February 2006
6 tags
More action on Advisory Capitalists
My recent post, Advisory Capital: A New Basis For Strategic Involvement, drew a range of commentary and critique. One theme I saw many times is that this is not an innovative idea, many people are doing it already. Indeed, several folks stated that this is the business model for their companies. Maybe I just the first to articulate it the way I did. Maybe it’s just timing.
I have read...
5 tags
Geeks Need Advice: Umair Haque on The Great Divide
In a provocative post that starts with asking why is Silicon Valley so frightened of MySpace — principally because they accomplished what they have outside the normal SV mindset, he suggests, and in particular, because the valley is not wise to real consumer dynamics — Umair Haque asks a bigger question:
[from Industry Note - The Great Divide: Why is the Valley Afraid of...
Taking The Plunge: Converting My Typepad Templates...
So, I had to finally clean up my Typepad templates for /Message. First of all, a week ago I created a new logo for the banner. Next, today, I braved the perilous crossing over to “Advanced Templates” — which means you can hack them a lot like Moveable Type templates (and I have had a lot of experience with those). But once you convert, you leave behind the easy-to-mess-with...
5 tags
Steve Rubel on Press Releases Get TrackBacks, But...
Steve asks the first half of a really big question:
[from Press Releases Get TrackBacks, But Will They Send Them Too?]
Press releases became a bit more social yesterday as PRWeb added trackback functionality. As Mike Manuel notes, this news comes on the heels of Six Apart’s commitment to making the trackback (defined) a web standard.
Will press releases ever gain the ability to...
3 tags
Jeneane Sessum on Technorati Favorites
Jeneane noticed a bug (I think) in the updating of Technorati Favorites:
[from Bug or Power-Law?]
Why does my new Technorati “faves’ posts” sidebar widget keep showing recent posts for Ken Camp and Stowe Boyd (HI GUYS!), when folks like Sheila Lennon and Will have updated more recently?
I looked, and the same seems to be happening with some of my faves, too. Maybe its...
5 tags
Fred Stutzman on Leveraging the Future of Social...
A very interesting piece, pointed out by the author, Fred Stutzman, on Leveraging the Future of Social Technology.
Underlying all social technologies are certain fundamental aspects, and I’ve decided to enumerate them as the connection/description/attribution model. Put simply, the structural aspects of social relationships can be represented through connection, description and...
5 tags
The Coming Market Revolution
Last year I organized a symposium on the topic of Social Architecture with the help of a number of people, including David Weinberger, Mary Hodder, Kevin Marks, Kaliya Hamlin, JD Lasica, and others too numerous to mention. One of the first and on-going questions was “what is social architecture?”
I was trying to apply the term “social architecture” to what I perceived...
The New Office Space: Going Bedouin
Om Malik’s guest columnist, Jackson West, explores the The New Office Space, namely wifi-enabled cafes, all over San Francisco, and the various protocols that are springing up:
Of course, the business of coffee shops is to sell food and coffee, not to take the place of VC-run incubator offices. While some have dealt with the problem of freeloaders by charging for their Wifi, this...
5 tags
Six Apart, TrackBack as an Internet Standard, and...
SixApart is trying to have Trackback adopted as an Internet standard, and I hope that they do exactly what they set out to do:
[from Six Apart - ProNet - Submitting TrackBack as an Internet Standard]
As many familiar with the protocol will attest, TrackBack, despite its wide market adoption, is far from perfect — largely due to the fact that TrackBack was invented for a blogosphere...
4 tags
Technorati Adds Favorites: RSS Reader 2.0?
Dave Sifry IMed me to draw my attention to Technorati’s new Favorites, which I was looking at just then, in the form of my pal, Doc Searls:
Dave told me that the whole idea had real legs:
Technorati users can each create their own favorites, as well as look at the favorites of other well-known bloggers like Doc. (This suggests a future social dimension, where people get to look at...
2 tags
CoComment is Backwards -- And Where Are The Tags?
After some small degree of use, I realized today that CoComment works backwards. That is to say, yes, I do want to be able to collate my comments on other blogs so they aren’t orphaned. And, yes, I am willing to do the extra step involved — to click on the CoComment bookmarklet thing in the toolbar — but its backwards.
They should roll out a plug-in for the major blog...
5 tags
90 Days of BzzAgent: Too Tame, Too Lame, Too...
Joe Chernov, a PR person for BzzAgent, pinged me today by IM, and asked if I had heard about BzzAgent’s blogging “experiment in corporate transparency”. Looks ok, but the posts are about as interesting as reading the guest register at the front desk.
But maybe it’s not the author’s, John Butman’s, fault.
As one post shows, deciding to create a long list...
2 tags
TagCloud Growing Pains
A few weeks back, I tried to put a TagCloud up at /Message, and I got the endless “This cloud has no data message” for about a week and a half, so I took the widget off the blog.
Turns out this is just another growing pain of the Blogosphere, which is approaching the size of the Milky Way:
[from tagcloud : Message: State of the TagCloud - Dec 2005 by John Herren]
...
13 tags
AOL-WebEx Partnership: Another Go At The...
AOL has taken a number (three?) of runs at the enterprise, and each time in the past its own ambivalence led to a retreat. There is a report out that suggests that AOL is pairing up with Web-Ex and heading once more into the breach:
[from AOL-WebEx love-in aims to make IM pay by Greg Sandoval]
AOL is expected on Tuesday to launch two new versions of the company’s instant messaging...
5 tags
Jeneane Sessum on Flickr, Please Terminate Me
Jeneane is perturbed by the attitude of Flickr’s community guidelines, and suggest that big company ateriosclerosis has set in, and the playful, open spirit of Ludicorp has been erased by Yahoo lawyerly types [Full disclosure: Jeneane admits that she is working for bubbleshare, a contending photo service]:
I would be honored if you would terminate me.
and before I go, one other thing...
3 tags
Guy Kawasaki on How To Suck Up To A Blogger
Guy Kawasaki is so off tone in his How To Suck Up To A Blogger that I am not even going to deconstruct his recommendations point by point, as many others have.
The ‘stroke their egos’ stuff is particularly abhorrent. Enough said.
Bloggers are people, and not a separate species. Many bloggers are busy, but are interested in information pertinent to their line of inquiry, whatever...
5 tags
This is very interesting
There has been a great deal of discussion in the tech community about the changing needs of Web 2.0 tech startups. When the underyling economics of innovation have shifted so drastically — cheaper high-powered servers, open source LAMP stack, accelerated development tools and techniques (AJAX, Ruby, Php, etc.) — more and more companies can bootstrap from pocket change, and be up...
10 съвета за по-добър блог or, Scoble on Tips For...
Every once in a while I am rocked by the thought that peopla the world over are reading what I write. For example, something like 30 people came to /Message today based on this post, in Russian (I think), which links to the Scoble on Tips For Joining The A-List post
[from Eenk.com - “10 съвета за по-добър блог”]
Стоу Бойд изглежда като модерен индийски религиозен лидер, но...
6 tags
edgeio Invitation Codes
I had the chance to catch up with Atherton polymath, Michael Arrington, earlier this week. It was my first glimpse of Edgeio, Michael’s new startup (where he is teaming up with RealNames founder, Keith Teare), which is nothing less than an assault on the traditional notion of classified ads’ listings.
[Exhaustively annoying disclosure: Michael is a friend, and I am in fact...
7 tags
Campfire: Basecamp Integration More Important Than...
Russell Beattle bitches that Campfire isn’t mobile, but I am less concerned about that (although it might be a nice-to-have) than the lack of integration with Basecamp. Good news:
[from Jason Fried’s comment to Jason Fried on Campfire]
Stowe, ever try to have a chat with 7 people in IM? Every try to just coordinate that? And then what happens when you close your window by...
2 tags
Michael Arrington on Naked Conversations...
Looking forward to Michael’s Party today. I have had a whirlwind two days in the Bay Area, and it looks like my travels have just begun, so I better kick back tonight when I have a chance. In the next few weeks: Toronto, Mexico City, Bay Area (again!), San Diego, Austin, Ft Lauderdale, and even discussions about a trip to New Zealand. Yikes. Can’t someone build a Web 2.0 app that...
5 tags
Jason Fried on Campfire
I recently reviewed Campfire, the new real-time group chat solution from 37signals. My first take was this:
So Jason Fried and Co. are hoping to provide a baseline level of chat, outside the conventional IM networks and chat systems, under the assumption that business is ripe for this sort of service. I buy it, especially if they integrate it into Basecamp, which has not been done yet.
...
4 tags
Steve Rubel Joining the Edelman Me2 Revolution
Steve Rubel has announced that he is joining Edelman, perhaps the most clued in PR firm out there. Here Steve describes Edelman, and why he is taking a SVP role there:
Two others who early on saw the revolution coming are Richard Edelman and Rick Murray at Edelman. Richard also started his blog in 2004. He gets it and he is fusing this Cluetrain thinking into the Edelman culture. Rick is...
14 tags
Campfire: Group Chat for Businesses
37 Signals have launched Campfire, the company’s entry into the real-time chat space.
I spent a few minutes running around with my partner-in-crime, Greg Narain, and the service seem cleanly designed (big surprise), fast (we’ll have to see about that), and extremely intuitive.
As a few seconds of registration, I was quickly presented with my Campfire Lobby (a bit of a mixed...
6 tags
Power Laws, Popularity, Authority, A-Lists and the...
Robert’s advice to the bloglorn is a bit superficial, focusing on eBay-ish features like adding a picture to your Technorati profile, or catchy headlines. Some of the tips are useful, like using lots of descriptive tags (as that will help search engines index your posts better).
However, here’s my list of what to do to improve your blog, so that your sphere of influence will...
4 tags
Niall Kennedy on Seeking New Horizons
Niall has tendered his resignation at Technorati, effective 1 March:
[from Seeking new horizons
I am leaving Technorati to pursue new opportunities. I submitted my resignation letter this morning and I will be a free agent on March 1. I joined Technorati in February 2005 excited about changing the world of weblogs and introducing people to a new kind of search. Almost a year later my...
6 tags
Stowe Boyd Gets Direction
The nice folks at Nokia shipped me some new toys to fool with, one of which distinguished itself immediately as something I’d like to keep in my kit forever: a bluetooth-enabled GPS unit, designated the LD-1W.
I have a real interest in geoloco apps — like Plazes.com — but without a GPS unit, I have been unable to actually determine my lat long coordinates, except through...
9 tags
A True Baseline For Personal Authority (and...
Technorati’s wheels are grinding again, and /Message has been updated, moving from 242 links from 140 sites and a rank of around 10,324 to 340 links from 182 sites and a new rank of 7,379:
Yesterday, I predicted a jump below 5,000, based on the recent surge at BlogPulse. I looked more closely, and the BlogPulse ranking climb was slightly more gradual than I had thought, so changes in...
8 tags
Technorati Authority Filter
Technorati has apparently snuck a new feature into use: an Authority slider, that filters out (or in) blog posts based on the authority of the author. This was reported by Robert Scoble, and commented on by many others.
Steve Rubel wonders if downsampling authority into popularity may not be in our best interests. But Michael Arrington wonders if there are any alternatives.
I went to fool...
3 tags
Conversations
Over the past few weeks, I have been swept into an open-ended discussion about conversation in the blogosphere. The Conversational Index, CoComments, and the recent glimpse at 3bubbles are all part of that chitchat.
There are a lot of voices to be collected — which I don’t have time for this morning, since I am in a Toronto restaurant, waiting for a meeting to kick off —...
7 tags
3Bubbles - a Bubble 2.0 Indicator?
It’s great to able to finally say something about 3bubbles, a company I have been advising since October last year. Starting next week they will be rolling out a limited beta of their technology: real-time chat for blogs. You can sign up here for the open beta, some time in the near future..
The model is to support the integration of chat into blogs: a chat room for your blog, even...
7 tags
Yet Another Witch Hunt
The blogosphere is buzzing about buzz in the blogosphere.
A WSJ article by Rebecca Buckman raised some questions about the buzz caused by FON getting a bunch of buzz because of prominent bloggers on the company’s advisory board blogging about a fund raising event:
>
[from WSJ.com - Blog Buzz on High-Tech Start-Ups Causes Some Static]
[…]
Some lawyers and academics with...
8 tags
Steve Gillmor on Idiot Wind
Steve Gillmor says I was way off with my recent post about RSS (Reads, Not Feeds). (In fact, he titled his post, Idiot Wind, which might be his characterization of my speaking voice, but I doubt it.)
Stowe Boyd’s post about RSS is flawed. Flawed in that it is totally wrong. Scoble is right. Stowe is not. RSS will continue to dominate and eventually suck all the oxygen out of the...
3 tags
Irina Slutsky Email Interview: Why Care About Web...
Over at the Under The Radar blog, Irina Slutsky’s email interview with me is posted:
Given that it’s so easy to create a start-up these days, how will the venture community get involved when most of the companies aren’t necessarily looking for funding, or aren’t fundable?
There’s been some discussion recently that what companies need more than money is good advice and access to the...
10 tags
Edgeio Write Up
So Mike Arrington’s startup (along with Keith Teare, formerly of RealName) has been leaked and reported on by Rob Hof. I had some inside dope on that, but was sworn to secrecy. It looks like we are going to see an insidious dribble campaign over the next few weeks, leading up to the planned end of Feb launch.
Here’s what Rob says:
[from Edgeio Edges Toward Launch—and a...
4 tags
First Take: Gmail Chat Goes Live
Without any announcement, Gmail Chat has gone live.
I collared my partner-in-crime, Greg Narain, before he headed out for the Northern Voice conference (sorry I won’t be there this year, guys!), and chatted a bit.
The integration works as advertised. There is a ‘quick contacts’ pane under the various ‘boxes’, which apparently defaults to everyone in my Gmail...
2 tags
How to (Zil)Blow your Launch
After favorable mentions in Silicon Beat, and the New York Times, the new real estate startup, Zillow, hit the wall today:
.
The buzz is being generated because Zillow suggests a possible destabilzation of the archaic financial system that the real estate agents really don’t want to see changed. The Zillow system will provide estimates of property value, which is one of the...
7 tags
talk n type
So Google is hastening the inevitable collapse of the Berlin Wall between real-time communication (chat) and slow-time communication (email). They have announced plans to integrate Gtalk IM functionality into Gmail, according to Laurie Flynn of the New York Times.
This is getting a lot of buzz at tech.memeorandom, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. Yes, because of the upcoming integration...
4 tags
Starting From Zero: Day 28
I sent email to Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, asking about the apparent hiccup in Technorati ranking updates:
[via email] Stowe,
We had some link count issues over the weekend, and our ops folks have been fixing things up. I hope that you should see things returning to normal soon.
We’re also continuing to build out our link counting mechanism with the goal to make sure that...
8 tags
Gmail Chat: Might Be Cool, But Maybe Not
So I had a chance to look closely at the screenshot that Google has nicely put into everyone’s Gmail accounts (click on the “Chats” option in the right margin). What does it look like (click to pop new window):
It seems that they have added the ‘quick contacts’ box — the people you email most regularly. Can be customized.
They have integrated text chat...
7 tags
The Conversation About The Conversational Index
There has been so much buzz about the Conversational Index idea, that many (if not most) people have lost the original context:
[from Blog Conversational Index: say what? by Jon Lebkowsky]
This is an incentive to end the war against comment spam, because the more I get, the better my comment index. *8^)
Am I more effective because I draw more attention from vocal people, and other...
6 tags
Was I Right or Was I Right?!
I missed this post — Getting Real: Help us put out the Campfire - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) — by Jason Fried last week, for a short test of the upcoming Campfire service:
We’re getting really close to launching Campfire, our simple web-based group chat tool for business. We’ve been using it internally for the past month and have been putting it through its paces.
We’ve...
8 tags
Steve Boyd on RSS "breaking through"
Don Dodge — who is on a tear recently — posts about The new way to launch your product or company:
It doesn’t cost anything to publicize your new product or service. Simply engage a couple of the “A-List” bloggers (Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Steve Gillmor, Cory Doctorow, Richard MacManus, Stowe Boyd, and others) by sending them a link...
11 tags
Steve Boyd on RSS "breaking through"
Dave Winer is poking at an important issue — How RSS can bust through — building on Fred Wilson’s statement that “RSS has to become brain-dead simple to use.” Fred was writing about RSS as a replacement for many sorts of commercial email — newsletters and the like. Dave is making a case for helping RSS to “break through”, meaning a more...
8 tags
The new way to launch your product or company
Two of my buds at the Web 2.0 Workgroup, Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington, beat me to the punch on Cocomment. Robert is enthusiastic while Michael is more lukewarm.
The idea is to collect all the comments that you leave on other blogs, so that you can keep track of them (there might be pearls of wisdom in there), and perhaps so that you can display them on your blog or website. I got ...
13 tags
Blogs its all about the conversation
Wow. What I thought was a modest post with a neat and helpful small idea — The Conversational Index — took off in a big way yesterday, getting picked up, and picked on, by a long list of smart people. I thought I would aggregate various comments and try to address them in one place.
The basic idea?
[from The Social Scale of Social Media: The Conversational Index by Stowe Boyd]
...
13 tags
30 Boxes beta on February 5th
I am joining in the chorus of praise for 30 Boxes (along with Scoble, Thomas Hawk (who calls it the best calendar ever), Matt Mullenweg, and Om, who called 30 boxes the gmail of calendars) even though I have only fooled with it for a few hours. I posted about it a few days ago, but just based on others’ thoughts. But now I have gotten access to the beta (thanks Narendra!)
In the past...
4 tags
MapStats: Gloom and Doom
I have been using BlogFlux MapStats, but the service seems like it went sideways yesterday: I supposedly only had 6 visitors. Looks like it’s back online today, but I noted that the fourth most used search term to get to /Message was “gloom and doom”? Bummer.
[from /Message MapStats for Last Week]
Gina Bianchini (3 - 7%) /message stowe boyd (3 - 7%) stowe boyd /message...
4 tags
Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: The...
Don Dodge had apparently come up with the Conversation Index on his own, although he inverts the calculation:
[from Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: The Conversational Index for blogs]
Note, I have calculated the number differently than Stowe, but the meaning and measurement is the same. Using my formula and Stowe’s blog stats his blog has a CI of (71+31)/80=1.27. Stowe Boyd has...
5 tags
Technokarma
Steve Rubel is picking up the technokarma question I have been poking at for the past few weeks today — see Micro Persuasion: You Can’t Take Your Technorati Links With You — where he says
This raises a bigger issue. Lots of bloggers and podcasters switch URLs and blog platforms. Still you can’t take your Technorati metadata with you. If you use FeedBurner you can...