So far in 2007 we've seen some exceptional web app launches. From video to
micro-blogging, new startups have transformed the web landscape. So what defines a 'hot
launch'? Obviously, a great product is essential, but also the ability to generate
buzz.
So let's take a look at the startup launches that have packed the most powerful punch in '07. The selections below are in order of impact (number 1 having had the biggest). Our criteria? Mostly, huge user growth in a short period of time. But another important factor is getting maximum press and blogosphere exposure - i.e. there is a lot of buzz about these startups prior to launch, or shortly after. Note that these are 2007 launches - e.g. Twitter, an obvious candidate otherwise, launched late 2006. We also haven't counted big company product launches, such as the iPhone. Here then is our top 5:
A new project from the University of Oxford (UK), the University of Portsmouth (UK) and Johns Hopkins University (US) aims to harness the power of the human brain to identify and classify galaxies and stars. On the Galaxy Zoo website, users are asked to identify the objects in photographs as spiral or elliptical galaxies, the direction of rotation, or if the photo depicts a star or merger of galaxies. The site launched yesterday and says they have already had an "amazing response."
"The human brain is actually better than a computer at pattern recognition tasks like this. Whether you spend five minutes, fifteen minutes or five hours using the site your contribution will be invaluable," said Kevin Schawinski of Oxford University of the project.
Viewpoints.com has set its sights on being the "end
all" review site for people who like to read and write reviews. This niche probably
should have been filled by now, but mysteriously no one site has dominated this segment
of Web 2.0 - with the possible exception of Epinions. Viewpoints offers a platform for reading,
rating and writing reviews on everything from laptops to schools and more. In all,
Viewpoints has over 700 categories - which they claim is the most comprehensive "citizen
view" on the Web. There are substantial obstacles in developing a credible review community, but CEO Matt Moog told me that he believes Viewpoints' focus on reviewer
profiles will overcome the credibility hurdle with time.
Our poll this week asks: Which Web company impressed you the most over the first half of 2007? Mid-week, Facebook has a handy lead over Google. Facebook has 34% of the vote, with Google second on 27%. Apple is third with 15%, probably reflecting the recent iPhone launch. Note that we added Adobe and Mozilla after about 100 votes, so the others got a bit of a head start.
If you haven't yet voted, please participate in the poll below:
Our sister site last100 has started a 2-part series exploring Microsoft’s Internet TV strategy:
There may not be another company as well-positioned to take advantage of the growth in IPTV as Microsoft. Despite being primarily a software company, Microsoft has long had a passion for television. The company launched the 24-hour cable news channel MSNBC in July of 1996 in a joint venture with NBC. Just less than a year later, Microsoft purchased WebTV, one of the first products to marry television and the Internet. In 2000 they acquired Israel-based Peach Networks, a provider of technology for digital television. The late nineties also saw a number of television-related investments by Microsoft, in companies such as AT&T, @Home, Comcast, and Rogers.
While the 1990s were a period of heavy investment in television companies (including a number of acquisitions), the 2000s have so far been much more about Microsoft developing television-related technology. It is on the resulting products and services that we now focus our attention.
Everyone knows that widgets are the new black. They are cool, they are slick, they are playful.
Cool and fun is one thing, but business is another. We are seeing an increasing number of media companies
and publishers turning to widgets. But why? What is it that media giants expect from these microchunks
of their content?
Apparently a lot. Media companies see widgets as an important new method of reaching audiences both inside and outside their domains. It seems that widgets cover array of tasks ranging from brand propagation to instant transactions and customer tracking. In this post we will take a look at how web widgets have evolved from cool, viral toys of self-expression to important big media tools.
United Talent Agency, a Hollywood talent agency that represents big stars like Liv Tyler, Ben Stiller, Harrison Ford and the Coen Brothers, has teamed up with advertising agency Spot Runner to create 60Frames Entertainment. 60Frames will work with top on-screen talent and directors on the "financing, ad sales and syndication of professionally-produced online content." The company has raised $3.5 million in Series A financing.
Among the first professional producers to work with 60Frames will be sibling writer-director team Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou), who will serve on the company's creative advisory board as well as develop content. The CEO of the company is Brent Weinstein, who joined UTA in 2001 as an agent specializing in new media and has negotiated interactive deals for Jim Carrey and Johnny Depp, among others.
Twitter has been a runaway success
since the status message inspired web app launched about a year ago. Its rapid adoption,
ease of use and extensibility resulted in a lot of excited developers taking Twitter's
best bits and mixing them up to their own ends.
FranticIndustries and the Twitter Fan Wiki
together present a comprehensive list of Twitter mash-ups and extensions. But what to try
first? Here's our selection of the most interesting and practical Twitters apps.
There are a number of DIY social network services on the market, and in this post we'll take a look at 3 of them - Ning, vibEngine and PeopleAggregator. By DIY, we mean services that allow you to create a custom social network for any topic. These services can be either hosted or based on your own server. In many ways, these services represent the second generation of social networks, after Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. You could argue virtual worlds are 'next generation' too, but in any case custom social networks are certainly a step up from proprietary SNS like MySpace and Facebook.
Let's start with the most familiar such service, Ning. It's the most talked about and was founded by Marc
Andreessen of Netscape fame. Ning started out in a flurry of web
2.0 hype in October 2005 as a mashup builder tool, but the current incarnation of Ning is
styled as "Your Own Social Network for Anything". This Monday Ning announced a whopping
investment round of $44 Million. Andreessen noted in his blog that
Ning will be "substantially expanding our product plans -- we have a long list of
features and product capabilities we plan to add as fast as we possibly can". So the $44M
will allow them to "staff up" and pump out those new features, as well as scale for
expected growth.
That's a dramatic and possibly even sarcastic headline, but it was derived from a real question asked in our current post comparing indie blog platforms Six Apart and Automattic. Commenter jm wrote:
"the other vision is that blogging is dead vs myspace/facebook stuff. Where is the need for a individual expression tool when the whole business is moving to social? they were just pre-2.0..."
