Facebook Redesign + App’s Program = App’s 2.0?

[Article published by Michael Watkins for News Ltd's 'Wires and Lights Blog' on Dec 1st 2008]

Facebook has announced that they will be introducing a ‘Verified App’s Program‘ early in ‘09. Applications will be evaluated on Facebooks three core principals, those being Respect, Transparency and Security. If all these principals are met, the application is deemed ‘Facebook Verified’.

The advantages of being an Facebook verified application will include more visibility in the news feed, higher ranking in the application directory and a big fat green tick next to your app when potential users are reviewing it. All good things.

All good things, if you are willing to pay a price. The price being $US375 a year…. recurring.

There has been a lot of talk regarding this move by Facebook, a lot of it critical. As the markets continue to tank, many see it as a blatant grab for cash, after all a ‘$US15B’ company wont be worth that for much longer in this climate, if it can’t pump out some steady revenue streams. Others claim that open-source on the platform is dead, as developers will have to pay to have their app formally ‘accepted’ by Facebook.

My thoughts are that this move is smart for Facebook and for serious application developers who have a vision to make serious money off the platform. Why?

In unison with the new site redesign, the program will help clear the backlog of useless and annoying app’s that clogged the news feeds which is what makes Facebook so useful
App’s as a whole got a bad wrap from the applications that just wasted your time or plain annoyed you. The new redesign changed all this. People said applications were dead due to the new design. I think they cleared the platform of all the shitty app’s that you don’t want or use and are gearing the platform to make way for credible app’s that actually solve real problems and have real revenue models. The program builds on this thinking and actually asks the real app developers who back themselves with a great idea, to come to the table and put there money where their mouth is.

Serious business ideas can be realized and be credible
In allowing the verified app access to more news feed exposure, notifications, invitations and emails, the program gives serous app developers an elevated platform to work off and the chance to prove that their app can work within a busy, highly exposed environment. Its like a head start, it gives the app more visibility above all the other unverified app’s. Lastly, since the app is officially verified, it will instill more confidence in the user to trust the app and therefore use it more.

It will provide a better user experience for users
With the crap, spammy, annoying app’s out and well built, designed and relevant app’s on the way through, users experience’s will inevitably begin to get better as time goes on.

It will usher in the next generation or ‘Web 2.0’ of app development
This is a big call on my behalf, feel free to abuse me in the comments… But I think we are seeing a small renaissance in application development being kicked off by Facebooks redesign and this program. Think back to Web 1.0, there was a massive rush of sites being created for no real purpose, other than to be seen, then the market died, along with all those websites… Then, technology got better, the masses became more comfortable online and smart people built sites that actually helped people solve real-world problems. The same trend appears to have happened with applications, I think over the last 18 months we’ve seen the rush of app’s that want to be seen. Now with proper guidelines and systems coming into place the platform is being set for a new wave. A wave of smart app’s that actually offer value, create money and solve real problems.

It is going to be fascinating to see how this pan’s out and if Facebook does start making real bucks off it. For now though, if I had built an app that I truly believed in, I would be one of the first to pay that $US375.

If you want to apply to get your app verified, visit here.

Feeding You Jobs In Realtime - Jobfeedr.com

[Article published by Michael Watkins for technation on Dec 16th 2008]

Sydney based garage startup Jobfeedr.com is on to something.

The site crawls all the worlds major IT jobs boards every few minutes, then automatically feeds these jobs to their homepage, your twitter channel or via RSS to your browser.

The service is one condusive to the times. Quoting co-founder Mike Nicholls -

More people [are] fighting for less jobs, more online job sites that need to be checked constantly for new jobs, job sites making candidates wade through 100s of screens to get through jobs just so they can show more ad impressions. Looking for jobs turns into a full time job.

In making this process automated, the Jobfeedr team just saved thousands of stressed out job hunters the hassle of wading through the irrelevant material that is pushed at them through the major jobs boards.

The setup process is dead simple. Head to Jobfeedr.com, set the specific fields you want for your feed then hit ok. A list of job’s will then appear below. Click on the twitter channel link of a chosen job, this will direct you to that job category’s twitter feed on twitter. Click follow and presto, all jobs found by jobfeedr relating to that specific job field will be automatically twittered to your feed.

Same goes with RSS. Click the RSS button and that stream will begin feeding into your browser.

I really do see some promise here. The idea is great, serves a real purpose and will save alot of time stretched people alot of time!

The global approach from launch is encouraging, the team is not just focusing on the smaller Australian or Australasian markets, they have San Francisco and New York City on the cards too - something we dont see enough of in the Aussie startup scene.

Mike Nicholls and Dale Hurley look like an experienced team who have the knowledge to keep pushing Jobfeedr forward.

Lastly and most importantly, although the look is currently very bare, the interface design and functionality is extremely simple, which is something alot of other twitter app and RSS app developers have yet to master.

Advert’s may come into play later down the track, with small ad’s being integrated into the twitter feed and possibly the RSS feeds. However for now, the team is focused on getting the core technology right, believing if they do this, users will pick up and advertising streams will follow.

Keep an eye on Jobfeedr in the future and if your looking for your next job, employ jobfeedr to do the work for you, saving you alot of time for other things during these xmas holidays.

Recessions Are Good News For Immature Aussie Startups

[Article published by Michael Watkins for technation on Dec 10th 2008]

With all the news around at the moment, indications are that they sky is falling and Aussie Tech Startups have little or no chance of surviving through the ever-widening financial quagmire that is the current world economy. I thought on this, felt sorry for myself and my own startup for 5 minutes, then decided to dig deeper into the effect economic downturns have had on small tech companies.

The results may encourage you ­

Talent Pool

When a market tanks, job cuts follow. When the market really tanks, lots of job cuts follow. The IT industry is one of the worst industries hit by layoffs, as companies prefer to keep on their core staff that provide the bread and butter applications for the company, then cut the rest of their roster. Most of the time it’s the young ones working on the cool new things the company had envisaged 6-12 months earlier, that get the chop.

Suddenly, almost overnight, the talent pool changed. The market is offering up brilliant young developers and designers that would have normally cost squillions an hour, to virtually nothing ­ all they want is to make their next rental payment.
If you had trouble finding good staff before, look now, in the right places and you will find them in abundance.

Less Competition

Remember reading about all those promising new tech startups that received bucket-loads of venture capital cash 12 months ago ­ and competed directly in your space -while you were busy writing your own business plan, in your makeshift office? Most of them will be out of business in the next 12 months, which gives you a clear start. VC backed companies usually have very aggressive business plans that are well suited to an aggressive market, once the market turns south, that business then chews through cash with a burn rate that would smoulder any page it was written on. Some will be smart and begin saving cash quickly, others won’t and will head down into the deadpool.

If your startup is compelling enough and you focus only on your primary proposition, you may find it easier and faster to grow in a lonely, lame marketplace than that of a busy, crowded marketplace. The time to jump in is now.

Perseverance and Money Management

If you thought juggling finances was hard 6 months ago, its gotten exponentially harder since. An economic downturn whittles out the companies that have bad revenue models and bad fiscal management, those companies simply deadpool. The ones that survive have solid revenue streams - no matter how much they make and strong fiscal management. So if you want to survive this, better start learning how to control, allocate and conserve money well, very well. If you come out the other end looking relatively bruised and battered, but all in all healthy, the market then has only one way to head and that’s up. If you take the lessons learned during a market fall and keep applying them to your business while in good times, it will only serve to make you as an entrepreneur and your company that much stronger when the next one comes.

Real VC’s

The time of the VC firm that had too much money is now over. VC’s will only invest in companies that they have researched to the point of lunacy, then they’ll research them some more. Its good news for startups because the wrong investors wont get involved with your company. Your business plan will only attract those VC’s or investors that know and connect with what you are trying to achieve. It will be harder to raise money, but know once you have raised it, you will be on board with an investor who truly understands you, your business and its future.

History

Apple and Microsoft were both conceived and then later founded during the tail-end of the 1973-74 stock market crash - supposedly one of the worst stock market downturns in modern history at the time, where did they end up?
They now have a current combined market cap of US$316.3B.

To sign off, here are some of my ideas - Go out now and build your dream team, the people you need probably have no job at the moment. Be frugal and smart with your companies money, if you get through this, there will be plenty on the other side. Take advantage of a desolate playground, market your brand in smart ways, get in customers faces while no one else is.

Raise money smartly, if your idea is compelling and growing, you’ll be 1 in 100, rather than 1 in 100,000, so you have more room to move - get the investor that sees your vision.

If you do come out the other side, you and your company would have been born in and persevered through one of the worst economic landscapes the world has ever known. You’ll probably have one of the strongest and smartest staff going around, have VC’s throw money at you and be in one of the best economic landscape the world has ever known.

Recession?? I think Progression.

Rapport – White Label Social Networking For Your Brand

[Published by Michael Watkins for technation on Nov 18th 2008]

Sydney company Cognitive Development have built one of the first white-label social networking platforms to focus on the sometimes forgotten Australian SME Tech scene. Named Rapport, the product allows companies with tighter budgets to capitalize on the social media movement by offering a pre-packaged but highly customizable social networking system for their brand or company.

“Our aim was to create a powerful marketing tool using social networking technology so that companies restricted by time or money can compete with their bigger competitors, particularly in a time of possible recession,” said Cognitive Development co-founder Stuart Inskip.

The reason it is so cheap relies on the fact that customers don’t have to pay for the entire development cost of the network. They use the existing Rapport architecture, then pick and choose which features they want within it. In cutting out development cost’s, it drastically drops the overall price of building a company focused social network.

This product could not come at a better time for SME’s struggling to get their brand out into a swamped and increasingly expensive market place.

The fact that a Sydney Based Company has been created to solely focus on social media for the Australian SME sector is a strong sign that the social media space in Australia is maturing and gaining commercial importance.

The cool thing is that each network can be tailored to fit the business it is being built for be it, Bars and Clubs, Open Learning, Retail or Fan Groups. In doing this it offers companies the chance to get maximum value out of their marketing and business objectives at a very competitive rate.

I am yet to see what the interface will look like or how it will act. A guess would be that it is something similar to Ning, but aimed at a more narrow, commercially focused demographic.

Rapport will definitely fill a niche for companies looking to capitalize on social networking within the baby-boomer or late Gen X demographics.

What will be interesting however is how companies focused on the Gen Y audience will use the Rapport platform to pull that demographic away from the big social networks like facebook. This audience is now so deeply entrenched within these social network that it will may prove a hard obstacle to achieve. If these SME’s don’t have an incredibly enticing value proposition for this generation, the jump maybe too difficult to make.

Monster + News Ltd = Seek Killer??

[Article published by Michael Watkins for technation on Nov 28th 2008]

Monster Worldwide has just struck a deal with News Ltd to buy 50% of CareerOne, News’s online jobs board.

The deal in short, allows CareerOne to employ Monsters search engine for more exacting search results.

Whats interesting here is why now? The market is tanking, job vacancies are evaporating and CareerOne’s Job numbers were down 10% from recent July levels. News CEO John Hartigan explains that the deal “signals an intensifying of our challenge to Seek“.

Possible benefit’s for News, if they are willing to spend the cash during the downturn, include promoting the CareerOne brand while Seek’s financials stall, which could result in more market share for the company next year when markets pick back up. Its a viable avenue to head down, but in order to gain more market share, there needs to be more jobs available and with current employment numbers dropping, that option isn’t looking attractive.

I’ve followed this story for the best part of 5 months now, ever since Monster announced they were heading back into the Australian market earlier in the year, after failing last time they were here. The question that still sticks out for me on this is, how can you realistically expect to be anything more than a distant second to Seek in the online Job’s board market in Australia.

The Bassett brothers company, which is now 26.7% owned by James Packers Consolidated Media Holdings, retains a staggering 60% of the Australian market. That is a colossal piece of market share, which Seek will aim to retain, tooth and nail.

There just doesn’t seem to be a financially attractive or strategically effective way to beat Seek in this sector.

I found that Fairfax Digital’s Jack Matthews’ remarks, sum up the move well,

“[we don't see] the benefit of bringing in a company that’s already tried and failed here. If we had a business that was really successful, we wouldn’t sell half of it.”

Seek has beaten Monster once before…and I can’t see a merger with CareerOne stopping that from happening again.

Seek Killer?? — We’ll wait and see.

ANZ wants to be your Money Manager

[Article written by Michael Watkins for technation on Oct 16th 2008]

ANZ launched MoneyManager today.

In a first for the Australian market, MoneyManager is a service that shows users all of their finances, from several different financial providers, in the one place.

MoneyManager imports account data from third party financial sites that a user would regularly use, then presents the information through a simple interface.

The site will make it easier for ANZ customers to effectively manage their finances without having the standard three to four browser tabs open simultaneously.

This will be welcome news to all who have been tracking their personal finances a little more cautiously recently given the current state of the globes financial sectors.

If you are an ANZ customer, you can sign up to use the site here.

QuickRosters - Painfully Simple Online Rostering

[Article written by Michael Watkins for technation on October 3rd 2008]

Quickrosters.com, recently launched into beta, allows business owners to easily and effectively manage their employee roster online.

The site is dead simple, as is the idea. It only took me 2-3 minutes to create a fake roster with 5 employees, set the times and dates of their shifts for the week and hypothetically email or SMS them off to staff.

What is fascinating is how simple the site actually is. Where the interface doesn’t score points in the good looks department, it makes up for in spades with its easy to use steps and instructions.

Founder and developer Chris Hulbert now needs to start licensing the software to SME’s in Australia. If Chris succeeds in doing this, he should be able to use the revenue gained to improve on the site and begin targeting bigger companies, as the issue he is addressing affects all businesses big and small.

This is one of those startup’s that came from a simple idea and was built correctly into a simple web site.

You can find and demo the Quickrosters site here.