I decided to start blogging with a little bit more intensity. I am in lucky position to face new innovations and technologies nearly daily, and participate to some of them financially or in a board role. I decided that it is a good idea to share some of the findings with the community, and started Discoverse. Please check it out and give feedback!

I realized that quick updates in Tumblr work often better for me than writing full blog posts. Therefore I set up a Tumblr site. Check it out: tumblr.alasaarela.com

There has been a talks about Web2.0 cool-off since early last year when the major Web2-focused media including TechCrunch, GigaOM and others started stabilizing from their hyper-growth. The social media revolution last year, led by Facebook, lowered the barriers to user acquisition to unprecedented levels, but people realized it is not so easy to make money from the traditional advertising model there. Along with the difficulties in in monetizing Web2.0 properties the interest from VCs has cooled off.

So what’s next? Here are some of my ideas on the potential driving forces of the next generation of profitable businesses on the web:

1. Fair mobile payments. Everybody has a cellphone, including the kids. It would be ideal to pay small transactions in your wireless bill. Currently the mobile payments have outrageous revenue share schemes, including the total rip-off Premium SMS, where the carriers in the US and Europe consider it fair to take ~50% of the revenues for providing the transaction platforms.

What would happen if the wireless carriers decided they could become the facilitators of global digital commerce by offering a global platform for mobile transactions with, let’s say, 5% transaction cost (they could easily manage the customer credit side through their existing accounting systems):

- Single-click micropayments for digital goods will flourish. This would enable unprecendent commercialization opportunities for digital media such as music, videos, audiobooks, games, applications, photographs, books, articles, magazines, and others.

- Low-priced subscription services for music, video, magazines, games would flourish and completely digitize the way we consume our media, putting the traditional media in danger of extinction.

- Combined with viral, social distribution models, this would create an equal opportunity marketplace for anyone to succeed in incredible speeds, creating millionaires out of successful individuals and teams in matter of months. Never in the history of humankind would the opportunities be more equal for the citizens of the world.

2. User created experiences. The web experiences will be increasingly customized by the consumers for their own liking. This is already pretty evident with the proliferation of external tools to manage anything, with good example being Twitter tools. Here are some areas that I think will make boatloads of money in the near future:

- Platform as a Service (PaaS) companies. Enterprise software customized by just about anybody to their liking, I personally like for example Rollbase. Corporates are increasingly looking towards agile web based solutions to their ever-changing needs, and easily customizable solutions with robust database back ends will have good chances convincing the new generation of CIOs to spend much less into maintaining and upgrading the enterprise systems. This will require the traditional ERP vendors with their army of system integrator consultants to become much more nimble and cost-effective.

- Casual Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Casual virtual world experiences already successfully implemented for the kids and teenagers by WebKinz, Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel will converge with the Social Games genre, offering unprecedented distribution, free-to-start game experiences with lucrative monetization opportunities.

3. Mobile online applications. The latest generation smartphones are capable of doing full web browsing experience, converting many mobile professionals to use them instead of their laptops, and the iPhone users are already proving that. The rapidly spreading flat rate data plans across the USA and EU are offering a new level of freedom on online application usage from the phones. Here are my ideas on the next generation money makers:

- Mobile phone as a shopping tool. Think about being able to draw the reviews and web shop prices of the products that you are thinking to buy while in a shop with your phone.

- Location awareness. Pretty much any online service will benefit from location awareness. Expect to see the next generation successful location aware online services be polite, not pushy, and bring commercial opportunities to the user only when she desires so.

This is definitely not a complete list of the opportunities available, but hopefully offers some ideas on what could work commercially in the next generation of web applications.

I just played a round of Picture This, a game on Meebo, with my friend. It was a greatly fun experience, rivaling any Pictionary event at the coffee table. Before that, I’ve played multiple rounds of Scrabulous on Facebook, as well as a bunch of other games that I’ve installed into my profile. The whole experience of casual gaming on social platforms is finally becoming as much fun as the traditional board games, that have been a compulsory part of most larger holidays and other major family gatherings.

It is relatively easy to see that (ultra)casual games like Quizzes, Vampires, and many others, are the fastest growing applications, often reaching very large user bases. Currently the applications are very simple, and mostly they will stay such, but eventually richer experiences will start emerging also on the social networks. It’s exciting to see how the market will transform during the coming year, and how this opportunity will be monetized without alienating the users.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: casualgames, meebo, facebook, social network

Welcome to my blog. This is my personal web resource through which you can connect and share ideas, friends and media with me. I will also update my findings and activity on the internet here. Feel free to comment, contact and debate.

Sincerely,

Mikko