Seth Godin posts that he doesn’t have comments on his blog because it’s all too much work. So much for being a new media evangelist when he won’t allow his own readers to participate in the conversation. And as some of the trackbacks would indicate, people aren’t particularly pleased with Seth on this one either, and as one person rightly points out: can you really have a proper blog without comments, after all, a blog without comments is just another website.
Tags: Seth Godin
Makes sense really, massive user base, many non-blogging users. Steve Rubel reports that eBay is to launch user blogs powered by SixApart’s TypePad. I’m not aware of any great success from other ecommerce firms in providing blogs to users, but if anyone is going to do it, it will be eBay.
Just went to view a video at YouTube, and got this screen:
There also appears to be music playing at the site as well.Not sure of the extent of it, whether accounts have been compromised or not, but certainly someone must be asleep at YouTube HQ at the moment.
Tags: YouTube, YouTube hacked
Update: the music was on another page, not YouTube.
Further Update: it looks as though the hacking was a very poor attempt at humour by the YouTube team with this being posted:
UPDATE: No, we haven’t been hacked. Get a sense of humor.
UPDATE 2: Apparently we can’t spel.
UPDATE 3: Please stop calling the office, we’re trying to work in here
That’s the way to keep yourself onside with your users, put up a spoof hack attack. Any one for Yahoo Video??
Ive never been a huge fan of buzzwords, but Cameron Reilly has introduced a new buzz word that I think has very, very long legs (potential): Nanomedia:
What is “nanomedia”? It is media that is produced for a niche audience, often on a low cost basis, either for the love of it or for commercial profit and I suspect the vast majority of nanomedia will be produced for the former reason. Nanomedia will mostly be copyright free or produced under a fairly open Creative Commons license. Nanomedia will be play on iPods, portable media devices like PSPs, mobile phones, computers or TVs and will increasingly start to consume higher and higher percentages of the average person’s entertainment time.
The long post is worth a read in terms of Cam’s suggestion on the death of old media. You’d note from the comment that I don’t totally agree with his suggestion that old media is dead, but I do agree over time that it will be replaced by consumer friendly (ie push/ lazy) nanomedia.
Tags: nanomedia
Digital Journal reports on rumours that Microsoft has been in talks for several weeks about a possible acquisition of eBay.
If Microsoft did buy eBay, it would deliver Paypal and Skype to Microsoft as well, two of my favourite apps.
eBay has done a lot with both companies that has been positive, but I can’t imagine anything Microsoft would do with them could be seen positively. The very fact that Skype and Paypal are platform independent has seen their rapid rise, and Microsoft isn’t really known as being a fan of providing multi-platform support. Indeed, I’d suggest that Microsoft owning both would only provide one benefit, and that’s in helping Paypal and Skype competitors increase marketshare as people leave the service due to Microsoft’s ownership….and they will, because Microsoft’s hardly known as a champion of privacy rights either. The last thing I’d want is Microsoft monitoring my Skype calls and Paypal payments, and I’d suggest that neither would a whole pile of consumers and merchants who also utilise these services.
TechChrunch reports on the launch of Ask.com’s new Blog Search facility, which is a spin off from its popular Bloglines service.
Of course Bloglines has always had a blog search facility, it just wasn’t very flash.
I’ve had a bit of an initial tinker with the site, and I’ve got to say, I’m totally NOT impressed. The blog search results are generally several days old, and although it presents them quickly, a quick comparative search of common keywords (including, naturally my own name) showed far better results at Technorati, and Gnoos. Of course any new service takes time to get off the ground, but with the wealth, and depth of indexing they have at Bloglines, I guess I would have expected a bit better for their initial launch.
Tags: Ask.com Blog search
Australia’s answer to Technorati, Gnoos.com.au is live. I had a chance to play with it prior to my recent holiday but didn’t get the chance to review it at the time. It’s first rate, super quick, and we’ll worth a look. It indexes international blogs as well…I’m not sure how many blogs they are tracking at this stage, but I’m liking the results I’m getting from searches.
Amazing figures from a booming industry. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $3.9 billion for the first quarter of 2006. The 2006 first quarter revenues represent a 38 percent increase over Q1 2005 at $2.8 billion and a 6 percent increase over Q4 2005 total at $3.6 billion.
Feedblitz, a Web 2.0 startup that converts RSS into email alerts, has announced they’ve take Angel Investment from Tom Evslin.
To quote Evslin on Feedblitz:
In business terms, what FeedBlitz does is make the content of RSS feeds accessible to the great mass of web users who have no idea what RSS is and couldn’t care less about the technology but do want to receive content they care about in a form they do understand – email. Most real people don’t know what a feed reader is. In fact, not many people have a clear idea what a blog is (although almost every web user has heard of blogs).
It’s a sound business proposition, because in reality most people still have no idea what RSS is. Best of luck to them.
Tags: Feeblitz, Tom Evslin
Tim O’Reilly responds to the criticism over the C&D to a not for profit organisation daring to use Web 2.0 in their name.
I won’t repeat what he says, but there was one point which I found amazing:
At O’Reilly, we’ve even had to send a cease-and-desist letter once, to a company that was publishing technical books with the picture of an animal on the cover.
That’s right. Apparently now you can’t put an animal on the cover of your tech book! Doesn’t matter if it’s a picture of your pet dog, apparently O’Reilly has a Trade Mark that covers all animals.
Sorry Tim, you wonder why people get upset! This is trade mark law gone mad.
Duncan Riley on SiliconANGLE Chiang Mai One
