Web 2 Ireland

Conor O’Neill of LouderVoice talks about the evolution of #leweb

Some great perspective from Conor on how #leweb began, evolved and how it is today. Excellent insight into one of the most significant technology conferences in Europe.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngMPRX8TOWg

The first Facebook Garage was so popular we had to have another one pretty soon after. On Thursday we had 150+ people crammed into a room in the Radission SAS to hear 5 speakers talk about different aspects of their experiences with Facebook.

It opened with Sean O’Sullivan from Rococo presenting their GigMonkey App. Plenty of technical meat in there about the various challenges they faced and some interesting comparisons with Bebo.

Robert Mao then gave a broad overview of build FB Apps/Connect and hosting them on Google App Engine.

I spoke about our integration of Facebook Connect into the LouderVoice reviews widget.

After the break, Flavien Charlon took everyones breath away with his description of the growth of My City. He currently has close to 500k active monthly users on this Facebook App. His talk covered everything from technical issues to growing a userbase and monetizing.

Finally Colm Long who runs Facebook EMEA gave us an insight into where Facebook was going, theeir approach to ads and the shocking growth figures for Facebook in Ireland. One important point that he highlighted was what a small company Facebook is (~900 people). So when development slows in one area e.g. Groups, it is only because they are resource strapped.

Michael Clyne took video footage of the entire event which we hope to post here next week. If you have any photos or videos, please post links to them in the comments.

Last weekend LouderVoice announced that it has launched its first private beta application for the Google Android platform.

ReadWriteWeb have some great coverage

“It is the first Irish Android application and one of the very first reviewing applications on the platform. The application is “all about writing and finding reviews when you are out and about with your Android phone”. It is live now in countries where Android is available.

lv_android_01.pngIn addition to finding reviews written on the company’s Website and Android, you can also browse or search reviews from its partners and clients. That includes reviews of many of Roomex’s 20,000 hotels, Puddleducks outdoor gear, Klipsch audio products and Bubble Brothers wines.”

Cathal Garvey has an excellent video overview

As per the Loudervoice blog, Loudervoice worked with Irish development partners – Marino Software in Dublin and Yazzgoth in Cork.

LouderVoice for Business has added PuddleDucks, Ireland's leading online retailer of children's and adults outdoor clothing, to its list of customers.

Customers can now read product reviews by previous purchasers and can also submit their own. These reviews appear on each product page along with highlights on the home page of the PuddleDucks website. Reviews empower customers to help each other find the right product for their needs. Recent surveys have shown that over a third of respondents rated peer opinions such as recommendations and reviews as the most useful aspect of an Internet-shopping site.

In addition to appearing on the PuddleDucks shopping site, the reviews are aggregated to the LouderVoice reviews website and its mobile phone applications. This doesn’t just make PuddleDucks more visible to search engines, it also enables a widely distributed conversation about its products.

I had a pleasure of attending LeWeb last week – and here are the top 10 takeaways

Meeting Irish in attendance
Very low Irish presence – Pat Phelan from Maxroam, Conor O’Neill from Loudervoice [who also covered event for ReadwriteWeb]
- Brian Bastible and colleagues from IDA

Connecting with People
Lots of great folks attending from the US, UK, Germany, France and Spain.

Old School is best school
Got to meet and chat with Dennis, Doc and JP.

Glimpse of future
Dave Morin – facebook connect, Marissa Mayer – Google, and Susan Wu – Virtual Goods

Startups – no Irish… come on !!
Startup Competition – some interesting startups – and very worthy winner – some Web2Ireland companies would have done well at this event….

Failure – true stories
Morten Lund was one highlight of the event – off the cuff – very honest in his story.

Funding is hard in Europe
Lots of VCs in attendance [none from Ireland] – and the VC panel was interesting – see video. Key themes – build products that VCs will use [Fred Wilson, Martin Varsasky, Jeff Clavier] – and they don’t really believe Govt intervention @ funding is key [more on that later] – and NO doesnt mean NO.

Go Big or Go Home
Lots of usual talk @ valley versus Europe and can we build a big European web company.

Annual LeWeb bitch fight
Great fun from the sideline

Next Year
Rumour has it that the International D Conference will happen in Dublin next year

And no doubt LeWeb 09 will be another enjoyable event.

John Collins has an excellent piece on the Technology funding landscape in today’s Irish Times.

Still don’t know where all the Irish VC monies goes to – please help us by updating your company profile on Crunchbase.

The Irish Times also has an article on Business Expansion Schemes – and gives a mention to Loudervoice – we should see quite a few Irish technology companies availing of BES schemes this year.

Related to funding matter – Saul Klein presented at web2europe this week – an excellent presentation which you should check out.

The lads in Contrast have launched a cool twitter related serviceQwitter: Catching Twitter quitters

Lots of press coverage – do check out venturebeat and other coverage from techmeme

Ireland certainly has quite a few twitter mashups @ twitter API – check twitterfone, loudervoice and tweetrush

This week’s Tuesday Push is LouderVoice who have just launched a range of business services. If you like what they are doing, please blog about it. You might even do it in the form of a review that they can use on the site.

LouderVoice for Business