http://senseable.mit.edu/obama/index.html

I find visualizing data to be such a cool topic – which can easily be seen from the number of posts related to statistics on Ogito blog, like this one.

But there is often a gap between aesthetics and usefulness of advanced visuals.

To be useful we typically require easy access to lots of context, to be able to draw any conclusions from the data, for example:

• ability to drill down – investigate what contributes to the variable value
• ability to compare variable level through time
• ability to compare variable level in case of different objects (e.g. competitors, regions, etc.)

(Ogito statistics for cities — registration required to see the charts — use simple Google Charts and tables with links to underlying sets of objects, and this is already enough to get the basic understanding outlined above)

Sometimes complex visualizations add difficulty to perform these basic operations rather than reduce it.

Social lending (or p2p lending), for those unfamiliar with the concept, involves people lending money among themselves with intermediation of an Internet portal like smava.

In Poland three such sites operate already, and all of them started activity last year. I wrote about them after bootstrap meeting, roughly at the time when all three were launching, and then I organized a research between Accenture and Gemius to have some insight into how the Polish Internet users like this idea.

There is no doubt that P2P lenders like the Polish market, though, since very few countries have four players, like we now have after Smava opened.

How Smava wants to differentiate itself? I noted the following:

• Conservative risk policy. They seem to have rather strict loan granting procedures. Scoring model was developed (and will be maintained) by BIK, the credit office. Documents and employment information are verified
• Automatic and free of charge (from what I understood, updated: free of upfront fee) collections procedure. Other sites also claim to have collections, but perhaps it does not work as well as advertised
• Anonymity. The parties don’t need to know each other unless collection procedures need to be launched. This would make me feel better as investor. Other players were missing this one when we compared them mid last year
• Quantification of expected risk for the investor. Meaning one can see expected cost of risk based on borrower’s risk rating. This functionality was highly emphasized though I cannot verify how better it is that competition

Other features of the service seem in line with the market. Smava’s vice president Arek Hajduk told me, though, that the platform Germans have is 2-3 times more complex that the ones he had seen before. Arek is a P2P veteran who was launching social lending startups in Denmark (Fairrates) and in Canada (IOU).

Smava’s target group are “good” banking customers. People with poor risk profiles will be rejected and not allowed to use the site.

Down payment for mortgage was quoted as one interesting market niche, and recent experience that my mother had seems to confirm that this is an opportunity. Even if loan term of only 36 months might make the installments quite high. Banks started to demand down payment recently, and people often end up missing 10-20k euros to close their deal.

Business model is based on the fees. Borrower pays 1% of loan amount after loan is granted, investors do not have to pay. There was some discussion at the conference if the fees are not too low to built a sustainable business. Nevertheless, Smava wants to reach break-even point within three years.

What are Smava’s chances on the market?

Hard for me to say since I don’t follow it very closely. Everyone at the conference was taking shots at Monetto, the site which a year ago was boasting to have the most secure platform. They launched late, apparently raised the expectations too high, and failed to deliver. Perhaps Smava can take their place as the “high end” P2P player. Finansowo, on the other hand, is a rather different niche, more “social” than “lending”. That leaves us with Kokos, the third player. I don’t know how well they are doing.

Smava says that financial crisis didn’t reduce the loan volume in Germany, in fact it actually increased, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Works on smava started in March 2008, and took about 6 full time programmers to finalize. Makes me a little bit uneasy about my 3-months, 1-non-programmer startup, but hey, they probably didn’t work seven days a week.

I wish Smava best. I would consider them for the time when I will have burnt all the money for startuping, but probably their advanced risk procedures would not let me in (if they are any good).

(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.

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.

At the moment, three social lending sites operate in Poland (Kokos, Finansowo, Monetto). Compared to other countries in Europe and globally, it’s quite a lot. In some larger and more developed EU countries P2P sites are yet to appear.

After couple of months from the launch of first site, 1/4 of Internet users in Poland declared that they had heard about the social lending concept. Of those, 24% would consider P2P loan, and 8.5% would consider investing in social lending. These numbers can probably be seen as a promising result – among those aware of the concept, social lending beats specialized fast-cash providers and loan cooperatives as acceptable source of a loan.

Gaining popularity is one thing, but high risk of potential borrowers will pose a serious challenge for the social lending sites. According to the survey, group interested in the P2P loans more often had problems with repayment in the past, including 90+ days defaults.

More in the report.

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.

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.”

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)

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.

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.

2d adventure ? Murloc RPG

Murloc happened to be the first game I found in which you can explore the world (2d, horizontal movement), pick quests, and fight (turn based combat).

I fail to identify myself with the creature that you play, but technically it proves the point.

2d adventure but more advanced ? DragonFable

DragonFable goes much further than Mork. Plenty of quests, characters, and items. The game is still 2d, but you have much more freedom to move within the scene. The combat is turn based, you can use skills, spells, and friends who assist you. You even customize your character in the beginning.

The graphics is not bad, indeed fable style, and the world seems vast. The game loads new areas in the course of the adventure.

There is also interesting business model: you can play for free, but cool items and locations are not available unless you buy a ?dragon amulet?. It cost $19.

Japanese Flash games

Ealier I posted one screen, here.

The play is quite impersonal, I would say, but these games prove that it is possible to have really nice graphics in a Flash game.

Conclusion: definitely possible to build an interesting online game. There are some games which have a storyline (e.g. Covert Front by M. Skutnik), but most are rather shallow (surely there must be some gems I haven’t found yet of course). This seems mostly due to the business model for the games, but it’s another topic.

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.