Guillaume Wolf
Internet is fascinating. It's changing the way we communicate, the way we work, the way we think... Yet, everything is still to be done.
Make it happen!
Posts
Microsoft will probably launch their new OS in the next few months. So... What's new?
Basically, Windows 8 will be very similar to Windows 7 except for the Start Menu. The Start Menu will be replaced by the Metro interface which is very similar to Windows phone (touch screen friendly). And this will completely change the use of Microsoft Windows: There will be two interfaces and two completely different experiences.
| OMG! Where is the Start Menu? |
| The Start Menu has been replaced by a new touch screen friendly interface. |
| On the right: Charms... a new menu on Windows 8 |
Conclusion
Microsoft tried to adapt their OS to the new way of using a computer. The success of tablets showed that they needed to have an application store and make an easy, user-friendly interface. They did great with this Metro environment which is so similar to mobile OSs. To sum it up, Metro is designed for entertainment and the desktop is designed for work. But it's sometimes really confusing...
In the end, Windows 8 is really innovative and therefore people will need to adapt to it... which they will no do happily...
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) has been introduced in late 2011. Mid January, the FBI decided to shut down MegaUpload. You can read it on megaupload.com. They also arrested all founders. It's sad, because MegaUpload was widely used on the whole planet.
- French authorities made irc.lc shut down its iframe pointing to the Anonymous webchat.
- Twitter recently announced that will censor tweets.
| Do we have to expect a massive attack on official sites to protest against censorship? |
Xavier Niel, CEO of Iliad is well known in France. He already turned the ISP (Internet Service Provider) industry upside down several times with his offers.
This time, he targeted the mobile industry with two outstanding offers:
All included: 19.99€- $25.50 (or 15€99 for Free ADSL subscribers)
- Unlimited calls (from France to more than 40 countries)
- Unlimited texts
- 3 Go data
- No commitment
- One hour out-going calls (unlimited received calls)
- 60 out-going texts (unlimited received texts)
- No commitment
- Verizon: $120 = 84 €
- T-Mobile: $80 = 62.50 €
- AT&T: $115 = 90 €
When designing a new service on the Internet, the goal of an entrepreneur is to become mainstream. That means they want their service to be used by everyone.
Now let's consider the new services that became mainstream after Facebook. The main names would be Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, Angry Birds... The common factor that made these service become so popular is the fact that they were really easy to use. Actually they didn't change our old habits. They integrated on existing platforms. Therefore the barrier to use it everyday wasn't huge.
| The use of an API enables to have a product on different platforms |
Therefore, when creating a product, startups have to make sure it can be used easily on existing communication tools. Nowadays, when it comes to online communication, people use:
- Mails
- Phones
- (Twitter?)
The social network market is very active these last days. Google recently decided to have their social network open to everyone. Facebook organized a developers summit last week, announcing a bunch of new neat features...
Now that Google Plus is live, there's a serious competitor to Facebook. Google Plus is great because I can use a single platform to share personal stuff with my friends and follow people of interest. However, the true value of Google Plus could be revealed as a social network for professionals. I'm not saying that Google Plus competes with LinkedIn... but it could be used with to connect with people who aren't really personal friends like coworker.
It doesn't seem to be the priority for Google as they decided to open a game platform before accepting to have people registering with Google Apps account. But I think it will soon come (>prediction). And when they do, they will probably be used in a lot of of companies...
How is Facebook reacting to this threat? Well, during the f8 summit Facebook announced a lot of great news. Some are direct reactions to Google Plus:
- Lists management has been enhanced to make it easier to share to limited circle.
- Users can now subscribe to follow anyone's public status...
- Facebook began to connect people with object with their like button. Now Facebook is going further... you can connect to anything the way you want. You can decide not to 'like' a book, but to 'read' it. You can share music you 'listen' and the one you 'like'. This way Facebook includes in your graphs not only people, but also object and the way you're connected with them.
- Timeline: Facebook will soon reveal a new way to show your personal information in a timeline from your birth to now. It looks quite promising!
Facebook is still way ahead of Google Plus. Today a direct competition with Facebook is to be excluded.
But there's another solution called Diaspora. It's still in alpha tests... but it looks promising. Diaspora is a federated social network. It means that you can use it for a limited circle (your school, your company...) and then your network can still be connected to another one.
The usage is very similar to Google Plus, but it's much safer for your privacy.
It's hard to see how things are going to evolve. I would say that Facebook will remain the king of personal social networks. Google Plus would be great to be used inside businesses. Diaspora would fit well with the way schools and universities are organized... Plus, there are more and more vertical social networks... these could have a great power in a few years...
Everything's possible, right?
Earthquake at Apple! Steve jobs left. It's always a nightmare for big companies when they see their charismatic CEO leave. The success of Apple was really connected with the image of their CEO.
You might know that Jobs already left Apple in 1984. As a results Apple's sales went down and they had to buy Jobs's new company (NeXT) in order to retrieve their CEO and therefore their success.
But this time, things are going to be different. As he mentioned on his resignation letter, Jobs is going to stay as chairman in Apple's board. I don't see Jobs resignation as a real threat to the company. I'm positive his leaving has been fully prepared and I suspect Apple will release a huge piece of news in order to prevent a drop of its shares.
There were an awful lot a rumors for the release of new devices before Jobs quit. The fifth generation of iPhones... the next generation of iPods...
My guess is that Apple needs a major announcement to make people forget about the charismatic former CEO. A product upgrade won't be enough: Apple will announce a real innovation in the next month.
So what could it be? I can see two problems to be tackled: the limited size of phones' screens and adding text on a touch device. Apple might release a touch screen with textures and reliefs in order to provide feedback to users or (let's be crazy) they could announce a bendable touch screen that connects with iPhones... I guess I'm more hoping than predicting...
This is a game changing announcement, since Google will produce hardware for the first time. It's often said that the main reason for this acquisition was Motorola's 20,000+ patents. Why not... I just don't see Google having any trouble paying for the licences (or court trials).
What I see in this acquisition is that Google will start to actually build its own devices. The competition with Apple and Microsoft will reach a new level! Now Google will build its own phones and tablet (Motorola Xoom is the greatest iPad competitor).
With Motorola, Google is now one of the biggest android phone manufacturer. Nonetheless, Google clearly announced that its existing partnerships will remain the same. And it seems that Google's partners aren't pissed at all. Therefore we can imagine how it will affect the market.
Google will be able to build phone the way they want. Motorola phones will not have any additional skin as android phone manufacturer use to add. They will also have automatic update. Great news for android phone users, because the other brand (Samsung, HTC...) will have to keep up.
I think this partnership is really exciting!
This is certainly the future of computers. With Chrome OS, I can easily login with my Google account on any computer and find all my applications and file directly. It's possible because everything is on the cloud.
It's great! But for a first hit, Google might have gone a little too far. Chrome OS is really disruptive and therefore not easy to use. For example, you can't easily open a file with these computers. Documents, videos... everything has to be on the Internet.
I don't think that these computers are going to be a hit since only a few tech-savvy would understand why it's designed this way. Plus, people would think that these computers have less features and therefore less value.
I wonder a long it will take for the world to change this way... Because it will!
Although I'm certain that Google can design an awesome platform, I doubt it could become mainstream. What makes the power of Facebook is that (almost) everybody is on Facebook. It will be hard to make them switch from on network to another. Even though many people are complaining about Facebook privacy issues... do you really thing that Google will be better?
In the main time, Google+ is focusing on mobile applications. That might help... but I don't believe it will be a huge success. Check out what people think on Beansight about Google+.
As a young entrepreneur, I had the chance to be invited. Maurice Levy who was in charge of setting up the event did a great job in the organisation: attendees were offered food from LeNotre and there was no major problem which is rare in the kind of big events.
In his introducing speech, Nicolas Sarkozy war clear: the Internet is a great strength for our economy and its global approach changes the way things used to be (in a good way). But this revolution has to framed by the states and the governments in order to make sure that it stays fair and moral. As he doesn't want to slow down the evolution, he wants the main actors of the Internet to take part to the political discussion.
That's the theory. Because in the end the discussion panels were more focusing on how to defend or promote their own services than elaborating a real discussion on what role the governments should have.
Finally it was a way to clearly shows that our leaders feel concerned about the Internet. It's a very visible event, but there won't be any effective decision concluded.
Obviously people from the Internet industry took the opportunity to network and meet some interesting people. We even had on open Mike Butcher session to introduce "real" startup. It was basically startupers shouting what they were doing to who ever wanted to listen....
It's been a while I haven't posted anything on my blog... I still haven't spoken about my own startup. What a shame! Now, let me correct that.
Beansight is a social network that enables its users to post and share predictions on the future. The community is invited to talk about prediction and give their point of view (will it happen?). When a prediction becomes true, credibility points are attributed to those who correctly forecasted it. A ranking allows you to track the best experts. You can also challenge your friends to see who's got skills.
If you like the idea, why not give it a try?
Beansight is born in May 2011 at the Startup Weekend Paris, an event which makes attendees launch their own startups in 54h. Then, the project evolved slowly till january 2011. At the point we entered the accelerator Le Camping. This means that we work in the prestigious Palais Brongniart in Paris. We also have access to a great panel of mentors.
Beansight is quite popular in the French Tech universe. The Startup has been featured on great blogs like TechCrunch and FrenchWeb (articles in French).
If you want to follow Beansight's news you can:
- sign up on Beansight
- follow Beansight Blog
- like us on Facebook
- follow us on Twitter
- Users are only served ads that fit best with them.
- Publishers can increase there prices because the value of each ad is greater.
- Advertisers have a better impact on their target and increase their return on investments.
The ad ecosystem evolved. DSP, SSP, Ad exchanges, data suppliers... all those platforms are designed to make advertisers buy on the audience instead of on the context.
Google is very profitable today because they make money on a wide ad space with many publishers. Facebook could do just the same and differentiate from Google thanks to a great targeting tool using the ad network data (gender, age, likes...).
That would be great because small publisher would have the choice between Google and Facebook to monetize their ad spaces. This would probably increase the selling price (which is incredibly low today).
I only fear that Facebook and Google will lower the market advertising prices. Their platforms would be very efficient thanks to the targeting. But they would sell it for a low price because they don't use sales people but an automatic bid platform. We can only hope that advertisers will have to bid higher in order to have a sufficient scale for their campaigns.
EDIT:
The question was: how would it impact the sponsored links? It seems obvious, that Google would generate more ad spaces, and that these spaces would have a lower CTR (Click through rate).
Now thanks to Marine Software, we have the data, to truly understand the benefit from Google Instant.
Apple's mobile advertising platform, iAd is only at an early stage of its development. They recently release a video of their first customer case with Nissan.
The results are quite promising, since they succeed to gain a lot of attention to the brand. Click through rates are said to be 5 time higher on iAd than on a regular browser. The average interaction lasted about 90 seconds. Quite a good start!
But to achieve these results, the advertiser has to deal with Apple's standards. Sure the results are great as you'll see in the video, but it increases the delay to set up a campaign (up to 10 weeks!). Plus not every advertiser could stand it till the end.
Apple's prices to advertise on iAd are incredibly high! In addition to a $ 1 million entry fee, you have to pay both for each impression served (CPM $10) and for each interaction (CPC $2). This is the cost for Nissan's smooth and beautiful ad.
There's also a cheaper offer for standard banners (CPC $0.25). This offer is designed for developers who wants to promote their applications. But it seems that AdMob (Google's mobile advertising platform) is doing better for these kinds of campaigns (cheaper and better CTR).
So we might have two complementary platforms. One helps you to increase your traffic or online sales, the other makes people recall your name and drives off-line sales.
AdMob for direct response marketers and iAd for brand marketers.
Since September 14th, Google has changed its brand protection policy in Europe. Now you can bid on a brand you don't own.
This could lead to insane behavior. If Pepsi want to steal customer away from Coca-Cola, they can just bid a high price on the words "Coke" or "Coca-Cola"... Of course you don't want your customers to receive deceiving results as they google your name. So you'll have to bid high prices too.
As a result prices for brands will probably increase. Great move from Google. Advertisers are upset but they have no other choice. They can try to go on court, but I doubt they'll win their case.
This move could change the way advertisers use Adwords. I guess smart and malicious Adwords users could definitely turn the game to their advantage.
Gmail is already a great tool for emails. Its core advantage is to enable the user to follow their emails by threads. This means that if there are answers to a mail, you can easily read the whole conversation.
Yet it still very easy to get overwhelmed by an increasing number of received emails. That's why Google has decided to organize them in two categories according to their importance.
Let watch Google's presentation video:
That's a really smart move from Google. The idea is very simple and I am confident that Google will succeed in making this filter efficient for all of us. It will help users to run their inbox faster.
My only concern is how people will deal with their "less important" mails. Emails coming from a new contact will obviously appear in the second inbox and might not be noticed by the user. Therefore we will still have to check the secondary inbox and we won't save that much time.
Once again, the success of this feature relies on the effective use of it. Will people find an interest in it if it either doesn't let them save time (but prioritizes their attention to the most important) or could mislead them and make them miss important mails? Are Gmail users able to use this priority inbox so that it will be efficient?
Wait and see...
I hope that some of the technological features of Wave could be reused later (in context spell-checking, media sharing and so on). Like I said: e-mails are an out-dated way to communicate. It needs something new... something disruptive enough to make it more user friendly but not to different so that everybody would still be able to use it.
So Waver... You still have till the end of the year wave peacefully... after that, the site might be down.
Now that the english changed its model and thanks to figures provided by the Guardian, we can try to guess what is best.
My conclusion is that the Times decreased its revenues by approximately 50%. But they also might have decreased their costs because they don't need any sales person now.
According to the Gardian, there are around 60,000 people that are willing to pay (45,000 already pay and 15,000 have a free suscription but would eventually pay) to read articles from the Times. This makes a total revenue of £120,000 per week (£2 per user per week).
There are still 195,000 users on The Times. With a 84% loss (according to the Gardian) it means that there used to be more than 1,200,000 visits before (I assumed that on average there one visit a week), when The Times was free.
I read on the Experian Hitwise that the average time spent per visit was around 5 minutes. Therefore there should be around 20 ads seen sold at a CPM of £15 (much higher than in France!). This is an expected revenue of £360,000 per week.
If The Times still display ads in their pai model they'll earn an additional £36,000 (20 ads per week per user at a £30 CPM).
In the end, it seems that The Times cut its revenues by two. There are quite some assumptions that have been made, but it seems that the paid model wasn't such a good idea in terms of revenues.
Updates
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The Leap, a new human computer interface http://t.co/EOMg4Qek!26 hours ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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Les cheques sont prets pour les #CJEAwards http://t.co/p51HdzS6
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Robert McDowell: The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom http://t.co/pjcMPWRt
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@captchme Pas le même objectif ! Pour Adword, vise à réaliser une conversion on-line (vente..). Vous c'est pour qu'un message soit mémorisé.5 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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Les CJE Awards c'est déjà mardi http://t.co/G4bh5pT5 via @pressecitron
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Les finalistes des CJE Awards sont… http://t.co/ehzOds0f via @locita
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I predict $ 113,099,001,795 ($45 a share) as the Facebook IPO day closing valuation http://t.co/Lckl86Bx
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Beansight offers now a custom feed of predictions http://t.co/n78kmLNK via @beansight
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Google will release a proper gaming console running android #Beansight http://t.co/zIKwEjeY
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@Mapelen Salut, je suis en train d'écrire un article sur l'opendata. Comment peut-on utiliser les données d'Home'n'go et dans quel but ?7 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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Les récompenses individuelles pour la saison 2011-2012 de NBA http://t.co/awd2cQym
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Google takes infographics to whole new level! The story of send: learn what happens to your emails. http://t.co/o0E8iZcA8 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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@captchme Super intéressant ! Vous avez déjà des annonceurs ? Vous avez pu faire des post-test de mémorisation ?8 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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@captchme Bonjour, quel est l'ordre de grandeur de prix d'une saisie captcha pour un annonceur ? Merci !9 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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1 billion downloads for VLC! http://t.co/6TX8aTie10 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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The Truth About Facebook Advertising http://t.co/NDoeW8MG
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@Mapelen Ah Je l'ai retrouvé : http://t.co/VF6dcPCF Ca vient de Oatmeal12 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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@Mapelen Ce n'était pas une critique :) D'ailleurs il me semble que ce n'est même pas tumblr qui les a créés...12 days ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
Profile
Summary
Member of Le Cercle des Jeunes Entrepreneurs and Le Bridge, in order to promote entrepreneurship in Europe.
Experience
- May 2010 - PresentCo-Founder / Beansight
- Jun 2009 - PresentProduct Marketing Manager / AlentyDefinition and design of innovative products using Alenty's technology: - for media agencies (media plan optimization) - for ad networks (ad space profitability) - for publishers (forms enhancement, content exposure optimization) Realization of ad hoc web analytics studies and analysis.
- Jun 2008 - PresentMarketing Intern / YuseoProspection of new costumers in Due Diligence Research seal of approval process and made a report to show how Yuseo could do Developed a commercial study of consumers for online shopping experiences
Education
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2008 - 2009Duke UniversityMaster of Engineering Managment in Engineering Management
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2006 - 2009Ecole centrale de LyonMaster in EngineeringActivities: Vice-president, Forum Synergie (Career Fair): 2,000 students and 90 companies (budget $250,000). Coach of the Basketball team. Treasurer, Centrale Lyon Improvisation Theater Company.
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2003 - 2006Lycée Henri IVMaths and Physics
Additional Information
Posts
Beansight just changed its layout. The new one will be more user-friendly and efficient.
Vote buttons are always on the right of the prediction in order to match with our reading direction (First the prediction is read, then it is voted). Probability to happen has been emphasized thanks to a gauge just under the vote buttons.
But our core improvement is our predictions feed. Beansight has so many predictions that it used to be very hard to find content you might be interested in. Now you just have to follow your friends and topics in order to see all predictions that match your interests:
We hope that this new feature will enhance the experience on Beansight. In order to benefit from it, make sure you follow your favorite topics:
Beansight opened in 2011. Let’s see what happened during those 9 months of existence. What was the main topics of discussion?
Sure, Beansight users like to talk about technologies (Apple, Google, Facebook…). Then comes sports with predictions on NBA and Football. There’s also politics with 2012 presidential elections (both in the US and in France).
So… who did well this year? Here is the general ranking of Beansight:
Congratulation to Guillaume Rosaz (grz73)! You’re the most reliable crystal ball!
As you can see, JeromeRuskin and mvaloatto succeeded in having a good ranking with very few predictions.
It seems that Apple inspired our top 3 as they scored about a third of their points with predictions concerning Cupertino.
That’s probably how Guillaume achieved to become Mr Beansight 2011!
As always, there are a lot of blogs that announce a bunch of predictions for new year. 2012 is no different. Here are the most popular one:
- Mashable: 6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012
- Mashable: 5 Tech Trend to watch in 2012
- TechCrunch: The Definitive Guide to HTML5: 14 Predictions for 2012
- TechCrunch: Five Predictions for Online Video in 2012
- CNBC: Predictions 2012
- ZDNet: Time for 2012 some predictions…
- CNet: Marc Andreessen, predictions for 2012 (and beyond)
- PCMag: Tech Predictions for 2012
- Forrester: 10 Cloud Predictions for 2012
- Predictions for Google in 2012
- IBM: The next 5 in 5
- Maya: The end of the world on December 21st, 2012
- And other blogs: here, here and there.
On this pages we can see some common topics, recorded on Beansight:
- Apple will release a TV: TechCrunch agrees. Mashable and ZDNet disagree
- Google Plus will have over 300 users according to Google OS blog. Mashable seems to agree.
- HTML5 will preferred to Flash for ads, according to TechCrunch.
- Who will be the next president in the US?
What do you think will happen in 2012? Please tell us on Beansight!
Like diamond cutting, we’ll try to get rid of meaningless content in order to enhance our platform.
Until now, we refused to moderate content on Beansight. We first wanted to know how people would use our platform.
It’s quite clear now that some predictions damage the overall quality of Beansight. We have to do something.
Predictions will be moderated. But we’ll have to come with clear rules:
- Predictions concerning a private circle are no longer accepted on Beansight. A prediction with references (people, event, products…) that are not on Wikipedia will not be accepted.
- Obvious predictions will be removed.
- Unquantifiable predictions will have to be modified so that everybody can understand how it will be validated.
- Irrespective predictions will be removed (they were the only one we were already moderating).
We hope that this work will give enhance the experience on Beansight.
Do you like it? Do you think this move is the right direction for Beansight? Please make sure to share your opinion on this prediction: “Beansight will be more strict in the moderation of predictions.”
Yes, Steve Jobs left his position as Apple CEO. He’s been replaced by Tim Cook. That’s a huge loss for Apple, as the success of the company was often linked to the charisma of its CEO.
The whole tech industry is shaking… What will happen to Apple, now that Jobs left? Well, that’s what we want to learn on Beansight. If you want to share your opinion or follow the trends for Apple, you can follow the topic Apple.
If you want to try a different voting experience, we decided to launch a dedicated website on Jobs’ resignation.
As you may know, Beansight is a French start-up. Does that mean we focus only on the French market? HELL NO! Our goal is to become mainstream. This means that we want to be a worldwide company.
And actually we already are! There are people from everywhere on Beansight. Obviously we have a large proportion of people from the United-States (about a third)… but there are also people from India, Turkey, Russia and so on. Just look at our stats from Google Analytics:
There also people who share Beansight all over the world. Our latest share went from Russia. Now… shall proceed to a multi-languages translation? It might be a little early for us. Let’s begin to people our community in English first!
It’s already been 6 months Beansight joined Le Camping. The accelerator program finished with a great celebration: the Camp Fest.
We had the opportunity to show our platform to journalists and then there were conferences with about 400 attendees. Finally we had a bbq with a rock band playing in the parisian night. It was great!
It’s time for us to take some hindsight on our progress during these 6 month. Beansight grew up. Thanks to advice from mentors at Le Camping we succeed to build a great platform. It still needs improvement and we know we can do better, but it already secured almost 5,000 members which is great! Furthermore, the community is international with users from the US, France, Spain, Turkey and many other countries!
We know our milestones to go on this good track. This summer, we’re going to spread Beansight everywhere. If you’re a developer you can help us do so thanks to our API.
Stay tuned to be notified about our latest updates!
As our community is growing so fast, it’s hard to catch up with every prediction that is shared on Beansight. We’re working very hard to deliver always more relevant predictions to you.
Our latest feature allows you to follow topics you like. If you’re on a prediction page, you can see tags on the top right corner. Here is an example with screen shots.
If you click on the tag ‘Google’, you’ll see all predictions about Google. That’s great! But it’s not over…
You can also follow the topic Google by clicking on the star on the top left corner. We are aware that it’s not easy to understand that we can follow a topic by clicking on the star. If you have any idea on how to present it, we’ll be more than happy to listen to you!
When you follow a topic, you’ll be updated for each new prediction about it. The circle on tag Google tells you that there is one new prediction on Google.
This is only the first step. We will soon have a completely personalized timeline. The prediction are going to be sorted by relevance to you according to your favorite topics and people. You will easily catch predictions shared and voted by your friends and the ones in your favorite topics.We therefore encourage you to follow friends and topics in order to get ready for this.
As mentioned on this blog, we hosted a hackathon this weekend. Developers were invited to mashup APIs of some startups from Le Camping.
The event went very well. More than 10 projects have come to light.
Hackers have been hacking all night long.
Beansight was used in 3 of these projects:
Johan and Pierre worked on a physical object that reads beansight prediction based on your twitter centers of interest. The Beansight Box.
Guillaume from Beansight, worked on small projects: a Dabla bot that send predictions on a given topic and a mini site which asks you to answer one prediction at a time. You can Agree, Disagree or Skip.
Amine worked on a Wordpress integration for Beansight. First, you can simply link a prediction to an article.
You can read about all the final demos on the blog of the event.
The whole Beansight team would like to thank all participants, we hope you enjoyed the event as much as we did when we saw the final projects.
We plan to release the Beansight API to the public very soon.
Thursday, June 2nd was a great day in Beansight’s history. Hence, we published our first sponsored predictions.
When a company sponsors a prediction, Beansight insures to make it more visible in order to increase the number of votes and we target experts who already have proven their skills in the concerned filed. The results are given in less than a fortnight.
Our customer is a French public water provider. The company needs to forecast its future market and therefore published two predictions:
- In two years, the French will drink more tap water than bottled water.
- In two years, many French towns will change their public water provider.
If you have some thought to share about these predictions you’re more than welcome to do so.
If everything goes well, Beansight will be able to validate its business model and our customer could even decide to be a regular Beanisght client! So these days are really important to us…
The Beansight team is hosting a hackathon in Paris. Join other developers to create a cool prototype in a 24-hour hackathon at le Palais Brongniart (Paris, France) on Friday, June 24, 2011.
Beansight and other startups from our accelerator Le Camping will open their APIs for you to mash them up.
At the end of the hackathon, a jury will reward the best teams.
The main goal is to have fun coding on a creative and innovative small project of your choice. Because Beansight will open its API, you will be able to make it your own and come up with a remixed Beansight experience.
Join us and get your free tickets.
More info on the blog
We continuously try to improve the experience on Beansight. Our current focus is to make Beansight become more social.
Now, you’ll be able to keep up to date with your friends’ activity. A simple box will shows you how many predictions your friends just created and how many times they voted.
Cyril created 12 new predictions and voted 38 times since last time.
To be notified of your friends activity you need to add them as favorites. To do so you can connect your Beansight account with your Facebook account. (by logging with beansight or by going in the settings). Then, Beansight will suggest you your facebook friends who are already on Beansight so that you could follow them easily. You can also follow any beansight user by adding him to your favorites.
click on the star to add a user to your favorites
For the moment it’s all we have… but this is the first step in order to achieve some nice new features:
- follow any topic you like
- a personalized timeline according to your friends and followed topics
- rankings for each category in your circle
- a Facebook invitation system
In May 2010, we participated to the second Startup Weekend Paris which took place on HEC’s campus. We designed Beansight during those 54 hours: a social network to share predictions.
What’s going on after a Startup Weekend? It’s up to you! Here are our advice to go on in your project:
- It doesn’t matter whether your win or not: winning is always good for your self-confidence, but it won’t make your project more successful. There are many examples of projects which didn’t win but however managed to launch their startups and attracted their first customers.
- Set up a debriefing as soon as possible: to talk about all feedback you got during the weekend (especially those from the jury). Then take the decision to move your project on or not.
- Build the founders team: everybody will have to estimate the amount of time they can allow to the project. Build your team consequently. If your resources are not enough, you’ll have to find other people (maybe people you met during the weekend?)
- Share equities between founders: make sure to talk about that early. You can use this method to do so. Keep in mind that this call does not have to be definitive, it could evolve according to the effective implication in the project of each member.
- Go out and and have beers with your teammates: it’s more pleasant to work with friends, isn’t it? Take the time to know them better and bound with them. You can talk about other things than startups.
- Launch as soon as possible: don’t try to have a perfect product on your first shot. Release your MVP (nothing about valuable player here: MVP refers to Minimum Viable Product) as soon as possible (and even sooner). Get feedback from your early adopters and enhance your product.
- Use collaborative tools: Beansight uses Status.net to have a private twitter network and Google Apps to communicate and share files. The development is enhanced with PivotalTracker to prioritize tasks and SVN for collaborative developments.
- Stay in touch with all participants from the Startup Weekend. They know your project since the beginning. They will be your first supports when you’ll launch.
- Widen your network: attend tech or entrepreneurial events in your area. Meet new people talk about your project and improve your pitch.
- Have fun! You’re at the beginning of a new adventure. Take the best out of it.
This post is a translation from Cyril’s original post.
In the beginning of the year, the world has been moved in Middle East and in North Africa. Many protests made the leaders of big countries like Tunisia and Egypt leave their functions.
The first strike in Tunis was too early to be foresighted by Beansight as the platform opened after the president was ousted. But what about the other countries? Let’s have a look at the predictions made on Beansight.
Egypt
This prediction was made on January 26th. Moubarak quit on February 11th. We can have look at the evolution of the probability of the event to occur (100% meaning the community is positive it will happen).
At the creation of the prediction, our community was quite small, so it took some time to have a proper trend. The prediction had an almost 100% probability to occur on February 4th. But it slowly decreased over time as people were doubting Moubarak would eventually quit. On February 11th, Moubarak quit. It took two days for our community to adapt their votes.
Libya
- After the Egypt, it will be Libya! (in French)
Quite difficult prediction we have here. It’s not very clear. Does that mean there will be protests in Libya? Does that mean that the leader of Libya will be dismissed? I don’t really know. This is the interesting part of Beansight. As our prediction are checked by the community through our algorithm, even unclear predictions are validated.
On this prediction, the trends shows that the crowds estimated from February 22nd, that the protests in Libya were as important as protests in Egypt. (On February 21st, the movement spread on the whole country.)
This prediction drives a lot of traffic on Beansight. Is Kadhaffi dead? Will he be killed before the end of the month? It didn’t happen.
Here again, it took a few days to have a real trend. We can see that our community were quite confident it wouldn’t happen from March 3rd. Then the probability slowly decreased over time to reach 0% on April 1st.
Predicted in the end of February, this prediction became true on March 18th as UN decided to intervene.
We can see that the community was confident in the beginning, then doubted till mid-March and then anticipated the UN call before it happened.
Algeria
- Abdelaziz Bouteflika will have to quit his position as leader of Algeria because of protests. (in French)
Not many votes on this prediction. But it seems that the community didn’t believe that Bouteflika would be ousted.
- The revolution in Algeria will fail. (in English)
Here again, it is not easy to understand what the prediction states. Were there a revolution in Algeria? The government is remains the same, but were the protests a failure? The president did promise a constitutional reform on April 15th…
The community is undecided… But the trend is decreasing… does that means that the achievements of protests in Algeria are seen as a success?
Conclusion
All in all, we can see that on these predictions, the community did predict some of the events that happened during the middle east protests. Obviously the signal was stronger as the deadlines approached.
In May 2010, we took part to the Startup Weekend Paris. The project Beansight started during these 54 hours.
If you ever attend to one of these weekends, there are some basic things that could enhance your efficiency. Let us share our experience and give you some advice:
- Your pitch on Friday evening: focus on the problem you want to solve. The audience should feel that it’s an important issue and that you’ll help many people.
- Select your teammates: The creation of the teams is incredibly fast! It’s really important to chose the right partners. Competences in your team should be balanced. (Watch out, usually developers are under-represented).
- Shut down your computer: the first hours. Don’t rush it. Take your time to think and brainstorm about your project. It’s the best way to solve it and build your long term vision.
- Chose the name of your startup: don’t waste more than an hour on that. It might not be your final name. You’ll have much more time to rename your startup later on.
- Gain visibility: communicate as fast as possible on your project. You can use Twitter or Facebook to bound with people from other project. They will be the first to talk about your project and try your service.
- Collect prospect contacts: a simple landing page with form to drop an e-mail is enough. You’ll be more than happy to have a consumer base when you launch.
- Seek for mentors’ help: they’re here to help you solve your problems and take the best decisions.
- Take some breaks: it will enable you to have hindsight on your project and meet the other attendees. (Their opinion matters too)
- 5 minutes to convince: on Sunday afternoon, you’re going to present your startup to the jury. They will pick the winner. When your slides are ready, take at least 2 hours of your time to prepare and practice your speech. We strongly recommend you to follow Phil Waknell advices on how to perfect your pitch.
- Have fun! This is the most important part in a Startup Weekend. Enjoy and learn!
Now, you’re all set. Good luck for this incredible experience.
(post translated from Beansight French Blog)
As mentioned in a previous post, Beansight opened its platform so that anyone can join. It sure deserves some event to celebrate it. We decided to throw a party with our beta users at Palais Brongniart.
We had around 60 people in Le Camping office. It was so nice to actually see our members and have a talk with them. We launched the party with a small game. Our attendees were invited to predict what great announcement Beansight would reveal during the party. They could write their guesses on a whiteboard or post in on Facebook or Twitter or even use Beansight.com as we let a computer as their disposal.
We also used whiteboards to engage the conversation on how we could improve the platform. For example we ask how prediction should be presented so that our users could see what suit them best. We had some nice ideas (preferred keywords, friends’ predictions…).
At 9pm, we finally revealed our mobile version: http://www.beansight.com/m. You can have a try! It’s the first iteration. All your feedback are more than welcome.
The party ended around 11pm. I think everybody enjoyed it really much. We will definitely try to do that again… maybe for our 10,000th user?
See all the pictures on our Facebook Page.
On March 31th, startups at Le Camping were presenting their projects to investors. This day is called Investor Day. It’s a huge milestone for each team at Le Camping. It took place at the hemicycle of Ile-de-France.
Each startup had 8 minutes de convince business angels and investors to fund their project. The startup made a fantastic job presenting their ideas, mostly thanks to the mentors (especially Ideas on stage).
Beansight was the last but one project. Cyril made a great job with clear and neat presentation.
To conclude the day, we had a nice cocktail during wich we had the opportunity to network with the attendees. I can’t wait to see what will happen next… any predictions ?
Yeah! That’s a great day for Beansight! A new milestone achieved: Beansight opens up, everybody can join the adventure now.
The precious feedback provided by our first users allowed us to improve the platform. Beansight is now more stable and the user experience has been enhanced.
We hope that it will increase the number of users and make the experience even better. Our users will be able to share their predictions with their friends. More users, more fun!
This is going to be huge!
Maybe you already noticed it, but Beansight got some neat new features.
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Expertise scores are now available. For each user, you’ll find their expertise level for the two best categories. At this point Steren has the best score. That’s not fair! Anybody can beat him.
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Beansight is well integrated with Twitter and Facebook. Users may log in via these social networks. You can also share predictions with your friends in a single click!
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We tried to improve the way predictions are organized. Now they are sorted by deadline. You can also use filters to show a single category or only prediction you haven’t voted yet.
We hope you’ll enjoy it! If you have any recommendation, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Comme prévu, l’iPad a été présenté au public hier lors de la traditionnelle Keynote. À la surprise générale (sauf pour membres de Beansight), Steve Jobs, en personne, était sur scène pour vanter les mérites du dernier produit de la firme.
La communauté Beansight a été, ensemble, très forte car elle a prédit correctement l’essentiel des caractéristiques de l’iPad 2 et ceci bien avant la présentation du produit :
Les membres Beansight ont également réussi à évaluer correctement les rumeurs qui mise en ligne sur internet avant la présentation de l’iPad. Elles ont été considérées comme non fondées par les membres :
- pas de Retina Display
- pas de disponibilité en Février ou Juin
- pas de slot SD
La prochaine fois, vous pourrez donc consulter Beansight pour obtenir l’information avant tout vos amis.
