Aggregate Knowledge, which operates a content discovery network under the brand name Pique, today announced a deal with BusinessWeek to deliver "user-driven content suggestions" on their website. It's the latest in a string of similar deals - Aggregate Knowledge powers "discovery" of both editorial content and product recommendations for over 100 websites, with a particular focus on retail and media. In this post we take a closer look at the implementation at BusinessWeek - and ask if the results come up to scratch.
In our post Social Networks Will Be Tomorrow's iTunes, Sarah Perez reported on new research indicating that social networks have the potential to be the content distribution platforms of tomorrow. "MySpace the next iTunes?", said Sarah, "It's coming."
However commenter Rian from DailySplice.com thinks it should be the other way round: iTunes to become social like MySpace! Rian wrote: "What if the iTunes store was more like MySpace or Last.fm where you were given a little corner of the store and could even promote your favorite bands?"
We've just spotted the new Facebook privacy options in the wild. As we wrote earlier this week, "the new privacy features will increase the granular control that Facebook has been known for. Users will now have the option of showing private information, including photos, to only specific friends (entered one at a time or by utilizing a pre-made list), or to "friends of friends" (i.e., your friends and the people they are friends with -- not unlike how LinkedIn works)." Below are a couple of screenshots...
Blogging is now big business. Mike Arrington reminded us of that with a rant this morning. According to Arrington, about $25 million of VC money went into the coffers of top-tier blogs and blog networks last year, $8.5 million the year before. And maybe I'm reading him wrong, but I detected a bit of distaste when he talked about blog writers starting to think they're worth more than the $5 per post standard apparently set by pioneering blog networks like Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker Media.
We've written in the past about Twitter's emergence as a platform for serious discourse, and it's true that some serious discussions about technology, politics, religion, and all sorts of important issues are taking place twenty-four hours per day on Twitter. It's also becoming an increasingly more important distribution point for breaking news. But we shouldn't overlook the social benefit that Twitter has for people, especially those who work at home.
I came across a post this morning on Jonathan Lane's blog that used the word "Facebook" and the term "jumped the shark" in the same sentence. Lane's basic premise is that while Facebook is great at accomplishing its core directive of connecting people, it sucks at all the peripheral services it offers and doesn't have a good enough way to integrate with higher quality outside services to satisfy the needs of a poweruser.
We all know by now that social networks aren't a passing fad. They're no longer used solely by early adopters, young adults, or tech enthusiasts - social networks are now mainstream. However, a recent UK study conducted by media research company, Entertainment Media Research, reports some figures that point toward the fact that social networks could do even more. In fact, social networks have the potential to be the content distribution platforms of tomorrow. See you later iTunes, I'm gonna sync with MySpace now...
Nonprofit tech assistance project NetSquared has opened the voting for their Mashup Challenge this week and it's a great place to discover a long list of interesting mashups being built to make the world a better place.
We've written about one participant here before, MoveSmart, and another really good one (SocialActions) reached out to us this week with a handy Sproutbuilder widget embedded below.
Syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen says that, with or without Apple's blessing, the company plans to develop a Flash player for the iPhone/iPod touch platform.
During yesterday's earnings call (see SeekingAlpha transcript), Narayen told investors that that Flash was "synonymous with the Internet and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the web and experience the web’s glory really needs Flash support".
Contextual ad platform Textwise launched SemanticHacker.com today, a contest for applications and business plans built on the company's semantic analysis technology. While the new API is offered for free, the contest will award three winners with $100k and one winner could score up to $1 million based on subsequent commercialization.
Semantic APIs only make sense, superior contextual advertising is clearly the most obvious cash-cow of semantics and a bounty sounds like a good idea - but there's something about this contest that doesn't quite feel right.
