Here’s a new feature I’m trialing on Read/Write Web. It’ll be a daily
shot of Web 2.0 news. Each item will have a main link, one or two lines of commentary
from me, and views of the story from other bloggers (if I have time).
It’ll take a while to settle into a decent format, so bear with me while I experiment
with this.
Why the coffee picture? Well I’m hoping this feature becomes
like a morning fix of caffiene for my US readers, as I’ll be publishing it in time for breakfast over there. For my non-US readers, maybe it can be a mid-afternoon Diet Coke or evening Hot Chocolate 🙂
Become.Com Goes Live
They claim to have the Web’s
“Largest Search Engine For U.S. Shopping Information”.
Key quote from CEO Michael Yang: “This shows the ability of our vertical search
strategy to produce the first disruptive technology in internet search since Google”
Views:Susan
Mernit is curious about revenue and customer acquisition models. The Internet Stock
Blog compares Become.com with Shopping.com (and others).
My comment: who knew spell check was such a crucial feature? (ref the
press release)
AP challenges Google News
MarketWatch: “…the Associated Press is “concerned” about its material being
distributed through Google and other news aggregators” and is “trying to persuade Google
to buy a license”.
Views: Here’s
the original story from LA Times, who frame it as Google vs Yahoo (the latter pays
license fees for their content). Threadwatch notes that whatever the
outcome, it will set a legal precedent. PaidContent says
“this [Content Providers looking for payments] will probably become a trend.”
My comment: On one hand, as a Content Provider myself, of course I’m backing
AP. On the other hand, long-term I think AP (as a bigco content provider) is better off
trying to build their own aggregation and syndication services, rather than worrying too
much about other aggregators.
del.icio.us funding round
Joshua Schachter, creator of the popular social bookmarks tool del.icio.us, announced an
investment by a group including Amazon.com, Marc Andreessen, Tim O’Reilly. Joshua
says it’s “a minority stake, which will keep me in control of the future of
del.icio.us.”
Views:Niall
Kennedy, softechvc,
Om Malik (who thinks
the funding was “less than $2 million”), PaidContent (which
notes of the investors: “Several already back or have backed tagging enterprises”).
My comment: This has been heavily linked to today, so chances are it’s not
new news for you. Let me just add that I still think one of the big companies will buy
out del.icio.us at some point, probably before the year is out. Who can resist becoming a
dot com millionaire? 😉 My money’s on Yahoo…
Bonus Link (froth on the top)
Excellent
post by Chris Anderson detailing mainstream media meltdown: music, tv, radio,
newspapers, magazines, books were all down in sales last year. Movies, video games
and the Web were all up.
