Apple, Inc., CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, the seminal figures in the development of the personal computer, made a rare joint appearance at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference. The two jointly discussed the history and future of the digital revolution in an unrehearsed, unscripted, onstage conversation with D co-producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. They're doing a great job blogging their own conference, btw.
Jason Calacanis' new start-up Mahalo launched today after being announced at the D5 conference.
It is a human-powered search engine. In other words, it is a directory. For results beyond the 4K human-built pages (soon to be 10k) in their system, Mahalo defaults back to Google. It is cute and has a nice, current design. The results for top searches are good.
But Mahalo will flop for the following reasons:
1. Wikipedia kicks Mahalo's ass. Instead of a small group of paid editors, Wikipedia has thousands of people editing and categorizing data. Try searching for things (like Tiger Woods) onMahalo and Wikipedia and see what you prefer.
2. It isn't a search engine. It is a directory. Directories are expensive to maintain and get old very fast. The list of companies with major funding that have tried this and failed is long. Ask Yahoo, Newhoo/Dmoz/Open Directory, Netscape. And so on.
Danny Sullivan, the king of search, reviews Mahalo here.
Commenting on TechCrunch, Seth Finkelstein weighs in:
Regarding “they are given Google results instead” - is there a formal partnership agreement with Google there? Given the involvement of Sequoia Capital, aka. Google buy-out Sugar Daddy, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is indeed a co-operative arrangement.
Bonus points to Vallywag, who did one hellofajob guessing what Mahalo would be well before it was announced.
Of course, Jason's A-list buddy and fellow TC20 conference organizer Michael Arrington gives it a pretty glowing review. Nice to see you can always count on your friends. Here's the announcement on Jason's blog. Check it out, as he's much better at hype than me. Official PR is here.
Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition. The online network was founded in the UK five years ago and it now has more than 15 million active users. - BBC
That's 2 acquisitions and some other significant moves for CBS in the past few weeks. They just scooped up Wallstrip for $5million and invested in Joost.
Selling Web Advertising Space Like Pork Bellies - WSJ.com Why are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft putting money and resources behind online ad exchanges? Yahoo recently purchased Right Media, while Google, pending approval, will acquire DoubleClick, which announced it would offer its own ad exchange shortly before t..
D&AD Awards 2007: Winners The digital world really made its mark at last night's D&AD ceremony where Nike +'s website received its honours in the new uses of websites category. See: Brand Republic's wrap-up.
Microsoft Live Takes New York 3D Microsoft has announced the launch of new functionality for Microsoft Live Search Maps; three-dimensional, photo-realistic maps covering New York City and 8 other locations in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
Now it’s just a race to introduce Street Smells : GMSV New from Google Maps is "Street View," interactive panorama photos taken along selected streets in selected metropolitan areas so far (Silicon Valley, Las Vegas, Miami, Denver and New York) with more to come. Note: To see "Street View" from outside the US, you need to add &gl=us at the end of the URL. Or, just click on this link for an example.
I'm bummed that I can't make it to the 2007 Next Web conference in Amsterdam this year. It should be great. Patrick de Laive and his team provide a little preview via this iChat interview with a few of the fab folks speaking at the conference.
Watch this iChat Video interview with 5 Internet Influentials who answer 5 basic questions in almost 20 minutes. Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly Media, Steve Rubel from Edelman and Micropersuasion, Matt Mullenweg the founder of WordPress, Marten Mickos the CEO of MySQL, Eric A. Meyer, CSS and HTML guru and Jay Adelson, CTO and co-founder of Digg.com all give their opinion and share their insights on what the Next Web will look like.
Have a great time, Bentloy, you bastardo. Tell the folks at Dampkring that I said high.
Hub After Hours in London, PSFK Conference Hub Culture will be speaking at PSFK's upcoming conference in London on Friday, 1 June 2007, and hosting an after-hours party at Raffles the same evening. Thanks Stan!
Top 20 Temporary and Disposable Email Services Temporary Mailbox Services — Now a days Internet has become a home to spam. Millions of spam bots crawl the web daily to find email addresses and then bombard them with spam emails thus destroying their efficiency and creating problems for users.
Myspace - the next Prodigy? (Redeye VC) By providing a clear roadmap – and business opportunity – for the widget makers, Facebook has just increased it's virtual R&D budget by over $250 million dollars.
Think about it. If you ran a venture-backed company and had to decide whether you wanted to focus your effort on: (a) a property that welcomed you in and let you keep 100% of the revenue you generate or (b) a company with a vague policy that doesn’t let you generate any revenue, which would you choose? I don’t think it’s even a decision. It’s an IQ test.
Does Coke Need a Refill? - New York Times Excellent read. Of note, the article details the recent $4.1 billion Glacéau acquisition. They make Vitaminwater, an increasingly popular drink with the youth crowd in the USA "on its way to being a $1 billion brand".
MyCoolButton A new Web 2.0 button generator that lets you choose the size, color, font and text for your button, then download it. Via Mashable.
500 years of female portraits in western art ... in 3 minutes.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael - Raffaello, Titian - Tiziano Vecellio , Sandro Botticelli , Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Antonello da Messina, Pietro Perugino, Hans Memling, El Greco, Hans Holbein, Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov , Peter Paul Rubens, Gobert, Caspar Netscher, Pierre Mignard, Jean-Marc Nattier, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Alexei Vasilievich Tyranov, Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky, Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov, Antoine-Jean Gros, Orest Adamovich Kiprensky, Amalie, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Édouard Manet, Flatour, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, William Clark Wontner, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Comerre, Leighton, Blaas, Renoir, Millias, Duveneck, Cassat, Weir, Zorn, Alphonse Mucha, Paul Gaugan, Henri Matisse, Picabia, Gustav Klimt, Hawkins, Magritte, Salvador Dali, Malevich, Merrild, Modigliani, Pablo Picasso
The High Price of Creating Free Ads - New York Times inviting consumers to create their advertising is often more stressful, costly and time-consuming than just rolling up their sleeves and doing the work themselves. Also see Nick Carr's Bad Ad Fad
My wife Katja and the Sotheby's team just opened their new office in Moscow. The Russian State television's video below is a great example of the media frenzy they created to support the launch of the new office and the exhibition (at the State Historical Museum, Red Square 1). Here's a snippet from Art Daily's article:
Speaking about Sotheby’s in Russia, Mr Ruprecht said: “This initiative demonstrates Sotheby’s continued commitment to Russia and our recognition that our Russian clients buy and sell at Sotheby’s globally and want to be able to interact with us in Moscow. Our decision to establish an office in the region and appoint Mikhail Kamensky as Managing Director of our Moscow Office will enable us to bring a higher level of attention to our buyers and collectors based in Russia. These sophisticated and discerning collectors have tremendous buying power and are transforming the international art market.”
Anyone who feels like translating the video should give me a shout. ;-)
Obvioulsy, Google is incredible. They are the undeniable heavyweight champion of search.
The video below is Google's lovely and talented Marissa Meyer explaining universal search at the company's first-ever Searchology media event at its Mountain View headquarters on May 16, 2007.
The idea of integrating search results from multiple data sources is not new. I built "multisearch" when at iwon.com (ISH, now IAC Search & Media) years ago. The service has changed dramatically since then, given the dominance of Google's original super-simple results page and the IAC/Ask.com acquisition.
Over the past three months, iWon has been adding new search resources to its site ... iWon feels providing a variety of results serves its users better.
"A lot of people think simple is better and web pages [only] are better," said George Nimeh, iWon's vice president of search and special projects. "But for the time being, we are trying to surface multiple data in a clean and uncrowded way.
We surfaced web pages, images, related searches, news and a variety of other data from multiple sources. Sure, we didn't have video results, but who did back then? We had universal search up and running almost 8 years ago.
What is new is the fact that Google now owns and indexes all the data. What my team cobbled together from five companies/data sources, Google can do alone. That allows a hellofalot more efficiency and flexibility, both from a marketing and development perspective.
Mayer says that Google has wanted to create "universal search" since 2001. "Hundreds of people" at Google have been working on and perfecting gathering results, ranking results, and displaying results to make the product launch a success.
Our team worked with some great people from Inktomi, LookSmart, Direct Hit and Moreover, amongst others, but there were only 3 people on our internal development team.
We were having a great time, and we knew we were doing great work together back then. Nice to see that Google has finally caught up. Hehe.
Michael and Xochi Birch speak about various ventures on which they have embarked including their most recent new company, Bebo, and the world of social networking.
Google queried on privacy policy :: BBC NEWS Google has been told that it may be breaking European privacy laws by keeping people's search information on its servers for up to two years.
Gates and Jobs to share the stage :: CBRonline.com Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Apple chief Steve Jobs will make a rare joint appearance to wax lyrical about their visions of future technologies at the D: All Things Digital conference, which is to be held in Carlsbad, California.
Advertising's Brave New World But as a series of recent high-profile deals makes clear, the emerging importance of digital advertising is making for a shifting and more complicated advertising terrain.
The official announcement of what the WSJ reported a few days ago about Facebook's new business direction has created a lot - no, better make that a ton - of buzz in the blogosphere. And rightly so. It is a major shift in the way social networks like MySpace do business.
Facebook launched "The Platform", a system enabling 3rd party companies to integrate their services inside of Facebook user pages. What does that mean? Read/Write's detailed and interesting post web points to an excellent FAQ by one of Facebook's 3rd party partners, SplashCast Media, which explains that:
This platform goes beyond the ability to post media from outside into Facebook and it goes beyond the previous Facebook API (a read-only Application Programming Interface (API) released on August 15th, 2006, and at the time also called The Platform). With the new platform, outside companies are now being allowed to deploy advanced functionality inside the Facebook site.
In a bit more of plain English, it means that Facebook just let people build widgets that will work inside their network. Personally, I think it is a bit strange that no one is using the word "widget" when describing it. Not much for semantics myself, but it does seem to fit. The Street, however, puts more value in platforms, right?
With the launch of this new platform, we're seeing a battle of open standards (Facebook) vs control (MySpace). For now it is also the start-up vs big media, but after a long time searching for a buyer, I think this move may finally create the exit opportunity that they've been so desperate to find over the past 24+ months.
My friend John Baker (MP, Client Services, OgilvyInteractive / OgilvyOne London) put it this way:
Everyone wants to be a platform -- Google clearly, Amazon on eCommerce, now Facebook on profiles.
I'd bet people would welcome having a single profile instead of 15 -- as long as it isn't brought by Microsoft and called Passport.
As MS seems to be on quite the spending spree, don't count out the return of Passport. Hehe. Seriously, given Yahoo!'s much-hyped failed negotiations with Facebook last year and their current pursuit of Bebo, they seem to be out of the running. Google could certainly afford them, but they seem to have their hands full with the YouTube and DoubleClick deals. Microsoft would be one of a short-list group of media, marketing and technology companies who I think would/should be interested in buying them.
If this new platform model helps Facebook crack the alums business, they're as good as gold and whoever owns them will make a fortune. They've been growing at an incredible pace in the US, and now it is really starting to take off here in Europe.
Arrington suggests that Facebook are the Anti-MySpace. I agree with that. A few people have suggested that this move spells the end for MySpace ... well, I'm not convinced yet.
I think we'll still be talking about MySpace for quite a while. They've cracked the advertising market for social networking dummies and have the power of Murdoch and co. behind them. Their technology works - they don't crash like Friendster did - and they've got an absolutely incredible number of people using it. Expecting their demise in a year is very wishful thinking, I think. (Sorry Chris.) Of course, I could be wrong. Have been before. Will be again.
Fred Stutzman - one of the people whose opinion I value the most with regards to Facebook - wrote a good post on it a few days ago following the WSJ article, and I've asked him for some additional comments. Stay tuned.
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint I've mentioned this before, but it came up at a meeting this week. So, if you wanna presnet like Steve Jobs, do this: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. Guy Kawasaki says, "Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting." It is a great post.
How to Make Your Cellphone Act Like a BlackBerry While I may never give up my CrackBerry, "You no longer need a Treo or BlackBerry to enjoy that luxury. Three new services — from Google, Yahoo and Teleflip — can deliver your e-mail messages directly to ordinary nonsmart cellphones. "
Yahoo! Advertising: Brand Advocacy Summit (2006) This informative presentation explored how plugged-in marketers can tap into the power of their brands to reach their most influential customers. Participants also learned how word-of-mouth and social marketing can benefit the bottom line.
Reasonably priced music on your phone anytime Omnifone has launched with an all-you-can-eat over the air music download and news service called Musicstation. They've teamed up with major labels like Universal and 23 global network operators so far covering 40 countries and a potential of 690m subscribers.
Make-It-Yourself 'Star Wars' The clips -- about 250 of them, from all six Star Wars movies -- will land on the Starwars.com Web site tomorrow, part of this week's 30th-anniversary celebrations of the release of his hit movie.
Exploring: reCAPTCHA: A new way to fight spam One of the words in reCAPTCHA is a word that the computer knows what it is, much like a normal CAPTCHA. However, the other word is a word that the computer can't read. When you solve a reCAPTCHA, we not only check that you are a human, but use the result on the other word to help read the book!
Pandora Goes Mobile, and Sonos, and More Music streaming service Pandora has had its ups and downs over the last two years since launching. People love to listen to their personalized radio stations that get more and more tailored as you tell it what you like and don't like.
Get In Now, Yahoo Goin' Mobile Panelists Urge Marketers That announcement was one of a number of industry "tipping points" touted at the Yahoo "Goin' Mobile" Summit, and the message to marketers about the future of mobile advertising was loud and clear--get in now, and do it right!
CNN, CBS, NBC, Joost Make New Web Moves CNN bought an equity stake in Internet Broadcasting, CBS Interactive bought Wallstrip, and NBC Universal adopted a new ad format from Unicast. Also, soon-to-launch Internet TV service Joost signed up with Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
Americans with Broadband Spend Half of Their Spare Time Online Broadband users spend an hour and 40 minutes (48% of their spare time) online in a typical weekday, and more than half of that is spent accessing activities related to entertainment and communication.
Steve Jobs introducing ‘1984’ in 1983 28-year-old Steve Jobs grooving to Irene Cara's "What a Feeling" and then unveiling Apple's "1984" commercial. The setting is Apple's sales conference in Hawaii in October 1983.
Is A-B Canning Bud.TV? File under: Never had a chance ... Anheuser-Busch Cos. CEO August Busch IV today said the No. 1 brewer expects its pioneering online television network to "fade" during the second half of the year.The latest in a string of online misfires ... Also see: Does Bud Bucks Suck?
Sony Ericsson will use its Ibiza Rocks live music event to promote its Walkman range of mobile phones this summer.
The handset manufacturer has rehired Iris Experience to handle the promotion of the third Ibiza Rocks concert series. In the UK, the event will be promoted through a range of direct-response initiatives, including a poster campaign running in music venues nationwide.
Iris as also developed an online campaign to drive traffic to the dedicated microsite at ibizarocks.com.
Internet Captures More Automotive Ad Dollars According to a new report from Borrell Associates, automotive ad spending will reach $31 billion this year, but total ad dollars will grow only 1.7% over the next five years, compared to an annual growth rate of 3.7% in the last five years.
Al Gore Has Big Plans - New York Times Six years after the Supreme Court declared him the loser of a presidential race that seemed his for the taking, Al Gore has attained what you can only call prophetic status; and he has done so by acting as he could not, or would not, as a candidate ...
Swedish Beers This is a blog about Swedish Beers, an ad-hoc London based mobile networking event run by Steve Flaherty of Keitai Culture and Helen Keegan of BeepMarketing. Nothing formal, no speakers, no powerpoint, nothing flashy, just turn up and mingle. skål
Given that Honda just won Advertiser of the Year in Cannes, I’m sure the brand is top of mind at the moment in the auto industry.
In addition to great work like their recent Hondamentalism campaign, they’re also innovating in the DM/digital space. The latest is the digital release of their popular customer magazine, dream.
As noted in yesterday’s Autoblog article, “a whopping 25 percent of readers provided feedback.” In case you didn't know, Autoblog is a top 200 blog and part of the Weblogs Inc/AOL network. It is the most popular auto weblog online today.
Please note :: This is the first post automatically generated from an RSS feed from my del.icio.us bookmarks page. These daily "link" posts will not contain much commentary, but they will help keep track of the stuff I don't have time to write about.
This has been a long time in the making, as I've wanted to do this for at least 2 years. After countless attempts, I've finally found a dependable way to do this using Blogger's software. A big huge shout out to Colin Surprenant for figuring a way to semi-hack Blogger and Feedburner to make it work.
I'm still tweaking the format, but feel free to let me know what you think.
SpringWidgets "If a website visitor sees a widget they like they can click a link and add it to their own site, or their desktop, or both. That?s an important innovation, and a useful one." -Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
Top 25 Largest Web 2.0 Sites April 2007 | eBizMBA eBizMBA's monthly survey of traffic data for the top 25 largest web 2.0 sites ranked by a combination of Compete and Quantcast data. For each site, we show unique U.S. monthly visitor data as well as respective rank.
The psychology of banner ads - Ars Technica According to research that appears in June's Journal of Consumer Research, repeated exposure to a product via banner ads generates a positive feeling towards that product. The good news for consumers is that a critical reevaluation of the product can make
For those of you in London, Hub Culture will present PSFK After-Hours, a cocktail party on June 1st, 2007 to close PSFK's upcoming London conference. Hub Culture will be on a panel during the morning at the event, which includes a number of top cultural creatives driving change in business - from Anomaly to Naked to Open Intelligence Agency. Sign up - you will learn!
That night presents a perfect opportunity to get everyone in the London area together for a drink, so arrangements are underway now - save the date! Private details will be released via email prior to the event, so be sure you and anyone you wish to bring is registered at hubculture.com.
Luscious images and a spiritual vibe from this excerpt of Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow, a project that has been making its way around the planet for the past few years but that I have only now discovered.
In a rare public appearance, photographer Gregory Colbert talks about the creation of his exhibit "Ashes and Snow." Colbert's work, which he calls "a 21st-century bestiary," captures the poetic beauty in our relationship to the animal kingdom. Colbert shows an 8-minute film, from the exhibit, of his epic swim with whales off the coast of the Azores. He then announces his new initiative, the Animal Copyright Foundation, which aims to collect royalties from companies using images of nature in their ad campaigns.
If you need a relaxing moment, don't miss it. The enhanced web site takes a bit to load, but it is quite nice. If you're in Tokyo, this is probably one of those shows not to be missed.
The video is part of http://bringtheloveback.com/ and was created by Geert Desager (Trade Marketing Manager, Microsoft) and Stef Selfslagh of Belgian agency Openhere for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.
Just released today, Flickrvision shows realtime, geolocated Flickr photos. Just like Twittervision, it's hypnotic to watch. The map moves around to show the location of the most recent tweet or photo. Both visualizations hail from David Troy, a VOIP consultant who has suddenly found himself doing a lot of geo work.
If you're looking for a nice waste of time for a few minutes, this will do ya just fine. Brad also notes:
the developer of the site (and sister site Twittervision), David Troy will be giving an Ignite talk at this year's Where 2.0 on May 28th (open to the public). A Where20-specfic Twittervision will be on LCD screens in the lobby; follow Where20 to be able to post messages during the conference.
Nice to see that even in an age of heightened creativity, usage and involvement, certain things have not changed online. Of note, Jacob Nielsen is still preaching about usability. The self-proclaimed "usability guru" has been giving the same speech since the mid 1990s:
Most people just want to get in, get it and get out. For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool.
What I find troubling is that Nielsen fails to see that usability has evolved from when he first started ranting (properly so) about the topic. Sadly, his thinking hasn't kept up with the times. Case in point:
Mr Nielsen also questioned championing teenage use of the web as a harbinger of what people will continue to do when they were older.
Although people in their late 30s make very different use of the web to those in their teens, Mr Nielsen expects that when those teenagers grow up the time they spend online will diminish.
It's because they are 20 years old that they act differently to 40-year-olds.
He's showing his own age when trying to tell us about those pesky kids, isn't he?
Jacob has always waxed poetic about simple design and easy-to-use sites. His own site is so incredibly ugly, it is a joke. That said, you can always find what you're looking for.
So, which is it? Design, functionality or usability?
Seems to be room for all of it, I imagine. In fact, I'd say that without a healthy dose of all three, you may as well not bother.
It is upfront buying season for the major ad agencies, and the networks are putting on their annual song and dance. Over on NYTimes, Stuart Elliot looks into this year's pitch from ABC, FOX, NBC and CBS to see how they're trying to keep viewers watching when the ads come on.
In what could signal a broadening of the revolt begun last year after Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola Co. pulled out of the TV upfront, another package-goods giant with a half-billion-dollar-plus budget is re-evaluating its position. This time it's Unilever's turn to startle the TV sales chiefs.
"We're discussing our upfront strategy," said Laura Klauberg, VP-media, Unilever Americas. "We're weighing all our options in the upfront. The process has existed forever and may have been very appropriate for business as it was conducted 10 years ago. Clearly, the market has changed a lot." Like the others before it, Unilever is citing as reasons for considering a scale-back the difficulty of making upfront buys well in advance of its calendar fiscal year and the fact that its marketing approach has become less TV-centric.
What will keep viewers viewing? I'd suggest they start with good creative and take it from there. Otherwise, you may as well put dead flowers on advertising's grave.
Take 16 of the best snowboarders in the world, the hardest working crew of cinematographers in the industry and one of the worst snow years in memory and what do you come up with? Well you tell us. This is the teaser for our new film "PICTURE THIS".
The HD is beautiful, isn't it? If anyone knows the tune, lemme know.
I've been a big fan of Last.fm for a while. See: Nature vs. Nurture. Looks like they're about to get into video, and I think it is a great decision. Here is some generously lifted text from Richard MacManus from Read/Write Web on the soon-to-be-announced service:
Online radio station Last.fm is adding a video section to its site this week, enabling users to create their own personalised video channels - similar to how users can already create radio stations based on their music tastes. Last.fm is partnering with major and independent labels for this. The company also claims that the quality of videos on its site "will be significantly higher than that of YouTube", with audio encoded at 128kbps compared to YouTube’s 64kbps.
What's most intriguing about this move is Last.fm's long-term goal for video. Last.fm aims to eventually offer its users personalised channels from "the largest legal catalogue of music videos on the web." And in case that's not clear enough, their press release concludes with this bold claim:
"Last.fm aims eventually to have every music video ever made on the site, from the latest hits to underground obscurities to classics from the past."
As one anonymous commenter wrote, "Time for Apple to buy this company, and quickly."
Publicis Groupe claims that one quarter of its total revenue will come from digital business by 2010.
CEO Maurice Levy said his objective is to exceed the projected industry average of 10 per cent and achieve 25 per cent of total revenue from digital. Levy added: “We have shown that we can lead the way in the traditional space. We now have the people and technology to do that in digital."
David Kenny, CEO of digital arm Digitas and group head of strategy, plans to expand the digital arm into all major global markets. He added that helping clients shift to interactive was key. By converging its technology, he aims to make the group's agencies ‘world-class’ in technology, data and analytics .
“There will be a massive shift once operations are properly in place. Interactive will no longer be experimental – but fundamental and core as more and more businesses use digital,” he added.
You don't have to know German to appreciate this lovely site from Ikea. Actually, it is from Ikea Austria, so I guess you need to imagine extra schmee on the meatballs and lingonberries. Hehe. Just move your mouse to the sides of the images to scroll from place to place.
The latest report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has a lot of people talking since it was released this past weekend. The analysis of 2006 data looks at the numbers and segments driving "Web 2.0" activities such as blogging, photo sharing, commenting, and so on. You can get a PDF copy of the report here.
A whopping 37 percent of people surveyed said that they had engaged in at least one "2.0" type of activity (like blogging, posting photos or videos, creating web sites or mixing/mashing content, amongst other activities. The study finds that people fit into 3 broad categories:
* Elite users (31 percent) * Middle of the road users (20 percent) * Those with few "tech assets" and limited use of technology (49 percent)
Pretty good numbers, right?
Well, you wouldn't know it by reading the mainstream media's spin on the report. Even John Paczkowski, who used to write "Good Morning Silicon Valley" for the San Jose Mercury News (one of my favourite blogs) gets it totally wrong, suggesting "that Web 2.0 – the “participatory Web”–has far fewer participants than its architects would have us believe." Larry Dignan asks if Web 2.0's upside is capped. I've found several other articles published by the mainstream media with the same slant.
But hold on a minute ...
The whole "2.0" phenomenon is only a couple years old, and what would be considered the most sophisticated community and networking tools, software and sites are all still quite young.
As I commented yesterday over on TechCrunch about this ... It is still quite early in the adoption cycle, and it should come as no surprise that adoption is being led by a small, tech-savvy group of younger, media-driven enthusiasts and early-adopters.
I find the fact that 31 percent of American adults are considered to be “elite tech users” to be a very encouraging fact. Almost one third of US adults? Incredible. How some can think that this is not an incredibly encouraging number is beyond me. Mathew Ingram echoes my feelings:
John Paczkowski of All Things D says that it’s clear from the study that Web 2.0 "has far fewer participants than its architects would have us believe." But is that really clear? I don’t think so. Did I miss the part where Tim O’Reilly or the other "architects" of Web 2.0 said everyone would be blogging and posting content within a year or two? I must have.
David Utter suggests that "there is a temptation to call this a "digital divide," but that's not entirely accurate." Other comments/posts can be found here.
These are the links to the mainstream new articles I found:
So, I'm fishing around on the YouTube job board - no, I'm not looking ... very happy here, thank you ... and I see an opening for a "Corporate Counsel, Digital Media - New York" in charge of, amongst other things, "negotiating, drafting, and analyzing a wide variety of video content licensing agreements and related agreements and managing contracting processes and negotiations for YouTube’s and Google’s growing digital media business" ...
The song is great (Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta), the video is fun, and the fact that they work in the biz and are promoting their video venture as a result is just plain cool. Welcome, everyone, to the way it should be done.
Could you imagine if the City of New York banned advertising in Times Square? How about advertising in all public spaces?
Well, that’s exactly what the city of São Paulo, Brazil, voted to do last September, by a vote of 45 to one, and it took effect January of this year. Madison Avenue has mostly swept this story under the rug, but it’s real — and daunting.
... which gets big-name bands to busk their way around the streets of Paris. Indie faves the Shins, Arcade Fire and Cold War Kids, as well as French-language artists like Quebec’s Malajube, have all participated –- live, public shows that draw their charm from a combination of spontaneity and back-to-basics enthusiasm. (In the Shins video, in which the band strolls around Montmartre, the lead singer James Mercer asks the band if it can come up with an intro to its song “Gone for Good” that has “that Mexican style” –- presumably because it fits the pseudo-mariachi-band vibe.)
To recap, someone has posted a link to a story about the said key getting cracked, and included the key in the title and description of the story. Digg staff took down the story, fearing that it would get sued by MPAA, as outlined in this blog post by CEO Jay Adelson.
This resulted in a proverbial take-to-the-streets riot, and now most of Digg front page stories are either related to the key-story, or are variants of the original deleted story. Ryan Block of Engadget is not alone in wondering, “How did such a loyal userbase as Digg’s so quickly divert its all-consuming energy to defying — even damaging — the company to which it was so loyal?”
One of my readers (hi Jon) sums it up nicely, “I think the real story here is user-generated content biting back when it’s actively censored by the site generating revenue from it.” Another dear friend is wondering if this is going to lead to traditional media wrinkling their nose at the social media and its ills.
A throng of tech-savvy Internet users have banded together over the last two days to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the movie industry to prevent illegal copying of high-definition movies.
The broader distribution of the code may not pose a serious threat to the movie industry, because only sophisticated technologists can use it to tailor the decryption software capable of getting around the copy protection on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. But its relentless spread has already become a lesson in mob power on the Internet and the futility of censorship in the digital world.
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