Category: Web 2.0

This is nuts. Beyond nuts. Interesting usage figures though, given I’ve read elsewhere lately that the 100 million users figure for MySpace is rubbish due to inactive accounts etc, Reuters claims MySpace has 90 million active users. Amazing, but still a crazy valuation.

The Scoble Show.

Got to say it’s pretty damn good. Scoble avoids the mistakes of many in podcasting by keeping the interviews fairly short and punchy so they don’t drag on (like that horrid podcast he was on with Arrington and Om over at Techcruch the other day). I’ve only watched a few so far (naturally the interview with Jeremy Wright was my first choice) but so far it bides well.

Tags: Scoble Show

All of a sudden the previously full feed from Techcrunch has moved to a part feed (click image for larger shot)…is this an accident or a deliberate move? Will Scoble and others who hate part feeds now boycott Techcrunch? Developing… 🙂

Tags: Techcrunch, Scoble

Michael over at the Solostream blog posts that the NY Times is looking for a WordPress developer. As much as it’s nice to know that even a huge MSM company like the NY Times group is using WordPress, the criteria is a bit rough, in particular “2-3 years experience developing and maintaining WordPress blogs”. That would mean you’d have to have started developing for WordPress prior to September 2004. Given WordPress didn’t really take off in a huge way prior to the MT 3.0 launch in mid 2004 it’s pushing things, and even looking at the Whois record for WordPress, the domain was only registered in March 2003…ie, WordPress itself is only 3 1/2 years old! Getting someone with 3 years experience is well….a very big ask indeed 🙂

Tags: WordPress, NY Times

Techcrunch reviews Zecco. WTF? God help us that there’s a startup with a business plan that actually might meet an unmet niche….oh no, because Techcrunch would much rather hype flash in the pan over capitalised and business plan free startups that create solutions for problems that don’t exist.

But probably more seriously here, who at Zecco doesn’t Mike Arrington like? Is there some past history here? after all, given the usual gushing reviews we normally get, this one is cold and calculated. Sure, they’ve got the Neil Kjeldsen is an expert disclaimer out front, but seriously can we trust someone with a history with paid brokers to be positive about a threat to their industry + this would have had to have been signed off up the line prior to publication as well.

Tags: zecco

Interesting post at Techcrush, a Web 2.0 review site:

We put down our pencils here at the Crush-Room for the next days due to possible legal issues. Please stay with us, we will see how things are going to work out.

Legal issues? we’ll the only possible person who could have legal issues with the site would be Mike Arrington, and it would be related to the name of the site, presuming that Arrington’s TechCrunch is a trade marked name. Now before everyone jumps up and down and says that it’s fair game legally because the name may well infringe on Arrington’s trademark, isn’t Web 2.0 suppose to be about being inclusive? Sure, the name similarity is there, but it’s hardly a major Techcrunch competitor, and we’re hardly going to mix up Techcrush with Techcrunch now are we? Story I guess is….developing 🙂

Update: Tony from Deep Jive Interests (via the comments) points to this comment on his blog where it would seem Mike Arrington confirms that he would be behind the C&D/ legal action against Techcrush. Mike can blame lawyers all he wants, at the end of the day he’s the one who says yes or no.

Tags: Techcrunch, Techcrush

Techcrunch covers an upgrade to the Web 2.0 television guide site MeeVee. It’s a service that offers….a television guide….I’m so under whelmed, after all it’s something MSN and Yahoo to name but a few have been offering for years, not to forget hundreds of other sites. But it’s Web 2.0 I hear people saying, it’s innovative! Bullsh*t, it’s a TV guide, and it’s a TV guide that only covers the US as well, so before they’ve even started they’ve excluded hundreds of millions of potential users. But it has Ajax I can hear others saying! We’ll so does the TV guide I use at Yahoo7. But it does social search, allowing you to find shows you might not know about! Wow (not), so does Torrentspy 🙂 But it’s going to be big in the tech/ Web 2.0/ first adopters crowd you might well say? well isn’t this the exact same crowd that is abandoning television for video on demand and the internet.

I give it 6 months at the most. Probably less. It’s some how got an Alexa ranking of 18,000 odd, I honestly dont believe it. At the moment their only income appears to be tribal fusion banner advertising, and they can’t even get this to work properly when I load the page (see below). eBay, here comes another one.

Tags: MeeVee

Engadget has a new look. Nice. But am I the only one at this stage to have noticed that the back end changes in terms of voting on comments etc is Netscape. Clever work by Jason Calacanis to leverge the scripting from Netscape into his Blogsmith platform though. Still no support for trackbacks though. As Darren over at Problogger notes theres less ads as well. With a page rank of 8 I’d think they could live off the side bar text links alone 🙂

Performancing has a job listed for a Google Blogger. The company hiring is a firm by the name of Visual Connect. It’s an Australian company, never heard of them prior to now, but it’s the second time in as many weeks I’ve seen Australian companies expand into blog network plays. Of course, new blog networks are probably so last year or the year before, but finally the minow of Australia awakes…or as the case may be, is catching up.

Tags: Blog networks

Minic over at The Blogging Times is advertising for an intern. It’s a non-paid position but by being part of that team you not only get exposure at the site, you also get to pick the brains of the Hunter S Thompson of the Blogosphere, Chartreuse. Recommended.