Archives For Web 2.0

Bullshitr Beta

August 21, 2006 — Leave a comment

Worth a laugh.

(via Steve Rubel)

Australians are often fond of the saying that we call a spade a (insert strong expletive here) shovel.

Web 2.0 is, according to many, entering a bubble. And yet bubbles are these nice rounded things that kids make from plastic $2 made in China kits which eventually burst.

Sure, Web 1.0 was a bubble, it was sort of nice whilst it lasted but it did actually burst.

Web 2.0 isn’t going to burst, but a whole pile of companies aren’t going to make it.

So lets call it a storm, and lets put that storm at sea.

Storms at sea cause lots of bubbles…but digress, because what I think we’re starting to see in Web 2.0 now is an impending storm. The winds are starting to rise, the sea is getting a bit rough. The weak are taking on some water and sinking (Kiko). When the storm finally hits, only the fit will survive, and when it passes they will emerge stronger than ever, with a pile of profits, decent business plans and rosey futures.

This is Web 2.0.

 

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Fess up time for me, I didn’t sit through the whole Techcrunch Web 2.0 video…it was to long, I lost interest about a quarter of the way in…but Robin Good has stayed loyal to his name and done something good: the Web 2.0 video remix, a total of 3 minutes, which cuts out some of the chaf and just leaves the important bits:

 

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From Techcrunch:

“it?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s so ajax intensive that it?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s really smooth to use”

Is it me of does this sound like a pitch for drugs or similar? 🙂

Robert Scoble 2.0

August 17, 2006 — 1 Comment

Robert notes over on his blog today “I think Om and Mike are telling all their fans ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ö‚Äúemail Scoble, it?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ll keep him uninteresting”. I’m guessing it’s a reference to his more recent posts to Scobleizer…since he’s left Microsoft the tone has changed alot, it’s more personal, more insightful, sure, perhaps less controversial, but for my liking it shows a personal side of Robert, something that was often clouded in the past due to the intense level of attention his blog received when he was Microsoft’s Evangelist.

Yes, Virginia, this is what personal blogs are suppose to be about.

Personally, I like Robert Scoble 2.0, and I’m happy I resubscribed.

 

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AOL Acquires GameDaily

August 16, 2006 — 1 Comment

Looks like another nice acquisition for AOL, with news that they’ve acquired Games Daily:

AOL LLC announced today that it has acquired GameDaily ( http://www.gamedaily.com ), one of the Internet’s leading independent video game publications, from Gigex, Inc.

AOL’s agreement with Gigex closed on August 10th, 2006. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 1995 and based in San Francisco, CA, the privately-held Gigex serves the mainstream gaming audience with its GameDaily.com website, one of the top three most visited video gaming information destinations on the Web. In addition, the company reaches industry decision makers each day with the GameDaily Biz newsletter, the most widely read video game trade publication.

As part of the agreement, AOL will acquire both the GameDaily consumer website ( http://www.gamedaily.com ) and the industry-leading newsletter, ( http://Biz.GameDaily.com ), which just received a “New First” award for its outstanding ongoing coverage of the video games industry by AEIM*. GameDaily will become the flagship video games brand within the AOL Games network, and will be united with content and community features currently found on the AOL Video Games website ( http://www.aol.com/videogames).

Odd thing is, can’t see the news anywhere else other than at the site (nothing at techmeme, techcrunch, even Calacanis.com at the time of writing (3:20pm +8GMT), maybe I’m the first to notice this…as I noted on Jason Calacanis’ blog the other day in a comment, AOL is on one bloody great big rollercoaster of a ride at the moment, although I’m sure this acquisition will be on the up side of the rollercoaster.

 

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This story is going to make big headlines in the next couple of days, although I’m sure I’ve read something similar in the past. What shocked me though was the rate in which the story at Digg itself is getting Dugg. I opened the page up at Digg to see what the fuss was about. I left it for about 5 minutes then came back to it, it was reading 3146 diggs. I thought it was interesting enough to be Dugg, so I clicked on Digg this: the total went to 3265 diggs, thats over 100 diggs in 5 minutes. I’ve just hit refresh as I’m typing this post, maybe 2 minutes later, it’s now reading 3290 diggs! That’s another 35 diggs in 2 minutes…amazing. One to watch!

 

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Yep, my first rant is live, I’ve signed on the dotted line to do a weekly column at The Blogging Times upon invitation from Chartresue.

I tossed up a couple of good ideas for the first post, but I kept coming back to the blogging market place, and the flaws in Long Tail Theory as applied to the current market for blog hosting. For some this will be dry (and maybe boring) stuff, but for others who are interested in the future trends in the Blogosphere, I hope you appreciate it. I was on a word count limitation for this post which I ended up exceeding by over 100%…but it could have been much longer had I dug a little deeper into some of the more imperical evidence to support the theory.

One note on the piece, the theory also applies roughly to Web 2.0 as well. Indeed, the first draft I wrote of it included Web 2.0 in it, but combining two markets (blog hosting and Web 2.0) in the same piece made it a bit confusing and way to long (it actually got out to over 2000 words at one stage) so I cut out the Web 2.0 stuff, but if you’ve got an imagination, what I’m say here can easily apply to Web 2.0 as well…particularly in terms of the tail not being long enough to sustain everyone, and the tsunami hitting when half of the long tail has a ROI = 0.

Anyhow, enjoy. I’ve promised Minic something less dry next week 🙂

 

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The end is nigh…we’ll it is for Mike Arrington, and I’ll tell you why: Crunchboard and Crunchgear.

Unlike a whole pile of other people who think that the move by Mike Arrington to launch a gadget blog is nuts (how many times have I read the phrase “not another gadget blog” or similar in Bloglines over the last week!) I think both it (Crunchgear) and Crunchboard are both great ideas that leverage the popularity of the core readership of Techcrunch into new media properties.

However, it also spells the end, if not now, but very shortly, of Mike Arrington as a reporter.

Why? because at the end of the day you can’t be a player and be seen to be an impartial reporter, and of all people I should know. It’s exactly what happened to me at The Blog Herald. Despite years of writing on topics I loved, once I started getting seriously involved in building a Blog Network, anything, and I mean anything I wrote about others in that business was taken by a loud minority of people to be slanted by my own business dealings….Duncan Riley, impartial reporter (at least by perception) took a bloody great big stab in the back, and instead of ignoring the knife wounds, I eventually sold The Blog Herald. Sure, I write about stuff in the industry here now at duncanriley.com (although not nearly as often as I once did), but when people read it, they know it’s my personal thoughts on the subject, it’s not attempting to provide something close to being impartial reporting on the subject because this is a personal blog. Techcrunch isn’t a personal blog, it’s setup as being a leading industry new source.

If Mike’s not in the situation now where he’s impartiality is being questioned (and I’d note I’ve already noticed some allegations upon a similar vain around the place), it soon will be. How can Mike write about people like Jason Calacanis or Nick Denton without people making allegations of a conflict of interest when he’s competing against them? How can he write about Web 2.0 startups in the employment industry when he’s competing against them? And with word that he intends on rolling out more blogs as part of the Crunch network, the conflict is only going to grow.

So what’s the solution? He either divests himself of Techcrunch, or he brings in talent to take his place….naturally given the huge dominance (in terms of traffic) Techcrunch has in his network, the later in more likely. Mike’s a smart guy, so expect to see new people writing at Techcrunch in the future, expect to see a set of policies for the site pertaining to its writers in terms of disclosures and editorial independence….basically, expect the death of Mike Arrington, the reporter.

 

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Trackback Mistakes

August 14, 2006 — 12 Comments

Quadszilla over at the SEO Black Hat blog has a very interesting tale of how Trackbacks can get you into trouble here….it’s a must read for every blogger…aside from a WordPress plugin though I’m not sure of any other way of avoiding this other than by not using apostrophes in post headings….which I personally usually don’t anyway, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.