I must admit, I’m not a big fan of the European song contest. But this Saturday, when the actual show was almost done, all the artists had done their bit, I zapped by the contest. And I stopped and watched… and watched… and watched… I was surprised because the Norwegian organizers had actually pulled of something “2.0″, something very nice. They pulled of a flash mob with people around Europe. I’m not sure if this is the biggest one ever, but it was fun. I had no idea it was coming and was pleasantly surprised. Has the oldest, most boring program in Europe finally grown up? Take a look at what they did:

By the way: as you may know I am a fan of these kind of initiatives, the T-Mobile efforts in the UK also were very nice and a simple search through YouTube also will give you some great examples.

At the end of last year I had a small problem. My N95 screen died on me, and then the entire phone. No phone in these days thats something you can hardly imagine. And immediately there was a dilemma: was I going to wait for the Nexus. At that time the Nexus wasn’t even launched and God knows when it will ever be available in the Netherlands… I was tempted to go for the iPhone but decided to ask my Twitter friends what to do:

I was surprised to get this answer:

It was an answer from someone working for dutch Press Agency Whizpr. One of their clients is HTC and she offered me the use of a HTC Hero, also an Android phone, until the Nexus would arrive. As you can imagine this was an offer I couldn’t and didn’t want to refuse! So now I’m the proud owner of a HTC Hero, which I really love, the only thing wrong with it is that its not a Nexus

There are a lot of social networks on the web right now. If you want you can be ‘connected’ to the entire onliny community in no time. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Plaxo you name it. One of these social networks is Naymz. Naymz calls itself ‘next level’ of networking. Based on background and reputation people should get connected.

I was once invited by someone but never really looked at the website since. I’m sure it’s a great tool and I really believe in the ‘reputation’-thought, reputation is very important these days, but there are too many social networks I’m in. I focus on a couple of them, Twitter, Linkedin and Plaxo.

Today I landed on the site again by coincidence (well coincidence… I received an e-mail) and started clicking around the website. It looks a lot like other social networks but has one smart trigger. Your ‘reputation’ is being shown by giving you a grade. The more you ‘do’ on the website, the higher your grade. And whatever way you want to look at it, everybody wants a higher grade. So you start looking around what you can do to get that higher grade. Off course you make make new contacts and upgrade your profile, but apparently you can als get an higher grade by ‘upgrading’ to a next level.

Now is ‘upgrading’ almost never free of charge, but in this case it clearly says "Upgrade for Free!". So hell, why not, I’m not Dutch for no reason after all. And that’s where it went wrong.

Althought Naymz ‘promises’ that you can upgrade for free, this is not true at all. After one click on the Upgrade-button it immediately becomes clear that the upgrade is far from being "free". You can choose between two kinds of subscriptions: one for $9,95 per month and the other for $95,50 per year. No other choices…

At such a moment I’m finished at a website. If they would have ‘honestly’ let me know on forehand that an upgrade costs money I would have minded it a lot less, but this is actually trying to trap you into buying an upgrade. I don’t like that.

No more Naymz for me. I’ll stick with Twitter, Linkedin and Plaxo for now. If you want to connect with me there you’re very welcome to connect:

Plaxo: http://basvandenbeld.myplaxo.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/basvandenbeld

See you there!

Twitter is not meant to be for everyone. One thinks it great, the other thinks its bull shit. That is fine, each should have its own ‘thing’ after all. But some marketers still like Twitter to use the marketing potential of this tool. On the SES San Jose top Internet marketer Andy Beal gave a presentation about how to do this. His presentation "Avoid being a twit on Twitter ‘gives useful tips for those marketers who want to use Twitter ‘smart’. Below his presentation. But you can also just Twitter because you like it …

[lang_nl]Op The Next Web ging de documentaire "The Truth According to Wikipedia" in premiere. De documentaire werd in de week na The Next Web op de Nederlandse televisie (VPRO) vertoond. Er bestaat veel discussie over de betrouwbaarheid van ‘User Generated Content’, content geplaatst door gebruikers. Wat is de waarheid? Een discussie die eigenlijk al eeuwen oud is, want zelfs in de Oudheid was niet altijd duidelijk of datgene wat ‘gepubliceerd’ werd wel de waarheid was. In de documentaire wordt dit aan de kaak gesteld. Hieronder is de documentaire terug te zien. In de film komt onder andere de criticus Andrew Keen aan het woord. De film laat veel kanten zien. Zeker interessant om te bekijken. Hieronder de versie die nu op YouTube is geplaatst.[/lang_nl][lang_en]On The Next Web, the documentary "The Truth According to Wikipedia" was shown for the first time. The documentary was shown on the Dutch television (VPRO) in the week after The Next Web. There is much debate about the reliability of "User Generated Content, content posted by users. What is the truth? A discussion which is already centuries old, because even in the antiquity it was not always clear whether that what was ‘published’ could be called the truth. In the movie, among other things, the critic Andrew Keen is presented. The film looks at the many sides of the story. Very interesting to watch. Below you can see the version that is now posted on YouTube.[/lang_en]

[lang_nl]Wat heb je hier als eigenaar van een website aan? Je kan je eigen mening vormen naar aanleiding van de documentaire, maar belangrijker is mijns inziens dat je goed nadenkt over het waarom van User Generated Content. Bouw geen site waarbij je content door de gebruikers laat plaatsen, alleen omdat iedereen het doet. Denk goed na over de toegevoegde waarde. En kies je ervoor om het wel te doen, zorg dan dat je er als organisatie klaar voor bent. Hou in de gaten wat er op je site gebeurt. Het voorbeeld van de Wiki van Rita Verdonk is hierbij interessant. Zij sloot haar Wiki al snel omdat er veel onzin op geplaatst werd. Het schiet dan zijn doel voorbij en werkt tegen je.[/lang_nl][lang_en]What’s the use of this discussion if you are the owner of a website? You can form your own opinion as a result of the documentary, but more importantly, I think that you should think carefully about why you want to use User Generated Content. Do not build your site with content by users, just because everyone does. Think carefully about the added value. And, if you choose to do it, make sure youre organisation is ready. Keep in mind and watch what is happening on your site. The example of the Wiki of the dutch politician Rita Verdonk is interesting. They closed her Wiki soon after launch because a lot of nonsense was placed. you then miss the goal of adding User Generated Content and it will backfire. [/lang_en]

This weekend there was a lot of rumor about the report on the problems at the football club Ajax. On Friday the report leaked to a number of journalists. On Sunday it was presented.

One of the many criticisms heard was that Ajax is no longer the ‘open club’ of the past but is a closed organization. This, they say, has everything to do with the IPO of the club.

Ajax is still not really open about the follow up of the report. The President yesterday did not answer any questions dealing with the consequences of the report. Still there was some openness: the dissemination of the report. Ajax placed a PDF of the entire report on its website. At least that is openness.

Anyone can now read the report. That would not have been possible 20 years ago. Long live the medium Internet!

Read the whole report in PDF format (see also website Ajax)

I Twitter. I often have to explain to customers and other relations what Twitter is. And that’s pretty tricky. It is not so very difficult to explain how Twitter works, but to explain exactly what it is and what its usefulness is, is more difficult.

At Twitter the intention is that you answer the question "What are you doing". As a result, you may only receive alerts as "at work", "at lunch" etcetera. That doesn’t seem like information you really need to know.

Although the service is used in this way by very many people, it is in practice often something else.I use Twitter in particular to communicate with others in the industry. I get interesting links, keep in touch with interesting people and get to know new interesting people. My network is growing because of Twitter. Therefore I do not use it is privately, but purely work-related.

You can use Twitter is in many ways, to me, these are the main advantages of Twitter:

• Contact with people in my industry
• Acquiring knowledge about the market
• Finding interesting links
• Sharing interesting information
• Branding

I think at this moment Twitter is a tool which is used primarily by the early adopters, not yet by the big crowds. Therefore I use it as an early adopter and to talk to these early adopters. As long as you know who and why you’re using it it’s a very useful tool.

Below you can see three movies about Twitter. The first is a news item on CBS News about Twitter, the second is a breakdown of Twitter and the third is a humorous film from Seesmic on a visit to the headquarters of Twitter.

Twitter at CBS

How to use Twitter

Seesmic Twitter