ReadWriteWeb

In yesterday's post about Google, a follow-up to this week's interview with Matt Cutts, we wrote that Google is still searching for a way to measure relevancy for video - and by extension a way to automatically insert contextual advertising around its YouTube videos. We think that the lack of an adequate "VideoRank" is the main reason that Google is not putting advertising around YouTube videos.

However Mark Cuban left a comment onto the latter R/WW post, saying that he thinks relevancy has nothing to do with it. He wrote:

"The lack of ads has nothing to do with relevancy. It has to do with copyright laws. If Google doesnt have a license from the video owner, they cant show ads.
If you do a viewsource, you will see the ad tags which define a user id, along with category and demographic info. If the user id reflects an uploader that Youtube has a deal with, you will see ads. If not, not."

And, as is Mark Cuban's custom these days, he finished with a none-to-subtle dig at Google:

"In terms of video search. There needs to be a differentiation between internet video search, and website video search. Google only does indexing of video on their owned sites.

Maybe they think they can host all the worlds videos ?"

We think Google is indeed scared of the copyright laws, but that the real underlying problem is that Google hasn't found an adequate technical solution to inserting contextual advertising next to YouTube videos.

So who do you think is right, the billionaire or a bunch of uppity tech bloggers? ;-) Here is a poll to find out...

At SXSW there was a panel entitled 'Using RSS for Marketing' (our coverage here from Sean Ammirati). Mick Liubinskas, from group communications product Tangler, left a good comment on our post:

"RSS is a big topic of discussion around Tangler. Obviously we want to do it, but there's doing it and there's doing it well. Options with an RSS would be interesting and I'd like to see someone do that well.

e.g. Give me everything, or just give we stuff with the word collaboration in it. Or maybe, give me articles with 50+reads and/or 10+ comments."

That got me thinking about how many of you currently subscribe to RSS Remix feeds - i.e. feeds that have been filtered or mashed up with other feeds. 

In my reply to Mick's comment, I said that RSS filtering is still a work in progress. Yahoo Pipes is at the geeky end of the spectrum, with its sophisticated "feed aggregator and manipulator" capabilities. But it shows where we're headed with remix feeds. Market leader in feed management, Feedburner, hasn't done a lot with filtering yet. However we've profiled several RSS Remix products recently on R/WW: FeedBlendr, FeedRinse, FeedDigest and BlastFeed. Others that have been mentioned in our comments are macro.scopia and the interestingly-named Profilactic. There are many others, I'm sure, but the point of this poll is to ask: are you using RSS remix feeds yet?

The title of this week's poll is taken straight from Matthew Ingram's post about USA Today's re-design. The new-look USA Today incorporates many of the social networking features that have become popular over the last year or so. Or as the editor of USA Today put it: "the real change is in the approach, not the appearance." And the approach, in a nutshell, is to merge traditional journalistic reporting with social software. The changes, as summarized by USA Today, enable their readers to:

• Scan other news sources directly on USATODAY.com;
• See how readers are reacting to stories;
• Recommend stories and comments to other readers;
• Comment directly on stories;
• Participate in discussion forums;
• Write reviews (of movies, music and more);
• Contribute photos;
• Better communicate with USA TODAY staff.

The USA Today re-design has predictably caused a massive weekend scrum at Techmeme, with many bloggers excited about the changes. But as Don Dodge precisely points out, 92% of USA Today's own readers dislike the changes. This is reminiscent of the Netscape re-design last year, when the portal Netscape changed overnight into a Digg clone - causing howls of outrage from Netscape's traditional user base.

So to the poll. We're interested in the high level trend here. Are newspapers going to morph into social networks over time, a place where people not only read the news but socialize with other readers (and journalists)? Or is this more evidence that the MySpace craze has gone too far...

There was a lot of talk last week about Google Apps Premier, the Google-supported package of web-based office products. Many people spoke about it as if it was a rival to Microsoft Office. While Google Apps Premier is clearly targeted at small business, there's a feeling that it's also more than suitable for enterprises. Indeed Procter & Gamble Global Business Services and General Electric were wheeled out by Google as early customers of Apps Premier.

So in this week's poll we're asking if you think Google Apps Premier is a tipping point, where a web-based Office Suite has became a viable competitor to Microsoft Office - for small and large businesses alike. Or do you think otherwise? Let us know...

As David Lenehan reported today, Digg is the latest company to declare its support for OpenID - the decentralized single sign-on service. This follows on from recent announcements of support from Microsoft and AOL. And as Techcrunch noted, Yahoo, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia are some other organizations that had previously announced their support.

It's clear that OpenID is gathering a good head of steam as the single sign-on mechanism of choice in the web 2.0 world. But let's take a poll on how many people are actually using it right now. Even though OpenID is a great initiative, R/WW's identity guru Jitendra Gupta has pointed out several times that OpenID is not without flaws - particularly in the areas of security and authentication. So many people may be reticent about using OpenID, at least for now. Another issue is that many people use fake identities on the Web or have multiple IDs, particularly those in the younger generation.

Please participate in the poll below and let us know in the comments to this post your thoughts on if/when real users will start utilizing OpenID.

Update: I forgot to mention that Emre Sokullu wrote a great analysis of OpenID for R/WW at the start of 2007. It includes a screencast explaining what OpenID is and how it's used.

This week's poll relates to a somewhat controversial NY Times article over the weekend, which suggested that Silicon Valley is more likely to create innovative and successful tech products than elsewhere in the world. Obviously Silicon Valley has a lot going for it - it's a hub for smart Web technologists, it's swimming in VC money right now, the universities there provide a steady supply of talent, and of course the history and 'myth' of Silicon Valley is well known. So yes, the chances for success are higher for a web startup living in Silicon Valley. But does that make Silicon Valley startups inherently more innovative? This article says yes, and what's more claims that "where you live often trumps who you are."

Om Malik has already written a good response, pointing out that Skype was a Nordic creation. And he links to a piece by Vinnie Mirchandani, who rightly says that "the Valley trails other global centers when it comes to many "next-gen" areas", such as mobile and enterprise software. 

Like Vinnie, I think the real value of Silicon Valley is in commercializing innovation. Indeed this is something I mentioned recently in an interview I did with a New Zealand newspaper - I said that kiwis are known for their innovation and so there's no reason innovative web startups can't be created here. But I noted that to succeed on a large global scale, kiwis will probably need to take the pilgrimage to Silicon Valley. And it's not just for the VC money - the networking is just as important.

So to this week's poll, do you think Web innovation is dependent on location?

A recent Techcrunch Forum thread asked what is the difference between Techcrunch, Mashable and Read/WriteWeb? I think each has a unique brand and we're pretty complementary when it comes down to it. But the comments got me thinking about what type of content people expect from R/WW.

So please help us out and tell us what you like to read at R/WW; what type of posts rock your boat. The following poll is multi-choice.

In this week's R/WW poll, we're asking whether you ever fake your Web identity - or even just part of it. Note that this doesn't count times when you are anonymous on the Web (such as almost all snarky blog comments). We're specifically asking about the times when you use an identity - e.g. online dating, peer-to-peer transactions sites such as craigslist or ebay, social networking sites like MySpace and Second Life.

See Jitendra Gupta's post today, Nobody Knows You're A Dog 2.0, for more on this topic.

Hitwise has released data that suggests Bloglines is still the clear leader in the RSS Reader stakes, with 3 times more US visits than its nearest web-based competitor Rojo. I don't think a lot can be gleaned from this data though, as it misses out desktop-based RSS Readers, start pages and a number of other types of RSS Readers. Also as Mike Arrington pointed out, Google Reader appears to be under-represented in Hitwise's stats. Indeed Google Reader is currently not being counted in Feedburner's stats and I agree with Mike that it is likely to be around the same level as Bloglines at this point. The non-reporting is a problem at Google's end and I understand Feedburner is doing its best to get Google to fix it.

There's no doubt that Google Reader has improved a lot since its initial release - and is now at the forefront of innovation in browser-based Readers. Likewise I am fond of a few of the desktop readers, for example the Windows-based FeedDemon impressed me in my tests last year and the Mac-based NetNewsWire always gets rave reviews. Also a lot of people now use the start pages, like Netvibes and Pageflakes, as RSS Readers. Not to mention email subscribers and browser integration (Firefox Live Bookmarks, IE7, Flock, etc).

As a follow-up to our previous post covering the top Web Trends of 2006, we'd like to get your vote for Best Internet Bigco of 2006. Long-time R/WW readers will know that at the end of each year we write a post noting our top Web companies of the year. In 2005 the best bigco was Yahoo, while in 2004 it was Google. Who will it be in 2006? Well this is where you can influence the decision ;-) I'll reserve the final editorial judgment for our 2006 Best Of post, but I'm keen to know what you all think!