Comments about cultural trends, mobile business, eCommerce and Internet developments

The open question around facebook and twitter remains how these companies will ever become profitable. Of course their solution is advertising, like so many other businesses that all rely on one or another form of advertising.

But lately the discussion has become even more interesting as these companies have provided access via web services to their key assets (content and social relationships), which will create a huge ecosystem of applications around it.

The question is if in such a model they can still find a way to make money?!

“Executives at Facebook say that as the premier social engine of the Web, it will ultimately find a way to make money. For example, it could choose to transmit ads along with the activity streams of its members, and perhaps split the revenue with the developers, though it says it currently has no plans to do so.

Of course, once you prop open the door to the store and give the merchandise away, the money-making options tend to be limited.” (source: NY Times May 3rd, 2009)

While I’m in general very skeptical on the idea that all businesses can get profitabel via advertising revenues, I’m a believer of the idea to create a ecosystem around the core assets by making them available to other application, which at the end make the whole user experience richer. the biger the ecosystem the higher the chances to become to ‘google’ of the social communities, basically create a monopoly, which than can be turned into money.

In today’s fiercewireless newsletter Lynette Luna is asking if “Skype’s persistence finally paying off?”

I’m actually using Skype on my mobile since two weeks!

In an effort to install several mobile applications (e.g. Shozu) on my Nokia E71 to become truly always connected (like the Japanese I just visited), I’ve also installed fring a little application that allows you to connect e.g. with twitter, but also with your skype account. Other than the skype application for available for the E71, fring also allows you to do voice calls apart from the regular chats. It actually works quite well on the 3G network.

While most (almost all) mobile operators are still fighting skype, I have no doubt that with the proliferation of the new generation of mobile phones (iphone, Androids, Symbians) Skype will finally get some traction also in the mobile world. UK’s 3 might be the first who is actively pushing it (3’s strategy is worth a separate post another day!), but others are tolerating it and some MVNOs might be able to follow the lead.

Anyone on VoIP on mobile networks?

Yesterday over dinner I was discussing with a friend which eCommerce companies, startups or newcomers from other countries have been the most successful in 2008 in Spain.

After thinking for a while we realized that there are not that many. There are quite some internet companies in Spain and many successful ones (e.g. softonic, idealista.com), but few that I would consider under the category eCommerce.

http://www.lamejorpaginaweb.com promotes segundamano.es (most known) and dooyoo.es (best) as the winners for 2008. Without a doubt these are successful eCommerce sites, but neither one of those I would consider really a newcomer or startup.

What do you think?and which interesting eCommerce startups are out there in Spain?

[polldaddy poll=1559428]

Yesterday a friend sent me the link to http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm with the typical note “I Think you might like this.” and I almost didn’t look at it. Would have been a shame as I actually love it, an amazing piece of art.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4&hl=en&fs=1]

There is also a youtube channel of this artist if you’re interested in more: http://youtube.com/profile?user=notblu

Finally I’ve decided to give it a 2nd try and start blogging again. While I’ve been microblogging on twitter lately, I still have the feeling that I’d like to have a bit more space to comment on latest developments, present interesting ideas and trends and just share with people some of my thoughts.

I will also try tumblr, but a blog still seems a good idea to me to bring it all together.

Excited to start!