Technologie und idiotische Investoren

Gerade komme ich wieder mal von einem Barcamp/Conference/Unconference zurück. Da gab es wieder allerlei interessante Vorträge über Technologien und Arbeitsmethoden. Dabei haben wir (ehemalige Mitarbeiter von Weblin) festgestellt, dass das was wir vor 3-5 Jahren gemacht haben, jetzt für die Masse der Entwickler interessant ist. Wir haben damals Probleme erkannt und gelöst, die immer noch aktuell sind und inzwischen wenigstens von den meisten anderen Teams auch angegangen werden.

Bei Weblin hatten wir ab 2006:

• MVC Frameworks,
• PHP Accelerator,
• Memcache mit strukturiertem, versioniertem Caching,
• Cache-All-Strategie,
• Monitoring,
• Unit-Tests, Integration-Tests,
• SCRUM,
• vertikal integrierte Teams,
• öffentliche live Dashboards,
• Cloud,
• Service Oriented Architecture,
• Load Balancing ohne Session-Binding,
• Zero-Bug Policy

und vieles mehr. Frag' doch mal heute - zu Zeiten von NoSQL - wer for 4 Jahren schon "Avoid SQL" gesagt hat.

Das waren schon damals alles bekannte Technologien - die aber nur 3 % der Startups verwendet haben. Heute völlig normal, keine Kunst. Die Kunst ist es das Richtige zu tun, wenn es noch nicht alle machen. Mit der Auflösung von Weblin wurden eine Menge Entwickler rausgeschickt, die die Technologien in ihre neuen Teams getragen haben und jetzt damit viel Geld verdienen.

So gut waren wir.

Technologie zählt. Alle Firmen, die Erfolg haben, haben super Teams im Hintergrund. Werft das Technik-Team weg und ihr habt nichts. Facebook, Zynga, Bigpoint kaufen Firmen nur, um an die Technik-Teams zu kommen. Für alle, die es noch nicht gemerkt haben: die Zeiten ändern sich.

_happy_ranting()

IBM recommends XMPP for Realtime Web Apps

There is a new tutorial from IBM about how to build modern realtime web apps. In the tutorial IBM suggests using XMPP, BOSH from JavaScript. It is worth reading.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-realtimeXMPPtut/index.html

This is exactly how weblin.lite was built 2 years. Even including the HTTP proxy to circumvent the JavaScript security limitation, tunneling XMPP through HTTP with BOSH, using a real XMPP server for message routing and a JavaScript XMPP client library to communicate. Also: jQuery, Ajaj, XML, JSON, WebServices, mysql. Basically, all the cool web-tech stuff we like.

Congrats to the weblin dev team. The best dev team I've ever had.

_happy_boshing()

Yes, we have been there. Now it is so much a standard, that IBM recommends the technology. It will be picked up by many others and we are already the experts. So much for certain ignorant investors and business angels, who do not recognize technology in their portfolio, even if it jumps into their face. We will be there without you.

What Are The Rewards Of Free-To-Play MMOs?

Nachtrag zu meinem Vortrag beim Virtual Worlds Camp: dieser Artikel bei Gamasutra nennt die gleichen Zahlen für ARPU in Free 2 Play MMOs und Browsergames.

Der ARPU liegt "from 30 cents up to $2", je nach Gameplay und Stärke des Engagements der User: "Sports and gambling games tend to be a bit higher, social games a bit lower."

"[Revenue] typically comes from 5-10% of the total number of users in any given month"

Na bitte. Meine Rede. Genau so stand es in unserem Businessplan. Realistisch aber immer etwas auf der konservativen Seite.

_happy_gambling();

Listen to Engineering

This is a corporate culture I like:

"Palantir runs a tight ship, providing vital information on an internal wiki, keeping meetings concise and striving to hire candidates with “an engineering mindset, even in our administrative people,” McGrew says.

The division of the company devoted to government products has only one ten-minute meeting every week to make sure developers and managers are on the same page and to discuss prospective customers. There is also a company policy against using PowerPoint decks.

The company is also unique in that it doesn’t have any soft-skills marketing or sales personnel. All customer-facing employees have degrees in computer science or symbolic systems and are capable of walking customers through software installations and debugging. This has helped Palantir build tighter relationships with its clients."

We are in a technology business. Technology is king. Engineering knows what to do. Of course many other people also know and we need their input. But if engineering fails to know, then the company is doomed anyway. No technology agnostic, smart ass business developer, investor relations, sales driven product management can save it then. It's the technology, stupid. Get over it.

To hell with your "how to manage companies the old way" books. To hell with "IT is a service department". To hell with your "great managers who sell bad decisions for good, because they once though they were good and can not admit that they turned out bad".

This is technology and you listen to us!

You don't believe me, because I am just a techie? Maybe you believe IMVU or Toyota: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/sciencedaily-corporate-culture-is-most.html

happy_listening()

Tencent’s virtual goods revenues keep growing during recession

China is always different. But here are indications that virtual goods remain strong during the economic downturn. Virtual goods are "small entertainment". "Big entertainment" like TV-sets and Porsches seem to sell worse. But it looks like people can still afford single dollars (or yuan) for one or the other virtual good, that makes life sweeter during recession.

There are also hints, that especially childrens' pocket money is recession proof. When did you see the latest reduction of pocket money? It was probably because of a family dispute over school marks rather than because of problems with the family income. In other words: it takes a long time until recession arrives in the pockets of children.

I recommend this article to all people, who do not believe in virtual goods, especially investors and a "great manager". Even those who admit that there is something to virtual goods, but still believe that virtual goods will dive, while advertisement revenues will always grow, please read.

When we said that Facebook earns already 40. Mio. $ with virtual goods half a year ago, we got a reply: "I don't belive it". Well, could be much more on the entire platform soon. Seems not only China is different but also Facebook. Maybe it's not the world that is "different". Maybe some people differ from the world.

_happy_spending()

Eight Virtual Worlds Recognized In OnHollywood 100

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/04/eight-virtual-worlds-recognized-in-onhollywood-100.html

And here it goes again:

"both RocketOn and Club Cooee, virtual worlds that sit on top of the Web or desktop, were recognized as Content Delivery Networks".

Weblin should have been there and would have been there. But thanks to a "great manager" and investors who believe in advertisements and not in virtual goods, weblin is at least 1 year late with virtual goods. The no show of weblin's CEO at the Engage! Expo panel was probably not very helpful either.

Weblin was the first world layered over the Web. It was always meant as a complete virtual world on the Web with people and virtual objects. See an extensive report on Virtual Goods News about weblin's original plans.

Now RocketOn takes the prize, and they earned it by doing the right thing.

The Lean Startup

Just hear this talk...
http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/lean-startups-at-web-20-expo?type=powerpoint

That was our plan. Much was implemented. But it was totally warped because a "great manager" knew better than anyone else, even better, than successful companies in the same field.