ReadWriteWeb

In 2005 I'll be sharpening my blog's focus some more, onto the topic of Web 2.0. I'll explore what Web 2.0 means in detail in later posts, but for now a quick definition of Web 2.0 is: using the Web as a platform.

A good way for me to launch into the new year is to review the Web 2.0 successes of 2004. Here then is an informal 'best of' for Web 2.0, a selection of companies that used the Web as a platform to their advantage this past year.

Best Web 2.0 BigCo: Google. The two big players in the Web 2.0 space this year have been Google and Amazon. 2004 for Google saw the release of Gmail, Orkut and Google Desktop Search, the popularization of AdSense, and an IPO. Amazon's main contribution to Web 2.0 this year was their enhanced Web Services released in October - including Version 4.0 of the Amazon E-Commerce Service. This allowed clever developers to create web apps that leverage Amazon's product data - the best example is probably Amazon Light 4.0.

In the end I chose Google, 1) because they're competing very successfully with Microsoft, who may as well be termed 'The Anti-Web 2.0' because they're using the desktop as their platform and not the Web, and 2) because of the sheer innovation of Google's web-based apps - Gmail is a web app that has as much richness as a desktop app, if not more.

Best Web 2.0 LittleCo: Ludicorp. They started off 2004 in the middle of building a multiplayer game / social software app called The Game Neverending, but they ended 2004 running a highly successful photo-sharing web app called Flickr. I'd argue Flickr currently has the most buzz of all the social software apps on the Web today (and there are a lot of them!). So I don't blame Ludicorp for shelving GNE, but I for one wish I could have both Flickr and GNE - sigh! (witness this post I wrote over a year ago as an example of the enthusiastic response GNE was getting at that time!).

Close runner-up in the LittleCo category is del.icio.us, the social bookmarks manager. [of course del.icio.us is not actually a company, but by "LittleCo" I mean small start-up style companies as well as individuals who have produced a product or service on the Web] Over a year ago I first tried del.icio.us as a linkblog solution, but I rejected it because it was a 3rd-party solution (i.e. I didn't have 'control' over my content). Well I have to eat humble pie on that one, because it turned out that del.icio.us caught on like wildfire in 2004 and the sheer scale of users brought many community benefits - e.g. it functioned as a recommendation engine for the blogosphere and its tag-based system proved to be a rare example of successful topic mapping.

Most Promising Web 2.0 Company: Feedburner. This was a tough one to pick, because there are so many new ventures using the Web as platform. I've been raving about Bloglines all year, PubSub has been building a technically very sound service mostly quietly in the background (but that's about to change in '05, by the looks of it), Six Apart has been making hay while the sun shines with TypePad, Pegasus News is getting a lot of buzz with their "Journalism 2.0" venture, and services like Feedster and Technorati continue to push the envelope.

But for me the most promising of them all is Feedburner, which burst onto the scene in 2004 with the one essential service that bloggers were missing - a way to track RSS statistics. Feedburner also enables splicing (e.g. of Flickr photos and del.icio.us links), advertising, web friendly UI for feeds, and other useful feed enhancements. In this new world of microcontent branding, which I believe will be an integral part of Web 2.0 in 2005, Feedburner is showing the way.

Summary

This post has allowed me to reflect on what a milestone year for web technology it's been in 2004 - it's been the Year of Web as Platform. But while it's tempting to think that the desktop apps peddled by Microsoft and others have been vanquished by web apps like Gmail and Flickr, we all know that Microsoft in particular will not go down without a fight. And the richness of applications not run on a web server still holds a powerful sway with some developers.

However in 2005 I think we'll see a continuation of the success of Web-based software, because of the social networking that such software enables and because of its 'run anywhere and anytime' nature.

One thing you can be sure of in 2005 - if it's Web 2.0 trends and analysis you're after, you'll read about it right here on Read/Write Web! :-)

Technical note: I've upgraded to Movable Type 3.14, at the request of my web host. They won't host old MT blogs anymore, because it "requires too much server (CPU) resources". The upgrade went smoothly (thanks to my hosts) and the only issue was that MT-Blacklist v1.6x isn't compatible with MT 3.14, so I had to uninstall that. I plan to install MT-Blacklist 2 soon, which is compatible.

Still on the topic of business models for RSS Aggregators, Charles Coxhead asked a very interesting question in the comments to my post entitled Contextual Adverts in Bloglines in 2005. Charles asked:

"Do you think there will be any issues for Bloglines in using others content for the purposes of building context for advertising, ie. is that contrary to licenses which state that the content can not be used for commercial purposes?"

I'd like to throw that question out to my readers. What do you think?

Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, wrote up a detailed response to my two recent posts: RSS Reader Market Share and Contextual Adverts in Bloglines in 2005. In his post, Mark analyses Boing Boing's web stats and draws some interesting comparisons between Google and Bloglines in regards to Boing Boing's traffic:

I think basically he is making two points:

1) "Bloglines is the 3rd largest source of referring pageviews on BoingBoing" --> meaning Bloglines is now boxing in the Web's Heavyweight division, with Search giants Google and Yahoo, in regards to straight referrals to Boing Boing.

2) "...and the largest generator of referring hits to BoingBoing content" --> meaning more people are reading Boing Boing via Bloglines than via any other single method (including landing on Boing Boing's site via Google or indeed all the search engines combined). At least, that's what I take from Mark's claim that "Bloglines audience share is 2.7x larger than Google's in the number of overall impressions." I hope I've interpreted that correctly.

What does all this mean? At the high level, Mark seems to be suggesting that RSS is the number one delivery method for Boing Boing's content and that Bloglines is the number one deliverer. And I mean 'delivery' in the wider context of not just referrals to the Boing Boing website, but people reading Boing Boing's content via RSS.

There are other insights in Mark's post too, so it's well worth reading!

Fascinating post by Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson, which outlines the Bloglines business model for 2005 - courtesy of a chat Eric had with Bloglines Chief Mark Fletcher. Eric wrote:

If you look at this in tandom with my previous post, in which I estimate that Bloglines has close to 50% of the RSS Reader market share, then the 'contextual ads' strategy makes perfect sense for Bloglines given their very strong user base. Plus they are already mining almost all RSS content in the blogosphere - anyone who has at least 1 Bloglines subscriber is being polled by Bloglines on a regular basis. To make a blunt comparison, they are the Google of RSS in terms of both user market share and ability to mine content.

Indeed the foundation is laid for Bloglines to build an advertising network that will be even more contextual than Google's. Which means more people will click on the ads, because they'll be more relevant... which means more revenue per advert than Google... which means advertisers will be clamouring for spots... which means a potential goldmine for Bloglines.

Now there is a rather important proviso to go with that scenario - which is that Bloglines currently has only a fraction of the quantity of users that Google has! But as I mentioned in my previous post, who's to say RSS isn't about to explode onto the mainstream in 2005?

It'll be very interesting to watch how this pans out in 2005, not just for Bloglines but for other RSS-based businesses.

P.S. Regarding my previous post, I emailed Boing Boing to ask them if they'd be willing to provide some of their Feedburner stats. As yet I've not heard back, but in the meantime there's a lot of interesting comments that people left on my post about RSS Reader market share. Check it out!

There's always a lot of talk about market share for web browsers, which is picking up again now that Firefox is starting to eat into Internet Explorer's huge lead. But there's been little talk of who is winning the battle for the eyeballs of RSS consumers. Mainly that's because reading RSS feeds is still a niche activity, but who's to say that 2005 won't be the breakthrough year for RSS Reader software? Or it may well be that RSS feeds will be increasingly read on the Web (e.g. My Yahoo! or Firefox Live Bookmarks) or in the Email Inbox (if Microsoft finally integrates an RSS Reader into Outlook). In any of these cases, it's interesting to start looking at trends for RSS Readers and which of the current crop has the most market share right now.

I'll start the ball rolling and offer up my own RSS Reader stats for your perusal. For the past couple of months I've been using Feedburner to track stats for my RSS feeds. The following graph outlines the RSS Reader spread for people who requested my feeds over a 24-hour period on 17 December 2004.

Table Format: 

The first thing you'll notice is that Bloglines dominates my stats, with over 50% of my readers (apparently) using Bloglines. However there are a couple of important caveats I think need to be placed on that. Bloglines is a web-based RSS Aggregator, which gives it some advantages over the Desktop-based Readers when it comes to stats:

1) Bloglines polls my site more often (on average) than the desktop-based RSS Readers - which most of the others on my list are. So it's likely that the desktop-based Readers are under-represented in my stats. For example, if a NetNewsWire subscriber was offline for a few days during the 17 Dec 2004 period I used, then his/her Reader would not have requested my RSS feed during that time - and hence it would not show up in my stats. I would guess this is a fairly common scenario, as not everybody obsessively fires up their RSS Reader every day (I'm sad to say I'm one of those obsessives!).

2) Related to the first point, it's uncertain how many abandoned accounts Bloglines has that contribute to their readership numbers. With the desktop-based RSS Readers if someone abandons your feed, that will be reflected in the Feedburner stats because the RSS Reader no longer requests the feed. But with Bloglines, it's their server that requests my feeds - not each individual subscriber. So abandoned Bloglines accounts will not be reflected in Feedburner's stats (and there's not much Feedburner can do about that).

So it's clear that Bloglines has an unfair advantage when comparing RSS Reader market share using Feedburner stats. Nevertheless, the gap is so large that it points to Bloglines being the dominant RSS Reader on the Web today. Only probably not by the margin my stats indicate.

Another thing - my total number of subscribers is around 500, which is pretty good numbers for an amateur. But it's probably not good enough to provide a reliable statistical measure for RSS Reader Market Share. It'd be interesting then to find out the same kind of stats from some of the professional or big-name blogs using Feedbuner. Boing Boing would be the most interesting and would provide the best indication of RSS Reader market share. But other professional players like Steve Rubel or 37Signals would also give a decent picture. Do you think we can pursuade them and others to share their stats? I'd love to get a more official view of market share for RSS Readers!

It's probably pushing it to equate Bob Dylan's career as an incredibly successful musician, with my nascent career as a Blogger. But there were a couple of extracts in the first volume of Bob Dylan's autobiography that I, as a Blogger, identify strongly with.

The first quote comes from page 18, where Bob was outlining his early days as a young and then unknown folk singer in New York City. He wrote:

The second bit of Dylan's autobiography that caught my eye was the following, referring to an encounter with a famous wrestler called Gorgeous George. George was just entering the ring for a bout and, as Dylan recalls:

That's how I feel about my blogging, as it relates to my career and indeed most of the people I know in the Real World. So far the only "recognition" I've gotten for what I'm doing is from fellow bloggers. I imagine that's a similar story to a lot of you though, seeing as blogging is still very much a niche activity.

When it comes down to it, I write on my weblog mostly for the "thing's sake" and because I know I'm onto something. The only exception is when I'm being paid to write a blog post mentioning my sponsor - which I have to admit is motivated purely by the money. My strategy for that is: for each paid post (which is once a week and it's clearly marked as being sponsored) I try to write about the things that matter to me, and get that to intersect with the thing I'm being paid for.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too - I still write for "the thing's sake" (or at least I'm telling myself I am), but I try to find the intersection point with my sponsor's product. My latest such post, Grunge CMS, was an attempt at that. Not sure yet if it's working out that way. If you have any thoughts on that, from a reader's perspective, I'd like to hear them.

So back to Bob Dylan's autobiography, which was a wonderful read. He didn't take a purely chronological approach to it, despite the title! He started out with the early New York pre-fame days and then suddenly segued into the mid-to-late 70's when he was trying to escape his fame and live a normal family life. One of the themes I most enjoyed was his refusal to accept the role of Spokesman for his Generation. He'd developed tactics and strategies to try and get rid of that unwanted tag, which mostly amounted to strange behavior and quirky recordings (such as one of my favourite Dylan records, Nashville Skyline). I wonder what would have happened if Kurt Cobain - another musician anointed as a Spokesman for his Generation - had adopted the same tactics, instead of killing himself? We'll never know and I'm making a lot of presumptions even asking that question.

btw I'm also currently on a Dylan kick with his music. I've borrowed a number of his old records from the library and I'm really enjoying Blood on the Tracks. I'm playing it over and over. Music, for the thing's sake.

Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg has some predictions for 2005. The first 4 are of great interest to me, so I thought I'd list them here along with some brief comments from moi. Plus at the end of this post, a hint of what I'll be up to in 2005.

If you haven't already checked it out, my interview with Tim O'Reilly has some insights on where Microsoft fits into the Web 2.0 world. Choice quote from Tim: "I just think that [Web-based] software services have a better model. So I think that Microsoft will continue to dominate on the PC, but the PC is going to be a smaller and smaller part of the entire business."

He's having a bob each way here - a disconnected anything will become passe in 2005 (not just PDAs). But the point is valid - when it comes to upgrading my Palm PDA, will I select a "smartphone" device? I probably will, provided it has a decent-sized screen and I can browse the Web and read eBooks on it.

I've been careful not to post anything explicitly about my employer, even though my day job is relevant to the topics I write about here on R/WW. Sometimes I write about experiences in the day job - e.g. with the CMS we use - but only in non-specific terms and I never talk about my employer's business. Some people are fortunate to have the support of their employer for their blogging, which is almost a requirement if you're blogging about them at all.

This is my favourite prediction for 2005! Little bit of news for you - I've started up a business with a blog buddy and we will be launching it in early 2005. So I'm finally putting my ideas into action. :-) Stay tuned for more news about this exciting (for me!) venture.

Thanks to a link from Robert Scoble (who is always looking out for his readers, bless him), my issue with Technorati not indexing my blog came to the notice of Technorati Chief Dave Sifry. To his credit, Dave immediately jumped onto the case and Kevin Marks solved it today. I noticed others have been having similar issues with Technorati, so I'll briefly summarise what the issue was and how it was fixed.

The problem was that outbound links from my blog were not being indexed by Technorati. Why was this an issue? Because Technorati tracks conversations and conversations are the lifeblood of blogs - e.g. I link to you, you notice my link via Technorati and respond on your blog, I notice your response via Technorati and respond in kind, ad infinitum (or is that ad nauseum!).

The Nub of the Problem

According to Kevin Marks, Technorati was indexing my weblog via my homepage and not through my RSS feed. But my homepage has excerpts and not full entries! So therefore Technorati was not picking up the outbound links in my entries. Kevin explained in an email that Technorati gave my homepage priority over my RSS feed "as usually the rss feed is an abbreviated form of the homepage."

The Solution

Technorati now realise that they cannot assume a blog homepage will have the full text of a blog's entries, so they have corrected their parser. In fact, as I pointed out to them in a follow-up email, many of the Web Design blog community have only excerpts on their homepages (that's where I got the idea from). And a number of those folks also have excerpted RSS feeds, so Technorati may still need to adjust their code to account for people who have excerpted homepages and RSS feeds.

All's well that ends well

Anyway now I am happy, as my outbound links are back to being indexed by Technorati. My blog lives and breathes in the Sphere again! ;-)

What, my links not good enough for you Technorati? ;-) I say that with a wink, but to be honest I'm pissed off with Technorati. My main weblog, Read/Write Web, is not being indexed there and so none of my outbound links show up in Technorati. Therefore nobody would know I'm linking to them, if they're only using Technorati to track blogs. And let's face it, they are the number 1 blog indexing service - by popularity if not by quality of service.

There's no reason why this should be the case - I've got Movable Type set up to auto-ping them for each post, my weblog is "claimed" at Technorati, I have them linked on my main menu (and all this was done ages ago). So why the heck am I not a part of the "World Live Web"?!

I've sent two messages to Technorati Support about this, but I've yet to receive a response. So what more can I do but blog it and hope they see this... And I wonder how many other people Technorati is ignoring?

I don't like to be negative about a Web 2.0 company doing its best to earn a crust in this new world. I go out of my way to write about Web 2.0 companies that offer great services to the blogosphere, especially the innovative ones like Feedburner and Bloglines. All of the other indexing services are giving me excellent value - Feedster, PubSub, Blogdigger, etc. So Technorati, please hurry up and start acknowledging my existence. My blog is "live", last time I checked!