Web Wednesday 23.0 - THIS WEDNESDAY - Feb 25th 6:30pm

It's Web Wednesday week again in Singapore! This is a special month as it marks our two year anniversary!

Join us at 6:30 pm Wednesday the 24th at Home Club between Boat and Clarke Quays.

This month we are jumping in to the world of mobile advertising - we will again revisit the annual discussion on whether or not THIS is the year of mobile advertising!

Google buys AdMob. Apple buys Quattro. Google launches NexusOne. Apple has iPhone. Nokia has been doing all of this for years. So what’s the hype all about?

Ruben Maislos the founder of Pudding Media joins us this week to give us his take on the age old question.

Ruben founded Pudding Media in 2006 and is the driving force behind the company’s global expansion of operations. A veteran in the realm of ad funding telephony services, he brings to Pudding Media the know-how accrued over a decade of working at DSPC and Intel. Ruben’s extensive mobile marketing expertise is coupled with a wealth of experience in the realm of speech recognition and advanced mobile telephony.

It should be an interesting chat - come join us. Rumour has it that Pudding has some big news....

See you there or be FourSquare!

Web Wednesday Singapore 22.0@ Home Club - 27 January 2010 - THIS WEEK!

Welcome to a new year and a new decade. 2010 is here and we are all excited by the possibilities for digital in the coming year.

WebWednesday is this week on January 27th at the Home Club. We will start at 6:30pm and continue until... (?). Join us to welcome in the new year, catch up with friends after the holidays, and discuss what we think will be the trends in 2010.

Looking forward to catching up with all of you this week!

See you all soon.

Joe, Kevin, and Andy

Web Wednesday 21.0@Home Club - Akamai's Top Biggest Internet Disruptions of 2009

The year is almost over and the holiday season is commencing. What better time for the last Web Wednesday Singapore of 2009. Join us for some festive holiday spirit and cheer NEXT Wednesday at 6:30pm at the Home Club.

At this month’s event, we will be having a guest from Akamai who will be sharing some data from Akamai’s State of the Internet and discuss the Top 5 Biggest Internet Disruptions of 2009. Our speaker, David Habben heads up Akamai’s digital media business in SE Asia and has been involved in the inception of communications technologies for over 15 years.

As Akamai is the CDN powering most of the major sites on the internet, they have quite a bit of data- it should be interesting.

We are looking forward to seeing you all there next Wednesday, November 25th at 6:30pm! Happy Holidays.

Best,
Kevin, Joe and Andy

Web Wednesday 20.0 - THIS WEDNESDAY - October 28th 6:30pm

Hey there- just a friendly reminder that Web Wednesday is THIS WEDNESDAY.

This week we move the discussion back to the local internet scene. We are lucky enough to have Clemen Chiang, ‘Chief Evangelist’ and one of the founders of Cozycot.com, the #1 Women's Site in Singapore awarded by Hitwise for 3 straight years in 2006, 2007 and 2008. CozyCot.com features beauty, fashion, gourmet, mom, wedding, reviews and forums. It attracts over 17,000 forum threads, with over 1.6 million postings to date and more than 500,000 visitors per month. He will be sharing with us "The 5 Critical Success Factors for a Women's Site":

#1. Secret Agent Double O
#2. Scaling The Cloud
#3. Socialize Networking
#4. Sampling Samples
#5. The Holy Grail

Given that this is a sector that seems to be hotting up among advertisers in the region and many new players are entering the market- it will be interesting to hear from a long established player.

We are looking forward to seeing you this week on Wednesday from 6:30-8:30pm.

Home Club is located on the Riverwalk B1-01/06, 20 Upper Circular Road- between Boat Quay and Clarke Quay. Here's the map!

See you then!

Web Wednesday 19.0, next THURSDAY, October 1st at the Home Club

Hi Everyone,

We hope the year is going well as we dive quickly into the last quarter of the year. The next Web Wednesday is next week on a THURSDAY. That’s right, THURSDAY, October 1st at the HOME CLUB. Please join us because we have a very distinguished guest joining us in Singapore. We moved the day of the week for this month only!

Randall Rothenburg is the President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau in the US and will be speaking with our very own Ken Mandel on the development of the IAB here in Singapore.

A brief introduction to Randall...
Before assuming leadership of the IAB in 2007, Randall was the Senior Director of Intellectual Capital of Booz Allen Hamilton, the international strategy and technology consulting firm, where he oversaw business development, knowledge management, and thought leadership activities, and directed the award-winning quarterly business magazine "strategy+business,". Previously, he served as the firm’s chief marketing officer.

Prior to Booz Allen, Mr. Rothenberg spent six years at The New York Times, where he was the technology editor and politics editor of the Sunday magazine, the daily advertising columnist, and a media and marketing reporter. Mr. Rothenberg is the author of "Where the Suckers Moon: An Advertising Story" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), a critically-acclaimed chronicle of the birth, evolution, and death of a single advertising campaign.

He is going to be interesting.

We are looking forward to seeing you all there. Remember, this month's WW is on Thursday Oct 1 2009.

Here's the map!

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Adobe and Omniture: It's about the Services

I received a bunch of SMSes, emails, and calls today about Adobe's intent to purchase Omniture. Obviously, I don't work for Omniture anymore, but people wanted some insights. The above graphic describes how the two companies are supposed to fit together.

The Adobe press release is here and Omniture's press release is here. The Guardian.co.uk got to this news first (since they were in the UK, and their reporters were awake when the news came out?) The Guardian's title was "Experts puzzled over Adobe's surprise purchase of Omniture". From the article:

===
Despite this, however, some were still left scratching their heads about precisely how the two companies would come together.

"I don't really see the synergy in the deal," said Eric Peterson of research and consulting group Web Analytics Demystified. "But I admit that I love Adobe and so I'm willing to be surprised. I think of Adobe as a software company for creative types; Omniture sells software-as-a-service to analytical types. These are different business models and very different customers."

Others pointed out that owning Omniture will allow Adobe to have a complete set of tools for website production - allowing customers to design, build, publish and monitor websites within a single system.

===
So the view is that a big software company buys a software-as-a-service company (SAAS), but there is no overlap in their respective offering, or - dare I say it - no "synergy". But "no synergy" also means no lay-offs. This deal is not about saving a buck by consolidating operations; it's about how 1 + 1 can make 3.

So beyond the nice graphic above, which will have short to medium term benefits, Adobe is ALSO buying a services company. Omniture has very strong consulting and services teams that reach very deep into major verticals from travel to telecoms to FMCG industries. Adobe, well known for its leadership in the publisher and agency markets, does not.

According to Omniture's latest SEC filings, Professional Services make up 13% of revenue in 1H09, up from 10% in FY2008.

So my take is that, in the longer term, Adobe is making a Professional Services play.

You heard it here first...

Web Wednesday TOMORROW NIGHT - August 26th 6:30pm at Home Club

See you there!