Israel Innovation 2.0

**The following relates to the enterprise but is not directly related to technology companies or people in Israel.**

Every so often I like to share my thoughts on Facebook’s future and where I think it is going in regards to the enterprise and in general. My biggest prediction in the past has been that in the race to gather the world’s information, Facebook and Google are at opposite ends of the information spectrum when it comes to social and computerized gathering and are bound to clash at some point. In light of Facebook’s recent failed attempt to buy Twitter, here are three things Facebook is likely to do or should do in the future based on this recent and other not so recent news.

1. Enhanced human-powered search, via Twitter-style comments and features
As mentioned, the inspiration for this post is that in recent days there has been talk of Facebook’s failed attempt to purchase the social networking/micro-blogging site Twitter in exchange for stock options. The exact plans Facebook had for integrating Twitter, which is primarily used by business and technology professionals to communicate with one another and who commonly share links to relevant information on the Web, may be unknown, but it is safe to assume that Facebook would have somehow integrated the rest of the technology into its status feature (which currently only enables users to comment on them). Twitter’s appeal is that being a site that relies on user interactions and content, it is the ultimate way to share information and help people find useful information on the Internet.

Regardless of the failed deal, it seems that Facebook will continue to develop Twitter-like technology on its own and roll it out as soon as it can. As it already has the status feature, and comment feature, its first focus will probably be to add a way to search your own past statuses as well as those of your friends.

2. Enterprise-friendly collaboration. Goodbye GMail.
Ever since companies started creating networks on Facebook, I’ve been waiting for Facebook to announce its creation or plans for creating a special platform for enterprises. The platform could serve as a low cost intranet system for companies and allow for better collaboration and communication among employees within such companies. If Facebook changed its messaging system into a full email application it would already have the other communication means, such as chat and video chat apps available to make collaboration easier and possibly a little more fun.

Also, if Facebook wanted to take GMail straight on, it could partner with Microsoft (who it partners with for search results and advertising) and develop an online version of MS Office that it could offer on its enterprise platform for collaboration. Of course, back in October 2008, co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz and colleague Justin Rosenstein left the company with the desire to build an online “enterprise productivity suite” that will from the outside (using Facebook Connect) complement the non-work-related social aspect of Facebook.

3. Calendar
Who doesn’t like Facebook’s events feature? It’s easy to create, access and share. Most important though is the access. Unlike Google Calendar or other calendar applications, the events are integrated throughout Facebook making it easy to access from the search bar or when you’re on the homepage after signing in to see what upcoming events there are for that day and the next few. While it is great the way it is, Facebook Events can still be improved to act as a full personal planner by making it possible to synchronize non-Facebook events with Facebook as well. Perhaps one way this could be done is with an “Share to Facebook Events” widget that could be placed on other websites.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

Israel Innovation 2.0′s weekly Israel-related technology headlines are back by popular demand. What happened during the past week of March 30, 2008? There wasn’t any news about any major investments and M&A (in Israel), but there sure was plenty of news about Israeli solar companies signing deals, Telecom announcing partnerships and Information Security… securing. This past week, it was revealed that sustainable energy stocks are lead by solar, Motorola unveiled a new Israeli-developed device and IncrediMail reported record revenues that increased 72% in 2007. To find out more about these stories and what the rest of this week’s 21 Israel-related technology headlines are, check out the list
below.

Cleantech
US Army fund seeks Israeli water tech

Solar Leads Sustainable Energy Stocks

Luz II signs deal with California energy giant

Solel to add solar facilities in Spain

‘Green our lever to move Israel from 2nd to 1st World’

In Israel
Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May

Economy added over 100,000 new jobs in 2007

Incubators in north and south excel

Telecom
Is you is or is you ain’t WiMAX

Motorola unveils new Israeli developed device

Metalink Unveils Operating Expense Reduction Plan

InfoGin and Comverse in technology partnership

Motive and Red Bend Help Operators Overcome Barriers to Mobile and
Converged Service Delivery


Information Security

Safend Provides New Data Leakage Prevention Offerings with Latest Release

Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum Sets Course for the Future

Commtouch CEO to Present at America’s
Growth Capital Information Security Conference at RSA

Miscellaneous

Elron Highlights AqWise and Galil Medical Developments

IncrediMail Reports Record Revenues, Increasing 72% in 2007

N-trig Hires New Vice President of Research, Development and Engineering

XFONE Completes Acquisition of Story Telecom, Inc.

Olive Software Announces Availability of ActiveMagazine 3.0,
Next-Generation Digital Magazine

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

Last night, at the Jerusalem Business Networking Forum (which I co-organize), I had the opportunity to hear Orna Berry — a Gemini Israel Funds Venture Partner and the Israel Venture Association (IVA) Chairperson — give an overview of the VC process and discuss what VCs can offer Israeli businesses.

During the Q&A session, I asked her if she agreed with her Gemini colleague, Daniel Cohen’s Op-Ed in VentureBeat last fall that explained why Israeli companies that have been founded in recent years don’t reach their full potential and beyond, and if she thought that despite the current climate, there are companies that can reach the Nokia-level.

Her response was that she did agree with Daniel Cohen, but she only gave examples of successful companies that were established before the creation of VC funds in Israel, such as Comverse and Amdocs. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to follow up with her about this after the meeting and so, I am still left wondering, do any Israeli companies founded in the past 10 years have the potential to grow into a Nokia or Google and, if so, which?

I have set up a poll below with four Israeli companies that I have covered in recent months that seem to be very promising. Which one, if any, do you think can make it?
 

Think a different Israeli company not in the poll is more promising. Share your opinion in the comments below.

Related ITGumbo content:
People information and networking… Shouldn’t the next big thing be from Israel?
Company in Focus: Red Bend Software
Company in Focus: Gemini Israel Funds
Company in Focus: Voltaire, Ltd.

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

This week’s edition of “Company Briefs” is inspired by BloggingStocks’ Zack Miller’s post, “Two Stocks to buy before Tuesday’s Annapolis peace conference,” and JobMob’s Jacob Share’s post, “67 Lists of Life Tips.” When you’re finished with these 23 headlines, you can also check out Eze Vidra’s VC Cafe post, “Bitesize: A Low Calorie News Dose.”

During the week of November 26th, the usual media attention allotted to Israeli technology was dwarfed by the attention the Annapolis peace summit received. Here’s 23 headlines of news stories related to the Israeli high-tech sector that you may have missed that can a significant impact on the Israeli industry, including investment, in the near future.

Cleantech:

By 2020, fuel oil and diesel won’t be used in Israel

Transforming the air we breathe into the water we drink

New proposals for competitive energy market

Ben-Eliezer commits to 10% clean energy by 2020
Ampal, Clal to develop wind projects

Investments, expansions and M&A:

Ness Tech in expansion mode in India

Diagnostic co Quantomix bought by El-Mul

InSightec raises further $30 million

Jerusalem Global to raise new VC find

RBC prepares shopping list of Israeli high-tech

Taiwanese invest in Israeli sensor startup

Skin treatment co HealOr raises $8 million

Ness Technologies buys Hungarian firm

Everything else:

Voltaire ranked as fastest-growing tech company by Deloitte

Israel pushing hard on nanotechnology R&D

UK and Israel have fastest growing tech firms in EMEA

Israeli firm enables voice, video messages

HP Israel wins Pele-Phone contract

Glide Mobile brings advanced online mobile computing to Israel

Israel, Korea to fund more R&D

Over 209,000 Israelis are Facebook members

Global industry:

New method for making diesel fuel uses vegetable oils

Google’s next frontier: renewable energy

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, recently mentioned in his blog that social networking on the Web is providing people with the opportunity to share data about themselves and things related to them for the interest of others (i.e., for connecting to others). He explains though that the popularity of these social networks hide the reality of people using these closed sites not for the sites themselves but for the opportunities and connections that they provide them.

For those who aren’t familiar with Israeli society, it tends to pride itself on giving advice and having connections (protexia). The connection of people and information are strong values that are practically innate in Israelis and has probably contributed to Israel’s high-tech sector being very active in the Web 2.0 phenomena — so active, that I have been thinking ever since Daniel Cohen’s Israei Nokia article that if all these Israeli companies were pooled, Israel could have countered Google or created its own Facebook.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier said than done or even fully imagined. However, with Berners-Lee talking about the Giant Global Graph and the need to transcend the limits of the current social networking graph, maybe there is still the chance that Israel will build the next big networking phenomena. Israeli companies just have to think outside the box of the Web and the set up of social networks as we know it.

For anyone who wants to get started on this, here’s a list of some of the top Israeli Web 2.0 companies that offer interactive services that if were combined in a new way, I think could create the next big thing:

Fun:
Aniboom- Users can create animated clips, post clips, view clips here, and based on the popularity of content that you post, you have the chance to make some money as well.

Metacafe- A user-driven video-sharing site that shows only entertaining short clips that is first reviewed by users before it gets posted on the site. Program creators of the most popular content get paid.

BlogTV- For anyone who has something to share via video. This gives you the chance to create your own live channel on anything you want.

Search and Information:
Walla!- An Internet portal with free email for anyone, this is the first stop for local information and direction on the Web.

Answers.com- Formerly with the tag line, the encyclodictionalmanacapedia, Answers.com is a one stop information engine. It’s popular wikiAnswers allows users to post and answer questions on anything they might be wondering.

Collaboration and work environment:
eSnips- While it is great for its music features, eSnips’ 5GB storage gives users a way to easily store and share documents on the Web.

ooVoo- 6-way video conferences, video messaging and video chatrooms make this ideal for live video communication for business or for fun.

Verix- Offers solutions for Business Intelligence when it comes to sales.

Advertising:
Kontera- “Kontera is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising and Information Services based on patent- pending text and content analysis technology that maximizes relevancy and yield for online users, publishers, and advertisers.”

TVinci - “The TVinci media management platform helps video content owners, broadcasting channels and publishers enrich, socialize and personalize video content, while maximizing monetization.”

Hiro Media- Hiro’s ad-supported video downloading technology allows any video distributor to allow the unlimited sharing of its product over the Internet with the ability to monetize it. monetized.

When my roommate told me in horror last week that our Israeli landlady friend-requested her on Facebook, my response was that I was not surprised.

“But she’s really old!” my roommate exclaimed. Pushing retirement age, our landlady’s using Facebook does seem to be a bit unusual, especially, since Hebrew is her primary language. However, considering Israeli’s propensity for adopting new technology and the weight that Israeli culture puts on protexia (networking) in general, I figured it was only a matter of time before she would join and search one or all of us out on Facebook.

And, indeed, her having joined Facebook does represent an overall Facebook adoption rate by Israelis that is starting to turn heads. A few weeks ago, when I mentioned in passing my observation that the Facebook Israel Network had over 100,000 members, I was not aware of the discussion that Internet luminaries, Jeff Pulver, Shel Israel and Moshe Maeir were also having about it between their blogs.

Now having read their posts (thanks to a post on Alec Saunders’ blog), I find that they have really put this into perspective. According to Moshe Maeir’s blog, from August to October 15th, the Israel Network grew from 18,000 to 70,000. By October 25th, it reached 100,000 and yesterday (November 10, 2007) it hit 150,000 – that’s 50% in two weeks. Of course, as someone raised in a comment on Pulver’s blog, this number does not even include the many Israelis who haven’t listed themselves in a network (such as my landlady’s adult children).

While this is something to watch, Maeir brought up an even more significant fact by pointing out that “about half [of the Israelis in the Israel Network] are above the age of 24, which means that Facebook is moving away from the college age origins.” (Something that rings true with my land lady’s joining it.) He goes on to state that this is part of a trend of Facebook becoming more of a “serious networking platform for business.” A trend, that given the amount of Israel business groups being created on Facebook, is clearly being taken advantage of and is in full force on the Israel Network.

What about Facebook apps? Eze Vidra’s latest blog post highlights the Israeli Facebook application, Save an Alien and what a great idea it is. The premise of the application is that in May 2008, a meteor is going to strike an alien planet and destroy its population of 10 million unless 10 million Facebook users adopt one alien each. Since one person can save only one alien, should all 10 million aliens be saved, the company behind the app will have collected personal information from 10 million Facebook users, giving the company a lot of potential for targeting marketing.

After reading about the application, I decided to google Save an Alien, and found several links relating to the application as well as links about people’s frustrations with the overwhelming amount of Facebook applications and the clutter it creates on personal profile pages (which takes away from a positive user experience). Since Facebook opened its platform in May, developers have created over 6,000 applications for it and it is constantly in news articles and all over blogs. As readers of Michael Arrington’s blog on TechCrunch have commented, Facebook is not the be all and end all of the Internet; though it often feels that way.

The questions lying ahead for Save an Alien and other Israeli Facebook-only applications to ask themselves are how can we make a presence on Facebook that will support a viable business model and at what point should we expand or continue to engage our target market on platforms other than Facebook? After all, if companies seek funding, won’t they need to show some additional backbone should Facebook popularity fade in the near future?

This past week saw big announcements from MySpace and Facebook, the U.S. market continuing to struggle and OpTier named Globes Israeli Start-up of the Year. How this will all affect technology and investments in Israel will be essential to follow in the next few months for innovations. In the meantime, review the news related to technology in Israel in this week’s Israel Innovation Companies in Brief: Week of October 21 slideshow.

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