Comments on: Martin Varsavsky and FON

By: El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado » Blog Archive » Market Viraling, Part II

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 01:26:04 +0000

[...] My friend Ethan wrote a post a few weeks back, while traveling in France, that caught my eye. In it he said that entrepreneur, Martin Varsavsky hasn’t spent a single penny on marketing or PR for his new company, FON: Speaking at Les Blogs today, Martin tells the audience that he spent €30 million in advertising on his last company, Jazztel, and hasn’t yet spent any money on advertising FON yet. Instead, he’s inviting bloggers to join his board of advisors and asking us to try the product and become evangelists for it. [...]

By: jooe

jooe — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 18:12:54 +0000

about fon: i don’t think that Varsavsky nice idea need to involve the word money (at least, when you are obtaining profit from resources other person is paying for). that’s the reason why i am collaborating in a project named WiFree

WiFree is open source and is based on a fully non-centralized P2P authentication and reputation model so you can share your bandwitdh limiting freeriders. by using WiFree in your router you can be sure when you open your wireless hotspot!

there’s a version for linux and the linksys wrt54g family too.

we propose a simple model: you get internet access from any WiFree hotspot if you also provide WiFree access to other users in a fair way

you can have a look and get the WiFree from http://www.wifree-project.net

have a nice wifree!!
jooe

By: Paul Reigersmants

Paul Reigersmants — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:26:03 +0000

I personally consider that most comments and critics on this post are correct.

Martin’s idea is good, but he must change his strategy if he wants to success this time.

By: FON Blog (English)

FON Blog (English) — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:08:30 +0000

FON explained by Ethan Zuckerman

Here’s a really good post by blogger and Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman explaining, in his inimitable style, how FON works, how it could be very interesting for developing nations and why he’s accepted to join FON’s US advisory board….

By: Stefan Weitz

Stefan Weitz — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 16:55:14 +0000

I’m still very confused about how he expects not to have his Bills/Linus’ISP accounts terminated when they are discovered to have violated the Acceptable Use Policy of their ISP (Comcast, in my case). Sure, the argument can be made that it will take COmcast quite a while until they can actually track and terminate accts of those Foneros, but it will happen – and it doesn’t seem to be a viable long term biz model. I know he is working with ISPs to get them to Fon-up, but unless he has some pretty sophisticated rev share models, I don’t know why an ISP would allow this.

Thoughts? Am I just missing something?

By: David Ploin

David Ploin — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 12:14:52 +0000

Martin makes again a big mistake, he’s fanatical about money and triumph and I hate this “ social activism » image .I am not one of his brainless sheep FONERO. He should not spend a single Euro in advertising if what he’s calling a “movement” was honest. Behind the curtain of so-called FON “revolution” is a basic business ambition. After the calamity of Jazztel Martin needs a new image, of philanthropist who spend more money to advertise his donations than the donation itself. If FON is good idea, Martin is the wrong guy for it.

By: Blah

Blah — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 19:27:15 +0000

This is going nowhere fast, unless there’s about to be some harrowing breakthrough in wireless networking technology (and its regulation).

802.11* doesn’t penetrate two walls in my apartment building, let alone to enough people to make this interesting, and I live in the heart of the kind of teeming metropolis that it would take to even make this plausible.

By: John Ipsen

John Ipsen — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:49:11 +0000

Ethan,

Great article. FON deserves success.

As I heard the comments from the audience, it was that Martin had deleted a post, not a comment, regarding the “patent pending of FON”. Deleting comments is of course fine, but deleting posts while they are being (negatively) discussed in the Spanish/Catelan blogosphere seems absurd. Instead, if he changes his mind, he should just clarify why.

BR John N Ipsen

By: Manu

Manu — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:37:10 +0000

Martin doesn´t have a blog, he has a flog.

He only accepts positive comments, and has deleted hard criticized posts (the one regarding patenting the idea/sw behing Fon).

The forum on their corporate website is hardly moderated.You can hardly see any critic.
He only answers what he liked and interest him.

That´s not bloggin, that´s cheating the audience.

That´s the reason there is more and more people (like me) wo liked Fon at the beginning, but left it.

Martin is a great entrepreneur, but Fon is vaporware.

By: Ethan

Ethan — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:22:03 +0000

Very useful clarification, David – thanks. To be very clear, I certainly wouldn’t characterize your comments as supporting Martin’s decision to remove some comments from his blog. I did think it was useful and important that you made it clear that the role of being a blogging CEO is an unusually challenging one.