Love it or hate it, the social news site digg sure does have a passionate user base. This Monday night (February 25th) at 9pm EST/6pm PST, Digg is holding a virtual "Townhall webcast", in partnership with Ustream. In a recent blog post Digg founder Kevin Rose said that in the webcast "we’ll be talking about the latest happenings here at Digg and answer your questions". Which is corporate speak for 'we're trying to keep our users happy and ward off another revolt'. Lately top Digg users have been unhappy and some publishers (cough) are voicing concerns too.
Adding photos to your blog is one of the best ways to enhance your content and attract attention to your writings. The only problem is that finding quality photos to use can be difficult. Bloggers end up going with one of three options: stealing, buying, or using Creative Commons licensed photos. Now, that third option just got easier with the introduction of the Photo Dropper Wordpress plugin. This new plugin searches flickr for Creative Commons licensed photos for you to add to your Wordpress blog.
According to yesterday's article in the Guardian, the three largest social networks in the U.K., MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo, all experienced large drops in membership between December, 2007 and January, 2008. Is this one month of falling numbers a fluke or have the networks reached a plateau? Says, Alex Burmaster, Nielsen Online analyst, "One month of falling audiences doesn't spell the decline of Facebook or social networking. However, most of the leading social networks are less popular in the U.K. than they were a year ago."
This is the perspective of a “skeptical, later early adopter”; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don’t spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze.
I think Google Apps has reached that point. The significant advantage is collaboration.
Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare system - check out our description of Carol.com below. Also, in the longer term, we will see the Web being used in medical diagnosis and practice.
Somewhere, right now, it is night time, and somewhere, you can bet people are partying. It's on that premise that live-streaming web radio site Awdio is built. Awdio streams live feeds from club DJs around the world, with coverage on every continent except Africa and Antarctica and has full 24/7 coverage. The site also streams events from other venues, including bars, lounges, hotels, and concert halls.
We had a lot of great comments today, but the winner is from our post How Vulnerable is Google on Search?. The premise was that Google hasn't changed search in 7 or 8 years, so they are vulnerable to search innovators - like the companies profiled at AltSearchEngines. Gabe Morris agreed with the premise, but he argued that it has little to do with Google's lack of features. Well done Gabe, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget. Here is Gabe's full comment:
Open source giant Red Hat sent a Cease and Desist letter to the DataPortability.org group today, the group says, demanding the removal of the DP logo from the group's website.
Red Hat alleges that the infinity sign on the blue suitcase of DataPortability.org and the green and white infinity sign at the top of the site are "identical to the Fedora Infinity design logo owned by Red Hat."
Last May we asked the question, "are social bookmarking sites better at search than Google?" Though some readers questioned our specific methods, our conclusion was that "while social bookmarking and ranking sites don't make great search engines on their own, they offer a wealth of user-vetted data that could be used to augment search results in a positive way." Recently, Yahoo! began testing including del.icio.us data in search results. While it is unclear whether the del.icio.us data is affecting search rankings, the more important question is: would it even matter?
According to an AP news story that ran yesterday afternoon, the upcoming MySpace Music service is definitely happening. Based on reports from music executives, who spoke only under the condition of anonymity, News Corp. has approached the four major record labels to discuss the launch of a music service that would operate via the MySpace social networking site. The executives also confirmed earlier rumors about the nature of the services that would be offered - according to them, the service will offer free streaming music, mp3 downloads, and a subscription plan. Can we say iTunes killer?
