web 2.0

Web 2.0 is over… in case you weren’t aware… and I think Facebook killed it. Facebook has been the talk of the web since it launched the developer platform, and continues to steal headlines with its ridiculous valuations and ad network that is a little too perfect. These things have changed / are changing ways in which we use the web, and I’m pretty sure it is for the worse.

I was getting ready to write a post on Hulu and Facebook and how the tide has turned into a state in which we are seeing the potential of the web being realized… then I realized how far off I was. Facebook hasn’t revolutionized the web, it has stifled it. I remember not long ago always reading about new independent startups coming from all over the globe… now I hear about Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and efforts like Hulu that are born out of corporations not individuals. The swing hasn’t taken full effect yet, but while the world is applauding the brilliance of Facebook developer platform and Google’s “Open”Social, I’m a little scared. This is a serious detraction from innovation. Instead of trying to build the next great website the developer community seems to be focused on building the next great Facebook app. That’s a big problem. As a result of Facebook platform and the notion that, “you don’t have to build a network, you can just use Facebook’s,” I think we at the beginning of a downward spiral in terms of independent innovation.

And now Google has entered the game with its “Open”Social. A platform that masks itself as open when all it really does is steer developers away from developing for the web and into developing for large corporate sites. Developing for social networks rather than for the web does little to drive real innovation. What it really does is perpetuate the success of sites like Facebook and gives the developers of the insignificant parts of the whole a false sense of accomplishment.

When I think of what Web2.0 was, I think of big-eyed independent entrepreneurs out to change the way the web worked… not followers out to build a little piece of a big site. I think back to the early days of del.icio.us (before it was purchased and entered into the unfortunate life cycle of a corporate product) and the first time I used Digg (a product I openly hate, but did respect), and I wonder when we will see innovation like that again. I don’t know when it will be, but I do know that it won’t come from a Facebook app.

Facebook is not the internet, it’s a part of the internet. Your Facebook app is a part of a part, that seems pretty insignificant to me. The web needs innovation, challenge, and a ton of voices… if we just develop for a handful of large companies (and only use the services of those companies) the power of the internet is lessened. We need more independent developers and leaders, and less followers. Platform is not a buzz word it’s a death knell. Of course, I’ve been saying that web 2.0 was ending since January 06… so maybe I’m wrong.

I relaunched Lopico on July 24, here’s a look at some of what’s worked and what hasn’t in the 6 months since relaunch.

Working
Search:
Search continues to be my number one strength. The majority of Lopico traffic comes from search engines, with Google accounting for just over 50% of all traffic (see Top Referrers below).

inFAQs:
I posted about this recently on the Lopico blog. Getting rid of the FAQs has had a fairly positive effect on the site. I answer more questions than I did in the past, but they tend to be questions I would not have put in an FAQ. This has also enabled me to make some connections with users that otherwise would not have happened.

New Design:
I’m basing this one solely on the amount of time spent on site, but it seems to be working and I certainly like it better (though I certainly have some planned changes).

Remember my location:
This one should have been in the old version, but remembering location has been a nice addition.

This blog:
Not listed below but, jdamer.com comes in as my number 8 referrer. Though I plan on getting rid of it by the end of the year, the blog certainly has been valuable.

Maps:
Not long after I added maps, they started appearing near the top of my most popular content.

Akron:
I’ve listed the top cities by Page Views below, but that doesn’t capture the fact that Akron has about 15x the number of page views as number 2 Milwaukee and about 50x number 6 Manhattan.

Costs:
I’m spending next to nothing on the site. I haven’t advertised in a long time but traffic (despite my tanking alexa ranking) is way up. When I first started I relied heavily on AdWords, more heavily than I could probably afford to do at the time, it worked well but I’m pretty happy with not spending money.

Unpopular cities:
This was one of my homepage experiments, I added links to unpopular cities directly on the homepage. I’ve been through a few of these because linking to the cities from the homepage gave them a search boost which in turn pushed them higher on the popularity rankings within the site (though the current group has been up for quite some time).

Not Working
Jobs:
This one I don’t take the blame for. I had a partner lined up to supply job listings and it completely fell through. I’m now considering other options or I may just remove the section from Lopico.

Social features:
The lopico social features haven’t really taken off the way I would have liked. I know I need to work on this side of the site, and I know it’s not the main draw, but I still think it should be further along than where it is.

Bookmarks:
I love the bookmarking feature, as well as the mobile bookmarks, but I’m a rare user. In fact the average number of bookmarks per user is less than 1.

Monetization:
This one I’m surprisingly not upset about. Of course, I don’t have anyone to answer to other than myself. I’d rather see the other features of the site develop than be making gobs of cash from the site. Long term it’s more important for me to have a great product than to have financial success now. I’ve come to terms with the fact that Lopico is not going to be a large enough direct source of income for me to live off of, and that’s okay. I’ve even thought about completely removing all ads from the site. If/when I do the next version that will probably be a reality.

Register on the homepage:
This homepage experiment did not go well. Going with the philosophy that more people aren’t using my site than are, I thought it wise to put a quick registration form on the homepage. It was scary (that’s what I heard anyway) and eventually I switched to a sign in form with a link to register - shortly afterward registrations increased.

Some Stats:

Top Referrers

1. Google
2. Direct
3. CNet
4. Yahoo
5. MSN

Most popular cities (by Page Views):

1. Akron
2. Milwaukee
3. Columbus
4. San Diego
5. Los Angeles
6. Manhattan

…looking back at my goals for the new version, I’d say I’m doing alright, but I’m certainly looking for more improvement. It’s really all about time, which is just one more reason I need to quit blogging.

I just lost a post that took me about an hour to create. Rather than recreate it, I’ve decided to give you my top ten fake Tech News Headlines from 10 years in the future:

10. Google changes moto from “Don’t be evil,” to “Don’t be evil, be super-evil.”
9. Facebook tells Yahoo! $100 billion dollars is not enough.
8. Mike Arrington comes out of blogging retirement to announce Web 8.0 as the greatest web version ever.
7. Del.icio.us hits record profits of $28.32.
6. Microsoft releases a new OS named Windows Hasselhoff which it claims not even Chuck Norris can hack. Two days later it’s hacked.
5. The U.S. Government ditches the color terror warning system and begins using Technorati’s authority rankings.
4. Yahoo! drops the exclamation point after 10 disappointing years in a row.
3. MySpace officially becomes a social network exclusively for ex-convicts.
2. Apple releases a pen and pad of paper called the ipen and ipaper, it is instantly heralded as the greatest tech invention ever.
and finally…
1. Wikipedia becomes an all out porn site.

Happy Holidays.

I was asked by Josh Amer to do a guest post. I run, amongst other businesses, iBegin, a local search engine. Right now only in Canada, it will soon be expanding into the US.

There is a lovely little buzz going on about user-generated content. Tired webmasters no longer need to work and write quality content - nay, let the users carry that burden. After all, they get something out of it… don’t they?

Many of them are beholden to the idea that (in general), users are good. If there is one bad user, there are ten others to stop the vagabond. Pretty grand isn’t it?

Alas, two major holes crop up:

1. Often times, the reporting user is taken at face value. The algorithm seems to be rather simple. Every time a user-generated entry is reported as spam, internally the system does this: +1 spam_report. If spam_report > 5 (5 people have reported this as spam), hold or delete. It seems while provisions were made for malignant contributors, there were no provisions made for malignant ‘helpers’. To be honest, I have not seen a single website where this simplistic approach is not taken. This even works on Digg: observe the cloud view of upcoming stories. In my own random testing, it took roughly 5 ‘this is lame’ for the bottom stories, 7 ‘this is lame’ for the middling stories, and 9 ‘this is lame’ for top stories. Frontpage stories took roughly 11-13 ‘this is lame’. I have enough employees to neuter almost any story. The former #1 user P9 had this done to him - every single story he submitted was immediately buried. Eventually he ‘quit’ - in really he had been neutered and could make no impact on the site. With the stakes higher as Digg becomes more popular, suppressing a competitor’s story becomes rather useful. (NOTE: I only buried spam/duplicate stories.)

A few sites are starting to create UserRank values, akin to Google’s PageRank. The thinking is reasonable - if we know the ‘quality’ of a user, we can know if his/her contributions (be it new submissions, reports, etc) are valuable or not. Noble, but this leads into point #2 …

2. How do you know a user really is a user? In order to understand the challenges faced by user-driven websites, I have started delving into some blackhat SEO (purely research). Suffice to say, sites like Digg and Reddit are already being heavily abused. Image captchas and so forth? All you need is a list of open proxies, a pinch of cURL, a dash of OCR software, mix well, and you have an automated system to run roughshod over any of the existing ’social’ systems. Just generate some rules and the system can be digging or redditting or bookmarking within an hour. And email validation? All you need to do is pipe all the email addresses to a single script and simply fetch the URL contained within. Easy as pie.

The processing power required to really weed out ‘networks’ of users is immense. Digg has tried to do this for submissions (but not for reports) - if you often digg the same user’s stories, eventually your digg counts less. Of course, in reality this only works for real users. An automated system will have a unique IP (courtesy of proxies), a unique signup name (just take a list of first+last names, and concatenate them together with two random numbers at the end), and a unique ‘voting’ history (all votes are randomized). There is simply no way to know that all these (fake) users are interlinked.

The above two points are very important as about a month ago I set out to make user-driven politics website (coming soon at Wing Politics. Having already
seen how ugly Digg’s political section got, it was obvious to battle #1 I needed a UserRank system. Yet I also had #2 to contend with.

The answer was actually quite simple. A major site was already doing it, the cost was low, and its only downside was it did require some trust.

With that in mind, I make a bold prediction:

As user-driven websites become increasingly manipulated (in more and more sophisticated manners), they will have to start ‘validating’ that a user exists. The preferred choice of validation will be by sending a validation code an SMS to a user’s cellphone

Google’s GMail is already doing this - the amount of spam coming from an @gmail.com address is almost nil. People who contribute to such sites heavily skew towards technophile/younger demographic - highly likely to have a cellphone. The cost, both time and monetary, would be rather significant for an abuser to gain enough trusted user accounts. The cost of sending an SMS is not very high, and as long as the user can be convinced that their cellphone # will not be used for any spam/marketing purposes, you have a solid way of ensuring the uniqueness of a user.

This post turned out to be rather lengthy, but I wanted to elucidate on the over reliance (and implicit trust) users have in most web 2.0 sites. I am also sure as exploits become more commonplace the solution I have proposed will become much more common.

Thinkature is a new app that combines collaborative productivity tools with instant messaging. It’s really pretty cool, I’m just trying to figure out who will use it.

Thinkature gives you an open workspace on which you can use the mouse to draw on screen, upload photos, and attach notes in a style very similar to how MyStickies works. Since you can share the workspace and simultaneously work there’s also a very useful built in instant messaging feature (something more sites should have). The focus on images and drawing would seem to imply that this will make its inroads with designers - but the potential is way beyond that.

I like the combination of elements, but to really be successful I’d like to see it do even more. I can add photos and little notes, but I’d also like to be able to add a table. Drawing on screen is cool, but I’d like to be able to erase parts of what I’ve drawn (you can delete an entire section, but not parts) and I’d like to draw in different colors.

It’s actually really an amazing product and things seem to be working very smoothly, I just want to see a few more things added so that Thinkature doesn’t get swept away as a feature rather than a company. Right now it seems to have a few things that other online collaboration tools are missing, but it’s missing some that the others have.

Grade: This will change how I use the web, though it might not be with this particular site.

If you read my blog regularly you’ll know that I’m a big Rojo fan, even after the first round of problems following the acquisition I still praised the reader. But now I’m just unhappy with Rojo, it’s down too much and some of the changes don’t really work for me. So savvy readers of jdamer.com which feed reader should I move to? I used Bloglines in the past and I like it because it just works, but I’m also a fan of the underdog. I don’t think the poll will show up in most readers (any?) so please come to the site and vote. Thanks.

Interesting comment on my last post. To summarize I’m not the only Ohioan who thinks about web 2.0. The commenter, Bob from Fuzzy Content, talked about (perhaps in jest) BarCamp Ohio. I’m into the idea and I’d really like to see it happen.

According to the Web 2.0 innovation map, some Ohio sites include:
Blogcritics
NewsMob
MyEmail
WebNote
BlogPulse
PodDater
Lopico

I also believe that the Web2.0 Show (is there a new name yet?) has a Cincinnati connection.

There are also a number of prominent bloggers from Ohio. I think it could happen and if you’re interested in making it happen email me at jda{at}jdamer{dot}com.

Great podcast from Om Malik and Niall Kennedy about the reality of Web 2.0. It’s a must listen if you live in California. As I live in Akron Ohio I can say that the podcast is very accurate. You may believe that everyone knows about Skype or del.icio.us or even FireFox and the fact is you are very wrong. I’m always telling people about one service or another and most often the reaction is interest but most don’t use the internet enough to turn interest into active usage. Yes I am the only one of my friends checking his email on his cell phone at a party - maybe that’s strange to those that live in Bubbleville, CA but that’s how life is in the majority of the country.

Granted there are large variations - especially with college students - but from what I see the majority use the well known services not the ones covered on TechCrunch (of course I find myself using the ones covered on TC less and less as the incremental value of services offered seems to be dropping - but that’s a different post). If I have time I think I’d like to interview people from Akron about their knowledge about different web sites, I think it would be beneficial to my readers, and very interesting for me as well.

Web 2.0 Reality Check

It’s no secret that Digg and Facebook - two of the most publicized social sites - have faced backlash from some users as of late. Digg is angering only a few, while facebook has angered the masses. The problem is that Digg gets it strength from a few and FB gets its strength from those mind-numb masses. We’ve all seen the numbers of FB users joining the ‘new FB sucks’ groups, I was invited to join one myself (and no I didn’t join), and it seems that most of the users are joining the groups the same way that they joined FB… without any real thought.

The FB situation is bleak, many say that 400,000 is just a drop in the bucket, but enough wrong drops and 100’s of thousands turn into millions. And I don’t care who you are, no one likes to lose 100s of thousands of users. [Palopia are you listening - launch NOW!] To make matters worse, the Facebook blog has essentially told users, ‘you don’t like it, and we don’t care.’ That may not be what the blog post was going for but that’s certainly how it comes off. Starting the post with Calm Down, is enough to turn most users off - turn down the arrogance or lose your base. Remember you’re trying to flip a site for $2B based on the strength of the network, lose the network and you lose everything. Am I overreacting, yes, but so are all of the users that are joining the anti-FB groups. Who wants to buy a product that has an ever growing chunk of users pledging their hatred for the product? Either look confident and lose your users or look like you care about those users and re-gain their loyalty. I don’t know how long I’ve been hearing about how loyal of a user base the FB users are (based on how often they visit the site) - that loyalty only lasts as long as you give them what they want. Sure the numbers have been good in the past few days - but that’s similar to the Digg effect, people are going just to see what the buzz is about. Speaking of Digg effect…

Digg on the other hand is in great shape. Get rid of the users that are gaming the system and the system gets better. I applaud the efforts. I’ve recently had to put in some extra security that prevents users from gaming Lopico and I couldn’t be happier with the results. Digg is for the masses, when it starts being about a few you have to change. The confusion is with the power users that thought that they could game Digg forever, and that think that there aren’t users #20-30 who would love to take their spot as the highest ranked Digg users. This is probably the first positive Digg post I’ve done in a while, because this is the first move I’ve seen from Digg in a while that gets them closer to what they claim to be - socially driven news made by the masses.

Digg Blog: Digg Friends
Facebook Blog: Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.

- J.D. Amer is guy from akron who is about to launch motask.com

Original Signal is the latest site to pool a large number of popular web 2.0 blogs in one place - it looks nice and it’s a decent gateway, but I already subscribe to most of these feeds so it’s lost on me (and personally I wouldn’t count 37signals as a web2 blog).

What I want is a mass feed of all the blogs from all of the ‘web2.0′ sites. Almost every site on this list has a blog, take all of these feeds mash them into one and I’ll get my news that way. The bloggers on Original Signal are all great bloggers/podcasters but there’s no way that they’ll get all of the news from all of the web2 sites, in fact they’ll probably miss something great from one of the lesser known sites.

…and I’d call it FeedRita.

J.D. Amer

Okay this will be the last on Lopico for at least 2 posts; here are a few of the new features of the site.

1. Design - completely redone, all css based, nearly table free (I’d say my design skil;s have improved, but I’m still getting better).
2. Picks - Adding places to your picks is like bookmarking them - I really like this feature, it allows me to keep all of the numbers of places that I call often on one page. Uses a little AJAX for this - see my picks.
3. Directory B - New feature that enables you to create custom categories.
4. Friends - This is sort of a social feature, and the last thing that I added - so it’s not quite perfect yet - this allows you to see reviews of people that you have added as friends.
5. hRev and hCard - Lopico now supports microformats.
6. Instant vote updating - old voting took time, this was first on my list to fix.
7. Now LAMP based - the old format wasn’t really working out, Lopico is now coded in PHP and much more functional and scalable. (I did all of the coding except AJAX code which is openly available).
8. Easier Reviews - old review used a content overlay and there was no direct link to review a business, new system is much easier and also updates automatically.
9. Homepage Experiments - I already blogged my theory on having the registration box on Lopico’s homepage, my other experiment is the “unpopular cities” - hopefully I’ll draw some attention to these cities and people will add more stuff.
10. Accounts - this may hurt more than it helps, but I’ll be able to do much more now that Lopico requires registration.

———–
Things I need to work on:
1. Creating passionate users
2. Photo Handling
3. IE7 problems
4. Social Features
5. Lopromo - local offers via RSS (only avail in Akron right now)
6. Business - I have a self serve ad program that I’m working on that will be done soon (1 ad, 1 day, 1 dollar)
7. SEO - The worst part about taking down my site for so long was that my search traffic plummeted. Luckily I think it’s even better this time around, just need to get back into all of the indexes.
8. PR / Marketing - I need to be much more active, this probably isn’t the proper forum, but there’s a lot more that I can do now that Lopico has a stronger architecture.

Last note - I submitted Lopico to TechCrunch, but doubt it will be reviewed, I know longer fit the TechCrunch niche, and that’s okay with me. If it’s on TechCrunch great, if not I understand TechCrunch is a business and should only put on the stories that are going to be the best for its business.

… no Lopico posting is going to be tough I have a lot more to say.

I’m getting extremely close to being finished with the next version of Lopico. So close that I didn’t really realize that it’s a Friday until just now. Anyway… I’m looking for a few more preview testers — looking for both casual users and people familiar with LAMP technologies, web design, microformats or AJAX (I may have just given away too much about the new site). There will be more announcements about this coming soon. If you’re interested email jda[at]jdamer[dot]com - or comment.

I’ve started moving my feeds over to Rojo from Bloglines.  There’s nothing wrong with Bloglines, it’s just not as good for the publisher as Rojo is. Rojo is just a more complete platform than Bloglines.  By combining tagging and Rojo Mojo it’s much easier for readers to explore and find feeds outside of those that they are already reading.  Will I spend my day digging through Rojo?  Probably not, but what I will do is give all of my blog posts Mojo (works like Digg) so that others will make their way to my blog.  By combining the rss reader (which is good on its own) with the promotional tool, Rojo is really doing more for Bloggers than any other rss reader that I’ve tried (certainly more than bloglines).  That’s a pretty solid strategy for inducing self-promoting bloggers to switch from a stand alone rss reader. For anyone trying to promote anything in the “web2.0″ realm it would be foolish not to add to readership with usage of Rojo’s technologies.  Hopefully growth continues, but I really don’t think that should be a problem.

I written about pandora a handful of times, and it is one of my favorite sites.  One of the few I visit every day without exception. It’s also the first site that I’ve noticed that provides a feed for its job postings.  Aggregators are fine, but the only way to know that you won’t miss a posting from a certain company is an rss feed.  Now if only I could narrow my feed by job function.

Related:  R-S-S me a J-O-B

Back to the rewrite (Why can’t all browsers get along?)

Not long ago I noted that the new thing in web 2.0 seems to be making lists of all the “web2.0 apps.”  Now the lists have gone 2.0

• web2list.com - allows users to vote on sites, review them, post them to delicious, and more
• buzzshout.com - also ran review site. TechCrunch disgustingly calls it yelp for web2.0 companies.
• AustinCast - now has a slideshow of 1400 web2.0 comapnies

Of the three I say go with web2list.

del.icio.us has been one of my favorite sites for a while. I use it on this blog and even integrated it into Sports Noise, but it’s time to do more.

As unhappy as Yahoo! must be with Flikr’s $80 a month for its photo printing service, it must be even more excited about del.icio.us’ $0 from any aspect of its business.

It’s time to start monetizing and it’s time to start adding meaningful features.

Do more with the info you have on me. Start showing me recommendations when I’m on my page. Start showing me relevant ads. Let me join groups of people with similar interests - this will also help first timers get started with del.icio.us. Change the UI, stop confusing success in spite of ugliness with success because of ugliness - people outside the tech world are scared of your site.

The only reason that I use del.icio.us for bookmarking is because I found it before any other social bookmarking service. My bookmarking pace has fallen off from its initial level so I don’t really care to switch services. I’d much rather have del.icio.us give me a reason to be excited about del.icio.us again.

…but hey, I’ll gladly loose to the likes of Craig’s list and Judy’s Book.

Lopico received honorable mention in the Web2.0 Awards for the category of Classifieds and Business Directories. Craig’s List won the category and Judy’s Book took second. Maybe I should have called it J.D.’s Pages?

Anyway, not bad for a site run by one 23 year old from Akron, Ohio.

Here’s an idea - web 2.0 co.s aren’t that great at being businesses, they’re much better at being betas. In fact, many of them do better as private betas (in terms of publicity) than they do as public sites. For Example, people loved Edgeio until they saw it. So, when someone says they have a great beta - and it’s been leaked to a handful of testers who are in love with the service - why not start charging others to use it? Say to the public - “you can use this same great service that all of the A-listers are talking about, it will just cost you a small fee.” Get the A-list chasers to pay for a month or three, then when it’s time to take off the private beta label give them a choice - keep paying or see advertisements. If they’re already paying it will be easier for them to justify continuing to pay, and since they have invested in your idea they’re more likely to keep using it.

Mercora is a very interesting music search company. As I understand it, this is how it works:

First, you download the Mercora Software, then you have two options

1. Add music and stream your music for others to listen to, or
2. find and listen to music that others are streaming.

I have not added any music yet, but I did listen to some. First, I did a search for one of my new favorte bands (which I found on Pandora) called The Mountain Goats. This band is somewhat obscure so I was expecting a “we couldn’t find anything” message, but instead Mercora returned a pretty complete bio of the Mountain Goats. Then I tried to listen to some music by the Mountain Goats, but this didn’t get me very far.

Mercora, like Pandora, has to have some restrictions to stay within Copyright law - basically it cannot be an on-demand free music player. So, I couldn’t listen to the mountain goats, and I’d have to wait a long time until someone streamed one of their songa and I could hear it. Oh well, I’m sure a more popular artist would be more readily available.

So, next I chose to search by Genre - choosing alternative - and here I found some pretty good results. I clicked on a song by Clap your hands say yeah, which took me to a users stream of music. It was a pretty good stream - until the user stopped streaming.
So, it’s not perfect. Neither is pandora.

It’s built around instant messaging and even allows you to add it to Google Talk, which would be helpful if I used Google Talk. Of course, now that AIM has opened up, maybe it will be available for AIM before long. You can also add a Mercora search box to your site. And, I’m sure there are other features I haven’t foudn yet.
Part of the reason that this might not be getting attention in Web 2.0 (that is to say it’s not on TechCrunch, and not discussed in the Last/Pandora debate) is because it’s old - it was started in 2003. Of course, it’s old because it’s a sustainable business. Which might be another reason it doesn’t draw much attention - business models, money, that’s not very 2.0.

I might switch to Mercora if:

• It does integrate with AIM
• It gets a larger base, so that I can find more music (although it seems to be doing pretty well)
• Pandora somehow lets me down

All in all - it’s a great product, but I’ll probably stick with Pandora.

First we heard about G:Drive, then we found out that G Calendar will be launching very soon. So, all of the 2.0 co.s that were slaving over their versions of calendars and online storage are now seemingly dead.

Worst of all they were banking on either a) being bought or b) developing a large enough fan base that reliance sets in, at which point they can think about having a business model. Sorry, you didn’t have a business model when you had traffic and now you have no possibility of a business. You could have made some money, but instead chose to create a cool cloneable app that created no reliance in your users.

So yes, your run is over, you could fight, but you don’t have anything that they don’t.

It’s the way of 2.0 - no business models anywhere - this is why 90% will fail. The creativity is great, but if you don’t have a business model you don’t have anything.

Pay attention to what Google is and is not doing. If you don’t want to get crushed, look at what they’re not doing. Google is not a content creator - create content. Look at what Jason Calacanis did (is doing) with Weblogs, inc., he built an incredible content network that couldn’t be replicated merely by building an application. And what happened? His company was purchased.

But what do I know? Google is scraping my site and using my information on Google Local, so maybe I’m dead too.

Almost every week someone will come out with a complete list of web 2.0 sites. It will get dugg to the top of digg (is the digg crowd getting dumber?), but it will probably only list 40 or so sites. Then, this guy comes along and drops a list of 900+ sites! Emily Chang’s eHub (which I feel is the best listing of 2.0 apps, because it keeps changing) only lists 614 resources as of today - and that includes interviews.

The problem (if there is one) is that only a handful of the people behind these sites have the time and resources to aggressively market their sites. So, for the next week (maybe) I’m going to start blogging about some of these 2.0 unknowns.

LifeLogger

LifeLogger is a blogging app with a few cool twists. Along with blogging you can add photos, music, video, bookmarks (through a bookmarklet), blinks (private messages), favourites (links to users other posts), and wisecracks (comments). You also have the ability to change the look and feel through what LifeLogger calls the garage. It’s pretty feature rich.

LifeLogger is a site that allows you to do a number of things in one place but, it may be trying to do too much. Having a full suite of features is a smart choice for a company looking to break into a crowded space, but do I really need a lifelogger email address?

Perhaps the biggest problem with the site is the way things are worded. LifeLogger requires users to relearn what they already know. Comments are now Wisecracks, and blinks are private messages. The problem is people don’t want to go through the trouble of figuring this out, they want to look at something and know how to use it. It may only take 5 minutes to learn, but you’re not going to get that five minutes if you’re using a bunch of unfamiliar terms. LifeLogger uses the word “Blinks” to signify private messages, but there’s a good chance that a number of its users use BlinkList, where “blinks” means bookmarks. It also has favourites which is separate from bookmarks, this will likely be an area of confusion for many.
I won’t use it because: I don’t need it, I’m already happy with my blogging method.

You should use it if: you want a way to keep all of your content in one place, and you want to share photos and videos.

You won’t use it if: it fails to draw attention from a key group of influencers, like myspace (a.k.a. internet cancer) did with bands.

Overall the product is very feature rich and well designed. It has a tough market to break into, but if it attracts the right crowd we might all be using the terms blinks and wisecracks before long.

I’ve changed my opinion slightly on Edgeio, but it’s only been elevated to the status of the next peapod. It’s ahead of its time, but it still might be a great idea.

However, I will stick to my first point from the earlier post: this is a horrible name for a company. First, I don’t like the fact that the only reason people even think of “the Edge” as a web 2.0 concept is because TechCrunch used the phrase 6,000 times, essentially training its readers. That’s fine, but really only if you admit that TechCrunch is a tool for promoting Edgeio. Second, the edgio edgeio problem is real - the TechCrunch post on Edgeio even includes the misspelling.

I’m done ranting about Edgeio, it’s a good idea, it could shake things up, but TechCrunch readers should be a little more uncomfortable with the approach.

I started Lopico because I needed to find a good place to get a haircut in Akron. I’ve used Lopico to find some great places in Akron that I didn’t know about. Other people use Lopico because… well I don’t know why. I know why I want them to use it, even beyond the original goal of finding a me a new barber (which still hasn’t been done). But why do they use it? The other day I had one visitor add 250 different businesses on one visit, why? I can’t tell you why others use it, I’m just glad that they do. I can tell you why I use the web services that I use:

I use Technorati and not Google Blog Search, because Technorati uses tags and gives me more ways to search.

I use Word Press and not Blogger, because Blogger is consider juvenile by many in the tech crowd.

I use Bloglines over every other RSS reader because I found it first, and I don’t want to move all of my feeds.

I use Google IG over My Yahoo because I like the 3 column layout.

I use Google Search over Yahoo Search because I like the way the results look, and because I use Google IG.

I read blogs and not the economist because I can get blog feeds for free.

I use Meebo and not AIM when I’m at work and can’t download AIM.

I use Trillian and not AIM because AIM has a habit of restarting my computer.

I use the Facebook and not MySpace because it looks clean, because it doesn’t look like it could give me a virus at any second, and because my girlfriend uses / lives on it.

I use Feedburner because it gives my readers options.

I use GMail and not LiveMail because the interface is clean.

I use Del.icio.us and not any other bookmarking service, because it has the largest number of users, because of the firefox extension, and because I found it before any others and I don’t want to move my data.

I use AdWords and not Overture because Overture has created too many obstacles.

I use Springdoo but not Springdoo phone because I pay enough for my phone.

I use BitComet and not Azureus because I don’t have to specify ports.

I use Firefox and not IE because it has tabbed browsing and extensions.

I use Firefox and not Flock because it lets me dictate what extensions I want.

I use Firefox and not Opera because I don’t want to worry about whether or not a website is going to work.

I use Pandora and not Last.fm because I’ve heard all of the songs Last.fm will play for me.

…and the list goes on.

So if you use Lopico, why? And if not, why not?

technorati tags: lopico, web2.0, marketing

Russell Beattie (who has a commentless blog) has a post on the lack of business models in web 2.0. I blame Google for this phenomenon. The essence is this - web 2.0 companies launch with the idea that they are just about tech, they then build up a loyal and reliant base of users, and when the time comes they start monetizing. Just like Google did. The problem (and part of the reason for Google’s success) is that the tech community has an aversion to making money. They want things that they believe are aimed at the user not making money. If they think that it’s just about money the early adopters, won’t adopt. Worse, Google is still doing this, further leading to the follow the leader problem. Google still launches (beta launches) products without ads that become monetized later.

Until the leader stops, the followers won’t.

So I purposely misspelled Edgeio as Edgio the other day to avoid the Technorati search, but now I’m starting to see referrers for people searching for edgio in Technorati.

Interestingly, Edgio.com was purchased by some guy on December 6, 2004, just a couple of months before edgeio.com. I guess this means that he can use the domain as he’d like and won’t have to give it up. Of course, with the misspelling already happening, perhaps Edgeio should try to buy it off of him.

After looking over some of my recent posts I decided that I’ve been a little negative lately. So I thought I’d throw out some things that I believe are good ideas. Why you would care, I can’t really say.

1. Comment Trackers: I haven’t started using one yet, but it’s a great idea. I’ve been commenting on other blogs more frequently and really like to follow up on the conversations that are created, but subscribing to comments from one post is a waste if you ask me. But, if I had a place solely for tracking my comments I would use it. I don’t know of the features of any of the sites that are offering this, but I would like to have my subscription to any comment feed expire in one week. Try CoComment
2. Blogging for a purpose: I don’t like edgio, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like something useful being done with tags. Tags are a great way to organize information on the web, but now edgio is taking the tags and giving them a more useful purpose. I like the theory, just not the application.

3. The free exchange of ideas: This more than anything is what the web was supposed to be about, and it’s finally becoming a reality. I get to experience the insight of so many more intelligent people on a daily basis because I’m active on the web.

Before I get too cheery, I think that there is still a long way to go. I think that too many sites come out as features and not complete sites. I know that it has a lot to do with wanting to be the first to do something, but its setting some sites up for failure.
I think that feeds need to become more prevalent and more accessible. I think that my mom should be able to post things that get picked up on edgio. But, we’re not there yet and glossy eyed optimism without critical thought is not the way to get there.

technorati tags: CoComment, Web 2.0