I missed the 'Decentralizing Data' session at Supernova unfortunately (still on NZ time and so slept through my alarm this morn!), but Dan Farber has the story about Yahoo Local's new support for microformats. I spoke briefly to Andy Baio afterwards, so I plan to write a more in-depth post later on this news. Here's Dan's coverage:
"In the quest to make the Web more structured, Yahoo Local now supports the hCalendar, hCard, and hReview microformats on almost all business listings, search results, events, and reviews, said Yahoo's Andy Baio (below) during a workshop on decentralizing data at Supernova. [...]"
Am now in the 'Engaged Markets' workshop at Supernova and will blog that soon.
Update: I wrote up some thoughts regarding the microformat news on my ZDNet blog, in a post entitled Yahoo and Microsoft support microformats - what chance Google?.
Paul Kedrosky points
to a new service called PostApp, which is a new
widgets syndication service currently in private beta. While the sign-up page doesn't go
into detail about what PostApp does, Fergus Burns from Nooked has an interesting
post on this subject:
"A new space is beginning to develop - widget marketing.
Led initially be desktop widget services such as konfabulator, we are now seeing tons of services supporting widgets/gadgets - especially in social media applications (typepad, wordpress, myspace, aimpages, netvibes, etc).
I've noted some recent startup activity specifically @ widgets - Snipperoo, PostApp, Tagworld, and a mobile widget venture from Nokia Labs, called Widsets.
All these startups are going to make "widget" placements in social media services easy - rather than the current "html/javascript" hacking - watch out for tons of innovation."
Note: Nooked is one of my clients.
I too have been tracking the growing importance of widgets, especially as it relates to the Personalized Start Pages space - Microsoft Live gadgets, Google's modules, Netvibes and Pageflakes, and of course Yahoo's konfabulator (although not yet integrated in a big way into MyYahoo). As Fergus notes, widgets are spreading into many areas now - into blogging platforms like Typepad and Wordpress, social networking systems like MySpace and AIMPages, etc. And now there's a whole new segment growing - which Fergus nicely labels "widget marketing".
This is all being driven by the increasing use of microcontent and web services in all kinds of web-based services - such as Windows Live, MySpace and Wordpress. I used to talk a lot about the Two-Way Web as it relates to webpages - that people have the ability to publish their own blogs, interact with e-commerce sites such as Amazon, etc. Nowadays it's all about The Two-Way Web App! You can interact and 'write' to any number of small web services-driven apps. And aggregation services such as Netvibes and Pageflakes can pack as many of these mini-apps onto one page as you care to add.
Snipperoo is another widget service to watch out
for. It's a service to create and manage widgets - Ivan Pope is behind it. Also check out
Zenrob's post
on MySpace's widget strategy, where he suggests that deploying more widgets may be the
key to MySpace's monetization.
There's no doubt about it - widgets are are fast-growing area of innovation and I expect to see more companies like PostApp and Snipperoo popping up to take advantage of this trend.
Today I arrived in San Francisco for two and a bit weeks of conferences and networking. This week I'm attending the Supernova conference, then it's Dave Winer's BloggerCon IV and finally Chris Pirillo's Gnomedex.
Marc Canter's company Broadband Mechanics, who I work part-time for, is releasing People Aggregator at Gnomedex. So all the BBM team is gathering for that. Also over the next couple of weeks I'll be talking up another project of mine, called Micro Media Corporation. It's a corporate blogging and podcasting program run by London-based The Rights Marketing Company, along with myself. More on that in an upcoming post, because we're looking for more blogging and/or podcasting contributers (and yes it pays!).
So it'll be a busy time. And of course I'm really looking forward to catching up with all my Silicon Valley buddies. As for Read/WriteWeb and my ZDNet blog, watch out for a lot of conference live-blogging and special interviews!
Digg CEO Jay Adelson took time out of his busy
schedule to email me some thoughts about Netscape's
new digg-inspired community news site. Jay's thoughts below, but first some context.
I've written two posts about the new Netscape site. In the Read/WriteWeb post
I had two main points:
1) I think introducing paid editors into a community site may end up being as problematic as the 'hive mind' that it aims to prevent - because it introduces potential bias and favoritism.
2) The prominence of internal links and editors influencing discussions with "commentaries", IMO deflects attention away from the actual articles - which leads me to think Netscape wants to keep people onsite, in order to expose them to more advertising (which there is a lot of on the new Netscape site). This of course is an old-style portal strategy.
I followed that up with a ZDNet post which suggested that the paid editors now hold the balance of power - and how appropriate is that for a community site? I also pointed out that because Netscape has released a working version of non-tech categories before Digg, that this could spell trouble for Digg as it attempts to expand beyond tech.
In his email to me, Digg CEO Jay Adelson questioned how active Netscape's users will be. He suggested that to achieve true interactivity, you need minimum intervention - i.e. no editors! He told me:
"A significant amount of our visitors are active (meaning they participate, not lurk). I'm curious how many interactive users Time Warner will have on their site. That was one of our greatest challenges, building that base.
Digg is extremely focused on transparency and absolutely no editors/intervention. We will never have a small group of people provide oversight."
Jay also questioned how scalable Netscape's site will be, with Netscape putting so much emphasis on manual editing:
"Another question I have is about scalability. We feel that there is a technical scale issue with user submissions, in that if you have thousands, or tens of thousands, of submissions a day, how does a few editors parse them? Ultimately, we need the users to both digg and bury stories, provide the editorial, in order to keep up with the real-time world of Internet-based content."
Jay ends by effectively announcing that it's Game On!
"Finally, we are very proud of the fact that there have been thousands of clones of digg. Keep them coming! (Time Warner is the first billion dollar company to do it, but bring it on. Surprised they went for the look and feel too, though.)
Stay tuned for v3! (Should be fun.)"
My thanks to Jay Adelson for sending me his thoughts. I'm going to email Netscape CEO Jason Calacanis to see if he wants to respond, because I'm sure he'll have some good points in return.
NB: I'm publishing this post to both Read/WriteWeb and ZDNet, because I can't decide on which site it belongs more! But no they're not clones of each other :-)
Techcrunch has the scoop on the new Netscape portal beta, which bears a striking resemblance to Digg. Mike thinks it's a "digg killer" and in terms of pure numbers it may well be. Netscape gets a surprising 811 million monthly page views, which digg is at around 200 M per month. But despite the Digg-ish features, the new Netscape portal is still trying to keep users onsite and also gives them less control over what content ranks highly.
The Tech frontpage. Note the top link - about the "hazards" of
online collectivism.
Some points to consider:
1) The headline link is to the comments page on the Netscape site, while the actual originator of the content gets the secondary links (the 'via' link and the 'Visit the site' link, which opens up in a new window). The editors also sometimes provide commentary on the articles ("Netscape Anchor Commentary"), which tends to deflect attention away from the article itself. These are subtle things, but it's obvious the objective is to keep Netscape users inside the Netscape site. This of course exposes users to the multitude of ads on Netscape, rather than send them away to the actual sources of the content. Seems a bit portal-ish to me.
2) While users votes count in determining what gets displayed, Netscape editors (aka "anchors") choose what gets to the top of the front pages. Will they favor mainstream publications? Will they not promote anti-AOL stories? Will they... etc etc. You can see how this might open up any number of claims of bias.
3) Generally speaking I'm not convinced about the relative merits of editors/anchors over the more democratic (but admittedly problematic at times) 'wisdom of the crowd'. I noticed this comment from Jason Calacanis on the 'Hazards' story:
"[...] what we're doing with Netscape is exactly what he's looking for: an editorial voice to balance the hive mind. Our Anchors are the balance to the limitations of the crowd--and vica versa!"
(emphasis mine)
While I've been as vocal as anyone about the mob mentality occasionally shown at digg - I wonder whether the opposite approach of using editors to determine ranking and lead discussions is really the answer for so-called community sites. It's inherently less democratic, even if it ends up being more effective. I guess time will tell, but at the very least it's an interesting experiment. I can't see any current Digg users defecting, but perhaps Digg should hurry up with those new features it's been promising!
It's a shame to hear from Bob
Wyman that PubSub is in trouble and in big danger
of shutting its doors. Bob says that "internal political issues" are behind PubSub's
demise and implies that this has deflected resources from actually improving the product.
It's not my place to comment on the politics, but I do think PubSub has dropped the ball
on the product front.
PubSub once held so much promise... It was the first real 'future search' product to gain traction and it was an innovator in the area of custom RSS feeds. The somewhat clumsy term I've used for that is Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds and here's what I said about it back in January 2005:
"Tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results - using, you guessed it, RSS! Google will probably be the front-runner (see this video for a hint to the future - thanks twdanny for the reminder), PubSub will be another, current players like Bloglines and Technorati will be in amongst it, and who knows who else."
As well, I thought PubSub was one of the
leading companies in filtering feeds - the
next layer up from aggregation. But unfortunately for all their promise, PubSub never
quite lived up to it and services like Google News and Technorati have taken the
limelight instead. Technorati has had its technical issues (which remain to this day),
but one thing they've always done very well is the UI. Which is where I feel
PubSub has let itself down, because their UI has always been a bit awkward and geeky.
Technorati has also proven itself to be outstanding at PR and drumming up publicity about
itself. PubSub never really got that knack, despite Bob and others best efforts to talk
up its technology. If anything PubSub has been too tech-centric, whereas Technorati
reaches out to 'the people' (with its tags PR blitz and the 'A-List Person's Favorite
Blogs' feature, for example).
However it's precisely because PubSub has always been very forward-thinking about web technology that made me like it and thus makes me sad about its demise. PubSub was into topic mapping circa 2004, when few other mainstream RSS companies were. PubSub was also one of the instigators of the Structured Blogging open source project. Indeed I worked with them - via Broadband Mechanics - on the recent website re-design (SB is a separate entity now, so isn't in danger of sinking with PubSub).
Their technology nous has always impressed me and at the end of 2004 they came very close to being named my Most Promising Web 2.0 Company of 2004. I gave that honor to Feedburner in the end, but here's what I said about PubSub (Dec 30, 2004):
"...PubSub has been building a technically very sound service mostly quietly in the background (but that's about to change in '05, by the looks of it)..."
That 'by the looks of it' pointed indirectly to PubSub's 2005 resolutions, which currently is a File Not Found page. That about sums up the situation, I'm afraid. Whereas Feedburner and other promising startups I mentioned at the end of 2004 (e.g. Bloglines, SixApart) have gone on to greater things, PubSub lost its way and the end looks imminent. I really hope they can somehow turn things around and get rid of the 'political' monkey on its back, because I know they have the smarts and the people to achieve success.
eBay, in collaboration with
JotSpot, has just released a new community wiki - making it almost certainly the
world's largest wiki platform for a commercial website (Wikipedia is bigger, but it's
non-commercial). eBay Wiki is described as "a collection of
fact-based articles written and maintained by eBay Community members" and is powered by
JotSpot's innovative wiki technology. I spoke to JotSpot co-founder and CEO Joe Kraus
about the new eBay wiki yesterday - his thoughts later in this post. But first an
overview of the product.
eBay Wiki is located at www.ebaywiki.com and the wiki topics are categorized and tagged. You must be logged in as an eBay member to edit a wiki page, which then presents you with an easy-to-use wysiwyg HTML editor. So no awful wiki syntax to learn!
Choosing topics/sub-topics and tags is very easy, as the following screenshot shows:
eBay Wiki also has article history and ratings, the editor's user details and seller/buyer ratings (i.e. their eBay reputation), RSS feeds and other easy-to-use social features.
So why did eBay choose to add a wiki? eBay has a buyer and seller community of more than 193 million members - a huge community that is thriving with conversations and activity. Their message boards get over 100,000 messages per week and eBay users are very knowledgeable on their topic niches. Having a Wiki on eBay will serve to refine and formalize the cream of the content in its user forums. It will also help eBay in the search engine rankings, as its user-generated content coffers will increase significantly over time!
In a Skype call, Joe Kraus
described eBay Wiki to me as "a kind of Wikipedia for eBay and about eBay". He said its
main focus is to give "tips and tricks on how to get the most out of eBay". The Wiki
will complement and build on the eBay forums, in that the wiki will be a "single point of
reference" on topics.
Joe sees eBay Wiki as another step towards wikis coming of age and becoming mainstream. I agree, the use of wikis from one of the Internet's biggest consumer companies may be vital to their uptake outside of tech and enterprise circles. Joe said eBay will promote the Wiki as part of their community hub and eBay CEO Meg Whitman is announcing it in her keynote address at the eBay Live! user conference in Las Vegas today.
Sampa is an interesting new homepage-builder product that
has just gone into beta. Like a lot of the products I'm interested in these days, it's
quite hard to explain what it is! Sampa founder Marcelo Calbucci, an ex-Microsoftie who is
still based in Redmond, calls it a "blog on steroids" - in other words, the next level up
from a blog platform like Typepad or blogger.com. Marcelo admits they're still trying to
define their market segment, but basically what he wants it to be is a platform for users
to create a whole range of different apps - blogs, newsgroups, pages, photo
albums, family tree, etc. If I had to slot it into a market segment, for now it'd be a blogging
service.
Example Sampa site, Marcelo's own website.
I get the sense that Marcelo wants it to be much more than a blogging service though - he even mentioned to me that it's a WebOS (a web-based development platform). This is where he may have issues, because right now the Sampa site is targeting non-programmers - consumers, families, small businesses. It wants to be "easy to maintain, affordable and customizable", but if you take a look at the admin interface (screenshot below) it looks a little forbidding for the casual user.
Another thing that Sampa could do is go the same route as the Microcontent Aggregators I profiled in earlier posts (43Things, Suprglu, Peoplefeeds, etc) - i.e. be a central place for bloggers to access their various types of content across the Web. Flickr photos, delicious links, etc. Maybe also include widgets and gadgets, like the Personalized Start Pages.
For a homepage-builder, it's a crowded market - because everybody from SixApart to siteKreator (to pick one from the econsultant list) is trying to create a unique product that will also appeal to mainstream users. It's a tall ask to sell a web platform to Joe and Jane Bloggs, so I wonder whether Sampa needs to either make their interface a whole lot more simple - or alternatively change tack and go for the early adopter market, more befitting its "blog on steroids" description.
So, it's an interesting app but it probably needs more refinement. It is a very early beta though and you can test it out yourself at https://sampa.com/sm/pplan.aspx.
The official FIFA World Cup website is run by and
co-branded with Yahoo. A
Washington Post story today highlights the interactive and multimedia features of the
site - including blogs, chat, and three- to five-minute video highlights for all of the
64 games. Also in lieu of live webcasts (not possible I presume because of TV rights),
the site offers something called "MatchCast" - which is described as "a kind of animated
telecast of the game that graphically displays players on the field, ball location, time
outs and live scores."
So the website is really a showcase of the latest in Yahoo's social Web technology - for a mass audience that is (in other words, expect a fair degree of conservatism).
Jorge Consuegra, general
manager of Yahoo's FIFA partnership, told Washington Post: "Creating a global community
around the biggest sporting event in the world -- that's the biggest step for this
site."
How they're creating this community is through the Yahoo product line - Flickr, 360, Answers, Desktop toolbar, chat, MyYahoo, etc. If anything, these community tools are scattered a bit haphazardly around what is a very large website. Not too many of the 'community' features are promoted on the homepage, which indicates that the site is still very much positioned as an information and World Cup news portal.
Yahoo technology is integrated throughout the site, including Flickr integration and promotion. A lot of the news and information on the site is pretty straight-forward and probably similar to what you would've seen on the 2002 official website. But it's comprehensive and that's the main thing. There's also the usual 'official site' suspects - polls, screensavers, shop, fantasy game, etc. If anything there are too many navigation options, as I had trouble finding things.
I did enjoy the Video Archive, which is an excellent way to waste a couple of hours in front of your PC! It's also great to see Fifa/Yahoo taking advantage of the broadband age and making historical World Cup footage available on the Web. In fact the Video section in general is fantastic and features a wide range of video content. Because the World Cup games are on in the wee hours of the morning my time, I'm particularly enjoying the Match highlights videos (btw it hasn't stopped me staying up far too late to watch the World Cup - hence my bleary eyes currently!).
The MatchCast feature is potentially the best feature, as it's a live stats/chat/graphics dashboard that runs while a game is in process live. Personally I'm not in the habit of using my computer while watching TV, but I can imagine MatchCast would be very useful in integrated TV/PC platforms - like Media Center for example. Perhaps a little ahead of its time for most of us right now, but if you're a very dedicated fan - then the opportunity to chat to other fans and check stats on your PC, while watching the TV for the game itself, might be a very useful thing.
I actually didn't see any evidence of blogs on the site navigation, but a search revealed that users can create a Yahoo 360° SuperFan Blog under the banner "The 12th Man". So that's why I couldn't find blogs on the menu - because it's cryptically labeled "The 12th Man"! Here's an example of a fan's blog - it's pretty much the basic Y! 360 experience.
Fan Photos is basically an invitation to use Flickr, which is good to see. I also noticed that Yahoo! Answers is being used for World Cup questions - and is promoted at the bottom of the homepage.
Overall, great use of video on the official site and MatchCast is a promising feature (I'll be interested to find out how well used it ends up being). Lots of Yahoo properties are integrated into the site, but to be honest I felt the community aspects were fairly conservative - IM, games, uploading photos, 360 blogs, etc. Blogging could've been made a lot more central to the experience, in terms of promoting it more and putting it high on the homepage. Also largely missing - enabling users to personalize their World Cup site and utilize interactive widgets/web services. So overall I'd rate the site a 7 out of 10, but there's room for improvement.
Open, freedom, dynamic, flexibility. Not words you'd
traditionally associate with AOL. But they're pushing on with their Open AIM platform, announcing more upgrades to it
today. The latest updates are:
- Support for AIM Bots
- Location-based services
- PC-to-PC voice calling
- Support for developers working on the Mac OS X, Linux, and Pocket PC platforms - or
with the Java language.
Together with the AIM Pages platform, which IMO is ahead of the curve in integrating external services into its social networking offering, this shows that AOL is adapting big time to the new rules of the Web.
Open AIM was launched in March and (according to the press release blurb) "empowers companies, communities and independent developers to build customized plugins, communications clients and mash-ups that access AOL's global instant messaging network." So basically AOL lets developers leverage its market-leading IM platform - which has 43 Million users according to AOL. And now they apparently have more than 45,000 developers working with the AIM Software Development Kit (SDK).
Seeing as IM is such a huge hit with the MySpace generation, it'll be interesting to see what people develop using Open AIM - and what mashups will evolve. The only way to find out is to open up, so AOL has to be given kudos for doing so. Of course, the fact that MySpace has IM too and the likes of Skype and Yahoo are big threats - doesn't hurt innovation in the IM space :-)
I need to investigate these AIM Bots some more, because they sound fascinating:
"AIM Bots are dedicated, opt-in Screen Names that help developers, marketers and individuals create new connections and establish strong bonds with contacts in the AIM community. In addition, AIM Bots can support audio calls, file transfers and picture sharing. For example, an AIM Bot could be created to let users send pictures or podcasts to their blogs.
AIM Bots respond automatically to instant messages (IMs) they receive and can maintain IM conversations with multiple users - reaching up to 10,000 people per day - before encountering limits.** To prevent IM spam, AIM Bots cannot initiate IMs without permission."
They also sound kind of dodgy, in terms of being bearers of spam and advertising. As a recent Slashdot article put it: AIM Bots: Useful or Spam? But still, I'm sure AIM Bots have their good uses!
disclaimer: I've done a tiny bit of work for AOL in the recent past, via Marc Canter's BBM. Just so you know.
