Yesterday, I talked to a friend of mine. He is Spanish, studied for many years in Germany and is currently working in Italy.
My friend knows all mobile Internet access fees in these 3 countries:
The following points is what I recall from the conversation:
Best offers are in Italy rather than in Spain or Germany.
In Italy mobile flat-rates are usually limited to several Gb (3 or so) and cost between 20 to 30 Euros a month. The cheapest one is Wind for 20 Euros.
Many flat-rate schemes in Italy used to allow Internet access abroad with no roaming fees (but limited to 200 Mb a month). Now this possibility is no longer allowed.
In Spain, there is an offer from Telefonica (mobile Internet access limited to 10 Mb) for 29 Euros.
Like evil Gargamel in the picture, we wonder: Would it be a good idea to copy hotornot into other languages?
Like smurfs for dinner, i think the answer is yes. Reasons:
- It shouldn't take very long to make a simple working version.
- We don't know that much about how startups really work. This would be a great sandbox to play and learn techniques, technologies, marketing strategies, adsense and much more. We would get hands on experience.
- It won't take big investments apart from buying a few domain names.
- We can always drop the idea at any stage, and if it becomes successful and we need VC money it will be easier to get.
- We will be more prepared and more experience to face other future projects.
At the end of the day, there's nothing to lose. It will be fun and interesting.
I guess this is one of the many reality checks I will experience in my new life as a entrepreneur.
The following is a -rather scary- cloud of startups that do actually work with maps, GPS, mobiles, web 2.0, communities, and geolocalisation. It is by no means comprehensive but gives a good idea of how crowded the market is:
The idea behind www.hotornot.com is very simple. You see pictures of boys or girls and you have to give them a mark from 0 to 10. This is simple and very time killing when you are bored in the office. Of course there is no adult content.
Hotornot business model is currently based on free services with AdSense. Before AdSense existed their business model was like a paying dating site like meetic or match.
Hotornot is only in English.
Imagine a Spanish hotornot where you can rank Betty la Fea. Or instead, lets imagine the easy approach of hotornot with funny pictures like those from tonterias.com. Sometimes I spend hours watching these funny pictures when bored.
Or let's imagine a Chinese hotornot. Do you think this kind of approach would work in China? or you think Chinese people would not spend time on this? or on the contrary, is this absolutely anti Chinese?. I will find out. (I am traveling to Shanghai the day after tomorrow). By the way, read this very interesting post in Web 2.0 Asia about "Your China Strategy".
Do you think it would be a good idea to clone? Do you think it is respectful to clone a successful application? Would you fill proud of it if you are successful? Personally I do not know how I would feel. would you quit your job to implement this? uhm...
Please tell us what you think about this by using the comments of this blog.
I find one of the reasons why mobile web is not so democratic is the high cost of mobile Internet access. I have a company-paid phone and I am not afraid of the cost. I have to admit that I find mobile web very useful and addictive. I read my mail and newspaper every 5 minutes on my mobile phone. I can just not stop.
And the reason is because I do not pay. If I paid it would be very different. The main handicap to mobile web getting popular is the high cost of mobile Internet access.
Saturday evening I investigated about mobile Internet flat rates. I visited the shops of the following Hong Kong mobile operators. In Hong Kong mobile operators (as well as any other business) face a huge competition.
The other offers from other operators for unlimited mobile Internet access for 50 € are not bad either.
Once I attended a speech of the Director of International R&D Labs of France Telecom (now called Orange). And he said that innovations from the East (Korea, Japan, Hong Kong) usually take 18 months to arrive in France.
I have no idea about these rates in Europe. I am going to research more about this and will tell you about this.
Yesterday, I talked to a friend of mine. He is Spanish, studied for many years in Germany and is currently working in Italy.
Like evil 
And the reason is because I do not pay. If I paid it would be very different. The main handicap to mobile web getting popular is the high cost of mobile Internet access. 
