Saturday, November 17, 2007

Multimedia E-commerce MME

Ever since VocalTec (VOCL) came out with it’s with its free calls internet Phone in February 1995 named iPhone, everyone involved with the Internet and VoIP asked the same question, how can we monetize the Internet if it is all free.

The concept of a platform for delivering services came to me back then, but was hard to implement from many reasons: luck of Broadband connectivity, low VoIP Audio quality on those early days, luck of payment systems and luck of e-commerce consumer behavior.

All that, I assumed, was about to grow and I started to build a business case for what is now BitWine Inc, or as I named the space back then Multimedia E-Commerce or MME.

The first thing I did was to map the world of e-commerce trying to predict the market direction in a hope to get there first.

In my quest I met Charlie Federman who introduced me to my brilliant partner Elad Baron and together the there of us set sail to build BitWine. We recruited a group of excellent Angel investors and an extremely talented group of developers, which worked hard to bring BitWine
http://www.BitWine.com to life.

I recently looked back on my MME e-commerce map to try and see how far off I was in 2003-2004. I think I was on the money, but I will let you be the judge of that.

I did not predict Amazon grid computing and storage services per-se but they certainly have a place on the map.

The diagram show that e-commerce applications spread from tangible goods to non-tangible goods, and from Auction to Buy Now and to pay-as-you-go.

If the trend continues, it seems that the market will experience growth in the next few years to keep an open window of opportunity to companies such as BitWine and fast investors who can ignore trendy investments and are able to focus on growth potential and tangible business models.

After all, 50% of US GDP or about $7T is derived from services, so there is plenty of room for the space to grow.


Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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