Moving to Twitter

I'm publishing most of my thoughts and interesting links on twitter.com

The Value of Social Networks

At the START Summit 2009, I took part in a workshop on business models for Web 2.0 companies. The most important "finding" was that some social network operators do a good job at charging their members for some services that they are actually willing to pay for while others miserably fail. While most of the information and discussions didn't really excite me, one question remains. Why am I using social network applications? What value do these platforms offer me?

In short, social networks offer condensed and contextualized information, they help us to reduce the number of things we're missing every day. All the profile data my friends fill in and all the actions they take are condensed into interesting packages, such as events (facebook), albums or company pages (linkedin). The activity feed is then pointing my attention to the available information, it is the social network cockpit.

Now how could this value be increased?

1. There must a better solution than so called "real time activity feeds". The answer is hidden somewhere in the IT labs of this world, who are dealing with recommendation systems.


2. Some information, such as job-related info is not really heavily used today. Social networks really only offer market places for jobs. Referrals, constant search for candidates or opportunities, etc. haven't really been very well incorporated into the social network's offerings.


3. Inclusion of further sources of information. So far, social networks only take the "member generated content" rather than the full content of the internet into account. Why not add suggestions on related articles, events, pictures, etc.


4. Extraction of geographical data. ASmallWorld has a geolocator feature, that is filled with information on the member's future trips. Such information is usually also added into status messages, etc. by most members. So why not automatically extract it and mash it up into a geolocator map for my friends instead of using additional tools, such as Plazes or TripIt.

Do you have other suggestions for improvements?

Companies in Switzerland and Singapore

I found useful comparison tables for the most important types of companies that exist in Switzerland and Singapore. I'm generally interested in limited liability companies / partnerships.

St. Gallen Symposium Photo Wall

I didn't know how easy it is to create a CoolIris Wall and I'm completely amazed. It took me 30 seconds to create this wall, wherefrom 10 seconds were used to find out the correct Flickr username.

• More information about the CoolIris Wall


• More information about the St. Gallen Symposium

Economic freedom index 2009

This index is quite important to all entrepreneurs. It is no wonder that the most relevant countries in the entrepreneurial scene are all on this top 10 list of the countries which grant the highest level of economic freedom. Economic freedom brings entrepreneurship because it tiers down barriers to start, grow, re-structure, etc.
Read more..

Top 30 Earning Websites

Flavio referred the list of Top 30 Earning websites on his blog. I absolutely agree with his comments but I still think the list is useful as an idicator.

It seems this list is US focused [...].
I’m also missing Monster, which made 1.3 billion in 2008, so the list doesn’t seem to be 100% accurate, but it’s still a good reference on what generates sales online.

The list supports my belief that solving an actual business problem is the best way to become successful. I will certainly look at earnings for all of the companies, too.

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START Summit 2009

I'm happy to see that many people are announcing the START Summit 2009. It's to be interpreted as a reward for the hard work, the START St. Gallen team has dedicated to the event. The team has done a great job with putting together an interesting program with great speakers, such as Henri B. Meier, Christoph Blocher, Nick Beglinger, Nicolas Berg, etc. A new achievement is the first time START Innovation & Sustainability Award, which will be given to a startup that is pre-selected by Synetgies (Camille, Renato, Tiziano and me) and that manages to convince the top tier jury with members from various fields. The award is hosted by Ernst & Young and startups.ch.

Registration for the START Summit is now open.