faberNovel Consulting has released a research paper on social networks. The paper is an excellent theoretical overview of social networks and the trends in this important market. I particularly liked the following two slides, showing the types of social networks and how they're positioned. Interesting that in terms of identity, Facebook and MySpace are at opposite ends of the spectrum - Facebook is viewed as "real identity", whereas MySpace is "fanntasized identity"! The whole set of slides is below, via Slideshare.
When Definr calls itself an "incredibly fast dictionary," they're not kidding. Definr is a single page, simple-as-possible dictionary lookup tool that delivers results to queries almost instantly (without reloading the page) and suggests words as you type. According to the site, the average lookup time is 14ms and even stayed fast when it was slammed by Digg traffic last weekend. And their server status page said that while I was on the site just now, the average lookup time was under 1ms -- now that's fast.
The Ruby on Rails-powered site works by caching at least 10,000 definitions in memory (as I write this, that number stands at about 25,000 -- it fluctuates based on load), so that results are delivered nearly instantly. The word completion algorithm, meanwhile, searches about 200,000 words. So to keep that speedy, Definr uses a C module written for Ruby and runs it on its own server. The result, once the Ruby layer is factored in, is that Definr can do 10,000 completions per second without catching its breath.
Billboard magazine has done some fine sleuthing and turned up a number of developments in the works that may push the digital download world over the edge towards DRM-free MP3s. Walmart is reportedly pressuring the major record labels to allow it to sell their music online in MP3 format and now sources are telling Billboard that Amazon and Pepsi will team up to give away 1 billion MP3s for free in 2008, starting with a Superbowl kick off in February.
Amazon launched its DRM free MP3 music download service in September. We said it rocked then and I at least stand by that opinion today. Estimates at the time were that AmazonMP3 had about 2 million songs available - that number could increase substantially as labels feel the pressure of news like today's.
Unfortunately, of course there's a gimmick in the 1 billion song promotion - you'll have to buy 5 Pepsi products to get 5 codes for each MP3. According to a great summary of the news at PaidContent, a similar Pepsi promotion for iTunes that aimed to give away 100 million songs in 2004 only saw 5 million people participate. These are different days, though, and DRM + excessive soda consumption = free music is far less compelling than a straight path from soda to tunes, I suppose. If they were serious about it they could just as easily offer one song for one soda - but the economics wouldn't work out. Rumor has it that Amazon wants to pay the labels only 40 cents for each song they give away, as opposed to the current industry standard of 70 cents.
Whatever. The point is, by Superbowl time, thanks to online outlets like Amazon and Walmart, consumer expectation of a DRM-free experience in music may be a whole lot more mainstream than it is today.
Portland, Oregon's JanRain, leaders in the OpenID movement, put on a PR push this week to promote what they say is the imminent approval of OpenID 2.0's final draft. Specifically, they say that they expect the final signatures to be penned on Monday at the upcoming Internet Identity Workshop.
General consensus is that it's the finalization of 2.0 that many big players have been waiting on. Remember when Digg said they would support OpenID, for example? In theory, this is what they and many others are waiting on.
Here's how I explain OpenID. Once you register an OpenID with any of a number of vendors (like JanRain's MyOpenID.com) then you can login with it anywhere that supports OpenID login. You can also use your existing accounts from a growing number of services as an OpenID login, like AIM, Bloglines, WordPress, etc.
What's the value for the user?
Those are some of the high level benefits, I believe. I'm excited about OpenID, I want it to proliferate and any time I find a new service that supports it - I am happy. For more detailed and informed enthusiasm, check out Sean Ammirati's post here on Read/WriteWeb yesterday. If you're interested in core critiques of OpenID, check out Wendy Boswell's excellent post on the subject at Lifehacker.
Perhaps in response to the campaign by MoveOn, perhaps just because they have always tweaked new features in the weeks following their launch, Facebook announced last night changes to its much-maligned (in the press) Beacon advertising system. According to a statement, participation in Beacon, while still controlled site-to-site, is now explicitly opt-in -- ignoring a Beacon notification will no longer be taken as passive acceptance to publish stories to your news feed. Users will have to explicitly tell the system they are okay with the information being passed to their profile before any info is posted.
MoveOn is calling this a victory, even though the system still operates site-by-site, and Facebook has said there will be no global opt-out, which we pointed out was apparently in an earlier, pre-release version of the system, and which MoveOn later picked up on.
As we suggested last week, and as VentureBeat also intimated, the size of the reaction from Facebook users seemed overblown -- i.e., the tech media and blogosophere echo chamber was more upset by Beacon than the majority of Facebook users. That matters little, though, since better privacy controls for users is a win for them whether they care to have them or not. We can't help but think, however, that MoveOn has actually missed the important issue.
Google announced tonight that the new Blogger (nicknamed 'Blogger in Draft') will support OpenID-based commenting. Essentially it means that users of OpenID-enabled services - such as LiveJournal, WordPress and TypeKey - can comment on any Blogger blog using their accounts from those sites, rather than with Blogger/Google accounts.
This is another small but significant step on the way to an open identity system on the Web, something that we here at Read/WriteWeb have been promoting. Incidentally you may be wondering if we will 'eat our own dogfood' and implement OpenID on this blog -- it is in the plan for our big re-design, which is coming very soon!
Thanks David Recordon for the heads up.
The Google Reader team announced tonight that the wildly popular online feed reader now recommends additional feeds to users based on our subscription lists, web browsing history and "more."
It's a very big day for one reason - simple recommendation is the low hanging fruit of data mining. May knowledge workers rejoice. I love information, I love discovering new high-value sources and the signal-to-noise ratio in a good recommendation engine can be a real competitive advantage over those who don't have access to one. I want to see the era of data get started and I want to see it get started right.
That said, I'm not feeling the love here. First, Google Reader seems stuck at 20 recommendations. It's got 1565 of my RSS subscriptions, thousands of Gmail messages (32k unread ones, in fact), several Google Custom Search Egnines, my GCal life history, search history and more I'm sure - all tied to my Google Account and all it can give me is 20 new sources? I've asked others and they aren't seeing any more. 20 looks like the limit and that's just silly. There is a world of recommended feeds that Google could suggest based on what it knows about me and what do I get? 20 feeds? (And how many of us just got told we should subscribe to Ross Mayfield's blog? It's your lucky day, Ross, I think a lot of us did.)
How about some other Google Readers whose shared items might be of interest to me? How about some cool custom search engines I might like, or iGoogle widgets or public Google calendars that might suit my interests?
How about some standards-based profiling, using what's emerging as the leading standard - APML - so I can be treated with the respect I deserve after all the use of Google services I've engaged in, instead of being expected to wonder at the marvelous black box that gave me 20 recommendations and no access to my own aggregate data that those recommendations were derived from? How about some of that, Google - that's what Newsgator and Bloglines are both moving towards. Everyone from OAuth to OpenID likes to say they smelled a fart about Google considering support for their protocol, but here the product has come to market and where's the communication about our Social reading being Open? I'm not seeing it.
Earlier this week Alex Iskold wrote that there is no money for bloggers in the long tail, even if there is money from aggregating the long tail.
There are many different motivations for blogging and some do not involve money. Some people have a cause they are passionate about - they want to help change the world and a blog is a marvellous way to get attention for that cause. Others don’t even want to change the world or get noticed, they are just passionate about something and enjoy writing about it - attention is a by-product.
These bloggers may have Adsense ads and Amazon affiliate links. Who wants to turn away “no effort” money, however small? Just don’t judge them by their revenue, it is a by-product.
The bloggers who don’t have either a financial motivation or a passion, tend to move to social networks and Twitter-type microblogging models.
The bloggers who are financially motivated break down into two broad types:
1. Unchained journalists and early bloggers turned aspiring media mogul - think Mike Arrington, Om Malik, Arriana Huffington, Henry Blodget, Jason Calacanis and of course our own Richard MacManus. It is such a great business for those that make it; so many more will be tempted to try. The barriers to entry are much more than they were for the innovators in the early days, but they are still lower than most businesses and new spaces are constantly emerging. So the blogosphere will always be full of blogs with minimal revenues and big ambitions, just like we have lots of start-up technology companies with minimal revenues and big ambitions.
2. Blogging for Attention that translates into other revenue. This is simply the open source model applied to writing. Why does a software engineer spend a lot of time writing code that they give away as open source? There are certainly some who do it for non-financial reasons; they just love writing code or they want to kick an evil empire in the shins. However this assumes a day job or a rich uncle- because the huge open source industry would not sustain on this basis otherwise.
Each night this week while making dinner, I've listened to a different podcast interview with a semantic technology professional. It's been a fascinating experience and the man I have to think for the education is Dr. Paul Miller, technology evangelist for semantic web platform vendor Talis. Miller is producing an informative, enjoyable and prolific series of hour-long conversations with some people whose work is simply amazing.
Semantic web tools are no longer trapped in the lab, after years of research they are becoming products and entering the public market. There is semantic technology work underway at Skype, Joost and the BBC, just to name a few brand names. Last month we called Twine possibly the first mainstream semantic web app.
I think of it like this: Once our software is capable of deriving semantic meaning from web pages it looks at for us - then there's a whole lot of work that will already be done, allowing our human, creative minds to save time and reach new heights.
Semantic technology is a subject of great interest to many of our readers here and elsewhere; we're proud that our post from yesterday highlighting 10 semantic companies to watch (including Miller's Talis) hit the front page of Digg this morning, taking this look into the future to an even larger audience.
I didn't know Richard MacManus was writing that post last night, but coincidentally I was already working on this interview with Dr. Miller. I'm very thankful that he took the time to help us dive deeper into the topic.
Marshall Kirkpatrick: What's the elevator pitch on what the semantic web is and what promise it holds?
Dr. Paul Miller: I hope it's quite a tall building we're riding up in this elevator, as the Semantic Web offers a wide range of opportunities moving forward. Talis Platform Advisory Group member Mills Davis of Project 10X is about to release his 'Semantic Wave 2008' report, and that does a great job of illustrating just how broad the potential for semantic technologies could be.
Reaching right back to that famous Scientific American article in 2001, there's been a tendency to paint a grand vision for The Semantic Web that encompasses a plethora of devices calling upon powerful reasoning and data mining capabilities to deliver a seamless, intelligent and unobtrusive end-to-end service to the end user. That vision is an interesting one, but still some way off.
Recently launched Ask500People is an interesting new polling experiment that endeavors to ask questions of 500 people around the world and report the results in real-time. Ask500People is not a polling widget that you can use to run questions on your site (though they have formed partnerships with some high traffic sites to occasionally run polls), but rather it is a way for people to gain access to a large crowd to ask pressing questions.
The site works by first soliciting questions from users, which are voted on Digg-style. If a question gets enough votes in 24 hours, it is added to the queue and eventually asked. When a question is asked, users can vote on site or via a polling widget that anyone can embed on their blog or social networking profile (assuming it supports JavaScript-based widgets), and the results are reported in real-time on a continuously updated Google Maps mashup. After the question is complete (after 500 people have answered it), the site pauses to catch its breath for a few minutes, then moves on to the next question. It's very addicting to watch answers unfold from around the globe, and to participate in debates in the comments section of the site.
