In lieu of a weekly Web 2.0 wrap-up (because nothing much happened this week), I did a cut-up of a recent blog post by ex-Microsoft employee and now Google employee Mark Jen. This is the guy who recently started a job at Google and is blogging about his experiences there. He pulled his blog off-air this week, after it got discovered and dissected by the media and other bloggers. But thankfully, Mark is back again! His post comparing Google with Microsoft is worth a read. I've done a bit of cut-up poetry with it, care of the Grazulis Cut-Up Machine and Word AutoSummarize. I swear this is unedited by me, except for adding linebreaks and the title...
Ode to Google (Microsoft I bid thee farewell)
best that was put in this microsoft.
right.
doesn't work as heart's product
microsoft world
that actually to possible of
in we're industry, of associate
at were current organize people on.
so time past software ways.
well way,
of products how would
where the –
far this microsoft longhorn,
and on.
exploring software
are need and productivity
into absorb
microsoft that can
is striking our infrastructure.
anymore is time.
which other apms
shipped much unlimited work
than internet lots population
i'll peculiarity spend my 20
in all stuff
that where dream is.
anyways, me google, productive;
and make true.
Jay Fienberg wrote a very interesting post regarding the future of RSS aggregators and blogs:
"Now (today), it's so easy to publish blogs that there are tons of them, and the effort to aggregate them is beginning to again attract editor-like and writer-like functions, i.e., merely mechanical aggregation of sites is seeming too read-only-passive, and folks are being attracted to more and more active, creative, interactions."
He terms this "creative aggregation" and lists Technorati tags, del.icio.us, Flickr, and Webjay as examples of this. He likens it to music DJ's, who are "aggregators of existing recordings" but have also "became creators in their development of playlists". This is all part of the Remix Culture we're currently in the middle of building.
He suggests that the developers of services like Bloglines, Flickr, delicious and Webjay need to continue to build on their creative aggregation functionality - in order to stay ahead of their competitors. I understood this better when I read Lucas Gonze's interpretation:
"...so what he's developing here is the dividing lines between manually generated content, content generated by bots reaping the manual content, and insight generated as bots become refined enough to perform a curatorial role."
I think a good role model for this type of editorial functionality is Amazon. Ever since they opened for business in 1995 (10 years ago, seems like an eternity in Web time!), Amazon has provided interactive functionality on their site and they raise the bar every year. Although their core task is to aggregate information about their products - e.g. books - what makes Amazon stand out from its competitors is their ability to creatively mine that aggregated data and enable users to do all sorts of things with it. Including, most importantly, contributing to the data (user reviews, etc). Which of course leads to more content/data to aggregate! That's an important point - creative aggregation feeds off itself, by creating ever more data for users to aggregate and remix.
The companies that most excite me in the Web 2.0 era are those that, like Amazon, are aggregating content and enabling users to do remixes of it and build on it. Letting users mix and dance to their own tunes, rather than serving up the usual top 40 fare. Flickr and del.icio.us are the two most obvious examples, but I think PubSub and Feedburner are two other examples where content is not only aggregated - but enhanced, remixed, personalized, composed.
Interesting edition of the Gillmor Gang this week, focusing on RSS and Web content models. The guests were Stephen O'Grady from analyst firm Redmonk and Rafat Ali from the excellent PaidContent.org.
Jon Udell launched into an interesting spiel around the 18 minute mark. He talked about some of the usage scenarios for RSS in the enterprise. Basically his point was that RSS is not just about collaboration, it's also an event-driven technology that can be used to monitor business processes. In Jon's words:
"...it [RSS] does play into product offerings that we will be seeing from the likes of Sun, IBM, Microsoft - and it's more than just person-to-person communication. It's process-to-person, process-to-process, it's event messaging, notifications."
He cited KnowNow, who offer an "event network as an integration platform". [note to self: I must listen to Jon's podcast about KnowNow]
Most bloggers (myself included) tend to natter on about the social aspects of RSS - collaboration, two-way communication and so forth. So I like the phrase "event network", because it emphasizes the time-driven aspect of RSS that is often overlooked in favour of the more glamourous social software angles.
Jon also noted that people can integrate and combine streams of content - for example, you could take a Feedster-indexed query and "make that query into another feed", or a del.icio.us tag could become "a feed that feeds into something else." This line of thinking complements my posts last week about topic/tag/remix feeds [post one, post two].
Rafat had some interesting things to say about how RSS is playing out in the marketplace. He mentioned that Feedburner has "yet to come out with a viable revenue strategy" - which I think he said to illustrate that the RSS/content business is still nascent and clear revenue streams have yet to emerge from it. As for his own business, Rafat said he hasn't yet sold RSS as a media option to his sponsors. He isn't sure about the "viability of RSS audience" - will it be a separate buy from the Web/email/etc audiences.
There was a bit of back and forth between the Gang and the guests about that old chestnut: are bloggers journalists? Also asked: are bloggers analysts? Stephen O'Grady's company Redmonk is styling itself as a new kind of Analyst service, meaning:
"Assimilating the most information possible from the most sources - and that means having as many conversations as possible.[...] you need transperency, you need a degree of open source, you need all the things that blogging and open source and everything else can provide."
Rafat said he is still a journalist, but he sees himself as "a quasi-analyst" these days - he "assimilates all this information", presents it as such and tries to make sense of it. But unlike a traditional journalist, he gives his point of view. Rafat is at the same time trying to build a media company, so he's also an entrepreneur.
Another fine Gillmor Gang production. If I may make a request, I'd love to see them snare an interview with Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher and/or Feedburner's Dick Costolo. Or Technorati's Dave Sifry, or Scott Rafer from Feedster, or PubSub honcho Bob Wyman. I'm interested in the Gang exploring the emerging RSS marketplace some more.
This year I've been focusing on Web 2.0 themes in my posts, but yesterday I received two emails from people responding to a couple of older Read/Write Web posts. Those emails reminded me of the personal nature of blogging and that it's about keeping it real.
The first email was from Debi Smith, in response to my review of Bob Dylan's autobiography. Debi wrote:
"Sitting here with tears streaming down my face. Just read what you wrote (December 19) regarding Bob Dylan's "Chronicles" and "writing/blogging for the thing's sake."
[...] The tears come from understanding my grandfather in a whole new way. My grandfather is Gorgeous George. George Wagner. He died the year before I was born. Every once in a while I google his name. Tonight was one of those nights. It's my way of trying to get to know him. I had no idea, until tonight, that Bob Dylan was inspired by him. And your blog was the first place that I read the quote from his "chronicles" regarding my grandfather. In it, I truly felt like my grandfather was reaching out and telling me the same thing he "told" Dylan. (crying again here)
[RM - this is the extract about Gorgeous George from Dylan's bio, which I'd quoted] "...He didn't break stride, but he looked at me, eyes flashing with moonshine. He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase "You're making it come alive." Whether he really said it or not, it didn't matter. It's what I thought I heard him say that mattered, and I never forgot it. It was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come. Sometimes that's all it takes, the kind of recognition that comes when you're doing the thing for the thing's sake and you're on to something - it's just that nobody recognizes it yet."
Thank you for sharing your perspective, and for sharing a piece of my grandfather that I was completely unaware of."
Needless to say, that's the sort of response a writer (or blogger) wants to receive from his or her readers every now and then. Thanks Debi for your inspiring email - and allowing me to share it here.
Just two hours later I got an email from another person who had stumbled across my blog. Lee Corbin wrote about my pre-podcasting audio experiment last July:
"I just heard your essay "The Fractal Blogosphere" and I think highly of your concepts and categories. I myself don't have time (and probably not the inclination) to audio blog.
(I did a web search tonight on "audio weblog" because I am--- like millions of other Americans---a talk show junkie, and I am sick to death of commercials, and yours was the first link that looked at all promising.)
[...] You recorded that 8 months ago [RM - actually it was 6], and so now, thanks to you, I shall search for "weblog broadcasting" and try to find something worthwhile to listen to. But maybe there has been considerable progress in those 8 months..."
I wrote back to Lee and told him all about podcasting and how the best of it (e.g. IT Conversations) blows my amateurish early audio attempts out of the water. But of course I enjoyed receiving the complement :-)
So two fantastic emails from people I don't know, but who identified with things I've written and/or recorded over the past year. That's what blogging is all about, as well as the topic-focused content. That sort of response encourages me to continue to write book reviews and personal stuff every now and then - in addition to my main content focus of Web Technology. Gotta keep making it come alive.
Some of the Web 2.0 trends and talk I tracked this week... accompanied by some dodgy Austin Powers subheaders.
Flickr and del.icio.us made tagging cool, now every social software app is doing it. Technorati, The Robot Co-op and Metafilter were among the companies braggin' about taggin' this week. There was also a fair amount of hand-wringing on the pros and cons of tagging - Many-to-Many covered a lot of it and Joshua Porter summarized why tagging is a good thing.
Bit of talk in the blog world this week about Big Internet companies buying little ones. The Internet Stock Blog asked: will Yahoo acquire Six Apart?
"...as these companies [Google, Yahoo, MS] assemble the complete bundle of integrated personal Web tools, the social networking sites will be acquired, del.icio.us will be acquired, and... Six Apart will be acquired."
In another neck of the blogosphere, Andrew Chen of Monkey Methods (nb: a different Andrew Chen from the one in my blogroll) suggested that Feedster and Technorati "will die". Death in this context meaning that they end up as "a discount acquisition by one of the portals". Andrew gave 5 reasons and the gist of 1-4 was that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are too big and strong for Feedster and Technorati. OK, he may have a point there. The 5th reason is interesting:
"Feedster and Technorati have, fundamentally, the wrong UI paradigm."
I think Andrew is wrong on that score and Feedster CEO Scott Rafer hinted in the comments why:
"We believe that RSS will change both Internet search and paid-search dramatically and in a way that Feedster can use to thrive independently."
With my Design for Data theory (see also my most recent post on it), I'm exploring a new type of design paradigm for Web 2.0. Feedster and Technorati are among the companies building this new paradigm. Here's a hint Andrew - it's not about "stickiness and pageviews" anymore.
Huge props to the Amazon Web Services Blog for real-time blogging of Amazon DevCon. I particularly enjoyed the notes of Rael Dornfest's talk, entitled Remix: beyond rip, mix, burn. It inspired me to remix some of the notes into my own post entitled Remixing and Speculation on The Future of RSS, with the theme of Information Remixing.
The 'future of RSS' bit was this: in the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds than feeds of actual people. I wrote a follow-up post fleshing that idea out a bit.
Narry a week goes by without Google making some news. This week they hacked around with one of the Web's fundamental principles - the link. Google created a "no-follow" attribute for the hyperlink, to try and thwart comment spammers. News.com reported:
"Called a "no follow" tag, the control when placed before pages of blog comments will signal to Google as it indexes the Web that the pages are to be overlooked. That will render comment spam ineffectual."
Here's Google's statement in the Google Blog. John Batelle has some good analysis on it.
John also reported on the Google AdWords API, a new advertising platform perhaps? John said:
"Google is opening up API support for AdWords. This is a big deal (I hope) in that it lets new ecologies of AdWord-based plays begin to thrive."
Lawyer Martin Schwimmer opened up a can of worms this week, with his request (granted) to have his RSS feed removed from Bloglines. I followed the action in this post. As yet Bloglines has not publicly responded to the controversy, but I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this issue in the coming months. For a more light-hearted take on it (or is it?!), check out Dennis Kennedy's post.
To follow-up on my rather bold prediction for RSS in my previous post: "in the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds than feeds of actual people."
One of the reasons I think this may eventuate is that blogging is and always will be a minority sport (as I've referred to it in the past). The killer app for RSS probably won't be geared towards the current ranks of bloggers and geeks. When RSS hits it big, it'll be because 'normal' people start using it - your Mom and Dad, Frank from Marketing, Jessie from Payroll, Dave from the local dairy. They won't be bloggers. They won't be interested in writing or podcasting or anything like that. All they'll want to do is track news and trends that are relevant to them.
Tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results - using, you guessed it, RSS! Google will probably be the front-runner (see this video for a hint to the future - thanks twdanny for the reminder), PubSub will be another, current players like Bloglines and Technorati will be in amongst it, and who knows who else.
But don't get me wrong, conversations and people will still be important. It's just that if 'normal' people won't be bloggers (one of my assumptions), then the community aspects of the blogosphere won't be so important to them. This doesn't mean they won't subscribe to people - normal folk will find niche writers and podcasters and so on and subscribe to them. But it'll be far more convenient and useful for a lot of people to subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds and trust the tools to filter the right information through to them, including content from niche bloggers.
On this theme, David Smith from Preoccupations wrote a post about the Google "nofollow" meme, which led him to comment:
"Whatever this does for spam, it's certainly got me thinking that the web is
heading towards greater separateness, a position reinforced when I read (thanks,
Ian!) that 'in the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix
feeds than feeds of actual people' (Read/Write Web). Well, I'd rather seek out the
conversations, thank you, and leave the computer puttering away in the background,
dribbling a modest number of topic/tag feeds whose purpose will be severely subordinated
to the primary thing that matters to me in my life, the relationships I have with other
people."
(emphasis mine)
I replied in David's blog that I didn't mean to imply that conversations or people are unimportant. On the contrary, topic/tag/remix feeds will make it even easier to find the conversations that matter to you and indeed you are more likely to meet new people and discover new points of view. Separateness is less of an issue with topic/tag/remix feeds, than it is without them. Topic/tag/remix feeds are more inclusive for all types of people (see this oldie but a goodie for more on this).
In 2005 in the blogosphere, RSS is a community-enabler. You find someone you like and you subscribe to them, and conversations ensue. What I'm suggesting is that in the future RSS will still be a community enabler, but by far its biggest use will be as a means to subscribe to personalised news and other information important to the lives of non-blogging people. Examples of the information I'm talking about: stocks, bank statements, weather, information needed for one's job, sports news, niche information (the long tail), lots of other things we can't predict yet ;-)
Amazon DevCon is happening right now and happily the Amazon Web Services Blog is blogging it in "near-real-time" (hat-tip to Greg Linden for linking to it). I haven't browsed through all the notes from day 1 yet, but I feel compelled to post about Rael Dornfest's speech on the subject of "remix: beyond rip, mix, burn". Some real gems in this...
--> Rael: "Remixing requires good source, inspiration, skill, trial and error, magic, and some combinatorics."
I had to look up 'combinatorics'. The Wikipedia definition is too complex (but no doubt correct). I like this simpler, user-friendly, definition of Combinatorics: "The branch of mathematics dealing with the number of different ways objects can be selected or arranged."
--> Rael on data remixing:
"Remix your data. Scraping begat XML which begat APIs. Hacks led to standards which
led to business opportunity. Syndicated ecommerce. Google/Amazon/Alexa, Amazon/eBay for
buying and selling, etc.
Creative commons, Salesforce, Blogger/Typepad, Technorati, Feedster, Bloglines.
Delicious, feedburner, typekey. Glued with JavaScript, Perl, Python, PHP as glue.
Lesson: There are parts of the platform that you don't have to own."
--> The following has got to be the most concise attempt yet at explaining how blogging is impacting on journalism (and there have been a lot of non-concise attempts!): "Blogging [is] remixing journalism"
--> On RSS:
"RSS reinvented syndication, [it's] not a remix. RSS is still an approximation of something, not sure where it will go. Tiny compared to where it will be. Everyone monetizes RSS. Perhaps a bubble already."
--> Finally, here's the speech in a nutshell:
"Rules for remixing:
* If it ain't broke it soon will be
* Need to focus on why it is broken, how is not enough
* Look to the alpha geeks
* If you are an alpha geek, look to the consumer
* Remix even if you have no ear for music
* Keep it open and hackable
* Think of the end-to-end
* If it ain't broke, it soon will be"
Note that a lot of Rael's speech referenced hacking, as befits a conference for Web Services developers. But the highlights I've picked out are just as relevant to Information Remixing, which is I guess my forte.
I frequently talk about remixing (ref: a search of my blog for the word "remix"). For example, take this excerpt from a post I wrote nearly a year ago:
"We can mix and match RSS feeds as we (the "consumers") see fit. Perhaps future generations of tools like Blogdigger Groups will allow us to mix and match microcontent, much like a DJ scratching a rap song on top of a Beatles melody."
In 2005 we're starting to see tools that make such remixing of data possible - and that's exciting. e.g. did you know that in PubSub you can create custom RSS feeds using combinations of topics, people, sites, data types, and other things.
Here's a prediction from me on the future of RSS: in the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds than feeds of actual people. Is that a scary thought?
Here are some notes taken from John Doerr's talk at the Web 2.0 Conference, held October 2004 in San Francisco. Thanks to IT Conversations for recording it!
John Doerr is a well-known venture capitalist, who apparently had the foresight to back Google in 1999 when few others did. His Web 2.0 speech had a lot of insightful nuggets and tantalizing snippets of insight. I got the feeling he was holding a lot back, but that's to be expected from someone who is on the board of both Google and Amazon. Still, very worthwhile listening to. Or if you can't be bothered listening, here are my notes:
After about 10 minutes of banter and rambling, it got interesting at the 11.40 minute mark. That's when Doerr launched into his Web 2.0 theories. He started by saying "...take the idea of the string theory and apply it to the Web", which led to his suggestion that there are "at least 6 parallel webs." Although this caused a round of titters in the audience, I think everyone was on tenterhooks! So the 6 parallel webs are:
* Near Web -> the PC upfront; "innovations are around services"; examples: Friendster, Visible Path
* Far Web -> tv web; people don't interact with it as much; e.g. Akimbo.com, which delivers video to your tv set
* Here Web -> one that is "ubiquitously pervasive"; e.g. phones
* Weird Web -> "talk to and it talks back to you" e.g. 3D VRML where the perspective changes; An example company is TellMe, which offers voice recognition over your phone (e.g. directory assistance - AT&T uses it)
* B2B Web -> the plumbing behind the scenes (xml, rss, web services - eg amazon); example: "companies building and promoting wikis".
* D2D Web -> Device Web (e.g. RFID info, remote sensors, smart dust)
He puts the 6 Webs under rubric of "EverNet". The most interesting one sounded like the "Weird Web", which John said had "opportunity for innovation" further into the future.
Doerr talked a bit about platforms. The OS as a platform was followed by databases (eg p2p), and now we have web / web services / "search in particular" ("a very powerful platform").
He said browsers are not so much a platform, but "a great enabler". People in the Netscape era used the browser as a thin client. He said that "most of the old web-based services [Web 1.0] are in the process of being systemically reinvented - including the browser." He reckons "browsers are going to come back", but dismissed the likelihood of Google doing a browser.
When questioned what are the opportunities or markets open for entrepreneurs, Doerr said there is scope for "lots of web services-based companies". In particular "really targeted services for the explosive Hand Web" [aka the Here Web] - for example, social services and tracking services.
"We live in time and we're assaulted by events", Doerr went on to say. He wants filters to be developed so that we're only assaulted by "the most relevant information". That's a "Google-sized" technical challenge, but an example of something he'd invest in. There are also opportunities to tackle information that is not currently on the Web - he gave the example of a video company that could aggregate all the backlist info about videos.
But he cautioned that a lot of those types of opportunities will go to "the larger companies" and the smaller innovators should be wary of "getting in the way" of Google, Amazon, EBay or Yahoo!.
Looks like the first salvo has been fired in what is sure to be an ongoing controversy over contextual advertising using RSS. Martin Schwimmer, a trademark lawyer, has asked Bloglines to remove his RSS feed from their service - and Bloglines has complied. Schwimmer publishes his website using a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution licence and he claims that "Bloglines' reproduction of my site is a commercial derivative work".
In a follow-up post, Schwimmer references one of my posts from late December 2004 - entitled Contextual Adverts in Bloglines in 2005. In that post I'd discussed Bloglines plan to introduce contextual advertising into their service in 2005. I wrote a follow-up post a day later (based on a great comment by Charles Coxhead), questioning whether Bloglines can use other peoples content as a base for contextual advertising. So now, a few weeks later, Martin Schwimmer is the first person to force the issue with Bloglines.
Schwimmer has gotten some kick-back from other bloggers. Robert Scoble asks why doesn't Martin just publish excerpted RSS feeds? A very good question and it's certainly the method most of us would use to get around this issue. And paidcontent.org suggests: "A better solution -- since he's advertising his firm -- would be to insert an info line in every post that comes through the feed."
But I think Schwimmer's beef with Bloglines is less about pragmatics and more about the (legal) principles he feels strongly about. Or as he puts it:
"[there's] a fear and a perception that a model where no blogger has control over the commercial re-use of their feed is the only model - and that's unfair and plain wrong".
You know it's about principles when words such as "unfair" and "wrong" get bandied about, especially by lawyers.
I'm not sure what to make of this yet, but I would guess that Bloglines has been trying to nut out this very issue for the past few months - at least. The fact is, we don't know what Bloglines plans are for contextual advertising. We know that Bloglines plans to introduce contextual ads in 2005, but they haven't yet revealed the what and the how. So Schwimmer's action seems like a preemptive strike in a way. But he is a lawyer and so he will have a better grasp of the legal principles involved than most of us. It'll be interesting to see how this issue pans out in 2005.
Update: Russell Beattie points out the Web 2.0 angle:
"Also, Bloglines specifically acts as a server-side proxy for me. People like Martin need to understand that the line between what's a desktop app and what's a server-side app are disappearing. Bloglines is to me just a more convenient and useful aggregator application."
I agree with Russ, because I use Bloglines the same way. However I think Schwimmer would argue that unlike a desktop app, Bloglines is re-publishing his content on the Web and (he argues anyway) with the intention of commercially gaining from it. Hmmm, I wonder what would happen if a desktop app started to place adverts in or around peoples RSS feeds? I guess that would be a similar type of thing to what Schwimmer is accusing Bloglines of doing (or what he thinks they intend to do).
Update 2: I like this comment by Georg Bauer in the comments to a Phil Pearson post:
"The borders between an aggregator and commercial use of content are fluid. I don't think he [Schwimmer] didn't understand aggregation - I think it's more a clash between understandings. Just because you put out some RSS feed doesn't say that everyone can do everything they want with it."
I think Georg hit the nail on the head on where Schwimmer is coming from. Bottom line: there are a lot of fluid borders and fine lines involved here ;-)
Update 3: Dennis Kennedy likens the Bloglines preview function (example) to a doppelganger of his website. Doppelganger is one of my all-time favourite words - ever read Dostoyevsky's The Double? It was also one of the themes in my Nanowrimo novel, Dirtside to Spaceside. Anyway, this is a great post by Dennis - I still haven't worked out if it's a piss-take though? I think it is, but the issues are of course serious :-)
Time for a look back at the week that was in Web 2.0. In no particular order...
1. Gizmodo's 4-part interview with Bill Gates ended with Bill insisting that DRM is a good thing because it protects your medical records (or something like that). In part one of the interview, Gates mentioned blogging - said it was "super-important". Part two was probably the most relevant to Web 2.0-watchers, because it covered the topic of "Windows Post-Longhorn" (in Gizmodo's words). I remember discussing a similar topic with Tim O'Reilly in November - Tim said 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." Bill Gates in the Gizmodo interview continued to hype the PC, but I think the following quote indicates that Microsoft is at the same time branching out from the PC significantly:
"From the SPOT watch, to the phone, to the set-top box, to the car—we write
software for everything."
(emphasis mine)
My take: in the Web 2.0 world, Microsoft wants its software to control as many internet-connected devices as possible. While Web 2.0 companies such as Google and Yahoo look to dominate on 'the cloud' (i.e. the Web), Microsoft is aiming more at the device-level (PC, phones, set-top box, etc).
2. Talk this week of other browser-based RSS Aggregators - i.e. some competition for Bloglines. Robert Scoble mentioned two recent beta products: Lektora and Onfolio. Also someone in Robert's comments pointed out Pluck (which I must check out, because it sounds awesome).
btw whatever happened to Lucmo? In mid-2003, they were the only one apart from Bloglines building a browser-based RSS Aggregator. But now they've fallen completely off the radar. Pity, because their vision sounded very promising at the time (and Bloglines has of course since proven it was the right strategy to do a browser-based aggregator).
3. The biggest Web 2.0 news this week was Feedburner's release of their statistics for RSS Aggregator market share, prompted by my post on the same subject in December. I discussed Feedburner's stats in detail here and here. Mainstream geek media site Internetnews.com ran a story about it, quoting yours truly! SiliconBeat also had a good take on it, focusing on how big Bloglines is getting.
The upshot of it all? The stats are extremely interesting and clearly show that Bloglines has a significant lead in the RSS Aggregator market, however there are a number of caveats about the data. I think Dick Costolo, CEO of Feedburner, said it best in the comments on my blog: "...it is still a young market very much in flux, and one shouldn't draw enormous conclusions from the single data point." Dick also mentioned that they "will be posting lots of other slices of the data over time" - cool!
4. Wired editor Chris Anderson is posting a lot of great nuggets about The Long Tail. If you want to get an understanding of how niche markets are taking over the media landscape, I strongly recommend you subscribe to Chris' blog. He's writing a book about it and the blog is one method he's using to gather information. Choice quote: "Practically every time there's been an expansion of access to a wide variety of goods, we've seen shifts in the demand curve toward niches."
David Jackson over at The Internet Stock Blog also has some fascinating theories on this subject - for example he predicts that the likes of CNET and Yahoo! are at risk from "niche, category-killing, advertising-supported Web sites that get high placement in algorithmic search engine results and, once discovered, attract repeat-readers."
5. News of a promising new open source project called The Dojo Toolkit. It aims "to create a UI toolkit that allows a larger number of web application authors to easily use the rich capabilities of modern browsers." Lucas Gonze likes the sound of it. I'm not entirely sure what it's all about yet, but I found this description on the mailing list:
"Dojo isn't necessarily about doing new things, but rather getting the DHTML community all pointing in one direction and backing a single set of widgets, tools, and core code which is liberally licensed."
Sounds good to me! Well that's it for another week. Hope you're enjoying these weekly summaries of Web 2.0 news, views and ideas. :-)
