Gemius is preparing for this year’s Internet CEE conference. It will take place in October.

(picture above of work on a promotional clip for the conference)

I did not participate in the last year’s event personally, so I cannot say anything about networking opportunities during the conference.

But I browsed the materials, and found them really interesting. Presentations from every nearby country, lots of data. I could get an overview of the whole region (from the point of view of web activities) based on this one conference.

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Report from our research on social lending in Poland is now publicly available.

You can download it from Gemius webpage:

English version of the report

Polish version of the report

The research was an idea I had after February Bootstrap meeting devoted to social lending. Initially I thought of writing a simple article, but then decided that it would be cool to have some original primary data. So I asked Gemius (leading Internet research agency in Poland) to participate, and then involved Accenture as well.

Below a couple of comments and slides from the report. (read more…)

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Kokos, one of the social lending sites in Poland, announced that it started cooperation with Allegro, the dominant online auction player (through antyweb).

According to the research that we did (Accenture and Gemius), this is a rather promising idea for Kokos - Allegro is the top site that potential borrowers actively use (i.e. visit at least once a week):

(there is similar data for potential investors, among which Nasza Klasa has better penetration)

The full report will be public shortly, also in an English version.

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I wanted to mention John Hagel’s post a few days ago, but couldn’t find time till now. He presents agenda for the new year, mentioning couple of things which might be inspiring.

Increasing value of deeper relationships, against the background of social “transactions” dominating the Internet.

Diminishing value of advertising. “Longer-term, I anticipate that most businesses online will have to make money the old fashioned way ? by offering products, services and experiences so valuable that people will actually pay money for them.”

Increasing value of leadership. “In times of great uncertainty and rapid change, unprecedented opportunities arise to shape our environments to create even more value. Shaping requires deep insight into the fundamental forces at work and powerful personalities to communicate conviction and persuade many who are on the sidelines that the rewards outweigh the risks.”

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My colleagues shared with me two resources for latest trends. Thanks.

http://trendwatching.com/briefing/ - 8 important consumer trends for 2008:

1. Status spheres - there are different “status spheres”, or “a variety of lifestyles, activities and persuasions, which can be mixed and matched by consumers looking for recognition from various crowds and scenes”. Examples: traditional sphere (status by luxury), transient sphere (collect as many experiences as possible), etc.
2. Premiumization - trend to create premium versions of products and services
3. Snack culture - “embodies the phenomenon of products, services and experiences becoming more temporary and transient; products that are being deconstructed in easier to digest, easier to afford bits, making it possible to collect even more experiences, as often as possible, in an even shorter timeframe”
4. Online oxygen - “consumers needing online access as much as they need oxygen”
5. Eco-iconic- “Eco-friendly goods and services sporting bold, iconic design and markers, that help their eco-conscious owners to visibly tout their eco-credentials to peers”
6. Brand butlers - companies going out to provide useful services to potential customers (e.g. toilets at the concert) instead of advertising. Hmmmm.
7. Make it yourself - “the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well”
8. Crowd mining - rewarding crowds for valuable deliverables (fellowforce would fall into this category)

The second is an article on BBC - The shape of things to come. They list following trends, some are overlapping with the above:

• Make it yourself
• Local networking
• See-hear-buy (ability to buy product instantly, like a song playing in the restaurant)
• Think blue (from the sky - carbon labeling)
• Secret bling (less obvious exclusivity, “being in the known” required to recognize the value of the objects)
• Radical transparency (services to remove unwanted personal information from the open web)
• Body language (devices understanding gestures)

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Article by David Hornik (VC) on his impressions from trip to China.

One line summary (I’m in a hurry:): Chinese market is great, but there are few real entrepreneurs. And there is no effective legal protection for investors, so you have to count on the culture not to get screwed by Chinese entrepreneurs. But unfortunately the culture makes it ok to screw foreign investors.

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I was examining Flash games, because I was curious if one can build a truly interesting game on this platform.

That, for me, would exclude asteroids, pacman-like games and so on. I like immersive games, which are able to tell the story and create a relation with the character. That points in the direction of role playing games.

After examination, it seems that making this kind of games is pretty much possible (even though most of the stuff online, and there is really a lot, rarely raises to the level above trivial).

Below some examples. (read more…)

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Yesterday I got to fight zombies, but today I bumped into works of Mateusz Skutnik, which are a bit more refined than that. I was pleasantly surprised, that while looking for quality stuff, works of someone from Poland pops up.

Instead of shooting, the games are more into exploring rooms, finding stuff and solving riddles. As for me - on a minus side, there is less mood than in zombies and no soothing action (shooting), on the other hand, exploration is a plus. I believe mixing action and thinking and mood is the way to go, riddles alone may get tiring after some time.

See here for one called Covert Front. First episode. I finished it myself so I am proud.

I clicked a bit around and it turned out that Mr Skutnik is a rather known Polish illustrator. He co-created a cartoon illustrating one of the Polish philosophers. Read some of his blog. Impressive.

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I’m thinking if it is possible to make a cool game online, let’s say in flash.

So far the coolest game I found is Last Stand:

Not exactly the deepest story, but still I played till I finished it.

Maybe not deep but it has: a dark mood, exploration element (new weapons), and shooting which is cool.

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Found this post accidentally: Blog Tip: Do NOT Put Adsense on Your Blog.

Its point is that Adsense brings so little revenue on a blog, that it is not worth bother to use it.

Quotes numbers which give 0.02% CTR (mine is 0.13%), and 0.06$ eCPM (mine is 0.$19). Hey I’m not so bad - relatively:)

Still it’s clear that ad performance on non-targeted blogs is very low.

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Short of $85b to catch Microsoft at $284b.

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See here on Google Poland blog.

They say new “innovation center” is just opening.

Job list includes following positions in Wroclaw:

• Director, Online Sales and Operations
• IT Field Technician
• Online Customer Support Specialist - New Graduate
• Online Sales and Operations Coordinator (Czech/Slovak)
• Online Sales and Operations Coordinator (German market)
• Online Sales and Operations Coordinator (Hungarian)
• Online Sales and Operations Coordinator (Russian)
• Online Sales and Operations Manager
• Team Lead, Online Sales and Operations

From the list it looks more like an operations and customer service center, with some local testing, rather than anything related to innovation. More of that in Krakow. But maybe it will change with time.

I couldn’t help but notice that there is also the following position on the list:

Emerging Markets Strategy Associate - Europe

Position based in London or Warsaw or Budapest or Istanbul or Prague.

(…)

The Emerging Markets Associate will work with the emerging markets team to lead strategic and operational initiatives that are critical to the ongoing growth of the company. Initiatives that the Associate may help drive include: projects to enter new markets; projects to implement our new sales channel strategy in those markets; and projects to build and train new teams in those new markets. The Associate’s role will be to provide the project management skills, analytic “horsepower” and business judgment to drive such initiatives.

Our ideal candidate will have demonstrated top quartile performance in a consulting, investment banking or line management role, and have graduated at or near the top of their class from a leading graduate academic institution. We are looking for self-starters who can work in a rapidly changing industry, tolerate ambiguity and demonstrate problem-solving leadership with limited oversight. Experience in a technology-driven industry is required, and fluency in an Eastern European language is required.

Sounds like interesting job indeed.

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Some time ago I wrote a couple of post about social bookmarking, namely about starting with del.icio.us and later reviewing Blinklist. And now, since I cannot sleep in this Moscow, I took a look at Alexa chart to see how the guys are doing… but what’s this?

Del.icio.us:

Similar story in case of Blinklist and Simpy.

Seems social bookmarking is out of fashion lately. Oh, and it seems Philipp Keller has already written about it. So we are in trough of disillusionment stage now. And I’m not even ashamed of what I wrote on “Peak of inflated expectations”, just still amazed how did I manage to write such a long review of Blinklist. And Simpy review was supposed to be even longer, and I even had a nice pyramid diagram of the bookmarking phenomenon, but I never got to finish the article.

Anyway, Philipp’s identification of hype stage would match my case, too, since I don’t use del.icio.us anymore. Actually I didn’t bother to reinstall the plugin after swapping the laptop. And interacting with web interface is slow and you have to navigate the pages and wait for them too load… makes me rather stick to the messy bookmarks menu in Firefox.

But that gives me some idea about the next hype stage, “slope of enlightenment”. Integrate bookmarking seamlessly into browser (not only tagging, but also browsing and searching) and it will finally work as it should, and I will use it again.

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