Sometimes we all get so
wrapped up in the latest Web 2.0 calendar, rss reader or search product, that we forget
that some things labeled 'Web 2.0' are actually doing social good in the world.
This is the case with NetSquared, which is a
non-profit organization that aims to
"increase nonprofit effectiveness through the use of web-based social tools." NetSquared
was created by TechSoup and is a project of CompuMentor - which has been active in the
non-profit tech scene since 1987 and has a staff of 110. So there are great credentials
behind NetSquared, plus already there is a strong Web 2.0 spirit on the relatively new
NetSquared site.
Recently I spoke to Marnie Webb, one of the key people behind the NetSquared initiative. She told me that version 1 of NetSquared went live in October 2005 and has since reached 350 registered users. But around 700 people are actively engaged in the community, thanks to Structured Blogging-like activities. For example people in the NetSquared community are encouraged to tag content on their own blogs, as well as del.icio.us, Flickr, Furl and other apps.
Marnie told me that
infrastructure is still the biggest issue for non-profit organizations, but that there
are other ways to solve problems using the Web 2.0 platform. That's where NetSquared
comes into play. Currently NetSquared has a US focus, but Marnie said they hope to reach
out to non-profits internationally in the near future. One of the keys to that is to
gather local stories of non-profits using Web 2.0 tools. One great example IMHO is the
sterling work done by the The South-East Asia
Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, aka the SEA-EAT blog. I wrote about this last year:
"The focus on this [SEA-EAT] blog has been about how people can contribute. One post entitled Seeking Info? Ask the Bloggers attracted over 200 comments from the date it was published (29 December, 2004) and then steadily throughout 2005. Interestingly, a post entitled Your suggestions and links attracted well over 550 comments from the date it was published (27 December, 2004), which shows the lengths people were willing to go to help. A lot of the comments on the blog were regarding donations and relief work."
And of course similarly inspirational work was done by people when Hurricane Katrina hit. This is the kind of thing that NetSquared aims to help with, utilizing the current generation of 'Web 2.0' tools and services.
Two other examples, as provided to me by Franziska Marks of NetSquared:
- Community Walk This site allows users to map their communities and points of interest, and post comments about these areas. It has a large base of international users. The most interesting example is the mapping of the Pakistani earthquake and helping with relief efforts by publishing maps of helicopter landing pads in the affected areas. http://communitywalk.com/map/590
- NY Coalition against hunger They are a citywide umbrella org for the independent soup kitchens. They also have been using Google Maps to actually map out these facilities in the city. This is a great tool to help volunteers see areas of need, to help soup kitchens collaborate, to map the need and analyze the gaps in the actual services.
The list of sponsors for NetSquared is impressive, so if you work for a big corp then do check it out. For individuals, there is a lot of great content on the NetSquared website to explore - and contributing is as easy as tagging your own blogs. But of course, I'm sure there's more you - we - can do if we put our 2.0 minds to it.
Flickr pic by cambodia4kidsorg (nb: that isn't Marnie in the photo).
Rojo,
the web-based RSS Aggregator I've used ever since I gave up hope of Bloglines ever
stepping up its functionality, has just come out with some more enhancements.
About a month ago, they re-designed their site and now they've done another overhaul and
added 3 new features - one of which (relevance) I will drill down into below. In a
nutshell the 3 new features, as described to me by Rojo CEO Chris Alden, are:
"Rojo Mojo: Voting meets RSS - Vote for the top stories and blog posts of the day with one easy click. Each story now has a title where you can give it some mojo - and see how many other votes it's received. The stories with the most mojo (votes) will appear on Rojo's Today page and are factored into our relevance metrics (See Rojo Relevance below).
Rojo Relevance: Feed Reading 2.0. You’ve always been able to sort stories by date, now you can sort stories by relevance and quality too. Other feed readers only allow you to see stories in chronological order—we give you a quick way to find the most interesting stories fast by bringing the most tagged, read and mojo’d stories to the top. Rojo Relevance is smart feed reading; the more you use it, the smarter it gets. It's our way of helping you sip from the firehose.
Rojo Categories: a range of categories in Rojo Today such as politics, entertainment, sports, Web2.0."
The feature I like best is Rojo Relevance, because that's precisely what I want a next-generation RSS Aggregator to do - find me the most relevant stories. I've used the word 'filter' a lot this year to express this need.
Rojo actually had a 'relevance' option in the previous version, so I asked Chris what has changed. He replied:
"First, the purpose of "relevance" is to do for feed reading what smart search engines (like Google) do for search results -- figure out what to put on the front page. Many readers are overwhelmed by the number of new stories coming from their feeds every day. So Rojo Relevance is about sorting those by "relevance" rather than date, to put the good stuff on top."
Ah good, so it's like tech.memeorandum and it'll serve as a kind of 'newspaper frontpage' for my feeds. Excellent! But how exactly is Rojo doing this? Chris Alden told me:
"How do we do it? Generally, just like Google used link metadata to determine relevance of search results, there is a fair amount of metadata we can use to infer relevance, including how many people are reading, tagging, and voting for a story, how popular the feed is -- both to you personally, to your contacts, and to all readers, as well as things like link data and content analysis. Since Rojo is a social network as well as a reader, we also know what stories are getting read, tagged, voted for, etc. from your contacts and can factor that in too.
I won't go into the specifics of the formula we use to generate our relevance ratings because not only is it our secret sauce but it is also something that is constantly being refined. The relevance should improve the more and your contacts you read, tag, and vote for things. What's cool is how we use Rojo mojo -- that is our voting system -- to inform our relevance. With digg, for example, you can see what pages are getting the most votes in aggregate from the whole community. With Rojo, we show you what stories are getting the most votes on Rojo Today. BUT we can also show you what stories FROM YOUR FEEDS are getting the most votes. It's sort of a personalized digg."
(emphasis mine)
Personalization has been getting a bad rap from developers this year, especially Memeorandum's Gabe Rivera who has told me repeatedly that personalized aggregation is a very hard problem. Gabe isn't trying to solve it with his products and to be fair he's given me very compelling reasons why. In any case, Rojo seems to be trying to tackle the issue and it's interesting that Chris namechecks web 2.0 success story digg - because they too will be releasing personalization functionality this year. Kevin Rose told me in a recent ZDNet interview that it is "one of our top priorities".
Finally, as to what has changed in Rojo's relevance formula, Chris said:
"The 'relevance' view shows the most relevant stories from ALL of your feeds. What's new is that virtually EVERY view can be sorted by relevance. So you can look at ONE feed and sort it by relevance, instead of date. Or you can look at a group of feeds -- say feeds you've tagged "web2.0" -- and sort that view by relevance. You can even sort our tagged stories view by relevance (tagged stories are stories being tagged by Rojo users.) Also, with the launch of the Rojo mojo voting feature we are factoring in "mojo" in our relevance formula."
All in all, this looks to be very useful new functionality. I'll need to have more of a play to be certain, but any RSS Aggregator that is making an effort to tackle the 'attention' problem of 2006 is alright in my book.
As I mentioned at the start, this is Rojo's second major re-design in a couple of months. Rojo's previous re-design was mixed for me. It had a nice look and feel, but I wasn't that impressed by the 'Rojo links' - an internal linking system that seemed to me to be encouraging a 'walled garden' approach (keep the users inside the system). But this functionality update is much more to my liking, especially the relevance feature. It'll help keep them (ahem) relevant in a crowded market, as Mike put it.
Final thought: I wonder if this will wake Bloglines out of their slumber? ;-)
- Microsoft's Remix Mix
Contest Winners (more gadget goodness from MS... pic from Donovan
West, one of the 3 winners)
- Notes from Mashup Camp on mashup business models (I hadn't seen these notes when I did my post on the same topic - makes a nice complimentary piece. Thanks John Musser for the link.)
- New Zealand's Big Hits (popular sites in NZ - TradeMe, NZ Dating and US-based Hi5... it still surprises me that not many tech news sites covered the TradeMe sale - it was nearly half a billion US dollars! Compare that to $30 M for Flickr et al and tell me which is more important....thanks Seb for the link)
- Wired: Man vs. Machine in Newsreader War (this is a very hard problem in the 'attention' era and none of the apps mentioned here have solved it... yet. Perhaps one clue is to get rid of the "vs" distinction and replace with "and".)
- More Info on Movable Type Enterprise (nice overview from Charlie Wood, who thinks "Six Apart has a ways to go".)
- Review of Publi.sh (Charles Coxhead's 'instant feeds' tool - this review notes some use cases: to publish feed(s) for grocery lists, movie nights, book-club assignments, etc)
- AOL Still Number One With Teens (YPulse notes from Comscore stats that teens use IM a lot, as well as online gaming... MySpace was second, Yahoo third... btw YPulse was the inspiration for my R/WW Filter)
- Phil Wainewright: Microsoft Live rolling along ("Live really has been achieving a lot, with more than a dozen new products introduced since its launch last November.")
- Netscape.com To Be Relaunched As a Digg-Like Site; Calacanis Heading It (the term 'raising the dead' springs to mind...)
by Ryan Stewart
(Richard's Note: I'm introducing guest bloggers to Read/WriteWeb, to write about topics that I think will be of interest to R/WW readers - but which I'm not an expert in myself. Ryan Stewart is the first of my guest bloggers, writing on the topic of Flash and 'rich internet apps'. I'll be editing the guest posts to fit in with the R/WW style, but the content and 'voice' behind each post will of course be that of its author.)
In 1996,
FutureSplash Animator became Macromedia
Flash 1.0 and people all over the world were amazed by its animation capabilities.
Everyone started downloading the Flash Player and nearly every site experimented with
Flash animation. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of Flash, which is one of the major reasons
it is so powerful as a platform, led to a lot of "Skip Intro" buttons and later a way for
advertisers to take up the entire screen with annoying Flash ads. For a long time, Flash
has had to cope with a bad reputation for degrading the web. However with creativity
running wild and a renewed interest in Rich Internet Applications, Flash has grown up and
some powerful applications are now being built leveraging the full potential of
Flash.
One of the applications that is really taking advantage of this power is Goowy, which started out as an e-mail client but has since expanded into a full fledged virtual desktop suite. Goowy combines the rich interactivity of Flash along with some of the best parts of AJAX to create a great user experience.
The most important part of Goowy is the mail application. For the most part,
it's a pretty standard mail client with a couple of cool twists. One is the ability to
drag and drop e-mail messages into folders. It makes organization very intuitive and
"desktopesque" for the average user. The graphical elements of the mail application (and
the entire app for that matter) will make any MacOS user very happy and provide a nice
level of interactivity valuable for anyone new to web apps. The other great thing about
using Goowy for your e-mail is that you can send e-mail from the address you already
have. Unlike Gmail which allows you to set the Reply-To and then shows up as "yourgmail@gmail.com
on Behalf of yours@emailadress.com", Goowy will simply send the message with
yours@emailaddress.com. Importing contacts is a one click operation and you can import
contacts from a .csv file or Gmail, Hotmail, MSN and Yahoo.
Viewing HTML email is one place where the Flash/AJAX interaction provides a big boost. The spell checker, the draft view and the rich text editing are done quickly and nicely with AJAX. The mail tree, auto complete features and all the navigation is pure Flash. The interaction is slick and the result is awesome.
One of the coolest things about Goowy is the calendar application, which not a lot of people have talked about and is 100% Flash. When I was looking at web based e-mail clients, what I wanted was an Outlook replacement, and Goowy was the best one I found - due in large part to the calendar. The current calendar is in beta and hasn't been updated since it was released a few months ago. Currently, it allows you to schedule events in 5 minute intervals (hopefully they'll remove this restriction in the future). It provides an Outlook-like view, with the monthly calendars over on the left and your daily view in the main right pane. The day view is a custom flash control which allows you to view events in a single day, those spanning multiple days and events that overlap times.
What's also cool is that each individual event is a custom MovieClip that provides right-click menu options, such as canceling the event or editing it in the window. It's a very simple, easy to use interface that people can jump right in and feel comfortable with. The other reason I love Goowy's calendar is that it fully supports the iCalendar protocol. Goowy users can send and receive events from other people who are using email clients that support iCal events. This means that Goowy can receive and send calendar events to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users. They're also planning to release recurring events, weekly and monthly views - as well as the possibility of calendar sharing in the near future.
The thing that really distinguishes Goowy from the slew of other AJAX desktop clients
are their minis. [Editor's note:
minis are little apps that run on your desktop - also known as widgets by Yahoo, modules by Google and gadgets by Microsoft.] At first, I thought the
minis were a useless throw in, but after fully embracing Goowy for my e-mail and calendar
needs, I've come to use the minis for sorting a lot of my information. You can track your
favorite RSS feeds using the newsreader or keep track of YouTube videos and listen to
podcasts right from Goowy. Flash allows it to stream multimedia seamlessly within the
application.
Goowy's minis also provide a range of functionality by tapping into external APIs. You can search for Flickr photos, tag things on del.icio.us, follow sports scores, see the weather, watch your stock portfolio, or see the top songs on iTunes. The minis also include functional applications like a personalized To-Do list, a summary of your e-mails and any calendar events you have today.
Goowy has a built in game library that allows you to play a variety of Flash games
from Tetris to Presidential Knockout. If you're getting tired of answering e-mail, you
can switch over and game a little bit. Combine this with the fact that Goowy lets you
customize your look and feel (right down to the background image) and you've got
something that can hook common users and give them some ownership over their web
client.
As a Flash proponent, I love showing people Goowy because it uses Flash to perfect the user experience, which is what Flash is really all about. The Flash/AJAX interaction is the perfect example of the two technologies working together to create a better application. Using the Flash Platform allows a smaller company like Goowy to compete with applications like Gmail and 30boxes because a well-written Flash application can deliver a better user experience and it makes the application available to anyone regardless of OS or browser.
The IM feature
showcases another example of Flash/AJAX, through the use of AJAX to perform the Jabber
communication via an AJAX XMPP API. This feature required using cross-domain Flash/AJAX
communication, because the backend is hosted on different servers than those serving the
virtual desktop. Flash is responsible for all of the window management - and all of the
sending and receiving is done through the XMPP AJAX API.
Goowy is a great application precisely because it makes the best of Flash and the best of AJAX. Flash allows the Goowy team to build an application that performs the same way across platforms. It also gives them the ability to create rich drag-and-drop functionality as well as animation and visual cues that perfect the user experience. AJAX provides the text editing functionality as well as some of the backend server communication. The new features will only make Goowy more prominent in the virtual desktop space, and Flash is what separates them from the crowd.
Despite all of these great features, Goowy isn't sitting back just waiting for users to sign up. They're aggressively moving into competitors territory in order to create a one stop shop for anything you need. They're in the process of opening up a premium account for users who need more space and some additional features. They've also partnered with Box.net to provide online storage in the near future as well as jumping into the instant messenger space.
Ryan Stewart's blog is Digital Backcountry.
In this exclusive interview with ex-Excite founder and current JotSpot CEO Joe Kraus, I discuss with Joe the Web Office and his 'Embrace and Extend' theory.
"Our goal wasn't just to build Excel online. In fact I believe that Excel will be 'Excel Online'. Microsoft isn't dumb and they get this revolution about 'software as a service' much more than they got the Internet revolution. They're getting it much more quickly. So we believe where Tracker is headed is not only to embrace the capabilities of Excel - you've got to do that. But you've also got to extend it beyond what Excel is currently envisioned as today, in order to provide lasting value. Because otherwise I think you're going to get your lunch eaten, over time as Microsoft rolls in."
Developing a mashup can be
a lot of fun and it's usually low cost, because you're using (semi) open tools and data.
Forget fun though for a minute - is there a business in mashups? There are obvious
benefits for the data providers, for example both Google and craigslist benefit from
increased traffic to their sites. In most cases that leads to increased revenue as well.
But what's in it for the mashup developer, apart from publicity and prestige?
Findory developer Greg Linden listed some problems with mashups as a business on his blog near the end of 2005. He noted that mashups have no service guarantees, there are usually limits on the queries of APIs and limits on commercial use of the APIs, mashups can be numbingly slow, and there are no barriers to entry.
Although Greg concluded that "there is no business model for mashups", in fact there are a number of ways in which mashup developers can monetize their products. The most obvious is advertising.
Simplyhired.com is a 'vertical search for jobs' mashup, getting data from job boards, company pages, online classifieds, and other data sources. It also mashes in Google Maps, LinkedIn and PayScale.com. When a user searches for a job - say, a chef position in Seattle - they not only get a list of available chef jobs in Seattle, but on the right of the results are "sponsored listings"
I assume SimplyHired has agreements with the data owners, in which they licence access to the data for commercial means (if anyone can confirm that, please do in the comments). In any case I expect SimplyHired is earning a tidy sum with onsite advertising, because the results are highly contextual and job-seekers would probably be tempted by "send your resume now" ads.
Another potential business
model for mashups is lead generation and/or affiliate programs. Adam Trachtenberg, a
developer from eBay, developed a mashup called Dude, Where's My Used Car? (previously
known as 'eBay Motors & Google Maps'). It is a mashup of data from eBay Motors
listings and - you guessed it - Google Maps, using the APIs of those two companies. What
it does is enable users to find vehicles for sale in a location near them. The data in
this mash-up is not stored on the host's server, unlike with Housing Maps for example, but is served up in real
time.
Explaining his mashup at the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference, Adam said it gave the user experiences they wouldn't normally get on eBay - primarily the visual mapping experience. But crucially the mashup still does a lot of things users can do on the eBay website, for example adding a watchlist onto their eBay profile.
There is also an eBay affiliate program, which is a possible source of revenue for Adam in the future. As of writing, he hasn't implemented the affiliate feature - noting in his To Do list that he needs to add Affiliate link tracking and more information on eBay Developers and Affiliate Programs.
How would the affiliate program work? Well this mashup essentially creates lead generations for eBay, because all results are directed to the eBay Motors website for details on purchasing the vehicle. It's similar to how HousingMaps directs users to craigslist to complete their transaction. Except that eBay actually has an affiliate program, which would allow Adam to earn a kind of 'lead generation' fee each time a user clicks through to eBay Motors and completes a transaction.
As mashups mature, we will probably see more examples of 'transactional' mashups - i.e. full-fledged web applications in which users can not only view (read) mashed up data, but do transactions with that data within the mashup.
Taking the eBay Motors example above, what if users could actually complete the purchase of a car from within the mashup itself - instead of being directed to the eBay website. The value would remain the same for eBay, who get the same cut of the action. Indeed they may find purchases increase, because the user can do everything from the one place (the mashup site). It would almost certainly mean more value for the mashup, because users would be able to do more things on the mashup site - which gives more monetization opportunities (e.g. advertising).
In an August 2005 blog post Technology VC Peter Rip speculated that advertising networks such as Google and Yahoo/Overture will eventually create "settlement network models" to enable transactional mashups. While he was talking specifically about advertising networks, there is no reason why this model can't be extended to web applications such as eBay Motors. The elements of a settlement network model would initially be:
"…bundling (1) contracts to police gaming and (2) payment settlement systems to enable the shared value model…"
Enabling transactions in mashups extends to enterprise applications too. In January 2006 Phil Wainewright wrote about a company called NetSuite, a provider of CRM software. NetSuite stores transactional data, such as orders and stock levels, which according to CEO Zach Nelson "makes it a natural choice for creating composite applications - or mashups, as the Web x.0 generation has it - with other services."
Other possible business models for mashups include:
None of these business models I've outlined here has yet been fully proven. But then it can fairly be said that business models for mashups in general are still being explored and there are no easy monetization answers yet.
Flickr pics: The first one is by ancawonka, from the Yahoo! party at eTech 06. The second Flickr pic is by Dave McClure, from the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference session on mashups (which I attended). Pictured are eBay's Adam Trachtenberg, Yahoo's Jeffrey McManus and Google/HousingMap's Paul Rademacher.
Niall Kennedy is on a roll, having this week published an informative series of posts on the RSS platform and the 'state of the aggregator':
I don't really have anything to add, being busy in the middle of other work right now. But I wanted to at least point to Niall's posts, because it's 'must read' material for anybody interested in RSS and microcontent aggregation. As he summarized in the State of the aggregator post:
"We have only just begun to explore the full possibilities of current feed technologies. Rich media enclosures, related content definitions, and well-defined author data open up new possibilities for user interaction and content discoverability. I believe most future uses of syndication technology will occur behind the scenes as a transport layer opening up a common XML parsing format to multiple applications and specialized uses. We've only just begun to change the world of publishing, customization, and personal empowerment."
Go check it out... also Dare Obasanjo summarized a recent ETech presentation on the same themes.
Flickr pic by JoshB
Is it just me, or does the list of winners announced for the 2006 Bloggies (the blogging oscars) bear a striking resemblance to the last 5-6 years? Slashdot, Boing Boing, Blogger, etc. Where are all the '2.0' sites, like TechCrunch, Scripting News, Digg? Anyway, there was one shining light: Darren Rowse's Problogger got an award - for Best Web Development Weblog. I'm not sure Darren would consider himself a web dev blogger, but still -- congrats Darren!
Update: Explaining myself more... I guess my beef is that there are a whole bunch of blogs that have popped up over the last couple of years that weren't even nominated. When the nominations for 2006 Bloggies came out, I was dismayed to see that same old list of names. I agree that the likes of Slashdot and BoingBoing are quality blogs/sites, but how many times can you give an Oscar to Steven Spielberg over Steven Soderbergh?
- The "Real" SXSW (it seems
that live blogging is beside the
point at an SXSW... I say that after fruitless searches tonight for the winners of
the awards -- Technorati and 9rules won apparently, but that's all I know officer...)
- Star of Startup.com Resurfaces (I enjoyed that movie... ex GovWorks Kaleil Isaza Tuzman has a new company called JumpTV - "The world's online television network")
- G'day World - The 2Web Crew Inaugural Edition (listen to 3 aussies define Web 2.0 and one-up each other with entrepreneurial tales of 2.0 excess - complete with rap music 'beeps' to censor Ben... now, when does The Artist Formally Known As Mac Daddy 2.0 get invited into this exclusive club?)
- Google Is Selling Books (The Goog enabling authors to sell online access to their books)
- MySpace Messenger on the Way (Pete has screenshots)
- Brand Strategy in a Web 2.0 World ("There is so much potential for social tools and technologies to address so many of these needs - the needs for Esteem, Connection, Self-Actualization, Cognition, Control.")
- Hungry Media Companies Find a Meager Menu of Web Sites to Buy (media co's looking "to find ways of reaching the younger audience that is spending more and more time online, in increasingly engaged social activities.")
- Online/offline the way of the future (Phil says: "Whoever solves the online/offline puzzle is sitting on a bonanza because this stuff is tough." -- if that's the case then Microsoft is leading the charge with Vista...)
- Interview with head of MIT's Media Lab (interesting talk about "the societal business model")
Flickr pic by Laughing Squid
-
Google/Writely
points to online/offline future (Phil Sim is putting out some excellent
analysis these days, especially on the topic of Web Office. In this post he
convincingly makes the case for an online/offline amalgam Office.)
- Directory of New Web Office Technology (Rod Boothby has started a fantastic resource here...)
- Instructables (Interesting new app: "Instructables is a step-by-step collaboration system that helps you record and share your projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more." hat-tip Alexander Hutton, who sent me this)
- Why Apple Needs the Web 2.0 Revolution (revolution, schmevolution... just open up your data more Apple, support open standards and keep pumping out the great products!)
- What’s the difference between RedirectThis and Live Clipboard? (read this post from Marc Canter if you really want to grok Ray Ozzie's clipboard functionality)
- Avril Lavigne is Digging Structured Blogging (Ben Barren groks structured blogging big time!)
- Structured Blogging in the enterprise (Jonathan says the key payoff of structured blogging in an enterprise context is easing "responsibility transition")
- Screenshots of Microsoft Office 2007 user interface (shown at at the CeBIT conference in Germany)
- Windows Live Search review (my epic ZDNet review of Windows Live, from last night...)
- Guarding The Gates: Web 2.0 Barriers To Entry (Mike Rundle makes it his mission to protect us from useless Web 2.0 apps... nice analysis, although note the equally good response from 43Things' Josh Peterson in the comments)
- Personal Bee, yet another Web 2.0 news site (you can almost hear the Sigh in SiliconBeat's voice... a Personal Bee person pops up in the comments and tries to up the mood a bit: "Hey Matt! Thanks for being interested in the Bee.")
Flickr pic by ekai
