In another great sign for blogs becoming a mainstream news and entertainment source, Nick Denton's blogging empire has struck a distribution deal with Internet media giant Yahoo. Reuters reported:
"Yahoo said it will post "dozens" of stories per day from Gawker Media's blogs, including New York-media gossip blog Gawker, U.S. political gossip-focused Wonkette, Hollywood insider's guide Defamer and popular technology blog Gizmodo.
The deal follows Yahoo's decision in October to begin displaying commentary from online journals or blogs alongside traditional news stories."
A screenshot from Yahoo News:
This is great news for Gawker, because Yahoo will drive a huge amount of traffic to their sites. PaidContent.org has an interview with Yahoo head of news and finance Scott Moore, who said:
"Why not just buy Gawker? "For one thing, Nick wants to be independent. That's important to him," says Moore. Beyond that, "at this point, we're not in the mode of acquiring blog content. We would rather work with as many as we can." In fact, Yahoo wants to go broader and deeper, eventually working with smaller blogs "empowering people who don't buy ink by the barrel.""
That's great to hear, because I'd like to think that well-branded topic-focused independent blogs have just as much to offer as the likes of Gawker to a 'distributer' like Yahoo. More details at Washington Post, Shore (who approves), Susan Mernit.
Update: Mike Arrington has spotted something the rest of us didn't: "Clicking on associated content pulls up a Yahoo page with the Gawker content (example). It does NOT redirect to Gawker." So Gawker isn't getting as many click-throughs as first thought.
In my ZDNet blog, I've published the first in a 3-part Case Study of a Web 2.0 business. Yellowikis is an open business listings site that has the potential to shake up the $22 billion Yellow Pages industry. What Wikipedia is to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Yellowikis may be to Business listings. In an email interview, Yellowikis founder Paul Youlten explained to me the background of Yellowikis, its business model and why he thinks it's disruptive. [Full story on ZDNet...]
TechCrunch has the scoop about Yahoo's new e-commerce web app, Yahoo! Shoposphere. Mike's taken it for a test run already and here's his description:
"Yahoo is making a major push into search personalization and recommendations - the overall project is called "Shoposphere" and the major feature being released is called "Pick Lists". Their goal is to move ecommerce towards what they call "me commerce". Any registered Yahoo user can create a Pick List."
The Yahoo Shoposphere site has more details on Pick Lists:
"Pick Lists let you share the stuff you love and the stuff that matters to you with everyone or your friends... on the Shoposphere, throughout Yahoo! Shopping, by email, and even through RSS feeds.
Make a good one and it could even show up as one of the highest rated Pick Lists on the Shoposphere."
More analysis from me as I look further into it... I do like the "me commerce" bit :-).
The Hard Man of 2.0, Ben Barren, takes out his nutcracker and starts crunching the numbers of Internet companies. Wielding financial methodologies, Ben intends to get some REAL analysis happening in the hot-air-o-sphere. Things like profit, revenue and unique user multiples relative to market cap. Not for the faint-hearted then.
Ben's made a start with the big Internet companies:
G (GOOGLE) - $109B, 86 P/E
E (EBAY) - $61B, 61 P/E
M (MICROSOFT/MSN) - $290B, 23 P/E
A (AMAZON) - $17B, 35 P/E
Y (YAHOO) - $54B, 35 P/E
A (AOL/TIME WARNER) - $83B mkt cap, 31 P/E incl Time Warner
Others.
IACI - $9.2B mkt cap, 6.6 P/E
NEWSCORP : $48B, 21 P/E
APPLE : $51B, 39 P/E
See also my ZDNet post on Alexa stats, where I mention that Yahoo and Google's market cap was essentially equal in May this year. But Google has since grown to over double the size of Yahoo!
Alan Taylor and Anil Dash report that Amazon is rolling out tags in a big way. In a discussion board message, Amazonian Blake Scholl announced that 50% of Amazon customers will see the tagging features at this time.
You will be able to apply tags to any item on the Amazon website and your tags will be collected under your profile. I like Alan's term for that - a taglist, like a wishlist. I can envisage Amazon adding RSS feeds later, so you can subscribe to tags and your friends' tags. For now Amazon has the whole "customers who used this tag also used..." thing going on, as a tie-in with their existing personalization features.
Here's an example page for the tag "money" - if you can't see the tags yet then Alan has some screenshots. Mike Arrington also has a screenshot and more details.
As Anil pointed out, these new tagging features point to the influence of The Robot Co-op's 43Things.com. Robot Co-op is made up of ex-Amazon folks and Amazon has a stake in the company.
In my ZDNet column today I took a look at the top websites in the world according to Alexa. You might be surprised by what I found. Here is the current top 10 in terms of traffic:
1. Yahoo!
2. Microsoft Network (MSN)
3. Google
4. Yahoo! Japan
5. Baidu.com
6. sina.com
7. EBay
8. Passport.net
9. sohu.com
10. 163.com
Yahoo's dominance in Web traffic and reach comes through loud and clear, but perhaps more importantly this data proves that China is a huge Web market. There are 4 Chinese websites in the top 10 globally, compared to 5 US sites. The top 10 Chinese websites are in the top 35 globally, second only to the US in terms of Web presence. More details in my ZDNet post.
This week: International Web 2.0, Mainstream Media Meltdown, Microsoft "Leaked" docs, Web 2.0 poster children rebel, 2.0 Post of the Week - samy conquers myspace.
This week we've seen evidence that Web 2.0 is taking over the world
reaching out to other parts of the world. China
Web2.0 Review is a new english language blog focused on Web 2.0 developments in
China, a key market in the near and long-term future. Australians are hosting Long Tail parties, Spain
recently hosted its own Web 2.0
conference, as did Britain, and the
TechCrunch format is being exported to
Ireland (sounds like a franchise opportunity for Mr Arrington!). Web 2.0 is happening all
over the world. Stay tuned for more announcements about this on Read/WriteWeb in the near
future.
Chris Anderson from The Long Tail blog updated us on some mainstream media stats this week. They showed that sales for box office, newspaper, music (except for digital downloads), radio and books were all falling by 2-7%. There were "mixed" results for DVDs, TV, magazines and video games. The only media doing consistently well is online advertising - banners are up 10% this year and Google revenues are up 96%.
The stats were sourced from all over the place and the comments to Chris' post include some valid criticism about the accuracy of the data - e.g. the book stats Chris used were from 2004 not 2005. However, having done a research report earlier in the year on this topic, I can verify that such data is extremely difficult to come by! If nothing else, it proves that online advertising - and by extension online media - is enjoying a bumper year.
This week Microsoft continued its well-publicized push into the Web 2.0 world, with the release of "leaked" documents by Bill Gates and CTO Ray Ozzie. The leak was probably intentional, but even so they contained some useful tips about where Microsoft is at in terms of Web 2.0. IDG ran an article late this week across its publications (Computerworld, CIO, etc) under the heading Microsoft lacks Web 2.0 savvy, or variations on that. The article quoted me extensively, but I think I should point out that I don't think Microsoft lacks savvy. What they lack is products that live up to the Live announcements and accompanying memos. But I assume those are coming in 2006...
Web 2.0 is certainly a love it or hate it affair. People
like me love it because it represents an exciting new generation of the Internet and
media, people like The
Register and Go Flock Yourself hate it
(for the same reason?). There's something about the Web 2.0 meme that drives people into
either passionate, sometimes bubble-icious behavior - or enrages them into cyncial, often
foul-mouthed rants. There's not much middle ground.
Anyway, my point here is that some of the Web 2.0 "poster children" have decided enough is enough and they don't want to be labelled Web 2.0 anymore. The Flock team has banned the term 'Web 2.0' from its office and del.icio.us creator Joshua Schachter is also rebelling against being "the Web 2.0 poster child".
I only have this to say in response: The Illuminati is not impressed. (hat-tip FactoryJoe for the image!)
Never let it be said that I'm not down with 'the kids'. OK, so I missed seeing this post in early October when it first came out. But it's worth highlighting now anyway, because it's a witty and well written account of how a young guy called samy conquered myspace.com with some clever javascript code. Here's an extract:
"If I can become their friend...if I can become their hero...then why can't their friends become my friend...my hero. I can propagate the program to their profile, can't I. If someone views my profile and gets this program added to their profile, that means anyone who views THEIR profile also adds me as a friend and hero, and then anyone who hits THOSE people's profiles add me as a friend and hero... So if 5 people viewed my profile, that's 5 new friends. If 5 people viewed each of their profiles, that's 25 more new friends. And after that, well, that's when things get difficult. The math, I mean.
Some people would call this a worm. I call it popularity. Regardless, I don't care about popularity, but it can't hurt, right?"
That's a wrap for another week!
Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV interviewed Ryan and Eran of supr.c.ilio.us about Web 2.0 at their launch party last night. Unfortunately they let slip about the Web 2.0 Conspiracy - and what's worse, they named names. It was very tough questioning by Irina and she basically bullied the supr.c.ilio.us guys into spilling the beans. Guess whose name was blurted out first by Ryan "The Informer" King? Yes, it was mine!
Eran Globen was the one that confessed all to the media:
"Web 2.0 is a conspiracy that was started by people deep inside the Illuminati."
This is a scandal of major proportions. The Illuminati will have to ship me out of my hiding place in New Zealand. But don't worry, Web 2.0 will continue on as before - vanquishing its foes and converting the masses to The Long Tail.
Dave Winer points to my post about Portals 2.0 and questions if there are really only 3 powerful Internet companies:
"Richard MacManus talks about The Big 3, and there is a trend to think about three companies -- Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- as the leaders in online. But I don't think that really works, because well, there are three more that are probably just as powerful as the others, but in different ways."
In the comments it emerges that Dave was referring to Amazon, eBay and Apple. Personally I think a good case could be made for eBay, but I don't see Amazon or Apple as being in the same league.
Dave McClure, also in the comments of Dave's post, came up with a ranking system:
"Tier 1: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Tier 2: eBay, Amazon, Apple Tier 3: AOL, IAC/Ask, NewsCorp/MySpace
actually, i'd say AOL is Tier 2.5, but will either partner/merge with a Tier 1 within another 3-6 months."
That'll get the anti-A-List crowd squarking! But when it comes down to it, I agree with Dave McClure's tier ranking.
One main caveat is that the ranking of Internet companies is very much dependent on the era we're in - and is subject to rapid change. For example, I'm currently reading a book called 'There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future', by Kara Swisher. The book is based in the era when AOL was Tier 1 and maybe even the numero uno Internet company. One story from that era was that AOL tried to buy Yahoo! for $2 million in around 1995 - but was rebuffed. How times change!
Last night my friends in Melbourne held a Long Tail BBQ, as part of the worldwide Long Tail Camp. Seeing as I live across the ditch in New Zealand, I participated virtually via a Skype call - which Cameron Reilly from The Podcast Network recorded. The MP3 is here (10MB - 30min).
At first I thought I was supposed to deliver a Sermon on the Mount to all the aussie disciples of Web 2.0, but thankfully it turned out to be a nice chat between mates instead. Cameron and Ben Barren asked some probing questions, which unfortunately my tired mind didn't process very well (it was after midnight on a Friday night at my end). So I rambled a bit in the latter stages, but even so everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I certainly did.
Some of the things I talked about in the podcast: my experiences of Silicon Valley last month, the origins of the 'Father of Web 2.0' meme and my ambitions for it to go mainstream, what's happening in Web 2.0 in our part of the world, trends for the next couple of years (which is about when my brain decided to fall asleep). Darren Rowse, who it turns out is actually qualified to deliver sermons, made an appearance in the podcast too.
The Snarksters from Supr.c.ilio.us also had a Long Tail event happening in the US. I look forward to hearing more about that.
Here are a couple of pics from the Melbourne event - more on Cameron's Flickr stream.
Ben Barren. That doesn't look like an aussie beer mate...
Paul Montgomery knows the way to a good
honest aussie beverage.
Congrats to Ben, Paul, Cameron, and all the other Melbourne 2.0 believers for organizing the event.
