Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

Just found Get a First Life via MIT Advertising Lab. It’s pretty simple. Go outside, it’s free, and there are over 6 billion members already! Got any more questions? The have an FAQ for things like:

• Are five senses enough?
• What’s this body thing, and what do I do with the dangly bits?
• Why can’t I build a dirigible with my mind?
• Penguins, spoons and you — what’s life like among the flightless?

So go there. As they say: First Life is a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist.

Damn cool!

I received the results from the pre DLD survey and I like them. First of all, not that many people took part (228) but it is still interesting and I am happy to know that I am party of the only 25% who also have been at DLD 06 Congratulations also to Ibrahim to having made the “Other Leading Entrepreneurs of 2006″ list.

The good things for us at Ormigo is really the Important Topics for 2007 part. Obviously it starts with user generated content, going on with communities, social networks,  next up online video content, and then at place 4 performance based marketing with 79% saying it is very or somewhat important. This is of course wonderful to hear and something we very much believe in. Then there is the “Best Business Model” which in second place (36%) has providing a platform for customers’ transactions which is again very close to what we do. Allowing local merchants to get new customers on a per lead (customer contact) basis, generated via ad campaigns that they could never run on their own, is really just a platform that facilitates transactions between merchants and users. This is really the mix of advertising, performance marketing, and a platform for transactions.

Well, we’re looking forward to rocking 2007 then

First of all, thanks a lot to Hubert Burda and of course to the entire team organizing the event. I had a great time, I was inspired and I will surely come again. The event was a great mix of people leading to very good networking indeed and some very inspirational talks, for example from Brian Cox about the Large Hadron Collider at Cern seen here showing us the one formula that explains everything :). And now I am stuck, because there are too many recollections, like waterball at the party, Henning on the Segway, loads of different people including old and lots of new faces, a great panel on How to be Good, Where are the Editors, The Billion Dollar Bubble (with Marissa Mayer talking live about the problem of the google.de domain from the night before) , and more. I really have to agree with Martin that Arianna Huffington rocks and the panel with Tarik Krim from NetVibes, Craig Newmark from Craigslist (see Martin’s video), Jim Spanfeller from Forbes and David Sifry (see his great photos from DLD. He’s a prime lens freak by the way, which I learned at the party :)) from Technorati was very good indeed. Because mentioning NetVibes, I have to also say that meeting Christoph from Pageflakes (and finally talking to him a bit longer after having seen him at MediaTech and Le Web :)) as well as a new colleague that will become official on Monday, was great. But that’s it from me and it’s back to working on Ormigo and writing down all the great feedback we received.

You can watch many of the panels here. Check out Arianna’s post about DLD or simply follow DLD at Technorati.

There we go, things are settled, Blu-Ray looses. It seems that the porn industry is supporting the HD DVD standard and Sony seems to have just denied porn on Blu-Ray DVDs. This was the same thing when Sony denied porn on Betamax and then VHS one. It is surely not the only reason VHS won, but hell, it surely made a difference.

As someone once said, who needs several different angles on the same scene anyway?

Let’s see how this plays out.

The wonderful Robert Basic has together with Klaus Eck organized a Blogger Meetup at DLD. Obviously Henning and me will be there as well as a large group of other people. Who do we have… for one Lyssa, who has the great and hard task to bring WAZ Online to success, Martin Varsavsky together with the head of FON Europe Robert Lang, Cam Basman (Outsourcing Blog) whom I met the first time at one of the first WebMontags in Cologne (he sponsored beer, thanks :)), of course Nico Lumma, Oliver Wagner, Robert is trying to get Caterina Fake and Craig Newmark to show up, Heiko (one of the organizers of DLD) is coming, Nicole, Hugo E. Martin (looking forward to have a chat with one of the most interesting guy coming from the print business), Martin Röll, Daniela from OpenBC, and I can finally buy Florian Dargel a beer :). And obviously there are lots of other people! All in all a great crowd.