Israel Innovation 2.0

In recounting Yahoo! President, Susan Decker’s remarks in my last post, a few things made me think about the role that Israel will have in the future of the Internet. As mentioned in that post, the topic of the panel that Decker, Sergey Brin, Rupert Murdoch, among others participated on, was, “What is the future of the new Internet media?”

Included in Decker’s response to this was a reflection that while Yahoo! currently covers the “breadth” of the
Internet, the future is in its “depth,” such as processing speed, low
costs storage, mass media distribution – three areas in which companies in Israel are constantly innovating.

For processing speed, one only has to think of the Intel chips that have been released in recent years and their original development here in Israel. Since Intel first opened an R&D lab in Haifa in the 1990s, Israeli researchers have developed the Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5100 series, the first PC
processor with a 8-bit 8088 bus, Intel Pentium MMX and Intel Centrino. Although the Haifa lab didn’t develop the latest Penryn chip, it did play a part in determining how the “new chip micro-architecture could be manufactured on a commercial scale.”
 

The commercial success of Intel’s chips have enabled not just more digital activity and productivity, but have also increased demand for low cost storage – several innovations of which, have also come from Israel. In the portable storage realm, Walletex has added a new dimension to USB drive storage devices with its credit card-styled and -sized 4GB and 8GB storage devices. Its devices also have the technology to receive automatic updates from the Internet when plugged in and connected to the Internet. G.ho.st, a web-based operating system that acts as a virtual desktop, provides users with 5 GB of free storage that can be uploaded to the virtual desktop.

Storage on a virtual desktop isn’t the only free online storage idea coming from Israel though – eSnips, the multimedia and storage social network, allows its users to not just upload up to 5 GB of data for free, but to also utilize its mass media distribution features, such as document and media file storing and handling, for other users to access and share. While this is a hybrid of low cost storage and mass media distribution, pure mass media distribution websites in Israel include MetaCafe and AniBoom. Both sites rely on user-generated and -submitted short film content, regular and animated, respectively and active participation in their communities.

It is the active participants of these communities that make it likely that these three mass media sites leaders in the present Internet media will continue to play a crucial part in shaping the future of the Internet and Internet media. The social networking aspects of these sites help inspire innovation here in Israel in ways that almost guarantee that these sites will reach and maintain the “depth” of the new Internet that Decker was talking about and which Yahoo! is still seeking.

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. 

As mentioned in my previous post, I attended the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem this past Thursday. One of the sessions that I attended was a panel discussion entitled, “The Revolution of the Internet and the New Media.” The panel was moderated by Yossi Vardi and the panelists included, Yahoo! President, Susan Decker; Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin; Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO, Maurice Levy; News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch; and Windsor Media Chairman and CEO, Terry Semel. The question posed to the panelists was “What is the future of the new Internet media?”

While the panelists were able to paint an overall picture of what the relationship between the Internet and media will probably look like in the future, only Susan Decker’s comments really stood out. She began by mentioning that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” She discussed the importance of the Internet for essentials and mentioned that while Yahoo! currently covers the “breadth” of the Internet, the future is in the “depth,” such as processing speed, low costs storage, mass media distribution.

In relation to mass media distribution and the role that it will play, she emphasized the personal connection that will be widespread in the future, and how it will affect news and TV in the future. This new media, dubbed “we” media, will allow individuals to define news and entertainment and receive it for themselves based on their own personal interests and then to share it with their entire social graph. What role Yahoo! will play in this, is still a major question. In reference to that, Decker concluded by stating that with over 500 million users, Yahoo! is both the largest social network and the least useful, and that the social graph will be used in the future to prioritize one’s information and interactions with others through it.

The means of attaining this in the future are what IT professionals should keep an eye on and try to really understand:
1. Creating open experience – figuring out the how and where.
2. Highly personal filters that are user generated and customized.
3. The connection of the online and off-line worlds and the digitization of everything.

(Note: Picture is of the stage before the panelists arrived.)