Archive for the 'Web 2.0' Category

Tagcrumbs Just Launched

About 9 months ago we had the idea of a social placemarking tool. Today we lauched it, Tagcrumbs is online. We had a lot of fun developing it and hope you will have even more fun using it.

Mark places of your interest, share them, recommend them to your friends. Tagcrumbs is the delicious for places. You can leave small crumbs where you have been, just like Hansel and Gretel did it. But they are digital, persistent and easier to organize. And nobody will eat them :).

Take a look at the slides for more details and start marking places now on www.tagcrumbs.com.

Tagcrumbs is Social Placemarking

Social Placemarking

More and more people ask us what Tagcrumbs is about. We are about placemarks - personal places that you would like to remember and share.

Let’s look at two use cases to illuminate our point:

Lisa, a young professional, is doing a variety of business trips to beautiful cities like Paris, Berlin or London. She uses Tagcrumbs to remember the location and the services offered in her favorite coffee shops - the ones with a cozy atmosphere and free wifi. As she loves Thai food (it shouldn’t be too expensive though) she remembers those places and goes for a quick walk after lunch visiting a sight-seeing spot close to where she is. By following co-workers doing similar trips, Lisa sees the city through their eyes at the same time. She’s already looking forward to her next trip.

Edoardo moved to San Francisco recently and you are planning to visit him soon. You know that by then he’ll know the coolest places in town, amazing spots to take pictures (he’s a photographer), the best outdoor events (he loves rock-climbing) and the club where the crowd rocks longest. He created a collection of placemarks organized by tags and places, to share with you and his other visitors.

It’s your turn now. Get creative, think about different places you feel connected to (place of your first kiss, best hostel in the world, an amazing view at a hiking trip, … ), what they mean to you and how you would best remember and share them - and let us know about it!

So, to sum it up (for you web folks): it’s like social bookmarking (ah, del.icio.us, oh, tagging) but for places. We like to call it social placemarking - storing, organizing and sharing of personal places enriched with your memories and messages.

You can follow our progress on our startup blog.

Our Startup Blog Launched

I am still working heavily on the internet startup and the product I wrote about earlier. We are getting closer and closer to the launch.

We created a separate blog to keep you up to date. Check out our blog at:

blog.tagcrumbs.com


Updated Mobile 2.0 Presentation from Rudy De Waele

Mobile Strategist Rudy De Waele (mTrends) held a presentation on Mobile 2.0 last week at the Plugg Conference in Brussels. If you were - just like me - not able to attend read the slides. They are worth a read and give a great intro to Mobile 2.0.

Comprehensive List of German Mobile Startups

Did you ever wonder what is going on in the mobile startup scene in Germany?

I crawled through the German web and - besides noticing and wondering how many new mom&dad, sport and pet communities we have - collected a decent list of mobile startups.

If you know a company that is missing please add it in the comments. I will keep an eye on any new startups and follow up on this in the future.

Mobile Content
dailyme.tv Application to automatically grab videos to your phone. Nokia only so far.
hiogi Text any question when you are on the go to a short code number and the community will reply with an answer.
itsmy Mobile content community. Site looks like Jamba TV ads.
ViiF Stream yourself with video telephony function of your phone and view videos. See the detailed report.
yasssu Reformat content to mobile. For media companies.
Mobile Gaming
ewave Provider of mobile multiplayer games.
Mobile Services
Beem it up Scotty Send any file over the web to your mobile device.
cellity Application for your phone to make cheap phone calls
indyphone Create wallpapers for your mobile phone.
Mobile Social Networks
aka-aki Creative and promising startup. Uses Bluetooth technology to connect with people around you.
KWICK! German social network with new large mobile website.
Plazes Create activities to let your friends know what you are doing where. See recent coverage.
peperonity Mobile community. Did they do this retro-design on purpose?
plexme Connect with people in your region. SMS-based.
qeep Nice design. Cheap messages to other devices.
Qiro Promising application for your phone. Similar to loopt.
Rock-It-Mobile Create your own groups and chat with SMS.
scaanoo Mobile messenger community. Do they think the design of the logo brings success?
TownKings Explore your city.
Townster See above.
Youni-mobile Community and virtual network operator.
Microblogging
1you Seems like Twitter for dating. Did the designers actually look at the rendered page?
baluu Basis microblogging. Only a few posts a day on the system.
brabblr Broadcasts messages to various microblogging platforms (Twitter, Jaiku, tumblr, …)
dasbeep Another Twitter-clone
dukudu Good looking clone. Not much going on anymore.
Frazr Most active German microblogging service.
niimo Former texteln.de. Quite active.
Slogr *Yawn*
Wamadu Number for each mobile operator so most folks can use their included messages.
Was geht bei dir? *Yawn* again…
Mobile Tagging
BeeTag Mobile Tagging system (Switzerland)
KAYWA Provides mobile blogs and QR reader + other services. (Switzerland)
kooaba Make a picture of the real-world object and easily get further information. (Switzerland)
TagYourCity Post stickers with encoded information in your city. (Austria)

Facebook Reaches Germany With Localized Version

Localized version of Facebook

German Facebook clone StudiVZ is now getting serious competition in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Facebook just launched a localized German version of their social network. Today all Germans have to learn English in school, but most - even college students - prefer to do everything in their primary language.

Many successful international startups do not have the resources to localize right away and focus on the U.S. market first, which gave the various German Web 2.0 clones like StudiVZ a chance to grow. StudiVZ launched in fall 2005 and claims that they are having about 4.9 Million users today. Facebook, with about 700,000 members in Germany, only has a fraction of the users but the user base is expected to raise significantly now that the app is localized.

The German translation is still far from perfect but students and others will begin to see that the Facebook platform is way superior to the poorly copied StudiVZ. StudiVZ basically looks the same as Facebook did several years ago (besides the colors) and doesn’t provide applications, an activity stream or a mobile version.

Although StudiVZ has better connections to German media partners I do not think they can compete against the well-funded giant Facebook. In the end Facebook’s rumored cooperation with Nokia, where all Nokia devices might come with a pre-installed Facebook client, and similar deals will break StudiVZ’s neck. Only the people that have spent hours on StudiVZ collecting friends will have doubts to switch and stay loyal first. However, when more and more of their friends have left StudiVZ they will also embrace the change and join Facebook.

It will be exciting to watch the social networking war and Facebook’s launch will hopefully help to boost the German Web 2.0. You can count that I will keep an eye on this and in particular the usage of the already localized mobile version of Facebook here in Germany.

Kudos to zweinull.cc for pointing the German release out.