Richard › Comments

Muhammad, do you think Digg complies with those 4 points in the book? 1. Diversity of opinion [ummmm] 2. Independence [hmmmm] 3. Decentralization [maybe] 4. Aggregation [check, except it aggregates just a handful of sites, like Ars Technica and a few other ones popular with digg's power users] - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Great points Muhammad. That would indeed be interesting, if Digg hid the submitter name! - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Great points Muhammad. That would indeed be interesting, if Digg hid the submitter name! - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Muhammad, do you think Digg complies with those 4 points in the book? 1. Diversity of opinion [ummmm] 2. Independence [hmmmm] 3. Decentralization [maybe] 4. Aggregation [check, except it aggregates just a handful of sites, like Ars Technica and a few other ones popular with digg's power users] - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Greg re "why this has not been covered by any of the major IT news outlets, whereas they have spoken to length about the ascension of the company." I think that's simply because they dropped off everybody's radar for a while, however a site like RWW picks up a lot of news from other blogs - hence I found out about it via you. Happens a lot in the tech blog world anyway. Re the stats, my reading is that Compete stats dropped 85% odd due to Google indexing issue. So I *think* what Twine is saying is that they dropped 20-25% in actual PV (which they monitor) but they're attributing the rest to Google issues. I haven't seen Twine's official stats, but I'm not sure I really need to. The bottom line is that they're struggling even with 20-25% dip, so version 2 is 'put up or shut up' in product market terms. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

From the beginning I wondered what 'semantic' [the magic word back in 2007] consisted in. I kept and maintained an account on Twine until I realized it was nothing more than any other online bookmarking website. As it failed to allow true/easy cross-posting I killed the account after several attempts at aggregating its content on Friendfeed [nail on the coffin there]. Twine is declining? That I don't really wonder why. - lelapin from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Greg re "why this has not been covered by any of the major IT news outlets, whereas they have spoken to length about the ascension of the company." I think that's simply because they dropped off everybody's radar for a while, however a site like RWW picks up a lot of news from other blogs - hence I found out about it via you. Happens a lot in the tech blog world anyway. Re the stats, my reading is that Compete stats dropped 85% odd due to Google indexing issue. So I *think* what Twine is saying is that they dropped 20-25% in actual PV (which they monitor) but they're attributing the rest to Google issues. I haven't seen Twine's official stats, but I'm not sure I really need to. The bottom line is that they're struggling even with 20-25% dip, so version 2 is 'put up or shut up' in product market terms. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Great post Sarah and I agree that mobile apps are an innovative re-working of the LP format. However we shouldn't forget that an album is an artistic package too and so for that reason I'd hate to see the concept of an album of songs disappear. I generally like what Apple is trying to do to keep the album format going, but needs more lateral thinking too - ref what you've written about apps. Excellent stuff. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Great post Sarah and I agree that mobile apps are an innovative re-working of the LP format. However we shouldn't forget that an album is an artistic package too and so for that reason I'd hate to see the concept of an album of songs disappear. I generally like what Apple is trying to do to keep the album format going, but needs more lateral thinking too - ref what you've written about apps. Excellent stuff. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

anon said: "The web has always been real-time, or as close to it as technology would allow." I disagree. With products like Twitter and Friendfeed, we've seen a new class of content producing and aggregation products - and they produce more, smaller and *faster* bits of content than previously. Plus look at the changes Google and Facebook, for example, have gone through this year - which I illustrated in this post. As for Google Wave, that hasn't been released yet. Pete good point re Twitscoop. Would love to know of more products like that, that make use of real-time web data. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

anon said: "The web has always been real-time, or as close to it as technology would allow." I disagree. With products like Twitter and Friendfeed, we've seen a new class of content producing and aggregation products - and they produce more, smaller and *faster* bits of content than previously. Plus look at the changes Google and Facebook, for example, have gone through this year - which I illustrated in this post. As for Google Wave, that hasn't been released yet. Pete good point re Twitscoop. Would love to know of more products like that, that make use of real-time web data. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Ah yes it was probably web clips. However, note that this was placed at the bottom of the email thread, not the top. This help page states that web clips (including sponsored links) should only display at the top of the page: http://mail.google.com/support... "Web Clips show you news headlines, blog posts, RSS and Atom feeds, and relevant sponsored links, right at the top of your inbox." Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot showing messages above. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Ah yes it was probably web clips. However, note that this was placed at the bottom of the email thread, not the top. This help page states that web clips (including sponsored links) should only display at the top of the page: http://mail.google.com/support... "Web Clips show you news headlines, blog posts, RSS and Atom feeds, and relevant sponsored links, right at the top of your inbox." Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot showing messages above. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

doing interesting RFID things - Richard

Thanks for all the comments, many noting that cards can be purchased anonymously. I did note that in my post, but perhaps didn't give it enough emphasis. But even if they're anonymous, I assume they have a unique identifier in the RFID chip? That would track your usage habits, and that data alone is worth something to companies and organizations. Interested to hear more thoughts on the privacy issue though... - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Thanks for all the comments, many noting that cards can be purchased anonymously. I did note that in my post, but perhaps didn't give it enough emphasis. But even if they're anonymous, I assume they have a unique identifier in the RFID chip? That would track your usage habits, and that data alone is worth something to companies and organizations. Interested to hear more thoughts on the privacy issue though... - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Tom, Octopus is next on my list :-) - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Tom, Octopus is next on my list :-) - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Andy thanks for that info, I've added that to the post. Michael, Paul, thanks for commenting - I will follow up on those recommendations. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Andy thanks for that info, I've added that to the post. Michael, Paul, thanks for commenting - I will follow up on those recommendations. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Slides, PDFs here - Richard

First International Conference, IOT 2008, Zurich, Switzerland, March 26-28, 2008. Proceedings - Richard

Bob, thank you for your illuminating comment. I've updated the post accordingly. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Chris, Aziz, thanks for your comments. Re "But the tone implies there's something wrong with this. There is value in aggregating and reorganizing content. " I'm not saying there's something wrong with this, however: having 31 million articles on the web without any original content (and stuffed with inbound links)? It's a somewhat cynical business model, in my view. Granted, there is some useful editing and additional content. But you're largely making money off the back of free user-generated content (Wikipedia) and replacing Wikipedia links inside the articles with your own to gain Google juice. Having said that, Answers.com does appear to be a very well run business and what it does it does very well. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Bob, thank you for your illuminating comment. I've updated the post accordingly. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Chris, Aziz, thanks for your comments. Re "But the tone implies there's something wrong with this. There is value in aggregating and reorganizing content. " I'm not saying there's something wrong with this, however: having 31 million articles on the web without any original content (and stuffed with inbound links)? It's a somewhat cynical business model, in my view. Granted, there is some useful editing and additional content. But you're largely making money off the back of free user-generated content (Wikipedia) and replacing Wikipedia links inside the articles with your own to gain Google juice. Having said that, Answers.com does appear to be a very well run business and what it does it does very well. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Thanks for the data points John. It doesn't matter what *I* call it, the fact of the matter is it pulls massive page views and advertising revenue. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Yes Demand Media is a Page View Generating Machine - iTechCrunch

Thanks for the data points John. It doesn't matter what *I* call it, the fact of the matter is it pulls massive page views and advertising revenue. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

tracking feelings on the web - Richard

Ouch, 154 of them follow @mashable vs. 94 following @rww and 121 @techcrunch - Daniel J. Pritchett

cool list, thanks for sharing! :) glad I made the cut! - Susan Beebe

That's coming soon! And it's not that I necessarily want us to live in this brave new world, it's coming whether we like it or not ;-) - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

That's coming soon! And it's not that I necessarily want us to live in this brave new world, it's coming whether we like it or not ;-) - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Thanks Gene, points noted. In this post I did gloss over privacy and security, as it was focusing on the potential. But in future posts will explore those things more. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin