Business-Consumer Networks

May Report

03.06.08

Hi friends!

Our project is still alive and we had a fair progress this month:

• Check out Yury’s new tutorial The New Web.
• A lot time was spent on studying economics (mechanism design) and thinking how to apply these ideas to online marketing. There some internal notes on that, hopefuly, a draft paper will be released in June.
• We rethink our seed project strategy. Instead of Caltech2.0 we will make an experimental web project on fashion brand prefernces. The main idea is simple: tell us what do you wear and you’ll be abale to learn the same about your friends. Will it work? What do you think?
• The fashion project has some initial code now. Development version is here (in Russian). There is also some preliminary javascript intended to be a part of the system.

Stay tuned! And thanks for following.

1 Comment

April report

27.04.08

April was a month with slow progress:

• We made a decision on our bootstrapping strategy: we start with Caltech2.0 project that will consist of several social services for Caltech.
• You now can check the very first version of Caltech2.0.
• Here is new text describing our ideas and plans Research Agenda for Online Marketing

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March Report

31.03.08

Hi here!

The first month of our project is over. Here is our informal report.

Done:

• Some server-side code: profile creation, blog engine, email notifications, OpenId support, images
• Reputation tutorial
• Business plan, vision paper
• Talking to potential investors
• Reviewing over 100 current startups
• Internal wiki

Learned:

• Business planning, basics of startuping
• Django framework
• Open web ideas: microformats, OpenSocial, data portability, state of the art in semantic web
• “Getting Real” style of project management

Plans for April:

• Release one business profile (for Caltech)
• Release few more business profiles
• Open interface for creating business profiles
• Introduce “Social Karma” mechanism
• Giving talks, getting feedback, publishing roadmap paper

2 Comments

Vision Paper

24.03.08

Here is the next small step in our project: The draft of our vision paper.

We now have much more questions than in the beginning

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Polls are here

17.03.08

1 Comment

Executive Summary

10.03.08

After learning how venture investors do their decisions we rewrite our proposal.

Here it is: Business-Consumer Networks. Executive Summary.

Inside you will find:

• Market opportunity
• Solution
• Value proposition
• Getting critical mass
• Business model
• Competition and competitive advantage
• Founding team
• Finance projections
• Risks

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First day in the office

03.03.08

Our project is getting real.
At Saturday we had the first day in our new office at the outskirts of Saint-Petersburg.
We have big room in the building of former headquarters of an aluminium plant.

Our first tasks were to set up LAN and internet connection, assemble office chairs and put up a whiteboard.

You can see that we successfully fulfilled these tasks!

3 Comments

Project Proposal is Released

23.02.08

February 28, 2008.

Here is our project proposal: Business-Consumer Networks.

Russian version: Бизнес-Сети.

Comments are very welcome!

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My business friends

12.02.08

On Sunday we discussed with my friends how many business friends a typical person have?

Business friend is a brand, company or service you use and appreciate.

My bet: 250. Let me write down at least 50 categories for business friends:

Continues after the jump »

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Audio-presentation

02.02.08

Click play button: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

MP3 for download.

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