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Re-organizing the news

Re-organizing the news

Mike Arrington has another Ode to Memeorandum on Techcrunch. I’m a big fan of tech.memeorandum too and it’s changing the way I read blogs and catch up with the latest tech news. My first rave review of memeorandum was a month ago when it went live and since then I’ve met Gabe in person – and seen how dedicated he is to developing it.

Some people…

Two-Way Web joins Web 2.0 Workgroup – spicy noodles celebration follows

Two-Way Web joins Web 2.0 Workgroup – spicy noodles celebration follows

The Web 2.0 Workgroup has expanded to 4 blogs (and more to come!), with the addition of Dave Winer’s Two-Way Web blog. This is awesome news, because the Two-Way Web site was a defining influence on me when I first started blogging.

Dave was around at the TechCrunch house later in the day and then we all went out for spicy noodles, a famous…

Web 2.0: Land of Opportunity, or Land of Absurdity?

Web 2.0: Land of Opportunity, or Land of Absurdity?

I’m sensing a backlash about the rising VC interest in Web 2.0. Mike Rundle takes aim at Flock in his post subtitled “The Leaning Tower of Buzz”. He thinks Flock is only useful to the blog crowd and doesn’t have a viable business model. Bart from Flock disagrees, saying in the comments that they do have a plan to make money and the market will…

Acquisitions 101

Acquisitions 101

To all those Web 2.0 companies looking to get acquired by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! or eBay, Don Dodge has handily compiled a list of tips. Don works on the Microsoft Emerging Business Team.

In his latest post he starts by noting Microsoft’s “rich tradition of acquisitions”. He points to a list of Microsoft investments and acquisitions over the…

Mash-ups Best Practice and Business Models

Mash-ups Best Practice and Business Models

The necessary components of a mash-up according to the panelists are AJAX or a similar client-side technology, APIs in the backend (or RSS and/or scraping if need be – although some people argue scraping isn’t truly Web 2.0), and a lot of work on the UI and data sets by the developer(s). Paul Rademacher mentioned there is still a lot of work to…

Yahoo! starts rolling out user-generated content to the masses

Yahoo! starts rolling out user-generated content to the masses

Yahoo! announced two major products this week: a podcasting service and then blog search integrated with Yahoo! News Search. Both of these products are outputs of Yahoo!’s strategy to introduce more user-generated content to their media offerings, as outlined by their CEO Terry Semel at the Web 2.0 Conference.

Some people have criticised the…

Web 2.0 Workgroup

Web 2.0 Workgroup

During my time in Silicon Valley I’ve been staying in the TechCrunch house with Michael Arrington and Frederico Oliveira (Gabe Rivera of memeorandum fame is also here currently). Mike, Fred and I all blog on the topic of Web 2.0 – so we thought why not create a Web 2.0 network. As you do. It’s called Web 2.0 Workgroup.

Our blogs are all…

Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 3-9 October 2005

Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 3-9 October 2005

This week: Web 2.0 Conference Special

sponsored by:

The past week has been an amazing one for me. My first trip to America and I’ve met so
many people that I’d previously only known via the Web (blogs, email, etc). The Web 2.0 Conference was held in San Francisco from
Wednesday 5th to Friday 7th October. It was a hive of energy and…

My Million Dollar Blog

My Million Dollar Blog

Tristan Louis did the numbers on the AOL-WeblogsInc deal. My blog Read/WriteWeb has 1,938 inbound links on Technorati as of today, so according to Tristan’s calculations Read/WriteWeb is worth over $1 million.

OK, so there were other factors that contributed to the weblogsinc deal – the value of network effects etc. But I certainly believe…

Andreessen confirms Ning business model

Andreessen confirms Ning business model

Marc Andreessen popped into Alex Barnett’s comments to confirm the business goals of Ning. In response to Alex’s well-written analysis of what Ning is trying to accomplish, Marc commented:

“Alex — your description of what we are trying to do is very well said. It’s an experiment, but those are the goals.

We are going to see if we can generate…

Web 2.0 Conference Post Round-up

Web 2.0 Conference Post Round-up

The conference is over now and so here’s a summary of my blog output from it. I was pumping out the real-time notes over the last 3 days! I didn’t have much time for analysis – my brain was full to the brim just absorbing everything. I intend to dive into the details over the next week or two. Here are the posts I wrote during the…

Cautious Optimism and Cynical Buzz

Cautious Optimism and Cynical Buzz

For me the Web 2.0 conference has been really exciting and the air has been full of energy. But I’m new in the Silicon Valley, so I’ve been curious to listen to what other conference attendees have been saying. A lot of them share my enthusiasm, but there’s also a fair amount of what could be termed ‘cynical buzz’. People who perhaps lived…

Discussion: Prosumer Media Mena Trott, Mark Fletcher, Rich Skrenta

Discussion: Prosumer Media Mena Trott, Mark Fletcher, Rich Skrenta

John: this idea of prosumer media, define more. prosumer media is big business

Mark: started bloglines to scratch my own itch. other people must have this problem too, that was genesis.

Rich: folks in newspaper companies surprisingly savvy about the Web. more and more content every day – our job direct people to that.

Mena: the day we took…

Conversation: Sergey Brin of Google

Conversation: Sergey Brin of Google

John: how you handling the success?

Sergey: attributes success to luck. followed our hearts in terms of research areas. found they had something useful and impactful. early on talked about open sourcing, but eventually started the company. exciting and wild ride. starting to get used to it.

John: brings up terry semel conversation, how he said…

Search engine stats: Jim Lanzone from Ask.com

Search engine stats: Jim Lanzone from Ask.com

Shows stats – 36k feeds that really matter; 14k “really really matter”, 60 feeds that are Paris Hilton hot; 1 feed is da bomb – slashdot. [will update these stats later]

Long tail of searches – 95%. eg head queries: hurricane rita, maps, song lyrics.

Long tail of verticals (or categories). Also long tail of revenue – “most of revenue still made…

Zimbra UI Minute

Zimbra UI Minute

Open source client platform for messaging, communications. Shows email interface with links embedded in each message – with web services calls to various apps/services. e.g. mouse over for Google map, appointment, events, fedex package updates. Lots of mash-ups. Impressive.

APIs are open, can write mash-ups. Has the ajax magic going on. Fully…

3D Web Services

3D Web Services

This is a Show Me of new technologies. Rolf Herken talking, founder of mental images. 3D visualization component software. mental ray photorealism – worked on The Matrix, Alexander, 2046. “Rendering the imagination visible”.

Thinks there’s need for 3D on the Web. e.g. 3D online entertainment, e-commerce, product stuff, mobile.

Very heavy data…

The Alumni Report Joe Kraus , Kim Polese

The Alumni Report Joe Kraus , Kim Polese

Kim, CEO of SpikeSource: “the world has completely changed for building a software company.”

Joe: talking about Jotspot, “DIY publishing” – wikis next step after blogs for web publishing. Jotspot heading towards “DIY apps”.

Joe talking about Jotspot mistakes this year – not focusing on revenue. “Jotspot was in beta for way too long” –> not…

Google RSS Reader announced at Web 2.0

Google RSS Reader announced at Web 2.0

Google just announced their new RSS Reader, called Google Reader. It’s browser-based (of course) and has similar look n’ feel to Gmail. Very Ajaxy. I’ll play with it some more and report back later. For now, here’s more info from SEW:

“Google Reader is a browser-based application that works with virtually all popular browsers on Windows, Mac and…

A Conversation with AOL CEO Jonathan Miller

A Conversation with AOL CEO Jonathan Miller

John starts by grilling Jonathan: “are you talking to Microsoft?” [crowd roars]. Jonathan replies that AOL is in transition from proprietary mindset/business model to more open model – like Web 2.0. John tries again: AOL is an important player in platform market, Microsoft wants to create a partnership with AOL.

Jonathan: “we’re the largest…