Tim Harper | Blog » Strategy

Are Location based Check-in services purely an american pastime?

Tim — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:22:12 +0000

I’ve seen both Gowalla and Foursquare, but there really aren’t many people using the services in South Africa or other countries in the world. Is checking-in a purely american pastime?? Apart from the rewards offered by certain stores, is there any real value that can be garnered from checking-in?

USA:

NY Penn Station

http://gowalla.com/spots/623366

(380 people checked in)

http://foursquare.com/venue/19462

(11744 people checked in)

France:

Eiffel tower
http://gowalla.com/spots/21869

(67 people checked in)

http://foursquare.com/venue/185194

(303 people checked in)

South Africa:

V&A Waterfront cape town
http://gowalla.com/spots/182354

(12 people checked in)

http://foursquare.com/venue/518280

(83 people checked in)

Ushahidi – Haiti earthquake response

Tim — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:00:01 +0000

I’ve been following the progress of ushahidi for a while now, it’s a crowdsourcing platform for crisis information, and was first used in the post election violence in Kenya in 2007. Since then they have taken the platform from strength to strength, and have got some real exposure with the latest deployment covering the Haiti earthquake that happened yesterday. There’s a great blog post explaining what ushahidi has managed to do in an extremely short space of time here: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2010/01/13/haiti-earthquake/

I take my hat off to the Ushahidi team for their efforts over the last 24hours, you have done a superb job at getting the platform up and running, and by the responses coming in to the system, I know that this project will make a real difference in the relief efforts.

http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ for more details and up to the minute reports from the island itself.

As a side note, it’s the first time I’ve seen google’s ‘Latest Results’ when doing a search for haiti earthquake in their results page. http://www.google.co.za/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=haiti+earthquake

It scrolls real time search results as they are indexed by google, fairly impressive I must say!!

Is all the South African VC only going to go to internet startups with proven revenue models?

Tim — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:49:07 +0000

With the recent news of the springleap investment by Lord Duncan Barratt(??) (Original press release) it left me wondering whether initiatives like Siliconcape will ever really help South African internet startups get anywhere.

Most bootstrapping, hardcore internet startups do not have any idea on their revenue model when they get going (dare I mention twitter?). They pretty much have a great idea, work on it until it’s a finished product, launch it, and go broke. Whether you like it or not, startups don’t fund themselves and there is a significant amount of work to be done to get any form of company going, which in turn requires time, and ultimately you need a salary to be able to eat.

I really like the idea of SiliconCape, I think that there is a great tech community in Cape Town, and bringing all the top Internet guys together and branding them correctly will definitely attract more top talent to our Fine City.
BUT
In terms of actual VC investment though, how many other startups have been funded in the last few years in SA? (Ok I actually have no real data to support this)
Mxit was selling themes and wallpapers before it received it’s boost from Naspers, so is this the general trend, start making some money, however small, and then get somebody to take you to the next level??

Bing and Yahoo sitting in a tree…

Tim — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:54:41 +0000

Bing and Yahoo sitting in a tree…

So what does it mean?

There’s a fairly lengthy explanation in terms of SEO here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-10-things-the-microsoftyahoo-deal-change-for-seo

But what it really comes down to is this:

There are now two main Search players, Bing vs Google, all others will probably either fall by the wayside or be eaten up by one or the other.

Google now has one, very specific opposition, and Microsoft are probably out to give google a very good run for their money.

How they stack up:

Google:

Currently have superior presence, both US and internationally, consumers see them as a household name. Their webmaster tools / analytics / adsense management is very well established and easy to integrate with each other.

Bing:

Not a household name yet, webmaster tools etc needs a lot of work, and they do not have even close to the volumes of Google. They do however have one of the worlds largest corporations behind them, with reaches into most major economic centers.

(check out micosoft locations vs google locations to get an idea of local offices)

http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/default.aspx

http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/locations.html

Microsoft has now acquired the search business of yahoo
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2009/tc20090728_826397.htm

So what does it mean?

There’s a fairly lengthy explanation in terms of SEO here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-10-things-the-microsoftyahoo-deal-change-for-seo

But what it really comes down to is this:

There are now two main Search players, Bing vs Google, all others will probably either fall by the wayside or be eaten up by one or the other.

Google now has one, very specific opposition, and Microsoft are probably out to give google a very good run for their money.

How they stack up in my opinion:

Google:

Bing:

Check out microsoft locations vs google locations to get an idea of local offices:

http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/default.aspx

http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/locations.html

So it will be interesting to see how things play out, the tried and trusted brand or the oversize bully that is able to place it’s product exactly where it wants it, in your face.

Google chrome OS strategy cards played a little early?

Tim — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:37:52 +0000

Google chrome OS strategy cards played a little early?

I saw that Google had mistakenly removed their free version of google apps the other day via @smneedham:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/what-the-hell-happened-to-the-free-version-of-google-apps/?awesm=tcrn.ch_5IM&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch

and then saw the announcement of the google chrome OS via @desbothma http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

and wondered whether this isn’t a case of them slipping up and showing their strategy cards a little early?

Bear with me for a minute here:

- Google creates a web biased operating system that is bundled with new netbooks, allowing absolutely no option to install any currently available desktop apps like the office suite.

- Users are forced to make use of the new, recently developed applications by the open source community

- Users make use of the already developed and refined apps that Google themselves have developed.

- Then google starts charging for using all versions of Google Apps.

Bam, there you have the perfect Network effect, closing the loop around the unknowing consumer that is now forced into using the google apps.

The announcement also says:

“They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files.”

This may work in more developed countries where bandwidth costs are not a concern, but here in Africa it will cost you an arm and a leg to do your day to day spreadsheets and or word docs, so it will be interesting to see what their plan is for this side of the atlantic.

Google has replaced the link to the free version of Google Apps, but it will remain to be seen how far into the future that will last.