This is the second in a 3-part series, by Bernard Lunn, on the new Web. Part 1 was The Whatchamacallit, Post Recession Phase Transition.
Recessions change consumer behavior, drive weak businesses and models to the wall and enable new businesses and models to thrive. This recession is likely to have a greater impact on Web ventures than past recessions for two reasons:
In an effort to promote the latest book in the Star Wars "Legacy of the Force" series, starting at 9am tomorrow (Tuesday, April 29), Del Ray will give out book one Betrayal for free as an audio book, eBook, and PDF download. Betrayal, which was a New York Times Bestseller, is the first book in the series and the free download will be available for two weeks until May 13, when the ninth and final book, Invicible, is released. This is an interesting marketing tactic from Del Ray, which is emulating popular music acts.
Social news site Digg has long been the big kahuna of sites where users submit and vote on tech news stories. Though tech content there has dropped dramatically (as we wrote about in this post) and Yahoo Buzz promises audiences that dwarf Digg's - it's still fantastic to get a tech story on the front page of Digg.
We get enough of our stories submitted that we thought friends of RWW might appreciate a chance to read our thoughts about what works best when you submit content from this, or any other site, for other people to read on Digg.
Up-and-coming mobile social network Brightkite faces some serious competition from a myriad of mobile social networks, all of whom are fighting to win the emerging mobile market. However, Brightkite has a few tricks up their sleeve that they hope will make them stand out from the rest, the most important of which is their ability to create a social network that merges with your real life.
Tomorrow a new breed of investment firm called Prototype Invest will officially launch, though the site is available now. Prototype Invest is a unique type of early stage investment firm. Rather than put money into startups, Prototype supplies technology in exchange for equity. This is an investment firm for anyone who has ever been told, "Ideas are a dime a dozen, kid. Come back when you have a working prototype."
Universal McCann has released a new report on the impact of social media (such as blogs, social networks, online video) on the media landscape. It surveyed 17,000 Internet users worldwide in March 2008. The report found that social media, in particular blogs, are "becoming a more important part of global media consumption for internet users than some traditional media channels." The report also found that social media is a global phenomenon (29 countries were surveyed), although there are cultural differences in how people use it.
While you're waiting for The Great Debaters to come out on DVD in a couple of weeks, there are a few places where you can put in some debate practice online in the meantime. One of the great things about writing a blog is that it is a platform for voicing your opinions. But it can also be rewarding to hear from the opposing side, and one thing we do often on this blog is ask for your views (as we did last week on the topic of video comments, for example). Below are 5 sites that organize debates around any topic.
BooRah is a semantic and natural language processing aggregator of restaurant reviews. The service pulls in reviews from numerous review sites and a substantial list of restaurant review blogs, then analyzes the emotional tone of the reviews it finds. Good reviews ("Rahs") and bad reviews ("Boohs") are collected concerning food, service and ambience.
It's a small but interesting site and the basic premise here is something that could be expanded beyond restaurants alone, something the company says it intends to do. I like it a lot.
Not too long ago, we discussed the problem of conversation fragmentation in the blogosphere and how new services, like FriendFeed, as well as old services, like Digg, were providing places to have conversations about a blog post off of the blog's web site itself. While many saw this trend as a natural evolution, some, mainly content producers, were upset, now having to check several different places around the web to track conversations about their content. However, for Rob Diana (aka "Regular Geek"), the discussion around this issue served as an inspiration to build a service that can help: YackTrack.
Last week trendy micro-blogging service Twitter launched officially in Japan, after the company had "noticed a significant percent of Twitter usage consistently originating from Japan". At the time of launch, Joi Ito - an investor in Twitter - claimed that Japan usage "was nearly 30% of Twitter earlier on", but had dropped to "about 13% as the US user base has grown."
However, the signs are that Japanese Twitter usage is set to explode in popularity - Twitterlocal shows that Tokyo is currently by far the city with the most Twitter usage.
