Flirtalicious

Posting has been slow lately, and it won't really be any better the next few weeks, because of this thing called flirtalicious...

Centralized vs. decentralized marketplaces

On the Dutch version of this weblog, Ymerce, there was a short discussion on whether (and why) Edgeio would actually be used. Pete Cashmore explains it in English...

"I really can’t fault it. It ties in with so much of the stuff that I’ve been thinking about recently - essentially that blogs are becoming the submit form for the web and that the centralized models (read: walled gardens) of old are about to be disrupted in a big way by smart aggregators. Think of Riffs vs iNods. Which will have more content - a fairly closed review site that requires a signup to post content, or an aggregator that will grab content from wherever it’s created, be it on Riffs or one of the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there? Clearly, the aggregator wins - it’s simply a better place to go if you want to find a review."

Use your API

APIs, with which external developers can build applications on top of existing functionality and data, are becoming an important element of many new companies and services on the web. New business and revenue models arise from this trend. But too often APIs are thought of as 'just another interface'. Therefore it's good to see things are changing.

"I was surprised to hear, though, how many of these companies build their own public-facing web sites second, by building on top of a web services API they develop first. The act of developing a public API, then, is not one of designing and testing various API calls -- instead, all they have to decide is which of their existing method calls they want to expose to the public. They already know the methods work, because if they didn't, the public web app wouldn't work, either."

We will be releasing a public API for Eccky soon, and are already using it for the mobile Eccky client, but I often wondered why we did not use the API for our website (and more) for the exact same reason as given above. And yes, I already know the answer to that question, we don't have to because we're not external developers, but I feel that's the wrong answer from a (future) business point of view.

Broadcast flag? DRM? Let's have it!

I don't like DRM or broadcast flags or any other system that limits users in how they want to consume digital content. It should go away, it should never be there in the first place. But wait, may be it should be there. May be it's good. Let them dig their own graves. Let them ruin their profitable businesses, let them make room for new ones. After reading about HBO's effort to use a sort of broadcast flag to ban viewers from recording any of its programming on DVRs, I can't help but think that we should just let them go ahead. What will happen is that people will increasingly start finding and liking other content with less restrictions more than HBO's. This content will be supported by new commercial models, hopefully enabling the same level of quality as HBO's programming today. These models should gain from having no restrictions on distribution and copying. Which ones? I don't know yet for sure, but I do know that introducing a kind of broadcast flag system will speed up innovation in that area. So may be it's a good idea to have more broadcast flags, more DRM, more perceived protection of existing revenue sources. The sooner the better.

"They’ve recently filed a motion with the FCC to enable the broadcast flag on all programming, which would basically disable you from recording the show via Tivo or another DVR device. Even if you’re a subscriber to HBO programming, you’ll still be barred from recording the show."

Edgeio?

What is Edgeio?

"The way Edgeio works is that bloggers would post items they want to sell right on their blogs, tagging them with the word "listing" (and eventually other descriptive tags). Then, Edgeio will pluck them as it constantly crawls millions of blogs looking for the "listing" tag and index them on Edgeio.com."

I think this is the model of the future. A mix of decentralized and centralized, working with standards. As opposed to (paid-listing) sites like eBay, Craigslist, Monsterboard, Match.com and Google Base where everything is centralized. Structured blogging and microformats are other examples of this trend, there's more to come...

The 'conversational index'

Comments on weblogs could be a useful instrument for identifying relevant weblogs or websites. Stowe Boyd calls it the 'conversational index'. However, I think the focus is too much on quantity instead of quality of comments. Something Michael Parekh notices as well. Comment and trackback spam will become an even bigger problem in the future if the quality dimension is not included. And it's not that hard to do it. A commenter's authority is a good predictor for quality. Using services like Technorati will allow us to check this authority, assuming (for the moment) the commenter has a blog of course...

"...successful blogs -- ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start -- shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks (posts/comments + trackbacks) was less than one. Meaning that there was more conversation -- as indicated by the number of comments and track backs offered by readers -- than posting articles."

Stamped email

Email senders will soon have to pay in order to be sure their email is delivered to the recipient's inbox. This is great news, primarily because it's such a bad idea. The good thing is that it will speed up the adoption of RSS as a replacement for email....

"AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a junk-mail folder or strip them of images and Web links. As is the case now, mail arriving from addresses that users have added to their AOL address books will not be treated as spam."