Last week, I attended the Internet Identity Workshop. As an attendee with less exposure to the user centric identity, an early session provided an great overview of how the pieces fit together. This is a regular topic at the IIW and I'm sure the community will continue collaborating online at the Identity Commons wiki page. However, the image below captures the map as discussed during our session.
The BBC reports that EMI Group has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Terra Firma for £3.2bn including debt, which is around US$6.3B. The deal isn't confirmed yet, because it is subject to shareholder approval. As BBC noted, EMI's sales have been in decline of late - the company reported a £260m loss in the past year. But interesting to note that EMI chairman John Gildersleeve listed EMI's digital and online strategy as a major reason to sell, because the cash injection will "accelerate the development of its digital and online strategy to fully exploit this long-term growth opportunity".
You'll recall that EMI announced a compelling DRM-free offering in early April, a move backed by Apple. I have met a few EMI people at past Web 2.0 conferences and I know they have a great deal of interest in web-enabling their music catalog. So EMI's moves in the digital and online arenas are positive. However I should also note that Coldplay's latest CD, X&Y, has been the only CD I haven't been able to put into my iTunes collection recently! And Coldplay are one of EMI's biggest acts (under their Capitol Records label). So there's still room for improvement ;-)
USAToday has an article today discussing the recent trend for startups to sell themselves on eBay. USAToday starts off with a joke:
"What do Beanie Babies, Pez Dispensers and troubled Internet companies have in common? They're all for sale on eBay."
eBay has become known as a quick and easy way to sell your startup, should you need to. Techcrunch has a nice phrase for this - the "eBay exit". USAToday notes that "more than 10 dot-coms" have recently put themselves up for auction on eBay. The paper says that Search engine DigForIt.com sold for $25,400 this month and SynapseLife, an online calendar and organizational site which Techcrunch wrote about, sold for $60,000 (it opened at $50k). Also Read/WriteWeb covered the eBay sale of Talkr in February this year, which sold for $50k all up. There are many more instances of ebay exits we could list. And there are other places where startups can sell themselves too, like SitePoint Marketplace (Josh Catone noted in January that Blogster went that route).
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal today, social networking site Facebook will announce later this week that it is opening inward (my term, not theirs) and allowing "other companies [to] provide their services on special pages within its popular Web site."
"For instance, an online retailer could build a service in Facebook to let people recommend music or books to their friends, based on the relationships they've already established on the site. Or a media company could let groups of users share news articles with each other on a page inside Facebook."
Last week Amazon clamped down on Zlio and told the service that they could no longer promote Amazon products in the United States. Amazon informed the site of the decision with a generic email and so far Zlio has been unable to find out the reason behind it. Zlio President and CEO Jeremie Berrebi informed users this morning via an email. (Techcrunch Forums has a copy of the email.)
Zlio is an online service that lets people create their own store, and populate it with products from a number of merchants. Zlio automatically figures out which of their over 25 merchant partners have the best price. They then share affiliate revenue with their users. (See their example store.)
Phil Wainewright has a compelling article on his ZDNet blog, arguing that the recent acquisitions of online advertising companies by the bigcos (Google, Microsoft, et al) is evidence that the current era of the Web is in a bubble. He notes:
"Today, we're starting to understand that the Internet is going to fundamentally alter the way businesses promote their wares to prospective customers. So the entire online ad business is getting snapped up at (literally) any price. Even though the buyers have no clue what it is they're trying to buy. All they know is that if they don't buy it, someone else will.
What they're really trying to buy into is the webification of advertising."
Phil rightly notes that before the Web came along, advertising was a totally disconnected activity. But now, the Web enables personalization of marketing messages and the ability to track the success of that. The companies that are being snapped up - DoubleClick, aQuantive and others - have built online advertising solutions that have achieved a certain amount of network effects. But Phil argues that they won't scale as much as the "over-inflated" prices that Google, Microsoft et al paid for them indicate.
I'm pleased to announce the first network blog to launch under the Read/WriteWeb banner - last100. We have more network blogs launching soon, all with the aim of leveraging Read/WriteWeb's reputation for quality news and analysis about Web technology.
last100 will provide news, reviews and industry analysis on products and services related to the digital lifestyle, with a particular emphasis on how the Internet is being used throughout the home. The site is edited by Steve O'Hear, a London-based consultant and journalist. Steve also writes a blog for ZDNet called The Social Web and wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary In Search of the Valley.
Where does the name last100 come from? It refers to what industry insiders call the "last 100 feet" problem, which is the gap between the typical home's computer and its living-room TV set. While the digital living room is a primary focus of last100, the site will also cover other areas of the digital lifestyle (VoIP, portable media, mobile web etc).
Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting Read/WriteWeb and helping us grow. Keep an eye out for some news on that front later tonight...
Wild Apricot offers Web-based Membership Management Software for clubs, associations and other non-profits.
Zoho is a leading Web Office suite, which continues to add to and enhance its impressive product range. Check out Zoho Wikis, CRM and Projects for 3 examples.
Userplane is a provider of communication software for online communities. Recently they released Webmessenger 2, a new offering that integrates IM, user presence and buddy list.
Compete is more than just a statistics service to rival Alexa; Compete also provides search, analytics, shopping deals, and a personalized homepage.
DesktopOnDemand is a free online desktop that lets you access your desktop remotely. DOD comes with 1GB of free disk space, with extra space available for a fee.
Adicate has developed an online advertising solution called The Hourly Advertising System, which lightens the work of both advertisers and publishers without increasing costs.
Eurekster is a search engine that learns from the community's search behavior, so it gets better the more you use it.
Also check out Read/WriteWeb's Job Board (in partnership with VentureBeat and Alarm:Clock and run by JobThread).
If you would like to enquire about sponsoring Read/WriteWeb and/or our network blogs (the first one will be launched later tonight), please email the editor for a Media Kit.
As noted in the Weekly Wrapup, one of the 2 big news announcements this past week was Google rolling out "Universal Search", where they integrate search results from across their properties (news, video, etc) into the main search. (the other big news was Microsoft acquiring aQuantive). Read/WriteWeb has two analysis pieces on the Google news - Josh Catone compared Universal Search to other next-generation sandbox search initiatives, and Alex Iskold drilled down into the impact on vertical search engines. Both pieces are well worth reading, but in this post I want to pose the question that Alex asked: will vertical search engines survive this latest move by Google?
The R/WW Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by:
Another busy week of Web Tech. And you may've noticed a new daily voice on Read/WriteWeb - Josh Catone is now a lead writer here, so welcome aboard Josh! OK, here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email (see form in the sidebar on the website).
There were two big pieces of news this week. The first was a subtle, but major, upgrade to the Google search interface. Called Universal Search, it unifies search results across Google's properties, so that web search, news, blogs, images, videos, etc are all integrated into the main search results. Josh Catone reviewed how this compares to other bigco 'next-generation search' sites - Yahoo! Alpha, Ask X, Microsoft Imagine Live and Google's Own test sandbox, Searchmash. Alex Iskold then analyzed how this news impacts the many vertical search engines competing against Google. His somewhat troubling verdict is that the vertical search space may be finished!
