Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category
Wikilobbying
Steven Colbert’s Wikilobbying is obviously humoristic, But it reflect serious concerns about lobbies and PR agencies tempering with the information in Wikipedia. I like using Wikipedia and I believe it has a potential, but it has to develop some serious defense to protect itself from such activities.
The Web 2.0 politruks
For long time I had the feeling that the term web 2.0 has to much ideology involved. From an exciting innovation and working business model it was made into ideology and start to form rules and ethics that has nothing to do with real development. Some of the people that promotes this phenomena were the usual type, like the crowed that ride on any phenomena and earn a living as consultants of any new trend. But they were not the only camp followers, because this time seemed like great opportunity for the social ideologist that learn nothing from past failures.
but as social revolution tend to develop, and the socialist type provided many examples, we didn’t need to wait long before the commissars arrived to make sure we are following the party line:
This difference, I suggest, in business models should be a focus of those keen to push the values of Web 2.0. Though Tim O’Reilly’s canonical statement of those values implies this freedom is necessary, it doesn’t really expressly say so. The freedom to access the content seems, in my view, related to the Web 2.0 principle that “the service automatically gets better the more people use it.” Or at least the right to access it if the author chooses (another Web 2.0 principle: Some Rights Reserved) seems essential for this ethic to make sense. As O’Reilly puts it, “Design for ‘hackability’ and ‘remixability’” — precisely what hoarding content doesn’t do.
One has to wonder what will be the punishment of those who break from the "canonical statement of those values", and how the web 2.0 gulags are going to look like (Although I think that I know who will be sent first…) .
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 - Business Model - Politruks - Socialism - The free market
The Digg effect
I read before about the amazing effect of social networks on one’s blog traffic, but now that I saw it on my own blog I’m really impressed. Two days ago I wrote a short post about Outbrain, an interesting attempt to take real advantage of the capabilities of RSS. A reader that thought that the story and the company deserves exposure than my humble blog posted the story on Digg. The results were simply amazing:
Traffic Info in the past 30 days
The ability of Digg to drive traffic and to direct attention of large groups of people is extremely impressive. I hope that Outbrain got more Alpha users as a result, it will only help to improve the matching algorithm.
Beyond RSS
RSS is great, mostly if you are a software. It is a protocol that allows software to check for updates on information source and highlight the new updates. It is so great that in fact its already changed the way that many of us consuming information. I, for example, do not visits sites anymore for news reading- if you don’t have RSS you do not exist.
But the problem is that with the ease of consuming information came a flood of it and we just don’t have enough time to sort, filter and then read the information we really interested in. Most RSS readers, or aggregators just deal with the technical level of allowing the user to subscribe to RSS feed and get updates in somewhat comfortable way.
Other sites try to harness the “wisdom of the crowed” assuming that the most clicked, or linked, post should get the most attention. It is a problematic approach, and I wrote about it in the past. In short the rating approach doesn’t provide my specific interests.
The answer is a process that will be able to analyze specific interests and priorities and provide personalized “newspapers” tailored to specific readers. Such service will take the real advantage of RSS and harness it into sophisticated information service.
Outbrain is an attempt in creating personalized news service. Although Outbrain is in the very first stages the direction is right:
So we decided to try and take this one step beyond the collective ‘ wisdom of crowds’ type sites (aka - Digg & clones, or should we say ‘ wisdom of bored teenager sites’…), and develop algorithms that try to predict personal interest in a specific article/post before it is read.
We do this by asking all outbrain users to vote on the items they read. The algorithm then seeks out similarities in voting patterns among different outbrainers, and personalizes recommendations accordingly. The more people vote about stuff they read, the smarter their outbrain becomes in recommending the right items to them.
If you are interested in this subject you can join the project and provide valuable information to improve the matching algorithm.
Technorati Tags: blogosphare - Google News - Newspapers - Newsvine - New Media - Old Media - tech.meme - outbrain - RSS
Spotback’s shining moment
Awhile ago I wrote about the lack of applications using RSS in methods that will be useful to the non-technical crowds. Most of the applications that use RSS lacking the vision of turning from RSS aggregator, in whatever form, into a personalize news/knowledge source.
An interesting and very promising attempt in the right direction is the service offered by spotback, an Israeli startup that tries to deliver personalize newspaper instead of aggregations of RSS feeds. Tech Crunch provides a very comprehensive review of spotback’s different features and give the company a well deserved good review.
I differ from Mike’s assessment that spotback is in competition with services like netvibes. Unlike these services spotback making attempts to learn what interest you, instead of what feeds you want to subscribe too. spotback is an attempt to to provide the masses real alternative to the old media and is on the right track to be tomorrow’s newspaper.
I have a strong feeling that before long we are going to see more attempts in taking RSS use to the next level. However today spotback is shining alone and it deserve all the compliment that it will surely get.
Great example
I find the discussion in Wikipedia whether to delete Ross Mayfield’s article on Enterprise 2.0 fascinating. It is an open discussion that remain in civilized boundaries and on topic and have great arguments for both sides. It is a really great example of the potential of open discussion that is self govern.
I love the warning at the top of the discussion page:
The cost factor
Finally a useful service.
I simply love this new web service, and I think that I know at least another person that will use it. The service is realy simple - review of the cost, or savings, of each proposed bill. You can review the site and use its sorting and filter tools, or you can use a direct injection with RSS feed.
The service focuses on:
WashingtonWatch.com starts with government predictions about the costs or savings from proposed changes to government spending, taxation, and regulation. We take these predictions and calculate their “net present value.” That is the value today of changes to future spending, taxes, or regulation.
Then, we divide that “net present value” calculation by the total number of people in the United States. The resulting figures convey the significance to average Americans — in dollars and cents — of proposed changes to the nation’s policies.
WashingtonWatch.com takes the perspective of individual citizens: An increased tax is treated as a “cost” because it takes money from people and businesses. Government spending also “costs” money because it moves money out of the public treasury we all own. “Savings” occur when spending cuts keep money in the public treasury and tax cuts return money to the public.
One thing is sure, this is going to be and endless of ranting fuel for me…
(many thanks to techcrunch for the link)
Congratulations Jeff
I’m using Blogbeat to analyze the traffic on my blog, and I wrote about it in the past:
But there is more into Blogbeat that I like – the attitude. I love the service – the constant improvements, the responsiveness to problems and the real listening to comments. Maybe when MeasureMap will finally open its gates they will have killer user interface full of features and Ajax coolness, but they will never have the soul of Blogbeat.
I was very happy for Jeff Turner, that build and maintain the service single handed, when I read today that the Blogbeat was purchased by Feedburner , and I hope that with the new funding and resources Jeff will be able to develop all that he planed.
Pessimistic Prediction
I like Digg and YouTube, as the previous post clearly demonstrates, and I’m looking with great interest about the technological and social options they are opening. Both service aren’t only reflecting the trends and general interest but also shaping the public opinion.
Being built on user generated content both of these services apply only minimal control to the actual content, mostly trying to protect from violation of intellectual property rights. However the increasing awareness of the ability of these services to effect the public opinion make them a perfect target to a different kind of attack and manipulation.
A while ago I linked to report about how PR agencies trying to effect how their clients being presented on Wikipedia . It seems very easy, mostly when the 2008 will start that such resources will start target Digg or YouTube. What can be easier than paying to several hundred people to click in favor of certain stories in Digg, all of these people will be real and pass the CAPTCHA test with no problem. with only few hundreds votes a PR campaign can control the first page of Digg, and can flood YouTube.
How can we prevent this from happening? What controls can place to prevent such manipulation? I don’t know. But the problem is that I don’t think the people at Digg and YouTube know - trying to solve it during the 2008 campaign will be too late.
Back to hieroglyphics
I love the fact that Israeli companies are in the front of innovation and high tech and my first intention is to support development made in Israel. However, and as bad as I feel, I cannot avoid writing that Zlango is a service that nobody need.
If it wasn’t bad enough when young people’s language and ability to write properly is ruined by shortcuts and emoticons Zlango suggest to degrade our written language and eloquence to the level of cave man . Michael Arrington is right when he write :
At first glance this is nothing more than a nifty piece of mobile software and a way to send icon based messages over inexpensive and ubiquitous SMS networks.
But I think the cultural implications of Zlango may be much deeper.
(although he meant to compliment Zlango)
And the real scary part is that Zlango and its hieroglyphics will become a success story.
