KookyPlan

You see a headline, it catches your interest, so you click on the link.  It takes you to a page, but they ask you to sign a subscription (for a fee) to read the rest of the story.  Errrrr.  Frustrating.

Imagine if there was a button you could click that would take you to “similar” (but free stories)… blogs, news articles, etc.

For example, visit a Wall Street Journal article, and find the headline available, but the content hidden.  Imagine if you wanted to learn about the topic, but didnt want to sign the subscription.  It would be great to see other similar stories, blogs around the net.

No, I dont think WSJ would put this link on their site, but perhaps a browser plugin would do the trick  (firefox, Internet explorer, chrome, etc).

To make $$ - maybe the provider of links could serve up their own ads along with the new content…

thoughts?  seen anything like this?

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet

I recently read an endorsement for a service called “Smart Links”…see article here

My innovation suggestion:  Imagine if the same tools could be extended to commentators… then, I might just comment referencing a book title, which could have a link, and if someone clicked on it, bought the book…then the commentator would benefit. (same dangers as outlined above would still apply)

Why I liked the platform:

Yes, its an advertising platform. But, its clever…and by embedding adverts into the text of what you write anyways… it might be a clever way to monetize blogs.

You know… at first, I wasnt impressed with “Smart Links” at all. I mean… why not just use an easier service like TechCrunch’s MashLogic which makes all phrases into linkes (wikipedia,etc)… but, then I saw this comment, and I realized the value….

Unlike MashLogic which might be really great for users experience, it doesnt help writers to monetize their blogs. This SmartLinks does. And, that makes it attractive for content contributors.

The danger is… that writers start changing the content in order to incorporate books, titles, and in the process steer away readers that become annoyed by product placement plugs.

My innovation suggestion:  Imagine if the same tools could be extended to commentators… then, I might just comment referencing a book title, which could have a link, and if someone clicked on it, bought the book…then the commentator would benefit. (same dangers as outlined above would still apply)

What do you think about my innovation suggestion?  Would you like to see this kind of dynamic linking in comments?  Would it encourage more discussion?  Or, would it corrupt the discussions with unnecessary static?  (note: blog administrators can screen blog comments, and delete comments they dont like)

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet blog, idea for others, Innovation, investment idea, smartlinks

I dont know how it happened, but I went from having no twitter accounts, to having three…all in the matter of a few months.  But, unfortunately for me…the system of twitter “account management” seems to be behind my speed of adopting new twitter accounts, and now Im in a bit of a mess….and struggling with how to manage, log in and update the various accounts.  There must be a better way, and hence…there must be an opportunity for some developer to develop and app to fill this need… (if you know of any, please let me know)

Here is what happened…

1. First of all, I started with my personal account: @briandbutler , and that was going along ok.  I was putting my personal thoughts, as well as my professional ones, and also posting my random innovation.
2. But, then I was invited to help setup @ForumNexus on twitter.  Yes, Im the country manager (Brazil) and also a teacher in this excellent program (shameless self plug
3. Then, I thought… oh, how about a separate twitter account for @kookyplan for discussions specifically related to KookyPlan, innovation, entrepreneurship, and an outlet for my ideas I want to share with others

Its all good… but, now… I need a twitter manager!

Here is my idea:

• Someone needs to come up with a way that I can log in with just my name, but then have access to all of my various accounts without needing to logout and re-log back in again.
• I need options, control, and an easy interface..

More (for advanced social media twitter users):

• For anyone that uses twitter as a central conduit to controls messages being sent over to other networks (to Facebook, Linkedin, Friendfeed, etc)….you might understand my problem here…
• Lets say I post this blog post.  Ok, I have it set up to automatically tell twitter about my posting.  Ok, and I have twitter set up to automatically tell Facebook, Friendfeed, etc.  Ok…all is working well… until… until I set up multiple twitter accounts.
• Then, with multiple twitter accounts, I have a problem… I can only choose one feed from twitter to feed into my other accounts (facebook, etc), so…. If I have my personal twitter account set up as my central “conduit”, but if Im posting in @kookyplan, then the message ends in twitter, and doesnt make it to my other sites… and the great “conduit” functionality of twitter is lost.
• What is needed:  twitter account management tools so that I can selectively choose which messages get sent on to which networks AT THE TIME of my original twitter message.
• A simple drop down menu to select which of my OTHER networks BEYOND twitter will receive this message that I am sending.
• But… for now….without tools to allow users to control which messages get sent where, its turing into a real time-management challenge for users with multiple accounts.

Please, someone out there… fix this!

While I might be one of the few people so far that have opened up not just one, but three twitter accounts…its clear to me that others will surely find this same challenge in the future.  For example, I was recently reading that Fred Wilson, a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures was setting up a twitter account at both his personal (@fredwilson) and professional (@avc) accounts.  He must be encountering the same type of challenges I am (and maybe thought of better solutions that I have).

There must be someone out there working on an “account management” system for Twitter.  If not… I suggest you get working…

Note:  this blog post will be automatically broadcast to my @kookyplan twitter account…but, if I want anyone from my other networks to hear about it, I will need to go in manually and re-twitt that same message on my personal @briandbutler account (log out, log back in)…man, its not worth the trouble!

if you know any existing solutions to this mess… please post your thought in the comments section of this blog…

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet facebook, Innovation, internet, twitter

It seems obvious once you think of it… why not add a “click to call” button, and enable telephone calls on Facebook?  Think of overlaying Skype on top of Facebook…

Why does Facebook need this?  Well, because they are losing money on a massive scale:  see our KookyPlan report here (needs updating, I know):  http://kookyplan.pbworks.com/facebook

Think about how silly the current system is… Lets say you use facebook to reconnect with old friends (as most people do), but then when you find your old high school buddies, the best that Facebook has to offer is a “wall” in which you can post messages, or “chat” to kind of talk with each other.

But, why not enable voice?

Think about the possibilities…Facebook transforming itself into a massive online phone book with all of your favorite friends a click away.  Then, like Skype, they could charge for calls to land lines (like “Skype-out”, which actually makes money).

Then, get this on your cell phone… and look out all competitors, this could be the voice-provider of the future….

any thoughts?

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet business model, facebook, skype, telecom

Why not have an iPhone app that turns your iPhone into a mouse that can run your laptop?   Just put your iPhone down next to the laptop and scroll, scroll on the touch-screen to move from page to page….and to move the cursor around…just move the iPhone left right, across the table.

Seems simple enough..and one less device to carry on business trips!

Note: I found out later that an iPhone app to work as a “mouse” does exist (thanks Adam :-)… but it only works so far as a touch-screen function…where the operator utilizes the movement of their finger to control the cursor.  Not bad, but… its not quite there.  The idea is to use the cell phone in the same way as your mouse… you are missing the ability to take advantage of the movement of the phone to mimic the functionality of the traditional mouse.

If this technology were to become mainstream.. what would that mean for all the “mouse”-makers out there? mmmm… not looking good… you might want to start re-tooling your factories to make iPhones !  While I dont see how an iPhone app like this can make money by itself, it is interesting to see how one simple innovation can put an industry out of business…

lesson: watch out for disruptive innovations!

Brian D. Butler Innovation, iPhone, idea for others, internet idea for others, iPhone, technology

Ive recently been writing emails to people in Brazil, and while my spoken Portuguese is decent (hold the laughter please :-), I struggle with formal written Portuguese.   One option is to use google translate, but as most people are aware, this software seems to do a good job, but often loses the meaning of the text in the translation (or even sometimes changes the meaning completely).  Most of the times, however, the software does a decent job in giving the reader a “rough-guideline” to the general meaning of the text.  If only there were a way to warn readers ahead of time that this document had been translated (and therefore please forgive the grammar errors)…

So, I got to thinking… why not have a button that could be inserted into the top of each of my emails… and with a drop down menu, the reader could choose which language THEY wanted the text translated into… that way, I could just write in English, and the reader, if they couldn’t understand the original…they could use google translate to get the rough meaning.  Then, the writer could use their best language to make sure the document said exactly what they wanted it to say, and the reader could read it in their own language, but there would be less fear of sending emails with bad grammar in foreign languages.

Brilliant solution, right?  All we need is someone to design the software, and find a way to embed this button on the top of all of my emails with some code…mmmm…

or, my wife suggested…why not just hand-write out a note at the top saying that the original text was written in English, and was translated by Google, and if there is any confusion to please call…

I dont know which was the better solution, but it got me thinking of how sometimes the easiest/ cheapest / fastest solution to implement is right there, but in an engineers fascination with new technology its sometimes the last solution we think of.  Sure, by taking the simple solution there may not be a brand new company that will be born, nor will paradigms be shifted, or markets be created…but problems will be solved cheaply, easily and will little time wasted.

Now, all of my portuguese emails start with:

** Este email foi originalmente escrito em inglês e traduzido para português pelo Google translator e revisado por uma pessoa que não é fluente ainda em português (estou estudando muito) :-)  Se alguma parte não fizer muito sentido, por favor reverta ao texto original em inglês no final do email, ou entre em contato comigo para maiores esclarecimentos.

Hopefully, some other engineer will read this note, and will get to work designing my drop-down-button-for-emails idea… and hopefully they will sell this software company to Google, so I can use it with gmail!

note, these products come close…

• Online Email translator from wordlingo
• let me know if you find any other tools…post in comments below, or in our wiki…

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet idea for others, investment idea, language, translate

just wondering…

have you ever heard of any company / software that could link together what a person does on a wiki (like wikipedia ) with their reputation on Linkedin / facebook (or twitter/friendfeed, etc)?

people generally find no attraction to contributing to wiki’s, because its very difficult to generate social reputation for your content in a document that has mixed authors.  But, what if those comments on wikipedia that you put there could automatically be posted on your blog? or notified in social accounts?

that might shift people toward contributing more to community-driven documents…if people from THEIR community could know what they were writing!

One idea… could it work with Facebook connect developer platform?  thoughts? comments?  (seen anything like this?)

note:  kookyplan, the wiki for entrepreneurs welcomes any software designer who wants to work with us to give this one a try

cheers, B

Brian D. Butler Innovation, internet idea for others, investment idea, kookyplan, wiki

(How Technology will shape the future of higher education)

The education marketplace may radically change over the next 5-10 years.  With falling costs of producing and delivering digital content, the education market could face radical disruption to the traditional business model.  Think about the following…

1. Falling cost to create content
   • any professor with a video camera can upload his / her lesson to Youtube (or similar sites).  With the drastic fall in cost to create content online, professors all over the globe are uploading lesson plans online for free viewing. (see my list of online distribution sites here)
   • economics of “scarcity” no longer applies to basic undergrad content in courses such as economics, marketing, finance, etc.
2. Falling Distribution cost
   • internet communication technology drives the cost of distribution of content to free
   • monopoly of “physical space” no longer applies since the number of “seats” at the lecture is now infinite.
3. Lessons from history:
   • every industry that faced both falling production & falling distribution costs….underwent fundamental radical change (disruptive).  In no industry that faced both of these factors did the landscape turn out the same as it began…
   • Parallels with other industries - newspaper, music, computer (Dell)
   • the education industry will soon face major disruption to their business model…much as other industries have in the face of falling costs of creation & distribution of content.  Think about the transformation we have witnessed in:
     • music industry:  record labels lost the monopoly of creation & distribution when costs fell and the internet grew
     • reporting / journalism industry: the newspaper lost its monopoly over creation & distribution when costs fell.
     • computer distribution: companies such as HP were challenged by Dell who dis intermediated the wholesaler, and went direct from manufacturer to customer…using the tools of communication to reach people directly.
4. Credit Crisis - driving force for innovations (as students save)
   • with student loan industry in free-fall, and with unemployment rising…parents of students may question spending $40,000+ for a four year degree.
   • the economic crisis may be just the factor that spurs potential students to seek cheaper alternatives
5. Potential “Dis-intermediation” of universities in the education supply chain
   • If content is free, and distribution is free, why congregate in physical space?
   • In the education of supply chain, we could see a radical transformation whereby the universities monopoly of physical space will give way to a direct model of education between teachers and students
   • Will this happen?  Maybe…because there has yet been no industry that has NOT radically changed in the face of dramatically falling costs of production & distribution of content.
6. Teacher to student
   • teachers role can not be disintermediated!
7. Examples of innovative education - Thunderbird’s Global MBA by satellite
8. Opportunities in Emerging markets
   • if the cost of producing content is falling, and the cost of distributing content is falling, then the potential of selling education could also be set to fall substantially.  If this were to happen, then the cost of selling education to countries like Brazil could fall significantly.  This could lead to much higher demand, and much greater education.
9. Teacher as “destination”: travel learning market
10. Book reader: falling cost of textbooks in digital format (Amazon Kindle)
11. Role of Universities as “gathering places” - research, equipment, presentations.

Add your comments here, or in our wiki:  http://kookyplan.pbwiki.com/Education-business-models

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet dis intermediation, education, Innovation, learn, MBA, teach, technology, trend

idea for innovation…

somebody should design a newsreader that helps people that have missed one weeks worth of news.  I recenly took a week off from reading the news, and wanted to get caught back up with the news headlines from last week / last month….but with google newsreader, I see just the top headlines for this day, or sorted by topic… but why not have news headlines over a PERIOD of time?

just a suggestion….

Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet, micro business idea for others, Innovation, media, news reader, suggestion, why isn't there

This is a really important distinction for any investor to make. You need to see the difference between the two…and so, a little parallel might make it easier to visualize who is who…..

There is a fundamental difference between the internet “applications”, and the internet “ad networks”. Internet applications are like hit TV shows. They draw in audiences who like the experience of the “show”.

Internet networks are like the TV networks (think ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox). They have developed serious business plans that know how to turn the audiences into money. The equivalent in the internet-world is Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. These are the guys that have the ad delivery mechanism figured out. And, as a result, they shop around for newest applications that are drawing in a big crowd (such as Facebook, MySpace, and the like).

An internet application (like YouTube) is very similar to a TV show (like Friends, Seinfeld), in that they bring in viewers and attract an audience. So, like a TV show such as “Friends”, the producers, writers, directors of the show should not be particularly concerned with commercializing the show. They do not need to think about the business model, but rather they should focus on creating an excellent experience for the consumer.

Then, someone else (TV station, network) can come along, and figure out how to make money off of that audience.

But, where does a company like google fit in? They are like the TV networks of old…like ABC, NBC, CBS…in that they have the infrastructure in place to commercialize an audience. They have the advertising and the ability to wrap content in advertising. Google, Yahoo, MSN seem to be the big 3 of online advertising…and they are out there shopping for content that people want to watch, so they can wrap that content in advertising (just like what the big 3 TV networks do).

So, what is the implication to small start-ups…well, it means that (contrary to what your business school prof says), you do not really need a business plan, or any real plan for how your website is going to make money. You just need to develop a very user-friendly and necessary tool that millions of people will want to use on a daily basis (not easy to do all by itself). If you can do that…you have essentially come up with a hit TV show, and the big networks will compete to see who can buy you….think Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc….all of those internet based “companies” with valuations that business school profs scratch their heads trying to understand.

If you can start to think about internet “applications” as the TV shows (such as Friends, Lost, etc), and the internet “networks” as the TV networks (such as ABC,NBC, etc)…then it becomes much easier to understand which sites should have a business plan (networks) and which ones should not (the applications). Confusing these two concepts has led many a small company down the wrong path. If your goal is to develop the greatest TV show the world has ever seen (internet application), then focus just on that, and let the business guys (the networks) figure out how to make money off of your audience.

see also:

Valuations and internet companies

Venture Capital Method of Valuation

business valuation

Brian D. Butler Investment, Venture Capital, internet Brian D. Butler, Innovation, Investment, valuation, Venture Capital