Editor: This is a guest post by Rogelio Bernal Andreo, founder of CoRank - a service that lets you create you own custom social network. Rogelio has a bee in his bonnet about the term 'digg clone', probably not helped by the fact Read/WriteWeb called CoRank a "Create Your Own Digg" site in May when it re-launched :-) But Rogelio is adamant that the term 'digg clone' should be buried, so we've given him the floor to present his argument. Tell us what you think in the comments.
There are a lot of people on the Net who don't know what Digg is. But for those who do, there's a term just as popular
as Digg: the Digg
clone.
Has anyone ever heard Google being referred as an "Altavista clone"? What about Yahoo Mail or GMail being mentioned as a "Hotmail-like site"? I've never seen anyone talking about MySpace as a "Friendster clone", and definitely Wordpress.com would never be called a Blogger-like site.
There's no denying that live online video is hot right now. Sites like Stickam, Ustream, Justin.tv, and Kyte allow users to broadcast themselves to the world 24/7. On Monday, I had a chance to chat with Josh Harris, the CEO of Operator11, a new entry into the growing field of live online video companies and he told me why he thinks his service pushes the medium in completely new directions.
Operator11, which launched about two months ago, touts itself as an online television network that offers anyone the chance to host their own live television show. Where Operator11 differs from its competitors is that its software allows viewers to actually become guests on the show and participate in more than just text or voice chat.
The old joke was that your start-up needed to be no more than one tank of gas away from Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley. Now VCs have to set up shop in Israel, India and other far away places that will do serious damage to their carbon footprint.
This is a significant change. Innovation is going global. Like everything else online, the power is going to the edge. What is fascinating is how this is creating clusters of innovation around specific competencies. This is free trade economics 101. It is just happening so fast.
Take India as an example. You cannot just look at Bangalore. That was the original center, but now you have Gurgaon (near Delhi, more call center/BPO related, GE led the way), Hyderabad (more Bio/Pharma focus), Mumbai (aka Bombay, entertainment i.e. Bollywood) and Chennai (aka Madras, typesetting/publishing focus). In the UK there is a pocket of innovation in Warwickshire around automotive engineering, where most Formula One engines are built, that leads to wild innovation such as the Eco Speedster. Think Israel for security, Korea for Wireless, Taiwan for high tech manufacturing design, New Zealand for the best writing on Web 2.0 :-)
The idea of a Yahoo!-eBay merger has been around for a long time. Most recently, the merger rumors were revived by Tim Poulus over at Seeking Alpha last June. Before that it was Jim Cramer on CNBC back in May. It's been about a month since the last round of speculation, so maybe it's time to revive it. I don't have any inside information, but of all the Yahoo! merger/acquisition talk (Microsoft, New Corp./MySpace swap, etc.), I think eBay makes the most sense.
This would not be an acquisition, but neither would it really be a merger of equals. eBay has the bigger market cap (~$44B to ~$31B) -- the gap between the two has grown over the past month -- and the more recognizable brand (2007 Interbrand rankings PDF). The fact that eBay would control so much more of the new company might be unattractive for Yahoo! shareholders, but the merger would still be beneficial to both companies, in my view.
This week's Read/WriteWeb Files is investigating the 100 Days For Yahoo. In a recent earnings conference call, new Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said that "the next 100 days or so" will be spent mapping out Yahoo’s strategic plan. So we thought we'd help with the strategic analysis.
Yesterday I listed 10 top Web properties that Yahoo owns. But the real question is: how to tie all of Yahoo's properties together and utilize them better? Josh Catone wrote that the solution is to make My Yahoo into an open platform, a la Facebook or iGoogle. Josh explained what can be done to create a more useful and meaningful Yahoo! for users, one that can keep people on the site and drive them to use their search engine. His theory:
Yahoo! needs to realize that the web platform is getting more and more important. Google already has, and is building a platform around their start page, iGoogle, by encouraging developers to build "gadgets" specifically for it. For Yahoo!, a platform can unify their services -- which right now are scattered -- and add utility to their page that will keep users there long enough to conduct searches. Yahoo! controls some of the hottest and most useful properties on the web, but has not figured out how to tie them together. They've started to bring some of their acquisitions under the single Yahoo! sign-on umbrella, but that still doesn't bring my del.icio.us links, my Flickr photos and my fantasy sports team management to one central location.
The good news for Yahoo! is that they already have a property just waiting to be turned into a full fledged platform: My Yahoo!
