We're piloting a new feature on Read/WriteWeb, called Point/Counterpoint. It's where two authors (John Milan and Alex Iskold in this case) argue two sides of an intriguing question. We'd also like you, the reader, to contribute YOUR thoughts in the comments section. Who do you agree with the most - John or Alex - and why?
John Milan: Can Google take over the internet? By many indications, they have already taken over the access point: search. Just like stepping on the gas in your car, Google search is making the Internet go for most of the 1.1 billion internet users in the world. However, unlike automotive manufacturers, Google has found a way to get revenue - every time you look at a billboard on the information superhighway. As such, Google's network effect is monetizing the world's largest network.
Alex Iskold: Google has certainly got a huge head start in the search/ad game and there is no challenger on the horizon. But that does not mean Google can take over and own the entire Internet. It is no longer the Microsoft/PC era where customers have no choice. Today's environment is far more agile, allowing customers to be highly selective and receive different services from different sites. Just because Google search is great and Gmail is good, does not mean that people will use Froogle.
The Web is a huge creative playground and far wider than the PC world, so Google is not going to be the best in all major market segments.
Written by Jitendra Gupta of KarmaWeb and edited by Richard MacManus
Social Media researcher
danah boyd recently
wrote in her blog about throwaway identities in MySpace:
"Sara created a MySpace using an email address that she made specifically for that purpose. After vacation, she couldn't remember her MySpace password (or her email password). She created a new MySpace page using a new throwaway email address. When I asked her if she was irritated that she had to do this after investing time in the previous profile, she said, "nah.. I had too many Friends that I didn't know anyways."
danah notes that teens often start new accounts on a whim - in IM, email, website logins. The reasons for heavy use of throwaway identities by teenagers are explained by danah in a separate paper, where she posits that in real life "teens have increasingly less access to public space". However online, "youth can build the environments that support youth socialization".
So multiple throwaway identities is another manifestation of teenagers experimenting with new looks, new music etc. As these teenagers mature, I would imagine they will settle on a set of identities and focus on building a reputation around their chosen identities. Incidentally, another implication of throwaway identities is that we have to be more careful in evaluating the user stats for social media sites that cater to teenagers.
The big news today is that
IBM has released an enterprise social networking suite, called Lotus Connections. The
NY Times explains:
"Lotus Connections has five components — activities, communities, dogear (a bookmarking system), profiles and blogs — aimed at helping experts within a company connect and build new relationships based on their individual needs."
The NY Times article notes that IBM has long been interested in social networking, for example it has "several projects under way within Second Life".
Marc Canter thinks IBM's entrance into social networking software validates his own product, PeopleAggregator. IBM's corporate competitor, Microsoft, is a bit more defensive. The Redmond company has issued a press release, with the title 'Microsoft Makes It Easier for Organizations to Transition to Its Unified Communications and Collaboration Platform'. The press release goes on to helpfully (and wordily) suggest how existing IBM customers might migrate over to Microsoft:
3D interfaces have been around since the Web began - and more than one dot com fell by the wayside partly because of an over-reaching 3D interface (cough, boo.com). Indeed as we noted in December, virtual shopping malls are still alive and kicking. But is 3D of any use on the Web, or is it just another cool novelty feature?
3D does have some real world use and there are 3D software companies emerging that are proving very profitable. As Glen (comment #4) pointed out in our December post, 3D has its place in enabling in-depth views of products. In fact a New Zealand company is making waves doing just that. Right Hemisphere sells Product Graphics Management software, that allows people to view products in either 2D or 3D. This has many uses, from marketing to education to product documentation. Also Right Hemisphere technology is used in Adobe Acrobat, for 3D technical documents.
Example of Right Hemisphere 3D usage
3D is undoubtedly proving useful and popular with Second Life and other virtual worlds. Also Robb (comment #8) in our December post pointed to the MOJI Intelligent Messenger - which features 3D artificial life forms, within an Instant Messenger that combines AI and computational linguistics. With game playing or social communications, 3D could prove to be a winning feature - because if done right it enhances the user experience. 3D photos and photo effects also seems to be a nice value add.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Metacritic, now a property of CNET, has been around
since before the last bubble burst. The site has a unique system for aggregating and
combining the reviews of movies, books, music and video games. This site is very
different from today's popular review sites, which thrive on communities and social
contribution. Metacritic's claim to fame is different, because it is an aggregator and
does not require any input from the user. It simply collects relevant content, organizes
it well and then adds a unique scoring system that turns metacritic into an instant
recommendation engine.
Even though metacritic is not new and is not based based on the latest trends, one look at its Alexa chart is enough to realize that the company is delivering a valuable service.
This is because we all love to find good information without exerting much (search) effort. Particularly if the information is quantitative, meaningful and of good quality, it's hard to resist. And that's exactly what metacritic is doing.
A quick thank you to Read/WriteWeb's excellent sponsors, for supporting quality content on Web Technology. Thanks also to our fast growing community of readers - your comments and encouragement spur us along every day. If you're a fan of R/WW, you may like to sign up to our MyBlogLog community too.
R/WW's current sponsors are:
My personal thanks as well to the R/WW team of writers and guest contributers.
OK enough of the back-slapping, time to pump out more Web tech posts...
Another startup has bitten
the dust, RSS company Syndicate IQ has "ceased
operations" according to a notice on its
homepage. Syndicate IQ was a company that provided feed management, statistics and
adverts - similar to Feedburner. Syndicate IQ
launched in December 2004 and its goal was to "manage, measure, and monetize syndicated
content", according to the old homepage (found on the
Wayback Machine). The current shut-down notice on Syndicate IQ states:
"Syndicate IQ has ceased operations. If you would like to continue to get news, resources, analysis, reviews, and opinion on anything and everyting RSS/syndication, head on over to Syndication Gumption. The RSS feeds for Syndicate IQ are being redirected to the main feed for Syndication Gumption."
Stuart Watson, founder of Syndicate IQ, wrote more about the reasons for shutting down in a blog post. Despite the failure of Syndicate IQ, Watson insists the RSS market "is still very, very young and plenty of opportunities exist". He outlines some:
Occasional Read/WriteWeb guest writer Rudy De Waele has started up a Mobile 2.0 wiki. Rudy's intro:
"Following the response and feedback on "Understanding Mobile 2.0" article at Read/WriteWeb, I created this wiki space to start categorizing the so-called mobile 2.0 companies, the next generation mobile products and services coming to market."
This is an excellent idea, because as we noted last week with the Nokia N800 release, mobile Web has started 2007 with a hiss and a roar. And browsing through the initial list of categories on the wiki shows just how many sectors the Mobile 2.0 revolution will touch:
Lately I've received some odd emails from wiki vendors Wikia and MindTouch about the domain wiki.com. A brief history: wiki.com (the domain name) was bought last year by entrepreneur John Gotts for a staggering $2.86
Million. After purchasing it, Gotts partnered with MindTouch, a wiki vendor comprised of
ex-Microsoft employees. At the time the huge domain name price was justified as a natural
driver of traffic. From the August 2006 press release:
"With its easily identifiable name, thousands of people are visiting the site daily without the aid of a search tool, signaling increasing interest in the technology and the value of a domain that drives natural traffic."
Apparently 500 people signed up in the first five hours to wiki.com.
Then earlier this week a PR person from Wikia contacted me, saying there is a rumor that all wikis on wiki.com will be removed this week - and that Wikia intended to "rescue" those wiki.com customers. Wikia you may recall is the company co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Right now Wikia has a wiki page up saying that MindTouch is shutting down by January 25, 2007 (see Message from Mindtouch). Wikia's page currently reads:
Hitwise has released data that suggests Bloglines is still the clear leader in the RSS Reader stakes, with 3 times more US visits than its nearest web-based competitor Rojo. I don't think a lot can be gleaned from this data though, as it misses out desktop-based RSS Readers, start pages and a number of other types of RSS Readers. Also as Mike Arrington pointed out, Google Reader appears to be under-represented in Hitwise's stats. Indeed Google Reader is currently not being counted in Feedburner's stats and I agree with Mike that it is likely to be around the same level as Bloglines at this point. The non-reporting is a problem at Google's end and I understand Feedburner is doing its best to get Google to fix it.
There's no doubt that Google Reader has improved a lot since its initial release - and is now at the forefront of innovation in browser-based Readers. Likewise I am fond of a few of the desktop readers, for example the Windows-based FeedDemon impressed me in my tests last year and the Mac-based NetNewsWire always gets rave reviews. Also a lot of people now use the start pages, like Netvibes and Pageflakes, as RSS Readers. Not to mention email subscribers and browser integration (Firefox Live Bookmarks, IE7, Flock, etc).
