Melbourne, Australia – 24 November 2010 – Club Intimate announced today it has won the 2010 Red Herring Asia Top 100 Tech Startup Award. Club Intimate was initially selected as a finalist for this award in October 2010. Following the presentation by Club Intimate’s Founder & CEO, Arshad Khan in Shanghai, Red Herring announced its Top 100 Asia Award in recognition of the leading private companies from Asia, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

“We are quite thrilled and proud of our accomplishment”, said Arshad Khan. “Winning of this ward was no easy task; Club Intimate was selected as a winner from hundreds of companies across Asia. Attending the event also gave me the opportunity to meet the brightest and smartest entrepreneurs from Asia”.

Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Asia to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Club Intimate embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Club Intimate should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their sector peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Asia.

Global Information Industry Center, University of California, San Diego has just released a very interesting report entitled ‘How Much Information? A Report on American Consumers.’ This report looks at how much information Americans consume across all forms of media.

The report says, ‘In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totalled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video). Information at work is not included.’

The report also says that:

• Bytes of information consumed by U.S. individuals have grown at 5.4 percent annually since 1980, far less than the growth rate of computer and information technology performance
• Roughly 3.6 zettabytes (or 3,600 exabytes) of information were consumed in American homes in 2008. Americans spend 41 percent of our information time watching television, but TV accounts for less than 35 percent of information bytes consumed
• Computer and video games account for 55 percent of all information bytes consumed in the home, because modern game consoles and PCs create huge streams of graphics.

Club Intimate wasn’t mentioned, may be next time

You can read the whole report here.

Skype is a little piece of software that lets you make free calls to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world. Even though the calls are free, they are really excellent in quality. If you and your friends are using webcams, you can also make free video calls. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype today. Every day, people everywhere also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles.

Since recently, eBay had controlling interest in Skype. On 19 November 2009, eBay announced the sale of Skype in a deal valuing the business at $2.75 billion. The buyer, who will control an approximately 70 percent stake, is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Joltid Limited and certain affiliated parties, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz.

We decided to use Skype at Club Intimate due to its superior quality of voice and video calls and because of the fact that one could maintain their privacy by not giving away their email address to other Skype users. Skype uses usernames to connect to other Skype users.

We have integrated Skype API to provide a seamless communication tool to Club Intimate users who use this service as instant messenger, for webcam chat and for sharing files.

Instructions below will help Club Intimate users download, install and use Skype on Club Intimate.

How do I download and install Skype on my computer?
Go to Skype.com. Click on the ‘Download’ button in the header menu, Skype will automatically detect your operating system and prompt you to download Skype. Click on the ‘Download Now’ button and then chose ‘Run’ to download Skype. You will be asked to select ‘Run’ button again and then follow the instructions provided on the application to install Skype.

How do I use Skype with Club Intimate?
Start by clicking on ‘My Home’ in the top navigation menu from any Club Intimate web page. On your personal home page, click the ‘My Skype Settings’ link found on the right hand side of your primary photo. On the ‘My Skype Settings’ page, enter your Skype Name and Password. Select appropriate Skype Privacy Settings and then click the ‘Update’ button to save your new settings.

How do I Skype with other Club Intimate members?
You can initiate a Skype session with other members directly from their profile pages or from other pages such as ‘My Friends’, ‘My Favourites’ and ‘My Private Pass List’. Just click the ‘Skype Me’ link. This will launch the Skype session between you and the other member.

Happy Skyping!

37MV7WM8XH4B

Sean Parker, Managing Partner of Founder’s Fund, gave a presentation entitled “The New Era of The Network Service” at Web 2.0 Summit 2009. In his presentation, Sean tries to prove the point that in the next decade ‘network services’ like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin will dominate the World Wide Web as compare to ‘information services’ like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

I totally agree with Sean on this. Whilst there will always bee a need for information and data, the real value is provided to people by providing platforms that help connect people and build relationships. This is the core value of Club Intimate as well.

Below is the full slide deck of Sean’s presentation.

Sean Parker’s Web 2.0 Summit Presentation