Has made mistakes with everything…has made them all. So here’s some tips about not making them!
Brazil has many successful internet companies; there is a huge business ecosystem. Brazil is growing fast, 7.5% in 2010, largest ecommerce market in LA. Russia has a same thing, amazing internet economy. Is the largest internet population in EU.

But globalisation is fragile, few people live, go to college, experience other countries. There are barriers to trade and travel. And to investment.

After he sold his last company for $80m, made a lot of money. But he lost $6m in the next round of investments And made a lot of mistakes in his angel investments.

Look at ecommerce. You have suppliers, shipping, payment services etc, low risk in US. In Russia, there’s no XML feed, no idea what they have, there is no real shipping activity, It’s COD for payment. You need warehouses, inventory, delivery people steal product, or the cash and the product. So he build courier service…no losses, but only delivers 2 a day. So they removed the second seats and it went up to 5 a day – the delivery people were doing taxi service. Made it impossible to pick up people, then 10 a day. They had to understand the local nuances.

In Brazil, things work with delivery and services etc, but you get sued a lot. Very litigious. Lots of things can go wrong like that.
He lost of first 6 companies., So he decided to change his model. He started making more investment, 7 in 08, 9 on 09, 22 in 10, 35 in 11 so far. The more investments, the more chance of success. Narrowed down on what he actually invest in. It is about 1 in 20 projects he invests in. They only invest in consumer facing companies, in certain geographies, where it fits expertise. Innovation in US, proven models in other areas.

Has 3 buckets of investments. Mostly small investments. Up to 4 projects a year, advise and accompany projects. Full screening, actively involved. One a year, partnership, get really involved. They take a concept that they have identified and get the partners in. They take one hour to assess – do they like the team, the pitch, the product and the deal terms

Lessons learnt: quality of time is more than quantity. They stick to investment principes, have good diversity. They need to be lucky occasional. They need to be patient, exits can take a long time. And most exits are less than $30m

(photo by Adam Tinworth)

You should never tell a secret to Loic, as he asks you to come to LeWeb and share with anywhere. The secret is the digital revolution in Latin America. There is a lot of activity there, 1000s of entrepreneurs, plus lots of people using the web, how they interact is changing the rules. The economy, in the last 50 years, there has been loads of crises in LA..they know there is light at the end of the tunnel. They have built a different kind of economy.

In last 15 years, Brazil has been growing a lot. The new economics has been shared with the people. Min wage goes up 2.5x, 20m new jobs. Over 30m people escaped from poverty, a new emerging class. They are all consuming. They love electronics, they love chips. Brazil home digital US$ is 7k, US is only 2.5k Computers are important, mobile devices, especially phones. There are 90mm broadband connections. 492m million devices, from 69m in 2002. It is about news, information, entertainment, people creative about getting this, not just with data plan

There are 220m people in internet every month. From a quality perspective, 96% go on web daily, 86% more than once. They really embrace the internet. It is 41 hours monthly. 86% on social networks. 60% on video online. 82% on Terra (this guy’s company)., It’s social Live, video and music. Video is the killer app, it has changed dramatically in last year in Brazil and LA. TV used to be so important, it had elected presidents etc. But switch to online. 96% of classA/B watch video online. 31% watch TV series online

Terra tend to offer lots of content for free. The revenue is in advertising. Sonara, is a music service, with 6million users. They treat as a platform, So they have the service, they do live shows, they do festivals. Live shows at least once a week. They had 1.5m people watch Paul McCartney. They offer Terra TV, so people can watch TV for free. It also has a premium offering., they get to see more for money, first for free. They have a portal, with 100m visitors. Again premium offerings in this. They show the Olympic games, with lots of extra information. For London, will offer more channels, HD, more stats etc.

(photo by Adam Tinworth)

The Local Social Network: it’s not just location, it is about groups, about communities. It’s about meetups, or social enterprise groups

The intersection of entertainment and digital, that is Hollywood and Silicon Valley, It will take off next year. Web integrates into shows, YT has TV. Hulu copied the TV model, but Ben does not think that is the right way to go about it. It does not generate revenue for the premium content it shows. There will be more models!

The End of the Real Time Web. THere will be better ways to control and parse through the information that come through to it, so you get info in your own time

So what challenges for entrepreneurs?

The money. The Financial Crisis. There’s uncertainty, It is supposedly the end of good times, there are now leaner times.

The Talent Wars. Hiring great engineers is difficult. There’s not enough talent out there for a digital economy. There’s loads of employee transfer across the big companies, diff ones win the war at the diff times, But there’s just not enough in total. Only 34% of US high schools interested in science/tech, but only 38% of them graduate with a STEM project. People are going to great lengths, to keep and get talent, big money and perks.

There are lots of ideas out there. But how many good ones? Most ideas are stuck. We should not give the easy money, for ideas that suck. We need to focus and get people to build better businesses.

Changing the world is really, really hard. So here’s some advice for you

Don’t plant a flower, plant a sequioa. Build something that lasts. It may not be a fast growing or as pretty as a flower, but it will survive. Remember that Revenue-costs = profit, the easiest way to build a lasting service

Be adaptable. Great ideas can change, so can great entrepreneurs. YOu need to be able to take critique, understand what is attack as well

Finally, don’t build a company. Build a cause. Build something that will matter, that you can believe in and get behind. You have to believe in it, that it will change the world. That it will matter.

The new version has rolled out to a few people, (the one on the web), it is a slow rollout. They want to focus on being simple, consistent and fast, so it works across multiple devices. This is a combination of the long-term projects and new focus of Dorsey. they have been talking about it for a while, but this drove it.

Was last year’s new Twitter a failure? THey learned a lot, eg, expanded tweets etc, do you get the info in the context of the tweet. But in right pane was not connecting, so new version has that in the stream. Some of the feedback so far is mixed (although Ryan says very positive!). The longer term users/power users seem to be surprised at the changes. Where are the DMs, why are they not a main part? Ryan says the overall strategy is to simplify, so they narrowed down to the impactful part. They are in the place relative to rest of product, refer to how people use it. Not the most important.

With employee testing, they have been critical. There has been lots of debate about the things; most company feels good about what is there. Ryan’s favourite place is the activity section. with all the follows etc. For the Discover section, it is the big bet for the,m. They have over 1b a week, massive amount of content. The challenge we have is making sure they connect people with content that is most relevant to them. How do they find the other amazing content that they could care about. THis is part of the way of viewing content, as to use twitter you don’t have to tweet. A few years ago it switched, away from the drive to create content to the lurkers. WHo consume only, or at least consume first and tweet later. The Discovery tab is far more important, one of reasons there is no DM on front page. It is key for where the company, they are focused on science of discovery and the experience of it.

Embeddable tweets, which is part of the launch, means you can embed, as like YT, and you can take it anywhere and then you can interact with that tweet where ever it is. The content lives where the audience exists. Twitter needs to help brands, etc express themselves better. To get that content in front of people

Twitter has been focusing on making sure there is a consistent experience across all the platforms. Making sure it is simple and easy across all the places, but still make sure you make the most of the platform quirks. Is this more about new users? Twitter had to balance old vs new users, but it was about getting new people, making choices about emphasis. There’s a new Tweetdeck as well; is this a twitter pro? Ryan is proud of the team, wrote it from scratch. It’s for newsrooms, for power users. an important product for this audience, with lists, searches etc. They focused on the needs for this audience. The death of lists is overreported – now on the profile page, They will invest, but they need to make it a better product first.

The Apple integration open up a whole load of stuff for partners, a lot of interesting things to open. Twitter is a beautiful horizontal layer on top of the vertical OS. There are third-party elements, but twitter is focusing on own apps.

There are 700 employees now in Twitter; they have a good focus to get best people to the team, to keep challenging themselves. There has been a bit of turnover recently, but seems to be a natural thing, you make decisions about if it is the right place for you.

From the design point, there’s a lot of new little tweaks., It’s been important for Twitter and rivals have been doing more. Twitter views it as one of the critical things; they think they have one of the best design teams there is. It’s how design, product and engineering work together, a great synergy to be more than the individuals.

The Twitter Ecosystem, is in one of the best places it has been There are 750k devs that have created an app on the system. There is a lot of people in it. Twitter needs to do the right job in giving them products to build on. They need to engage with community, they have been building relationships, doing a lot of listening and looking forward to 2012. There was controversy about Twitter saying don’t build clients, so what are the opps for the devs. That’s the question they have lots of from entrepreneurs. Twitter will invest in core experience, there are lots of opps outside of that. Eg in analytics. Radian 6, Dataminer, huge opps there.

For Twitter to last, there needs to be money. Where’s it going? Twitter needs revenue, but it is not the point o living. It is incredible, some of the campaigns have 5% engagement, Excited about where that is going, they need to scale up to keep trust of users and build right product.

People don’t want to appear to be idiotic when they buy things. Mathew builds storefronts for retailers, what trends is he seeing. For merchants, the storefront is a stressful place, but it does not have the human touch that actual stores have. The social element is coming back into digital, When you go there, you get recognised. It becomes more vibrant. Mobile phones is making this possible in an actual store. With Etsy, they have put Facebook in there, that shows what your friends like. The social network influence is more important than any other ratings.

Since last year, Groupon has gone public, there are lots of other offer based systems. Where is location going here? Matthew thinks commerce is cool again; putting inventory into phones is a great opportunity. You can be walking down the street and let people know what the offers are through the phone. You can program a city.

They are announcing things. Paypal access is added to Magento stores…it is a commerce operating system, plenty of partners etc.

Looking at consumer behaviours, standing in line and waiting is an old concept. Now with apple, each sales rep can take payment. There is an explosion of apps in this space, adding onto the ipad etc. The POS systems are constraining and making the need for diverse systems. They are looking at the human touch, how can they let the staff know who you are, what you want, know more about you. SO staff can give you customised offers, based on your social network.

This is an open platform, bringing people together, opening up APIs etc…giving commerce in the cloud. Merchants want to buy tech…give them an app store to get tech into the stores. Retails stores, don’t have the tech at the moment, don’t have the expertise to build it out. SO how is this team going to help them? So x.com is a meeting place for developers and merchants. There are large number of requirements listing. They are working at taking the data and providing the best stuff for the merchants.

Is NFC a worry, or an opp? It’s seen as an opportunity. There’s a bunch of people working on this, at looking at a platform approach. It will look different in different approaches.

x.com is looking at making every screen a chance for commerce at making it more fun, putting the experience there. Ebay looks forward to an exciting world for consumers.

One of the challenges is what can the gov actually do, can’t they just get out of the way? So what do they to help entrepreneurs grow?

NP,the last study he has shows the internet economy is 6%, but whole digital bit is 80%. France is focusing on innovation and bringing down the barriers. So changes to tax regime, for startups, no tax for 6 years. They have huge tax cuts for innovation, if you pay 2 engineers, you get a third ‘for free’. They have also invested, in infrastructure, in services, to push production and consumption. They have tried to unleash potential of talent, by freeing up universities, to teach how they want, to deal with companies,. THere is a whole new conception on what gov has to do for innovation. Gov needs to be seen as part of the ecosystem, not above it. They need to facilitate and catalyse. Work with ecosystem, rather than at. In France, the ecosystem has been growing. France has released a lot of data, for people to work on, 300k data sets

From EK, he shares similar goals to NP. Look at the OpenData, just launched the OpenData institute. They think that by opening up the data and inviting devs to give them ideas, they can unlock new growth. By collaboration, by co-opetition, making markets open to all, they can stimulate growth. The Tech City initiative was announced, to amplify what was happening. Gov was looking about how it could get out the way and to stimulate it. The gov put in the entrepreneurs visa, to come to UK to set up business; the lifetime capital gains relief – that’s 10% tax on first 10m made on selling, plus R&D tax credit, plus early stage investors tax breaks up to 50%

Looking at EU, there needs to be about the same number of startups as SV, but about half the number of scale-ups. So how do we grow? SO how are govs helping those? NP thinks we need to focus on investments, there’s gov money now to help that. France has been trying to attract larger companies to grow the ecosystem. Also, it is about culture and mindset. THere’s a change, people wanting to grow global, was not ness where it was a few years ago. With new platforms, there are more opps for companies to be global. For UK, agreement, getting in some of the bigger companies in is key. THere is a risk that they will own all the engineers, but they also recognise that they need to add value. Google has taken out a building in London and are building out what they should do with it with the Tech City team. London knows startups are great, but scaleups are very important, so London want to ask opinion on the Global Entrepreneurs Network. THey will find the people from the different areas and put them together…entrepreneurs collaborate, to establish networks to support each other. NP thinks this is a good idea, building stronger links and ties. It’s all about connection, the power is in the networks and govs understand that.
So a call out for any ideas?

We asked people what made a good app. But they have already answered that question, with reviews etc. The data is there. But how to turn it into information. What are they saying? Look at words on 1 and 5 star reviews. good apps are lots of things, bad apps just suck. But what issues are being reported. Sorted reviews into categories next, looking at popularity of issues. What issues are most important? Looked at app removal reports, who removed. Top 3 issues are malware and excessive permissions, 3rd is intrusive ads. What can we learn about reviewers? How is the review system being abused? So bot reviewers – games being promoted in reviews for other games, plus troll reviewers.

Copycat Music: What Does it Mean to be an Original?
Martin Bohringer, @boehr

Looking at copycats, can EU startups do original startups or just copycats. So what does it mean? What makes it original. Music is about creativity…looking at original music…(and did copycat of the Axis of Awesome video)

How to Solve the App Store Discovery Problem
Emmanuel Carraud, @EmmanuelCarrauZ

App store is great, a new ecosystem over $5b. But too many apps, over 500k, 1k every day. So user is lost. So how do you find a good application. For devs, how can they be visible, how can they reach target audience, how do they make money. At MagicSolver, worked at that. based in Cambridge. Analysed the demographics, what people liked. Local key, eg utilities in China, US mainly games, UK has only 2 in common with US in analysis day. Italy has a lot of local apps. Japan has no Xmas, but books, brands etc. You need a good name, good SEO, good buzz. You need to get visibility, use the media, have a big marketing push. Need engaging apps to stay on top. Listen to users, for dev details and iterate quickly

We’re Not All as Smart as You Think We Are
Trevor Dougherty, @trevordty

When 16, got first job with state senate campaign, They did not know what to do with him, They did not have anyone running social media, so they put him in charge. This was the assumption, that young people are experts due to age. Just because they have access does not mean they do it better. People know how to do it at a basic level, So how to use groups and events and marketing. Most people won’t know what to do with FB advertising. Looking at video, it’s cheap to do. But can it be done well. At his school, it is expected that people know about it. With microblogging, it is popular with big media. but do young people get it? A lot of his fellow students use it to follow people, rather than do anything on it. Only middle-aged people from SV understand it. Young people have access to tech, but not ness use them better. You need to differentiate between power users vs the majority of people who have basic understanding. Keep it simple.

A Social Course
Raul Krauthausen, @raulde

How hard is life in a wheelchair? Hard. Dogs are as big as horses. There is no obvious way to get places, sometimes there are no one to help. Postboxes are too high, You can’t get money out of the ATM…without giving people your pin. There are some advantages joke picture of woman’s arse). Friends get fed up going to same cafe, as known as wheelchair accessible. Idea to make an app to show where are accessible areas. Application needs to be free, open ,available to everyone. Used openstreetmap, where all can contribute. Launched wheelmap.org, people can add stuff and also use data with API. now 200k places,. On Android, 1200 users, iPhone, over 10k downloads. Getting it across borders, we asked on Twitter who could translate. Got them done, even now in Klingon. Asked about how people can share his app info

From Flaneur to SmartMob: Collectively Experiencing Paris
Simon Lindgren, @simon_lindgren

Recently we have seen dev of LBS, People log movements and provide to SNS. So Walter Benjamin, looked at metropolis and how people interacted with environment. In 1927, he started writing a book, the Arcade project. Looking at the Arcades, you could see a condensed version of the strategies and types of modern society. Looked at the Fleneur, an aimless stroller of the streets, looks for new experiences and expressions in the city. Moving round a city can be seen as spellbinding, it is public. Many systems have reward systems, have badge programmes for going places, so the movement becomes an end to itself, as Benjamin predicted. There is a dissolution of time and space. Lefebvre wrote that space is a social thing, and we see that on the logins, that space is becoming democratised. We see how the every connected world changes things, with politics etc, online takes over spaces.

Is the Web Turning Us Into Monsters?
Greg Pouy, @gregfromparis

Get’s insulted a lot online. has his own bot, that responds to him every tweet. Negative reviews are obvious on the web; they are normal; but, you need to consider destructive vs constructive reviews. people can be mean online. We may all do that, people act like sheep, or not say anything. It is too easy to bash anonymously. Even he has done it. But not a good idea. SNS are great, he loves them. but being socially connected has consequences. If feel socially connected, but you feel less motivated to actually connect, so leads to not caring about others. teens are more likely than adults to bash…to be mean. The web is a reflection of society, not turning us into monsters. It is cathartic. So 2 messages, wait before sharing or commenting because you can hurt someone. And stay friends with those not connected

The Future Way of Working: The Distributed Company
Sara Rosso, @rosso

A picture of the modern workspace, full of cubicles. But that is not inspiring. Do you need to be in an office to be productive. Individuals have different places to be most productive; the idea of remote worker has really gained over last 20 years. In most places, it is a minority, regarded with suspicion. Is distributed only for small startups, freelancers. She works for Automattic, is completely distributed company. There is no office, they have 99 people in 74 cities. They are tightly connected in terms of communication. Use blogs, Skype, private IRC. The blogs are searchable and accessible, keeps records. IRC is a way of showing up to the office, colleague can find you. Everyone in company needs to be a self-starter, how they manage themselves. Goals need to be overcommunicated. It is hard to grow, you want to be distributed to get the best resources. But how will you communicate. How will people acclimate as you grow, Need to decide tools before distribution, There needs to be a new way of management. You still need to see each other on occasion. The future is out of the office

Chinese Tech & Doing Business in China
Anina Net, @360fashion

Looking at china and entrepreneurs. Most people there were farmers at one point. YOu need a lot of patience. You should get into an incubator programme, help you navigate. Also get to know the local VIPs. Let them know what you are doing..they can help. China is huge, it is fragmented, you need multi device approach. How do you cope with people who do not want to put cards into mobile sites? Which app store do you use – there’s >20. Doubon has affiliate fees for monetisation, a brilliant innovative programme for mobile. You need to have a licensed analytics programme. You need to have great moderators and collaborators, the gov could close you down if conversations get out of hand. But anything can happen, even if never been done before. You need Guanxi…there are great walls everywhere, challenges and cultural divides, you need to bridge the divides. They want to know who you are first, not how you will make money. China makes me leaner, makes me think faster, makes me sharp.

Knowing Why (Connaitre Porquoi)
Dave Troy, @davetroy

Has been reading Moby Dick, questions about why..a film is only as good as the reason for making it. Is it story or money for film sequels. For OWS, there is criticism about why they do not know why, but they have got a cause…its not the why, it’s that they do not know what to do with it. Look at TedX, there’s one about NewWallStreet, so what could be implemented to make Wallst better and fair. So the theme is not to make bigger plans. or look for things that motivate you. Differences are down to story, about what motivates you. in Bray, the Fat Duck, the property prices has doubled as there is a story. Look at Amanda Rose and Twestival. Look at the how of tech and they why of the story. Look at Kickstarter, they ask you to explain why. What are the social objects that make your stories spread? It is all about storytelling, the best products or companies will have stories.

(some images by Adam Tinworth)

(photo by Adam Tinworth)

They were asked what they mean by media. PFF think they are are local and social, that they are not media, but a media acceleration company. They are looking for partners, eg as with Evernote. BG thinks AOL is investing lots of content…interesting how social and mobile change what media is. FB is media, twitter is media, that creates challenges for the traditional media. They think innovation, how to incorporate it, is one of the biggest challenges. So for Orange, BG thinks keeping it separate is the best model. NewsCorp with the Daily, spends lots of money creating lots of content and it’s not getting traction. Gabe would consider techmeme as media; Media as a word is overused. Is it social media or broadcast. Techmeme does not have comments, not too many tweets, focus on the media, it’s one to many..not like social media many to many. BP thinks that media is staying the same, the industrial mass version is changing. Big companies do not control the system, But audience still wants to gather around a tv programme, on whatever screen they want and still want a social connection with it. The difference is that the big company no longer controls the system. They have to think about maximizing the consumer experience. It’s a new way, maximizing the experience

What is good examples of integrating social and media. Gabe is not focusing on this; is looking at publishers. Social media is a follow on, it collects attention but not really adding. For Gabe, Twitter is one area, in terms of breaking news and being able to provide additional information, counterpoints etc. Not too often, usually not really useful. Gabe does not know of any traditional media where social is adding value (although he admits there may be there). Gabe looks at Reddit, with moderated comments that can be seen as a success

Paul thinks you are looking at the future, where is it going. He thinks we are still in period about understanding what the success will be. There will be soon something, but not seen know. Bruno thinks there are new models of storytelling. The news is no longer delivered to you. Or the story shows. You know people will get involved with characters etc. You engage in new ways of multidimensional shows and stories. The context is always changing..that that is a big thing with social

Looking at local, big media has a problem covering local in a way to make money from, says Brad. AOL has made a large investment in Patch, which is a local media network. They don’t do big towns, do small ones, do suburbs. Twitter is media, so the volume is huge – even if it is garbage. The challenge is making media more relevant, using social and interest graphs and then you have a proximity graph, bringing in mobile. Techmeme is always of the now, so always relevant.

But can you scale local? Brad thinks this is what the Patch experiment will show over the next few years. They have invested over 100m..some are profitable, can all of the 900 sites be so. Paul is talking about sharing knowledge and processes and platforms to scale, even if news is local

For Bruno, local is not what local used to mean. So local used to be a major town and suburbs..so 500-600k. Now it is more local, more granular. So the model is changing, it is not volume as such.

Audience questions

So how important is local? For Brad, Patch is a challenge, it is going. But local is important, people care about what happens around their area. Can people make money? Bruno says that there used to be lots of local press, but local was a huge place. The audience is smaller. You have to think about how to organise local news in a key way. Look at the US, with support of journalism is on local basis as many organisations don’t cover it. Gabe would not do a local site. There needs to be an abundance of the local news to consider filtering, says gabe, but there is not this. He does not see the success at the smaller scale. Patch does not sound encouraging. A Patch story did discover the Jobs presenting new plans, then techcrunch wrote this up. Local content matters, says Brad, but there is not an abundance, so difficult to curate and promote. With Paul, he asks what is local? how big is the size?

Looking at mobile, Gabe has about 10% mobile. He knows there are news sites where mobile is bigger, but for those that are like work, like techmeme, desktop is more important. For Twitter, it’s 50%, for FB it’s about 30%. It will become increasing in numbers. Paul sees 2 forms of mobile, when you are away, getting the info, or as a second or third screen when doing other things, to interact. Bruno is working on mobile apps, that to view, capture and share what you can see on TV. For Paul at Orange, this multidevice is a key element for their partners.

It’s good to sell a company twice. The first time I was part of the product..so emotional. The second time I was an investor, so more a financial decision. (Skype). It has ended up in a good place. How are the trends? Looking at things like the iphone, mobile internet promised in 1999 but not really until after the iphone. Now most entrepreneurs looking at mobile models. Also the growth of ecommerce, especially on mobile. In Western countries, eg in Sweden, 10% of commerce is ecommerce. 5 years ago etc, it was too much of a niche. Now the small niches, eg shoes, are large opportunities.
Looking for potential investments? Looking for the people, the team need to have ambition, the desire, the intellectual capacity. They need the high ambition level. They need to have the right time, so things will happen. They need to be realistic as well

Fund is about $200m, invest in startups, in about 50 companies. They don’t look for subsectors. They are open minded. Look at Google, when they got into search, the other companies we becoming portals, as that was where the money was. Search was not the trend, so few would have been looking to invest. It’s not about pure innovation either, it is about focusing on great products

With Skype, they knew they would have freemium model but did not launch with it. Companies can do revenue earlier now. There was more focus on the backend, now more on front end, as there are cloud services. You need less money to start a company.

Predicts there will be more OS platforms. Carriers want to keep relationship with customers, so an independent system could be one there. He can’t tell companies to only focus on iPhone, or on Android. BUt can show them the numbers of users, hard to justify sometimes building on other platforms

A bit more than haf the investments are in EU. But is not ness a competitor for Silicon valley. SV is epicenter of tech innovation. But the likelihood of companies from other areas are growing. Entrepreneurs have access to the same information. The growth is outside the US, outside EU, it will be emerging markets. would rather invest in these kinds of places to grow.

(photo by Adam Tinworth)

Record everything, dev data machines/algorithms to find patters, dev visualisation so humans can see the connections and then dev them to make the world better

Was looking at how his son learnt, wired up his house for camera and microphones. Recorded everything in basement. Collected film over 3 years, (have put in strong data protections) Looked at how move through space/time in the various activities. tracked where son was in the house, got the words he was hearing, and tracked the words the son started to use. By time was 2, he had been learnt about 500 words, and they knew how they had been developed. They looked at how often a word was heard and when the son used it. So when a word used a lot, son spoke it earlier. but how about social context? The study allowed visual context to be assessed. Reveals social activity structures through time, tracking activity and then associates words heard with the activity being done. Tracking the hearing over time, gives you a landscape in space where it was heard. The new hypothesis is that the uniqueness of the wordscape means word will be learnt earlier – ie that when things happen in specific places, then the word is learnt earlier.

So context has a strong correlation with language acquisition. Took that model and started to look at TV, advertising etc. Looking at how people are commenting on TV, through social networks. You see huge growth in people talking about TV. If you look at the social expressions, in reaction to media impressions..now people create online and it can be studied. They can follow connections and where information travels They have the social web, the TV web of content, and the links between what is being said and what it being watched. This is the TV genome, the most cohesive data set of US tv and its audience. Of Google was developed to assess inbound links to content…but if you take every comment as a response to TV, then TV genome is like pagerank for TV content. They measure how many people talk about each show, Can assess the raw data, it’s not just the number that watched.

Is using this for developing insights. Looking at how to produce visualisations to share their data. Provide conversation patterns, ways to show engagement – which is not numbers, but about what is being talked about it. Does semantic analysis. Looks at audience, how they are linked etc, what types of shows people talk about.

Privacy. Only uses public data, looks at audience patterns and analyses on an aggregate level

Personal note: I worked with a media client 2 years ago to develop something very similar for them on Twitter. They wanted to track information around their shows, to be able to understand what was being said, the sentiment etc and visualise it in a way that the average show producer could get a handle on the social web.