In other news this week, Nielsen/NetRatings, one of the leading Internet stats services, will scrap rankings based on page views and replace it with how long visitors spend at websites. This is a boon for online video and Ajax-driven websites, as well as providers with popular IM products - such as AOL. However Google's ranking will drop, as Google search is less about time spent on site and more about sending users on to relevant destinations. The comments on R/WW were a mix of praise and skepticism. As Robert Gorell commented: "...what about tabbed browsing? I think "time spent" is a zombie metric." The main takeaway, as Robert put it, is that "there's no one-size-fits-all metric for the Web." Bronson Harrington perhaps put it best with this comment: "I think this will be a case of identifying your most important metrics based on the aim of your site/market/industry and weighting them."

Other noteworthy Web news this week:

• Bay Partners Announces AppFactory, A Seed Fund For Facebook Apps
• Hollywood Talent Agency Launches Web Movie Studio
• Rock On: Net Radio Lives to See Another Day

Analysis Posts

Lest you thought the iPhone articles were over with, Alex Iskold took a unique look at its UI innovations with The Physics of iPhone. Alex followed up later in the week with an examination of the burgeoning widget industry. If you are wondering what all the fuss is about with widgets, check out: The Evolution of Web Widgets: From Self-Expression to Media Companies

Guest writer Andrew Watson wrote an in-depth history and comparison of the two leading Blog Platforms, Six Apart and Automattic. A commenter in that post questioned whether blogging is still relevant, with the popularity of social networks these days. A follow-up analysis, Is Blogging Dead?, addressed that.

Companies that compete in search with Google - it's a topic we cover a lot on the Read/WriteWeb Network (particularly at our sister blog AltSearchEngines). This week we discovered a South Korean search engine, Naver, that has been very successful at it. Naver uses a Q&A product to get user-generated content for their service, which has led to Naver becoming the dominant search engine in South Korea. As Thierry Bezier commented, the high level trend here is that "the future will be localised".

Also this week, Read/WriteWeb explored some of the 'new media' products and trends on the Web. First Josh Catone looked at 5 News Aggregation Methods. I followed up on Friday with the first in a new series: The State of Citizen Journalism: Part 1, Newsvine.

Resources

R/WW is always looking for ways to introduce our readers to new technologies or Web techniques. Check out 5 Alternative Ways to Browse Amazon to explore new UI methods on the Web. And if you're a Twitter addict (and web 2.0 geeks will know what we mean here!), take a look at our pick of the Top 10 Twitter Apps.

R/WW Network Blogs

Our Digital Lifestyle blog is last100 and this week they welcomed a new writer, Daniel Langendorf. The last100 Weekly Wrapup provides details of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), then talks about a provocative post entitled: “Does live TV over the net make sense?“. The post questioned whether in fact live programing is still relevant in an Internet age. Last100 editor Steve O’Hear thinks so, but many readers disagreed.

Also this week guest last100 writer, Mack D. Male, wrote an excellent history of Microsoft’s Internet TV strategy, covering everything from Web TV, MSN, Windows Media Center, Media Room, to Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

Over on AltSearchEngines, The Name Inspector wrote a guest post explaining how the intrinsic meaning of a name (if there is one) relates to the company, product, or service that the name stands for. AltSearchEngines also explored three Alternative Code Search Engines to Google Code Search, there was a Great Debate on Visualization of Search Results and editor Charles Knight examined People search engines.

Startup Action

This week's Startup of the Week is Viewpoints, a Personalized Reviews site that Phil Butler reviewed.

In other startup action, we took a special look at the DIY Social Networks market, reviewing Ning, vibEngine, PeopleAggregator.

Also if you're wondering what have been the Top 5 Hottest Product Launches of 2007, check out our picks!

Other startups or beta products the Read/WriteWeb team reviewed this week:

• Openads 2.3 Beta Launched, But Google Threat Lurks
• Flock Version 0.9 Focuses on Social Media Discovery
• Terrible Idea: Buy Blog Comments Sells Spam
• Outsource Your Brain for Science

Finally, we here at R/WW pride ourselves on being 'beta hounds', always checking out the most innovative new beta web products. If you're the same, you too can Get Your Hands on Hot Beta Invites!

Poll

Our poll this week asked: Which Web company impressed you the most over the first half of 2007? We got a great response and here are the results:

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1. Facebook 30% (263 votes)
2. Google 29% (246 votes)
3. Apple 16% (139 votes)
4. Adobe 5% (47 votes)
5. Yahoo 4% (37 votes)
6. Other (please comment) 4% (33 votes)
7. Microsoft 4% (32 votes)
8. Mozilla 4% (32 votes)
9. Amazon 3% (25 votes)
10. AOL 1% (5 votes)
11. eBay 0% (4 votes)

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There was a lot of discussion on this, but it's clear that Facebook and Google have impressed the most so far in 2007, with Apple getting good support too.

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.