oneconnect
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Yahoo! Rolls Out New Mobile Web Campaign
Today at the CTIA Wireless Conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo! officially announced a new mobile-optimized site and an all-in-one iPhone application. Yahoo! has been making strong moves to reposition itself as a leading mobile web destination for a few months now, and recently they announced a new centralized framework called OneConnect that weaves all of Yahoo!'s disparate properties like Messenger, Mail and Flickr together with many other web services like Twitter, MySpace and YouTube into a single portal page.
Building on that OneConnect core, the big announcement today, is availability of viewing all that OneConnect goodness (and more) on virtually any web-enabled cell phone at this URL: mobile.yahoo.com (if that isn't active, try this link).
3 Questions about Ads in RSS
Dave Winer has posted a comment by Jason Calacanis about adverts in RSS feeds. In a nutshell, Dave doesn't want ads in RSS feeds and Jason does. I found this comment from Dave to be very curious:
"BTW, what exactly is wrong with the way the BBC and NY Times do it? They write good one or two sentence summaries and link to the full story from the feed, and the ad is there, not in the feed. Jason, think about it -- RSS itself is an advertising medium, if you use it correctly."
Now I'm a big admirer of Dave Winer, even though he's frequently controversial and a lot of people dis him. He's done great things for RSS and he deserves a lot of respect and kudos for that, so I'll always try to stick up for him. But in this case I have to take issue with his stance on ads in RSS feeds. (btw I have been posting about this issue all week on Silicon Valley Watcher).
I left the following comment on Dave's RSS-focused blog and I want to repeat it here. It's my reply to Dave and all the other people up in arms over ads in RSS feeds...
Richard's 2 Cents
I can't quite believe what I'm reading: you prefer excerpted RSS feeds to full-content?? Obviously this means you don't think RSS is a first-class content citizen, as HTML is - why else would anyone not put their full content into an RSS feed?
So you've pretty much answered the first 2 of the 3 questions I posted in response to your last post. But what I want to know is your answer to the third... ;-) (and I don't want to hear the 'I'll pay you by donation' argument from people, because clearly that doesn't scale unless you're Jason Kottke).
1) Which is better: an excerpted RSS feed (where you have to click through to read the whole post), or a full-text RSS feed with some ads?
Personally I'd prefer the latter.
2) Really, what *is* the difference between advertising in an RSS feed and advertising on a webpage? RSS is becoming the new HTML - why fight it?
3) What's wrong with Writers wanting to get paid for their work (just as software developers want to get paid for their work)?
Is Microsoft a Web 2.0 company? (alt title: The Center of the Universe)
Summary: Yes Microsoft is a Web 2.0 company, because their goal is to use the Web as a Platform. The difference is they'll use the Web as a Platform via millions of Windows-run 'devices'. That'll be their interface into Web 2.0.
The Yahoo Search team has a vision called FUSE - which stands for Find, Use, Share, and Expand. Apparently it represents the use of search "to fuse a myriad of services and applications". Basically, search is the center of the universe for Yahoo - and Google too.
Compare this to Microsoft, which has at the center of its universe the Windows OS. Microsoft is currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Windows Operating System (OS) and in a recent Microsoft press release Jim Allchin, the Group VP of Platforms, updates us on Microsoft's vision:
"Our initial vision was "A PC on every desk and in every home." Now we’re envisioning a PC for every person and in every room – almost in every nook and cranny."
Well I don't particularly want Microsoft to be in all my nooks and crannies. They've certainly targeted the nooks and crannies of many an Internet company over the years (Netscape especially)! But seriously, what this vision entails is that Microsoft want to have Windows running on a multitude of Internet-connected devices in the future.
Back to Yahoo's search-centered vision. John Battelle writes:
"...at the center of the idea of FUSE is what's happening to media - how every single medium - music, TV, print, telecom, even our first versions of the web - is being remixed and reordered by Web 2.0. It's an old saw, but mass media really is becoming my media - through RSS, podcasting, iTunes, Tivo, blogs, and many innovations to come. And central to navigating a my media world is search. Hence, the FUSE vision holds water for me - search is not just about a web index. It's about my interface to the world."
Yahoo and Google are both basically Internet services companies - and no doubt both sees its search platform as the center of a "my media" universe. How does this compare to Microsoft, who are still essentially a device-dependent company?
While the main 'device' over the past 20 years has of course been the Personal Computer, Microsoft recognizes that in future other devices will be more important - mobile, television, so-called "media centers". They may still call them PCs, but these devices will be much more varied than in the past 20 years.
Is Microsoft a Web 2.0 company, like Yahoo and Google?
Yes Microsoft is a Web 2.0 company, because their goal is to use the Web as a Platform. The difference is they'll use the Web as a Platform VIA millions of Windows-run 'devices'. That'll be their interface into Web 2.0. Microsoft is doing this instead of going the direct route - as Yahoo and Google are - through search engines and all the usual Web 2.0 technologies (RSS, Web Services, APIs, etc).
Oh Microsoft will do things in those domains too (e.g. start.com), but the Windows OS is at the heart of Microsoft's Web 2.0 strategy.
The way I see it, Microsoft really has no choice but to try and dominate Web 2.0. Much as they corralled Web 1.0 via Windows and the Internet Explorer browser.
So will the center of the Web 2.0 universe turn out to be Longhorn, the next generation Windows OS? Well if Microsoft gets its new OS onto millions and millions of Web-connected devices over the next few years, then they'll essentially control all those "my media" interfaces to the Web 2.0 world.
Don't count Microsoft out of Web 2.0 yet.
The New New Journalism
Now that I'm part of
the new Silicon Valley Watcher network, reporting
on RSS, I've got to thinking about how I fit into this new world of
blog-journalism. Here's the beginnings of my theory on this...
Back in the 70's Tom Wolfe coined a style of news writing called New Journalism, which was very
influential for me growing up. Although I never did formally train to be a journalist, I
always identified with Wolfe as a writer. The title of this post, btw, is a result
of combining the name of Tom Wolfe's manifesto and the title of Michael Lewis' classic 90's Internet non-fiction book:
The New New Thing. Witty huh? :-) Lewis is another of my favourite authors, btw.
So I've been reading a lot of great stuff on the Web about how journalists are adapting to the New Media world of the Web, in particular how they are adjusting to bloggers and blogging technologies. This post I'm writing, off-the-cuff, approaches the topic from the other side: a blogger adapting to the world of journalism. I'm just a blogger, yet I'm now doing reporting on Silicon Valley Watcher with my new colleagues who are 'real journalists' (my phrase).
Here's the piece of insight I was searching for, in pondering this post: Specialization will come via niche, not skill. Terry Heaton wrote that in the comments section of Jay Rosen's blog - note that both come from the world of journalism.
Terry's practical point was that journalists need to be "multimedia skilled" these days. I imagine in the same way that so-called 'Generation M' (or 'C') are "media multitaskers", to quote a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The main point though is that being a Specialist in the 21st century is increasingly about focusing on a niche - moreso than having specialist skills, such as (for example) reporting and editing. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying specialist skills aren't still important. Obviously they are. But I do think that specialist skills will no longer be the key differentiators in 21st century journalism.
What will make quality journalism stand out in this century is the specialist knowledge that the reporter/writer brings to it - which includes being close to the news source (ideally being what we in the IT industry call a 'user') and being able to drill deeper than someone outside that niche can do.
Of course being multi-skilled means to be skilled in reporting and editing - as well. But it's no longer enough *just* to have those skills. Those people who focus on a niche will be able to build up a deeper, and hence potentially more valuable, store of knowledge than those who skim across dozens of niches.
Having said that, Michael Lewis (the author I mentioned above) is a great example of someone who is able to insert him or herself into a niche topic for a period of time and come out with a compelling story. So there is still room for a highly skilled reporter/writer to inject themselves into a variety of niche situations and report on them as well as - or better than - people already in those niches. I can't imagine anyone else writing a better and more insightful story about baseball than what Micheal Lewis did in 2003.
So in some cases specialist skills (reporting and writing in Lewis' case) are more important than specializing in a niche. I wonder whether that will be the norm in this century though, as it was in the last? I don't think it will.
This is all forward-looking for blogs and journalism in the 21st century. Sometimes though it pays to look back to the Good Old Days. When thinking about what makes a good journalist, I like this traditional (romantic?) definition:
"The ideal newsroom protagonist, judging by fiction and film from the first half of the twentieth century, brought reporter and detective together in one person. The reporter and the detective both were considered hard-working and highly moral, even when breaking the law. Both insisted on remaining loners and working by their own idiosyncratic rules. And both mixed with high-hatters and hoi polloi; they, like the heroes of Vern Partlow's song 'Newspapermen,' reveled in 'corruption, crime and gore.'"
Well apart from reveling in corruption, crime and gore - that describes me, on my Web 2.0 and RSS beat. Perhaps I will get to revel in gore when the next phase of the RSS Format Wars hits. :-)
I suspect this is just the start of an ongoing series of posts on this topic, by this reporter. I haven't finished my train of thought and I will probably change my mind later... but in the new new tradition of blogging, I'll post what I have now and see who continues the conversation.
NB: Just discovered some author has already used the term "The New New Journalism". Oh well, nothing is ever new in this world... ;-)
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