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Tuesday, October 18, 2005 |
Web2.0 or Not?.
 This is too good not to post. Web2.0 or Not? is the tongue-in-cheek, hugely sarcastic and quite funny creation of Ryan King and Eran Globen. Yeah, its HotOrNot for Web 2.0 companies.
These two guys, who by the way are brilliant engineers (Ryan consults with Technorati, Eran works at Jeteye), have been keeping things lively with their various projects, another of which is Supr.c.ilio.us, which describes itself as social social tagging site tagging. The top tag is tagging. Yeah, theyre making fun of the rest of us. Read their blog post on the Slide party last weekend as well.
All I can hope is that these guys continue to do what they are doing. And yes, weve added TechCrunch to Web2.0OrNot to see what people think. :-)
Tags: Sup.r.ilio.us, techcrunch, web2.0, web+2.0, web2.0ornot [TechCrunch]
10:01:05 AM 
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Monday, October 17, 2005 |
Web 2.0 This Week (October 9-15).
 Web 2.0 This WeekOctober 9 - 15Location: Silicon Valley Tons of new companies launched this week. My guess is they were aiming for the Web 2.0 Conference last week but had to delay. This may have worked out for the best as the covereage they received was probably much better after the press chaos last week.
Most bloggers have probably noticed that Dave Winer is back in the bay area. Its good to have his brain around here again. Ive been invited to a couple of his weekly breakfasts with Steve Gillmor. I try to keep my mouth shut and keep my listen to talk ratio as high as possible. These guys arent always right, but theyve seen and done enough that even when theyre wrong, you can learn a lot by being around them.
We said goodby to Richard MacManus, who stayed with us for during his trip to silicon valley. Based on how warmly he was received, my expectation is that Richard will be back soon. His eloquent goodbye post was excellent.
We launched something called the Web2.0WorkGroup last week. Its an experimental sandbox that a bunch of bloggers focused on writing about the new web are working on. Right now its a directory of participating blogs. Soon it will be much more.
Heres this weeks wrapup:
1. TechCrunch Profiles This Week
Kahuna (update), Gada.be, Google Reader (update), Yahoo Blog Search, Google Bookmarks, Wink, MeasureMap (update), Memeorandum (update), Yelp, Qumana (update), RememberTheMilk, Sphere (update), PreviewSeek, Reading Lists, Inform
2. Smart PR and Dumb PR
Smart: Give the blogosphere an exclusive preview and announcement rights of your new product and let the accolades roll in.
Dumb: Launch a product that breaks Firefox, ignore blogger input and give the New York Times an exclusive. Bloggers respond.
3. 100 Million Blogs Strong
Blog Herald reports that there are over 100 million blogs. Breakdown by country. Awesome. The BBC also reports that the web has grown more this year than ever before.
4. Dave Winer on Nerd TV
Dave Winer is interviewed by Robert X. Cringley on Nerd TV. Its a big download but worth it. Im glad stuff like this is being recorded for historical purposes.
5. Robert Scoble writes about Real Time Search
Its a cross between a rant and a classic essay, and its important. Hes continuing his theme of comparing search results on the existing blog search engines.
letâs talk about what the state of time-based search is.
In a phrase: it sucks.
No one is doing it well.
I can just hear everyone saying âhuh? I thought Feedster, Technorati, IceRocket, Bloglines, and Pubsub, among others, are doing time-based search?â
Yes, but they all are unsatisfactory. Why? Well, for one, theyâll never have the traffic of MSN Search, Yahoo, or Google. Most of the ânormalâ people around me never will use a search engine other than these three. Heck, most of the people in the world have never even clicked on âadvanced searchâ and youâre gonna try to get them to visit something like http://blogsearch.google.com ? Yeah, right.
Everyone said search was good enough before Google. Blog search isnt even good enough.
6. List of Large-File Sharing Apps
Massimo Curatella takes the time to list large-file sharing apps. Bookmark it.
7. Oodle loses Craigslist Feed
 Oodle got it right when they went for the decentralized content approach. Craigslist felt threatened and turned them off. Oodle responds diplomatically.
This is not great for Oodle, but I also think its not great for Craigslist. Data must be open. Sites that try to horde it will lose in the end.
8. Tagging Essay
Fred Oliveira writes about Tagging, with a focus on why people tag. I hope hell still be in the bay area for Tag Camp on October 28 to share his ideas with that group.
9. Chris Pirillo FIres Off on BlogSpot
A post by Chris Pirillo launched a huge blog discusson on splogging and the fact that BlogSpot seems to be the main source of it. Google owns BlogSpot and has a clear incentive to allow this to happen - they serve ads on every one of these splogs. This is not a new problem. Google needs to take action.
10. Bury this Hatchet
Dave took the first step. Yesterday he reached out again. These two guys need to work together to make the blogospere and the web a better place to hang out. I hope they find a way.
Tags: techcrunch, web2.0, web+2.0 [TechCrunch]
12:14:43 PM
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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 |
Mena's Corner: My Week at Web 2.0.
As promised, I offer some brief impressions of the Web 2.0 conference that O'Reilly held last week in San Francisco. A very worthwhile conference with a buzz I've never quite experienced before. There's definitely a lot of life right now in our space and O'Reilly and Battelle were able to capture it well.
That Stepford Feeling
Picture a combination of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives. But instead of aliens or robots, they were Yahoo! and Google employees. Where did all my friends go and who are these people now wearing purple and yellow?
On my panel I made a comment about how after this last week at the conference, I think Web 2.0 is about consolidation. Believe me, I'm happy for those who have made the decision to exit through acquisition or to join these companies -- I certainly understand the attraction of selling and being able to have more resources, larger teams and large-company advantages. That said, it wasn't until this conference last week that I, personally, realized how Six Apart is not a small company nor a big company. I haven't felt so much like an in-betweener since I was eleven.
The buzz word of Web 2.0 was openness. If there is truth in this, then the big players and small players and medium players should all be able to work together. Hopefully, this is the case.
Oh my God! A real, live teenager!
The most enjoyable panel, by far, was the teenager consumption panel moderated by Safa Rashtchy, of Piper Jaffray. In watching these kids talk, I realized how infrequently we come in contact with teenagers -- at least this breed of social, functional teenager. They were candid and honest with their answers because they weren't on message or thought that there might be a "right" answer. Many of them expressed their distrust of media (particularly Fox News) in the same breath that they talked about their usage of MySpace. During the panel, the "did-you-know-that-there-is-no-Santa-Claus" person in me wanted to ask them if they knew who owned MySpace. I held back, thankfully.
After the panel I cornered one of the teenagers and enlightened him about the existence of Skype. He seemed genuinely excited. To his parents: I'm sorry.
My takeaway from this panel is that we need to see more people from the non-technical world talk about what they do with the Internet. Someone suggested that a panel just like this one, but with mothers and fathers, would be incredibly insightful.
Web 2.0 is People!
An oft-repeated phrase, Web 2.0 is people. Or rather, software, services and platforms that are enabling communications. On our panel, I was asked what type of company should Six Apart be considered as: a software company, media company or communications company? To a certain extent, I think we can be considered to be all three, though communications is by far our largest focus. I hope this is evident by what we're doing with Comet.
My takeaway from the conference?
A teenager working on web services at Yahoo! would be ultimate Web 2.0.  [Six Apart News]
11:28:39 PM
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The Web 2.0 WorkGroup.
 There are a number of weblogs that I read religiously - of the 400+ feeds that I read, there are 15 or so that I check multiple times a day for new content.
Two of those blogs are Richard MacManus ReadWriteWeb and Fred Oliveiras WeBreakStuff.
Richard and Fred write blogs that are very complimentary to TechCrunch. While we generally focus on new companies, Richard analyzes trends in the new web and Fred focuses on design, usability and development. To get an overall view of the space, I highly recommend reading all three blogs.
Today weve formed a loose alliance. Youll see a web 2.0 workgroup logo on the left sidebar of this page - it links to a landing page - web20workgroup.com. On that page we have links to all three blogs, along with recent posts and our feed information.
We will be adding additional blogs over time. This is not a blog network or anything formal. We just like the idea of coordinating our ideas a little more closely.
Richard and Fred have also become good friends. Richard, whos from New Zealand, has come to the U.S. for the first time to attend the Web 2.0 conference last week, and hes been staying at my house while hes here. Fred, whos from Portugal, is also staying here while he works on our edgeio project.
Tags: techcrunch, readwriteweb, richardmacmanus, fredoliveira, webreakstuff, web2.0, web+2.0 [TechCrunch]
11:34:42 AM
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Monday, October 10, 2005 |
Web 2.0 This Week (October 2 - 8).
Web 2.0 This WeekOctober 2 - 8
What a week! Web 2.0 was absolutely terrific. There were hundreds of smart and interesting people milling about and cross pollinating their ideas. Our focus was on the new companies, of course, and we briefly wrote about each and every one of them in our two part post gThe Companies of Web 2.0. See Part 1 and Part 2.
Herefs this weekfs wrapup:
1. TechCrunch Profiles This Week
1-800-Free-411, iKarma, Ning, zvents (update), Flock (update), Attention Trust, Attention Trust #2, edgeio, Google Reader, Sphere, Yahoo Podcasts
2. Fred Wilson Thinks about Web 2.0 Companies
 I had the chance to meet Fred Wilson at the Web 2.0 conference - I only wish I was able to pick his brain for a longer time. He writes a much-discussed blog post on gpointh v. gend-to-endh solutions. A point solution is a stand alone web service - think Flickr before its acquisition by Yahoo. An end-to-end solution is a group of services under one roof - think portals like MSN, Yahoo, etc. Generally, mass users like portal type solutions, but point solution are almost always better. Investors and entrepreneurs need to think about this, of course, when deciding on their eventual exit strategy. Must they aim to be bought by portals?
3. Will you be at TagCamp?
 If you are near Palo Alto, a must-attend event is TagCamp on October 28-29, 2005. Will you be there?
Speaking of tagging, Barb Dybwad links to a Wired article on the subject that is worth the read.
4. How Much is Your Blog Worth?
Tristan Louis analyzes the Weblogs, Inc. acquisition and comes up with some very interesting thoughts on the value of blogs. Richard MacManus and Om Malik take the analysis even further.
Bottom Line: Inbound links are worth $564.54 each.
Ifd like to see the analysis done from a different angle - how much is an RSS reader worth? See # 6 below.
5. Visualizing Del.icio.us
Brian Benzinger writes a great post listing all of the various visualization tools for del.icio.us data.
Hey Brian, per my #4 above, you owe me $564.54. :-)
6. Bloglines Feed Data
 Bloglines released some great data and insights on their blog.
While there are lots and lots of blogs, Bloglines says a blog is important if it has at least one subscriber - a fair measurement if you consider Bloglinesf market position (still dominant) and if you discount the fact that just about everyone subscribes to their own feed. By this measure, there are about 1.3 million gimportanth blogs. Four months ago there were 1.1 million such blogs. This makes up the glong tailh.
Things drop off quickly from there. Only about 37,000 blogs have 20 or more readers, and only 437 have at least 1,000 readers. The scientific term they use for the big guys? gTotally Sweeth. :-)
7. CNet Top 100 Blogs
Thank you, CNet, for picking TechCrunch to include in your list of the Top 100 blogs. Ifm not sure we belong, but it makes us feel great!
Tags: techcrunch, web2.0, web+2.0, ajax, tags, tagging, tagcamp, web2con, del.icio.us, rss, bloglines [TechCrunch]
10:35:28 AM
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Saturday, October 08, 2005 |
The Companies of Web 2.0, Part 1. The Web 2.0 conference kicked off today with a number of great workshops. The highlights for us were the Attention Trust board meeting (posts below) and, of course, the Launchpad workshop where a dozen companies presented in an hour and a half. My notes on each company are below. Many of these have been profiled here [...] [TechCrunch]
2:57:50 PM
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The Companies of Web 2.0, Part 2. Heres the second set of companies that presented at the Web 2.0 conference Launchpad workshop. See Part 1 here. Zvents My friend Ethan Stock showed off Zvents, which launched last night. Weve written about zvents here and here. In a nutshell, Zvents helps you create and locate the tens of thousands of monthly local [...] [TechCrunch]
2:57:30 PM
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Web 2, A Few Highlights. It's hard to both post and run this event, but a few things have been so interesting I wanted to note them. First, Terry Semel, who I interviewed yesterday morning, had some choice words for Google. In essence, he suggested that if Google and Yahoo were to be judged as competitors, perhaps they should be judged as portals, since that's what both companies are now. And by that measure, Google is "number four." I also got to ask Terry a question suggested by Indeed CEO Paul Forster. If Google does jobs.google.com (which is expected by many shortly), would Semel let Google crawl hotjobs.com? "We will always be more open than Google," was his response. Innaresting. Second, I interviewed AOL CEO Jonathan Miller yesterday, and got a chance to ask him about the persistent rumors of a MSN or even Newscorp acquisition (I also asked MSN honcho Yusuf Medhi,more on that later). He deferred, but did say that all things worth considering will be considered. I then played off my favorite AOL idea of the moment. It goes like this: AOL was critical in Overture's rise, when Overture got the AOL deal, it made the company. Then, when Google stole AOL with Adwords, that deal (which many said Google overpaid for) was critical to Google's future success (according to Eric Schmidt, who told me as much for my book). So, I asked Jonathan, might not MSN try to steal AOL's business from Google? MSN can afford to overpay, and a hundred million or more in guaranteed profit to Time Warner's bottom line can't hurt, right? Miller had a great answer: "We're kind of the swing vote," he said. "I think people have noticed that." Indeed! More, I hope, when I get a chance.... [John Battelle's Searchblog]
2:56:50 PM
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Catching up.
Radio crashed again, and it took me a couple of days to find time to reinstall it (about a 30-minute process). It's done, but now I need to filter several hundred items from my RSS subscriptions. Should be back online before Monday.
I love Radio's features, but these once-a-quarter crashes are starting to annoy me.
12:23:57 PM
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005 |
Web 2.0 spotlights risk, opportunities on the Internet.
(InfoWorld) - What is new and what is changing in the Internet business will be debated, explained and analyzed at the second annual Web 2.0 Conference, which runs from Wednesday through Friday in San Francisco.
Burning questions that should be of interest to companies doing business over the Internet will be addressed by an impressive roster of high-ranking executives from industry powerhouses such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, as well as from small startups.
"There are plenty of conferences, but this is one of the few that is entirely focused on the Internet industry as a business ... and where it might be going. There's a lot to talk about and a huge amount happening in this space. The resurgence of various models on the Internet that are successful is very much reflected in the program and agenda at Web 2.0," said the conference's Program Chair John Battelle, an author, entrepreneur and journalist who cofounded Wired magazine and founded The Industry Standard magazine.
Some hot issues of interest to business executives that will be discussed:
-- The benefits and downsides, best practices, and liabilities, of letting employees keep online journals, or blogs, about their work.
-- Podcasts, the method of creating audio clips for distribution using syndication feeds, have become intensely popular, and this may mean they emerge as attractive online advertising vehicles.
-- Companies can collect loads of customer data online, but mining it and making sense out of it can be a challenge.
-- Increasingly, developers are creating applications that use the Web as a platform, to do things like the popular "mash-ups" in which disparate online services from different companies are integrated using open application programming interfaces (APIs.)
Speakers tackling those and other topics include Yahoo's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel, IAC/InterActiveCorp's Chairman and CEO Barry Diller, America Online's Chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller, eBay's Founder and Chairman Pierre Omidyar, Microsoft's Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie, and Google's Senior Vice President of Global Sales Omid Kordestani.
The term Web 2.0 refers to the way the Internet business has developed after the bubble burst in 2000, Battelle said. "But more than that, Web 2.0 is a way of thinking about your business that includes a number of principles, one of which is harnessing collective intelligence" and building on top of other people's work, in the spirit of the open source movement, Battelle said.
Another characteristic of the Web 2.0 landscape is the potential for platform independence provided by the Web, which allows for the creation and deployment of applications and online services that aren't tied to a specific device or operating system, he said.
It is generally accepted that the company that is most threatened by this development is Microsoft, because it can erode Windows' force. "Microsoft has already begun reacting to that. The [recent] reorganization was a huge reaction to exactly that. It's a major threat to the way they've done business in the past and they're very aware of it," Battelle said. "The Web provides an opportunity to develop services and applications and business models that aren't entirely dependent on our PC-centric view of the world and Microsoft knows that."
Those attending will also witness discussions about how media and entertainment companies should protect and distribute their content online, whether it be movies, songs, articles, newscasts or television programs, a thorny issue involving intellectual property protection concerns.
A session will also be devoted to innovation in the search engine space. "Search has become our primary navigational interface to knowledge and information and that's why we see such a battle over search between all the major companies that are Web platforms and Microsoft," said Battelle, whose recently published book "The Search" about this area has been well received by critics. "It's a very large field and there's lots of money chasing whatever is next in search. It's a great area of innovation."
The Web 2.0 Conference, produced by MediaLive International and O'Reilly Media, closed its registration after about 800 attendees signed up, Battelle said. This isn't a dramatic increment from the 700 or so who attended last year, but size isn't the goal of the event, he said.
"The goal of this conference isn't to be big as it could possibly be. If we wanted to, I suppose we could make it a lot bigger. The goal is to have a conversation that feels relatively intimate. So you need to at some point say: 'Ok, that's as many as we're going to take,'" he said.
Some of the announcements expected at the show include:
-- KnowNow will introduce a real-time notification service that delivers RSS content directly to end-users as soon as it is available, saving them from having to check their RSS feeds on a Web site, news reader or aggregator. The new service, called KnowNow eLerts, delivers the notifications via its eLert toolbar or deskbar, according to the company.
-- Topix.net will announce that its NewsRank article categorization technology has been rolled out to 177 newspaper and television station Web sites from Gannett Co., Knight-Ridder, and Tribune Company. The technology automates the process of presenting readers with content that is related to the article they are reading at the moment, according to the company. NewsRank is also available to other media companies beyond Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Tribune, each of which owns a 25 percent stake in Topix.net.
-- Startup Bunchball will introduce a social networking site in which users can set up groups with friends, family and colleagues and interact with them using socially-oriented applications hosted by the company. The site will also foster the creation of a community of Flash developers who will provide the applications. "For developers, Bunchball.com is a site where they can create and deploy social applications with unprecedented speed, because we handle all the 'plumbing' for them, from databases to servers to presence, chat, online file storage, etc ...," wrote Bunchball founder Rajat Paharia in an e-mail. "We don't charge developers for this, and instead give them ways that they can make money off of their creations, including an advertising revenue share and the ability to sell content."
-- Flock, also a startup, will preview its "social" Web browser, which will feature tools to help users organize, search and share bookmarks, to create blog entries and to manage RSS feeds, according to information provided by the company.
-- Morfik will announce and preview a development environment designed to automate and simplify the creation of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications. Morfik expects to release the product in the last quarter of 2005.
-- PubSub Concepts will announce it is funding a "major" open source development effort related, among other things, to blogging and the semantic Web, according to the company. By Juan_Carlos_Perez@idg.com (Juan Carlos Perez). [InfoWorld: Top News]
9:35:55 AM
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The workplace goes (social) network.
The place to watch for changes being brought about by social networking software is where people work. No hype, no venture capitalists, no marketing departments, just people using what works in order to do business and beat their competitors.
Working Together, Wherever They Are. Networked computing is allowing workers to more efficiently nurture new ideas, new products and new ways to digitally automate all sorts of tasks. By STEVE LOHR. [NYT > Technology]
9:34:05 AM
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Tuesday, October 04, 2005 |
Ning: "LEGO for social software"
Looks like Ning is going to be a "love it or hate it or don't get it" kind of service.
LOVE IT!
Frederico Oliveira/TechCrunch: Ning launches! - Ning, also known as the official name ....
Ning launches! Ning, also known as the official name for 24 Hour Laundry's project, just launched. I actually had to keep myself from posting early because I was excited about it. Now that I got the word from them with the approval to post, here goes the unveiling.
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Frederico Oliveira
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/04/ning-launches/
View discussion
[tech.memeorandum]
DON'T UNDERSTAND IT!
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Ning - I don't get it - Is it Drupal lite? Hypercard for webapps?.
With all due respect to Diego (whose clever cactus had some awesome ideas), I don't get Ning. Is it Drupal lite? Hypercard for webapps?
Whatever! I do know the following:
- It takes a lot of chutzpah to compare their photo sharing app with flickr. Sorry, not even close. Please tone down the outrageous marketing comparisons ...or at least add smileys to let us know that you're joking!!
- If I was still programming, I'd be wary of hacking on somebody's system where they get my app and the system underneath is not open source (is Ning open source? I couldn't find the license in the FAQ). Instead I'd pay $5-40 a month for my own hosted server and hack in Drupal, Plone, WordPress or some other open source system where I knew the legal status of the system I was using and the code I was writing on top of that system.
- I love PHP but it ain't Programming for the People and it ain't Hypercard.
- URLs with ampersands, question marks and ".php" in them are so 1999 (don't 100% agree with Dave, but ning does appear to suffer from some "featureitis") and totally unnecessary.
- "the people" will use Jot et al and not program in PHP and not use Ning.
[Roland Tanglao] |
10:16:39 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Bill Brandon.
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