This week: Social tools in disasters, VC trends, Custom Web 2.0 Business Plans, Web-based Office, Techie post of the week - APIs and control.
First things first. We've all been shocked by the Hurricane Katrina devastation. Dina Mehta has a couple of great posts that show the way for people to help, using blogs and social software (we all do what we can with the tools we know). Dina wrote:
"The KatrinaHelp wiki and blog teams, made up of people across USA, Europe, Bahrain, India and many more places, are currently also working with some of the developers around the Skype API and the SkypeJournal team (all independents, and Skype too has been supportive by offering up free SkypeOut minutes) and have managed to set up a kind of messaging centre between volunteers on the ground to connect those needing help with those that have it to offer. [...] Lets see how it emerges. What we could build around blogs and wikis and RSS and tagging and VOIP There are so many possibilities."
In a not unrelated follow-up post, Dina tells us what it's like to be poor in her home country of India. Also check out Nancy White's Full Circle blog, which is covering the Katrina crisis and pointing to resources.
If you've been following the Web 2.0 space (there's a good lingo word to use), you'll have noticed that Venture Capitalists have taken up blogging in a big way. I take this as an encouraging sign for both the market and the blogosphere - the latter because most VCs have an excellent strategic sense and are not shy about blogging their insights. I won't try and name every VC blogger, but a good RSS feed to subscribe to is The VC Channel - it aggregates a lot of the top VC bloggers. There's also a VC Channel website.
Some of the hot trends that VCs are looking at are: China (particularly Bokee, China's biggest blog network), mobile, consumer software aimed at The Long Tail, social media, Web 2.0. As Venture Capitalist David Cowan commented in RedHerring:
"Investments such as Bokee extend our consumer portfolio into the realm of applications widely known as web2.0, which to us means applications that are viral in nature and leverage consumer-generated content—two elements of a business that lead to rapid growth and high margins."
Cowan expanded on this comment in his blog, noting that he is targeting the mobile and Asian consumer markets right now. He wrote more about his Consumer Investing theory in a follow-up post.
In another VC post this week, Jeremy Levine wrote about shorts and longs - meaning short-term and long-term investment opportunities. An example of a 'long' is what Levine terms "eBay for" businesses, which he defined as marketplaces that "make money by providing a forum for buyers and sellers to come together."
So if you're a humble developer or wanna-be entrepreneur, how does one attract the attention of a VC? Well you could try the odio.us Gateway to Web 2.0 Riches, developed by Nathan Torkington. It automatically generates a Web 2.0 business plan elevator pitch for you. Examples are:
- Decentralized Web 2.0 Ruby on Rails IM infrastructure that leverages the basic human need to connect.
- Mobile hybridized AJAX photo Firefox extension that leverages grassroots talent.
- Multi-device open source tagging-enabled voice web-app that leverages ubiquitous broadband.
- Long invite-only beta disruptive emergent calendaring Firefox extension that leverages network effects.
This reminds me - I wonder when the first Web 2.0 Reality TV show will be made? How about Tim O'Reilly as the Donald Trump character in 'The Apprentice 2.0'? ("MacManus, you failed to leverage the Long Tail and I didn't see any evidence of Network Effects. You're fired!") ;-)
I wrote a post this week summarizing some recent trends in Web-based Office software. I mentioned new and trendy products like Writely (Web-based word processing) and Kiko (online calendar). My post got some great comments. Ian mentioned his new product called Openomy, which he describes as an "online file-system". Jay pointed out that "the first Ajax app was Microsoft's web version of Outlook". Phil Pearson (who I met for the first time this week, in Wellington) mentioned that a company called HalfBrain developed an AJAX office suite back in the late 90's. Phil said it was made available to the public, "but then it got bought by IBM and disappeared".
I just updated that post tonight, with some more Web 2.0 Office products, so check it out.
Thought-provoking essay by William Blaze, who asks: who really has control in an API-powered Web 2.0 world. William says that the API is actually "a system of control", in which "the API creator has a nearly limitless ability to regulate what can go in and out of their system." He goes on to write:
"Privilege is what the Web 2.0 is really about. What separates the Web 2.0 from that plain old "web" is the establishment and entrenchment of a hierarchy of power and control. This is not the same control that Microsoft, AOL and other closed system / walled garden companies tried unsuccessfully to push upon internet users. Power in the Web 2.0 comes not from controlling the whole system, but in controlling the connections in a larger network of systems. It is the power of those who create not open systems, but semi-open systems, the power of API writers, network builders and standards definers."
Michal Migurski also posted some thoughts on this.
While I don't agree entirely with William's thesis - it's too cynical to say that privilege is what Web 2.0 is about - he does make you think about the implications of APIs. William's right, APIs from the likes of Google, Amazon and Flickr always come with restrictions and strings attached. While we use the platforms of those companies, via their APIs, we're never in complete control.
OK, that's just about it for the week. Before I go, I want to give a shout-out to fellow Web 2.0 chroniclers TechCrunch. I'll be rooming with the TechCrunch crew in October, when I'm over in Silicon Valley. I can't wait to visit the home of the Web and shmooze with all the great people I've gotten to know virtually via my blog.
That's a wrap for another week!
Barb Dybwad posed an interesting question this week: "how many of you read some or all of your RSS feeds on your cellphone? If you do - which application or service do you find the best/easiest to use/most comprehensive and why?"
Personally I don't read feeds in my mobile phone, although I would like to. I do download content from the Web onto my Palm PDA, for offline reading. So it makes sense to go the next step and read content online on my mobile device. Anyway Barb's readers recommended the following apps and services for mobile RSS reading, if you're interested:
- BuddyBuzz
- winksite.com
- LiteFeeds
- Bloglines mobile
- PHONifier
- iFeedYou
- FreeNews
This week I've been noticing a lot of Web 2.0-style Office apps coming out. Here's a selection of some of them:
AjaxOffice - "A complete office suite usable via your browser. Your documents are safely stored on a server..."
Writely - "The Web Word Processor" (unfortunately the beta is full already). TechCrunch reviewed it and said: "Writely is a highly specialized niche application built with ajax. Ajax allows this (and other applications) to act very much like desktop apps."
The weirdly named FCKeditor is also an MS Word-like web app. It's open source too. (hat-tip Josh)
gOFFICE - "a browser-based online word processor and desktop publishing program"
Num Sum - web-based spreadsheets (hat-tip Michael Fagan). Interesting service that lets you share spreadsheets, except only the author of a spreadsheet can edit it.
Kiko - Online calendar solution powered by (of course) Ajax. TechCrunch profile here.
Those are just some of the web-based Office apps that have popped up recently. Don't forget established tools like Gmail (Google's email app that blows MS Outlook out of the water) and Chandler (the open source Personal Information Manager that has been in development for a Web eternity).
Interesting also to note this CNET article from way back in 2001, speculating that Yahoo was looking at Web-based office tools. CNET quoted from a survey on the Yahoo website at the time, asking questions about a "full-featured suite of office productivity tools available online through a browser, handheld devices and Web-enabled cell phones." Hmmm, wonder what ever happened to that?! IBM has also talked about server-based office apps in the past too.
But really the most interesting web-based Office apps are the current crop of Web 2.0-style apps, built by small start-ups or open source developers. Ajax seems to be a common denominator amongst a lot of them.
Is the development of this new kind of "Web 2.0" Office tool likely to be worrying Microsoft much at this stage?
I'm interested in knowing what other Webified Office tools are out there - alpha, beta or even a glint in a developer's eye. Please add to the comments and let's see if we can build a big list of them.
UPDATE, 5/9/05: In a trackback from klogs.org, I discovered a web-based Powerpoint called S5 and a web-based version of Microsoft's OneNote called (of course) Webnote. Also an online Office suite, thinkfree, which isn't vapourware like AjaxOffice (thanks to my commenters for alerting me to that). Hmmm, I think Microsoft needs to watch its back ;-)
I have an Excel spreadsheet of data about RSS vendors that I want to share with the world. I recently did a report for a client, in which I defined and analysed 'The RSS Space'. As part of that report, I created a spreadsheet that mapped RSS vendors to categories - with a lot of help from some brilliant minds in the VC and RSS worlds. So what I want to do is publish that vendor mapping data onto a public wiki (I have my client's permission), so that everybody can publically expand and grow it - and benefit from it.
However, I'm having problems inputting an Excel spreadsheet into a Wiki. i.e. my data has a lot of rows and columns. Does anyone know of a wiki that makes it really easy to input tabular data? And probably more importantly, makes it easy for users to edit and add to that data. Please let me know either in the comments here, or by emailing readwriteweb AT gmail.com. Thanks!
Last night while looking at the new Feedburner design (well done guys!), I noticed that my subscriber stats figure has suddenly jumped. My current count of RSS subscribers in Feedburner is 3744. The main reason is that Rojo has just been added to Feedburner's numbers - previously it was missing. What surprised me is the extent of Rojo's impact on my stats. Rojo has overtaken Bloglines as the number 1 RSS Aggregator for my readers. Here is my current top 10:
Rojo
Bloglines
NetNewsWire
Newsgator Online
ThePortNetwork
Firefox Live Bookmarks
MyYahoo
Google Desktop
FeedDemon
SharpReader
A few quick comments on that:
- 7 of my top 10 are web-based RSS Readers (I'm counting Google Desktop in that). And 7 of the top 8 are web-based! Possibly that reflects my own bias towards web-based apps, which presumably a lot of my readers share.
- On the other hand, NetNewsWire is still going strong in 3rd place, which probably reflects my geek cred ;-)
- Rojo and Bloglines dominate my stats, which suggests to me that the other web-based readers have a lot of ground to catch up (and there are tons of new web-based feed readers on the market currently).
Coincidentally yesterday, before I found out about the Rojo numbers in my Feedburner, I decided to give Rojo another try. I've been increasingly frustrated by Bloglines - it doesn't cut the mustard anymore in terms of organising one's feeds, tracking topic feeds and in general adding value to my feed-reading existence.
Already I've noticed that Rojo's performance has improved since I last checked (that was my number one complaint about Rojo) and its added some neat new functionality - e.g. you no longer need to physically click the "Mark as Read" button. So I'll be using Rojo for the short term and perhaps in time it will convince me to stick around :-)
My question to Bloglines: when are we going to see these new improvements you've promised in the past? You'd better hurry up, because it's clear that Rojo is eating your lunch.
Interesting podcast conversation today between Steve Gillmor and Rafat Ali (of paidcontent.org). Steve labelled paidcontent.org "an emerging force in the new media" and this theme was explored during the podcast. My ears pricked up when Steve talked about blogs like Om Malik's, John Battelle's and Engadget becoming media properties in their own rights. No mention of MacManus' Youngbloods this time, but I'll let it slide ;-) Rafat said he thought Om Malik's weblog "has become the hub of Silicon Valley".
Rafat went on to say that some bloggers are media companies because they cover the niches that mainstream media (MSM) aren't looking at. PaidContent.org is a good example - its beat is digital media and it does a better job than most MSM of reporting it. But the thing I found most intriguing is that it doesn't stop there. The PaidContent.org's of this world are in turn getting trumped, by what Rafat calls "Super Niches". For example, a blogger that focuses on one particular part of digital media (because digital media is in itself a fairly broad topic, as Rafat admitted). Or a blogger that takes a single gadget as their niche and drills down much further than Engadget is able to do. Another example increasingly common: bloggers that focus on a single company.
Steve has a concept called a "new newspaper" (if I heard it correctly), by which I think he means that a person can select a variety of super niche bloggers to cover all of the topics they're interested in reading on a daily basis. As Steve pointed out, what we as readers look for is authoritative voices that give us unique perspectives (or views) of general news and information that flows into the system.
Bloggers drive trends, MSM ratifies them - as Steve said. Rafat seconded that by saying that MSM journalists nowadays tend to get their leads from blogs.
I want to finish by saying that none of this is meant as an attack or slight on MSM. Look at the work the BBC has been doing over the past year in using the Web as a platform for news media - they're ahead of the curve. And to take up Rafat's earlier point - the little dogs may be eating some of the big dogs lunch, but there are even smaller dogs yapping at the heels of the little dogs. No doubt Super-Super Niche Bloggers will soon become popular too - e.g. blogging about a specific division within a single company (I'm sure this is happening already).
The main takeaway I took from this thought-provoking podcast is that anyone can be a media company these days. I myself have done pretty well by focusing on 'Web 2.0'. One thing I do urge people to do though is that if you're going to focus on a niche, build value on top of it. Analyse, contribute ideas, drill down, drive trends. Be a hub, be your own media brand.
And of course MSM media should leverage all of these niche hubs. They're already doing it in a way, by hunting news and opinions from bloggers. Some like the BBC are doing it by inviting the public in to remix and develop media based on their content. Some are also hiring bloggers. Everybody wins.
I do love the Web.
