blending the mix

MediaPost reports on a speech by the President of Fox Interactive Media Ross Levinsohn that they would be “tidying up” profiles which contain profanities and offensive material from myspace.com

The tidying up has resulted in the loss of 200,000 myspace.com profiles which begs the questions, depending on the influence of the advertisers, just where will the clean-up stop?

Can News Corp. (ultimate owners of myspace.com) really expect myspace.com to continue its high growth if content is being controlled to suit advertisers?

Can they also expect to maintain their current high levels of active users, when those users know they are being monitored for advertising purposes and in all likelihood, targeted too.

It takes me back a short time to when Steve Rubel moved to Edelman. The Wal-Mart story which happened the day after he jioned (I think!) evolved into a lengthy discussion about how neutral Steve could be as a well-kown blogger yet at the same time represent major companies.
In the same way, to what extent can myspace.com retain its trusted peer-to-peer status when there is such a strong openness and trust between members about to be interferred with by advertisers?
Danah Boyd wrote a wonderful paper on why myspace has become so popular and the conclusion is that it is MY SPACE,nobody else’s. I can be who I want, when I want and talk to whomever I want without any otuside influences.
Will this feeling of independence still be enough to ensure myspace retains is position once the ad campaigns really start kicking-in? Are we looking at this:

Maybe not, but the big brands need to realise that they are treading on dangerous grounds and whilst myspace are not in the business for free, that they should NOT be censoring anything.

Diversification in the network is vitally important and it smacks to me of Fox Interactive needing to get some revenue in quickly and the easiest and quickest way of doing this is to fall at the feet of the big -spending advertisers.

To succinctly make the point, let me quote from Danah:

“MySpace might be a fad, but it will fade for different reasons than Friendster. Friendster has itself to blame - it never loved its users… it never treated them with respect, or learned to understand why they were there… it never give them what they needed to make themselves at home. Friendster never learned to provide for the diversity of users it had - it wanted them all to be the same”.

No one brand is bigger than the community so they need to tread carefully.

An interesting statistic by Sony Ericsson suggests that once a new technology (like picture messaging) has achieved a 25% market penetration then it will no longer be a doubt for consumers that the technology will stick around.

In this instance, SE claim that once 25% of people have started to use picture messaging, the rest of the market will no longer fear that someone at the other end will not be able to see it
I am surprised that any market would be 25% early adopters (especially one with high entry costs such as mobile telephony), but I suspect that if that was broken down, there would be leading-edge adopters, keen early adopters, follower early-adopters making up the 25%).

Thinking about applying this rule to web-based products is an interesting idea, especially with things like blogging, wiki and other consumer-generated material. Once you start to get a handful of readers to your blog, that number quickly increases (please!!), likewise a wiki and forums…but just how many people are your 25% early adopters?
With blogs, wikis, forums etc., as long as there is some degree of credible activity going on people will be happy to become part of the conversation. If that is 25% who knows and with several hundred million internet users it would be a wild guess anyway but there is no getting away from the fact that early efforts need to get the early adopters in board to spread word of mouth.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that the internet is full of people who don’t care about wiki’s, blogs etc. or simply use the internet to shop. If they see something that interests them, that others also share an interest in - they will come.

SEOmozsWeb2.0Awards is s comprehensive list of winners and the 2 best runners-up of a variety of Web 2.0 categories ranging from Blog Guides and Bookmarks to Mashups and Wiki.

See if your favourite software is there…and find out what else there is…

Thanks again to Steve…

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, Mashups, Wiki

The BBC reports on a war of words between Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) and nature magazine which claimed that the free wikipedia resource was as accurate as any publication by EB.

Is this a case of a traditional retailer not adapting to the times and getting hacked off that Nature has rumbled them for charging for something you can find on the net for free, or do they have a point…

…and I think that they may be right.

EB say:

Is it not inveitable that where different nationalities and indivuduals combine to create a definition, that different terms will be used? Is it not inevitable that one person’s understanding of a topic within a subject will have a slightly different turn of phrase than another?

I think so.

BUT, to what degree do Wikipedia users use the resource for unequivocally-correct information? Not an awful lot I bet…and this is where EB can capitalise.

Wikipedia is a great resource which in principle works well, but as a fairly frequent user it is always at the back of my mind that this is another interested individuals’ words, not the work of a company whose very existence relies on the accuracyof its work.

That said, if tests can prove Wikipedia is as accurate as EB, then clearly the EB have some strategic work to do!

Technorati Tags: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Nature, Wikipedia

Welcome to iRows, surely a hot contender for Google’s next office application acquisition?!

It has all the great features you would expect from an excel-style application with, I have to admit, great speed:

iRows Looks good and surely one of the missing links from Google’s expanding desktop office suite. Thanks to Steve Rubel for the link.

Technorati Tags: iRows, Google

If the way you can ask ask.com a question and find what you need appeals to you, then Yahoo Answers takes this one step further!

Ask a question and you get a human answer! Click ALL thumbnails to enlarge.
Step 1: Ask the question and select a category (select from Internet, Sports, Politics etc.).

Step 2: Check your question and Submit

Job done!

You then receive an email confirming you have asked a question and are instructed to click on the Q&A page link to see what responses you have had.

Alternatively, you can activate email notification of responses.

The link takes you to the Q&A page of your question where the responses have been posted. Whichever of the posts answers your question, simply indicate by pressing the Best Answer button.

Your question is open for 7 days so you can wait until then to get the answer which most helps.

Points are awarded for your usefulness to the community. You start off with 100 points and gain or lose as follows:

-5 points for asking a question

+2 points for answering a question

+10 points if your answer is selected as the Best Answer

+1 for daily login

All questions are answered by the community members, earning points for simply logging-in ensuring that the community grows by incentivising participation.

as fun as this is, what purpose does it serve? What can people hope to learn from Yahho Answers that they wouldn’t already be able to get from a Yahoo or Google search?

How popular is Google Answers? Does the fact that Yahoo is free open it up to more answers or more abuse?

I LOVE the idea of the open community prioviding answers, almost like wikipedia but the large youth base of Yahoo makes me think it will be open to the type of abuse that wikipedia avoids.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo Answers, Google Answers, Yahoo, wikipedia

The following link is a gadget for the Windows Live desktop: Google - MicrosoftGadgets.com.

Designed to incorporate all sorts of clever and useful productivity features, Microsoft hopes that the programing community (like the Firefox one) will create useful tools that will bring people flocking to use Windows Live as their new home page.

BUT, follow the comments down on the 6th most popular download and see the root of the problem:

Be warned…

This Google gadget encodes a publisher ID for the Google AdSense program. Look at what is “hidden” in this gadget:

This is a publisher ID so that the gadget publisher can share in the profits when you use it. It also embeds extra ads into your search results! I don’t think this is fair we weren’t told this up front by the gadget developer. You can read more about Google AdSense here: http://services.google.com/feedback/online_hws_feedback?client=pub-8209065128435831&hl=en

If your looking for an honest Google gadget, check Live Google Search v1.1 that has no hidden agenda. It simply directs you to the standard Google search URL recommended by Google.

The gadget designer has hidden his affiliate code into the gadget so that every use of the gadget will increase his likelihood of receiving Google Adsense income.

BUT, that is not all:

I was also a little disturbed, but not surprised, to discover the way your iTunes gadgets work. Instead of reading an RSS feed from Apple and directing the user to iTunes Music Store, the gadgets are simply iframes into http://www.ifindcds.com. When a user click on one of the links, it uses a URL from the domain http://click.linksynergy.com (which is really http://www.linkshare.com, a company that runs an affiliate marketing program).

Then there is your Amazon gadget. It’s sole purpose is to make money for you as well. Whenever anyone uses it to buy a product, you share in the profits (see the Amazon.com associate program for details).

He has done the same thing for an iTunes gadget as well as an Amazon gadget.

The very best feature (for me anyway) is being able to customise my desktop with gadgets to suit my own needs.

Unless everyone bothers to check the comments about a gadget, people like this are going to RUIN the credibility of the good, honest and useful gadgets that are out there which ultimately, will do nothing but destroy Windows Live

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Microsoft, Google Adsense

Weblog Tools Collection » 10 Flickr Hacks is a great article exploring the virtues of flickr, the new picture hosting service provided by Yahoo.

What makes 10 Flickr Hacks so interesting is that it highlights the community-mindedness of web 2.0 ideas in being able to create interactive activity with what is effectively a fancy picture hosting service.

You have a lost of 10 ways in which widely accessible innate content can be turned into something interesting.

Maybe web 2.0 is more a state of mind rather than any specific application?

Technorati Tags: flickr, Yahoo, web 2.0, web 2.0

Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR News - Brand Republic have a great article about respect and integrity which plays on the phrase “Web 2.0″.

As much as many internet insiders would struggle to accurately define what Web 2.0 IS, it is clear that new Web 2.0 applications are all about community, integrity, trust and openness. Wiki’s and Blogs provide ordinary people access to technology which gives them an online voice.

That this phrase is being used in another context with the term “Brand 2.0″ is it not as good an indicator as ever that this is where we need to be as advertisers and brands.

Do consumers not always respond better to something they feel they can believe in, feel engaged with and, ultimately, trust?

Is it me, or are we all beginning to panic a bit too much about Google?

Google were heavily criticised for their 82% profit growth being insufficient and below Wall Street forecasts - yet you find me a company that wouldn’t be absolutely over the moon with a profit growth of 82%!!

Today, they are again criticised for stating that “Growth is slowing and now largely organic” where their share price has taken another hit.

I absolutely believe that Google is being hijacked by corporate investors who base their predictions on “Google the money-making machine” (which to eb fair it is!!) but who forget how much of an industry talisman it is.

With Web 2.0 products cropping up all over the place, is the negativity about Google’s financial growth (and let’s face it - it is still 82% growth) not going to dribble down into the rest of the industry and cause other investors to think twice about investing in some great Web 2.0 projects?

Google is just another company whose share price should be indicative of their own performance, yet for many analysts, Google seems to equal internet and any negitivity surrounding them spreads throughout the industry, potentially affecting Web 2.0 development.