Compete (a R/WW sponsor) has released data that shows MySpace and Yahoo are the top websites in terms of average time spent on them by users. The data is for US users only. Here are the figures from Compete, expressed as % of total time spent online in the US in Dec 06:
Source: Compete
The good old long tail is in the house here, with 20 domains making up 39% of all the time spent online by US consumers. Another noteworthy figure is that only 2.1% of time was spent on Google.com (includes all sub-domains). But then Google is not - yet - a portal type service, unlike Yahoo which actively aims to keep users on their properties. This will probably change over time though because, as Rich Skrenta pointed out in his awesome essay, Google is poised to effectively take over the Internet. Or are they? See R/WW's point/counterpoint discussion for more on that theory.
Red Swoosh is a P2P desktop client which appears to
compete against the BitTorrent client. It's a very promising technology in
a Web world increasingly filled with video and other large multimedia files. Red Swoosh
is a desktop client (Windows only) that enables users to download and stream files from
each other, rather than from webservers. It works like this: you signup to the service, then when you have a large file that you want to publish on your website, you "swoosh" the
link by adding http://edn.redswoosh.net to the front of the URL; then when a user
clicks on a swooshed link, they are prompted to install the Red Swoosh client if he/she
has not previously done so. Red Swoosh uses http and not a specific p2p protocol like bittorrent.
Red Swoosh claims to offer the most efficient P2P file-sharing system on the internet. One of the investors behind the company is Mark Cuban, who recently wrote a long post about why BitTorrent is doomed (via TorrentFreak). His point was that the bittorrent protocol is actually no more efficient in terms of bandwidth than the client-server setup. Incidentally Cuban doesn't mention his affiliation with Red Swoosh in that post (he may've done so before, I'm not sure). But Cuban's post is clearly aimed at pumping up Red Swoosh over BitTorrent, albeit indirectly, so a disclosure would've been in order.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Lately Amazon has been
introducing a raft of 'web 2.0' features to its e-commerce website. In this post we
explore how Amazon has implemented tagging, Ajax, blogs and wikis - and ask whether it's
made much difference to the user experience, and to the bottom line. In previous posts,
we've discussed Amazon's bold and visionary Web Services Strategy -
which is creating many success
stories. But this post is not about Amazon's new business, it is about the
continuous innovation of their core e-commerce business.
Amazon continues to refine its web site and roll out gems that no one else has. In our post on recommendation engines, we discussed how it combines sophisticated personal, social and item-based recommendation technologies to drive the user to transaction. Here is a stacked view of some of the features we now see on Amazon.com:
But these are just some of Amazon's recent innovations, many others are popping up. In this post we're going to explore some more new features that we've found.
Disclosure: Zoho is a sponsor of R/WW.
Late last week, Web Office
provider Zoho and online storage company Omnidrive announced a partnership,
allowing users to edit a Zoho office document and save directly into Omnidrive. Also,
both Omnidrive and Zoho released APIs. The news
has already been covered in-depth elsewhere - e.g.
TechCrunch and Zoli's Blog. As
Zoli Erdos pointed out in his post, the partnership is a useful step forward in seamless
on-and-offline computing.
The other thing of interest is how both companies are working on data standards for web apps and storage. Omnidrive is positioning itself as a central data provider for not just Zoho, but over time for other web applications too. As Omnidrive CEO Nik Cubrilovic told me in an email:
IBM has just released a new
product called Many Eyes, a
"shared visualization and discovery" service. We talked about the usefulness or otherwise
of 3D graphics on the Web earlier this week (and most people agree that 3D is becoming
increasingly relevant), so this is I suppose another rich way to present data and
content on the Web. The aim of Many Eyes, according to the press
release, is to "explore different visual representations of large amounts of data and
share it with others to help them collectively make better sense of the information."
Essentially Many Eyes is a mashup machine for visualizing data! A tour of the site is offered here. Users can upload their own datasets, and/or work with existing datasets on the site.
There are a lot of great options to visualize the datasets, as outlined on this page. As an example, check out this visualization of McDonalds calories data:
Written by Gang Lu and edited by Richard MacManus
There
are many so-called Chinese YouTubes fighting it out on the Chinese web2.0
battleground, but one that caught our attention is Mojiti.com,
launched in November 2006. What makes Mojiti special in this market is that it
offers users a fresh experience: videos are not just available to watch and
share, you
can annotate them too! In other words, with Mojiti you can add text and graphics
to existing videos. In this post we review Mojiti and also tell you about a few new
features which haven't yet been released: a Media Center plugin, Flash
Spots, and SubRip/SubViewer.
With Mojiti, you can tell your own stories inside online videos. You can add text, hyperlinks, shapes, thought and speech bubbles, images and more - anywhere on the video screen. You can narrate your own video, subtitle videos with any language, or just comment on any scene. Mojiti's technology works by adding an overlay on top of video from all major video sharing websites (such as YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video and more). It also works on all major online video formats (Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime). Users annotate on this overlay and Mojiti synchronizes their annotations to the underlying video. Since each annotation is linked to a specific moment, users can now search inside the video and even jump to specific scenes, which makes it much easier to find out the video, or parts of it, that you're really interested with.
And of course, the personalized videos are also for sharing. Mojiti gives you different options to share your video creation - such as emailing, embedding, or even watching on your Media Center PC (using its new Media Center plug-in).
We spoke to Eric Feng, the founder of Mojiti.com. He has a few years experience in Microsoft's Seattle headquarters and he has also been a lecturer teaching on entrepreneurship at one of the best universities in China, Tsignhua University. Eric told us that unlike most Chinese startups, Mojiti.com is targeting the international market by offering an English version since launch. After only 3 months of operation, Mojiti has videos with subtitles in nearly 20 languages and it was also mentioned as a representative of web 2.0 startups in China by BusinessWeek.
Nevermind Mobile Web 2.0, you've got to admire Irishman Pat Phelan's 2 recent mobile services: AllFreeCalls.net and now Roam4Free. The former is a complicated workaround that makes it possible for USA residents to call an Iowa-based phone number and from there make free international calls. Unfortunately I can't take advantage of this, as I'm not a US resident. But it's a brilliant workaround, even if the way it was set up is difficult to comprehend. I loved Mike Arrington's conclusion: "If anyone has read Catch 22 - this makes about as much sense as Milo’s scheme where he bought eggs for 7 cents and sold them at a profit for 5 cents." One of my all-time favorite books -- hmmm, perhaps we can call this Mobile 22? :-)
Not content with AllFreeCalls.net, Pat Phelan has now come up with another mobile Web hack. This one is called Roam4Free and it enables travelers to buy cheap roaming access on their mobile phones. This is done via the purchase of a Roam4Free SIM card, which enables users to receive calls for free in over 65 countries and make calls for "up to 90% discount on standard mobile rates". You can use this in over 115 countries, claims the website. What's more, it works "on most mobile phones and virtually any network across the globe." A Roam4free SIM costs €20, which includes €5 of calling credit.
The one thing Roam4Free appears to lack currently is a US connection, but according to Shel Israel "Pat vows that the service will expand to include the US and other countries over the next few months."
I wonder what is next on Pat's To Do list - breaking down the walled gardens of Telco Mobile Web content perhaps? :-) Via Web 2.0 Ireland.
Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus
When we did a poll
asking what search approach stands the best chance of beating Google, personalized search
came out tops with 22%. Collarity was the company we used as an example of such a service,
so we wanted to find out more about it. Last week, I had the chance to meet Collarity
founder Levy Cohen and his work-mates in Palo Alto and get some insight about their
2-year old, 15 person, angel funded company. We also managed to get some exclusive
screenshots of the as yet unreleased Collarity Discovery, which you'll find at the
bottom of this post.
Firstly a quick overview of Collarity. It's described as "community based search technology that automatically tailors each search to the specific interests of the individual." Let's explain this with an example. When we search, do our queries always return relevant results? Let's say you do a search on "execution". If you're a financial type of person, "execution" might refer to the management of a company. If you're a programmer you may mean running an application. Or perhaps you're looking for information on Saddam!
In search, putting social and personal variables into the equation is one way to improve results. Everyone should not get the same results; your results should be personalized. Also, searching on specific websites should return results that are influenced by the site's community. This is what Collarity is aiming to do. Collarity uses Yahoo in the background as its underlying search engine, but their patented features are:
In Chennai, India, a DEMO-like event called Proto.in was held this week to showcase 30 new technology companies. As of now there is no information on the official blog about the presenting companies, but organizer Vijay Anand sent me a list of the companies along with descriptions. The event wasn't just for web 2.0 type companies - as with DEMO, there were also Telecoms, consumer hardware and other product types on show. I've summarized the Web products below.
A blogger named Gokul has an excellent overview of the proceedings. Gokul noted that he didn't see any disruptive products, but he said companies like Unleash Networks, Taazza and Wizdom.in "showed the potential to create disruptive products." He also wrote that "quite a few number of companies had social networking woven around their products."
Music discovery and social
networking site MyStrands has undergone a
re-vamp. It includes better integration between the online, mobile and physical worlds; excellent new mobile features including a mobile Web portal and personalized radio station; new
navigation on the site; and a personal version of partyStrands, their service for party organizers,
bars, clubs and DJs.
MyStrands is based on
"behavior-based recommendation technologies" and their services allow people to organize and
discover digital music and other media, through Internet connected devices (computers,
mobile devices, etc). With the re-vamp, the mobile side of MyStrands has been
significantly strengthened, with new support for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices,
along with a new mobile Web portal to help users network and discover music. There are
also a couple of new Flash-built services - music charts and radio - plus a tie-in with
Napster.
In detail, the new features being released today in MyStrands are:
