In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we take a special look at how President Obama’s inauguration was covered, analyzed and celebrated via the Internet. Also this week we began a new series on recommendation technologies, starting with the Netflix Prize; and we asked some hard questions about Twitter’s API support. Check out the highlights too from our Enterprise Channel and Jobwire, ReadWriteWeb’s new product which tracks hires in tech and new media.
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Web Products
Facebook and CNN: The Power of the Social Web Revealed
This week Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. As several million people attended the inauguration in Washington D.C., Facebook and CNN invited the rest of the world to watch the moment online. Online visitors to CNN.com were able to use its video player to watch the live broadcast coverage of the event. We also saw what has be one of the most brilliant examples of the real-time web in action: next to the video, the Facebook status updates of those watching streamed by in the sidebar.
ReadWriteWeb Guide to Celebrating Inauguration Day
Millions of people followed the inaugeration via the Web; as Obama recently pointed out “you don’t have to brave the crowds and commotion in order to participate in this celebration.” We compiled a list of online resources to navigate the inauguration virtually. Included are Inaugural Week events, where to watch the Inauguration online, news coverage, and links to interesting and [we hope] fun sites. Although the event is over now, many of the links in our guide have archived content to enjoy at your leisure.
Whitehouse.gov: Looking Back at 12 Years of the US President’s Web Presence
As the eyes of the world were focused on the pomp and circumstance of Barack Obama moving into a new role as President of the United States, Obama’s Web team was hard at work – with far less fanfare – moving their Web property to a new address: whitehouse.gov, the official Web site for the President. And while, at first blush, the site may appear similar to Obama’s President-elect site, change.gov, it is strikingly different than the predecessors who have occupied whitehouse.gov over the past 12 years. How different? In this post we take a look.
Is Twitter Strangling its Famous API?
The most extreme developers may find themselves left out in the cold.
Twitter watchers know that a large part of the service’s use comes through its Application Programming Interface (API) and that’s been a big part of what helped the young service grow. Now that the company has Britney Spears, CNN and Barack Obama among its ranks of users, though, developers seeking to push the limits of that API may soon find themselves no longer welcome.
Netflix Prize: Will the $1 Million be Won in 2009?
This week we started a new series here on ReadWriteWeb about recommendation engines. We identified recommendations as one of 5 trends to watch at the start of 2008; and that’s even more so at the beginning of 2009. We also have a page dedicated to recommendation technologies in our stock presentation entitled What’s Next on the Web?. In this post we look at Netflix; and in particular update you on the $1 million challenge that Netflix set in order to find ‘the next big thing’ in recommendations.
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
A Word from Our Sponsors
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- Mashery is the leading provider of API management services.
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- Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 allows you to create interactive social media experiences.
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RWW Jobwire
The White House Names New Media Director
As noted above, the WhiteHouse.gov website saw major improvements this week – thanks in large part to the efforts of Macon Phillips, The White House’s newly appointed New Media Director. One minute after the inauguration, Phillips posted an entry entitled “Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov” and introduced himself as one of several people who will blog on the site. In the post he says, “our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities: communication, transparency and participation”.
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Web Trends
7 Online Things To Do To Help Obama Restore America
As noted above, this week we watched Barack Obama be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. Many have called Mr. Obama the Internet President because of the unprecedented way his campaign used the medium to raise funds, raise awareness, and ultimately outmaneuver John McCain. But what can we do now to help turn this country around? Read on for 7 things every one of us can do on the Internet to help Obama restore America.
Word Cloud Analysis of Obama’s Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln’s
When Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the US, his speech was widely praised around the web. There were quite a few concepts discussed that we suspected hadn’t been a part of past inaugural speeches. What words were used most often? We ran the full text of the speech through tag cloud generator Wordle.net for one view of the event, and just for the sake of historical context we ran George W. Bush’s second inaugural speech, Bill Clinton’s second, Reagan’s first, and Lincoln’s first and second inaugural speeches as well.
The most common words in the Obama and Bush speeches were dramatically different.
In the second RWW Live of 2009, we discussed a web standard that made big strides in 2008 and is being increasingly adopted by Internet companies big and small: OpenID. At the end of December, the OpenID Foundation announced its new Board – and we had several of those board members on the RWW Live podcast show this week. They were Scott Kveton and Chris Messina from Vidoop, Brian Kissel from JanRain, and David Recordon from SixApart. As usual, RWW Live was hosted by Sean Ammirati and featured the RWW regulars.
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The Older You Are, the Better You Multi-Task (If You’re a Woman)
New data released by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) gives us insight into how men and women engage in “simultaneous media use” – that is, surfing the net while also doing some other activity like watching TV. According to the study, it’s more common for women to watch TV and use the computer than it is for men. What’s more, women supposedly get better at this multi-tasking as they age.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
Enterprise
Live Presentations: What an Online Office Suite Should Look Like
The current crop of online office suites from Google, Zoho, or ThinkFree is quite usable, but most of these products still feel very limited compared to the power of Microsoft’s Office products. The newest entrant in this market, Live Documents, however, is trying to change this by developing a fully featured online/offline office suite. This week, Live Documents, which was co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia, who famously sold Hotmail to Microsoft in 1998, released its first product: Live Presentations. We think that the Live Documents suite, thanks to its easy to use user interface and support for offline editing, has the potential to play a major role in the online office suite market – especially once the team irons out the bugs and adds a word processor and a spreadsheet application.
Email us if you’re interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb’s Enterprise Channel.
SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
