Herve Cuviliez

More and more people are bored by facebook. I’m not sure that a new design will change that, no?

Facebook has released its new home. Should we rename facebook to twitbook. at least, they will give twitter some credits

with 514m$ raised, Facebook is so innovative. they are able to copy twitter but change twitter light blue into a Facebook dark blue. Waouh

I hated the new HP of facebook, too crowded too messy, and u kinda lose ur way in there

I agree with the FB fact,i’m one of those who are getting bored, their new look? dont even care plus they are copying twitter

now facebook wanna be like twitter. clearly twitter is market leader and facebook is trying to catch up.

facebook has clearly accepted that twitter is the future and they have to just follow the direction of twitter

I’ve certaiinly stopped using facebook as frequently as I did. Suspect you are right - new design won’t bring me back.

Twitter success is because of the real time intimate conversation (include support of this through apps and desktop widgets) and the age of next generation reporting as a cause of this. This is why Facebook copied Twitter.

I cannot end up that week without talking about what’s going on in france regarding P2P networks usage.

if you are not familiar with the subject you can read this excellent article from ars technica: French anti-P2P law toughest in the world

Don’t get me wrong my point here is not to advocate for piracy, every talented content creator deserve to get the harvest fruits of their work.

But to denounce an industry that misbehaved for the past 2 decades and the clueless lawmakers influenced by music/video industry lobbies.

To better understand the situation

we need to take a closer look at their business model. If you think, they make their biggest profit on original content creation and talent detection, you are all wrong.
Music industry (same for video) makes most of their profit by moving from one medium to another audiotape to CD, videotape to DVD, etc.. so you have to buy again and again the same album (I bought some albums 3 times: audiotape, CD, iTunes). This has nothing to do with content creation. Everybody was happy, money was flooding without any work except burning some CDs. That was good old times.

Then came a problem: Internet. Information became medium free, distribution worldwide, and file exchange standards emerged. it took them sometimes to understand the importance of the phenomena. They were to concentrate at resampling songs and creating best of with their already produced music.

When they understood it, their first reaction was how can we stop this not how can we benefit from it. So they created the DRM. a “smart way to recreate medium but they went to far. The music you were buying on iTunes was no playable on you Nokia mobile, and having it on two PC was an nightmare.

They forgot 2 things in their masterplan: Internet has no boundaries, so there is no way to stop the information (except if you live in china) and the most important one: Customers are not stupid.

How you can explain to a customer that from now, you can only listen to your music on the device you used to buy it. Even with a CD, I was able to play it in my car, at home or at a friend place…. and with the digital music, you (music industry) try to explain me that I don’t have that right anymore! NO WAY so I have to find another way to enjoy my music freely. the other way are P2P networks.

that’s why I started downloading from P2P networks, and by their attempt to preserve their unfair profits they have pushed millions of people to P2P networks.

Of course there are professional pirates, I don’t deny it and they deserve to be punished by law as any other thief but the vast majority of P2P networks users are people like you and me pissed of by music industry greediness. I hope they will one day realize that I’m using P2P networks because of DRM, they have moved me to P2P. I had and I still have no problem to pay for content.

Then comes now the second act. As the DRM has failed, let’s make a law. Here comes the HADOPI

577 deputies talking about something they barely understand for the majority. French assembly debates are looking like comedy shows.

• French Culture minister saying that Internet access is not a fundamental right.
• French government can request you to send your hard drive via mail
• To solve the problem of using P2P from public hotspots, let’s create a white list of site accessible from public hotspots. Don’t we normally call that censorship?
• If you downloaded too much music, they can cut your internet access. What happens when I’m using dial up, will they cut my phone line also?
• Etc, etc…

I’m appalled. HADOPI is just another proof that France is stucked in the past, incapable to see a change in a positive and so unable to take advantage of it (you can also read my post on the french digital revolution).

To the Music industry leader

you should spend your energy to figure out how to recreate your economy is a worldwide interconnected market because this or any law won’t change that. Even, China has difficulties to keep the system closed.

By this law, you will just encourage people to find a better system that P2P to exchange files but it won’t solve your problem.

Funny links (in french):

• Estimate your HADOPI performance
• Fuck HADOPI website

A lot as been written on twitter: business model, quality of service, etc…

So what can I add on top this? May be just my personal experience, because a lot of people around me still get what interest I find in twitter.

To me, twitter is amazing tool to learn about my industry, directly from people who make it and try to bring a small something in it.

That’s why the most important thing is not your followers number but who are you following. Sorry, Al gore despite having 11 000 followers + in less than 48, you are not a twitter hero. Choosing to follow, people who can help you and send you feedback, will make you one.

Following the right people will bring you the right information and the most interesting discussions

To see whom I’m following, go to my twitter http://www.twitter.com/hervecuviliez

Google is about to release its browser call Chrome. It’s for sure another step into the Google web domination and another hit into Microsoft business.

the good news is we gonna move a step further into the Web OS era.

But this announce make me feel sad for one reason, it’s a new threat for Firefox.

Not only because Google will have an unfair competitive advantage thru the integration of Gmail, Google search and others but mostly because 85% of Firefox revenues come from a single source: Google.

Let’s hope that’s Google won’t let them down and will continue to support this great initiative.

And you, try not to forget that it was Firefox who ends up a solo browser (internet explorer) dark age, when we will all rush to download this new toy.

I watched on techcrunch a couple of weeks ago the future of search by Google. It impressives me, not only because they will team up human rating with pagerank but also because it will create new sources of traffic creation for all of us (your name is visible on each comment & rating made). Google was already taken something around 75% of our attention, it will become with this 99%.

It made me realize that Microsoft will never catchup on web search. They are too far behind, even buying Yahoo won’t solve the problem.

Having said that, Mr Balmer should look at emerging countries and learn from their “jump to the next generation” attitude.

When you start traveling there, you realize they’ve chosen not to catch up but to invest into the next generation infrastructure and it’s a winning strategy: Estonia (called  E-stonia), Macedonia (wimax covered), Africa (mobile applications stronger than web ones), UAE (150% mobile penetration rate)…

That’s why should focus on the next big thing: Mobile.

Mobile is the big thread for Google (my previous post on this here).

Why? because with mobile will come new usage patterns. Today, everything start with google but tomorrow nobody knows what will be the entry point on mobile internet.  Google already working on it with Android and their strong presence in the iphone.

Of course, it’s easy to say not easy to do, but with Microsoft cash-flow, it should be doable.
My humble opinion

1) Our culture: Coming from an engineer culture, France has always been strong at building infrastructures, don’t we have one best automotive highway or high speed train networks even airlines. It’s a no surprise that’s we have a fair good broadband network. As a consumer, you pay only 30 euros for a 20mb connection plus free calls plus 60 TV channels. Everything perfect but only 53% households have access to it.

But this time it’s not about infrastructure but about services and content
Didier Lombard (France telecom CEO) said

Contents are the oxygen for our networks

That’s my point because our culture, we don’t give enough value to intangible assets. We have very few online champions, really to few to catch the growth which goes to the US (around 80% of online media spending in france)

2) Our lake of investments: if you take a look at the The Global Information Technology Report 2008 ranking just released by the World Economic Forum, you won’t see big evolutions in the past 3 years, France (2006: #22, 2007: #23, 2008: #21), UK (2006: #10, 2007: #9, 2008: #12), US (2006: #1, 2007: #7, 2008: #4), Germany(2006: #17, 2007: #16, 2008: #16), India (2006: #40, 2007: #44, 2008: #50), China (2006: #50, 2007: #59, 2008: #57).

Knowing that a networked economy is directly linked to innovation and competitiveness, we will have to invest heavily to catch up with the 10 or even just for not been catch up.

Regarding point 1) and our 2,000 billions euros debt, It will need political courage and vision to make the necessary investments.

3) Talents migration: Due to point 1&2 and/or to our tax system, we face a huge talents migration and where we are still questioning ourself about it , others developed countries are already working on it (see Bill gates congress intervention here). In the past 6 months, every entrepreneur, I have met was considering incorporate outside of france. Fortunately, we have local initiatives (see my post on digiport) but it won’t be sufficient.

Conclusion: This is in this context that was appointed Mr Besson as Digital Economy Secretary of State. He will present his catch up plan for the french digital economy in a couple of months after a series of meetings with french digital economy leaders.
It will have to be ambitious, heavily founded and engaging if he wants to have the market makers behind him.
I wish him good luck, If this time nothing happens, I will also move east.

Is it possible that a technological advanced country as a so poor mobile network (talking about AT&T).
I bought a prepaid card 2 days ago and I still pissed off.
You pay when you receive phone calls even when you receive texts (a shame everybody know that it cost them nothing). It remembers me the early 90’s in Europe.
Definitevly, USA is #1 on the web (watch out china, guys) but for mobile you should definitely look East.