Category: Web 2.0

Joey Alarilla at CNet Asia notes the rise of Pinoy bloggers into positions of prominence in the blogosphere. Not before time, and thoroughly deserved. Congrats in particular to Jayvee on his recent promotion, to others he’s definitely a blogger to watch.

It looks like Santa Claus was kind to Nick Wilson and the team behind Performancing, with news that the metrics arm of Performancing has been sold off to PayPerPost. Naturally it would be remiss of me not to offer congratulations to Nick and the team on the sale, I have little doubt that the money offered was good, and in all honesty in a similar situation (presuming that the money was good as a given) I would have also sold. However, I can’t help that think a little that this has a little touch evil about it. My first thoughts were to state that this is not dissimilar to selling a child care centre to a group of paedophiles, but that is probably too harsh, because as much as I’m not personally a fan of PayPerPost (although I note positively they’ve been forced by law to force disclosure) what they do is legal, even if many do not like it. The question I suppose is what exactly are PayPerPost’s intentions for Performaning Metrics. Numbers, and the control of them is a powerful position to be in. As we know with the toolbar download occasionally lumped into a P2P or other package company comScore, knowing numbers = money. Certainly the numbers behind visitors to blogs are a more limited market, but surely knowing who visits various types of blogs, how often, and when provides some sort of positive to the PayPerPost people. I’ve not gone through all my Bloglines feeds for the past week yet, nor my 3000 unread emails, but it will be interesting to see what the reaction is amongst the Performancing Metrics user base is. I think it’s a given to say some will stop using the service, but as we know apathy is the norm in current day society, even amongst bloggers.

Tags: Performancing, PayPerPost

It’s supposedly Christmas, although you’d think it’s the silly season with news at Mashable and TechCrunch that Jimmy Wales is going into the search engine game. Just because Wikipedia was successful, it would appear as though Jimmy Wales has been drinking so much of his own Kool Aid he now thinks he can conquer the world. Watch for the “non-profit” Wikipedia to start showing links and driving traffic to the new search engine once it’s fully up and running. Given how Google currently treats Wikipedia articles as though they are gold, expect a change on that front as well. Google may well deny any attempt to punish the ever popular wikipedia, but given Wikipedia will be used to now push a potential rival, they’d be mad not to act. Merry Christmas, and will some one tell Jimmy Wales to lay off the punch 🙂

Apologies to those who were unable to leave a comment here at duncanriley.com over the last 2 days, it would appear as though the site gained a db corruption that needed a quick repair. Odd thing is though, I’ve noticed other blogs I help people out with, or a few oldies I still have, all seem to eventually experience a similar issue in one form or another. db corruptions seem to be par for the course in aged WP blogs as opposed to the exception. I say aged because I’m not sure if it’s a usage/ content point that results in db issues or literal age, perhaps in the same way that an aged install of Windows XP often starts behaving oddly. If anyone is having any similar issues leave a note, and I can compile them and send them to the WordPress people to consider.

Des has the details. I was in on one of the emails prior to the announcement, looks like some great speakers lined up, free registration, and Queensland in March usually isn’t quite as hot as Queensland in February..but it will be warm 🙂 There’s also a call for sponsorship, if you’re interested Des has the details as well.

Tech Digest reports SixApart’s Mena Trott saying that Vox is winning over burnt out bloggers. I see the logic, and I understand the how, but WTF? Surely this isn’t the key target area for Vox?

“People have really embraced it,” she says. “They’re saying they think blogging is fun again. A lot of people got burned out, because blogging had become a task rather than a pleasure. But we’re winning those people back, along with some of the people who are usually more skeptical and cynical about Six Apart as a company.”

Great…..great. But what about the kiddies? what about new bloggers? I’m the first to admit that Gartner was right about blogging hitting a peak, in the Western nations at least, but are we at a point now that the market is so mature that a new product is aimed at poaching existing bloggers from other products? Wouldn’t this strategy cannabilise users from other SA products? Don’t get me wrong (and ignore past history), I’m not having a go a Mena or SA here, indeed I happen to think Vox is a bloody good product (indeed, if I wasn’t such a control freak I’d be tempted to setup my permanent home there), but SA must know something the rest of us don’t know in terms of the marketplace, because to an outsider without access to the market research and other data SA has, it seems like…well like a rather “interesting” growth strategy, at least in respect to the history of the commercial blogging marketplace to date.

Tags: SixApart, Mena Trott, Vox

Another day, the same Chadstone foodcourt. With she who must be obeyed and the golden child catching a movie at Chaddy I’ve got some time to catch up on some reading. And what do I find? Refreshing bloody feeds. Not all of them, just the ones from people using Feedburner. Every single one of them. Again. Even Steve Rubel’s feed, which rather famously was supposed to have been fixed earlier this year is showing stuff I read yesterday. There may be Christmas cheer all around, and I can literally here the sound of the cash registers turning over as I type this, but once again Feedburner f*cks up my day. I’d name some of the other sites with this issue, sites that have been refreshing and refreshing over and over and over again for months, but at least in with some of the sites I’m not legally able to do so at this stage. So I have a Christmas Wish: that people using Feedburner would stop doing so, or alternatively they pressure Feedburner to finally fixing, once and for all, the issue their feeds have with Bloglines. And before some one suggests that I should change from Bloglines, I’ve got no intention of changing. ALL of the non-feedburner feeds work fine, it’s only ever sites using feedburner ALL THE TIME!!!!! Surely I’m not the only person suffering with the same issue?

Tags: Feedburner

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