1000 Times 1000

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This may seem like a little bit of a strange post, but it is as with a love letter you write to your ex-girlfriend… just write it down and put it on the mail and don’t look back, although it is probably not the most coherent story, she’ll understand what you’re trying to say.

Almost 2 years ago Boris and I started thinking of a new way to interact with the web. We love the web and all of its possibilities. Especially in the Web2.0 scene people are easily reachable (which
is great), companies are transparent and open, and everybody is in the business out of passion, out of some thought on changing the way we do things, improving stuff, creating new ways of communication etc. We (referring to the web2.0 scene) are not only web addicts, we really love the web, we are the users, we are the evangelists, we are the web..

The Web is about people and together we build a better environment/world/web/place. All people shaping the future of the web know that people have to work together to make things happen, that is why everybody is willing to help others (with business, deals, introductions and linklove).

If you’re not in the web2.0 scene you’d probably do not have a clue what I’m talking about. In fact I have a lot of troubles to describe the feeling, the experience of being in this industry on this time. The industry is changing faster than ever and faster than any other sector in the world. The CEO of Forbes magazine said: “2 years on the web, is like a lifetime in real life”
I guess that is why it is so great to be part of this whole thing. We believe we can change the world with technology and love.

I have to admit that we are also a very tiny little bit blind. We think that everybody uses the web in the same way as we do and that everybody wants a better UI and cool services to keep track of what we are doing, thinking, listening or eating. Well, we must open our eyes and confess that most people think the web is that E on your desktop that takes you to Google and your social network (be it Facebook, Linkedin, or Hyves -in the Netherlands). That doesn’t mean we have to accept that, I guess we are obliged to spread the great things and possibilities of the web, we have to keep going out there and educate as many people as we can. We have to open up the eyes of the people, while keeping in mind that not everybody is as passionate about the web as we are.

It is a long road ahead, but eventually and probably sooner than later we will get to the point that everybody sees the power of the web and falls in love with it.

In the mean time we have to hang in there we have to continue helping each other, building new stuff, keep on writing our blogs, keep commenting, keep the discussion going on and don’t let money and power take over.

I’ve noticed that now money and power have entered the game, the web scene is getting tougher. Some people are falling back to the old rules of business, preferring money over friendship, transparency and openness. Lately we have seen small blogwars, especially in the US (Federated Media vs all their portfolio blogs, Calacanis vs Kevin Rose, and now Scoble vs Calacanis). All these little fights are not the end of the world, but I do think we have to keep our end goal in mind and blogwars do not contribute to that goal.

So this is a call for all web cracks, keep the spirit high and keep in mind that Love is the Killer App.

Oh in case you still do not understand the title of this post: I’m in love with the web!

Today I did an interview with Clive Fernandes of loscreador.com about the web, about Fleck (and its future) and some personal stuff.
It is an interesting interview (if I may say so) with some nice quotes.

I don’t see myself as hugely successful, I’m having a great time and do cool stuff, but I haven’t sold a company yet. If I have to say what I think the key is to success, I would say: be open, be easily approachable, be honest, have fun, think in solutions and opportunities, grow your network and keep in mind to stay personal. I believe that the way we do business within the Internet scene will become a model for a lot of other sectors (if not all!)

about my first experience with a computer:

…..by accident my mom kept on typing at the end of the ‘screen’, the cursor automatically jumped to the next line! WOW! Right then we saw it. This is big!

On the future of search:

In 4 years we will probably laugh at the way we search now.

It is worthwhile reading

Today, Saul Klein (Partner at Index ventures and speaker of The Next Web Conference 2007) and others launched Seedcamp, a kind of European version of the YCombinators Summer Founders Program.

What is Seedcamp?
At Seedcamp Europe’s brightest and most ambitious young entrepreneurs come together to start their new startup. It starts of with 20 startup teams from all over Europe and at the end of the week 5 teams will be selected to get 50k in seed funding (for 10% of the shares) and to move to London for 3 months to work with a world class network of mentors and to build new cool European companies.

So if you are bright, talented and ambitious and want to work with the best VCs and web entrepreneurs of Europe, sign up for Seedcamp.

Robert Gaal and Wouter Broekhof (founders of Wakoopa) are nominated for the Top 25 European Entrepreneurs under 25 by Businessweek. Although this nomination is already a couple of weeks old (I forgot to blog about it in the first place) I think it is nice to mention it, because it is damn cool!
It would be great for the Dutch web scene if these guys win.

You can still cast your vote.

Fleckers at Arringtons mansion

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

This morning the Wired did a post on Michael Arringtons blogging empire. It is a very interesting 4 page article. The article starts with this alinea:

One Tuesday morning in early May, Michael Arrington was sound asleep in his bedroom in Atherton, California, when three men burst in. Naturally, he was startled. His first reaction, he recalls, was to tell them to “get the fuck out.” But he quickly realized they meant no harm. Clad in white business suits and speaking English with a Dutch accent, the apologetic men looked more like dandies on their way to a garden party than criminals. They were, it turns out, overeager entrepreneurs from Amsterdam making the rounds of Silicon Valley big shots. All they wanted — desperately — was to tell Arrington about their startup.

The wired just wrote about Boris, Arjen and me (the Fleckers) waking up Michael Arrington in white suits!!!!

The real story is somewhat different though…. On Monday night we had a dinner appointment with Scott Rafer, Matt Mullenweg and Michael Arrington in San Francisco city. It turned out that Michael had a double appointment in his agenda (something went wrong) and couldn’t make it to the dinner. We ended up having a great night with Scott and Matt.

The next morning we had an OpenCoffee meetup in Palo Alto where we met Keith Teare (CEO of Edgeio), as he is a close friend of Michael and shares the same assistant (dear Amy), he knew about Michaels no show the night before and said: “Michael lives around the corner, why don’t you guys wake him up with a café latte, that would be awesome! If he kills you, blame it all on me.”

We went to his house and were trespassing in his yard, bouncing on all windows and doors accompanied by the words “Michael, wake up, we got you some breakfast”. Except for a barking dog, there was no response at all!

We called Keith, Amy and everyone we could thing of that could know where he was and they all came up with the same conclusion, he was still asleep. Then a young guy (Nick of omnidrive) opened up the door asking us in a polite way who the … we were. He let us in the “Mansion” and we went straight to Michaels door to wake him up (despite Nicks advice that if we still wanted to live we better not wake him up).

After 5 minutes Michael opened the door, it was good to see him and have a talk with him, and after some practical jokes, we left the house on to our next appointment.

The men in white went on. A week after our trip we were featured in the San Hose Chronicle and now almost two months later… Wired!

Later on this day we will put up some videos of the wake up call.

This is a 10 minute video on how web2 influences your normal life. It is pretty funny. Made by Clichee.tv.
Some Dutch initiatives are included as well (eKudos, Sellaband, Preople, and Fleck).

This post is in Dutch!

Voor The Next Web Conferentie hebben we een onderzoek laten doen (door Ruigrok Netpanel) naar de manier waarop web2.0 een rol speelt in het hedendaagse surfgedrag.

Dit waren de 10 dingen die mij opvielen:

1. Marktplaats heeft de grootste naamsbekendheid (meer dan hyves!)

2. Web2.0 nauwelijks bekend (maar wel bekender dan vorig jaar van 10% naar 13%)

3. Web2.0 nauwelijks/niet gebruikt voor zakelijke doeleinden

4. Web2.0 ten koste van tv (56%) maar vooral ook ten koste van shoppen (bij vrouwen dan -13%-)

5. 40% aangesloten bij online netwerk

6. 27% besteedt tussen de 3 en 6 uur aan online netwerken, 9% besteedt tussen 7 en 10 uur.

7. De helft vd Nederlanders die lid zijn van een online netwerk loggen meer dan 1 keer per dag in!

8. 60% van de Nederlanders leest geen blogs en besteed daar minder dan 1 uur per week aan (het is dus toch waar, de enige mensen die je blog lezen ben jezelf en je moeder :) )

9. Aantal rss lezers speelt geen rol in beoordeling betrouwbaarheid….! (wie zijn die mensen :) )

10. Fleck heeft evengrote naamsbekendheid in Nederland als Philips in Amerika (dat is helaas niet zo gaaf als het klinkt :) )

De uitkomsten van het onderzoek zijn hier te downloaden.

Het onderzoek heeft aardig wat nederlandse pers gehaald.

Marketingfacts:
4 op de 10 nederlanders zijn actief op online social networks

AdfoWeb:
Web2.0 populair onder Nederlanders

WebWereld:
‘Marktplaats, Wikipedia en Hyves belangrijkste consumentensites’

Emerce:

‘Nederlander kent web 2.0 niet’

Nu.nl:
Nederlander weet niet wat blogs zijn

Sprout:
Met Sprout naar Next Web

nu.nl and emerce came with a story about Myspace entering the Dutch market. My opinion is that this is just big bullshit and that IF Myspace is entering the Dutch market they will buy hyves (see my previous post).

So the big journalistic brands are just seeking news…. again.

Last night we did a video interview with Tim O’Reilly. He has a great vision on what will happen next. We made a small trailer of it for The Next Web Conference. Check it out.

Updated version…

The Next Web Awards are the Awards for future accomplishments. Today we decided that it is rather cool to give away some future (not yet on the market) products. So now you can win an iPhone by casting your vote for The Next Web Awards.

What are you waiting for? Vote and win!