My master thesis on social networks

Last Friday, I've done the presentation of my thesis to HEC Paris and Telecom Paris.
It actually received very good feedbacks.

More than 2 years after my first business plan on social network (Called So ME), I've dedicated some time to a thesis dealing with the future of social networks. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to translate it in English yet. Anyway, this is called :

"L'avenir des réseaux sociaux :
vers le monopole d'un multi-spécialiste ou l'émergence de réseaux sociaux de niche"

First i came through all the past big steps of social networking sites and impacts on the Internet actors, introducing the next challenges. In a second part, I analysed the hypothesis of a monopoly driven by network effects and multi-specialisation. In a third part I focused on the potential rise of some niche social networks.

This thesis could address consulting needs of any actors seeing social networks as a potential activity creation, product development or financial investment opportunity.

I'm currently thinking about how to distribute it. Any advices?

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

------------------------------
Post edited 5 times with developers vision