Rupe : "There are millions and millions of new writers on the Internet, mainly writing rubbish, but a lot are writing words of wisdom."

tt vs croc
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Rupert Murdoch on his worldwind Aussie tour has already ticked a celebrity wedding, offsided Islamic Aussies, and been named most influential Aussie ever by a Packer publication. He is pretty circumspect that news "may not be delivered on destroyed trees." His other great soundbite from the Herald Sun yesterday was :

"There are millions and millions of new writers on the Internet, mainly writing rubbish, but a lot are writing words of wisdom. As you find your way around it, it is a magnificent thing to see." I wonder when Rupert wil have a MySpace page if he doesnt already....

A Wired piece Switters sent me also has the Hep Cat talking the language of UCG : “To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control."

Auttomatic Success

myspace owner
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

There doesnt seem much chance of Auttomatic being at least as successful (and likely more) than Tony Schneider (post below) re the new premium paid support service for WP + WPMU. Smart and industrial. If it's good enough for New York Times....

"WordPress is already used to power blogs and sites by several well known large companies, places like the New York Times, CNET, and About.com. In talking to other large corporate users over the past few months, I've received the same request over and over: if we could pay you to provide us with enterprise level support for WordPress, we're ready to deploy it in a big way. We've responded by creating the Support Network. It's loosely modelled after similar offerings from companies like MySQL and Red Hat who provide support subscriptions for open source software."

THE STORY : "Is this something like “The Devil made me do it ?”

BarCamp San Francisco
Originally uploaded by miss_rogue.

BadPitch.Blogspot.com provide virtual 2.0 entrepreneurs the next time you are approached by the media, conference organisers or at a family dinner to talk about blogs, etc.

Media Outlet : Duh
Reporter: Get the spelling right so you can Google them as needed.
Story Angle: Be smart here and ask questions. Is it a roundup with all of your competitors, or a feature on your company?
Deadline: This drives the interview timing, but it also tells you how much of the story you might appear in.
Run Date: It's usually not always the day after the deadline.
Preliminary Questions: Starter questions help prepare the interviewee.

Marc Cuban has another take on the process : "Is this something like “The Devil made me do it ?”. Is there some invisible editor in the ether doling out assignments ? How does someone “make themselves the story ?”

(I also like Jason Calacanis' line to newly funded bloggers who are building businesses : "STARTING IS EASY, FINISHING IS HARD" - I have a line I constantly tell myself learnt last time "things are never as good or as bad as they seem.")

“in a town without a middle class, your parents are either millionaires or your parents work for millionaires.”

jacko fingers
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I dont have a elgato TV on my Mac so other than the Gym to catch up on Big Brother, I dont see much TV. I did see a funeral on Veronica Mars last Friday : In which the rich, sex addicted Hollywood director (harry hamlins character) is supposed to be mourning his wife. His ICM agent is at the funeral trying to close a deal for the studio; Son has moment of clarity, and knows she has merely escaped, hence the next episode he wants to hire Veronica et dadee. It's a very kewl cruisy show. Fluff-meta, digg it.

InTheseTimes.com has some good detail around the show I didnt know : "Its setting, the fictional southern California town of Neptune, is a prophetic vision of the Two Americas we are in the process of becoming—a “town without a middle class,” as Veronica calls it in the pilot episode’s opening moments, where “your parents are either millionaires or your parents work for millionaires.”

"We’ll be hiring.. starting UK.. redesign.. more staff.. operations + sales.. interns, more mixers + conferences, research.."

besties
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Rafat at PaidContent knows exactly what he is going to do with his first round of funding (sub $1m tranche 1 they say but obviously more by the looks of expenditure line items) Makes sense (become a young, liked Meckler)

PaidContent : "We’ll be hiring a journalist in NYC, starting our UK vertical, launching a redesign of all our sites, hiring more staff for operations and sales, bringing on interns, planning more industry mixers and developing conferences, starting our research arm, and more."

Congrats Dan + Amy

chopper closes
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Dan, Alon and I used to catch the 801am Sandy train Elsternwick to South Yarra, starting in Year 9@Melbourne High. The irony is I've ended back in Elsternwick during some of my start-up weekdays, and Dan is kicking it with his (now) wife Amy in Washington, after a beach wedding in Mexico; Which I would have loved to gone to; Unfortunately the budget stretched to about $3.20 for a 2 hour ticket to Tivoli Road South Yarra, not Mexico, but I hope we'll catch up soon at the Espy or Blairgowrie; I'm sorry I couldnt be there. But looks fkn awesome.

DoomedAdvertiser.com

wedding rollers
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

DoomedStartup.com may be in the business of writing less than glowing reviews of emerging companies, but on a Monday morning with my own serverbeach.com problems I still have to chuckle at their take on gather.com - who has raised $6M.

To me, both gather.com and newsvine.com are attacking similar markets. (pro news meets citizen journalism) They've both built nice products but there isn't enough 'edge' or 'hyperlocal' elements for me, to use 2.0 jargon. They may need an om or scoble to position their products to the world.

DoomedStartup.com : "Doing a little bit of everything doesn't work for startups; to succeed, they have to be much better than whatever's already popular. It's hard enough to be the best at one thing, much less four... A social site that centers around user-generated content and pays members who create popular content is probably a good idea, but a startup run by non-technical people with bad taste and a penchant for spending money fast is doomed."

BB : I was just reflecting at how normal I think it is now that there are sites such as doomedstartup.com, and we dont even bat an eyelid. Its a normal check'n'balance of launching a new web business, or "keeping the bastards honest" to use a famous Australian Politics quote. (Don Chipp ?)
If you dont get found out by usage numbers, or standard financial analysis - "What is your business model ?" (talked about yday at bloggerconiv) vertical niche content players in the doomedstartup space are going to go after you... no wonder Mr Jarvis has such a good piece on why advertisers, their agencies, and above the line TV budgets, will soon be privvy to the same doomedadvertiser.com analysis !

BuzzMachine : "But this won’t last for long, as one client and then one agency discovers that the lazy, traditional, one-stop-shopping of TV upfront and the big-media lunch circuit is inefficient, wasteful, untargeted, irrelevant, and ultimately damned irritating to your customers. Once that tipping point comes, dollars will start flowing to the upstarts online — not as many dollars concentrated in a few places as before, but spread out far and wide."

Blogs are (our) "Little First Amendment Machine" + (the) "Unedited Voice of One Person"

sienna in nyc
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

There's an interesting Bloggercon session led by Lisa Williams "Emotional Life" which adopts a slightly diatribe-ical group-reflection on relationships between blogger as blogger, blogger as family member/partner/wife "I'm going to blog about this", and readers as supporters or stalkers, and breaking up through YouTube, then getting digged. To blog, or not to blog, is the 2.0 Shakespearean MP3 on offer here :)

(Note : The quotes in title come from Jay Rosen NYU Journalism Professor, and Dave Winer, who invented you know - rss, podcasting + opml)

"Bloggers like (Community Theatre) Actors will Work for Free"

paris undercover
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

A funny line from a bloggerconIV participant "Making Money" (mp3) who said bloggers are not very good at making money : Using the analogy of community theatre actors where even the musicians would be paid, but the actors would work for free. The flipside is then the $20M and 'points' for the next X-Men.

The most interesting part about the discussion related to personal brand building, not that the monetization solutions were the most scientific cutting edge - Thats the trade-off I guess of not having ad infrastructure vendors there !

The session also showed that nearly every single blogger has a different business model. Traditionally you were either an early stage or public co' employee, an entrepreneur, consultant, but with blogging/podcasting there seem to be some new tools to create a hybrid of entrepreneur/freelancer /writer/producer...

"It's better to be the dumbest one in the room than the smartest."

DSC_2908.JPG
Originally uploaded by paolovalde.

Informatory blog likes Chris Pirillo's BloggerconIV session on Users in Charge - mp3 - ("Every big company employee should listen to "Users in Charge" from today's BloggerCon.") - Chris catalysed the crowd by asking "What are you passionate about ?... What do you care about.. "as users" ?- User lockin to vendor discussions ensued :)

Ponzi enjoyed the day too :) "Wow, what a day. I can feel the love in the room. It's better to be the dumbest one in the room than the smartest." Today I feel privileged to be in that position. The bloggercon people are people I truly feel a connection to. There hasn't been one who has made me feel like my questions were "dumb" - even when they were.'

Nick Bradbury on BloggerConIV

Blogher
Originally uploaded by l0ckergn0me.

I came across Nick Bradbury's bloggerconIV post (using Mr Calacanis self promotion technique) here on gnoos (I wasnt trying to build a global solution here as much as one that satisfied local needs first, and then rollover to global interests - which is what regional search engines have always done, so it's kewl a bradbury type comes up early in the search results for gnoos.. eg bloggercon - its not like aussies would be blogging about this, not being there, but it would be of interest to them, etc)

Anyway, Nick of the Feld Mobius Newsgator RSS Empire writes a good summary of 'his experience' (as they say in Big Brother during evictions; 'How does X affect your time in house ?') Nick's quote rings true as when you launch a product the usual suspects start asking for heaps of features and in aggregate wouldnt even click on an ad between themselves (ok if we had ads, they wouldnt click on them !)

Nick Bradbury - "Why did I want to speak up? Because many of the people talking were techies, which is a big part of the problem. Less technical users believe they don't have the technical expertise to join the conversation, so developers end up tailoring their tools to meet the needs of power users since they're the ones that speak up. We need to create an environment where non-geeks don't feel intimidated, and power users need to help rather than hinder this goal."

I wonder how the newbie solutions (ala vox.com which Mr Riley sent me a royal invite to yday) approach will go btw.. i hope there is a post digg audience... just waiting to become the early majority as marketers segment them.

As a friend said to me while chatting away on his Blackberry "Just a minute, I'm on Reddit, and the most popular story is about Unix and topless women." I've had many similar conversations on the flipside with media proprietors who reach millions of people with their mastheads and say "I go to these popular citizen journalism/social media sites, and it's still too geeky, bloggy.... call me back when it gets more mainstream."

"Some day I'm going to buy the Knicks and pull a Mark Cuban... mark my words. :-)"

Britt Bravo
Originally uploaded by marytsao.

In between Jason Calacanis' embedded reporting of his beta.netscape (which i totally empathise with re my own projects gnoos et soon to birth offspring) anyway Jason is doing a East Coast Cuban, minus his team losing the Finals to digg, we hope.

Calacanis : "Some day I'm going to buy the Knicks and pull a Mark Cuban... mark my words. :-)"

BloggerCon IV - Citizen Journalism MP3

Kicks in very well once audience participation starts happening (10+ minutes in) - Especially once you get journalists giving their real life example of their conversion to Kabbalah, Scientology, oops I meant Blogging. Citizen Journalism BloggerCon IV mp3 here. Damn, should I listen to the Collingwood match or bloggercon IV ?

BloggerCon IV .mp3's

BloggerCon IV
Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

I've just watched Rye slay Pearcedale in local footy, and here is the link to Blogger Con IV MP3's. I've passed on the American National Anthem which is the kick-off link and started with "Tools". Just press play.

Does Anyway Listen to Paid Gervais Podcast ?

048
Originally uploaded by Sgt. Gooch.

I miss the free Karl podcasts with Gervais playn exec producer pimper. His first series did some handy numbers - which seems in line (250K+) with what the big individual podcasts do (Curry, Keith+Girl, Gervais)

Podcasting News says Gervais Series One had a "Guinness Book of World Records with an average of 261,670 downloads per episode...But people didn't stop downloading the show once he got the record. So the number got bigger. According to Gervais, the total rose to 541,329 by the time the first series of The Ricky Gervais Show ended in February."

Tim Blair vs Jim Schembri Blog Smackdown

jess flex
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

1.0 MSM journo vs 2.0 blogger is waaaay funny.
#3 search term on gnoos.
The exchange here from Tim Blair's site.

"Croatia Australia" on gnoos

"Croatia Australia " on gnoos is today's popular search. Aussies are still pumped ! Italy, you may as well withdraw now.

GOAL!!!!! 2-2

GOAL!!!!! 2-2
Originally uploaded by nettsu.

How good was that goal !!!! I've got to love that aussie bloggers are immediately blogging this pre-9am, as well as the media - which we are picking up on gnoos. Oh I love RSS.

Aussies Draw and Get Thru to World Cup

AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE OI OI OI
Originally uploaded by nettsu.

What a game - Aussies needed a draw against Croatia and got it. Care of Harry Kewel goal. Get Schwarter back as the keeper though. Melbourne will be pumped today, and next we take out the Italians, which could bring street warfare back among Australia's own. Flickr stream.

4 Hours : Aussies Commence Defeat of Croatia

$283K AU
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Australia has to only not lose to Croatia to get thru to the next round of World Cup. There will be millions of Aussies up at 5am today. I think I heard that 7 of the Australian team are of Croatian descent and 3 of the Croatians are Australian. Anyway, go Aussies I'll be listening on radio at minimum, after having no luck finding a SBS or other eg Yahoo, BBC virtual radio stream :)

Back to the war of virtual participants... where Dan Farber is refining a good variation on the standard social media pitch : "MySpace meets YouTube meets Podomatic meets Flickr meets Facebook meets Google APIs meets Yahoo 360 meets Imeem meets Vox meets the giant Live and MSN Spaces meets Dabble meets Xanga meets TagWorld meets LinkedIn meets Digg meets the new AIM meets X, Y, Z."

UGC is Dead Says Business 2.0

they forgot om
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

When the symbolic "I", of the UGC crew, who freestyles user generated content, is at the top of a business 2.0 50 people who matter list, ahead of Om Malik, Rupert, Sergey and the Atherton crew, well the taxi drivers will be well and truly shorting this index. BTW Do people trade Web 2.0 funds/indexes btw in any guerilla format ?

10 Steps to Becoming a Web 2.0 Billionaire

When I speak to alot of people, they underestimate their true potential and what they could achieve. Many people have asked me to reflect, and I thought I'd take some time out between my various non-commercial pursuits and do so.

10 Steps to Becoming a Web 2.0 Billionaire

1. Become a self-taught expert in designated new web 2.0 area, and write blog posts, post YouTube videos, and whatever other 2.0 method acting you need to get inside the role of being a 2.0 entrepreneur. Just make sure you are regarded as serial.

2. Go to friends and family at birthday and/or XMAS time and say that you dont want any presents this year. But you will take a second mortgage on the family home. If questioned, show them a graph of google's early stock price on Yahoo Finance.

3. Create a non-commercial blog network and link to each other saying it's a very exciting time, and that there is never a better time to start a company. If you start getting random panic attacks, and dont know what they are; They are panic attacks. Heartburn isnt a heart attack either.

4. If you are in a relationship, finish that. If you have a family, tell them there will be no presents for XMAS or birthdays. Love is what matters most.

5. The $100,000 you borrowed, spend it, and make sure there isn't much to show. Especially dont have a finished product or good financials. Make sure your business is easy to copy, non scalable, and generally not that attractive to even your friends, and other people on the internet. When your (friends + family) investors start to ask how the business is going, show them the same Yahoo Finance graph, and say you are tracking to and exceeding industry standards. On Time. On Budget. Always show a logo to elicit feedback.

6. Raise a fund because someone contacted you from your blog looking to "partner" as a synonym for a "flutter". Show them the graph, and pay any serious creditors from the proceeds who have been threatening physical pain in the prior months from a bad ad deal you did before people got Web 2.0.

7. Now you are a 2.0 hedge fund value investor that isnt regulated or restricted by the shackles of being a public company or venture capitalists. Find some old school internet assets, or even better offline retail assets that can be dressed up with some AJAX and start your rollup play. Cook at 200 degrees for 45 minutes. Go out and get a latte.

8. Given you spent the money from the investor who contacted you on your blog, on high interest credit repayments, and you need to start showing a return to the 2.0 pension funds, start buying assets using scrip. In phone calls you make in various states of undress interchange the word scrip, script, equity, stock, pscyhed, cash and stock, earnout, and synergy but minimise use of terms cash and upfront. You bought an ad agency before and it sucked.

9. Now you have fused some offline, 1.0 dot com survivors and 2.0 ajax, video, p2p, meta-vertical search playaz into a rollup play, you must engage 2 primary tactics - Speak to Russian Mafia and Domain Name Spammers about maximising traffic and contextual ad revenue. Read Tech.Memeorandum (dont call it techmeme.com or you wont be considered 2.0 old school) and find out how you can get 5 billion pages indexed in 30 days. Ensure due diligence is conducted during the consequent growth period, and your personal golden parachutes have uncapped bonuses for exceeding revenue and user targets from this representative window.

10. In between speaking to those in Eastern European time zones, you have been dealing with convergent media funds that are looking to find an entry point into the exciting world of software without desktops, and TV without networks. You like them because they lost more than you and the Junior VP of Bus Dev has sent you his resume looking for work. They are looking to you as a solution to their problems. And with 28% of all web consumers visiting one of your destinations, and 85% daily, you are a 2.0 Ted Turner like cosmonaut : With a collection of assets, which when aligned with the "natural owner" should be able to maximise the ad yields by a factor of 4-8 times across billions of page views. Ensure your independent research firm does a few lovely graphs which make this comparison stark and immediate. As a final signature maneouvre make the acquire transfer the billions through PayPal once they win a rigged reverse virtual auction; Buy a basketball team; Become a philanthropist; Save the World. We all can do it. In these 10 easy steps. Then Blog About It in a List. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

"At Yahoo, we’ve been big microformat fans.."

the simpson
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

This is right in my sweet spot at moment. It's good to be on the money tech platformwise, or at least close to where the innovation is happening. Niall Kennedy : "Yahoo! Local has added microformats support -- including hCard, hReview, and hCal markup -- to almost all of its business listings, search results, events, and reviews. The new markup allows parsers of Yahoo! Local pages such as web browsers and search engine to automatically recognize the structured contact, review, and calendar data present on Yahoo! Local pages."

Yahoo Local (and Y!Tech) itself, I'm very interested in their use of hReviews : "At Yahoo, we’ve been big microformat fans — Yahoo! Tech uses the hReview microformat for all product reviews, Flickr supports XFN and hCard on all profile pages, and our own Upcoming.org was the first big hCalendar supporter."

"Bootstrapping is not about being a cheapskate about everything, squeezing every last penny out of your vendors and partners"

ounce please
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Found this on gnoos, meta-therapy care of RoundOne : "Even in a bootstrap startup, it is important to spend some money – just in the right places and at the right times. Bootstrapping is not about being a cheapskate about everything, squeezing every last penny out of your vendors and partners and otherwise being the nightmare customer for every company you deal with.

At some level, you will begin to realize that markets are somewhat “efficient” and unless you have some special connections or characteristics that cause you to convince people to give up their goods and services at a price well below market rates, you’re essentially going to get what you pay for (in a macro sense). Of course, there are definitely ways to find the best deal (in terms of value), but this can usually only be taken so far. And, of course, there are places that you should find the least expensive option, because it doesn’t matter all that much."

"gobblegook businesspeak that (doesn't) define anything concrete"

royale db9
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

This is one of the most accurate posts I have ever read of the Life of a Startup (from an angel investor perspective "I was stretched with my partners. We were thrashing. We knew we had something Big, but somehow it was the Business We Dare Not Name. Technology, Platform, Application, Solution -- these are all gobblegook businesspeak that don't define anything concrete.")

This from Peter Rip whose firm - Leapfrog Ventures - invested in Ojos (Riya) who has been looking to be the Dj's DJ and find an enterprise 2.0 business model out of "mashups". Their latest investment Abgenial Systems, I'm now fascinated to see what happens. The story confirms to me, that many entrepreneurs have extensive domain experience - operational and sometimes academic. Not always, just a decade working through the same problem, can either motivate you to do something, or accept your fate and inevitable atrophy.

Abgenial Systems founder - Rafael Bracho : "In the late 1990's, he co-founded Active Software, the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) pioneer, where he served as CTO until its merge with webMethods. Prior to that he held various technical and management positions at Sun Microsystems and Schlumberger. Dr. Bracho has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a MSc in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington."

Peter Rip from the tantalising post title 'Investing at the Intersection of Opportunity and Serendipity' : "Last Fall, Web 2.0 was white hot on “collaboration and mashing” and Enterprise Software was moribund with “legacy vendor consolidation and broken distribution models.” Software as a Service was the VC industry’s Great White Hope, combining Web distribution with Enterprise functionality. (Read this as low cost of distribution and tangible value.) Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo were increasingly veering towards web applications (calendars, maps, photo sharing, etc.) – free form of SaaS." '

90% (will) Search for Themselves

young + old
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Had a cracking dinner last night with the formely-UK contingent @ CNF on Chapel. Today it's back to shipping our newest Naimbian. The quote below which John Battelle's link to a Harris poll here is spot on :

"The Search quotes a Harris poll that says nearly 40 percent of internet users have performed the requisite vanity search. “I’d be willing to wager that this number will head north of 90 percent in the coming years, as search becomes as individually definitional as finding oneself in the white pages was during the rise of the telephone. Besides ourselves, nearly 20 percent of us have looked for former flames and 36 percent for old friends, and 29 percent have researched a family member.”

Save Larry Emdur - The Rove Video Podcast

mmblack dslite
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Rove is actually funny here in this 2 minute video podcast, care of nova 969, which we're indexing yah.

BillG@Microsoft.com Email

maya jjjs
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

From: MSBILLG
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 1:41 PM
To: Microsoft and Subsidiaries: All FTE
Subject: My Transition Plans

I wanted to take a moment to share some of my thoughts, as well...

As Steve's mail indicates, I've decided that two years from now, in July 2008, I want to devote more time to the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Right now and for the next two years, my full-time job is here at Microsoft, and my part-time job remains the Foundation. Beginning in July 2008, I will switch that, to be full-time at the Foundation, while remaining involved with Microsoft as Chairman and an advisor on key development projects on a part-time basis.

To prepare for this change, we have a well-thought-out transition process. Again, I will continue at Microsoft full-time for the next two years, but over the course of those two years, my day-to-day responsibilities will shift to a team of incredible technical leaders who are already doing amazing things at the company.

Read Rest Here.

Five Web 2.0 Trends that Haven't Hit Australia in 2006

Just drop the B
Originally uploaded by scriptingnews.

Dave Winer drops the B-Bomb from We(B) 2.0, and doesnt end up with a badly translated Nintendo brand, but rather an open API, into the bloggerconverse.

Downunder there is mounting demand for The OPML-RSS-Podcasting MacDaddy to visit later this year and pimp his global unconference franchise (not to mention a handful of startups wanting his sage advice) We want to get this moving again Dave because we have the support and funding (for your visit), yay !

Being a Monday (but me on a very strange timezone as I've been interfacing with the East Coast for UI updates + lots of sports at different times), I've been reflecting on major driving trends that hit America in 2003-5 but have not yet arrived in AUSTRALIA; This is macro here I'm talking, not opportunistic arbitrages on skills and experiences you may have that collide with capital and a marketplace, which you think your time invested may create a share, which would equal more than if u kept doing and working at what u do today.

5 TRENDS YOU DONT WANT TO MISS AUSTRALIA

1. RSS : Major Aussie sites like ninemsn, sensis, fairfax etc need to make sure they offer all their content as RSS feeds - with the right amount of ontological slice'n'dice eg with afl.com.au you can now subscribe to each clubs news updates through RSS. NRL.com you cant !

2. UGC : Local User Generated Content Platforms : Global players like MSN Spaces, Google Blogspot and Fox Myspace are getting great amounts of usage, but no community or platform has been built on top of these major players, or as a separate initiative.

Aussies have taken big time to commenting on SMH and News' blogs (hundreds of comments per posts) so platforms, brands and communities is next; The publishers will end up loving blogging because of all the free/cheap content it generates** (Nothing in life is free, and publishers who think bloggers are free, well um, no.)

3. P2P
(i) For Ads : Self Service Ad Infrastructure so the increasing number of local publishers whether they be bloggers, ecommerce or content creators (like emmalina !!) can monetise their content and users, with advertisers that are local who have more chance of getting better click thrus in many cases.

(ii) For Financial Services : Peer to Peer lending, or Person to Person as Dave Winer would like, so we can lend each other money in parcels, and get a better than bank or term deposit return - with a lower default than people would think. The ebay or more so betfair of microlending. Maybe this will fund the Web 2.0 industry in Australia given startups need less money these days to get to working prototype stage.

4. Under 25 Social Networking : Forget that Over 30's Friday night advertisement : Money chases Money and Money chases youth : Teenagers and Uni Students are the real technology users, and they want to network, connect, upload and share video/images, and they dont have a local virtual place : And Im sick of them hanging at the Gloria Jeans near Elsternwick station. In the US, they'd be on MySpace already.

Todays aussie emos also prefer Wireless : So learnings in identities, avatars and the like from gaming are key. (btw re global incumbents - a front page on your global property also does not necessarily equal global success : and universities are the untapped angle as well re facebook like preemptive plays) Throw in the best of youtube, livejournal, myspace and u probably still underestimate it. Esp, if it helps drive overall 2.0 leadership. (Myspace and Facebook are the only new sites which truly challenge/compete with older sites and networks such as google, yahoo, timewarner etc)

Sub Trends here which small players could and will exploit - but maybe fail if they arent street enough + better as one rollup custom built new brand) include :
- Aussie Image Community
- Aussie Video Community
- University Social Networking
- Wireless Social Networking

5. Meta-Classifieds Search : This has already hit Australia productwise in some categories ala jobs, its just people dont yet know the URL - so marketingwise it hasnt been played out. (its like 5 days work to tap into and customise API's here to scrape every major classifieds site downunder) Amusing; One place to search and find for stuff - a job, car, house, plaything.. (the sites like it because it drives free traffic, while google keeps getting more $$$$)

Ladies and Gentlemen, that is my 5 trends that havent yet hit mainstream in Australia, which is ridiculous. Some have launched but no-one knows as they are offshore plays; Some are already being used but are globally offered and research isnt tracking; None however are localised, or in development (other than um yknow a few) yet properly.

So it's timely to get on your bike, raise some funding from your local rich uncle/VC (whatever he calls himselves these days, just go with it) and get yourself some pHp-java-python luvn, or ping me ben dot blaagh yknow.

"There are no original ideas in this world, only ideas to be evolved."

fountainstory.png
Originally uploaded by michaelarrington.

Jason has done a great job overall on beta.netscape, and I imagine players like MSN must be envious about the speed to get to beta. A nice historical soundbite, which if you changed the names mentioned could be about Hollywood Blockbusters :

Calacanis.com : "The fact is, we've evolved the work done by DIGG by bringing an editorial layer to Kevin's community model. Kevin's community model was, of course, based on Josh's bookmarking model at Delicious. Delicious was inspired by Flickr tagging and Furl's group bookmarking, and Furl was inspired by the *dozens* of bookmarking sites that were around in the Web 1.0 days.

DIGG didn't create voting or social bookmarking--they just did it best. They evolved the entire concept, and that is what *GREAT* entrepreneurs do: they build a better mousetrap. There are no original ideas in this world, only ideas to be evolved. "

"Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use"

topofservice.png
Originally uploaded by michaelarrington.

The Double D Dodge, who may be the last 2.0 Product Planning Celebrity left @ 1 Microsoft Way, summarises a Kleiner Perkins' partners perspective at a 'Future of Software' conference on the characteristics of (I assume) of a 2.0 (largely) B2C play (btw I cant think of many Kleiner funded plays in the 2.0 space recently, so this must be future investments ?? i wonder if Ajit Nazre is talking enterprise, consumer or both ?)

KP's 7 rules for start-ups (Don Dodge link)
1. Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
2. Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
3. Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
4. Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
5. Personalized user experience - customizable
6. Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
7. Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices etc.

I like The Rules, esp "Instant Value" - I've definitely learnt you must solve an immediate, real problem, rather than trying to be all things to all people. (or even all things to specific people) Not that Im a huge fan of small is the new big : But Solve a Big Micro problem first, save some time, then extend features from there.

The only problem with this small-big strategy, and the related ship often and early principle, is alot of stuff you build (back end admin tools, infrastructure etc) isnt really of use to the end user in their initial adoption, but you still need to build it.

There are many trade-offs in resource allocation to front end (you can touch it) features vs back end (optimisation and admin tools.) As a result, applying this rule, you launch with 15% of your total end user solution, and spend much longer that you thought shipping the remaining 85% - Which has to take longer because you now have to take care of your operational website and business; Hence need for Rule 2 "Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required" - I'll get back to you on that one : I'm learning that one again at the moment :)

Melbourne Sandbelter Geoff Ogilvy Wins US Open

ogilvy wins
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Geoff Ogilvy, originally a Melbourne Bayside Sandbelt player, did it for Australia for the first time since David Graham in 1981 (Norman never won it) and win the US Open.

I remember watching Ogilvy at the Portsea Pro-Am 3 or 4 years ago, and he has had a stellar rise since. Ironic too that after Ch.9 played Staying Alive at 4pm yday instead of Delayed Dees and Bombers, that this morning Ch9 (i think) were not going to cover the golf live. gnoos has coverage of it. hehe

And now an Australian wins it. And Australia loses the soccer to Brazil. Then throw in Sam Newman punching spitting fans at the Footy Show in Germany - I guess James Brayshaw is happy now he is at his Adelaide farm than in Germany holding it together.

Aussie. Aussie. Aussie.

Newscorp Article.

Myspace est value@$3bn. Pebble Beach Offsite. Source : Guardian.

Marc Canter : "AOL implements ‘Universal BLOG THIS’"

m6 cab
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Since I started blogging, or should I say about 1 month after I started and I figured out I could use flickr to do so, I've blogged from flickr using their "blog this" button. So to me its standard.

Having built a localised RSS engine for starters, but being a big fan in dev, of local structured blogging, microformats and the like, I have been perusing alot of search results from feed readers and search engines, and wondering why I couldnt' BLOG THIS. Blogging a link, extract, attributing source and so on, is hard, and if the average intelligence of a TV watcher is 12 years, and we want to take share from them, we better make blogging easier for Mena's mom.

Phew ! Marc Canter points out it has already been done by AOL (and Yahoo). And there is kewl stuff being done by RedirectThis.com.

If we all want blogging to be successful, by getting a whole market of newbies in (who we want to promote their blog to friends to show how SMART they are) BLOG THIS could be a huge driver : Downunder as a case study market for example, newbies have a high understanding of search, but less of "blogging". (we're not exactly having UGC parties here which is fine !) Blog This will give people something to write about or commentate, rather than have to become random novellists.

Marc Canter : "AOL implements ‘Universal BLOG THIS’" -
I agree with Marc it should be open, which I'm sure is more an issue of priorities, standards and resources :)

Jim Schembri Supports Home Loans

There is a classic little Aussie smackdown happening of Jim Schembri by A-List thinkers and bloggers ala Blair et Tartan. Schembri, of the cant make a film so writes badly of most of them minus bootylicious noir pieces, and cant blog, so does an equally crap effort at that - in this his sequel piece. Funniest of all is the 300 X 250 graphical island ad for a Fairfax home loan service, next to his post; Depicting the modern white picket fence dream (Caroline Springs anyone ?) "Schembri" is currently the most popular search term on gnoos, which at least means he's getting known in the Aussie blogosphere... Global virtual creatives though, know alot better, namely to have their own blog so if they linkbait they can use the Adsense traffic to pay off that Home TV projector a bit quicker and direct that Superman sequel anyday soon now.

Thanks for Staying Alive Eddie instead of Dees v Bombers

side on
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I've spent all weekend on transnational UI wireframes, which is one of the weaknesses and benefits of a startup, in that you end up being a jack of all trades, accentuated by working with a globalvirtual team (esp for specialities) on different time zones. The things we do for killa creative code.

What Im really annoyed with though is I didnt (or needed to) memorise the free to air and Pay TV schedules as Eddies' not the 1 network preferred to play the 1983 Travolta Staying Alive at 4pm today rather than the Dees vs Bombers on delay (wouldnt happened to the Magpies) As a result, I didnt drop in on my TV with Foxtel in Rye to watch the Dees live at 2pm.

Anyway, the Dees won by 6 goals, which is great after an awful first half where Essendon couldnt kick straight. Here are the initial Demonland votes which reflect the second half rather than the first.

I contend Melbourne is a top 5 team, but Adelaide is a league ahead, and Eagles with Judd at home are stellar too. Sydney have the finals competencies which allow wins, but I reckon their back-half is a bit off this year. The Kosi incident today was awful - I hope he is OK longterm.

Demonland Votes for BOG
6 TJ
5 robbo
4 junior
3 green
2 bruce
1 caroll

Jim Clarke, Jason Calacanis + beta.netscape.com

bulimia cola
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

People are talking about beta.netscape.com and worrying about skewed meta-journalism within AOL, which isnt an issue or important. (Postman and Chomsky can chortle on this conspiracy stuff as much as they want, ratings matter more)

AOL has the benefit of being an (integrated media) company with resources. The beta.netscape brand (which like 500 bloggers have posted about today) have missed the real story to me;

Will the early and mass internet market that use or would be interested in citizen journalism sites ala digg, do so if AOL actively encouraged them to ? And if so, is beta.netscape the right brand ? Or should there be a new brand ? That uses netscape.com and AOL traffic to drive digg destruction... (oh that $40m... sounds good hehe)

The black and aqua design of beta.netscape, without the softness and humanity of Six Apart's new alpha vox.com service, automatically tells me that the right message isnt going into Consumer Experience User Interface Land in AOL Lollyland. (well someone commented to me today their picture around board table had lots of lollies.. i havent yet called beta.AOL switch to confirm)

What do I, sample of One think of when I hear 'Netscape' ?
- That browser that lost to microsoft in the 90's that jim clarke got rich on, as one leg in his 3 billion dollar home runs
- Tried to be a portal before no go, Yahooooooo
- Tried the enterprise portal tools sell, no go. (and staff went to google and lived happily ever after)
- Day 1 Stock Chart !
- NASA and Space Discovery, y'know that movie where 3 old Americans went to the Moon or something.

I even told people today "hey, its good - go to netscape.com, but go to calacanis.com first, he's going off :)", not realising the beta.subdomain. (and they reply to me "it looks pretty much like a portal" 'oops')

Unfortunately I think Mac McCabe, while taking a breather, has the right strategy (leverage the default AOL/Netscape traffic), and go 2.0/riff-digg, with the meta-journo angle - which i like - but the problem is the brand. I just cant digg it.

What (definitionally) is the (beta.netscape) brand name btw ? Are we supposed to call it beta.netscape dot com? Or is it netscape dot com in waiting ?

People make fun of 3-7 letter websites, but beta.netscape is a mouthful. SixApart know this, and called Mena's mom new blogging tool - Vox.com; AOL should have just bought a really expensive 3 letter URL, which they drove people to from netscape.com, as well as syndicated content throughout the whole of AOL/Time - on and offline.

"hi my name is james and i'm from beta.netscape where i'm an associate blogger and did you know your restaurant has had 223 "beta.netscapes" and we'd like to get your feedback on that... and your special fried rice"

Anyway... brand / UI / design issues should get sorted because its a well built service... If the beta becomes real time, as in it goes live at netscape.com, will that mean it replaces the "pro" content, and what then happens to the pro content. (a prequel beta ?) Note : can beta.netscape (also) get rid of that sidebar please when i click thru to an article.

Guus. Gnoos. Goo. Go Aussies World Cup !

in da llo 'ood
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Xooglers are back with an extended but sorta interesting diatribe about the Dilbert logo and commercialisation implications for the the double digit billion revenue firm !

Xooglers : "We need a new logo by Friday. Any ideas?"

 The next day, the “G" and "O” at the front of the logo are screened back so that they appear much paler than the last four letters. Dilbert says, "We could drop the first two letters."
 The PHB answers, "That's a no go idea." On day three, the last three letters are faded back and Dilbert says, "We could shorten the logo to three letters."
 The Boss says, "No, Goo isn't sticky."


"If the universe of truth tis now free, who will pay for your insights, wit, pith, truth ?"

haviana celebrity
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

My favourite 1.0 book - Burn Rate by Michael Wolff, is now almost full circle retro; Just as film directors waited till the mid noughties to make 90's Gen-X films. I'm thinking I should be the first person to write a dystopian Web 2.0 Novel, with a reality post-modern, "meta-journalitic" twist, as Jason Calacanis riff'd today re Douglas Rushkoff, which set me off on this retro 1.0 books amazon search.

Burn Rate : "What is your business model ? is the salutation in almost all conversations about this newest medium. What is the economic justification for what you do ? What is the value proposition ? How do you convince people to pay more than you're spending ? If the universe of truth tis now free, who will pay for your insights, wit, pith, truth ?"

These are questions I ask myself everyday and I dont even know what pith means.

Battelle to Buy Minivan once he saw Dayparted Google Ad, not.

dont cry for
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

(Corporate Brand) Advertisers who want to roadblock above, below and online media at a certain time (a sporting event, Sunday night, morning etc) would disagree with John Battelle on the non-importance of dayparting an ad campaign.

In Johns car example below it depends who is the ad buyer : The car manufacturer ? Who will likely care more about the dayparting as part of an overall above/below marcomms strategy; While the Car Dealer , like John will not pay a premium for dayparting, but will for more car buyer leads at a cheap effective cost. (in the old world this is the brand vs retail debate)

It has been a slow hyperspeed process to get advertisers across the line (over a decade in), and dayparting is just another tool (but important), as per Andrew Pascoe's recent campaigns combining video ads and dayparting on ninemsn - #1 aussie portal i once worked at :) "This means it's independent of the content of any of the pages it appears over, and this leads to the ability to do things like buy by day-part etc." (from platform9 : "Plan across a day part strategy with solus, high impact placements.")

Battelle : "My view - dayparting is not that big a deal - I'm currently researching buying another car. At 10.45 pm. So send me ads! Who cares what time I'm Googling "Toyota Minivan"?"

Car Manufacturers.

Almost 1/3rd of You are on Myspace

Selected Social Networking Properties by Unique Visitors
  May 2006 (source : marketwatch.com)
  Total U.S. - Home, Work and University Internet Users
  Source: comScore Media Metrix

  Property                           May-06
                                      (000)
  Total Internet Population          172,120
  MYSPACE.COM                         51,441
  Classmates.com Sites                14,792
  FACEBOOK.COM                        14,069
  YOUTUBE.COM                         12,669
  MSN Spaces                           9,566
  XANGA.COM                            7,146
  FLICKR.COM                           5,163
  Yahoo! 360 degrees                   4,936
  LIVEJOURNAL.COM                      3,904
  MYYEARBOOK.COM                       3,048 

Riya on The Visual Fiya Ecom Trawl

on it bad
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

So Riya's Post Tara Plan to finally be a Google Image Search Engine, seems to be a concession that 44 engineers, 14 Stanford PHD's and a lightbulb, still requires a "massive data center", a few (more) months of crawling alot of images across the web (billions or tens/hundreds of millions anyone ?) and $15m in VC. I empathise actually, although I'd move the decimal point the other way. Question to self - is Google Image Search a Billion Dollar Opportunity and other than flickr's $35m - what are the precedents of huge image businesses ? (Im thinking this aloud to myself so thought i'd type it while the electrons jump around)

SiliconBeat : "So how will it work? Say you find a rug on eBay with a two-inch border with a favorite cross-stitch pattern. Riya will analyze the rug image, process its pixel structure for a histogram of color and shapes, and so on, and then match it against the database of images it has collected from the entire Web. Riya will show you the other places it has found the image, for example whee Amazon.com is selling it for ten dollars cheaper. Riya gets a referral fee when you buy the Amazon.com rug. Same thing can be done for dating. Search for an image of a hot blonde, and Riya will pull up similar looking blondes at Match.com. You'll be able to photos for your search query, so you can look for just about anything." (note : Is Silicon Beat making any observations by their stereotypical blonde blokey/"rug" angle ?)

BB : When its ready, Id still love to have a Riya API into gnoos, so we could have an image radio button search downunder...

Calacanis Diggs Meta Journalism Meets Digital Maoism for Netscape

Powder Room
Originally uploaded by modelux.

The non Bill Gates retiring for charity story today is AOL's entrepreneur Mr Calacanis, who has bootstrapped with AOL resources a Digg competitor. I think it will work; Broader categories of content for newer AOL users. I like the meta-journalism idea (from the perspective of a player with resources) : Just not 100% sold on the branding so far (the black and aqua, and fonts are a bit techy for me, and not as clean as digg esp in light of its new leaked screenshots/UI)

Calacanis : "I'm convinced meta-journalism is the piece missing from the Wisdom of Crowds. Doug Rushkoff explained the concept of "meta" to me years ago when we used to go to the Knicks games (those were the days), and reading Jaron Lanier's Digital Maoism piece in Edge last week was perfectly timed for me."

Jason Calacanis (GM of Netscape): "We did not create the New Netscape to copy DIGG, no more than DIGG copied Delicious or Delicious copied Furl. All of these sites are evolutions of the first wave of bookmarking services. The key thing we are doing different is that we are having our editorial team followup on stories that make it to the top 20 list. We're not doing this to become gatekeepers, but rather to add a journalist process to the power of social bookmarking. You can call this metajournalism or social journalism, and I think it's the logical next step.

"So that's why I recommend hiring the best available athlete."

byronator
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

It's Byron Pickett week over here, and given he is the draft of the year, and some on Demonland say the best draft Melbourne has ever had, Fred Wilson, The East Coast self proclaimed high handicapper, cliche of the week suits Byron down to the next goal he kicks, tackle he shrugs, and opposition player he decks.

A VC, the abridged version :) "Many teams believe that instead of drafting players to fill holes they should simply draft the best available athlete... Because things change quickly. Gaps don't last long. They get filled one way or another. But talent is hard to come by and really gifted people are few and far between. So that's why I most often recommend hiring the best available athlete. If you build a team full of people who can play any position, you are going to do really well. I am sure of it."

The New Facebook

The New Facebook
Originally uploaded by Bryan Veloso.

$1.4B - No... Great designs from Facebook's UI guru Bryan Veloso. (even if they are from last year, but heck not like Im a US uni student) I wonder how the Facebook space will play out globally Mr Farmer...

Tim Bray - Microformats : “This could be big”

Instruments
Originally uploaded by knurdle.

Tim Bray is starting to look past hair choice and grok the microformats revolution, which is just lacking case studies and muscle. "The Microformats kids all have really great hair, and the coolest acronyms; still, up till now, it’s all only occasionally seemed plausible to me. But this new Technorati microformat search thing, I look at it and for the first time really think “This could be big”. For example, look at kitchen.technorati.com/event/search/vancouver (even the URI is interesting)." (I like the Technorati Kitchen search results - and back end - but im at a bit of loss at to how to search it..)

R E S E R V O I R D O G S

reservoir dogs
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I rewatched Reservoir Dogs 6 weeks ago (along with True Romance) and the final scene from dogs instantly became my disposable auteur motif. This was the script (extracts from IMSDB.com) along with True Romance, and Pulp Fiction that became Tarantino video store folklore. (his latest movies are a bit crack'd out unfortunately)

Steve Buscemi's got the method in Dogs. Which I guess is luckier than playing the now late Chris Penn who is great in this movie (and others like Short Cuts, Magnolia etc), along with Michael Sex Tape Madsen - who while not dead has gone tres Hollywood Hills meets Skid Row, Heidi Fleiss loopy.

Mr. Pink (Buscemi) : How about if I'm Mr. Purple? That sounds good to me, I'll be Mr. Purple.
Joe: You're not Mr. Purple. Some guy on some other job is Mr. Purple. You're Mr. Pink!
Mr. White: Who cares what your name is?
Mr. Pink: Yeah that's easy for you to say, you're Mr. White, you have a cool sounding name. All right look if it's no big deal to be Mr. Pink, do you wanna trade?

The scene kicks into gear when Penn says to Keitel who (doesnt) think Tim Roth is an undercover cop is pointing his gun at Eddie, Penn's Dad - The Don : "Stop pointing your fuckin gun at daddy!"

Keitel back to Penn says : "Joe, if you kill that man, you die next. Repeat, if you kill that man, you die next!"

Buscemi, would prefer there to be not such an escalation : "C'mon, guys, nobody wants this. We're supposed to be fuckin professionals!"
Joe: "Larry, I'm gonna kill him."
Keitel (Mr White) : "Goddamn you, Joe, don't make me do this!"
Joe : "Larry, I'm askin you to trust me on this."
Keitel : "Don't ask me that."
Joe : "I'm not askin, I'm betting."
Eddie : "Daddy, don't!"

Joe FIRES three times, HITTING Mr. Orange (Roth) with every one.
Mr. White (Keitel) SHOOTS Joe twice in the face. Joe brings his hands up to his face, screaming, and falls to the ground. Eddie Penn) FIRES at Mr. White, HITTING him three times in the chest. Mr. White brings his gun around on Eddie and SHOOTS him. The two men FALL to their knees, FIRING at each other. Eddie COLLAPSES, dead. Joe's dead. Mr. Orange lies perfectly still, except for his chest heaving. The only SOUND we hear is his loud breathing. Mr. White is SHOT full of holes, but still on his knees, not moving.

(Buscemi) Mr. Pink is standing motionless. Finally he grabs the satchel of diamonds and RUNS out the door.

We hear outside a CAR START. Then the SOUND of a BULLHORN yells out: POLICE FORCE (OS) Freeze! "Get out of the car and lie face down on the ground!"

MR. PINK (OS) Don't shoot!
We now hear SIRENS, the SOUNDS of more CARS DRIVING UP, MEN RUNNING to the warehouse. While all this noise is going on, Mr. White tries to stand but FALLS DOWN. He somehow makes it to where Mr. Orange lies. He lifts Mr. Orange's head, cradling it in his lap and stroking his brow.
MR. WHITE (with much effort) Sorry, kid. Looks like we're gonna do a little time.
Mr. Orange looks up at him and, with even more of an effort:
MR. ORANGE - I'm a cop.
Mr. White doesn't say anything, he keeps stroking Orange's brow.
MR. ORANGE - I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
Mr. White lifts his .45 and places the barrel between Mr.Orange's eyes.

POLICE FORCE (OS)
Freeze, motherfucker! Drop your fucking gun!
Mr White looks up at them, smiles, PULLS the trigger. BANG
We hear a BURST of SHOTGUN FIRE.
Mr. White is BLOWN out of frame, leaving it empty.

BTW : This is how the written script sets the scene
1 INT. UNCLE BOB'S PANCAKE HOUSE - MORNING

Eight men dressed in BLACK SUITS, sit around a table at a breakfast cafe. They are MR. WHITE, MR. PINK, MR. BLUE, MR. BLONDE, MR. ORANGE, MR. BROWN, NICE GUY EDDIE CABOT, and the big boss, JOE CABOT. Most are finished eating and are enjoying coffee and conversation. Joe flips through a small address book. Mr. Pink is telling a long and involved story about Madonna.

MR. PINK
"Like a Virgin" is all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The whole song is a metaphor for big dicks....

Forget Hedge Funds. Become a Intrapreneurial Blogebrity

Alex
Originally uploaded by NYCArthur.

Stephen Baker makes a good point, even if he may be in the middle of the annual performance review with his bosses at Business Week :) If Restricted Stock Units have taken over from Stock Options as a way of retaining and rewarding staff, while keeping stated costs low, how will intrapreneurial blogebrities get some skin in the 2.0 corporate comms game ?

BW Online : "But the fact remains, most corporations and media outlets haven't figured out yet how to revamp compensation for the new age. Very few journalists, for example, are evaluated for customer relations. That's almost sacrilege, the province of the advertising or marketing side of the business. But blogging is blurring the line between these domains. Perhaps the best way to measure the value of bloggers inside the company is to see how they fare when they leave. There's a growing list of case studies out there."

Google Geo-Coding Stays Downunder

Find 100 movies
Originally uploaded by dreadfuldan.

When it comes to google maps and API's they are certainly not at the front of the pack in Australia - which for startups is good rather than bad :)

Google API Blog : "Street-level geocoding is available for the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan. More countries will be added as Google Maps launches in new countries." ie Not Australia.

The Glue Between RSS Readers + Blog Platforms

portal engagement
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm working alot on the glue between segments in the RSS industry (i thought i needed to start using terms like 'industry' and 'segment' to confer some type of rationality), and anyway I'm wondering why the blog platform players (six-vox, spaces, blogspot, myspace) are not more closely integrated with RSS Readers, ala bloglines, rojo, newsgator etc. (and the RSS Readers are not smart enough at search, browse, personalise)

What am I missing ? When most people blog, they do link to something do they not ? Or would like to ? If it was easier ? I'm really interested in this, so please stoopid ideas will be listened to for at least 4 uninterrupted seconds.

Self proclaimed Purple Cow Marketers like Seth Godin, talk about marketing being about solving consumer problems; Inch wide mile deep systemic deep uncovered pains preferably (extra points if you get consumers when they are most vulnerable etc)

To me blogging, the pain as a newbie or semi-literate typist is you need to find a piece of "data" to blog about, dig into it's properties like the URL, cutnpaste a selection of text and/or other media, upload an image, remember to credit the whole trail of sources linking to the story (becomes like an Oscars speach)

Then once in the blog platform you need to click on this stupid hyperlink icon which im sure newbies have no idea about cutnpaste into the body, attribution, etc. It's not till about Masters level at Uni they teach you how to pedantically source material. And PHD students Im sure must think Masters are like superweak NDynamites ;)

The fledgling nature of the metablogpodvidverse is why The Scoble left A Microsoft - Microsoft's products are just too complex and dont know which problems they are solving, and in what order. And Donnie Brasco wanted more Tony Soprano turf. So back to Berkeley (kidding) and surroundings for Adam Curry's new doppleganger (I wonder if Scoble will do much planepodcasting as they reinvent the Podshow business model ! Note to blogging self : get plane before i sellout - isnt it funny the new version of selling out is to leave a big company for a small one...am I off topic enough yet for you...)

Blogging platforms, RSS readers, Blog search to me are the same thing. Not that Im giving guidance, blogs are just a great outlet to "air" ones grievances :) In a local sense at least, Im definitely sure there is a gap between RSS Search-RSS Reader-Blog Platform.

(Note : I liked this graph from Comscore re MySpace, which (credit to :) Anniversary Arrington linked to that i screengrabbed, uploaded to flickr, then blogged it, then linked it etc aaagh. It shows how many minutes users spend on portals and how frequently they visit. Then there are some pretty colours and soccerballs of different sizes.

The green of facebook might show why they knocked back $1.4B from Yahoo looking for Cuban dough, and the pink of MySpace is pretty frky.

Facebook are punting that in the GEMAYA battle the green soccergirl will make some of the large cap public Co's eventually bite - I'm sure the founders are like sell already and the VC's are playing a very high stakes game of chicken with Web 2.0 and the University FaceBook Social Networking Rites of Passage...) Next.

"Domain, Domain, Domain."

josianne, the wonder, the space-maker, the idea-prompter.
Originally uploaded by tetheredtothesun.

NameMedia : 650,000 domains, 2006/7 revenue $650M, 75 staff, profitable, its another Web 2.0, oops domain business that sells the spades to the 2.0 miners.

Boston.com : ``The analogy we use is real estate," Conlin said in an interview. ``Our objective is to build the largest portfolio of undeveloped real estate on the Internet. Some of the sites we have will be held for resale. The best ones, the waterfront properties, we'll build businesses around. It's a content-light, user- friendly way for people to find what they want."

And to think at business school I was taught the VC equivalent of 'location, location, location' was 'people, people, people' - Nup, its about domains : Buy Low. Sell High. The bit inbetween is called The Gross Margin which these domain co's have spades of :)