The Australian Newsagency Blog (via Trevor Cook) reports on the rumour in Crikey yesterday (which I actually saw…after having lapsed my membership for a year I signed up again for the paid version, the Christmas pack was just far too good) that Fairfax is looking at launching online news sites covering states they don’t currently publish in, in particular Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

I for one, as some one who lives in Western Australia (note I said lives in, I’ve probably got to live here for 20 years before I can call myself a local, and it’s not quite 10 years yet, so I’m still a New South Welshman) welcomes Fairfax with open arms. The state of news in this state, competition wise anyway, is pathetic. The West Australian is it. Admitedly the hard copy version of The West is actually a good read (I’m probably going to get lambasted for saying that), despite all the criticism it gets. Online however it is terrible. Actually beyond terrible. They relaunched their main site this year in response to News launching PerthNow, but it actually got worse. On the other hand, the first news site I still read every morning is Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). Since launching the site in 95 Fairfax have led the way in Australia in terms of online news. It’s the best news read online in Australia, by far. News.com.au isn’t bad, but it’s not the SMH.

The Australian Newsagency Blog quotes

Fairfax Editor in Chief of Online Mike van Niekerk said as much in his presentation entitled Cashing in on Digital Success at the Beyond the Printed Word conference I attended in Vienna last month. Fairfax has optimised its sites for financial return.

They’re open with there news online, and they can make a quid out of it. I look forward to seeing what they can do in Western Australia. A full, good read of WA news mixed with national and international news (say like the SMH but with WA news at the front) is a site I will visit every, single day, and I’ll even click on the ads to support the competition.

David Krug has announced the acquisition of Workboxes on both Workboxes and the Hello Cowboy site, which in itself is new to me today, I’m presuming this is the name of Krug’s new consulting and marketing service. It’s an interesting name, and I mean this with all due respect, but I can’t seem to get the image out of my head of a Drag Queen saying “Hellllooooo Cowboy” out of my head, for Australians picture Carlotta. It must just be me, filthy mind or something. Congrats though to all involved in the sale.

Tags: David Krug, Workboxes, Hello Cowboy

If you’re like 99.999999999% of the population who are struggling to keep up with this weeks Web 2.0 soap opera, let me humbly present the solution to your problems. Compliments of duncanriley.com and far too long stuffing around on MS Publisher (I don’t have access at the moment to InDesign, I’ll need to fix that), I present the Web 2.0 soap opera graph. It’s too large to put into a jpg, or convert into html, so as long as you’re able to read a PDF document enjoy. I’d note that it is a short and brief version, to fit every single last thing that has been said and done this week onto a chart would require atleast an A1 sized document…and they don’t present to well on most computers 🙂

Tags: Web 2.0, Michael Arrington, Rafat Ali, Jeff Jarvis, Nick Denton, Sam Sethi, TechCrunch, SixApart, Loic Le Meur

The Beeb reports that Skype is to offer the KishKish Lie Detector as an add-on for Skype users. It apparently analyses audio streams over a Skype call in real time and illustrates the stress levels of the other person, which in theory helps show when the other party is lying. No word on cost yet, but I brilliant idea. I only wish I had it 12 months ago 🙂

Tags: Skype

Michael Arrington reports on Glam receiving $18m US in series C funding. Struth. They’ve got some good traffic, admittedly, but as a whole Glam is essentially a blog ring with a couple of their own blogs bolted on…ok, more that a couple, they’ve got 29 of their own blogs/ sub sites, but 205 “affiliates”. The structure of the page is interesting as well when you take a look at their page view stats, 90m pages in November, and yet it takes you at least 2-3 steps to actually get to an article on the site, the oldest trick in the book to boost your page view numbers. 76806 articles/ posts over 29 blogs/ sub sites? WTF? Are they including “affiliates” in the total? Something really odd again, if there are sooooo many page views on the Glam.com site and it’s sub sites, why is it that they currently have an Alexa ranking of 10,298 as I write this? I double checked some of their sub pages and owned blogs to be sure, they are all being served off of glam.com, so at 90million page views to the one domain, they should be pushing Top 1000 on Alexa, not still at 5 figures.

But before I sound like I’m sticking the boot in for the sake of it, I’d like to note that I’m not. I actually happen to like Glam’s setup, it’s well designed, lots of content, and it helps share the love with its “affiliates” in both traffic and advertising deals. But $18m in C series funding? I’m sure I’ve read that they’ve already taken funding previously, so it would be a case of A, B then C. $18 million?! It’s nuts. If Glam gets $18m, surely 9rules is deserving of $20m? Naturally there are some differences, moneterisation would be a big one, but tit for tat 9rules runs a similar model, and despite not really running it’s own blogs/ subsites on the 9rules.com domain, has nearly a 50% better ranking in Alexa, and has a PR8 homepage as well (compared to PR7 with Glam). Without knowing what’s behind the hood, I’d also suggest that 9rules would have the better IP in terms of tech as well.

Tags: Gam, 9rules

Gartner believes that Blogging Growth will peak in 2007 (via Steve Rubel). They’re wrong. Totally wrong. Sure, it will peak in 2007 in the Western world, if it hasn’t already (I believe that we’ve probably already passed the peak point now), but it won’t worldwide, which is what Gartner is claiming:

One of the research company’s top 10 predictions for 2007 is that the number of bloggers will level off in the first half of next year at roughly 100 million worldwide.

Most people who would ever dabble with Web journals already have. Those who love it are committed to keeping it up, while others have gotten bored and moved on, said Daryl Plummer, chief Gartner fellow.

“A lot of people have been in and out of this thing,” Plummer said. “Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they’re put on stage and asked to say it.”

Wrong. So wrong it’s scary. How can people have tried blogging if they haven’t previously had internet access? Sure, we take it as a given in Western countries that internet access is close to universal. But Australia, the United States, Canada, the UK…they aren’t the whole world, are they!

There are 1.3 billion people in China, and only 123 million have internet access (Internet World Stats) with various reports putting the broadband number of those at between 70 and 80 million users. Less than 10% of the population of China currently has internet access. According to an October 2004 report (IWS again), the number of Internet users in China was growing at 800,000 a week. That’s 800,000 people every single week that haven’t tried blogging. Depending on the source, the number of bloggers in China varies between 20 million people and 35 million, but even by taking the lower figure of 20 million, you’d be looking at roughly 15% of all internet users in China who blog. If 800,000 new people are joining the internet a week, that’s potentially 120,000 new blogs every single week.

Let’s look at India. According to IWS, there are 40 million internet users in India, out of a population of 1.1 billion. I was unable to find a growth figure for India, but you’d guess from such a small base as a percentage of the population, that internet access would be growing. How is it, according to Gartner, that all the new people joining the internet in India would have tried blogging?

The list of countries can go on and on and on. For a respected firm such as Gartner I would have expected better than just another Western centric view of the world. Asia is where it’s all happening, and Asia will deliver plenty of good growth in blogging.

Tags: Gartner, blogs, blogging

We’ve heard all of the debate, the rhetoric, the hysterics, the utter nonsense, but for all the noise some in the blogosphere have made, none of it has made a difference. The Government of the United States of America though can make a difference, and it would appear that they are. Running a pay per post style business that doesn’t force bloggers to disclose paid listings (like Pay Per Post)?, guess what, you just got f*cked, big time.

The Washington Post reports that the Federal Trade Commission ruled Monday 11 December that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships.

Yep, that means companies like Pay Per Post, and some of their peers (I’d note some firms do force disclosure, as they should).

It gets better:

Word-of-mouth advertising is already covered under existing FTC regulations that govern commercial endorsements. What the FTC sought to do yesterday in its staff opinion was to note that such marketing could be deceptive if consumers were more likely to trust the product’s endorser “based on their assumed independence from the marketer.”

If you’re running paid endorsements on your own blog, don’t think that this doesn’t affect you and that it only affects the company paying you:

The FTC said it would investigate cases where there is a relationship between the endorser of a product and the seller that is not disclosed and could affect the endorsement. The FTC staff said it would go after violators on a case-by-case basis.

Note: violators. That’s both the company paying, and the individual deceiving. If you’re running paid for posts and not disclosing the commercial relationship, you could potentially end up liable for a fine, or even a prison sentence. Do you really want to take the risk?

Tags: Pay Per Post

OK, so some people are going to have some fun with the headline, but I mean it sincerely. I was cleaning up some of my sidebar links today (ok, it’s like spring cleaning in summer) and I realised I was pointing to the old Syntagma Media site, I fixed the link and thought I might drop over. OK, so the some what questionable multi coloured headers are still in place over the individual blogs, but the “network magazine” sites (channel portals)…we’ll they’re looking good, real good even:

The three sites are Phi, Allusionz and LifeTimes. I’m not sure what John paid Thord to design them, but I’ve got to say it was money well spent, and certainly adds a real professional touch to the network. Congrats on a job well done.

Tags: Syntagma Media

Jason Calacanis writes about “Out there” people. He’s right. If there’s one really good thing coming out of Web 2.0 it’s the change from the traditional top down hierarchical know your place companies to a new way of doing business, where questioning is acceptable, hierarchies are less, decisions are influenced by the crowd.

I suppose it should be noted however that the old adage of the nail sticking up still holds true in many companies though: it’s bound to get squashed. Smart companies welcome dissent, differences, vitality. Dumb companies believe that their CEO should be the sole face of the company, and everything he says goes. Smart companies use dissent as a way of driving positive change. Dumb companies get rid of the dissenters.

I love this quote from Calacanis:

“Of course, in business most answer are not right or wrong–they are 50, 60, 70, or 80% right or wrong. “

Empowering the individual, all individuals within the company actually works against something that can be poisonous, the cult of the individual.

I’d like to think I’m an Out There Person. Certainly it doesn’t always win my popularity points, but it works for me.

Mark Cuban’s list with Calacanis’ additions

1. Fast followers
2. More flexible
3. Open communicators
4. Aspire to greatness
5. Looking for new, innovative ideas
6. In short ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú your future leaders
7 Passionate
8 Lovers of intelligent debate
9 Don’t take themselves to seriously

7 can be an issue for me, when I’m passionate about something it can sometimes be with too much zeal. But I love 8 and 9. There’s nothing better than an intelligent debate. As for taking myself to seriously, I’m a lot better than I use to be, and certainly I think I make a rather good change agent.

At the end of the day, I honestly believe that only those Web 2.0 companies that embrace this sort of thinking will succeed. Indeed, if they aren’t already they aren’t really Web 2.0 companies. Having a Web 2.0 web site or tool doesn’t automatically make your company a Web 2.0 firm, it’s about the culture as well. This new culture is the way of the future, and it is a path to success. Those that follow the old ways are doomed to failure.

Are you an out there person? If you employ people, do you encourage them to be out there, to challenge, to debate?

Tags: Jason Calacanis, Web 2.0, Out there people

Kevin Burton writes about his experience with SixApart, and it’s decision to force him to take down a post based on a false DMCA notice. I’m not about to start SixApart bashing (although it should be noted that Burton is now blogging at WordPress.com as a result of this), because I can’t help but feel a little sorry for SixApart in this situation, indeed for just about anyone out there who runs a hosting business in the United States, because the DMCA is a nightmare that seemingly will never end. SixApart, like any hosting company in this situation, are caught between a rock and a hard place, legally they have to enforce the DMCA take down notice until such time that a DMCA counter notice is issued, even when the take down notice, as it was in Kevin Burton’s case, is spurious at best. Of course, at least for those who have been following the whole DMCA Michael Crook saga across several blogs will know, this latest travesty is not that surprising, but it also goes to show that it’s only when good people stand up against wrong-doings, will the possibility of change then occur. Laughing Squid, to their credit, is one such hosting company. It’s a shame that SixApart didn’t stand up and be counted.

I’ve been on both ends of the DMCA, having sent out plenty of DMCA notices in a previous job, and have also been on the receiving end of them. The worst experience I had was with WebNX, who instead of forwarding on the claim, simply informed the company I was then working for that the post must be removed immediately or the entire hosting package (3 boxes and around 100 sites) would be cut off. We couldn’t even counter the notice, we never received it but instead were essentially forced to act by WebNX. I recently received a notice via my domain registrar, who said (I kid you not) that if I didn’t remove a post they would suspend my domain (for reference it was NameCheap). Again, no correspondence could be entered in to. For the benefits the DMCA brings in countering some spammers, the negatives far outweigh any of the good stuff. This is bad legislation that is easily abused. I’m not American, so I can’t make a difference, although I am seriously thinking about taking my hosting needs outside of the US because of the DMCA, and I know other people in the business who have already done so, after all, hosting anything in the US becomes a massive risk. To those of you in the US, particularly those who have been on the receiving end of the DMCA, I’d urge you to stand up and be counted. Write to your representatives, and get them to change the law. It might not make a difference now, but certainly as more and more sites are spuriously targeted, more and more business will be leaving America, as more and more companies choose to host offshore for safety.

Tags: DMCA, Kevin Burton