A couple of weeks ago Charlie Schick posted about the lack of mobile-focused bloggers in the Web 2.0 Workgroup. Charlie wrote:
"...from the list, I, of course, did not see a person focusing on mobility. I'm not surprised. Mobile might not need a special focus, but it sure should be part of the discussion."
I replied in the comments that we'd love to have a mobile-focused blogger in the mix. In emails following we discussed who is blogging about the intersection of mobile and Web 2.0. Charlie himself blogs occasionally on this subject and he also pointed to Debi Jones' The Carnival of the Mobilists blog (great name!). The mobile sites I already know about are Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs and Russell Beattie's blog. I've also got Scott Rafer's Mobile Chair and Mobile Opportunity by Michael Mace (ex-Apple honcho) plugged into my Rojo.
What other mobile blogs do people recommend? As I wrote recently on ZDNet, I think mobile is the next 'revolution' cab off the ranks in the Web industry. There's no reason why we shouldn't be talking more now about how 2.0 technologies and mobile are intersecting - for example location and presence services that utilize things like RSS and social networking. What's being built now in mobile that we in Web 2.0-land should be talking about more? Who's blogging about it? Who's building it?
Note: The Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-Up is back with a new publishing day (Fri) and a new format, a countdown of the Top Ten Web 2.0 issues or news stories of the past week. Also I'm on the lookout for a new sponsor for the Weekly Wrap-Up. It's had 3 extremely satisfied sponsors over the past 30 weeks, so if you're interested send me an email. Here we go then, with the top ten...
1. Yahoo integrates RSS into Yahoo! Mail and their alerts service. This was the biggest news of the week - see my coverage on ZDNet and analysis on Read/WriteWeb. Why was it important? Mainly because Yahoo has 227 million unique users for Yahoo Mail, according to Scott Gatz. It's a huge, mostly untapped, market for RSS and will introduce millions more people to the benefits of syndication.
2. Evan Williams' Ten Rules for Web Startups is a must read post for aspiring entrepreneurs. Worth sticking up on your wall. See also Ben Barren's 10 Rules for a Hollywood Startup ("5. Dont have any idea what an API is or what it is like not to be a VIP.")
3. The Great Eyeballs Debate started up again this week, courtesy of an Om Malik article in Business2. By Om's numbers, BoingBoing is worth a cool $34M. But Jason Calacanis did a Good Will Hunting number on Om, saying it's more like $500k-$3M. How do you like them apples?
4. Mashups are a hot topic right now. Check out my Top Mashups post, inspired by the ProgrammableWeb popular mashups page. Speaking of mashups, Ning King Jon Aquino has created yet another interesting app - Google and Yahoo Maps Side By Side.
5. Skype released the next version of its product (yes, 2.0), which includes video calling functionality. Supr.c.ilio.us had blanket coverage.
6. Mobile Opportunity: why Web 2.0 doesn't cut it for mobile devices. Good post that explains how mobile web applications need a different architecture than PC web apps, because of connectivity issues with mobile. Quote: "they [mobiles] need both a local client and a local cache of the client data, so the app can be fully functional even when the user is out of coverage."
7. Jeremy Zawodny posted the results of his 30 Day Gmail and Yahoo! Mail Challenge. Showing that he's certainly not biased, Gmail won (Jeremy works at Yahoo).
8. Nick Denton's Startup kit is worthy of mention, if only because bizarrely he included two humans in the kit - VC Fred Wilson and Nick's attorney.
9. Web browsers were big this week. Firefox 1.5 was released and I wrote two posts about the browser market. On the PC Microsoft is set to continue its dominance with IE7's release next year, despite Firefox's rise. However in the growing mobile market it could be the likes of Opera or Mozilla that takes the early lead.
10. Flickr and Webshots - A classic web2.0 case. This post charted how Web 2.0 wunderkind Flickr has over the course of 2005 gained ground on, and now overtaken, Web 1.0 photo-sharing site Webshots. Thomas Hawk also did an analysis. Excellent work all round.
That's a wrap for another week!
Great article from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, covering Yahoo's strategy. Interesting comparisions to Microsoft and Google, plus lots of stats to pore over for the number crunchers amongst us. But what I enjoyed most was how Wharton wrapped up so many of the themes I and others have been blogging about for the past year.
The article suggests that Yahoo keeps its nose clean and stays out of trouble with its main competitors in the Internet space, Microsoft and Google:
"Yahoo's approach has allowed it to fly under the radar and still compete with multiple players across many Internet markets. As a result, Microsoft competes with Yahoo, but also partners with it."
Further, the article says, Yahoo is undervalued by the market and underestimated by Microsoft. I liked this quote from Wharton professor Kevin Werbach:
"Google is more threatening to Microsoft today because of the breadth of its ambition, but ultimately Yahoo represents a similar challenge in moving the center of gravity away from the desktop to the web."
On the risks to Yahoo's media strategy, the Wharton article says losing focus may be Yahoo's biggest risk. I don't totally agree, because I think Yahoo is very focused on being a read/write media platform for mainstream users - which requires a broad feature set. In terms of Web 2.0, they say Microsoft and Google are engaged in a "battle to control the APIs for future web development." Yahoo is just "an emerging player" in terms of APIs according to Wharton.
Where I really think this article nails it is in this description:
"While Yahoo seems to have its tentacles in dozens of markets, what may be emerging is a prototype for what a media company will look like in the future. For example, it might need to develop content, but also be well versed in software, services and commerce."
That reflects what Yahoo CEO Terry Semel outlined in the recent Web 2.0 Conference. This is an outstanding article and a 'must read' if you're as interested in Web-based media as I am. I've been a fan of Yahoo for the past couple of years precisely for the reasons outlined in the Wharton article. If Yahoo is indeed flying under the radar, it isn't my radar ;-)
