Myspace : Bad Move (switched back)

{EDIT: Due to lots of negative feedbacks, Myspace has switched back to the previous version.}

Myspace has done one thing pretty bad today.

They started to touch to user's profile.
Now users can see crap lines on their customized profile.
They spent like so much time to make it beautifully (or not), i think they won't appreciate this change. This is not myspace role to make profile beautifull. That's the rule they set with myspace experience...

I remember the Marketing director speech about myspace.
He said that the user profile was like the user bedroom.
So just think about it : Would you like your mum to change your bedroom deco?
Especially just for separation lines... It's useless!

They used to start to update the rest of the site (wich is good) and they improved quite well the user home page. I understand that myspace need to update the layout technically because they want to launch an application plateform just like Facebook. But If the users see this, it will be very annoying for them. Hope they will understand the error and switch back.

Welcome to London

As said on gregorytalon.com since 1 year (I'll update it soon), I've planned to move to UK so it's done now. After 3 days in London i can say that's great. It will be the opportunity to raise my English to a native level, which is not bad at all ;)

I'm gonna join Yahoo! UK in the SOHO Office as Product / Marketing Manager.

I'll also be writing a thesis (part of my HEC MS) on Social networks, my predilection subject since 2 years now. Lot of things to say, quite an exciting part of the WEB, potentially impacting both. I'll try to make it the most attractive to read.

Back from Japan

All good things have an end. My travel to Japan with my fellow HEC students is over.

Japan is a great country. Now i understand why Japan is the 2nd world power : They have a business (industrial) god!!! Regarding the japaneses, there is not so much individuality (it seems) in their attitude but they are very fashion. They use cellphones intensively like no others. If I had to define the country I would have selected those following words : Sushi, Video Games, Anime, Mobile & Karaoke. I visited Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo...

As the differences with US & EU are very strong, now I understand why Google, Ebay... have so much difficulties in Asia... Battle between Asian and US actors will be hard in the next coming years...

Now I'm back and it was the occasion for me to deliver my first conference at IIM on friday morning. This to share with 60 students on Internet industry, on their ambition / passion for Internet, Animation and video games industries... I found it very pleasant to try to transmit some messages that were key factors for myself, to interested students. Thanks for their attention.

11 days to discover Japan

I'm happy to take some days out of the country in order to discover Japan during 11 days.
I've always dream to do that (i used to be a gamer :) )

I'll be back on May the 18th.

Microsoft May acquire Yahoo! for 50B $

I simply don't understand how it could work...
Don't you?

Basically i see the value for Microsoft but I don't understand why Yahoo! is considering it. It will make more redundancy (Y! has it already... ) Anyway we'll see if they'll make it this time, the stock took 18% :)

Digital News #1

BestofMedia acquired Tom's hardware :
My fellow student Emmanuel de Chezelles (fondator of http://www.jeuxvideopc.com/ & Game product director at BestofMedia group), announced the acquisition of Tom's hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/ by BestofMedia group, becoming the first french online media group with 19 Millions of UVs. This is also the occasion for me to congratulate Emmanuel for all his work and success.

Ruby on Rails VS PHP

I guess net entrepreneurs have some hesitations on choosing RoR or PHP for their new product.
I think an understandable post (for entrepreneurs) revealing advantages and weakness of each programming language with a direct comparison approach could help us in this choice.

As I’m not CTO, I’ll request developers to give their opinion and to bring value to this post. I don't think i can't make it in one shot. So i'll edit it each time i understand one additive thing on this subject.

I had several discussions with great young French developers such as Matthieu Aubry or Jérémie Bordier, Matthieu who build www.phpmyvisite.com (a Google analytics competitor) is basically more PHP addict, Jérémie is more pro Ruby...

What i understand by now is that Ruby is fully object oriented when PHP allow procedural & object approach. What’s make Ruby famous is his framework: Rails. You have to know that since rails exist, there were some frameworks developed for PHP also as PEAR.

Ruby's arguments:
. Easy to read & understandable
. Volume of lines reduced
. Easy and cheaper to make and maintain web apps' evolutions
. Faster to develop
. Geek Buzz for your project & trendy developers

PHP's arguments:
. Free to use and to install (Ruby is free too but Hosting companies don't install it for free yet)
. Still Faster in production
. Lot of experience around it (Allmost everything has been coded already)
. The biggest developers community (Think HR)

Ruby 1.9 with the new YARV interpretor will maybe solve the speed issue of Ruby in production. One example of bad optimisation of RoR on Twitter that drive costs in production :
http://www.ff00aa.com/fr/space/2007/04/12/340-ruby-on-rails-sur-un-gros-site/
Not easy to see this as a lesson cause we don't know if everything is well optimised here...
Franck Perrier reports me a great productivity gain on Eyeka using RoR.

Entrepreneurs have to manage human, business & technical aspects... This choice could impact both... But we have to insist on the fact that, whatever you choose, the success is mainly due to who is going to make it. I'm not really able to choose at this stage, some of you could help us! Feel free to contact me to give your opinion and let's share about it.
talongregory (at) yahoo.fr

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Post edited 5 times with developers vision

Yahoo! Mail will turn to unlimited storage

Yahoo! put an end to the storage rush when Google is offering 2.8 Go and 2 Go for Windows live... This in order to be in line with people new usages of Mail.

This is a good news and lot of things could follow to deliver on "archiving your life" value.

Sony PS3 launch event : When execution leads bad customer experience

6pm under the Eiffel tower, with 3 dedicated barges, one big screen, a radio dj, one show on MTV & GameOne, 1000 guests... Customers had the worst event experience of ever for a new game machine launch... Just trying to explain what I've seen there. Customers were supposed to be accommodated at 6pm, i was there only at 7pm but anyway... First, the event was announced to be under the Eiffel tower, not really true... It was on the quay... so what was going there?

I've been accommated by 10 vigils, a wall of barriers blocking the access and several cops... Welcome! ... 50 boys and girls where waiting... One vigil was talking the 3 20-25 years old and well dressed guys but with different origins... Telling them that if they're not going to buy the machine, they could go away... After some hesitation i asked to a vigil what's going on...
He told me : "No demonstration, just wait midnight (very cold weather), show your payment card, enter, buy, and go away..." Ok so it's exactly like in a classic store like FNAC or Virgin without the good customer relationship management of the sellers. OK after some minutes walking around the place to see what's really happening, i didn't see anything, just one dj's announce telling exactly the contrary of what the vigil said to people... Go home and watch the event on MTV Greg...

I want to say thank you to Sony Marketing FR guys and responsible event agency if there is one. Great job! Lot of money waste, great ROI (Only 50 machines sold versus 1000 on the barge!). The event could have been great but if you had allowed people to enter, maybe there would have been more people there and more machines sold... What i understood there was that Sony wanted to dedicate the event to VIP only. Ok cool... Ensure that they're will be there next time!

But main thing : the ones who buy your machine are not VIP and you should have test to make them feel like VIP during this event... Lost! Let's play Wii, Xbox 360 & DS...

One special thanks to Xbox 360 Marketing team for the great XBOX 360 barge action "XBOX 360 loves you", it was the only funny things of the event...

Myspace VS WAT Episode 5

Last month i was thinking that myspace could reach 2M UV in January and it seems that it was not so realistic as it "only" gain + 191 000 UV vs December. Skyblog growth is continuous (i don't understand really that point but it demonstrates that the life cycle is not 2-3 trendy years)

Yahoo! 360's vertiginous fall (- 50% in 2 months) has ended, it regains 91 000 UV (+ 40%)... WAT's growth is slowing down with + 113 000 UV as the marketing budget for january should have been reduced versus december... This site is not engaging its users, retention is very low for that kind of site and was yet lower in january than in december. It's not social it's just yet another Yahoo! music property...

One fondator of Amiz.fr contacted me to present me his site, so i've integrated it to this analysis cause the related datas are back in NNR.

Audience (January UV):

. Myspace FR: 1, 691 Millions of UV (+191 000 UV MoM only)
(Beta officially launched in the middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360: 210 000 UV (+91 000 UV MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT: 713 000 UV (+ 113 000 UV only MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

. Skyblog: 5 186 000 UV (+ 265 000 UV only MoM)

. Amiz: 132 000 UV


Retention (December pages by user):

. Myspace FR: 70 (+19 MoM!!!)

. Yahoo! 360: 15 (no data last month)

. WAT: 5 ( -6 MoM)

. Skyblog: 164 (+16 MoM)

. Amiz: N/A

Next Episode on March the 14th

Previous Episodes:
Episode 4 : January
Episode 3 : December
Episode 2 : October
Episode 1 : September

Myspace Music Store live / Snocap integration

All members just received the announce. Myspace music store is live.
Snocap has been integrated on Myspace music artists profiles.
The first artist push in the newsletter is Snoop Dog.
Here to view is profile

The integration is quite good but not perfect marketed, it's quite unpersonal in the wording "buy this artist's music", "buy my music" is basically better...
The cost of an MP3 is 0.83$!!!

Itunes Store...

It's time to build sense

Friday Carl Hallard (Currently working in the Marketing team of Paypal) and i, decided to turn one idea to reality. We had this idea 1 year ago when we were building SoME Business plan.

It will take time, we'll need talents to build sense together. First, we would like to meet technical talents working with passion. (Ruby on Rails addicted could be cool).

We think it's all about love, if we have passion, we'll make good job. We don't care about your location, your age or your education.

To meet us and share about it: Contact me

Myspace's growth is 30% per quarter

Rupert Murdoch interview :

Will Ebay make the deal? (With Myspace)

Myspace is currently discussing with Ebay, if you've read this article you won't be surprised.
Maybe this will be crucial for Ebay. Maybe it's simply : "make it or loose the e-commerce market". Sometimes i think it's just like Yahoo! and Google few years ago. Yahoo! didn't make it and you know the results...

I'm pretty sure that Myspace is a great opportunity for Ebay to growth now. Ebay network will be pretty hard to socialize... Myspace users are waiting to buy and to sell...
It's easier to make transactionnal links based on social experience than social links on commerce experience...

If they don't make it, another will. One survey of December says that myspace users are likely to sell and buy products through their social network, it's a more trusty network than Ebay one.

If Ebay provide his CtoC payment solution it could be the KO for Google Checkout...

Myspace deal on e-commerce seems to be the deal of the year. Myspace shouldn't wait too long, users are waiting, specially to buy music...

Google may loose Gmail Brand in Europe

After Deutchland, Google is about to loose the Gmail Brand in all European region cause of Daniel Giersch a entrepreneur and HIS (lol) brand Gmail. In DE and UK Google is already using @googlemail.com and not gmail.com anymore...
Duplicated brand > Not indexed anymore :)

Jack Ma - Alibaba Group

Interview of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group (Yahoo! China recently acquired by this Chinese company) in Davos. Alibaba is the e-commerce leader in China and i think in all asia with also Alipay, the leading CtoC Payment platform in Asia.

"it will take time for them to learn, i think they'll be back in the next 5-10 years" talking about US companies in China...

"I think that's why i'm very confident with china, every young people start to create, to be entrepreneurs..."

"We'll be global in the next 5 years, in US, EU..."

I'm currently waiting for the launch of Alipay outside of Asia, Myspace could has been a huge opportunity but it's seems to be too late.

"France must learn to forget faster" - John Gage

French version of the Video :

One interesting discussion with John Gage, vice president of Sun Microsystem (with Loic Lemeur) about France's value in the mondialization...

Myspace's approach of the value chain

After a long discussion with my binomial & friend Carl Hallard, i would like to share on Myspace approach of the music industry's value chain... (The picture is the myspace page of Fancy an emergent french band)

I remember my school's tutors wondered us : "where do you place So ME (Our platform) on the value chain?" We were not sure, especially because it was a new web 2.0 platforms editor (Business plan 2004). So ME, the first launched platform was an intermediation one for artists and fans (a Myspace like but with a deeper focus on the relation between fans and artists), allowing "experts" (artists) to sell entertainment/cultural products on the site...

Value chain seemed to be the thing we must respect and we used to say "We respect the value chain and bring solutions". It has been designed to bring promotion tools and revenue drivers for artists, diversity and direct contact with artists for fans, tools for Majors (to select the artist with huge potential artists with an objective approach)

I think Myspace's success is mainly due to this. They focus on bringing solutions to most of the value chain actors... If you think Myspace is blog or just "6 degree rule", you're wrong...

We don't need to respect how things goes in the current value chain but we need to bring solutions to actors that are currently involved in. Then when you get most of the market share as Myspace or Apple with the Ipod you can bring your own value chain in a sense.

Myspace has created social links between people around their interests, involving expert as emergent artists, video makers, nights clubs staff... as fans and other consumers (public), they will start to allow them the generate commercial transactions. It's relevant to introduce commercial transactions on a Social Network but it's not easy to generate social links based on commercial transactions.

Yes i know that some people are now engaged after meeting them as sellers and buyers on Ebay... Just crazy but not very representative...

Why will i need to buy music in a store if i can buy it to "my friend" the artist directly on Myspace?

Today the only reason i could buy music in a store (for myself) is that "my friend" artist told me to, or cause the packaging add a specific value... (I've finally put all my cds' packaging in my cave last week...). I've never buy MP3 files yet but I'm just waiting for Myspace to allow registered artists music sells to do it and I can't wait (yes truly!)

I think Myspace will become the first MP3 paid distribution platform, Apple store is not so relevant for Myspace users...

Myspace could become a strong e-commerce player soon.

Who is going to make the smart move to deploy his CtoC payment solution on Myspace?

. Ebay with Paypal

. Yahoo! / Alibaba with Alipay
. Google with Google checkout

I think it's the most important deal to make this year for Payment solutions to expand market shares. It seems to be Paypal but we don't know really...

Will Myspace and Newscorp turn into e-commerce successfully?

I'm more in love with the e-business than with any company so i hope it they will do it!

Myspace VS WAT Episode 4

Last month myspace's growth was slow as all the market. The site has officially been launched in January so we can expect huge growth next month.
In December, myspace FR has gain 224 000 UV to reach almost 1.5 M UV.
Skyblog is slowing down... Yahoo! 360 lost 30% of traffic (- 50% in 2 months), the product is dramatically loosing market shares... Quite surprising, I didn't know if they launch another acquisition with big budget but WAT traffic increased by 200% MoM! As retention has not been improved I think they've done it lol

Will myspace reach 2M UV in January? I think that's realistic!

Audience (December UV):

. Myspace FR: 1, 448 Millions of UV (+224 000 UV MoM only)
(Beta officially launched in the middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360: 117 000 UV (-41 000 UV MoM!!!)
(officially launched in the middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT: 600 000 UV (+ 395 000 UV only MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

. Skyblog: 4 921 000 UV (+ 94 000 UV only MoM)


Retention (December pages by user):

. Myspace FR: 51 (-7 MoM)

. Yahoo! 360: No data (7 last month)

. WAT: 11 ( +4 MoM)

. Skyblog: 149 (-2 MoM)

Next Episode on February the 14th

Previous Episodes:
Episode 3 : December
Episode 2 : October
Episode 1 : September

Direct Marketing Campaign to get a mission at Yahoo!

During the 6 last months i used to think about how to get the opportunity to bring something to Yahoo! US on product side. As I’m too young and not Stanford branded, with a bizarre deal to make (1 week at Yahoo! 1 week at school and so on during 4 months), using the HR way was not relevant to make it. So i've decided to launch a direct marketing campaign targeted on the 4 top management persons managing products BU's including the famous memo author.

I needed to surprise them and i was thinking that nobody try to contact them directly. I used a Yahoo! answers EU campaign to design 4 personalized emailing introducing my request, our shared contacts and pushing them to discuss about it together. My speech was US oriented showing my passion for the internet and my can do attitude (My vision of my professional life). I precise that i sent it without any resume but i made a "call to be redirect" on my corporate website gregorytalon.com

It's quite crazy but why could it not work? Let's try, i had nothing to loose.

I wanted them to read it and to convert (not a 0,5% conversion rate allowed), so i included the receiver picture in the creative, not only mine. I was thinking that the first reaction will be "who is that young man pretending to..." so i've put it in the creative : "Who are you?" said by the receiver. I've tested it to know if they'll receive well and not as spam, i had big issues on that point during 4 days.

Then it works one of my receivers called a shared contact to know more about me. After 3 weeks of push with US, UK and FR with 5-6 contacts across EU helping me to negotiate with US. I'll start to work for Yahoo! US and Yahoo! EU on Yahoo! users value (subject has changed, even more interesting now). We'll work as a team with my colleague Julien Marie.

5 things you don't know about me.

This is the blogosphere buzz currently!

Following invitation of Vincent Thome on his blog I'll do it also...

Here they are 5 things you don't know about me.

. I was 18 when I found what I love, when my life created too much lacks of loved things.

I've some Portuguese origins, my mother was not allowed to study when she was young because she was the older child of a 5 children Portuguese family. My father is a self-made man with no graduation. They divorced when i was 7 years-old and i started to live with my mother. I wasn't so good at school, and i spent one year to find what i love at the Paris VI science university. My mother wanted me to become engineer (high level one as she said) and my father wanted me to work as soon as possible. After 6 months of boring general science courses... I decided to leave the faculty and i started to make websites, first for my music band called Elerium to promote our music, then for my video makers association linked with an artist’s online community in order to promote our contributors' talents... I was good for many things like music, design, video... but i didn't find myself excellent on anyone of those things. I feel more comfortable with finding solutions for others. I was 18 and i had the chance to find what i love very early: Making Internet products & services bringing solutions and value for people with conviction that they're many things to build on all subjects!

. I'm feared of my death so I'm running faster each day to make my life great.
I used to be attached to things that don't change every time. I don't know really why and when but I've changed : I think that the better way to make more each day is just to challenge this objective with a huge amount of can do attitude. Why should i let someone tell me what's possible or not for myself. All is possible if you have the passion to do it with a different approach! I think i can say "many thanks" to Carl Hallard, Arnaud Portanelli, Guillaume Le Dieu de Ville, Pascale Furbeyre and Claude Vogel who helped me to understand that point. I'm trying to go deeper each day.

. I don't support flat periods.

It's pretty hard to feel good for me when i didn't reach to make "huge" progress.
Fortunately I'm confident that I'll connect the dots soon each day of my life and most of the time, work paid!

. I always tried to have experiences in places I'm not supposed to like
Agencies & HEC are good examples and I've learn lot on myself there. :)

. Something I even don't know yet

Following the tradition i invite Carl, Alban, Julien & Pete to share 5 things we don't know about them.