Disqus - Latest Comments for othylmann

Re: Could Wordpress Be the Natural Successor to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook?

othylmann — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:02:21 -0000

I suggest you take a look noserub.com.

Re: RingRevenue lands $3.5M from GRP, Rincon, Great Pacific

othylmann — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:32:32 -0000

Just one small correction, it is the cheapest form of online advertising, mainly because it only pays what it can afford via sales or leads. It is working because the conversion rates are relatively constant, there are enough placements out there to put them on, and lots of people with placements do not have access to branding campaigns. on very niche sites affiliate ads might outperform google adsense.

Re: The blog is still alive!

othylmann — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:58:33 -0000

Thanks to our growing team I am really looking forward to the P2P Lan syncing. Syncing people over the Internet is starting to be a little bit of a bandwidth hog ;)

Re: Adsense not working

othylmann — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:39:20 -0000

try putting it below the article, a content ad, above the stars. You will be suprised the difference placement makes. But it might move it to a EUR but as this is not a site geared for AdSense you will not be getting $30 of course, but very few people do.

Re: Skype cofounders seeking $266M for their Atomico Ventures fund

othylmann — Sat, 09 May 2009 08:29:53 -0000

They have existed for some time actually, it just seems to be the first time they are taking outside money.

Re: Susan Boyle My Heart Will Go On (video)

othylmann — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:39:48 -0000

The problem is that with a previous show they had somebody who was "ugly" but authentic. They fixed that person up and suddenly the authenticity was gone. Some of the people with the show said that this time they will do their best to not screw it up ;) meaning leave it like it is.

Re: If You've Got Suggestions For Boxee ....

othylmann — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:44:08 -0000

I actually had the account before your investment but hey, feedback none the less. posted on getsatisfaction. thank you for supporting boxee

Re: Could Google be the N.Y. Times salvation?

othylmann — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 04:14:48 -0000

With the costs that the NYT has for authors, Google will very likely not buy the company. and cultural and culinary coverage just doesn't convert performance advertising wise. So I'd lean out of the window and say "nope, not going to happen."

Re: jamiew's tumblr

othylmann — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:30:21 -0000

you porposed? :)

Re: Boxee: Brilliant UI, shame about the business plan

othylmann — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:34:15 -0000

damn, mythtv is supported to some extent: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=286

Re: Boxee: Brilliant UI, shame about the business plan

othylmann — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:29:51 -0000

I had an alpha account for some time but only now (THANKS! ;)) took a closer look and boy is that thing beautiful. Now if I only can record TV with it too then I am sold.

Re: Did Nullriver slide the iPhone tethering app past the goalie?

parislemon — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:47:09 -0000

really? that's interesting and would be incredibly useful. something tells me AT&T wouldn't go for it.

Re: Did Nullriver slide the iPhone tethering app past the goalie?

othylmann — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:49:12 -0000

By the way, in germany, with your iphone contract, you can get a second or third free SIM Card (MultiSIM) that is running on the same number and everything but can be put in a USB HSDPA Dongle for your laptop and used there, or in a second phone (they all ring at the same time).

Re: What would you do if you were the CEO of Seesmic?

othylmann — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:01:49 -0000

As this is easier to aggregate then video, I'll not do a video post. I will also presume that Seesmic has the investors it has because of the video conversation idea, not only because Loic is Loic (even though it would be a valid reason ;))

another thing is that I do not think you will get people to use this every day. They will use it when they need to you just need to increase the needs ;) The thing is that Seesmic does take an amazing amount of time, hence the little interaction.

So let's execute:

a) talk to the universities that offer remote studies like Open University (Business School) in UK/Europe, or University of Pheonix Online. This tool is wonderful for them.
b) what this needs is an easy brandability of Seesmic, but keep it one platform. So my account would work for Open University if I were enabled to talk there. One base platform, different access routes and security settings and privacy options. Online learning has an amzing future, and you can potentially help.
c) emphasize mobile. the iphone would be wonderful because it has the geek crowd, but you will likely work better and closer with nokia who are moving more towards media creation than apple at the moment. So integrate with OVI, allow production of videos on the mobile phone, and answers directly in there. Oh and the mobile emphasize is just because that is the future and there are more mobile phones with camera than pcs.

now back to work before I figure out some other ideas.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

fredwilson — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:20:04 -0000

That's a shame. Such a cool scooter

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

othylmann — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:14:11 -0000

I think they are no longer being produced though, at least not in germany, could be wrong though.

Re: Managing a tech team is like talking to your auto mechanic

othylmann — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:47:25 -0000

There is a nice saying. You can have it good, fast or cheap, choose two.

As your developers are probably not doing anything but good, because they are good and hence don't want to produce crap too, which is great if you are growing, then you are left with one. :)

Fast or Cheap.

And this thing will only get worse when your platform grows as with it the dependencies grow and with that the errors creaping in no matter how many unit tests you have. Oh the joy of software development :)

Re: Can Twitter survive the WWDC Stevenote?

parislemon — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:48:25 -0000

oh goody, more noise :)

Re: Can Twitter survive the WWDC Stevenote?

othylmann — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:32:24 -0000

There is also this room at FriendFeed.

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/wwdc

so not only will it distribute over different services, at friendfeed the discussion will be even over several rooms ;)

Re: Twitter Q&A: Nice Spin, But Lets Focus On Uptime

othylmann — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:12:20 -0000

i would just guess that the downtime increases just simply because they grow. That's that. If you have a scaling issue growing is a pain, especially when there is a leo laporte, kevin rose, scoble, etc. "who has the most followers" fight ;)

Re: Twhirl is raising funds at a $4.2 million valuation

othylmann — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:24:42 -0000

Thank you sebastian. :)

Re: Twhirl is raising funds at a $4.2 million valuation

othylmann — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:58:42 -0000

We discussed it internally and our partner focussing on companies building medical devices, isn't sure if Adobe will survive the next crash. Otherwise, we find your business model very interesting, but would like to see a bit more traction.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

othylmann — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:54:27 -0000

As always, very thoughtful discussions here.

One thing to monetization though. Facebook is trying to monetize the social graph kind of, but in the end, it is people talking to each other. Like forum traffic, it is not hugely valuable as such as you are simply interrupting people. For blogs, that's different because you are advertising on/in/around content. Just from a performance marketing standpoint, putting fitting ads on content at the end of that content, when people are through reading, yields amazing results. So in the long term, wordpress plays in the content/behavioural targeting idea. Facebook plays in something that is fully unproven to be monetizable.

Second of all, Facebook seems to be a chatty platform, and while apps are fun they are not hugely valuable. At the moment there is still just one Social Network I really use a lot, being Xing in Germany, as it has most of the internet world in germany and it is 100% focussed on business networking, not hireing or messaging or something else. There is no dating on there, the job boards are clearly marked, and so on.

Blogging is something you start investing in and then it becomes invaluable. I've been blogging since 2001 and sooner or later you find out that being fully open with what you want to be open helps you keep all the stupid stuff out :) and you get a lot deeper interaction with people.

The real power comes in connecting all of this and there the question becomes who will be the holder of my social graph. Will I hold it myself via id.thylmann.net or will facebook hold it (integrated everywhere as a service) or my GMail Address Book, ... ? We will see.

Re: The Social Graph In The Second Inning

othylmann — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:59:56 -0000

One of our developers at Ormigo is actually started an open source project as a side thing with http://noserub.com. Noserub is an open social network that allows for portability of your social graph and making friends with people on different noserub installations, later other installations. It really needs to be open source to allow for full portability and to be able to own your social graph without somebody interfering. Mine is at http://id.thylmann.net/othylmann/ .

This is actually something very revelant for Ormigo, as our local lead gen system is actually build on a social network. Open social graphs allow us to do a lot better matching without having all users in our platform. If you are looking for a dentist for bleaching, best would be somebody rated well by some of your friends. Lots of this is still only under the hood being built out bit by bit but we are just now slowly realizing the real impact and potential and are getting great feedback. And this is just one of the possible uses of the social graph. It plays in really well with lead generation though as long as you are generating your users that can be used by others, because generating leads for BMW normally does not give you that capability.