15
years ago today, Tim
Berners-Lee publicly released his WWW project onto the Internet. According to Wikipedia:
"On August 6, 1991, he [TBL] posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet."
As the Wikipedia states, this was the point when hypertext was married to the Internet.
The original alt.hypertext posting is still available, thanks to Google Groups:
"The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system."
Also note that Berners-Lee made available the first Web browser - "prototype (very alpha test) simple line mode browser" - and the first hypertext editor. For, you know, reading and writing on the Web ;-)
Via Alex and Justin and Jeremy, who points to a BBC timeline.
With the
launch of Microsoft's blogging and social networking platform, Windows Live Spaces (formally MSN Spaces), there has
been an increase in interest around gadgets - i.e. mini web apps. People can add gadgets
into their Spaces site and Microsoft is starting to promote this feature heavily. Jay
Fluegel of Microsoft has written
a post to encourage developers to create gadgets for the Live Spaces platform. He
wrote:
"...a big part of joining the Windows Live family today is support for web gadgets written by anyone including YOU! Thanks to the great work done on Gadgets to date, you can now write a gadget that works both in Live.com (personalized portal) and Spaces (online expression/identity). And, it only takes one person adding it to their space for your gadget to become popular -- visitors to that space can choose "Add to your space" or "Add to Live.com" right from the header of the gadget, then visitors to that space can add to their spaces, and it's off to the races!"
Gadgets are a way for external
developers to get their apps onto the large Windows Live "family" of services - which drives usage and increases mindshare. This is what I call a real ecosystem at
work, because Windows Live Spaces (and live.com, the personalized start page) is a
platform that external developers can leverage to their advantage. It basically gives
small developers access to a mass market, so it makes sense to put your app on there and
potentially gain mass exposure. The same argument applies to doing a gadget/widget for
MySpace or Google's platform, although MySpace doesn't really make it easy to leverage
their platform.
I also like the guidelines Fluegel gives to potential Spaces Live gadget developers: make gadgets customizable, make them "reflective of the author's personality" [i.e. the Spaces user], and make sure it fits lots of different designs and themes. That old Web maxim: develop for the user first.
Details on developing gadgets for Live can be found at the Windows Live Dev site. Note that I've had some feedback from developers that Live gadgets are a lot harder to code than Google's gadgets. When I wrote about Google's gadget platform, Coogy developer Robert Yeager left this comment:
"In developing gadgets for Cooqy, our eBay search engine, we were able to have a Google gadget ready in about 5 minutes, but the Microsoft Live.com version took 5 hours! Oh, and the Microsoft version of our gadget doesn't work on Firefox!"
Microsoft's Mike Torres (from the Live Spaces team) replied in my comments:
"We're working pretty hard to have a consistent Live.com, Spaces, Windows Vista development story for mini applications. And of course, reducing the barrier to adoption by making it easier."
For more info on Live Spaces gadgets, the LiveSide blog has a podcast which explores the gadgets more with Jay Fluegel.
Finally, if you're a Live Spaces user, here are instructions to start adding gadgets to your page.
Next in my series on international web apps is Korea. I have Chang W. Kim, who runs a blog called Web 2.0 Asia, to thank for providing me with all the info.
Korea is in many ways ahead of the curve in terms of the Internet. It has the highest household penetration of broadband internet in the world and some highly innovative Web applications (e.g. the social network Cyworld).
Chang says that in Korea a lot of web 2.0 initiatives are done by Internet bigcos - Naver, Daum, Nate.com (operated by SK Communications, which also owns Cyworld), Yahoo Korea, etc. However he says Google Korea isn't such a big threat in this market and it is outperformed by local search company Naver.
In a post on his blog, Change described the reasons why:
"I think the success of Naver search has been largely helped by the fact that Korea is a very homogeneous society where people often have very common and shared interests. I mean, every society has its memes and zeitgeist, but I think Korea is a little more special. 48+ million people packed in a small country that's equipped with dead efficient broadband and mobile networks. That's an interesting (and even a bit dangerous) combination."
Chang said that the Korean bigcos all seem to be providing generic Web/media 2.0 service offerings - blogs, photo management tools, online video sites (a la Youtube), social networking, RSS aggregators, etc. Very similar to what's popular in the Western world.
But Chang reckons of all the bigco service offerings, the most impressive is definitely Cyworld. It provides the same social networking values as Myspace, but it did so 5 years before. Cyworld had been criticized as a "closed service" in the past, but now they are opening up. Chang has written about Cyworld's new initiatives, which are little known outside of Korea, on his blog [ref 1 and 2].
Some of the best features are:
In terms of stats, Cyworld is totally dominant. According to Wikipedia:
"...as much as 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s[1] and 25 percent of the total population of South Korea[2] are registered users of Cyworld, and as of September 2005, daily unique visitors are about 20 million."
Cyworld also recently opened for business in the US - and promptly got a harsh review from Techcrunch's Marshall Kirkpatrick. Chang commented over on his blog that he thinks Cyworld US may not take off, but that the parent company has deep pockets and is putting in a lot of effort for version 2 of the US product - codenamed C2. It does seem to me that Cyworld is a culturally unique product, which may prevent it from succeeding in the US (and hence the UK, Aussie, etc) market.
But from what I understand of
it, Cyworld is extremely innovative and (unlike Marshall) I actually do think avatars
will have a big part to play in future social networks in the West. Marshall was very
dismissive of avatars in his TC review. He said in a comment: "I can’t speak for
anyone in South Korea, but I think these avatars are silly. I think the whole thing is
massively nuts." Nice one Marshall.
Korea has a great list of startups and some of them are making a name for themselves overseas - e.g. OhMyNews and ThinkFree.
Chang also said there are many online gaming services - "Korea is a hotbed of online games companies." He thinks that online games (MMORPGs) might be the best example there of a) software as a service and b) online money-making business models.
If there is a possible market opportunity, Chang thinks it's a Facebook-like college social networking site. But then, everyone uses Cyworld anyway!
Finally, if you want to keep up with the Web industry in Korea - as well as subscribing to Chang's blog, also check out my friend Taewoo Danny Kim's blog and Channy Yun's KoreaCrunch. They're all in english and well worth tracking.
Mitch
Kapor, famous for co-founding Lotus
1-2-3 in the 80's and more recently the ambitious Personal Info Manager product Chandler (which is taking an awful long time to
build - it's still in alpha after 3-4 years) has a new startup project. That's Mitch
Kapor in the center of the photo btw, next to Bill Gates. From his post:
"I’m incubating a new startup, which is pretty exciting because we’re
working on innovation at the intersection of search and social production.
Think of new services which are a cross between Google and the Wikipedia. So far
it’s just been myself and my co-founder, Todd Agulnick. We have built an
incredibly nifty proof-of-concept system built around tens of millions of
bookmarks. Early feedback from private demos has been very positive. Next up,
we’re building a small technical team to get to a beta as quickly as possible and
are looking for a couple of top-notch developers who want to help create a great
startup. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, check the
Craigslist postings - search for Foxmarks or by my name."
(emphasis mine)
One craigslist job listing states:
"Foxmarks, LLC is developing a novel, user-driven approach to finding the information that matters on the Web. Founded by industry pioneer Mitch Kapor (Lotus, EFF, Mozilla, Open Source Applications Foundation, Second Life), it combines approaches from search engines, social bookmarking services, and Wikipedia-style content collaboration."
(emphasis mine)
In another job listing, the Foxmarks "next-generation system" is described as "composed of a variety of components, including a three-tiered web application as well as downloadable browser components."
A third job listing talks about a "Foxmarks extension for Firefox, and an AJAX-y front-end for Foxmarks' next-generation web application."
This sounds very much like the Search 2.0 products that Ezzy Ebrahim and I recently profiled here on Read/WriteWeb. Check out part 1 and part 2 of those articles for a good overview of the 'social search' industry.
It's interesting to see Mitch Kapor doing another startup. But does this mean he's still involved with Chandler? Also, given that the name of the new startup is Foxmarks - is it related to Firefox (he's chairman of the Mozilla Foundation)?
Update: There is already a project called Foxmarks, which is "an extension for Firefox that synchronizes bookmarks across multiple machines". Perhaps that is being expanded and spun off into a full-fledged next-generation search app.
Update 2: Mitch Kapor has an update post and also John Battelle has more. Mitch says "...the extension is separate form the web site we are going to build." Also he is still involved in Chandler development.
Tom Wolfe could write a novel about this...or at least a short story.
Cartoon by Oliver Widder, via Nick Carr's comments.
Jason Calacanis also notes: "I think we have three of the top 20 DIGG users (and two from the top 10!). We also hired from Newsvine, delicious, and Reddit top users."
Finally here's a more serious graphic, that shows just how long the Digg tail is:
Source: Diggtrends
Widgets (aka gadgets, modules) are mini web apps that you can plug in to a
webpage or site such as MySpace, or a personalized start page like Netvibes or live.com.
Widgets are becoming more and more important on the Web, so I thought I'd spend a few
posts looking more closely at them.
Let's start with Google widgets, which they used to call modules but are now calling gadgets (curiously, a case where Google has copied Microsoft). Google offers two types of gadgets:
1) Desktop plug-ins - for the Google Desktop. Much like Yahoo's Konfabulator widget platform and Apple Dashboard.
2) Personalized Homepage gadgets. Google has gradually increased the number of widgets in their directory, but there are third party sites that offer a great selection too - e.g. here and here.
Google gadgets can also run in Google Pages, their webpage-editing tool.
To develop gadgets for the Google platform, use the Google Gadgets API - which Google claims is "so easy to use that you can develop your first gadget in 5 minutes". They also say it's easy to turn existing web content into a gadget.
The main difference between Google's and Microsoft's gadgets is that Google takes a web-centric approach, whereas Microsoft gadgets will utilize both desktop and web. I'll look more closely at Microsoft's gadgets in my next widgets post.
The Diggtrends website has just done some stats relating to the Netscape owner's offer to buy out digg's top users. They found that the top 10 users contributed 1792 of the frontpage stories - i.e. 29.8%. The top 100 contributed 3324 stories, i.e. 55.28%. Nearly 30% of frontpage stories contributed by just 10 people is a pretty amazing stat - talk about the A-List!
What's more, there are 444,809 registered users and out of these only 2287 contributed one or more story for the period of 6/19/2006 to 7/30/2006. The implication being that relatively few Digg users a) contribute at all; and b) even fewer regularly get onto the frontpage.
More details on my ZDNet blog and on Diggtrends.com when they release the full stats.
This has turned into a very enjoyable series, profiling web products being built all over the world! The latest list is for Poland, courtesy of Sebastian Kwiecien - who runs a blog at web20.pl. Sebastian sent me a very detailed list of Polish web apps, including information about an intriguing social network integrated into Coca-Cola's Polish website. More on that in a moment.
First off, Poland has a lot of Digg clones! wykop.pl gets the most traffic and Sebastian says it's probably the most popular web 2.0 site in Poland.
The other digg clones are: linkologia.pl, pr.org.pl, etapia.pl, linkr.pl.
http://cocacola.pl/UdaSie/ is a 43things.com clone prepared for Coca-Cola, which launched recently. It's a fully-featured social network integrated into Coca-Cola's Polish website. Now this one caught my eye, because to my knowledge no major commercial website in the US has integrated anything like 43things into its site.
It's a very well designed website, using the Coca-Cola global web imagery. Here's the frontpage - on the left (green) you have "what do you want to achieve" (actually "what you desire" or in polish "czego pragniesz"); and on the right (yellow) is "what you've achieved" (in polish "co ci sie juz udalo"). So you can share your goals and achievements with the community...
Here's the lower half of the homepage, a giant tag cloud:
The next screenshot shows a post. Sebastian says when you post information about what you've achieved or want to achieve, there is a comments box below the achievement and also community avatars on the right.
This is very very cool! Does anyone know of any major commercial websites elsewhere in the world that integrate a social network like this?
Another interesting one is filmweb.pl, a popular community website for movie fans. Sebastian told me it recently had a Netscape-like transformation from old-style film portal to more 2.0 features (like blogs, user-contributed content features and so on).
Finally here are other categories of sites in the Polish web 2.0 world:
- fotosik.pl - photo sharing place (there's also slajd.net coming)
- biznes.net, goldenline.pl, ogniwo.net - business networking sites like linkedin.com
- grono.net, spinacz.pl - teenager social networking sites (grono.net claims to have 800,000 users!)
- blox.pl, bloog.pl, blog.pl - polish blogging sites (the most important are those connected with top polish portals)
- wiadomosci24.pl, ithink.pl - citizen journalism sites
- fotosik.pl, patrz.pl - photo/video hosting/sharing site (also streemo.pl is coming soon - it is currently in alpha)
- pytamy.pl - an askeet.com implementation (an answers site)
- wrocek.pl, miejsce.info - google maps mashups
- podaj.net - book exchange website
- 10przykazan.com, blogfrog.pl - blog aggregators (there are such functionalities in trendomierz.pl too)
Sebastian told me that Polish web20 sites are mainly clones and that there's few that are really unique. But he says the web 2.0 market is starting to grow in Poland and he hopes to see some more original sites soon. In June there was a conference called "Welcome Web 2.0 to Poland", so the interest and passion is obviously there.
I want to thank Sebastian for all the info he gave me for this post! I learned a lot from this discussion.
Once again, I'd love to get similar info about other international markets - so contact me [readwriteweb AT gmail.com] if you'd like to contribute your country's top web apps. I'd particularly like to know more about the Asian markets (China, Japan, Korea, etc).
See also: Top German web apps; Top Dutch web apps.
Nisan Gabbay of Silicon Valley VC firm Sierra Ventures has started up an interesting new blog called Startup Review, which aims to profile Web startups from a business angle. Here's how he put it in an email to me:
"Startup Review will feature weekly, in-depth case studies on successful Internet start-ups. The companies profiled will have achieved either: a) significant exits, b) large revenue, and/or c) strong Internet brands."
His first profile is of craigslist, which he claims could be worth around $2.4 billion - if Craig Newmark wanted to sell (there are no indications he does). Nisan notes:
"Assuming they could make $200M in revenue at a 40% net margin, and applying an Ebay-type EBITDA multiple, that would place the value of the company at ~$2.4B. I have no doubt that if Craigslist were to sell, it could command more than a $1B purchase price as is today, and probably significantly more (Note: Craig is a better man than I!)
eBay would be the most logical acquirer, given that they already own a 25% stake through a rather dubious stock sale by a former trusted employee of Craig’s."
There's been a bit of talk about Facebook.com and YouTube asking for over a billion to be acquired, so by that measuring stick craigslist would certainly be at that level of value too.
