Aggregating and filtering the latest Web Tech and Media news, so you don't have to! (p.s. thanks for the encouraging comments about this new daily feature - I'm trying out a new name...)
- Out with
old media; in with... what? (CNNMoney.com ponders who will be media gatekeeper in the
21st century. I dunno, the word 'gatekeeper' seems very -- well, 20th century. Maybe
start by losing the old broadcasting terminology? Just a thought.)
- Old mogul, new media (I'm sensing a theme here... this Economist.com article is about News Corp and their "trendy new web communities")
- 50 users v 1 editor (Lloyd Shepherd, Deputy Director of Digital Publishing at Guardian Unlimited, ponders whether Guardian is more democratic than Digg)
- TechCrunch reads the riot act to Ning (the DIY social web app hasn't lived up to the hype - be interesting to see if it responds to Mike's detailed list of issues...)
- Interview With Digg.com Founder, Kevin Rose (incl stats... "Digg’s registered membership is currently at 140,000 and is doubling every three months.")
- Who Are the New Media Gatekeepers? (I've been emailing with Scott Karp and we disagree on more than we agree on, but it's stimulating conversation -- and he sure knows how to get attention ;-))
- Hey, Your Content Chocolate Is In My Portal Peanut Butter! (best post title I've seen in a while... John Battelle: "Next up: Yahoo sells books, and Google sells videos. Oh, wait, that's already happening...")
- Emo/pop punk rockers finding fans on MySpace (I still don't understand what emo is - shows my age...)
- Top Sellers on Xbox Live Arcade (Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is number 1... apparently it only costs $5)
- Rich Media Realities (Fred Wilson lists some compromises, because his "nirvana scenario" isn't happening anytime soon)
Flickr pic by Kristal
Aggregating and filtering the latest Web Tech and Media news, so you don't have to! (p.s. it'd be great to get some feedback on this new daily feature of mine - is the R/W Filter of any value to folks? How can I improve it? Thanks!)
- Chinese
internet police (Rebecca MacKinnon tells us about two cartoon web cops named
"JIngjing" and "Chacha", who will be patrolling websites in the southern Chinese city of
Shenzhen)
- The Walled Garden “Hit List” (Bill Burnham fingers eBay, match.com, Monster and Homestore as Walled garden perps)
- Tech plays supporting role at Sundance festival (a lot of great Web stuff happening at Sundance, including podcasts, web streaming of most Shorts Program entrants, and premiering films on the Internet in conjunction with their live premieres)
- Yahoo, Google & Web 2.0 Reality Check (Om Malik seems to be raising concerns about Yahoo's perceived lack of focus)
- Amazon.com To Launch Live, Weekly Online Show (starring some comedian guy called Bill Maher... I have to agree with current analysis that Amazon's media efforts so far have been stop-gap)
- YouTube not Acquired Yet (but TechCrunch will surely report it first when the actual sale does go through)
- The battle over bundling: Top Ten Sources and more (Susan argues strongly for bloggers getting a share of revenue. btw I'm in the Web 2.0 Top Ten List and gave my permission just today)
- Last.fm + personal data = excellent music (Matt McAlister: "In an increasingly trust-driven economy, Last.fm will get my business over iTunes any time I'm given the choice.")
- A life online: living decentralised (how to create an online platform for word-processing, spreadsheets, email, image-sharing, file storage, collaborative working, and for keeping up-to-date with current events)
On ZDNet I've written an article outlining some common elements of a modern website or app.
A lot of the features and functionality of so-called Web 2.0 sites are now common elements in most current web apps and sites. It's really gone beyond what was labelled 'Web 2.0' last year, because so many mainstream websites are now using these elements. It's no longer a niche trend. For your reference here is a summary of some of the popular elements in use by modern web sites and services [...]
Tushar Vyas, from mOne-Group M: "Traditionally, media enthralled people. Today it doesn't happen - customers are multitasking and fragmented. Today's customer wants to gain perspective, personalise the experience, get involved and participate. Digital allows this to happen."
Quoted by Dina Mehta at Digital Summit 2006 - Integrating Online into the Traditional Media Mix panel.
Where enthrall = To hold spellbound; captivate; to hold your full attention
I would consider myself enthralled by the Web, but then I'm a bit odd that way :-) Normal people use a variety of media - tv, iPods, Xbox, mobile phones, IM, email, etc. Especially Generation Y, those born between 1977 and 1994, who are known to multi-task on all these things and more.
Dina also covered a session called Why search is Hot, Impact of the Echo Generation (Gen Y is also known as Echo Generation). She noted:
"The American teenager is online too, but they are also simultaneously listening to music, reading, chatting on the phone, watching TV - so implications on how to market to those who multi-task. Also, this generation
Two-three broad trends --- looking for affinitiy groups, collective mindset, mass customizaton and expression. They are also highly networked - it is reflected in why people use networking groups, communities, blogs. They are also interconnected, and therefore influenced by what happens within these communities."
So even though there may be a lack of focus in Gen Y, little to enthrall them, there are a lot of digital, social and creative things that interest them - and opportunities for Internet media to serve that need.
Aggregating and filtering the latest Web Tech and Media news, so you don't have to!
- Digital Summit 2006 (in Mumbai India.
Dina Mehta is covering the event in
her blog and says so far there's been little talk of social software, but she has
some good real-time notes with stats on the India Internet market. See also ContentSutra)
- eyeTV and iPod integration (Michael Gartenberg says it's "a great way to get legal video content on your iPod pretty easily")
- iLife and RSS (Gartenberg again... he is doing a great job covering convergence these days. He says the iLife photocast feed needs work and worries about RSS in general being fragmented)
- Microsoft's Don Dodge looks at collaborative filtering services such as Digg, Reddit, memeorandum ("The big players are likely to look for acquisitions in this space.")
- Can Murdoch Win on the Web? (News Corp may spend $1 billion to push DirecTV into broadband)
- Yahoo misses Q4 Wall Street estimates (shares down about 13 percent in after-hours trade)
- Yahoo Q4 Earnings Release Conference Call Transcipt (The Internet Stock Blog transcribed the whole call - excellent work! See also the Yahoo webcast and paidcontent.org's audio)
- Google to buy radio ad company (paying $102 million in cash for DMarc Broadcasting, a California company that works with radio advertisers in the sales, scheduling, delivery and reporting of radio ads)
- Fred Wilson on Intelliseek/Buzzmetrics/Nielsen deal (a big deal because "Nielsen is a major player in marketing research and data and they have embraced the idea of user generated content/feedback as a business opportunity.)
Create iTunes playlists with WishMix (but for your benefit or Apple's? My latest ZDNet post)
Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig has a thought-provoking essay on FT.com about the perilous state of what he terms the Read-Write Internet:
"We are well on our way to perfecting the “Read-Only” internet – that network in which every bit of culture can be bought in a single click, but bought with the rights to consume only. 2006 will be a critical stage in this process."
He cites Apple and Amazon as companies that are beginning to control how media is used in their software/services. But more so than technology, Lessig worries that Intellectual property laws will prevent the Read/Write Web from reaching its potential. He says that "copyright in the digital world gives content owners more legal control over the use of their content than in the physical world."
Lessig describes the “Read-Write” internet as "a world in which content is bought, but not simply to be consumed. Blogs, photo journals and sites such as Wikipedia and MySpace signal an extraordinary hunger in our culture for something beyond consumption."
This is a theme that Lessig has been talking and writing about for years, as have I and many others. But it's worth always coming back to, because as Lessig points out there is so much potential in a Read/Write Web:
"It is hard for those of us from the couch potato generation to understand why the creativity of the Read-Write internet is important. But if you focus on something that we are likely to understand – market value – then the Read-Write internet, indeed, has a great deal to recommend it. The computers, bandwidth, software and storage media needed to enable an efficient Read-Only internet are but a fraction of the technology needed to support the Read-Write internet. The potential for growth with the Read-Write internet is extraordinary, if only the law were to allow it."
And it's not just market value, as Lessig goes on to say.
Well, there are no easy answers to get the law and policy-makers to see the real value of the Read/Write Web (or Read-Write Internet if you prefer). But I'm certainly glad we have Lawrence Lessig around to keep the pressure on in the domain of law. It's up to us Web and media folks to do the same in our domains.
A daily review of Web and Media news that crosses my path during the day.
- comScore: Google Continues
to Hold Top Position in Search Share Rankings (see also
Shore analysis: "It also means that general aggregators will continue to position
their search services increasingly for specific verticals")
- Josh Porter has a number 1 hit on Squidoo, with his catchy tune called Introduction to Web 2.0 (I hear the disco version is awesome)
- Blog Herald being auctioned off: High bid stands at $72,000 (Blog Herald is a blog about blogging and is affiliated with the B5media network. Current owner Duncan Riley outlines his reasons for selling)
- Burnham’s Beat Reports Record Q4 Revenues (nevertheless, I've downgraded my Burnham's Beat rating to AAA-)
- TechCrunch: Yahoo Acquires SearchFox Assets (as Mike said, unclear if Yahoo bought it before or after the recently announced SearchFox closure)
- Digg gets a WSJ write-up (Slashdot's Rob Malda "said he considered a Digg-like format for Slashdot, but rejected the idea because he believes much of Slashdot's value lies in its editors' news judgment.")
- The Prejudice Map of the World (New Zealand is not on the map, but I'll tell you here what Google delivers for kiwis: ingenuity, good-natured bluster, tinkering)
- Managing Hotmail ("Hotmail relies on more than 10,000 servers spread around the globe to process billions of e-mail transactions per day." Link via Jeff Clavier, who nicely summarizes it)
- Web 2.0 Show interviews Jason Fried from 37Signals. ("I encourage everybody to build things.")
- anne 2.0: Where are the Women? ("At what point will men stop asking "where are the women in the blogosphere?" We are everywhere: writing about politics, about tech, about feminism, about new media, about motherhood, about economics, about academics, about everything that men blog about.")
Disco pic by Éole
On my ZDNet blog, I discuss social news site reddit.com with co-founder Alexis Ohanian and compare their collaborative filtering system with Digg's.
Reddit may have a jump on Digg when it comes to avoiding groupthink and spam, via a user reputation system it calls 'karma'. Check out the full story on ZDNet and tell me what you think: is Reddit's karma system a better - more honest - way to rank stories and users than Digg's populist approach of ranking by homepage hits? Or do you think Digg has the right approach, but just needs to address the groupthink and spam issues that come with scaling to thousands of users?
It's not quite a Bloggers and Old Media lovefest yet, but at least people seem to have eased up on the 'us vs them' rhetoric. AdAge.com has a nice article explaining why Blogging vs. Traditional Media has been oversold. Scott Karp's recent post entitled Bloggers Are So Wrong About Media raised some hackles, but in a follow-up post he explained that (in his view) New Media has the conversations but Old Media has synthesis. As I emailed Scott, I think he raises some interesting points - but I still don't quite agree.
I'd argue that new media does have synthesis mechanisms - both human-powered and automated. As an example of the former, blogs like paidcontent.org and Ypulse provide comprehensive coverage of niche sectors. There are also tech-driven synthesis solutions such as search engines (Google, Technorati, etc), Digg, memeorandum, etc. None of these 'new media' synthesis solutions are perfect by any means - indeed just last week Digg dug a hole for itself when many of its members falsely (and largely anonymously) accused an O'Reilly writer of theft. But this new media world of blogging and aggregators is evolving rapidly and synthesis is one of many things that continues to improve.
Overall though, it's no longer a case of Old Media vs New Media... actually I don't think it ever was. As I mentioned above with paidcontent and ypulse, human-powered synthesis still has a very big part to play. Old media brands have the resources and brand strength to create powerful Web synthesis solutions, should they so desire. But it's no longer just old media playing the game - the rest of us can play too now ;-)
A daily review of Web and Media news that crosses my path during the day. I need a better name for it - any suggestions?
- John Battelle's thinking
ahead to the next Web 2.0
Conference and is seeking feedback for a byline. I may not be hyping the meme
anymore, but I love the Web 2.0 Conference and long may it continue. John's thinking of
'Disruption' as the theme for '06, which judging by the impact Web companies had at CES
this year -- may be on the money.
- Mark Pincus: the future of media is all about brand - and apparently porn. Fred Wilson responds: correct, it's about brand, microchunks and syndication. I'm with Fred on this - it's all about branding your microchunks (which is where the porn comes in?).
- 78.5% of Google's ad revenue shared with users? According to the NYTimes (via Ben Barren): "...for every dollar the company brings in through AdSense and other places that distribute its ads, it pays roughly 78.5 cents back to sites like Digital Point that display the ads."
- Dave Winer is implementing Reading Lists (yay!). I hope the Web 2.0 Workgroup is one of the example Reading Lists...
- Gather.com is getting a lot of press and as usual Mike Arrington gets to the crux of the issues in his analysis: "...the site is poorly designed, very cluttered and doesn’t clearly state what they are doing."
- Matt McAlister responds to the "Old Media" rebuttal to the noisy blogosphere ("I don't think the critical blogosphere noise will stop until Old Media invests in the new user interaction models rather than continue its fight to preserve traditional advertising metrics.")
- Russell Beattie: Home Media Thoughts ("none of this stuff really works together, and most of it is too complex for your average consumer to try to get working.")
