about Second Life or other virtual worlds in 2009?

Meltingdots still thinks Second Life to be one of the most innovative social services in the world. No one is coming even close to them, but I think they need a visionary so the users will keep believing them. What we first need to do before using Second Life is to have more people get used to using avatars as themselves. Weblin is a good way to start out, and when the users get bored with the flat interface of the 2D web, that's when the 3D virtual world business begins. We will continue SL until this day comes.


Disclosure:Meltingdots is the sponsor of Avatar Watch, which is my main blog.

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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sun goes bankrupt.

Sun inc, one of the leading companies focusing Second Life business in Japan goes bankrupt.

On Nov 16, Sun's CEO Okui was arrested for helping a lawyer go abroad. The lawyer, who seems to be the owner of Sun inc actually, was evading tax. Then a notice about bankrupcy was posted on Sun's website on Nov 21, stating Sun's negative networth is at least US$5 million.

Sun had released Second Life viewer for PC and mobile(Sun Inc Second Life Browser Viewer (Beta)), and was trying to built e-commerce platform called "Tokyo Zero" in Second Life(it enables users to buy real bags, clothing by Linden Dollars).



Sun's got funding from Acrodea(mobile solution provider), Hakuhodo DIY Mediapartners(agency), Fullcast Markting and Ngi(venture capital which is also the owner of 3Di inc).

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Saturday, November 15, 2008

OpenSIM based worlds - Legend City, DreamWorld

Last week I visited 2 virtual worlds which are based on the OpenSIM platform, Legend City and Dreamworld.

Legend City
First one is "Legend City". To get an account, visit the site below.


Legend City has its own currency "Legend Dollar"(200 Legend Dollar is equal to US$1). I could find its KIOSK in Second Life, paid 2000 Linden Dollar and got 1333 Legend Dollar.
secondlife://Legend%20City/119/223/23/


After that, i downloaded the viewer and launched. Here's fa irst snapshot of it.


Default avatars are nice.


When i visited Legend City, it's difficult to walk straight or to stay upon floor. One interesting thing is popular stores in Second life have their own stores in Legend City(Simone, for example). This world may attract fashion lovers.



Dream World
Second world on the list is "Dream World" in China.

http://www.3ddw.com/

梦幻世界-三维3D虚拟世界娱乐交友社区 via kwout



The first snapshot of its client viewer.


Dreamworld isn't very large yet, I found about 10 Sims on the map.


This is a lounge for English speakers.


This exibition hall might be inspired by last summers' Beijing Olympics.


Ni Hao!


When I visited this world, I couldn't find anyone. I visited at prime time and there is no time difference between Japan and China.

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Entering the 4th Dimension - by Google

In the past months I've blogged quite a few times about the use virtual worlds in visualising and understanding history. One of these examples was IBM's recreation of the Forbidden City in China and I also blogged how cool it would be to walk more of these Ancient Sites.

One of the things I wrote when speaking of these ancient sites was;

"From about the day I signed on to Ancient Sites I've had the believe that this had the potential to change our Educational system in the way which students could globally interact, learn languages, geography, history, art and you name it."

There are many ancient sites I would like to visit. In real life I have walked across the ruins of Olympia, of Mycaena and Sparta but one place I like in particular is ancient Rome. Currently I act as a Gladiator in the online game Gladiatus (by the way, I changed my handle from VeeJay to Verritus in this game) so Iam pretty excited of yet another Google thingy. Although I got pretty negative on Google yesterday in their quest for world dominance, this is a cool thing as they bring the 4th Dimension into Google Earth. Here's the full story from Thomas Clayburn at Information Week.

The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, on Wednesday invited the hoi polloi to visit Rome in Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Earth.

Not modern Rome, but the Eternal City as scholars believe it was in 320 A.D., based on the Rome Reborn model constructed by the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities.

"What fascinates me most about this project is the accuracy of the details of the three-dimensional models," said Alemanno in a guest post on the Google blog. "It's such a great experience to be able to admire the monuments, streets, and buildings of Ancient Rome with a virtual camera that lets you go inside and see all the architectural details. From the Colosseum to the Ludus Magnus, from the Forum Caesar to the Arch of Septimius Severus, from the Rostra to the Basilica Julia, you can get up close to them all."

To view the new Ancient Rome 3-D layer in Google Earth, open the "Gallery" folder in the "Layers" panel and select "Ancient Rome 3-D."

This marks the first time an ancient city has been incorporated into Google Earth. "Going back in time presented some new challenges, such as how to handle the ancient terrain which was clearly different than modern day," explained Google Earth product manager Bruce Polderman in a blog post. "We needed to ensure that modern day imagery, terrain, and buildings didn't interfere with the ancient Rome model so we opted for a simple overlay."

In conjunction with the debut of the Ancient Rome 3-D layer, Google is sponsoring a curriculum competition for K-12 educators. Teachers interested in participating can sign up, waive assorted rights, and submit a lesson plan and supporting materials in the hope of being among the top six entries. Prizes include an Apple MacBook laptop, a digital classroom projector, a digital camera, a 3-D navigation mouse, $500 in gift cards to Target or Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), and an engraved Google "Top Educator" plaque.

Below is a video demonstration produced by Google:

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Scienta est Potentia, Google est Scienta

Does Tessier Ashpool SA ring a bell? Well, it should. It is the name of one of the mega corporations in William Gibson's "Neuromancer" In a quite dystopian setting it is mega corporations that have real power on earth (and beyond).

In our present day we also see the rise of mega corporations, large industrial conglomerates spreading their tentacles into this world. For now, they are just companies, focussed on profits, but according to trendwatcher Adjiedj Bakas who predicts the future will see global mega companies turning into sovereign states.

Google Flu Trends

With the above in mind, I just came across a report on a new Google service which kind of scares me.

GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials "track sickness"."

Flu Trends" uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: "GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week."

Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others.

Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: "One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... as early warning signal for flu activity."

Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE's chief executive vows: "From a technological perspective, it is the beginning."

Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible with collective intelligence."

Read Full Report at Drudge Report.

Scientia est potentia

In plain English this means knowledge is power. The Google octopus is slowly speading its tentacles into every corner of digital data, creating access to unprecedented amounts of corporate and private knowledge. Creating access, not only opening up access to this knowledge to the public, but also acquiring this knowledge itself more or less, comprising it into a collective intelligence.

Does this mean that when Google holds the key to the knowledge of the world, Google holds the key to the seats of power in this world as well?

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential:

This specific sentence should turn on the alarmbells. We've fought so hard to tear down the walls of domination from Microsoft, sueing them in every way to prevent them from gaining market domination. Yet when Google is working closely with governments, will it make those governments blind to the level of domination Google already has?

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I am becoming my avatar (2): Big Stage

Last month I wrote an article on the Philips Design probes, titled I am becoming my avatar, in which I said:

In Second Life we often see people trying to shape their avatar as much as possible to their Real Life appearance -kinda counts for beach babes and sixpack Joe's I guess - or the other way around, people shaping their avatar in their ideal sort of way and then try to become like this ultimate adonis in real life too. With this combined technology Philips will provide the change to bring this a step closer. Soon we will be able to project those textures and skins from Second Life on our own skins and clothing.

In this article I focussed on the way we take virtual stuff and try to add them to our real life selves, but the other way around works as well of course, which I tried in June last year at Avatar Island in which I did a testdrive of the CyberExtruder software.

The avatarisation has a new chapter though, which is called Big Stage. Mashable did an excellent report on them:

Big Stage, a personal avatar virtualization service introduced in beta form earlier this year, has its official launch today. The company has marked the moment with more choices for use of their own unique “@ctor,” as well as an updated media player and social sharing functions.

The so-called “@ctor” is a user’s 3D facial representation, which the company calls “The Digital You.” The user can subsequently insert this representation into a myriad of places, like still imagery, social networks, video games, virtual worlds, music videos, TV clips, and even advertisements. An @ctor can be animated through the Big Stage Media Player.

Since launch, the founders of Big Stage have made it a point to emphasize the backend power that goes into the making of an @ctor. The process involves up to three digital photographs taken from different angles of your face, which must be uploaded and put through what the Big Stage team regards as “advanced stereo reconstruction.”

Read Full article at Mashable.

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Linden Lab writes out 10K innovation contest

Linden Lab are offering $10K for projects that improve real life through virtual world.

Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life, just announced that they are launching a $10,000 (USD) "Linden Prize" for "an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world." The criteria include:

  • Work in Second Life that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life.
  • Distinctive, original work using Second Life that clearly demonstrates high quality, execution, function, aesthetics and technical sophistication.
  • Work that has the capacity for inspiring and influencing future development, knowledge, creativity, and collaboration both inside and outside of Second Life.

The price money offered is a substantial increase from previous initiatives (which in my opinion have been nothing but shameless crowdmining projects), including USC's "Public Good" challenge that offered $1,200 to three winning projects and the Foundation for Rich Content which has been providing small grants of $80 for projects that enhance Second Life in some way.

However, with 10K in the offering, I doubt it will be enough to attract larger real life businesses to compete and in the passing make a difference. For individual entrepeneurs and Metaverse evangelists, this might be a daring opportunity though.

Entries for this innovation contest are due January 19. See the Linden Prize site for further details.

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Saturday, November 08, 2008

Step into the Arena: Gladiatus

Yesterday I signed up at yet another online game. This one's called Gladiatus. In this MMO you log into ancient Rome and become a heroic Gladiator.


Gladiatus is a continuously evolving Massively Multiplayer Online Game where you play as one of the many gladiators of Ancient Rome. Although not mandatory, players generally compete in trying to become the highest ranked character in the Arena and/or the specific game server. Gladiatus was released in May 2007, with an online forum being launched at the same time. The forum still exists to serve as a media for in-game discussions, help and etc. [Wikipedia]

The game has two main areas, first of which the city of Rome where you'll find the inn (where you can get quests), training grounds, shops and the Arena where you can challenge other Gladiators in your claim for fame.



The other area in Gladiatus is the great outback where you can fight bandits, thieves, wolves, do mountain expeditions to gain experience and find artefacts.

It's pretty basic when compared to the slick 3D worlds out there right now, but I like the theme. Watch out, it has the potential be a little addictive. There's several thousands of players out there to fight and you can find me here on server 3.

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Crunch back with Visual CV

A Credit Crunch and recession do funny things with people. All of a sudden we are all looking for a new job. Well, I personally am not, but professional networking sites like LinkedIn report an increase of 25% in activity and new connections made.

On the other hand, Headhunters seem to turn down their activity a little. Over the past yerar I received at least two annoying calls a month, but it's been pretty quiet over the last two months. I guess it's pretty much a US thing to use LinkedIn for finding and hiring people, here in the Netherlands we kinda stick to old fashioned, not networked sites like Monsterboard or Nationale Vacaturebank.

Anyway, if you're looking out for a new job, you might want to check out a new startup called Visual CV. It opened up for beta in early 2008 and offers a whole range of cool features to pimp your resume with video presentations and so on.

"...VisualCV is a clever idea to update the traditional resume. It also allows applicants to stand out in the job market, and cuts out unnecessary steps (phone and in-person interviews) that make it more difficult for employers to see a body of work. Plus, it is entirely free..."

Read full article at Killer Startups.

One of the example resumes that stands out of course is the one of Barack Obama, the president elect of the United States of America. One slight comment, analysts say Barack is the first internet president, with all his neat web 2.0 ventures, like on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the Obama Blog. His resume is a little outdated though, it still states Presidential Candidate. However, a striking example of how leveraging the power of internet can help you get a new job.

Visual CV Barack Obama

One example down the road, we find the Visual CV of Torley Wong, better known as Torley Linden or @torley, neatly wedged in between Barack Obama and former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki in the "Influencer" category at Visual CV. Not sure if this is on the same level, but one could say Torley is the people's president of Second Life, or officially Resident Enlightenment Manager at Linden Lab.


Well, time to get out there and pimp that resume.It's easy to do, create then share.


Some more press coverage from early 2008:

"...New to this field is VisualCV. With an online resume at VisualCV, you can showcase your work in a visually appealing way. Although VisaulCV may sound like they're just jobster, version 2, take note - VisualCV already has 50 participating companies onboard receiving VisualCVs and their names may surprise you...

...VisualCV offers a unique feature that lets you track who views your profile after you've shared it, but unlike resumes you post on other job sites, VisualCV's members have more control over their resume's privacy - there are no backdoors for recruiters or marketers to access your resume..."

Read full article at Read Write Web.

VisualCV, a free service for individuals offered by a Reston, Va., start-up, lets job seekers create an online résumé that can include work samples, references' video testimonials and a visual for accomplishments, such as a chart showing surpassed sales targets...

Read full article at Wall Street Journal.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Plaxo looking for the People Layer

A few weeks ago I made a few remarks about the new fanpages on plaxo (currently in beta) on twitter, which got picked up by John McCrea, head of Marketing at Plaxo. About the same time I blogged Yahoo's oneConnect in which I wondered what the differences were with services like Plaxo.
In my book, Plaxo didn't have the best of starts, as it carried the smell of Napster. Way back in 2004 David Coursey wrote a (2nd) article on Plaxo, titled "Plaxo Reconsidered" at eWeek.com.

The big issue was that one of Plaxos co-founders, now departed, was also a co-founder of Napster. That company, of course, was basically about enabling people to steal other peoples intellectual property. My own opinion is that some Napster people should have ended up in jail. After the Napster meltdown, Plaxo was positioned as the "next big thing" for this ex-Napster exec. That publicity helped Plaxo raise $20 million in venture money and gave the new company more credibility than it would otherwise have had.

I don't want to get into the Napster story here, and just concentrate on Plaxo. I think the Napster background serves well in positioning the founders as being early experts in networking and understanding the power of virals. What I wonder though is, what were the initial thoughts on Plaxo? What was it that the founders envisioned. What was Plaxo supposed to do, or grow into? And what's still standing of that original conception?

Although I was not there at the time (as I joined in 2006), the original concept was to help people stay connected by leveraging the power of a networked address book. But not just another online address book, one that synced with the various tools you used, like Microsoft Outlook or the Mac address book. The vision is still pretty much the same, but the challenges of staying connected have expanded in a world of many different social apps. That’s what gave rise to Pulse, the first social web aggregator, which brings your address book to life, with feeds from your connections from all over the Web. What’s interesting to note is that the original “grand vision” observed that the Internet was missing a “people layer.” Now, as web itself is going social, and the Social Web is going open, that grand vision is looking smarter with each passing month, as we help a new “Open Stack” of OpenID, OAuth, XRDS-Simple, Portable Contacts, and OpenSocial come together to enable exactly that.

Another quote from the Coursey article:

Given that I consider Napster money and influence to be tainted, I was immediately concerned about Plaxo, especially when I couldnt imagine how they could turn the company into a huge moneymaker without doing something shady.

There were other things Plaxo did, such as keeping track of how many information requests Id received and using the number in e-mails to try to convince me to sign-up. That seemed a bit like stalking and, along with a few comments and rumors Id heard about the company, only intensified my concern.

His initial hesitation against Plaxo is one I share, but this wasn't untill sometime early 2007, when I started receiving tons of invites untill finally almost everyone in my company was using Plaxo, so I signed up also. I reckon many people have felt that initial hesitation. Did it affect the way you did business in any way, did it temper your expectations for the platform? When most invites at that time were generated by my professional network, I assumed Plaxo would take on the competition with LinkedIn for instance, being a profiling site plus extra features to lifelog. When looking at the current profiling options, it looks like it's somewhere in between LinkedIn and Facebook. Was Plaxo aimed at professionals to take on the competition with LinkedIn?

Plaxo has always had a broader vision than simply “business networking.” We are keenly focused on providing a better way to stay connected with the people you know and care about, rather than being a service that is for “networking” or connecting with people you don’t know.

The latest addition to Plaxo are the fanpages in which you can sign up as fan of a tv series. Right now this feature is only available to US residents. Are there any plans to go beyond GEO blocking and make this feature available worldwide?

The geographic restrictions are not Plaxo-specific, but rather come from the content sources. You’ll note that everyone in the space is dealing with the same issue.
[to work around geoblocking read this blogpost on hotspot shield]
Considering this latest addition, is Plaxo moving away from say LinkedIn and moving closer to Facebook, from business oriented to more social oriented?

We aren’t moving toward or away from either company. We are continuing to move further down the path that we started upon back in 2002.

From the Coursey article again:

Plaxos current mission is to reach 10 million users and $10 million in annual revenue as quickly as possible. Right now they are at more than 3 million users and essentially zero revenue. The Plaxo execs asked that I not pre-announce their forthcoming products, but they discussed them in enough detail that I have great confidence that Plaxo wont abuse its customers. A key part of their plan is finding other services that Plaxo customers would be willing to pay for. There is no plan to discontinue the free service, only to add revenue-producing products to the offering.

Well, I figure you've more than doubled the 10m users now, but where are we with revenues? This previous quote, as well as the first one about the 20m VC gets me thinking about the Business Case behind Plaxo. I've discussed this with colleagues of mine. Maybe it's because we're Dutch, but we just can't see where the money is to be made. Signing up is free, there are hardly any adds and datatraffic streaming all the lifestreams must be huge. Where's the return on investment for Plaxo?

The return on investment for the investors in Plaxo came earlier this year when the company was acquired by Comcast. Our current business model is a combination of Premium services and advertising.

What can you tell about new features for Plaxo? What are must haves for you?

As you may have noticed, Plaxo shows up in the majority of news announcements around opening up the Social Web. Plaxo is today one of the largest and most prominent OpenID Relying Parties (sites that accept OpenID). With Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and MySpace really heating up the OpenID space working on a great end-to-end OpenID user experience is an area of critical focus. And that’s really all about getting not just the sign-on piece right, but leveraging the whole Open Stack to make onboarding to a new site as frictionless, secure, and useful as possible.

I'd like to think I've got a pretty big digital footprint and participate in dozens of social networks and platforms. Initially I thought that Plaxo had a number of advantages. One was that it gave you more flexibility in managing groups than LinkedIn and you that with the new Pulse you could plug into tons of services. However, when I look at my own usage of Plaxo, I just plug in and let it stream, and it's what I see happening with dozens of colleagues. We sign up, use it for contacts, but that's it. In a way, Plaxo is converging channels into one stream, just like most sociall apps right now. This is, I believe the design flaw in the current web 2.0 landscape.In the past year I've thought a great deal about web 2.0 and how we deal with it, how we use it. We spread our names all over the web, signing up everywhere and leaving parts of ourselves all over. The major issues we have to deal with -in my opinion - are privacy and identity management which need to be elevated from a classical corporate solution to be web 2.0 ready. At plaxo, you've got millions of users putting private information into your databases. How do you deal with this? Where do you see Privacy going in this changing information age?

As you can imagine, privacy, security, and trust are critical to the success of our service. We have one of the strongest privacy policy’s in the industry. And we are focused on giving users fine-grained control of what they share with whom. Hence, not every relationship is forced under the term “friend”. When you give people a choice of family, friend, business, it unlocks a lot of sharing that would not be possible otherwise.

As LinkedIn now is gearing up with adding more collaborative tools, it will be pretty interesting to see what the competition will bring us, users and if the world is big enough for multiple players in the market. To be honest, I have spent more time and energy on my LinkedIn profile than I did with my Plaxo account, and although lately I'm starting to favor Plaxo a bit more, I think it's just not good enough yet to relocate my digital self. Both Plaxo and LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and oneConnect still have too many design flaws in common where it comes to Identity Management for me. At this time, they're players in the same yard to me, with each addition the scales might be tilting slightly, but I don't predict a big landslide here in the near future.

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