Making more with prostitution

We've read enough about Chinese and Korean companies where underpaid employees are working hard to earn money in virtual words by collecting valuable objects (farming). Prosititution however appears to be more lucrative for some…;-)

“Perhaps the most unique use of a “female character” was by Rob Conzelman of Philadelphia who wrote of his own experiences as a “cyber whore” for Dragonfire magazine. He explained that he tried his hand at “gold farming” but was frustrated by the amount of game time needed to acquire even a small amount of game cash. Plundering and pillaging dungeons and cities was not enough to get him the money he needed so instead he resorted to the world’s oldest profession — prostitution. He went to the largest cities in the World of Warcraft where he stripped off all of his female character’s clothing and positioned her in front of the cities’ inns and propositioned players to have a good time upstairs. It is surprising how many players actually took him, excuse me, her, up on her proposition, and she soon made much more money than she could have done tramping through dungeons.”

Operating systems don't matter

Lately I've read a lot about Parallels, a software product that allows you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on one machine, an Apple for example. But every time I read about it I tend to think that I don't care a lot about the OS I'm running, OS X, Linux, Vista, whatever... Almost everything I do is within the browser environment. Office is probably the only program I frequently use outside of the browser, but even that is not really necessary anymore. I am always online however, sort of a must if you'd like to live a web-based life. Although there's definitely a trend towards being able to use web services off line as well…

“While the last version of Parallels allowed you to run both operating systems at once, it still required you to switch back and forth between the two. Now, however, Parallels’ Coherence product, which the company says will ship by mid-February, lets you keep multiple windows open on your desktop, just as you normally would, running a variety of applications. Except now you can switch between windows running Windows and Mac applications just as if they were all Mac.”

News, PR 2.0 and press releases

Based on my own experience with the introduction of Eccky last year I was surprised by the impact of a press release. Often the news about Eccky was already published on the Eccky weblog or my own and some (online) publications would report it. But only after sending out a press release using the regular channels would get traditional (often main stream) media writing about it. Even though I knew they had read about the news already. Many journalists are lazy and wait until the news comes to them in a form that can be copied and (sometimes) edited. If you have an interest in PR you should follow the discussion about what some call a ‘Social Media Release’, hrelease and SMR...

“The IDEA is to strip out all of the bullshit and hype from traditional mechanical, and useless press releases and rebuild it as a focused compilation of relevant facts, links, media and a subscription feed to help readers write, tell, and share a story their way (without having to sort through a sea of crap to find out what’s real, what’s canned, and what’s important.) This is what a good release should be anyway, regardless of trends and titles. Basically it’s the press release redux. It takes out what’s wrong with press releases and modernizes them into a usable format for journalists, bloggers, and individuals.”

Google's bandwith strategy

A while ago I wrote about Robert Arn's analysis of why bandwith will be a huge bottleneck in the mass adoption of watching video over the web. There simply isn't enough bandwith available to let everyone watch TV using services like Joost or YouTube. Many people tend to think P2P will be the answer, but that's not true. It might solve only part of the problem. It's sometimes amazing to see how difficult it is for many people to see the obvious. Robert Cringely did an interesting analysis and also presents a scenario where Google will be the dominant force. Intruiging, but not very likely. Below you will find the core of his definition of the problem, read his article for a solution and Techmeme for further discussion.

“The Internet as we know it is a shell game, with ISPs building their profits primarily on how many users they can have practically share the same Internet connection. Based on the idea that most users aren’t on the net at the same time and even when they are online they are mainly between keystrokes and doing little or nothing when viewed on a per-millisecond basis, ISPs typically leverage the Internet bandwidth they have purchased by a factor of at least 20X and sometimes as much as 100X, which means that DSL line or cable modem that you think is delivering multi-megabits per second is really only guaranteeing you as much bandwidth as you could get with most dial-up accounts.

This bandwidth leveraging hasn’t been a problem to date, but it is about to become a huge problem as we all embrace Internet video. When we are all grabbing one to two hours of high-quality video per day off the net, there is no way the current network infrastructure will support that level of use. At that point we can accept that the Internet can’t do what we are asking it to do OR we can find a way to make the Internet do what we are asking it to do. Enter Google and its many, many regional data centers to fill this gap.

Looking at this problem from another angle, right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you’d find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. Broadband ISPs hate these super users and would like to find ways to isolate or otherwise reject them. It’s BitTorrent — not Yahoo or Google — that has been the target of the anti-net neutrality trash talk from telcos and cable companies. But the fact is that rather than being an anomaly, these are simply early adopters and we’ll all soon follow in their footsteps. And when that happens, there won’t be enough bandwidth to support what we want to do from any centralized perspective. A single data center, no matter how large, won’t be enough. Google is just the first large player to recognize this fact as their building program proves.

It is becoming very obvious what will happen over the next two to three years. More and more of us will be downloading movies and television shows over the net and with that our usage patterns will change. Instead of using 1-3 gigabytes per month, as most broadband Internet users have in recent years, we’ll go to 1-3 gigabytes per DAY — a 30X increase that will place a huge backbone burden on ISPs. Those ISPs will be faced with the option of increasing their backbone connections by 30X, which would kill all profits, OR they could accept a peering arrangement with the local Google data center.”

My newspaper

Ever since the start of Techmeme I read at least 100 feeds less (150 originally) and it's the first website I check at breakfast and the last one before I go to sleep;-) Danny Sullivan did an interview with Techmeme's creator and he says some interesting things in there that could tell you a lot about the future of news sourcing and distribution. And don't forget to check Techmeme for the discussion on this interview…

“Gabe asked the audience if anyone had heard of Techmeme. Apparently, no hands went up — at least in the audience. All the panelists certainly had. I love that anecdote, because I feel it largely reflects how Techmeme operates. The masses might have Digg, but perhaps the influencers have Techmeme. Certainly plenty of large, influential bloggers I know keep an eye on what it is covering. But I recommend it for anyone, not just influencers, for the easy way it organizes what’s happening with technology stories.”

Genealogy made easy

I've played around with genealogy and family tree services before, but they're always so complicated to use. Now Geni has launched which aims to make all of this a lot easier. It's still in beta and they are promising a lot of new features for both importing (GEDCOM) and exporting/publishing data, something that is currently impossible. Will be very interesting to see what kinds of services will be build on top of a Geni API.

"You can start creating your family tree on our homepage through (what we hope is) a fun simple interface. It’s extremely fast to build your tree by clicking the yellow arrows in the direction you want to add new family members. As you’ll notice, there is no software download required, no lengthy signup process, and no fees. There is another key advantage of Geni: When you add a relative, you can also enter his or her email address. In that case your relative will receive an email inviting him or her to join your tree. By clicking a link, your relative will be taken to the same family tree you’ve been working on, but re-centered from that relative’s point of view."

A personal annual report

Clive Thompson writes about Nicholas Feltron, a designer who created his personal annual report for 2006. The concept (and execution) is pretty funny actually, and it might be useful as well..;-)

“The design is spectacularly cool, and the concept totally cracks me up: It’s such a neat riff on the glossy corporate annual that all companies produce each year. Yet it’s also a quite interesting way to take stock of one’s life, eh? That graphic above details his drinking in a “beverage by type” pie-chart."

A competing community

I'm no advocate of government intervention in a competitive environment, even in the case of a (perceived) monopoly. Competition is probably always the right answer, and it's certainly interesting to see this competition increasingly coming from unexpected sources. Lawrence Lessig compares the various Microsoft issues with the current ‘network neutrality‘ debate.

“I think about this mistake whenever I think about the current Microsoft-like network-neutrality debate – whether network owners can pick the stuff that flows across “their” network. In this debate, too, I am a reluctant regulator. And again, I don’t see how it’s possible to steer broadband providers away from a business model that – like Microsoft’s – may benefit them but could stifle innovation. Every dominant commercial competitor has the same incentive: to build a business that extracts all potential value from the pipes that company owns.”

Virtual reality starts to get real

VR still is a bit of a tainted term. However, old visions are becoming reality. The integration of physical and virtual life is (for me at least) one of the most important trends for the coming years.

“In the early 1990s I predicted that VR would become the standard interface metaphor for computers by the 21st century. Did I get that right? It seems not; after all, we still use windows and mice as standard the interaction paradigm, just as we did back in 1990. Yet, if we can draw anything from the recent and somewhat surprisingly successful introduction of the Nintendo Wii, it’s that VR did arrive, is pervasive, and has become a dominant interface metaphor. Just not on the computer desktop. VR isn’t about head-mounted displays, although it might have seemed so, fifteen years ago. VR is about bringing the body into contact with the simulated world. Nintendo, with its clever, cheap, attractive and highly functional Wiimote, has done just that. They’ve done what decades of other researchers and engineers failed to do: they’ve brought us into the game. So predictions might come to pass, but rarely do they come in the form imagined. But every so often, when you step up to the plate, you connect completely, and knock one out of the park.”

Beyond Second Life

There's been a lot of discussion around SL lately, for me it's still a fantastic example of how we'd might experience the web in the near future. To get a better understanding of how to get to that future, I recommend you read this interview with Ogoglio's founder. Many of the challenges facing the 3D web are being discussed, including some of the flaws SL's model (and also, at least for now, Croquet's).

“Sorry, but Cory was right. Croquet and MUPPETs are both trying to beat Second Life by being a better Second Life, and that’s a game that’s already lost. We don’t need a better stand alone 3D client and server grid that barely talks to the web. We need the web to get better.”

Dumb groups and individuals

I'm not the only one being annoyed when memes like “Wisdom of Crowds” and “Long Tail” are being misused. Kathy explains why people should not just shout “Wisdom of Crowds!” when a new online service enables (groups of) people to 'do something'.

“Of course most of what I’ve been dissing is the popular, rampant misinterpretation of Wisdom of Crowds, not what Surowiecki actually meant. Read the book and you’ll see just how significant and powerful the aggregation of individual knowledge really is, and how in the right circumstances with the right constraints, the wisdom found in that group CAN be smarter than the smartest individual in the group. But he never says the group itself becomes smarter when they work together to produce a result as a group.”

Less ads is more revenues

Something that really annoys me are websites that place too many ads, not realizing the fact that the value of each new ad is rapidly decreasing. Social networking services have certainly been a leading example of this. Serving less ads could generate more revenues however….

“Given the extreme pressure to monetize with low CPMs, many of today’s social networks are way too cluttered with ads. Virtually every pageview that is generated carries an ad. This is highly wasteful and counterproductive, for both users and advertisers. Instead, improved methods of monetization yielding higher CPMs, must correspond with a reduction in the volume of ads. To some extent, old-fashioned artificial scarcity must be imposed on available ad inventory in order to achieve improved performance and satisfaction for all parties involved.”

Will reputation managment systems work?

What's the value of reputation management systems like Rapleaf when everybody has a 100% positive score....?

"Tee Hee Hee - perhaps Auren Hoffman should shill his rep and put in a few negative ratings. Cause nobody has no enemies. This exposes the problems with ratings and reputation systems. They don’t work. In fact all of the Rapleaf reputations are 100% positive. What a wonderful trustworthy world we live in. What’s ecven more interesting is how easy it was for Auren to raise money for this ill-fated venture. How could anybody expect a profit from this? This is an example of a Bubble 2.0 company."

Social networking's niche future

I've written before about the difference between ‘small’ and ‘large’ social networking services. The little ones have the future I think, and via Marc Canter I found this interesting article (Anatomy of a Successful Social Network) that sort of says the same. But explained way better;-)

“As of now, most mainstream social networks allow us to do pretty much the same things; contact friends, send email, post to forums, blog, etc. On the other hand, the niche social networks are expected to have these standard features in addition to services that are specific to that niche. For example, a social network for bookworms will have features that let its users showcase their favorite books. The generic social networks can never attain this goal unless they provide a framework to allow custom tools to be easily integrated (widgets on steroids). In the end, no one can predict where social networks are headed, but millions of people today still spend time on niche forums. This should be enough to give us faith in this market.“

Will it be an open or closed web?

Google's decision to not allow any new users of their open search API has led to an interesting discussion. One that has the potential to shape the further evolution of the web, especially with regard to the many mashups we all like so much...

“Data APIs are not going to disappear, of course. AJAX widgets don’t allow mash-ups, and some sites have user bases including many developers who rely on being able to combine data from different sources (think CraigsList). However, the fact that Google has decided that there’s no value playing in the space will matter a lot to a lot of people. If you care about open data, this would be a good time to start thinking of credible business cases for companies to (continue) offer(ing) it.”

You

There's nothing new in TIME's article where you are named the person of the year 2006. But it is still fascinating to sometimes think about the huge impact the internet has (already had) on society.

"But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious."

Really virtual

So often lately I hear people talking about virtual relationships, virtual people, virtual identities and stuff like that. While in reality it's not a virtual person walking around in Second Life for instance. It's a real person, having real social connections. Danah has an interesting post on this same topic.

"If you look at the rise of social tech amongst young people, it’s not about divorcing the physical to live digitally. MySpace has more to do with offline structures of sociality than it has to do with virtuality. People are modeling their offline social network; the digital is complementing (and complicating) the physical. In an environment where anyone could socialize with anyone, they don’t. They socialize with the people who validate them in meatspace. The mobile is another example of this. People don’t call up anyone in the world (like is fantasized by some wrt Skype); they call up the people that they are closest with. The mobile supports pre-existing social networks, not purely virtual ones."

Back to Les Blogs

Update: I see I'm not the only one who thinks politics have no place at this conference...

The second day of Le Web 3 is underway and it's turning into something of a political circus. It's great to hear Shimon Peres speak about the things he knows a lot about, or all of the French presidential candidates on whatever keeps them busy. But unfortunately this is not why I really enjoyed the previous two Les Blogs conferences. And it's not why I came to Le Web 3. Despite the great lineup and the great effort done by Loïc to make it a memorable event, the event has lost it edginess, its 'geeky vibe' that made it so special when it was first held. The back channel, ubiquitous wifi, the audience as a speaker, a group of 200 attendees (there are now 200 journalists), it's all missing this time. And there are too many people speaking in French because they don't speak English. This all really turns it into a normal 'shut-up-and-listen' conference.

Back to Les Blogs, no more LeWeb3. For me at least...

IPTV, VOD, RSS & broadcast

When Steve Rubel says everything in TV-land will change because of IPTV he doesn't necessarily mean all content will be distributed that way. At least not in the short term. He presents his vision on what might happen in the short term, a vision I think is very plausible.

"As we've seen time and again, we love to watch people like us. This is not just all about YouTube. It dates back to Candid Camera and America's Funniest Home Videos. The trend is evergreen. However, RSS feeds are going to find their way onto your TV set either from your cable/satellite provider or via IP-connected devices like Apple's ITV, Xbox, Slingbox or TiVo. The user won't know that the RSS is even there. They will be able to browse through thousands of shows created by individuals and subscribe to them on their TVs. Many of these will be ad supported. Most will be free. Some that are more successful will require micro payments to view."

Microsoft matters

I've been working with Microsoft (as a partner for Eccky) for some years now, and I really agree with what Jon Udell is saying.

"Bottom line: This isn't your father's -- or maybe your older brother's or sister's -- Microsoft. Initiatives like these matter, they're solidly in line with my own agenda, they're being pursued in very open ways, and I want to help move them forward."

He gives some examples as well, most of them I've written about before on this blog.

"At the Emerging Technology Conference in March, Microsoft's incoming chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, showed how LiveClipboard, the 21st-century version of the Windows clipboard, could enable collaborative sharing of information, and creative recombination of services, across all operating systems, web applications, and desktop applications.

Kim Cameron, Microsoft's identity architect, is taking a similar approach in the domain of identity, privacy, and the control of personal information.

Jean Paoli, Microsoft's Office XML architect, continues to pursue his lifelong dream of empowering millions of people to create and use smarter documents.

Jim Hugunin, who created both Jython and IronPython, is making my favorite open source scripting language, Python, a first-class citizen of the .NET platform.

J.J. Allaire is creating a blog-writing tool that will enable millions of people to publish data that's reusable and intelligently searchable."

The dumb pipe

Ever since I started working in this industry I have been amazed by the stubbornness of telecom operators to stick with their strategy of not focusing on their core business. I've written about it many times before, but it seems to be a disease that has no cure... A waste of time, money and energy.

“It sounds like those voices still aren’t very loud, however, as the reality is that most incumbent cable and phone providers are doing the exact opposite. Because the biggest fear among many ISP execs is becoming a “dumb pipe” provider and missing out on the kind of revenues they’re seeing at Google, don’t expect an industry sea change anytime soon. Incumbent broadband providers will likely continue trying to be jacks of all trades, potentially doing none of them particularly well — at the expense of their core connectivity offering.”

Giving it away with a profit

Cory Doctorow writes about his experience with giving away his (e)books for free. Although he can't prove it, the suggestion is made that more physical books have been sold as a result of this digital giveaway. I find it hard to believe that books will still be read that way (on paper I mean) in the future, but fortunately Cory also identifies a more sustainable revenue source. The man himself;-)

"It's good business for me, too. This "market research" of giving away e-books sells printed books. What's more, having my books more widely read opens many other opportunities for me to earn a living from activities around my writing, such as the Fulbright Chair I got at USC this year, this high-paying article in Forbes, speaking engagements and other opportunities to teach, write and license my work for translation and adaptation. My fans' tireless evangelism for my work doesn't just sell books--it sells me."

The large small village

When using the internet the wide world sometimes appears to be a small place. But it is interesting to see that especially our local environment (street, neighborhood, town) has become a lot richer because of the web as well.

“The seemingly paradoxical proposition that while Internet technologies were originally touted as “making geography irrelevant”, in actual fact they excel at the opposite — giving you richer info about the stuff that’s going on nearby you. As Johnson told today’s New York Times Arts section: “It really shows that the old idea that the Internet was going to make cities obsolete had it exactly wrong,” he said. “In fact the Internet enhances cities in all these different ways. I think it lets people have the kinds of conversations that we sentimentally always imagined that people were having.”

Never forget

Wether we realize it or not, a lot of our experiences are being digitized. Increasingly they can also be easily retrieved. A while back I wrote about this phenomenon and now Fast Company has a longish article looking at the scientific research that is being done in this area. With Gordon Bell’s MyLifeBits as the most well known example. His conclusion sums it all up...

“Still, Bell insists the trend toward total memory isn’t going away. More and more, it is happening automatically. Those tens of millions of bloggers and Flickr users–all out there recording their thoughts and pictures–have clearly decided that there’s enormous value not just in capturing those thoughts but in sharing them with the public. The choice isn’t whether you’ll join the revolution but whether you’ll embrace it.”

Drawing sheep

Interesting report on the way Amazon’s Mechanical Turk works and what you can use it for.

“Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a system for getting people to do small tasks via an API for small amounts of money. The Sheep Market is perhaps the most interesting application based on MTurk. Whereas most Human Intelligence Tasks (or HITs) are about data verification, this task involved drawing a sheep. 10,000 sheep in total were accepted, arranged on his site and then offered for sale. Aaron Koblin, the creator of the Sheep Market, has written his thesis (Word doc)about the experience.”

Starting in a coffee shop

It's a normal thing in Silicon Valley to start a business working out of a coffee shop. Last weekend I was discussing this phenomenon with a couple of Amsterdam entrepreneurs since it's a trend we don't really see happening here. The Guardian has a nice story on this topic.

"Since opening last year, Ritual Coffee Roasters' plain wood tables and leather sofas have become a cradle of start-up companies, including Rubyred Labs. The firm aims to 'turn ideas into top class internet products and services'.'We would come here a lot with our laptops, because so many people come here,' explained one of its co-founders, Jonathan Grubb, 27, wearing a sports hat and sweatshirt. 'The coffee shop has replaced the garage for internet start-ups."

AI in trading and marketing

That artificial intelligence will become more important in our daily lives has been clear for a while now. Nevertheless I found this little fact (below) mentioned in a NYT article on Ray Kurzweil very interesting, and it would not surprise me to see these kinds of techniques to be increasingly used in other industries like marketing as well. Google’s AdSense is probably a good example.

“Studies estimate that a third of all stock trades in the United States were driven by automatic algorithms last year, contributing to an explosion in stock market activity. Between 1995 and 2005, the average daily volume of shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange increased to 1.6 billion from 346 million.”

Abundance in virtual worlds

Wise words by Raph Koster on the recent events in Second Life. Yes, Second Life will have to face zero as well.

“Microtransactions for digital assets and virtual goods is a rising, potentially multibillion dollar industry. To succeed, entrepreneurs who are building networked systems based on user content (be they citizens of Second Life or the makers of virtual worlds themselves) must realize that anything displayable is copyable; the value lies instead in service and in server-side functionality. Content is like songs around a campfire: destined to be enjoyed for free. Those who build businesses around hosting campfires would be wise to focus on making the campfire experience great, rather than charging listeners by the song.”

Whisful thinking

I find it hard to imagine that social networking and IM services will provide mobile operators with new revenue sources. Sure, there will be more data traffic over their networks, but I wonder if that's going to make them happy given their flat-rate offerings. Anyway, Vodafone clearly thinks differently.

“Sarin says social networking, mobile advertising, mobile video, and other advanced applications are on the rise. “We expect these services to generate 10% of our revenue within three or four years,” he says. Vodafone generated $29.4 billion in revenue and $6.6 billion in profit during the first half of the year, beating analyst forecasts.”

What happened to Lonelygirl15?

She's still alive. Detailed Wired report on the advent and future of the YouTube-girl apparently coming from the Midwest, but who actually is an actress in a Beverly Hills home.

“Many assumed the series would sputter and die. Media reports zeroed in on how viewers had been duped, suggesting an inevitable backlash. But the fans — raised on the unreality of reality TV and with the role-playing ethos of the Web — seemed to take the revelation in stride. One guy who had corresponded regularly with Bree wrote to ask if he’d been conversing with Jessica Rose. “No, you’ve been talking to Bree,” came the reply (from Amanda). “If you want to talk to Jessica Rose, you can go to her MySpace page. If you want to keep talking to Bree, use this email.” “Fair enough,” the fan wrote back, and then went on to tell Bree the latest news in his life. To many, it didn’t seem to matter whether she was real or not. A number of posts appeared on YouTube denouncing the series, but many more responded with variations of this simple statement: If you don’t like it, don’t watch.”

What's wrong with Second Life?

With all outside attention focused on Second Life it's interesting to follow its development from an insider perspective. Many signals are pointing at fundamental problems. Read this interview for some insights.

“I mean, there is room for just about everyone on Second Life. I don’t personally believe it’s the corporations that are the problems. It’s the core attitude of the host company. The eagerness to put the bottom line ahead of the benefit and safety of their customers… the ones who are paying the bills. As an example… Linden Lab has much vaunted their “more than 1 million members” status. To get there, they opened the grid to no-ID registration. Email addy only. And we all know how easy it is to get an email addy. As a result, griefing increased by major amounts. The number of adolescents (and resulting problems) increased by major amounts. These things were not for the good of the grid.”

Born in 1985

Interesting article in the Guardian on how today's 21 year-olds have been raised in parallel with the advent of the internet, gaming, etc.

“These kids have been socially conditioned in a universe that runs parallel to the one inhabited by most folks in the media business. They’ve been playing computer games of mind-blowing complexity forever. They’re resourceful, knowledgeable and natural users of computer and communications technology. They’re Digital Natives - accustomed to creating content of their own - and publishing it.”

The semantic web, for real

New York Times has an article on Web 3.0. Formerly known as the semantic web, with Tim Berners-Lee (WWW inventor) as the driving force behind that vision.

Leaving aside all the jokes about the term Web 3.0 there's a deeper thought in the article, something Nicholas Carr recognizes as well. It also has a lot to do with what Tim O’Reilly calls ‘harnessing collective intelligence‘, a key characteristic of Web 2.0.

Anyway, I feel all these thoughts and terms really do point at a logical evolutionary path for the web.

“Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century."

Web 2.0 Summit summarized

I like this summary of everything I've read about the Web 2.0 Summit. Microsoft’s TechEd in Barcelona (which I attended this week) was more interesting I think. More on that later…

“When we were in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, there was tangible excitement about the new age of digital media. The Hollywood types were bursting to talk about this revolutionary age of amateur talent ushered in by YouTube. This week, web 2.0 crowd treated the YouTube acquisition simply as a huge transaction, with the only interesting aftermath being lawsuits. Here, we’re so far ahead of the curve, it’s a race to see who can be cynical first.”

Brands producing own content, new?

Is this new? They started doing this back in the 1930's....

“Marketers have found a new way to try to keep viewers from tuning out: offer them TV shows, movies and online programming created by the marketers themselves, often with help from their advertising agencies.

These new offerings, the marketers hope, will be entertaining enough to endear viewers to the brands behind them.

Burger King, for example, is making a feature-length film that may star — no surprise here — the “King” character of its ad campaign. Office Max recently created a show on the ABC Family channel. Anheuser-Busch plans to start a seven-channel TV network online, called BudTV.

“It’s the exploration of sort of a new world,” said Doug Powell, chief integrator of Maiden Lane, an advertising agency. “Clients would love to have a way for customers to be able to participate with their brands more often and not have to rely on the traditional media world.”

The importance of 0

Techdirt’s Mike has been writing about the concept Chris Anderson now calls the ‘Economics of Abundance’ for a while. He explains why this concept is really very simple, but still difficult to understand for some. Who knows what might happen when they start to get it….;-)

“However, the point is that if you understand the zero, there’s nothing to worry about and the model works perfectly. It just requires a recognition that the scarcity doesn’t exist. Instead, you have abundance. You can have as much content as you need — and in that world, it makes perfect sense that there’s no costs, because without scarcity there need not be a cost. Supply is infinite, and price is zero. That does not mean, however, that there’s no business. Instead, it just means you need to flip the equation and use the zero to your advantage. Instead of thinking of it as forcing a “price” of zero, you think of it as being a “cost” of zero. Suddenly, you’ve lowered the cost of making something to nothing — and you should then try to use as much of it as you can. One simple example of this is to use that item that “costs” zero as a promotional good for something that does not have a zero marginal cost. When you realize how zero factors in, you realize that there’s nothing new or radical here at all. It’s just coming to terms with the idea that free market economics still works in the face of zero (in fact, it thrives) and there’s no reason to put in place government-sanctioned barriers to shape the market.”

The world in 3D

Like I said before, Second Life to me is especially interesting because of the idea it gives us on how we might use the web in the future. Microsoft’s latest Virtual Earth release is also a clear step in that direction. And it's clear where it is going:

“Pretty wild! 3 Dimensional virtual world navigation in a web browser. Best of all, Spaceland has been architected to work the way the web works, from the ground up. You can link to a place in Virtual Earth in 3d, the same as you would in 2d! just use the Share menu above the map to clip a permalink to your current view. Same as it ever was."

Optimizing the newspaper

Google starts a test where they will be selling newspaper ad space. Will be interesting to see when, and if, newspapers will start optimizing their printing process (localization for example) to make sure the most relevant and profitable ads will appear. Optimizing from a revenue perspective that is, not from a cost perspective like today.

“Some newspapers see Google’s proposed system as a way to increase sales. “Every day in the newspaper we have a fair amount of space we set aside for ads that we are unable to fill,” said Owen Youngman, a vice president for development at The Chicago Tribune. “Google says they can bring us thousands of small advertisers for space we would otherwise fill with house ads, and we say ‘Great.’"

Trust through the blogosphere

Tim Berners Lee blogs about blogging and highlights something that is indeed becoming more visible every day. Blogs provide filters for the web and a certain level of trust as well. Multiple initiatives that are rooted in the blogosphere are making this trend even stronger.

“A great example of course is the blogging world. Blogs provide a gently evolving network of pointers of interest. As do FOAF files. I’ve always thought that FOAF could be extended to provide a trust infrastructure for (e..g.) spam filtering and OpenID-style single sign-on and its good to see things happening in that space.”

The future of Second Life

Would you like to understand how virtual worlds like Second Life should develop and evolve? Read Stef Wade's thoughts on this topic, I can only agree. Like I said before, Second Life is a great prototype of how we might use and experience the web in the future, but that does not necessarily mean Second Life itself will be a success.

“It is not easy for Linden Lab to give up the monopoly they have in SL. But as far as I can see, it is the only possibility to be successful in the market. An open system will invite competition to the LLs own court, but it will be the only way to prevent the marketplace from splitting into many small pieces.”

A lot to learn

All the rumor surrounding YouTube makes it even more clear that most content companies still have a lot to learn. Hyperpeople explains it better then I could have...

"Television producers are about to learn the same lessons that film studios and the recording industry learned before them: what the audience wants, it gets. Take your clips off of YouTube, and watch as someone else – quite illegally – creates another hyperdistribution system for them. Attack that system, and watch as it fades into invisibility. Those attacks will force it to evolve into ever-more-undetectable forms. That’s the lesson of music-sharing site Napster, and the lesson of torrent-sharing site Supernova. When you attack the hyperdistribution system, you always make the problem worse."

Large and small social networking services

I agree with Robert Young that Facebook and Six Apart are two of the most interesting 'mainstream' social networking services at the moment. However, I have difficulty with his implicit statement that advertising revenues will create a lot of wealth for these companies.

Marc Canter's vision is very appealing. He says there won't be only a few large centralized social networking services, but instead expects there to be many smaller ones that are relevant in a specific context. The larger ones will facilitate this by building the social networking infrastructure (with Facebook and Six Apart as leading examples), using standards and open APIs. However, a consequence of this will be that at least part of the advertising revenues will go to the niche oriented services. The fact that a user uses SixApart's Vox to create a profile, write blog posts and submit videos (read Robert's piece on 'consoles for consumer control') doesn't necessarily mean they will be seen (consumed) by others at the same place. They will be cross-posted to the relevant niche networks... And that's why I think opening up Facebook for everyone was a bad idea. They are losing their context (students, universities). How will that end...?

"I’m probably also one of the very few that felt Facebook made the absolute right decision when they opened up its social network. Their timing, in my opinion, could not have been better, particularly in terms of competitive positioning against MySpace. With the move, there is no doubt in my mind that Facebook has placed itself on a new growth curve… one that will benefit from the churn of members from competitors as well as newbies to social networks. Having said that, let me qualify my thesis a bit. As I wrote in my last post, Facebook has a low “narcissism” ratio, relative to more “Hollywood-oriented” social media services… and it’s very important that it stay that way as it pulls back its velvet rope to the masses. But doing so puts Facebook on the same evolutionary path with Six Apart… at the conceptual level, both companies are ultimately aimed at becoming personalized portal platforms (what I’ve previously referred to as “consoles for consumer control“)."

What ever happened to OhmyNews?

BusinessWeek has an update on OhmyNews, the newspaper largely made by citizens and itself very newsworthy a couple of years ago. Beginning 2003 I wrote about for the first time.

Apparently OhmyNews is not yet structurally profitable. Read the article for the details, but this quote from McKinsey's Korean director is very short sighted for someone who is a strategic advisor to large corporations....

"Other industry watchers also express doubts that citizen journalism will turn out to be a going concern. Had it been an attractive global model, "someone would have made lots of money by now," adds Stephen
Bear, Seoul-based director of McKinsey's Korean operation."

Wikipedia rules

I find myself using Wikipedia more and more these days. And linking to it as well. Apparently I'm not the only one when looking at these research results. Increasingly I'm using Wikipedia directly however, not through a search engine. So it will be interesting to see how, and if, Google and Yahoo will embrace that trend(?).

"In a research project, Cuhalev gathered a random sample of about 1,000 of the 1.4 million topics covered by Wikipedia. He then ran the terms through the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines. He found that Wikipedia did in fact appear with remarkable consistency in the upper reaches of search results. On average, the online encyclopedia appeared in the top-ten search results 65% of the time - and 26% of the time it actually had two results in the top ten. (Cuhalev has posted a summary of his findings on his blog, and the full report can be downloaded here.)"

Studying social networking

The NYT covers a computing symposium, "2016", where social networking (research) is being discussed. I'm not saying this is not relevant, but somehow I prefer Danah Boyd's almost inside-out approach over the way these professors are theorizing about this 'revolution'.

"Social networks, noted Jon Kleinberg, a professor at Cornell, are pre-technological creations that sociologists have been analyzing for decades. A classic example, he noted, was the work of Stanley Milgram of Harvard, who in the 1960’s asked each of several volunteers in the Midwest to get a letter to a stranger in Boston. But the path was not direct: under the rules of the experiment, participants could send a letter only to someone they knew. The median number of intermediaries was six — hence, the term “six degrees of separation."

Web 2.0 lesson

Interesting article on the authority of data sources in which Tim O'Reilly also makes a very recognizable remark on software bugs..;-)

"Aside: That's a classic bug cascade. As my friend Andrew Singer once noted, debugging is discovering what you actually told your computer to do, rather than what you thought you told it. Unfortunately, you sometimes don't understand what you told your computer to do until some particular corner case emerges.)"

And the Web 2.0 lesson:

"But it's a real shame that it's not possible just to remove the bad data. As Lou said in one email, "the whole story seems to be such a strong illustration of the downsides of connected and linked databases (and therefore very much a Web 2.0 lesson)."

It's not about Second Life

With all the hype surrounding Second Life these days it is understandable that some people are wondering if it is all justified. And on the level of Second Life the answer is probably no. There aren't that many concurrent users, there are technical and more fundamental usability issues, and there's a lot of superficial reporting on what's really happening.

But for me Second Life is showing a scenario of how we might use the internet in the future. From that perspective it inspires me. However, I do not believe that it will necessarily be Linden Lab dominating the virtual world space with Second Life. There will be many connected virtual 3D environments, like we have many websites, portals and communities today.

I think the hype is justified, but not because Second Life is or will be so successful. It could be, but it doesn't have to be. It's just an example of a much more fundamental development.

"Despite the problems and excessive hype, Second Life and the other massively multiplayer virtual worlds do represent a strange and wonderful phenomenon worth writing about for journalists: people living in an alternate reality — literally creating their alternate reality — that affects their “First Life” either through virtual relationships or by running real businesses. Hopefully, more journalists will be able to tell the story of these cultural shifts without becoming the pawns (and customers) of the game’s creator."

Google's switchboard vs. repository issue

Tim O'Reilly sees a risk in the way Google is evolving, somewhat related to my own concerns.

"But Larry's on to something. I've been seeing the distinction that he makes coming more and more into focus as a defining issue for Web 2.0. Google has been a key enabler of the decentralized nature of the net -- they make other sites more visible, distributing attention, rather than concentrating it. But some of the newer sites, and the newer applications from Google and the other big guys, are increasingly aimed at centralizing user activity and user data.

This is true of GMail, of Orkut, and of Google Calendar. Google Maps could have been such a centralization play, but because of the brilliant hackers who built the first mashups, it's instead been liberated as a "real sharing" service.

I've been concerned about this switchboard vs. repository issue very specifically with Google Book Search. While I've come to the defense of Google over their library project, and overall, I believe that GBS is a very good thing for the publishing industry, it's essential that Google remember their heritage, as a distributor of attention, rather than trying to make their sites sticky (Web 1.0)."

Contextual shopping in Second Life

I like the comparison Amazon's Jeff Barr makes between the potential of AJAX technologies six years ago and Second Life's scripting language today. From the Reuters interview:

"Reuters: It seems like going to shop on Amazon.com is still easier at this point than shopping in Second Life.

Jeff Barr: Ease of use is only one way you’d look at it, integration is a really important thing. You can imagine a Second Life build where you have a concert or a musician that’s just done a live performance, or maybe an author who has done a book reading. Just as you’d walk out of a venue in real life and buy a book or a T-shirt or a CD, now you have the same ability in the virtual world — it’s contextual commerce.

People love to do things that stay within the metaphor. So if you can say in character and if you’re essentially doing your shopping in avatar scale, that seems to maintain the quality of the experience.

Reuters: Are there still constraints in Second Life you find frustrating?

Jeff Barr: If you think back to the Web browsers of five or six years ago, we had all the capabilities to do AJAX and it was just a matter of time before people got clever enough and had enough experience. It just took developers a long time, and being absolute masters of the existing technology before they pushed it to the next level.

If you look at Second Life and the scripting language, you realise we’re just at the very very beginning of how people can use this."

Let's be (a) bright

I was doubting whether I should blog about this subject, but I guess Wired has this article for a reason. It's readers are more receptive to the message(s) brights like Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion), Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and others have for us. I indeed hope that one day we will all be (a) bright.

"Look at slavery," he says. We are at a beautiful restaurant in Santa Monica, near the public lots from which Americans -- nearly 80 percent of whom believe the Bible is the true word of God, if polls are correct -- walk happily down to the beach in various states of undress. "People used to think," Harris says, "that slavery was morally acceptable. The most intelligent, sophisticated people used to accept that you could kidnap whole families, force them to work for you, and sell their children. That looks ridiculous to us today. We're going to look back and be amazed that we approached this asymptote of destructive capacity while allowing ourselves to be balkanized by fantasy. What seems quixotic is quixotic -- on this side of a radical change. From the other side, you can't believe it didn't happen earlier. At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God."

Or in (his) other words: "There is, he writes, "nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors." Like rape, Harris says, religion may be a vestige of our primitive nature that we must simply overcome."

There's a long way to go: "Still, Adams admits some marketing concerns. Atheists are predominant among the "upper 5 percent," he says. "Where we're lagging is among the lower 95 percent."

But then again "the New Atheism does not aim at success by conventional political means. It does not balance interests, it does not make compromises, it does not seek common ground. The New Atheism, outwardly at least, is a straightforward appeal to our intellect. Atheists make their stand upon the truth."