Why? Because they've only indexed my blog up till 26 May 2005! What's up with that?!
SearchEngineWatch has a good summary of opinions in the blogosphere. Put me down as 'Underwhelmed' please Danny (sub-category 'Peeved').
UPDATE: I've discovered the issue is that Google Blog Search indexes the RSS domain name, not the blog one. Because I have a Feedburner RSS feed, it's indexing feeds.feedburner.com/readwriteweb as the domain name for my blog. This is true of other Feedburner customers too - e.g. John Battelle's blog has the same issue. So I've contacted Google Blog Search about this.
Over on my ZDNet blog I've written a couple of posts that extend my analysis of The RSS Space. In the first post I explained the RSS Space categorization some more. I then noted that 4 of the 5 categories are at the mercy of The Big 3 of the Internet industry - Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Commoditization is the term for this. I think this is most true in the 'Reader Services' category, because it's relatively easy these days to develop an RSS Aggregator. The real value in the future of 'Reader Services' will be in creating value-add services, which I believe is the direction that Bloglines, Newsgator, Rojo and the like are heading.
I finished that post with a bold prediction: the next Google will come from the 'Publisher Services' category, because it's the one category in which The Big 3 have shown little interest in colonizing. I'm interested to know what my R/WW readers think of that - am I off my rocker? Let me know in the comments ;-)
In a ZDNet post tonight, I reviewed Microsoft's announcement of start.com becoming an extensible application platform. Start.com is introducing "web gadgets", which are DHTML-based components that can be created by external developers and used on Start.com. According to Microsoft this will mean "anything from custom calendars to service integration."
This leaves Google and Bloglines behind the 8 ball. Surely Google is building something with RSS or Atom? Well at least it's finally released Blog Search. But... is it just me, or is Google Blog Search pretty tame/lame? I don't think Technorati should give up its day job just yet, despite being hammered in the blogosphere lately.
In relation to RSS value-add, I'm most disappointed with Bloglines. It has not followed up with any RSS value-add developments since its "Universal Inbox" strategy back in March 2005. And I've switched to Rojo as my Aggregator of choice now, because Bloglines has failed to keep up with Rojo in functionality. Come on Ask Jeeves, you didn't pay all that money to just sit on Bloglines did you?
There's a lot happening in The RSS Space right now and I will be writing more on the topic, both on ZDNet and Read/Write Web. The RSS Space Wiki is going strong too, so feel free to add vendors to that list.
I've been one of the beta testers of a brilliant new blog news service over the past 2-3 months - and today it's gone live. tech.memeorandum is the brainchild of Gabe Rivera. It basically aggregates all the latest news from blogs on one page - but it's more than that. It's an automated, constantly-updated, finger on the pulse of the tech blogosphere.
How it works: the more people that link to a blog post, the bigger the headline. The biggest and most recent headlines are at the top of the page, but move down as newer popular stories emerge to take their place. Below the original source of each story are links to other bloggers who have linked to it. But the beauty of it is, only posts with a decent amount of writing in them make the memeorandum page. A simple link and a sentence won't do.
All in all, it's like a hybrid of populicio.us and the New York Times!
It's almost entirely automated too, which amazed me when I found out - because the quality of the posts and stories that it uncovers is top notch. As is the connecting together of all relevant links, which Gabe has an excellent phrase for: "relate the conversation". I've been using this new version of memeorandum as my prime source of breaking blog news for the past couple of months. It's so quick to scan and find out what's hot in the tech blogosphere.
Congrats to Gabe, he's done a wonderful job building this. My bet is that mainstream news media organizations will be beating a path to Gabe's door to either invest in it or license the software.
Robert Scoble has more details, plus Gabe himself has written a few posts about his announcement. Oh and there is a politics version of the new memeorandum too.
Congrats again Gabe, this is an outstanding example of a Web 2.0 media product.
This week: Microsoft's Web 2.0 platform, Rich Clients, Acquisitions, Web 2.0 in The Real World, Techie Post of the week - Web Development Trends for 2006.
News this week that Microsoft is releasing a set of developer APIs for four MSN properties: MSN Virtual Earth, MSN Messenger, Start.com and MSN Search. The details of this "Web platform" strategy will be revealed at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles next week.
Surprisingly the news didn't get a lot of coverage, but the sites that did write about it focused on: the competition with Google ("Microsoft Web plan takes aim at Google" was CNET's heading); how Microsoft might be cannabilizing its flagship Office and Windows products; and "Microsoft's Web 2.0 Vision" (as TechNewsWorld phrased it).
As I wrote in ZDNet, this is Microsoft's acknowledgement that the Web is now the place to be for developers and consumers. However I don't think the Web platform strategy is a primary one for Microsoft, I think they're more interested in dominating how their customers access the Web. If they can't own the platform, they want to own as many of the paths onto the platform as possible - which may then give them control over the platform. Broadly speaking, this is what Google wants to do too.
The topic of 'rich clients' often comes up when talking about Web apps. Rich clients (aka smart clients) are usually Internet-connected desktop applications which offer a rich user experience - interactivity, drag'n'drop, high-end graphics, and so on. Their proponents say rich clients are better than browser-based apps because they have more (i.e. richer) functionality and can be used offline. In the age of broadband, offline usage is becoming increasingly irrelevant. But the richer functionality point is still a compelling one, despite what AJAX can do in a browser these days.
Mike Chambers, from Macromedia Flash Platform Developer Relations, wrote a post recently that makes the case for rich clients in a Web 2.0 world:
"Web 2.0 gets really interesting when one can build clients that composite not just multiple data sources, but multiple rich data types, and start to build applications that really leverage the web as a platform in a much richer way with things like streaming media, VOIP, messaging and real-time data."
Mack D. Male has similar thoughts. My take is that it's still better not to be reliant on desktop (or proprietary) software, but I'm certainly open to richer functionality so long as its connected to the Web.
This week threw up some interesting acquisition rumours. Ebay is apparently in talks to buy Web telephony darlings Skype, which would be a deal worth anything between $2 billion and $5 billion. Some people thought it made sense as an extra communications channel for Ebay's buyers and sellers - IM and Internet phone. Others thought it made little strategic sense. David Beisel raises the intriguing question: if the deal occurs, will it mean connectivity is "worth more than content?"
Update: all but confirmed, eBay will buy Skype for "over $2.6bn" and possibly as much as $4.1 billion if Skype makes performance targets.
A confirmed acquisition this week was Newscorp's purchase of online gaming company IGN. As Techdirt pointed out, Newscorp appears to be on a mission to capture Generation Y eyeballs:
"Combined with his purchases of MySpace, Scout Media and (still potentially) Blinkx, it's becoming increasingly clear that News Corp is building up a stable of high traffic sites that cater to highly desirable demographics for advertisers."
Scott Rafer has more on that theme: "Murdoch wants the average age of the NewsCorp Internet customer to be Gen-Y or younger, which makes perfect sense for a new entrant into e-commerce."
This is a new regular feature of my Weekly Wrap-Up, sort of a counterpoint to the Techie Post of the Week. I think it's important to highlight how Web 2.0 is being implemented in The Real World, by real people - i.e. not geeks like me or Ivory Tower folks.
The first Real World example is a Web Ministry, defined here:
"Web Ministry is using internet resources (namely the web) to utilize the gifts, talents, resources, and desires of a believer (church, organization, individual) to make an eternal impact in the lives of individuals."
Good start - now I want to hear how they're going to do it. That's what this segment of the Weekly Wrap-Up will be about - what's being built on the Web outside of the geek domain and how it's being done.
btw I found that post via their previous post on Web 2.0, which linked to my ZDNet blog:
"I feel dense. I've read a lot of definitions of what Web 2.0 is. The most recent "simple" explanation I read came from ZDNet.com. But I still don't get it. Can someone explain it in simple, dumb language? Better yet, give me an example of how it's different. I just don't get it. What I'm seeing is that it could be big and important. But I just don't get it right now."
[emphasis mine] I hear ya! And I'm working on it ;-)
Anil Dash's Web Development Trends for 2006 is an excellent overview of trends to look out for in 2006. He calls it "vocational education for people building Web 2.0". I particularly liked this comment about the continued appeal of XHTML and CSS:
"In a Greasemonkey-enabled web, it's going to be more important than ever to have a reliable structure that you can hang new behaviors on."
Amen brother.
That's a wrap for another week!
James MacAonghus from Aqute is writing a series of posts analysing BBC Online, which I highly recommend you check out. In Part 1 James wrote that BBC's online reach has been steadily growing. In Part 2 he drills down into the details. Although BBC has more than one online strategy, "a pattern is emerging" according to James. He wrote:
"The BBC is beginning to leverage, in some ways clumsily, in other ways brilliantly, the aspects of the internet that make it into a development platform, namely user-generated content, and content APIs."
I liked the way James identified different scales of online business:
"1. Leading global brand - Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.
2. Second-tier global brand - News Corp, BBC, Bertelsmann.
3. Leading national brand - Naver, Baidu, T-Online, Terra.
4. Second-tier national brand - Thus, WH Smith, Thomas Cook."
By "national", he is referring to Britain - but this categorization could easily be extended to any country.
The problem for BBC, says James, is that online "it is a second-tier global brand, which is unacceptable." The answer? Of course it's "to buy into the concept of leveraged expansion that is web 2.0."
The nub of James' excellent analysis is this:
"The BBC is opting to provide widespread access to its content as part of a platform strategy. To grow, the BBC needs radically different ways of attracting users."
But go and read the whole thing (especially Part 2) - it's well worth your time. In a follow-up post, James quotes from a speech by Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, on the importance of the Internet to the BBC.
Another thought-provoking blog post this week was Matt McAlister's A Web 2.0 business model for publishers. This is not unrelated to the BBC Online strategies that James wrote about (indeed Matt even cites BBC Backstage). Matt wrote:
"Every publisher has 2 primary assets: audience and content. The more valuable of the two is the audience, so you have to be more careful with that piece. But the content is something you can exploit in this new world in some interesting ways that shouldn't be too scary."
Matt works at Yahoo, which is my pick for the most interesting 'new media' company in the world today (I think BBC is right up there too, as you might've surmised). Of course I'm biased towards Web companies, but hey even Rupert Murdoch likes the Web these days.
That's the title of my latest post on ZDNet. I'm pointing to it here because Bloglines is for some reason not fetching the Web 2.0 Explorer feed, so the 56 people who've subscribed already in Bloglines (in just a couple of days - wow!) have not yet been notified of the new post.
In it I discuss the news of Microsoft's Web 2.0 platform strategy, which will give developers access to MSN (Microsoft Network) and some of its other website properties via APIs and the like. It's good news, but I've taken a different approach to it than other analysts:
"Microsoft hopes a large proportion of the population will use the Web via millions of its Internet-connected 'devices' - such as mobile phones, media centers in the home (e.g. controlled from your television set), games machines, even the good old traditional PC. These devices will run on, you guessed it, the Windows OS and they will be Microsoft's interface into Web 2.0."
Just after I wrote that, I came across Tim O'Reilly's post Why Microsoft can't best Google, based on Phil Wainewright's post. I left a comment on Tim's post that, like Google, Microsoft too will "extend its reach to any device that does go online". That was my main point in the ZDNet post. So I think Microsoft can beat Google - they will adapt.
Also Alex Barnett from Microsoft offers his views on the news. I'm looking forward to Robert Scoble's comments, especially after he's just interviewed Bill Gates! I wonder if any Google employees will blog about it (yeah right).
Deja vu, is there a glitch in the Web 2.0 Matrix? Phil Pearson has noticed it:
"OK guys, this is going too far. Not ALL of the following are required for a web 2.0-style application/site:
- Name that consists of a number and a word. (37signals did it for their company, and 43places did it for their site. That's enough.)
- Blatant rip off of font and style from everything from 37signals.
- Ruby on Rails. (PHP is good enough for Flickr, remember).
- Yellow background appearing then fading out whenever something changes.
- Submit buttons that grey out and say "please wait" when you click them."
What other Web 2.0 stereotypes can you think of? Here are some suggestions to kick it off:
- Tag clouds
- RSS Aggregators with 'rss' or 'feed' in their name
- Logos with the same color scheme as Google's
- Using the word 'beta'
- Social bookmarking sites that look exactly like del.icio.us
- No one from Google that blogs (thanks Ben Barren for that one!)
Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments...
A couple of weeks ago I began my new life as a full-time freelance Web Analyst and Writer.
One of the things I'll be doing is co-writing a book for O'Reilly Media on the topic of Web 2.0. I started writing it this week.
I've also just started a ZDNet blog, called Web 2.0 Explorer. There are two posts up there already, including one I wrote tonight entitled What is Web 2.0.
With all this Web 2.0 writing I'm doing, you may be wondering what's going to happen to Read/Write Web? Don't worry, my focus here on R/WW will remain on Web 2.0. Indeed I will be doing more detailed analysis and theory posts on the topic. There'll be more deep thinking and I'll be blogging ideas that I plan to cover in the book. I've been impressed by Chris Anderson's ability to develop ideas and gather feedback from the blogosphere about The Long Tail for his book, so I'm hoping to do something similar here.
Oh and I have some exciting new features to try out on Read/Write Web. Stay tuned ;-)
So, over the coming months I'll be drilling down into Web 2.0 on R/WW, in a book, and on my new ZDNet blog. The next step is probably to get a Web 2.0 tattoo.
I recently finished a report on 'The RSS Space' for a client. In it I mapped out the current RSS vendor landscape, building on a blog post that Brad Feld wrote well over a year ago.
I've decided to publish the vendor map onto a JotSpot Wiki as a kind of 'Open Source' gesture. Currently the data is representative, because it only has about 50 vendors mapped. There are just too many RSS vendors in the world today for one person to comprehensively map them all. Which is why I've put it onto a wiki - I'd like to invite the community to flesh it out, so we can all benefit from the data.
The Wiki was set up with the help of the good people of JotSpot (I did try other Wiki solutions, but Ken from JotSpot went out of his way to help me). It's open for anybody to edit. Unfortunately because it's a really wide and long table, the formatting is not ideal. If anyone knows a way to improve the formatting, please let me know!
There's also an RSS feed, so that you and I can track changes.
What am I hoping is going to happen here? I really want people to add new vendors to the table - there are literally hundreds of RSS vendors out there. The more that are added to the table the better!
Regarding how the RSS vendors are categorized on the Wiki. Below you'll see a table that summarizes the categories and provides examples. It wasn't just me who came up with this, in fact most of the credit goes to Brad Feld - who literally defined the first and last versions of the categories. Also a big thanks to (in alphabetical order) Ben Barren, David Beisel, Fergus Burns, Jeff Clavier, Dick Costolo, Fred Wilson, Charlie Wood.
Let me know what you think of the categories in the comments below. And of course please add to the RSS vendor list on the wiki.
Table 1: RSS Sectors
|
CATEGORY (--> means sub-category) |
EXAMPLES |
|
Publisher Services --> Content --> Analytics --> Feed Mgmt --> Advertising |
Feedburner Nooked Pheedo SimpleFeed Syndicate IQ |
|
Reader Services (including RSS Aggregators and Consumer
services/tools) --> Web-based --> Desktop --> Mobile --> Enterprise --> White Label |
Bloglines Del.icio.us Moreover Newsgator PubSub |
|
CMS/Blogging --> Hosted --> Standalone --> Enterprise |
Blogger MSN Spaces Six Apart Wordpress Yahoo 360 |
|
Content (including Podcasting, blog networks, news directories) --> Proprietary --> User-Generated |
Gawker iPodder Odeo Topix.net Weblogsinc |
|
Search --> Index --> White Label / Microsites (e.g. Technorati Live8 promotion) --> Embedded (e.g. Google network and Technorati partnership with Newsweek) --> Market Research |
Bloglines Feedster Ice Rocket Technorati |
OK I do have ulterior motives for publishing the RSS vendor categorization and mapping. Firstly, I want to publicize my new career as a freelance Analyst in the RSS/Web 2.0/Social Media space. The categorization/mapping work was just the foundation for the final analysis report I delivered to my client. I'm available to do similar reports for other organizations. In other words: Analyst for Hire!
Secondly, I have a plan to extend the 'RSS Space' analysis report I did into a general industry report, which I will then try and earn a little money off - i.e. like a JupiterResearch or Forrester report, only far less expensive!
To be clear - what I've published on the wiki is just the RSS vendor mapping. The analysis report I wrote based on that data is for my client's eyes only - but I'm available to do reports for other companies. Think of the Analyst reports I do as building value on top of open data - very Web 2.0 don't you think? ;-)
What are you waiting for, get on over to the Wiki! :-)
John Musser has started a promising new Web 2.0 resources website, focused on technical Web platform development. It features a list of Web 2.0 APIs, 54 of them already!
The point of the site, John explains in the ProgrammableWeb blog, is to "create a home page for Web 2.0 developers." That's a very worthy aim and I'll be checking the site out regularly. [link via Josh Porter]
