PR Pitches Promise to Trade Diggs for Coverage

As the blog has gained in visibility, so to have the inbound pitches. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they are horrible - and some are just downright off-topic, and get deleted. But one the more recent trends I've seen is a promise by the PR rep to push the story to Digg "if the review is great". Twice this month, I have received near-identical pitches, ostensibly from two different people at two different PR agencies, ending with the following two lines, after having introduced their new iPhone apps:

"Let me know - I can send promo code right away. If the review is great we will digg it as hell."

Never mind the cookie cutter wrap-up and the substandard English, or even that the pitches have been for less than interesting iPhone applications. Call me snooty or idealistic, but I have a very real problem with the idea that if my review is deemed "great", that the PR team will try and reward me with traffic by manipulating Digg - even if I think they don't have the Digg juice to do it.


An excerpt from one such pitch in early May
I'm not going to stand on a pedestal and make a rant about paid posts, or how bloggers are allowed to curry favor or get bias, but this is a stupid practice I could really live without. Because I'm a nice guy, I won't be outing which agencies, individuals or which products are pitched this way, but I bet some of you reading this have gotten the same template garbage.

Do you really think you're earning bonus points with me because you're Web 2.0 savvy enough to know what Digg is?

If you want to entice me into writing about your product, don't do it with a promise of Diggs. Show me that you know what I usually cover, and that your offer is something my audience wants to know. And please don't send me a link from a top tech blog as evidence that your stuff is awesome, because if somebody else already debuted your story, it's already old. Digg it?

eSocialWeb Wants You to Share Sites and Services With Friends

One of the fastest-growing niches in social networks these days is the ability to review products and services and share comments with friends, helping to discover new things and new people. We saw this trend with the debut of Lunch.com last month, and Likaholix in March. Also launching in that timeframe was a smaller site, focusing only on Web sites and Web applications, called eSocialWeb.

eSocialWeb breaks down Web sites into a set of familiar categories, from Entertainment and Lifestyle to Shoping, News, Technology and Business. Like with Digg, you can submit new entries if they don't already exist in the system, vote up ones that already are on the site, bury them, or add a comment. And like Digg and other services, you can link up with friends and get recommendations based on your own submissions.


Recommendations from within eSocialWeb

Submitting Apple to eScocialWeb's Index
Today, the top sites on the service include Mint.com, the online finance software tool, Hulu, and XKCD, among others. And I found submitting new sites, like Apple, to eSocialWeb very simple, just like with Likaholix. You can also see the most recent activity across the site or by individual.


Recent Activity on eSocialWeb
Does the Web need another social site for friends to trade links? Maybe not. But this is one site that's trying to win a small niche with focus. Check it out at http://www.esocialweb.com. You can find me at louisgray, as always.

Don't Tempt the Online Mob. They Come Bearing Pitchforks.

There's no need for me to recap Twitter's two-day flub as you've already seen it 40 different places. What's most interesting to me about the entire situation is the rapidity of how the user community turned on the service and its founders in response to what was a relatively minor change that was confusingly and sloppily addressed. The response, which loudly came from all corners, mirrored that of previous blowups, which have also included Facebook and Digg as victims - the first around its terms of service and Beacon, and the second, around its blocking of illegal series of numbers that could unlock DVD region codes. Even Google Reader faced a backlash last year from users who expected a different interpretation of what friends were and who could see what.

See also:

• May 2, 2007: Unpopular Opinion: Digg Revolt Is a Bad Precedent
• December 26, 2007: Google Reader Blinks, and the Mob Wins

Every single case dealt with a Web 2.0 service driven largely by user generated or selected content, where the mob was reacting to changes handed down unilaterally from a seeming all-knowing company, without first communicating potential changes, or accurately foreseeing downstream effects. And in most of the examples (Google Reader being practically the only exception), the service had already chipped into its balance of goodwill, leading to a strained relationship with a vocal minority of users, setting the stage for the much larger backlash that was to come.

Did the services that made mistakes and got roundly slammed deserve the punishment? If you ask the users, the answer is yes. In today's world, the online communities that have been built around these popular products have a sense of entitlement, not just to specific features, but that they will be made a part of the process, spoken with and not just spoken to. And if they feel they have been wronged or lied to, all hell can rain down on the company or the individual bearing the broken message.

To me personally, the change in @replies for Twitter was frustrating and annoying, but what ticked me off was more the way in which it was delivered. As with the company's previous comments about following many users being "disingenuous", this week's move seemed like they were once again telling us of a right way and a wrong way to use their product. That their blog post was backtracked upon and respun as a product issue and then a technical issue made us feel lied to, and the team, despite having what by all means is a very successful product, disappointed us again.

Here's the thing: Before I get slammed (again) for being a FriendFeed apologist and/or Twitter hater... the truth is not so black and white. I think Twitter is great for what it is supposed to do - send short messages and help broadcast information quickly. It is now a utility, like e-mail, and we're all assumed to be there. But I, and many others, continue to get frustrated when we see the system and its people fall short of what is an amazing potential. You can have hundreds of millions of users, but the experience itself is diminishing, and the management seems disconnected, in a way that makes them look like they are in love with the latest celebrities to sign up and less enamored with us rank and file who evangelized their product the last few years, pointing out both the good and the bad as it came.

Similar too are the stories of those previously stabbed by the mob. The Digg fanatics believe strongly in their ability to push favorite items forward, and potentially upset the balance of the new world media. Facebook, once deemed a safe place for friends and family to congregate online, found itself on the wrong side of privacy choices and business. Google Reader wrongly hoped that those you e-mailed in GMail would be fine to share your RSS favorites with. In each case, the users believed in the product, wanted it to succeed, but disagreed strongly with the latest moves, and they would not give up until their voices had been heard and made impact.

Designing new products and services, and adding new features to existing ones, is very difficult to do in public, especially when you are trying to walk the fine line of placating existing users while attracting new ones. Twitter, in a flash point of popularity, is especially vulnerable due to the fact their own product, as also are Digg and Facebook, could be used by users to fight back. Did Twitter or Facebook or Digg lose users permanently due to such heated battles? Probably not for long, but the scars do linger, and the trust factor that might once have been there is gone, or at least damaged enough that the mob will keep their torches at the ready, waiting for the next time they're needed.

The world of product development, on the backs of user content, is changing the way people expect to participate. And when they aren't treated as equals, or they are talked down to, people are taking it very seriously, and there are more platforms for conversation than ever, with more people to reach than ever, so any service who is in this space who expects to make even "small settings updates" should strongly think of their potential impact and be ready in case things start to go wrong - fast.

BurnURL Clarifies Focus In Light of DiggBar Controversy

Digg's new DiggBar is gaining a great deal of negative feedback as many see the URL shortener as reducing publishers' impact on Google and other search engines, giving Digg.com the credit as the new shortened URL is discovered. The debate has been lighting up Techmeme and John Gruber of Daring Fireball has pratically turned over his entire site to link after link decrying the new product. (See also: Ted Dziuba, Danny Sullivan and 3DogMedia)

With this backdrop, ReadBurner's new URL shortner, BurnURL, which similarly to the DiggBar, frames the original articles with a "share bar", explains how they have tried to help both readers and publishers. As author Michael Davis writes:

"One of the changes we recently put live was to remove the Sharebar when we detected the user-agents of Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask (these four account for the largest portions of search traffic). These crawlers don’t need to see the Sharebar (as they’re not going to interact wtih it), so we don’t need to serve it to them. Instead we feed them a 301 redirect. This tells them the URL that was burned is the original content owner and it should be listed in the index on that topic. Our shortened URL effectively gets ignored."

While I am an advisor to the ReadBurner team, they didn't check in with me on this update (or ask me to write about it), but I'm glad to see they are keeping their eyes open and trying to create a service that benefits users and content sources.

See the full blog post here: FRAMED!: What BurnURL is doing to help out Readers AND Publishers

No, Tech Blogs Should Not Shut Up About Twitter

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Pete Cashmore at Mashable asks: Should Tech Blogs Shut Up About Twitter? Allow me to state for the record: no.

Cashmore, responding to some not-so-nice comments about Mashable on Digg, muses whether or not tech and online media blogs have "let our Twitter infatuation spiral out of control." However, he also notes that "Twitter, clearly, is the next big thing in social networking."

First of all, let's take a quick look at the recent history of "next big things" in social networking. MySpace absolutely dominated tech news and the blogosphere circa 2005 and 2006 (how soon we forget!), which transitioned to equally staggering coverage of "MySpace killers" and, of course, Facebook. Facebook apps and Facebook's meteoric growth are both reasons why it continues to enjoy a great deal of attention today.

Even though Twitter's audience size is relatively smaller than the MySpace/Facebook level kicking off 2009 (though its growth rate of 752% in 2008 was monumental), there's enough buzz, innovation, and compelling storylines surrounding the 140 character-based communications platform to warrant an intense level of coverage.



Are some/many blogs chasing Twitter stories just to get in on the hype and drive page views? Of course, but that's true of all big stories across any subject area.

All of that said, I relate to Cashmore in that I've thought about my own level of focus on Twitter. However, as I discussed over the new year's break, I've tried to focus on areas within the online world and social media that intrigue me without worrying about outside factors, so if I personally focus "too much" on Twitter, so be it!

Now, here are reasons why I think that Twitter deserves lots of obsessing and coverage in 2009.

It has the potential to go "mainstream"
There are pretty good arguments on both sides for whether or not Twitter has the potential to go "mainstream" (check out a great discussion of this topic here). I would argue that it does have the potential, which we can roughly define as 10 million users or so. Either way, Twitter's explosive growth and massive potential warrants ongoing coverage.

Twitter apps, plug-ins, and add-on services
Twitter's open API has opened up a flood of innovation around building tools and services that benefit the Twitter community. Much like Facebook's development platform, Twitter has smartly tapped into the resources of the "crowd," allowing its audience to become tied to and invested in the success of the underlying platform.

It's where the geeks, influencers, and increasingly the cool kids are at
Even though Twitter has been around a little while (by webby standards), it's early adopters and geek enthusiasts have not abandoned it, even though bright and shiny objects such as FriendFeed came calling… along, let's not forget, with a bunch of would-be Twitter killers such as Pownce, Identi.ca, Jaiku, and Plurk.

It's starting to spill over into mainstream media and regular (read: non-insane online addicts like us) life
CNN is promoting Twitter, comedians joke about Twitter, moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas are just starting to get into the swing of it. Quoting myself from last month's the Twitter mainstream debate: "It is intuitive enough that "civilians" can hit the homepage, register, post their first post and add a few friends within a minute. They can also quickly "get it" and see benefits." In other words, Twitter is for real."

It's an important part of the overall storyline
We're in an interesting period right now. I'm tempted to say "unique" but every phase or era is unique in its own way. What we do know is that the economy is in recession, but that the underlying issues have little to do with the tech sector. But what has happened is that the downturn has shut the door on the loosely-termed web 2.0 era, which had already been in its silly season anyway.

I like to say that we're in a post-web 2.0 era. It's not web 2.0, it's not web 3.0 (whatever that will come to mean, led by crazy semantic web or mobile technologies, or something). What we do know is that web communities, social networks, or whatever you want to call them, continue to evolve.

Think about it. Even though MySpace is still one of the most popular websites – and a social networking website at that – on the Internet, no one really talks about it anymore. MySpace is part of the past, while Twitter is right in the center of the conversation of where things are now, and where they're headed.

It's got a good beat that you can dance to
Okay, maybe it doesn't. But the point is that if you hang out on Twitter, you feel a pulse of activity that lets you know that people are meeting, engaging, and chitchatting.

People who love Twitter love it because it fits a need in their life. And as I've written about before, a key reason why its strong growth continues is because its flexibility allows it to fit different kinds of needs for different kinds of people.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

10 Ways to Maximize Your Google Reader Link Blog

I've been sharing articles I've read in Google Reader for the better part of two years. I don't know exactly when I started, but I'm fairly sure I'm nowhere near finished. And while I admittedly started sharing to a link blog without having a clear goal in mind, I'm finding that this massive shared items repository is becoming an incredibly versatile information hub that benefits me, the authors of articles I've shared, and the consumers, be they friends in Google Reader, or in many other locations.

I believe that while Google Reader has grown in visibility, arguably becoming the most popular RSS reader on the Web, the utility of shared link blogs is less known. Here are ten ways you can maximize your Google Reader link blog - most of which I'm doing, and probably didn't anticipate when I first started sharing items into the ether.

1. Act as a trusted information filter.

Regardless of how fast a reader you are, there is no possible way you can read every single news source and blog on the Web. Neither can anybody you know. And regardless of how closely your feed match percentage is on Toluu, there are feeds you read that your friends don't. By sharing the best items of what you read every day from Google Reader, you are hand-selecting the best of the Web and "endorsing" those items to your link blog subscribers.

Do so with some regularity, and you might be surprised as to how people come to rely on your manual intervention and news discovery. I first became cognizant of this in February when "SeekGround" reported "I discovered that I had shared more of louisgray's shared items than anyone else's in the last 30 days". In May, Duff's Device similarly wrote: "I saw another article that I received from Louis Gray'sGoogle Reader Shared Items again. Thanks for keeping on top of the world for me Louis. :-)"

As of tonight, ReadBurner reports I have nearly 8,500 articles shared on my Google Reader link blog. While there are others who have shared more total items, I know that I have shared those items I believe are most interesting to me, and others I believe are following along.

2. Share your items with Google Friends.

Though Google hasn't nailed the "what is a friend" issue, you can add friends through GMail and Google Talk. If they are also Google Reader users, and share items, you can opt in to seeing their Google Reader shares, and they can see yours. If they subscribe to your shared items, your shares are mixed in with all the other feeds on their list. Of course, if you don't want to see their lists, click "Hide" next to their name, or "Show" to bring them back.



3. Embed your Google Reader link blog to your own blog or Web site.

When I first started sharing to my link blog, I had this odd feeling I was sharing posts and nobody knew about it. After all, the link blog URL isn't the most intuitive on the planet. But you can embed a widget on your blog to display a subset of your recently shared items, and visitors to your blog can click out to items you've shared.

4. Add your Google Reader link blog to your Google profile

Your Google profile is a fairly blank slate, for you to add or delete as you please. While it's very common for people to add links to their Twitter page, their blog or their LinkedIn profile, I'd suggest it's just as important to add your link blog to the page. Mine is here.

5. Share items to Facebook, FriendFeed or Socialmedian.

2008 was the year of personal news aggregators, which took updates on your services from around the Web and put them all in one place. While this trends was best exemplified by FriendFeed, Facebook also offers the option to feature your Google Reader shared items, and Socialmedian will pull them in as news, going so far as to check the shares by topic to place them in the right categories.

You can see my Google Reader shares on FriendFeed here. And to avoid duplication of items, if I share items from louisgray.com, I manually delete them from FriendFeed. Takes seconds, and reduces the noise. (My Socialmedian page is here...)

6. Add your share count to ReadBurner, RSSmeme or Feedheads.

Feedheads, the pioneer in tabulating popular Google Reader share counts, was joined by ReadBurner and later RSSmeme, in early 2008. As some people are turning to ReadBurner and RSSmeme as a democratically sorted Digg or Techmeme, sharing items you like will add your vote to the list.

Be sure to add your feed to ReadBurner here.

7. Replace your bookmarks with Google Reader shared items.

At the end of the year, I said that RSS Has Practically Eliminated My Need for Browser Bookmarks. As I thought about it more, it's my Google Reader Link blog that is essentially my rolling bookmark list, highlighting those items which are the best, and which I will want to return to. While Delicious is also a good Web-based bookmarking system, the link blog is a good way to find recent items of interest.

8. Expand the visibility of lesser-known sources.

Sometimes, I get in a routine of reading my RSS feeds and then sharing, without thinking about how the shares are effecting the downstream author. But I've gotten e-mails saying the shares have generated attention beyond what I expected. Last month, one blogger wrote, "When you pop an article on (the linkblog), I'll get 60-70 hits and get pumped to the first page, that is pretty averge for the support you give me." Earlier this week I got a similar e-mail from a second author, who wrote an e-mail titled "Thanks yet again", adding "Your Google Reader share really lit up that discussion."

In a tech blogging world where there are so many different sources of news, and so many people writing about the exact same thing, you can make a difference by choosing lesser-known sources of news, and highlighting the best content, not just the loudest. I've tried to share items from those who have done original reporting or are thinking differently than the echo chamber, and it in turn can deliver greater visibility.

9. Use your linkblog as your "to comment" list.

As part of my online new year's resolution, I said I would be making more time to comment on other blogs through the year. But as you know, my full-time job doesn't work all too well with browsing the Web and making comments throughout the day. Instead, I've found I'll go back to my own Google Reader linkblog, and open the items in a new tab, and go through to add comments one by one, left to right, so I've given the authors feedback and participated.

10. Create your own leaderboard of news sources.

Google Reader tracks statistics on what your most-shared news sources are over the last 30 days, which can report on who you've found most interesting in the last month. Given each person's individual tastes, the results can be very different than more public leaderboards which tend to feature those who are most popular and have a deeper subscription base. While my own link blog does tend to feature popular sites like TechCrunch, Scobleizer and ReadWriteWeb, I can see that I've also shared a high number from lesser-known sites, including TechWag, Regular Geek, The Future Buzz, Andy DeSoto and Chuqui 3.0. And if you're stat-oriented like I am, you can check in and see how this changes over time. (See my blog leaderboard from last July)

So... are you sharing your Google Reader items? I am. You can find mine here. For the betterment of the community, it'd be great to see your shared item links in the comments.

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DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner.

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Does Your Ethical Stance on Rumors Change in a Down Economy?

By Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Shakespeare I Ain't (E-mail / Twitter)

Tech blogging is just as competitive, if not more competitive, than mainstream news. Nearly every blogger salivates over the tiniest little rumor that could turn into the scoop that lands you the top spot on Techmeme or the front page of Slashdot or Digg. It's practically become acceptable to run with the unconfirmed rumor in order to make it out of the gate first.

Should that codicil to a blogger's code of ethics be removed in a down economy?

Two notable stories have "broken" so far this year that lack confirmation. The first, making its appearance on Gizmodo this past Monday, had Steve Jobs passing on the Macworld keynote because he's allegedly on his deathbed. The second, also breaking on Monday, had SD Times claiming Google would put Juniper out of business by coming out with a hush-hush router to end all routers.

Apple still had a new 17" MacBook Pro and some sexy software upgrades, but Juniper didn't fare so well, dropping steadily throughout the week with a huge dip this morning as the story about the stock falling and the alleged Google router hit the mainstream press.

Are either of these stories true? Looking at past history and the companies involved, I think it's pretty safe to say that Steve Jobs is sick. That's been apparent since the rumors of his imminent demise started swirling after his appearance last year. However, Steve Jobs is not stupid. I don't think he would let things get to the point where he's on his death bed before taking some steps to turn over control of the company, and speculating that he's got one foot on a banana peel over a grave is gossip, not news.

As for Google and Juniper, it's no big secret that Google wants things Google's way. Is Google going to go into the hardware business and compete against companies like Cisco? Never. It's simply not going to happen. If they weren't willing to do it for a consumer device like the rumored Gphone we were all salivating over the idea of years back, they certainly aren't going to do it on a scale like routers, where failure would be catastrophic. But they have Android, and they've shown a desire to apply their software acumen to existing hardware issues. Is it conceivable they are planning to (or already are) working with a hardware company, much as they did with HTC on Android? I might bet a few pretzel sticks on that.

Based on the evidence, however, Google isn't going to topple Juniper, and we aren't going to see Cupertino shrouded in black crepe any time in the near future. And in a climate where tech jobs are on the chopping block and companies are scampering to drive their stock back up to appease shareholders, going for the big dramatic story rather that looking at the facts is going to end up with all of us out of work. If the tech companies go under, so do the jobs writing about them.

Read more by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira at Shakespeare I Ain't.

10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech

Following on to last year's 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech and the recent results: My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close.

1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

2) Businesses Will Be Expected to Be On Social Media If They Have Web Sites

In the mid and late 1990s, there was a land rush for domain names, as every company jumped in and procured Web addresses and built out Web sites to establish their electronic home. Although many of these sites were rudimentary at best, they knew they needed to be there to participate. In 2009, it will be expected that brands and businesses will be similarly established on social media, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and YouTube.

3) Apple Will Introduce A Succession Plan for Steve Jobs as CEO

While Steve Jobs is not likely in imminent danger, the continued unsettled rumors, as well as a good level of common sense will push Apple to present a succession plan for Jobs, which will not take place immediately, but over the space of a few years. One to three names of potential in-house replacements will be named, as well as a timeline, as Steve fades to the background, but continues to wield tremendous power over Apple's vision and deliverables.

4) TechCrunch Will Acquire VentureBeat or Silicon Alley Insider

Mike Arrington's tech blog continues to be the influence leader in its space. Both VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider have forged strong brands with a financial bent which would be good additions for the TechCrunch brand as Arrington and team look to extend their umbrella and wrap up what he considers to be the best blogs. SAI in particular would offer an East Coast/financial bent that the Silicon Valley-based TechCrunch is currently not known for.

5) Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009

While commoditized PCs managed to put pressure on Macintosh and relegate Apple to a small market share percentage the Cupertino company is still trying to recover from back in the 1980s, history will not repeat itself, as Google's Android partners will be unable to knock the iPhone off its perch as the must-have smart phone for power Web consumers. BlackBerry will continue having a significant share in the enterprise, but it will continue to be iPhone eroding its share, not the Android, especially given the unmatched array of applications available for the iPhone which Android will not be able to match.

6) A Major Alternative to FeedBurner Will Emerge As the Service Stagnates

Google's mismanagement of FeedBurner has many people frustrated with how the feed service has been run since its acquisition last year, as the service continues to see slowness, outages, and recently went dark, shutting down their blog and being gobbled up by the AdSense team. Competitors will emerge, enabling bloggers to move their FeedBurner subscriber base and historical statistics to their new platform.

7) FriendFeed and Twitter Will Both Be Independent Through 2009

Despite Twitter's recent dance with Facebook, it will rely on its existing venture capital funding and find revenue that enables the company to stay afloat at least through the end of the year. FriendFeed, similarly, will not be acquired or merge with any other service prior to the end of 2009. The company, if necessary, will instead do a second round of funding, with its own internal sources providing much of the capital.

8) Companies Will Continue Budget and Staff Cuts Through the Third Quarter of 2009

The layoff parade in 2009 will not be limited to unprofitable companies, small companies or practically any category of companies. The doom and gloom that have hit the financial markets, advertising, real estate and almost every sector will continue through the first half of the year, before starting to see a rebound in the third quarter. You will see strong companies like Microsoft lay off thousands, and practically everyone will not be renewing contract positions that have concluded - even Google and Apple.

9) An Extremist Group Will Manage to Take Down or Deface the White House Web Site

America's political climate is extremely polarized, following the conclusion of two extremely divisive terms. As Barack Obama moves into the White House, the very features that make him a "first" will also make him and his administration the chief target for some incredibly angry and hate-filled groups. One will somehow manage to access the WhiteHouse.gov site and manipulate it this year.

10) eTrade, Digg, StumbleUpon, Skype and Yahoo! Will All Be Sold.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. eBay will want to ditch its non-core assets like StumbleUpon and Skype (I made the sale of StumbleUpon a prediction last year too). Digg, losing momentum, will sell cheap. Yahoo! will eventually be purchased by News Corporation, AOL, or even Google, assuming it passes regulatory approval, by the end of the year. Microsoft, still insulted, won't be back to the table.

Social Media Advertising: Crossing the Streams

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Can you hear it? That's the sound of social media companies scrambling, hustling, and scraping to find new revenue-generating models to beat back the hounds of this wacky economy.

Most recently, we're starting to see talk of experimenting with the insertion of advertisements into what users normally expect to be ad-free content streams. In movie metaphor terms, it's time to look to Ghostbusters for inspiration.

As we all know, Dr. Peter Venkman (played by the amazing Bill Murray) advised that the streams of the ghostbusting team's Proton Packs were not to be crossed… right up until the end of the movie, when they had run out of ideas in defeating the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It was a classic "it's so crazy it just might work" movie moment.

Are some social media companies reaching a similar "crossing the streams" decision point? For instance, Techmeme, the well-known technology news aggregator, has actually employed the practice of inserting "sponsored posts" into its stream of algorithmically generated story and blog post clusters for some time.


Techmeme Interweaves Sponsors' Posts With News
With a clear label of "sponsored post" and a different colored background on what is essentially an "advertorial" ad unit, Techmeme is leading out a new form of online advertising that other social media companies might be looking to adapt.

A story on TechCrunch this week called Digg's Sorry Revenue Stream, And Rumors Of An Experimental Ad Product was illuminating in a number of ways.

Key takeaway:

One experiment Digg is working on, says one source close to the company, is a self service advertising product that will be somewhat similar to Google Adwords, but with a twist. The product would insert advertisements into the Digg news stream (presumably clearly marked). Where those ads end up, and how much an advertiser pays per click, would be based on user feedback.

So users would have the ability to vote on advertisements in the same way they vote on stories. The better ads, as determined by Digg users, will get more prominent placement and a lower cost-per-click.

I think allowing users to vote on ads that they like and have them "bubble up" to the top, social news-style, might be a rather clever addition to the Digg platform. That said, we can imagine that some of Digg's famously rowdy commenters would be incensed at the prospect of any advertising inserted into an area previously set aside for user generated story submissions.

How incensed is hard to say, but we can look at the reception that ad network Magpie received on Twitter to get an indication. To be fair, Magpie is an independent service - it has no formal affiliation with Twitter - that offers to sell "tweets" on Twitter user profiles. So its revenue model aims to cut microbloggers in on revenue, and not Twitter itself. The reaction thus far from the Twitter community has been pretty negative, and indeed signs are that Magpie is gaining very little traction.

That said, it's perhaps doubly interesting that Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams would mention inserting ads into Twitter streams as a potential revenue option during a recent interview. However, he noted that they are "looking into other options." Maybe it'll come down to a "don't cross the streams" decision?

It's worth considering if Internet audiences will be generally more accepting of seeing "sponsored posts" on Techmeme – or indeed inserted into the "blog stream" on well known tech blogs such as Mashable – versus user generated content-driven platforms like Digg and Twitter.

In any event, social media companies are going to be looking for new ways to keep the lights on and servers humming, and that will likely mean seeing more forays into previously ad free content zones.

What's your opinion on crossing the streams?

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

Gawkk Delivers Video Discovery Engine With a Social Center

It doesn't take a scholar to recognize the commentary around most YouTube videos appeals to the lowest common denominator. As is common with many Web services that have gained mass popularity, the discussion on YouTube more closely resembles a junior high locker room than an exchange between friends and family. At times, the nonsense spewed underneath the most popular videos is practically enough to make a person avoid the site altogether.

In contrast to the banal free-for-all at YouTube, where the inmates are in control of the asylum, we have seen the rise of more personal, friend-centric services to exchange links, images and video through social media in the last few years, including sites like FriendFeed, Twitter, Ballhype and Socialmedian. A new name to be included as part of that conversation is Gawkk, a social video discovery and sharing site, which pulls in the most popular videos across the Web from services including YouTube, Hulu, Break.com and others, and sets up a platform to see what videos your friends have shared or commented on.


A Gawkk Video from Hulu, With My Comment
The service, created by former Direct Hit co-founder, Gary Culliss, lets you subscribe to channels as diverse as CNN and the History Channel to The Simpsons Channel, Law & Order, and even Budweiser Commercials. You can also browse the site's many different categories, see the most popular videos of the day, or simply follow the channels your friends have subscribed to.


Some Popular Videos Found on Gawkk, via MSNBC and Hulu
As a Gawkk member, you create your own personal channel, and can add videos to your channel by hitting "Save" underneath any video. You also can create an activity stream by voting videos up or down (like with Digg) or through your comments.

For example, my channel can be found here: http://www.gawkk.com/louisgray/channel and my activity feed can be found here: http://www.gawkk.com/louisgray/activity.


My Gawkk Activity Stream
Unlike YouTube and Hulu, Gawkk does not actually store the video media on its site. Instead, it acts as way for users to share video they have found from anywhere on the Web and share it on the site (using a bookmarklet, found here). Videos are brought to Gawkk both by users themselves, or imported from the many external sites, which are then organized into thousands of public channels, chronologically, by topic, from TV shows to actors. As a member, you can subscribe to any number of channels, and even have the option, at signup, to rate each channel from one to five stars to signal your interest, and also indicate what other channels you might like.


Rating Each Gawkk Channel, Choosing to Subscribe


My Gawkk Channel Subscriptions
Videos that receive the most "up" votes are promoted to the home page for the entire community to see, just like the most popular items on Digg, Ballhype, Reddit and other social voting sites. The hope is that by breaking out of the muck that is YouTube, you can enjoy sharing video with friends and finding common interests.

You can find me on Gawkk with the ID of louisgray (as with most other services). And if you want more friends than just me, find who else is already on Gawkk by checking your online mail address book.

My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close

It's a year-end tradition for many media, blogs and individuals, to predict what will happen over the next year. Some prefer to make their guesses fairly straight-forward in an effort to be right (Example: Apple will release new notebooks with a faster processor at MacWorld) and others will make their guesses seemingly outlandish, so that if they're right, they're seen as virtual psychics. Others, somewhere in between. At the conclusion of 2007, I made ten predictions that I thought would be fun, and as we're coming on the one year anniversary of that post, it's a good thing you didn't bet your home mortgage on my list. (What? You say there are other issues with your mortgage? Oh.)

See: 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

In the spirit of reducing my ego, here are how those ten predictions in the world of tech stand:

1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads

Wrong. I expected that Google would start to tabulate its shared items and most popular feeds via Google Reader, and that using this data, Google could provide a democratic version of Techmeme, or at least pull Feedheads outside of Facebook. Instead of Google doing this however, it was ReadBurner, followed by RSSMeme and others, including Feedheads, who started a site at www.feedheads.com. Later in the year, Google Blog Search did introduce the option to show hot topics in tech, but it's largely been a stale effort. At this point, Techmeme is still more important than Google in this regard, and Google Reader has declined to show most popular feeds or shared items.

(Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner and took the position in August.)

2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction

Wrong. I thought Facebook would use its expensive stock and buy up some smaller companies. Digg continually sounded like it was shopping itself, but it never sold, and the company's CEO often denied talks were occuring with anyone. Also, given the stock market crash, Facebook is no doubt valued much lower these days, making a stock transaction less likely.

3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation

Wrong. So Far. In September, TechCrunch and others reported that eBay planned to sell StumbleUpon, but no sale has taken place yet. At this point, also, with Yahoo! crumbling, they are less likely to take on the service.

4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support

Wrong. Twitter focused on growing and not crashing this year. Still just text.

5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion

Wrong. I hardly hear anything about Boot Camp these days, likely because VMWare Fusion and Parallels have become entrenched, and nobody cared about Apple's "restart" alternative. My comment that Apple would "slowly take over the market" in this space also looks quite dumb, as did the expectation that Windows applications could boot alongside Mac apps. The question is, why not?

6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking

Wrong. And it's too bad! Sure would change things a bit if somebody could figure out how to check a box and have graphical ads or text ads disappear.

7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences

Wrong and Right. AssetBar, in its attempt to replace Google Reader, failed fast. FriendFeed, however, did much better than I could have guessed at the time I wrote the post. Obviously, I played a small role in evangelizing FriendFeed through it coming out of beta in early 2008, but it got bigger than even I expected. My comment saying that "neither would be acquired by the end of 2008" did manage to be true.

8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable

Right. While there are some bloggers who prefer video and are using it, from Robert Scoble at FastCompany TV to Loic LeMeur at Seesmic, it hasn't become as second-nature as standard blogging or mciroblogging. And so far as I know, nobody is making money on this in a consistent way.

9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office

Mostly Wrong. Netflix didn't blink against iTunes' charge. They instead branched out with their "watch instantly" feature and partnered up with TiVo and others. Blockbuster is still a disaster, and I certainly am not going to the box office thanks to so many alternatives. But iTunes video rentals cannot be said to have hit Netflix and others all that much.

10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble

Wrong, So Far. Robert joined FastCompany at the beginning of the year, and is putting up some interesting content. That said, FastCompany has seen changes in focus and leadership, and I am curious to see how his show evolves in 2009. Scoble continues to be a mainstay on the social Web and at industry events of course, so even if 2009 sees him somewhere else, it won't be far from the limelight.

So wasn't that fun? Now you see you can largely ignore my predictions, or maybe, I should try harder to be right. Maybe, if I'm good, I can put a 2009 prediction list up by the end of the year...

BackType Adds Digg, Reddit In Path To Comments Nirvana

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with Christopher Golda and Michael Montano, founders of BackType, and talked with them about the growth of the site, and their continued efforts to become the blogosphere's number one repository for comments, tracking, search and alerts. Among the first steps they promised, and have already delivered, was the option to add comments you make on social services Digg and Reddit to your profile page. Along with the site's recent integration with FriendFeed, BackType has risen in visibility and functionality, even as few are using the site to its fullest potential.

As Golda and Montano explained over lunch Thursday, the site was originally started to track comments activity by friends they followed from around the Web. With so many different commenting systems out there, from WordPress to TypePad, Disqus and more, no one service provided a full history of individuals' activity, and they saw an opportunity to create a product that was built around comments and the people who make them, rather than individual blogs and their readers.

As BackType has gained awareness, the founders have so far been surprised by the high number of people using the site for social media marketing - tracking keywords for their company and the competition, but it's become a natural evolution of a service that can gauge a company and its products' visibility across the Web. Extending the services that BackType tracks, like Digg and Reddit, makes the product's database more robust and diverse.

Additionally, the rapid integration of BackType to FriendFeed has helped raise the product's visibility, they said. Now, assuming the blog you comment on is being tracked, any comments you make on the Web, assigned to your e-mail address and name, can be pulled into your FriendFeed stream, like Disqus and IntenseDebate have been doing for some time. (You can see my BackType stream in FriendFeed here)

Interestingly, at least for now, the BackType integration into FriendFeed does not track comments from Disqus or IntenseDebate. Golda and Montano offered FriendFeed a "Disqus and IntenseDebate free" version of the feed, as to not avoid overlap from those who had already turned on those services, but FriendFeed took that as the standard, meaning users who want all comments still need to integrate both services. (For example, my Disqus feed is also live.) This might change later, but FriendFeed would need to make the update, and their "to do" list is no doubt long.

As BackType's database has grown, so too has its functionality for companies looking to track their keywords across the Web. I've even set up an RSS feed from BackType for the company where I work, so if we are mentioned in a comment somewhere, our PR firm will see it and have the opportunity to respond or evaluate quickly. You can set your own alerts by e-mail on the BackType.com site or use their Trends site to see the velocity of updates. (Examples: Google, Seesmic, and Obama.)

Smart marketers and public relations people are already searching news, blogs, and Twitter to monitor their brand. To track the brand across comments throughout the Web using BackType is just as important. While you can still follow people and discover what they're saying at the blogs they frequent, and discover new sites, I think BackType will become a more integral part of people's social media monitoring than anyone ever expected. Adding Digg and Reddit, while small additions, just makes their sphere of tracking even more thorough.

In case you want to see what I'm saying on BackType, follow me here: http://www.backtype.com/louisgray.

Liking the Dislike: Social Networks Don't Force the Love

Newton's third law of motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Many technologies have ratings features built in with equal and opposite choices these days, from the thumbs up and thumbs down on your TiVo remote control, to rating songs from zero to five stars in iTunes, and of course, deciding whether to Digg or Bury. But as social networking tools don't necessarily need to subscribe to Newton's laws, not all services offer diametrically opposed activity. You can't offer a negative share on Google Reader, canceling someone else's share out, for example, and FriendFeed limits you to "liking" items, making users oddly "like" things they hate, if only to draw attention to the item. Social Median, which is increasingly looking like FriendFeed, added the ability to "like" and "dislike" items on Monday, through what they call a "mood button", drawing more attention to the battle between love and hate. (See a discussion on FriendFeed about the new feature here)


Social Median gives articles mood, based on the like/dislike ratio
With so many people consuming as much content as we are these days, with more Web sites, RSS feeds and social networks to imbibe, services are making it ever easier to make our feelings known in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of effort. While a year or two ago we may have left a comment and engaged with the blog author, these days, we're just as likely to vote up the number of stars on their Outbrain widget, share the item in Google Reader, or just click "like" on FriendFeed, essentially "checking the box off" on what was required for me as a reader, taking the easy way out. Often, this is done even by reading just the headline, and not the full article. (Do you really think people are reading all the items they Digg?)

Social news sites like Reddit, Mixx and others tend to simply show the sum total of votes by its members, subtracting the down votes from the up votes to determine an item's popularity. As a moderator on the Elite Tech News Reddit, I recently found myself looking at what the community had selected as the best news items. Usually they will have anywhere from only 1 to 3 points, but by looking deeper, the actual up and down votes are more like 12 to 9, or 11 to 10. Negative voting is almost always approaching 50 percent.


Ballhype says, "Don't be a hater"
I'd always thought if I didn't like something, I should just skip it rather than calling out that I don't like it. I do bury some items on Digg, if I find them to be duplicates, from shady Web sites, or, punitively, if I see the authors relentlessly pimping for votes on Twitter, but those are exceptions, rather than the rule. So who are these people who are just as likely to vote items down as up? So far, typical social networking behavior has let you play the role of hit and run, disliking an item and taking off, if you have that option, letting you do so anonymously, even if the system knew it was you. In fact, Ballhype would put up an alert to "Stop being a hater" if you gave too many thumbs down in a row.

Social Median's new approach to "Mood" not only lets you "dislike" an item, and see the percentage of people who dislike it, but you can see just who voted it down, adding a level of accountability to your vote. I am curious to see if the community takes to "dislikes" as quickly as they took to likes on FriendFeed. It's always easy to be in a group of friends who like something, but if you say you dislike something, it begs a follow-up. Why did you dislike it? Was it the subject matter? Was it poorly written? But again, that takes you out of the realm of doing as little as possible, and actually needing to answer the questions. I bet the community would vote thumbs down on that idea!

Hackr WatrCoolr: Tech News Aggregation With No Mouse Required

A couple weeks ago, in an article about Microspaces, I said that Web entrepreneurs are finding new ways for you to navigate their sites, and many are now incorporating keyboard input, to jump to new comments or pages. Though I mentioned it in a quick tweet on September 25th, I thought it was worth highlighting the Hacker WatrCoolr, a site that displays headlines from many popular tech news sites, and lets you quickly flick through them using only your keyboard - no mouse required.


A Headline from ReadBurner on WatrCoolr Tonight
WatrCoolr shows the latest headlines from Digg, Hacker News, Del.icio.us, Techmeme, Reddit, RSSmeme, Slashdot, Yahoo! News and ReadBurner. Each headline shows its recency, and the destination URL (e.g. nytimes.com or makeuseof.com).


Scoble's Post Hits Techmeme and Makes it to WatrCoolr
But unlike many other news aggregation sites, the Hacker WatrCoolr doesn't shoe-horn them into one busy page, like AllTop. Instead, it displays one headline at a time. To scroll through older items from the same source, you just need to hit the down arrow key. To see a new source, hit the right or left arrow. And to read the article, you just have to press the "r" key, or press "n" to have it open in a new window or tab.

While Hackr WatrCoolr is not looking to replace your RSS reader, some of the functionality is very similar to that of applications like Google Reader, and it's a very easy way to get all the top stories from each of these sites in one place. It may be a little experiment, but it hints at one way the Web could go to make the process of our news gathering even that much more easy. I hope to find more Web developers who are thinking different about how we navigate today's often-formulaic and static Web sites.

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner, and hold a small equity position.

MacBlips and GadgetBlips Launch to Capture Leading Tech Stories

When I met with Jason and Erin Gurney of Ballhype and Showhype fame earlier this year, I practically sold them on the idea of launching an Apple Macintosh-focused site, which would distill the many Apple related stories from around the Web and provide a centralized site where Mac fans could discuss news, rumors and find a community with other Mac fans. Today, with the launch of MacBlips, they made good on that idea. And as if that weren't enough, in parallel, they launched a site called GadgetBlips, which gathers the top stories from sites like Engadget and Gizmodo, and provides gadget lovers a place to talk up their cell phones, TVs, laptops, or video game consoles, to name a few.


Both sites share a common foundation. MacBlips and GadgetBlips are constantly scouring the blogosphere to find those stories most-frequently referenced in articles, and bringing them to the site's front page, where users can vote them up or down, or make comments, like Digg, and of course, like BallHype and ShowHype.


MacBlips and GadgetBlips users can also submit stories they find from around the Web, and blog owners who write about Mac, Apple and gadgets can register their sites and track activity, to see which of their articles were found the most interesting to the community.

Speaking of community, any user can create or participate in subgroups on either site, focused on specific topics, be it iPods, iPhones, Mac Rumors, the BlackBerry or Nintendo Wii, for example. And as with most social networking sites, you can befriend other users, and be alerted when they have activity on the site.

The idea behind MacBlips and GadgetBlips is essentially to provide a single site that finds the very best Mac news and Gadget news, without forcing you to read all the related RSS feeds, and to help you find other Mac-heads and gadget freaks like yourself who like to debate wireless plans, discuss how to switch from Windows to Mac, or just when Apple might release the iPhone Nano.

As somebody who in the past has scrolled through screen after screen on MacSurfer.com to find the best articles, or gone one by one from MacWorld to AppleInsider, MacRumors and MacInTouch to be on top of the latest Apple news, the arrival of MacBlips is a welcome sight. But with so many other Mac-related sites out there, it should be interesting to see if the new addition will have folks changing where they choose to engage. And given the Gurneys' efforts on BallHype, which included game picks for sporting events and tournaments around March Madness and the NBA playoffs, for example, I'm very interested to see what kind of predictive behaviors they can do for the next MacWorld Expo Keynote.

You can find MacBlips at http://www.macblips.com/
You can find GadgetBlips at http://www.gadgetblips.com/

On both sites, you can find my ID as "louismg". (MacBlips | GadgetBlips)

To Blog, or Not to Blog - That is the Question

Guest Post By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

I'm noticing a trend lately which started several months ago, and I couldn't quite pinpoint what was causing it. It seemed as though many of my friends and others that I esteemed as good bloggers were getting tired, and were posting much less frequently, or not at all. Many of these people were part of the reason I became an entrepreneur and it was disappointing to see them stop posting. It seems as though those blogging are getting tired, or just see it as a waste of time.

We see this with the recent fallout of Jason Calacanis - he just wasn't getting what he needed from blogging and decided to find another way to achieve what he wanted out of it. Louis Gray himself has mentioned on this blog about the change in traffic via links from A-list bloggers, and I have to say, I've seen it as well. The blogging landscape has changed significantly.

With the advent of Social Networking sites and tools providing outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed, I think many bloggers are getting overwhelmed with all that is out there, and frankly, they have found other outlets to get what they were previously getting from their blog. I'd like to share some tips on when you should and shouldn't blog, in hopes that other bloggers don't feel overwhelmed or quit altogether:

Post only when it is something that educates, or brings original news to your readers

This is an important policy of mine, for the most part. Often, especially before I started seeing bloggers fall away in exhaustion, I noticed many people just blogging for the sake of blogging. There often was no real new content in their posts. I like to keep a little Mac Sticky Note on my Desktop with all the blog post ideas I come up with (this post was one of those), and I can then turn back to them when I hit a slump. The most breaking and original get first priority. I think you will find that the most original posts you can provide will be the ones most visited, and re-visited by your readers.

Avoid posting just to state an opinion about another person's post

I believe it is mostly no longer necessary to blog about the content of other bloggers. There is an occasion or two where you may want a little more exposure from other bloggers if you really want your opinion to be known, but for the most part you can comment on other posts in other ways. With the advent of sites like FriendFeed and Google Reader it is now very easy for you to gain an audience, or even port your blog audience to these sites, and write your opinion either as notes in Google Reader, or as comments in FriendFeed. Let's face it, especially for a beginning or mid-level blogger, FriendFeed and Google Reader get a lot more traffic than most blogs get, offering you the chance for much more exposure on your opinion. Hopefully you are encouraging your readers to utilize FriendFeed more and they too can comment on your opinion to these posts.

Disqus is another great way to state an opinion about a post. Any blogger that implements Disqus is empowering their users to eventually make their own posts about the content, and have others comment, in threaded fashion, to those posts. Bloggers that implement Disqus are giving their users power to own their own opinions.

You don't have to post multiple times a day, or even every day

It's actually okay to only post once or twice a week. What's important is that you try to stay at least semi-regular so your readers don't give up on you. Your readers will come back if they know you'll keep posting. Blogging is certainly not dead, and it can be a great way to build up a following for your personal, or professional brand - that has never gone away.

Don't blog if it's only for individual gain

If all you do is blog to try to gain attention for yourself or your business, maybe through some good SEO and Google juice you'll get some traffic, but you'll never gain the loyalty and trust that many of the largest bloggers on the internet have. The best bloggers gain traction because they are working to empower, help, and educate others, not build up their own identity. Your own identity will come from that as you try to help others - writing a blog is all about building community.

Have something quick to say? There are other options

Believe it or not, Twitter used to be called a "micro-blogging" site (yes, hard to believe that was just a few months ago!). Sites like Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, even FriendFeed, and the dreaded, "Identi.ca" can all be great places to post your random thoughts, comments, and short posts. Twitter has since become much larger than that as a communications platform, but the capability to use it in such manner is still there, and I argue, a great way to start a discussion when used in conjunction with sites like FriendFeed. Look to find ways to integrate this with your blog and ensure your readers can find you and talk to you on these sites. There are even Wordpress plugins which will show all your Tweets in a single day (although you may want to think twice about this if you tweet more than 10 times a day like I do!).

Blogs are still good for SEO, and building brand, just not as much any more

The fact of the matter is that in order to get recognized by Google, you have to have content, and you have to have others link to you. To get recognized by Technorati, you have to have content, and you have to have others link to you. To get even recognized by Techmeme, you have to have good, original content, and have a few larger bloggers link to you. While Google and Technorati may not be the traffic drivers they used to (although I have a friend blogger that still gets 1,000 visitors a day just for a single post he did on a theme he wrote, all from Google), they are still too important to ignore. The fact is Techmeme will still give you thousands of potential new readers to your blog, as will Digg, and others. If you hit this jackpot of sorts, it can help you way more than any of the Social Networks ever will.

However, to get to this point is often a slow process, and can be achieved in other ways now, and that is getting more and more so as these Social Networking tools take root. The fact is I still get more traffic from social networking sites than I do Google on my own blog, so balance is key.

Lastly, settle for "good enough"!

I know several bloggers that spend hours on a single blog post. I heard of one blogger that takes an entire day to post. While sometimes an hour or so may be necessary to do research and gather data, for the most part it shouldn't take that long. Louis Gray often writes his posts in under 20 minutes. My average post is under 30. The key is, you can't be perfect - "good enough" is all you have to be.

As you can see, while the many options can seem overwhelming, they are actually there to help reduce some of the burden and fluff previously seen by bloggers and readers of blogs just a year or two ago. I hope, if you're one of those overwhelmed these tips can guide you to figure out how much you should blog, and where your content should go. It's okay not to blog some times! Just figure out what your motives were when you did (or do) blog, and see if there are other places that could be better satisfied.

The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining

I am a strong believer in the power of linking between blogs, and I still go out of my way to link, especially to peers, to smaller blogs, and to developers of services I write about. At one time, I thought being linked to by the most prominent bloggers could have a significant impact on my traffic. And for a short time, it did. But now, I've seen traffic from other blogs to be driving an ever-declining percentage of visits to my site, swamped by social media tools, aggregation sites, and of course, Google search.

Yesterday, out of curiosity, I downloaded all my visitor logs going back to January of 2006, when I started regularly posting on the blog. While there's no question traffic overall is significantly higher now than it was one year ago or two years ago, the impact that even the biggest of blogs can deliver is lessened. I believe that this is due to a few things:

1. People are relying on aggregators to find them new sources of information, including Techmeme, Hacker News, Reddit, Mixx, FriendFeed and others.
   
2. People, especially those who read this site, are relying more on RSS readers, and many have subscribed to so many feeds that they are reading through stories in an effort to clear out their unread items, not clicking the embedded links.
   
3. People who actually read blogs on the site (outside of RSS) are clicking through to respond to the author with comments, rather than viewing links.

This year, thanks to covering some of the hottest topics in the tech blogosphere, I've been lucky enough to have been linked to from some of the most-prominent blogs in the market, including TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Scobleizer, MicroPersuasion, Jeremiah Owyang, Mathew Ingram, The Inquisitr, Profy and others. I've also been actively engaged with those flying lower on the radar, including I'm Not Actually a Geek, SheGeeks, Regular Geek (see a theme?) and others.

But looking at my aggregate statistics from the last six months, not even the "big name" linkers drove a lot of traffic, relative to just about every other source. And in some cases, the top blogs that drove traffic were themselves relative unknowns who I've featured in my monthly obscure blog recommendations, themselves often being the beneficiaries of being on Digg or Techmeme.

Top Blog Referrals in First half of 2008:

1. I'm Not Actually a Geek: When Your Blog Is LouisGrayCrunched
   
2. Scobleizer: Loving my FriendFeed
   
3. Regular Geek: Required Reading in Social Media
   
4. ValleyWag: Most bloggers don't deserve any ad revenue, the seven-word version
   
5. TechCrunch: More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Come The Politics. And Here Comes My Rant.
   
6. Micro Persuasion: Become an Expert with the Power of Deliberate Practice
   
7. Mathew Ingram: Duncan Riley: Lessons in diplomacy
   
8. WebWare: A Proposal for Twitter: Shut It Down
   
9. ReadWriteweb: Content Is Becoming a Commodity
   
10. Mark Evans: Who's Louis Gray?

Definitely a lot of bigger names here, mixed in with some others. But the most interesting thing is that the highest among these "only" delivered just shy of 500 visitors over the first six months of the year, and the lowest passed less than 100. That doesn't even come close to a single day's worth of Google traffic, or a single day of having a post on Techmeme or Hacker News, let alone Digg.

Instead of blogs driving traffic, we have some more mainstream names, as shown in the below graphic from Google Analytics, highlighting sources for the last 30 days:


In fact, it isn't until the #10 position overall over the last 30 days that you get a total number of visitors that is less than the #1 blog referral over the last 180 days. And in most cases, I've not seen any kind of meaningful traffic from mentions on Mashable or ReadWriteWeb. Back in January, I was a little less than happy that Mashable wasn't giving linkage a lot of prominence, but even now that they are, the impact is extremely small. I got 77 referrals from Mashable on their story around Twitter brand management, and 53 more from a story on my being an early adopter, very insignificant in the large scheme of things.

Now, I'm not saying that this data proves linking is dead. I know links power Google juice, and they enhance Technorati rankings, and if done well, people can find new sources of data, but the ability for even a so-called A-List blogger to deliver a windfall of visits is much less than I had ever expected. It is now more important to be part of the social media sites that drive strong traffic - the Twitters and Techmemes and FriendFeeds and Stumbleupons and Reddits, if traffic is your goal. Those sites, combined with RSS activity in Google Reader and other programs are what will drive traffic. So don't wait around begging for Scoble or Mashable to write you up. It might not have the effect you thought.

On the Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying

Often, perception of a site or service's momentum can be self-fulfilling.

Even over the last two years of my writing on this blog, the companies I cover have changed, as what used to be relevant has become less so, and new hotshots have come to take their place. But while some niche services are on their way to becoming household names, others that could have done so are fading, when compared to their peaks of 1, 2 or even 5 years ago.

One tool showing the decline of brands relative to one another is Google Trends, which measures how frequently a keyword is searched for as a percentage of the total searches on the Web.

Using Google Trends, you can see the near-death of older Web 1.0 brands, like Netscape, Lycos and Alta Vista, the plateauing of early Web 2.0 brands, like MySpace, and the deflating balloon of weakened brands, such as Technorati, Digg and Microsoft.


Netscape's Downfall... In Graph Form.

And Lycos Follows Suit.
A little more than a week ago, Google Trends made news by introducing the ability to track data on Web sites, but the service's core element helps shed some light on the fact that the interest level in Technorati has been slashed in half in just the last 12 months, that MySpace peaked a year ago, as did Digg.


The Technorati Monster Is Starving.

And Digg Is In a Rut.

MySpace Is Floating in Space.
Meanwhile, as both Google and Yahoo! have continued an upward trajectory of world interest, Microsoft has seen steady decline every year, starting in 2004, when the data was first tracked.


The Only Thing More Depressing is MSFT Stock.
At one time, it was fun to point out that the Technorati monster had escaped, that Technorati wasn't up to challenging Google Blog Search, or to debate whether Digg's relevance was going to decrease with its move away from solely having a tech focus. But Google Trends lays out on the table the tougher news - nobody cares, and the number of people actively looking for news on Digg or Technorati is going down, while many, many other services are rapidly growing.

While the entire market of Web measurements is questionable, from Alexa to Compete.com and all sorts of competitors in between, it'd be interesting to see Google get even more aggressive with their trends, showing the velocity of a term's decline or ascension. Maybe that'd get the point across a little better for those saying their damaged brands aren't in trouble.

And lest you think Google Trends is all bad news, it's not. Take a look at hotter stories, like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or Google itself to see what an up and to the right arrow looks like. But if these brands aren't careful, like some of those listed above, they too could stagnate and fall. And once you slow, you're really just preparing for the inevitable drop.

LOUD3R Launches Massive Semantically-Driven Network

As I mentioned in yesterday's story on OneSpot, the quest to separate the wheat from the chaff in news and blogs through leveraging RSS and social tools is a vibrant market. Whether Web users are relying on Digg, Slashdot and Reddit to bring the hottest items to the top, or if they are instead turning to automated memetrackers like Techmeme to rank stories' popularity, a lot of people are asking to not read every single story, but instead, put their faith in the hands of others.

A new network debuting today, called LOUD3R, hopes to leverage this automation and social prioritization of stories, through a vast network of sites, including 25 at launch today, each one of them utilizing a semantic publishing engine, which finds, clusters and ranks content for a number of vertical topics, ranging from technology to sports, fashion to business.

Each one of the sites carries their trademark - 3R ending. For example, a site dedicated to Web 2.0 and community, isn't called Buzzer, but instead is translated as BUZZ3R, and can be found at www.buzz3r.com. Similarly, an auto site is called ROADST3R and can be found at www.roadst3r.com. I'll let you guess as to some of the others, including GLITT3R, WATCH3R, and FOUND3R.


A sampling of LOUD3R's 25 sites at launch
Like many other topical Digg-like sites, including Ballhype and Showhype, the LOUD3R network family promotes stories that have received attention from throughout the Web. But instead of getting voted up or down by users, the articles are driven by background rules, in Techmeme-like fashion, as Gabe Rivera has implemented on his own family of sites, including BallBug, Memorandum and WeSmirch. Users can make comments on the items, see related stories, or e-mail them.


A lead story on one of LOUD3R's sites.
The sites also use the same background semantic engine to highlight hot topics on each site. On PUTT3R, it's no surprise that Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate are hot topics. On WOOF3R, the topics instead turn to terriers and poodles.

Like Digg, you can see the "Most Popular" items, as well as "Newest", and the LOUD3R algorithm also tries to make a best guess as to what is most "Interesting".

Will LOUD3R's cute naming strategy and interesting use of semantics gain them significant traction? The company certainly hopes so. They have gobbled up more than 550 topically-oriented domain names with the "3R" brand, so today's launch is just the beginning. They hope that their semantic engine will help filter all the content on the Web and only bring visitors the "best available". And they definitely believe that through targeting topics that are historically underserved, they can get a leg up against competition.

With more than 500 sites planned for launch, not every single topic has to be a dramatic success for LOUD3R to make some coin, they hope. Their press release, also issued today, says each site has a low maintenance cost, and each will deliver advertising revenue. If the audience doesn't get QUIET3R, then LOUD3R should get BETT3R and BIGG3R.

BlogRize Builds A Community Around Your Blog and its Readers

There are two major trends converging in the blogosphere. The first is the growth of sites dedicated to tracking shared items, and the second is, as Allen Stern from CenterNetworks called it, "the year of the friend". In this perfect storm around finding what your friends are reading, and learning new sources for content comes a new entrant: BlogRize, a site developed by Jesse Spaulding, a 26 year-old from Vancouver, Canada, who has built a new platform for blogs to grow their community, through seeing what their readers also like reading and sharing.


The louisgray.com BlogRize community in action
As Jesse writes, "BlogRize is today's news, filtered by communities of people who enjoy reading the same blogs." BlogRize tracks items from two sources - a person's blog, and their Google Reader shared items. The two, in combination, are displayed as a person's "Community News", and each shared item has a number of activity options, from adding comments, to marking as "Interesting", "Funny" and "Insightful", or from the other perspective, "Lame", "Disagree" or you can even flag a post as having the "Facts wrong". You can also save stories for later reading.


My BlogRize profile shows recent activity and who I'm following
When joining BlogRize, you can start using the service by joining an individual blog's community, such as louisgray.com, techcrunch.com, or readwriteweb.com. By joining the community, those posts you find interesting from around the Web are integrated into that site's community news, where they are tabulated based on the number of shares, how often they were found interesting, and you can even see which friends found the same items intriguing that you did. Comments can be left on any item, and are highlighted.


Clicking through to an item shows who shared it or took action.
Interestingly, unlike some sites which rely on a large mass of users to get rolling, BlogRize doesn't need the wisdom of big crowds. As Jesse wrote me in an e-mail back in February, during early development of the site:

"Imagine a site like Digg where the entire community is made up of readers and fans of louisgray.com. But this is not an isolated community. Nope, BlogRize is an integrated site of many separate but interconnected blog "channels". So, there is not going to be a problem of the content stagnating due to a certain channel having a small subscriber base. In fact, our system is able to generate a HOT page of highly relevant links within a channel - even if that channel has zero subscribers. It can do this because it knows what keywords and what other blogs are most relevant to louisgray.com."

Jesse also noted Dave Winer's blog post on The next step in Digg clones as one source of inspiration. BlogRize users can build a Digg-like community just with the readers of a single blog, big or small. We also saw another entrant in this market debut just last week, with Yokway, as more and more frequently, bloggers are looking to share items with people they know or their peers, rather than with strangers.

To get started with BlogRize and join the louisgray.com community, sign up with the embedded invite code. If you have your own blog, you can claim it and start a new BlogRize.com community just for you.

Yokway's Social Sharing Site Launches In Beta

At the beginning of the month, I profiled an early edition of Yokway!, an interesting Digg-like derivative for small social circles of friends interested in similar topics. Now, nearly a month later, the site is ready to open up for beta users, having upgraded their user interface, adding search functionality, and reorganizing the site to better help users find friends interested in similar topics. And while Yokway! doesn't yet have the kind of buzz behind it that FriendFeed has developed, it debuts with a number of handy items that the popular social aggregation site doesn't yet have nailed.

Yokway's central offering is a site that lets you view items shared from your friends. Unlike some other lifestreaming services, which pull data from RSS feeds via services around the Web, Yokway requires users to post items one at a time, like Digg, select a topic, and provide a comment. This is called "Yoking", to be used as in the phrase, "What's Yoking?", also translated as "What's Happening?"


The Yokway! stream in action with two shared items.

The "What's Yoking?" stream has three modes, much like FriendFeed does, offering a "my network" stream with updates from myself and all friends, one just for my activity, and a third, for "everyone", encompassing all Yokway users.

Running alongside the "What's Yoking?" stream is a "Recent Activity" board, which shows not just what's been posted recently, but who may have rated an item (from one to five stars), when they did it, and if they made comments or added new contacts.

In this early beta phase, the "Recent Activity" encompasses the last 12 hours, but undoubtedly, as users increase, it could provide a live, to the minute, feed.

Beyond the basics, what sets Yokway apart from FriendFeed is the use of topics, which Yokway calls "My Sharing Circles". Anybody can create a new "Sharing Circle", and I immediately joined a few that are likely no surprise to you, including "Web 2.0 Technologies", "Startups", "Faebook", and "Semantic Web". Clicking on any sharing circle shows all shares within the circle, as well as comments, the total number of views, and their rating.

Another pleasant feature from Yokway is the ability to state your relationship to a contact. While with many services, including Twitter and FriendFeed, you're either a "friend" or you're not, Yokway has an option to mark a contact as a friend, family or coworker. While I don't yet see how this is used at this stage, the groundwork is there to maybe share items with family or coworkers only, for example, or it could be to show other contacts how you know a contact they're not familiar with.

The service will have an uphill road to climb to take on sites like FriendFeed or Digg who have significant market traction, but its features are certainly interesting, and the team has done a lot of work in the last four weeks to upgrade the user interface. If you would like to start using Yokway, head to www.yokway.com and post your e-mail address to get a beta account. You can find me here: Yokway!: LouisGray.

In Blogging and RSS, Headlines Can be Make or Break

In mainstream print journalism, a good headline can be remembered for decades, whether for its unintentional incorrectness ("Dewey Defeats Truman" -- Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 1948), its unconventional approach ("BASTARDS!" -- San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 12, 2001), its editorial wit ("Headless Body In Topless Bar" -- New York Post, April 15, 1983), or its emotional angst. ("Ford to City: Drop Dead" -- New York Daily News, October 30, 1975)

With social aspects of blog consumption becoming increasingly important, as well as the meteoric rise of RSS feed readers to take in information, a good blog headline can mean your story will be read instead of others on the same topic.

A good headline can mean the difference between getting ignored and getting Dugg, and as seemingly everyone is adding new feeds by the day, the sheer overload of information virtually guarantees a high number of your readers may never get to the full body of your story, if the headline doesn't grab their interest, or even turns them away.

Today, it is well accepted that Google Reader is the most widely-utilized RSS feed reader out there. While some have said it's not capable of handling the most avid feed consumers, I've yet to see one built more robustly. Helpfully, the service also offers a full set of historical statistics.


My Google Reader data as of this evening.
On a typical weekday, my stats show I'm seeing 700 to 900 items in my Google Reader, and need to make a quick judgment call on whether I'll read the full story, click through if it's a partial feed, hit share, or move on.

Just how little time do I have to make that decision? Assume that I read every post for 1 minute apiece. This would mean I spend 12-15 hours a day just in Google Reader. Take that number down to only 10 seconds, and you're still looking at 2 hours a day. What about three measly seconds? Taking a mere three seconds per headline means I've carved out 45 minutes a day just for feed reading, assuming 900 items. On the low end, that would be 30 minutes a day for 600 items, including those you actually read, and don't just scan the headlines.

RSS feed reading at that volume only truly becomes trivial if you think you can read and determine an action for the average post in one second. One second per post could take you all the way down to a stressful speed reading demonstration of 15 minutes a day. (Don't even try and get me started on how folks like Robert Scoble, who read more than I do, manage to cope.)

Contributing factors to whether I share a post on my link blog include the newness and uniqueness of the information, the quality or brand of the source and conversely if it's a new and emerging blogger, the amount of interest I have in the topic, that I perceive my readers to have in that topic, and the quality or content of the post itself.

But also a factor? The headline. If I happen upon two stories on the same topic, of interest to me and my readers, where the source is equal, it can be the headline and first paragraph that make one item shared over another. And as it is only the headline that is displayed in my Google Reader shared items on my blog or on FriendFeed, that's sometimes all the consumers see as well.

The issue of headlines becomes especially important for sites like Digg, Reddit and the like. Reddit, in fact, shows only headlines, begging for an up or down arrow. Digg shows a headline, and a submitter's authored one paragraph description. When you see stories that have hundreds or thousands of Diggs, do you really think all of those folks clicked out to the story, read it, and returned to Digg it? I doubt it.

Outside of social news submission sites, you can also see the importance of the headline on places like TechMeme. Items in the TechMeme discussion links show only a headline, and the story's source. Often, there can be 5-20 different stories from different sources on the same topic, making the headline, or the brand of the source, be the deciding factor for which post to click.


An example TechMeme discussion from tonight.
In 1998-1999, while wrapping up my senior year at Berkeley, I worked at a Web site focused on Internet and Silicon Valley history, called Internet Valley. My boss was certain that Web site consumption would change, and that the era of long textual pieces without styling was dying, in favor of pieces highlighted by bold, italics and colors. His theory was that Web users would "skim" and no longer "read" articles.

While his design tendencies were abysmal, he was right about people changing the way they consume news in this firehose of information. Now, it's obvious that you can lose them from your headlines alone, so for as much work as you may put into your writing, and getting the data or sources right, give your headlines their due.

YokWay! Weeks Away from Launching "Digg for Friends"-like Service

While much has recently been made of former Googlers striking out on their own and developing new Web 2.0 services, we shouldn't think "The Big G" is the only company ever to come out of Mountain View with entrepreneurial spirit. A number of Web services on the market, and some soon to debut, feature Netscape on their resume, including YokWay!, which calls itself a "knowledge networking service that connects you with the people you trust", mixing elements of Digg and FriendFeed in a simple service with a clean user interface.

YokWay! is headed by Cyril Moutran and Stéphane Osmont, both of whom come with resumes featuring stops at Vignette after two years at Netscape apiece. The pair have been working full-time on the project since late 2006, and are said to be launching in the next couple weeks. But you can log in to the service now through this link, seemingly with no restrictions.

The mission statement for YokWay! is, as with other lifestreaming and discovery sites, aimed to helping you share items you find interesting, and collaborate with your peers. (See the screen capture below of the Welcome screen)


Yet, unlike other services we've covered here in the past, YokWay! takes an old media approach to consuming the content, with words like "Channels" and a "Magazine", with each site subsection serving a different purpose.

My Magazine is a collection of all shared items from me and all my contacts within YokWay!. It's most similar to the Adam Stiles' LinkRiver or FriendFeed in this sense, in that I can see all items shared from friends in one place. However, unlike LinkRiver, it offers comments, and unlike both services, you can rate a posted item from one to five stars, and each posted site or item features a full thumbnail. (See below for an example. My comment is highlighted.)


My Memory quickly shows me those items which I've posted to YokWay!, without images or details, including comments, views or ratings.

My Blog shows everything from My Memory, but with full detail, including ratings, comments and view detail, as well as showing me all the contacts I have in YokWay!. This is most similar to my own stream within LinkRiver, or my own dedicated feed in FriendFeed. (See mine below)


While I'm mentioning LinkRiver and FriendFeed in the comparisons to YokWay!, I think it's more like the proverbial "Digg for Friends" that Dave Winer and others have been craving. Items get posted, and are seen only by the friends who follow you. YokWay! also features a wide array of subcategories, so instead of grouping data by popular Web services, as the lifestreaming folks do, it aims to put your content in the correct buckets, be they "Video", "Travel", "Software", "Innovation", "News" or many others. In case you were concerned, there's even a channel for "LOLCat", if you're so inclined. However, by default, most submissions go to "_root" and are seen by all. It's this "Channel" service that's unique, giving you the option to subscribe to as many of these channels as you like, making you not limited by users, but by content. Based on the Channels you choose, your Magazine automatically builds. (See some options below)



YokWay! features a clean, if at times spartan, interface. Adding contacts from the existing list of users is very easy, as you can see all users, and just have to click the "Add to Contacts" button to add them to "My Magazine". There isn't yet a way to invite users who aren't yet YokWay! contacts, but I would assume that would be a near-term addition as the site debuts.



Adding comments, like on FriendFeed, is also very easy. For any shared item, I can click "Add a Comment" and type in the textbox. If an item from one contact is particularly interesting, I can also click "Share" and send it to any of my existing contacts, or surprisingly, I can send this item to a contact not using YokWay! at all, simply by posting their e-mail address. (I should point out that in my one test, this didn't yet seem to work)

YokWay! looks a lot like a number of other promising Web services I've run into over the last few months - aggressive, clean, and happy to add new levels of interactivity to existing content through leveraging existing contacts with similar likes and interests. While many are clamoring for the perfect solution to integrate RSS with comments, or to reduce the amount of noise at other social bookmarking and aggregation sites, YokWay! is trying to do just that, with ratings, filters by channel, and of course, comments. For a service that wasn't even supposed to be out yet, they're already ahead of some I've seen that said they're ready.

Get your login to YokWay! now. You can find me here.

Custom Reddit for Elite Tech News Created

It wasn't all that long ago that RSS and blogging pioneer Dave Winer called for the ability to create a Digg clone. He envisioned a service not for a vast market, but instead, one for a specialized niche of readers. With a limited number of participants, an elite group of moderators could serve as editors, using their collective brainpower to push the best news to the top, unimpeded by random videos, images, politics and the latest Mac or Linux war to hit the blogosphere, as can be seen all too often on popular "wisdom of crowds" sites, from Digg to TechMeme.

Last Tuesday, Reddit was first to the scene, offering users the ability to create their own reddits. Now, instead of one massive catch-all site that absorbed all the news of the day, many parallel reddits have emerged, including some for Comics, lolcats, wikipedia and much more, from atheism to politics and the environment.

While the total number of subscribers to these custom reddits remains small, with the most popular typically sporting a few hundred users, one in particular has heeded Dave Winer's original call to deliver a site dedicated to the top tech news of the day, edited by a group of popular tech bloggers.

A sample of tonight's tech news.
The reddit, focused on "Elite Tech News" and featuring the "elite" address of http://reddit.com/r/l33t, is moderated, so far, by MG Siegler of ParisLemon, Steven Hodson of WinExtra, Frederic Lardinois of The Last Podcast and me.

While the site is just getting started, we are approaching 100 subscribers, and hope to include you among us. You can be sure that this reddit won't fall victim to pictures of kittens, promotions of fringe presidential candidates and off-topic nonsense. Find us at http://reddit.com/r/l33t.

ReadBurner Keeps Improving With Stats and Upcoming Items

I always knew the first service to crack the code of showing the most popular shared items in Google Reader, along with who shared them would be a fun utility. The catch? I used to think it would be Google who would be the winner. But now, with ReadBurner almost two weeks old, I've already seen the site change the way I think about and interact with RSS feed aggregators and shared link blogs.

In the last two weeks, Alexander Marktl has made his experiment into a useable, enjoyable site, filtering it into no fewer than five different language families, adding RSS feeds, revealing the individual sharers, and adding profile pages for each individual user.


Meanwhile, he has added a new page dedicated to "Upcoming" items that haven't yet reached the popular stage, just as Digg does.

The sum of all these changes? Even more reasons to keep checking in on the site - and two major shifts have occurred in my thinking over the last few weeks because of ReadBurner.

1) Google's Shared Link Blogs are a Big Barrier for Competitors

When AssetBar launches for good, there are some tremendously interesting services the site will offer that nobody else does today. But assuming I leave Google Reader for AssetBar (or any other service), my shared link blog from Google Reader will go dark. That, in turn, will stop my updates from being included on ReadBurner, Shared Reader and other services.

Even if AssetBar shows the most popular shared items, it will likely be doing so in a way where its data will be parallel from Google Reader, and therefore, won't be counted in ReadBurner, Feedheads, Shared Reader and others. If my shared link blog is important enough to me, I wouldn't make the move.

Even though Google hasn't done much with these shared link blogs, they already post a barrier for new companies.

2) I Finally Know Who Reads My Blog and Shares, but Doesn't Comment

ReadBurner, by revealing who is sharing blog posts from louisgray.com, shows me the link blogs from people I've never known. Even as my RSS feed reader subscribers ticked upward, my subscribers are largely an enigma. A small fraction of them make comments here, or send me e-mail. Now, I can go to ReadBurner, click on the names of people who have shared my items, and find them for the first time.

This alone is a very powerful thing.

And Alexander's not done. ReadBurner just launched a "Stats" page highlighting the most active link bloggers, the most common sources for shared items, and most common authors - the very beginning of exactly what Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel and I have been asking for Google to do for the better part of a year. (See below screenshot)



Whether this addition was spurred forward by a similar feature debuted by "Shared Reader" I saw in the middle of last week or not isn't certain, but it's impossible to know. After all, "Shared Reader", after a very public debut, both here, and on Mashable, looks to be down at the moment. Good thing ReadBurner is still up and innovating.

10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads

Amid the discussion of Google's sneaking in a social network, little has been said about Google Reader potentially tabulating and reporting the most commonly-shared items and most popular feeds. I believe that in 2008, Google Reader will start reporting the most popular feeds, clicked items and shared items. By the end of 2008, it will become equally important for bloggers, if not more so, to be atop this list, instead of on TechMeme. Google will also integrate this information for both Facebook and iPhone, competing head to head with Mario Romero's excellent Feedheads application.

2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction

With the company being valued at $15 billion, Facebook can offer around 5 percent of the company to Kevin Rose and team at Digg and net them pre-IPO shares of what's sure to be a white-hot 2009 offering. The all-stock transaction would value Digg above $500 million, the highest possible exit for the company. Public companies, including Microsoft, will counter with $300 million of real money and be rebuffed.

3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation

eBay has done absolutely nothing with StumbleUpon since the service's $75 million acquisition. Unlike PayPal, which was a natural fit, StumbleUpon has no fit within the ecosystem of eBay. A more acquisition-savvy businesses, like Yahoo! or News Corp, will end up with the property by the end of the year. Expect this to accelerate alongside management changes at eBay and continued fallout after the Skype disaster. What it will do is pocket eBay some serious cash. This time, StumbleUpon goes for north of $200M.

4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support

Moving outside of its 140-character niche, Twitter will enable bored microbloggers to show exactly what they are doing with still photos and 15 second video clips. Despite the novelty wearing off, many will continue to do so, gaining us precious photos of the window over their computer desk, overexposed facial closeups and pictures of their breakfast. The service will be integrated with Picasa, Flickr and Photobucket.

5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion

Some time in 2008, Apple's Boot Camp application will no longer require a restart to run Windows applications. Users will be able to natively run Microsoft Outlook, Project, Access and all other Windows-only applications alongside their Mac OS X applications on any new Mac. While developers may decry the competition to Parallels and VMWare Fusion, Apple will remain quiet, and slowly take over the market.

6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking

By the end of 2008, either Firefox, Safari or Opera will natively ship with the ability to block all ad banners and Google AdSense. Publishers and bloggers will make a lot of noise about it, while secretly avoiding ads themselves. A significant percentage of early adopters will change browsers solely for this feature.

7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences

Early adopters always looking for an edge will move away from Bloglines and Google Reader in search for something more cutting-edge. Many will turn to FriendFeed and Assetbar, following the latter's launch, to find a rich feed reader with social networking features. However, neither service will enjoy a significant market share prior to the end of 2008, and neither will be acquired by the end of 2008.

8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable

Despite advances in video capture and broadband speeds, Web users will not gravitate toward long-form video blogs, choosing instead to stick with text and photography. Only the rare extreme niche businesses will find any success with utilizing video for blogging.

9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office

The introduction of video rentals on iTunes will not only force a dramatic subscriber exit for Netflix and reduced rentals at Blockbuster, but will also further slow attendance at movie theaters nationwide, as consumers find the service good enough, and much less inexpensive than a night out.

10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble

After joining FastCompany in early 2008, Robert Scoble will be at first jubilant, have initial success, and then plateau. While he will remain tremendously popular, there will already be discussions by the end of 2008 as to where he will end up in 2009, giving ValleyWag and Uncov, among others, plenty to gossip about.

Other 2008 predictions:
Jeremy Toeman: Technology Predictions for 2008
Paris Lemon: The Year Ahead 2008: 17 Predictions
The Economist: Technology in 2008
Mahalo: 2008 Technology Predictions
Center Networks: 2008 Predictions from CenterNetworks

BlogBurst Intertwines New Media With the Old

Recently, I enrolled this blog in BlogBurst, a service which opts in your posts to traditional media, including Reuters, Fox News, and USA Today. It only took a few minutes to configure, and was worth taking a look at. Now, as of this morning, my first post, as far as I know, has been added to the Reuters news services, sitting alongside other wire stories from Reuters journalists.

See: Apple Finally Getting Around to iTunes Movie Rentals

This is both a positive development, and a negative one. It's good to gain the blog additional exposure, and have my content read by a new audience, but it also puts my posts on par with those from professional journalists with real-world fact checkers, editors and sources. Additionally, ads sold alongside the wire story will be gaining Reuters revenue, and not me.

I don't expect significant traffic to be referred my way from this service. It's just another distribution medium, like Digg, TechMeme or StumbleUpon. But this one comes with an old media brand.

Three Itty Bitty Digg Clones You Might Not Know

The popularity and growth of Digg cannot be overstated. Despite Slashdot's having nearly a decade's headstart, Kevin Rose and crew developed a simple solution that has become the engine to emulate. And while many others have written stories on the "Attack of the Digg Clones", summarizing competition from Reddit and others, I've seen a small handful of niche sites starting up that may or may not gain traction over time. They say 9 of every 10 startups fails, but on the Web, with the cost to start a new project being so low, companies or sites can float along with little traction and not feel pressured to shut down or have a liquidity event.

Here are a few Digg clones you might not know. The more "niche" they seem, the more likely they might be to find an audience uninterested in fighting for a spot among the unwashed hordes. And you probably won't be shocked that all three... are in Beta.

1. DigWin (www.digwin.com)

DigWin launched in beta more than a year ago (See: digWin.com Goes Beta: "Microsofties" Rejoice!), focusing on Microsoft technology-centric news only. Unsurprisingly, the top headlines on the site are typically focused on Microsoft as a company, the Windows operating system, or the surrounding developer community.

Unlike Digg, where it usually takes a few hundred "Diggs" to make the front page, DigWin's low traffic means only 2 or 3 "votes" are needed to be considered the "latest hot news". My first brush with this site was when a reader voted in my story on .PST imports to GMail.

2. BlogsferaNews (www.blogsferanews.com)

BlogsferaNews looks extremely new. In fact, a quick Google Search doesn't land any hits, with the exception of the site, and the owner's Technorati profile. Blogsfera, which I can only assume is Italian for "Blogosphere", also has a primary focus on technology, ranging from Video Games and Gadgets to Internet, Linux and Software.

The site is so new that only a dozen participants have submitted stories to the site, and unsurprisingly, almost 100% of those stories have successfully reached the front page.

Typical vote counts to reach the front page are between 5 and 20. So far, the only story I've ever written to hit the site has 3 votes. (It Could Be a Boring... Slow... Cold... TV Winter)

3. StartupNewz (www.startupnewz.com)

This site's name gives away its focus - Startup News. The site's authors have tried to make it a catch-all of startup news, including commentary on venture capital funding, social networking trends and global adoption of wireless. (See the StartupNewz blog)

In addition to the content submission portion of the site, which, like BlogsferaNews, takes 5-20 votes, the authors also have an extensive photo library from recent Silicon Valley events, including TechCrunch, Office 2.0 and the Churchill Club. (See StartupNewz Photos)

StartupNewz is just getting off the ground. Despite some stories having 20 votes, only 10 users have submitted stories thus far, dominated by the top two users, who have submitted 224 and 115 respectively. That could be a sign you could have an input on the community by getting in early, or that it would forever stay small.

As mentioned, all three sites are in beta. And with the simplicity of starting such sites, there's no doubt there are dozens or hundreds more out there. But as the one-time dominance of Slashdot shows, even the big guys fade sometime. And just maybe you'll be hearing a lot more about these (and others) as people get Digg fatigue and move on.

FriendFeed Continues Upgrades, Separates Items

Last night, social network and update aggregation service FriendFeed upgraded their servers, taking the popular site down for about an hour and coming back with something unexpected, a small, but much-appreciated, upgrade.

The site, which posts all your updates from a variety of online services in one place, including those from Google Reader, Blogger, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, Netflix and more, used to aggregate your updates in a single block, organized by service.

For example, if I added 3 items to my Google Reader shared link blog, it used to say:

"Louis Gray shared Why I said “mugnormous” the other day, SmugMug Automatically Scales Photos and Video, Supports High Definition Video, and one other item on Google Reader".

Now, instead, it splits these out in a more readable way, such as:

Louis Gray shared three items on Google Reader

Why I said “mugnormous” the other day
8 hours ago

SmugMug Automatically Scales Photos and Video, Supports High Definition Video
9 hours ago

one more >>

In the last month or so, FriendFeed has been spitting out small, but useful updates. The service added a utility whereby I can share items directly to its feed (much like del.icio.us, but without it), the option to make comments to others' posts, and to say whether you "Like" a specific item (much like Digg).

FriendFeed has become a must-visit destination for me multiple times a day, as I can get a very narrow picture into what others I've selected to follow are doing or finding interesting. Some of those I'm following include Bret Taylor, who announced the upgrade, MG Siegler, Mihai Parparita, Dave Winer and Scott Beale.

I strongly request you sign up as well.

Friendfeed Upgrades Enable Service to Mimic Digg

Slowly but surely, Friendfeed has been adding features which have made the service a more fully integrated and go-to destination for me multiple times throughout the day to share news and learn what others like me have found interesting, as I can see their Twitter, Digg, Flickr, and Google Reader shared items updates, all at once. Now, with the addition of comments, "Like" capabilities (the equivalent of "Digging") and the ability to share items directly through Friendfeed, the service has expanded to more than just a single repository for date from other services, instead being a platform for new content.

I first became interested in Friendfeed as the service could aggregate friends' Web activity in a single place. But in recent weeks, it's grown to be much more. In October, they added a function to say you like an item or get the feed by e-mail.

Today, Friendfeed introduced a "bookmarklet" that allows me to share Web pages on the service, independent of other Web sites, like Digg or StumbleUpon, directly to those friends who have opted to subscribe to my own feed.

Unlike Digg, Friendfeed isn't open to the unwashed masses, but instead, is open only through invites. Let me know if you want one.

Friendfeed Follows Friends' Web Activity

I've long been a Google Reader and Google Reader shared items link blog advocate. The service lets me call out to you what I'm reading in the blogosphere, and what I find interesting. But for me, and for many other people using a wide variety of Web 2.0 applications, my link blog only covers one facet of my activity.

Where Google leaves off, Friendfeed steps in, combining my updates from around the Web, not only from Google Reader, but also noting when I update louisgray.com, when I add new items to del.icio.us, when I Digg new stories, find something via StumbleUpon or add photos to Flickr. Others also use it to display their activity on Twitter and Pownce. This creates a feed for not just one facet of my activity, but many.

That answers the "feed" portion of Friend feed. But the "Friend" portion takes the service up a notch. I can subscribe to friends and watch their activity one by one, or go to a combined "Friends Feed" and see all their combined activity. From this page, I can see if MG Siegler Dugg a story, if Fred Wilson added a new post to his blog, or if Jeremy Zawodny added a new bookmark to his del.icio.us items. It's a lot like reading Robert Scoble's shared link blog, but one written by multiple people, and with more sources.

The site is currently in beta, and ramping up, having been started by a few notable ex-Googlers, looking to gain traction as the service goes viral. Their blog shows their new office space, as they're just getting started.

My feed is here. If you need an invitation to the service, just say so in the comments, and I'll send it via e-mail.

ShowHype Connects Hollywood With Silicon Valley Geekery

Take the community submission format of BallHype or Digg, the blog ranking algorithms of a TechMeme leaderboard, and sprinkle in the gossip and glamour of Hollywood, and you get the unique community news and discussion site of ShowHype, which debuts today, brought to you by the minds behind BallHype.

The latest "Hype" in the family aims to take the mantra of "The best stories, the biggest fans" and apply it to a world where people are more familiar with movie scripts than JavaScript, and the box office is more closely watched than the NASDAQ. ShowHype users can log in to view the most popular entertainment news, videos and blogs of the day, submit new articles or even create unique ShowHype stories for what's sure to become a focused audience trading in the latest Hollywood dirt.


The ShowHype front page highlights today's stories with the most buzz.

Six months after the successful debut of BallHype, the site's creators, Jason and Erin Gurney, just may have another sleeper hit on their hands. Speaking to them a few weeks ago about the site in a sneak preview at their home, we talked about how they're eager to find fun topics, like entertainment and sports, for their users, and are steering clear of more divisive subjects. So don't wait around for PoliticsHype or GodHype any time soon!

Anybody familiar with BallHype will find the ShowHype interface extremely familiar. If you already have a BallHype login, the same credentials will get you into ShowHype. In fact, I've already started a users' group in ShowHype for "TiVo Fans", where we can share tips, news and tricks. If you're into Hollywood in a big way, or even if you're the more casual type who secretly wants to know what exactly is going on with Lindsey Lohan, Kate Hudson, and Justin Timberlake, then ShowHype should be a must-bookmark destination.

Also see: TechCrunch | ParisLemon | Frantic Industries

Tech Blog Link Power: Spiky Visitors or Sticky Visitors?

Download the Full-Size Image

While many tech bloggers live for the instant, drug-like satisfaction of hitting the Digg front page, or getting picked up by StumbleUpon or Slashdot, that rush of one-time visitors doesn't last long, and they won't come back again. A Digg visitor is usually one that won't comment, won't bookmark, and won't remember your URL.

Repeat visitors to tech blogs usually aren't forged by traffic spikes from well-known news hubs. Nor are they from search engines. It's a rare blog or Web site that can drive both high levels of both one-time visitors and repeat visitors. In fact, in my experience over the last two years of technology blogging, the very best sources for repeat, engaged visitors are:

1. Robert Scoble / Scobleizer
2. TechMeme
3. My own comments on similarly-focused blogs
4. Links from other B-List Bloggers
5. Shared Link Blogs (such as those from Scoble, Webomatica and others)

In fact, while I don't want to give Robert all the credit here, I have seen his hand in some of my highest-traffic posts. Often, his addition of my posts to his shared link blog or his own blog later leads to other bloggers linking, which pushes my post to TechMeme, in turn, leading to more follow-on posts and residual traffic.

But I can't just sit around and "write for Scoble", hoping he'll throw pixie dust my way. In order to engage with the crowd and encourage return visits, I need to link to others, make comments on other similar blogs, and make tools for engagement, like my RSS feed and MyBlogLog, easily accessible.

Thus, I've broken the Link Power Index into four sections:

1. High spikiness, low stickiness (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Megite, Slashdot)
2. Low spikiness, low stickiness (Google, Facebook, Technorati, Yahoo!)
3. Low spikiness, high stickiness (RSS, word of mouth, comments, LinkedIn, B-List linking)
4. High spikiness, high stickiness (Scobleizer, TechMeme, Shared Link Blogs, MacSurfer)

Last month, "BeachBum" asked, in regards to some of my less-desirable visitors from Google Images, "Do you find that the porn traffic converts or do they just come and go?". The answer is no. None of them convert. Unless I start writing about porn full-time, they're not coming back, and that's okay. While a one-time visitor may have found a keyword sequence on Google that had your blog listed #1 overall, it's unlikely they're your demographic.

In fact, surprisingly, links from B-List and A-List bloggers have been more useful to me than links from more mainstream media. While I was flattered to see coverage of one of September's posts on MSNBC.com and the Houston Chronicle, they didn't drive the traffic of a strong link aggregator, and their visitors, as far as I could tell, were one-offs.

If you want a one-time spike of traffic, go ahead and write to make the front page of Digg (Yuvi Panda's Round 2 analysis of Digg's front page shows how...) or get a group of friends to Stumble your content. But to cultivate readers and engage with the blogging community, you should comment often, share ideas with your peers, and hope somebody with real pull, like Scoble, or MacSurfer, notices your effort.

The above image is how I've interpreted sticky traffic vs. spiky traffic to louisgray.com in the last year-plus. Do you have any comments or insight? Am I off the mark, or have you seen similar behavior? Please let me know, and feel free to use the image yourself. Links back are always appreciated.

Also on this topic: Chris Brogan: Scoble Effect Better Than Digg and Search Engine Land: December 2006 Statistics Review

Yuvi, the Stat-Master, Analyzes Digg

As with Yuvi's previous work, analyzing Robert Scoble and Engadget, his insight into one of the Web's leading, most popular properties, this time with Digg, is extremely impressive. His analysis shows how hard it is to reach the front page of Digg, what days see the most front page stories, and how the site has evolved over the years. Amazing detail.

My one front page Digg story to date? Google's Earth Day Logo Makes a Splash (102 diggs, 18 comments)

For Apple Legal, Resistance is Futile

As I mentioned in a quick note on The Apple Blog yesterday, the latest rumor du jour is that Apple is set to soon release shorter, wider versions of the iPod Nano in a variety of new colors. While the initial "spy shots" on some sites have been blurry at best, subsequent requests by Apple Legal to a number of those sites, from 9to5mac.com to Gizmodo, and most recently, Paris Lemon, for them to remove the images, seems to be a lot like asking for the barn door to be shut after the cows have been released.

Once a rumor or leak hits the Web, it's out, period. If it's an Apple rumor, it's likely on Digg. Other Mac users, like I did, downloaded the images to their hard drives en mass, in the event the takedown notices were issued. If the photos were reposted anywhere, they're on blogs, and Google Images would be next to reindex the images in their library, and cache them forever. Archive.org may crawl the page and take a picture. Even if Apple Legal reached out to everyone, and everyone complied, those images are out for good.

It's an oft-repeated sport for the Mac rumors sites to seek out leaked info, and then for Apple Legal to go after them. But even though I respect Apple's need for secrecy and privacy and for them to break the news, in the world of the Web, with such a maniacal fan base as they have, resistance is futile, and they might as well focus more on those internally who broke the rules, instead of shooting the messengers.

Not All Links Are Created Equal

There's all sorts of hubbub on the blogosphere in the last few days, over how one ranks authority of bloggers' influence. It is in the aggregate number of links, or the aggregate number of individual sites linking? Should all that be discarded due to the advent of microblogging? Given the current thinking is to throw out total page views in favor of total minutes on a site, as well, it seems the whole concept of how we measure authority is in flux. But while most argue tit for tat on whether a blurb on Twitter counts as much as a link from another blog, there should be no secret that not all links are created equal.

In fact, while one blog could dedicate its story to you, it may not result in 1% of the traffic you can expect from another highly trafficked source, whether it be Digg, or StumbleUpon, TechCrunch, TechMeme, Scoble, etc. Compounding this issue, there is a significant population of Web sites that don't even enter into the radar of statistics aggregators like Technorati, due to the fact they aren't classified as blogs or "the live Web".

A few self-focused examples:

1) Today, my site traffic spiked in the middle of the day to about 8-10x normal traffic. Instead of 100+ visitors per day, my norm, I saw 100+ just between 1 and 2 this afternoon, only to see the one-time spike go away, and traffic return to normal. Was there new content? No. Was there any reason the content got less relevant in the space of an hour? No. So what happened?

A StumbleUpon user found my story from last week on Facebook where I suggested the site would go the way of Friendster and GeoCities before it. Submitted to the popular service, I was seeing 25-40 concurrent visitors on the site, with new ones every minute. Then, as quickly as the spurt arrived, they vanished. Yet, the one link had given me a boost of 100 visitors, not exactly chump change.

2) On July 5th, we saw a similar spike in traffic, to about twice normal, thanks to 100+ visitors coming to the site to see my simple comments that I had gone a full week without filling my need for an iPhone. Again, without any promotion on my part, the visitors came. So what happened?

MacSurfer happened. MacSurfer posted a link to the story, sending all sorts of Apple afficionados my way. Like Digg and StumbleUpon users, those one-time visitors are a cheap date. They show up, don't comment, and move on. But there's no better place to drop a Mac link than MacSurfer, the granddaddy of all Mac link aggregation sites. Of course, MacSurfer doesn't even hit Technorati's radar, so they had no idea the link had occurred.

3) Just two days prior, on July 3rd, we had another spike, thanks to Robert Scoble's mentioning my post on addicting games that can reduce productivity in a story he had written on the Web-based game phenomenon. Interestingly enough, though the Scoble crowd dropped in to the site in strong numbers, not even his A-list credibility could send me as many unique visitors as MacSurfer and StumbleUpon in this round. His crowd was more in the 80-100 range.

It's hard to determine what posts will get traffic, and which ones won't, or which ones will draw comments, and which will be ignored. There's also always going to be interest from people to determine what the most successful, influential, or highly trafficked sites are. It's clear that a link from me to Scoble would drive maybe 1-3% the traffic his way as he could drive mine, so anybody in the business of counting links and assuming they are all equal is absolutely off their rocker. Not all links are equal, and someday, somebody will come up with a great algorithm to show just how much "more equal" one can be versus another.

The Biggest Blogs Aren't Really Blogs Any More

Though my stance is likely a controversial one, I don't believe that the most successful blogs out there are really blogs in the true sense of the word as they were originally intended. Instead, the uber-blogs, like TechCrunch, GigaOM, Engadget, Mashable, Read/WriteWeb and others, have morphed into a new phase of their lives, mimicking old world media.

While millions of people continue to create popular and less popular Web logs chronicling their thoughts, lives and activities, TechCrunch and the rest have instead turned into product announcement and release launching pads, typically lacking a personal touch or insight. They have evolved from their own mouthpieces to instead, mouthpieces for others.

Gone is the personal touch and feeling that is so embedded in the blogosphere, replaced by an air of elitism and selective news aggregation mixed with startups gleeful over a successful data point of public relations.

It's been proven that popular blogs can retain the very personal one-to-one conversational style. Great examples of this include Robert Scoble's Scobleizer, Dave Winer's Scripting.com, Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion and Jason Calacanis. But especially over the last 12 months, you can see a divergence, as the blog powerhouses are much less about the comments and conversation, and more about them acting like media. Meanwhile, old media, primarily those covering technology, are adding interactive tools made famous through blogging, like comments, and the ubiquitous "Digg This" icons on every story. The convergence of old media and new media is happening before our eyes.

This change isn't necessarily all bad, but I strongly believe the time to refer to these new media sites as "blogs" is gone. TechCrunch, in my opinion, is no more of a blog than is Computerworld, InfoWorld or eWeek, these days. Even InfoWorld has gone solely online, ditching their print magazine equivalent. The site's historical roots are truely embedded in the blog world, but you could say the site has grown up - now with a full network of sites, and even a trade show for startups looking to use the platform as their springboard to fame.

Will all blogs that find success move away from their humble origins? Likely not. But even as we enjoy the scoops, product introductions, reviews and obituaries from TechCrunch, GigaOM and others, we should make a conscious attempt to recognize in this new world of media and the "24 second news cycle", that the landscape is rapidly changing and definitions need constant tweaking.

Unpopular Opinion: Digg Revolt Is a Bad Precedent

Unless you've been away from the computer for the last 24 hours, you are likely familiar with yesterday's amazing mob-like takeover of the Digg site by its users, angry about the site's removal of a submitted story which offered up a code removing copy protection from HD-DVDs on Linux. While the crack itself was esoteric, and probably didn't mean a hill of beans to the vast majority of the site's users, the ensuing take-down was the effect of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, spawning hundreds and hundreds of follow-on submissions that swamped the front page, even leading to the eventual, short-term shutdown of the site late yesterday.

Amid the din, Digg tried to explain its stance, saying they had to comply with copyright owners. But that just fanned the flames, and eventually, Digg founder Kevin Rose capitulated, saying "Today was an insane day" and added "We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code..."

The inmates had taken over the asylum.

Response to the melee is a lot like rubbernecking on the freeway. Everybody, jaws agape, had something to say on the subject, from TechCrunch and Mashable!, to parislemon to Digg competitor Slashdot. Many are cheering on the user base. Others are wondering if the takedown notice was even valid in the first place. But to me, as fun as it is to watch the mob, I absolutely see where Digg was coming from, and the response, to give the users what they want, is in dangerous territory.

Yesterday's explosion was around a code most of us would never use. But what is to stop the next round of Digg mobbery from promoting software piracy as Microsoft Windows Vista registration codes are passed around, or the latest TV shows and films are posted to BitTorrent? As Digg had first said yesterday, "We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights." But the sheer volume of users took over, and changed the rules. If enough of the mob decides tomorrow that leaking a DIVX copy of the new Simpsons movie online is the topic du jour of the day, they could again revolt against Digg and make sure that Digg's hands are tied. Now, there's precedent that Digg will walk away from a tough fight, when it threatens to cripple the popular site.

There is a population on the Web all too happy to find new ways to get something for free - whether they be film and TV downloads or MP3 files, software or pornography. Now that Digg has shown it can be used for nefarious methods, another barrier has been taken down between the Internet's dark side and those who have always followed the rules.

How Much RSS is Too Much RSS?

Engadget's Ryan Block asks the question today. "Is Engadget’s daily wall-to-wall coverage too much of a good thing?" Are subscribers to the Engadget feed, who can anticipate upwards of 30 new stories a day, inundated by having too much to read, some of which might not find their fancy?

The issue is a very real one for us on the bleeding edge of information consumption. For those of us RSS wonks who have upwards of 100 or so individual feeds, finding the time to read hundreds of posts on all topics can be a demanding task. I consistently scroll through 500 or so articles on Google Reader every weekday, and about half that number on the weekend. Engadget is one of the most prolific blogs, usurping even ESPN.com's main feed.

According to my Google Reader Trends, Engadget posted 28.3 items per day over the last 30 days. Of those 848 items, I read 100% of them. Only an aggregate newsfeed I developed for work was more busy, tagging me with new items 42.7 times a day. The other mega-feeds? ESPN.com with 26.8 items, TechMeme with 22.8, Slashdot with 20.4, Eschaton with 18.5, Talking Points Memo with 15.2, Daily Kos with 14.6, and Mashable with 14.4 posts daily.

Combined, those alone tally more than 200 posts a day, good for 40% of my reading. But in terms of quality over quantity, Engadget is among the very best. I've considered unsubscribing from Slashdot, which seems to lag Digg or Engadget these days. I actually did unsubscribe from Boing Boing a few weeks ago because the signal to noise ratio was too high. I've also considered reducing my political feeds like Eschaton and Talking Points Memo, which tend to be duplicates or feature too many "New Open Thread" type posts that don't add value to the RSS reader.

As Ryan asks what the solution is, I would argue that in Engadget's case, it's not to write less through reducing the amount of posts that are accepted. Instead, it's to better let readers know that reduced sets of feeds are available on specific topics. Engadget, like ESPN.com and other busy sites, offers the ability to subscribe to channels dedicated to Gaming, HDTV, Storage or Wireless, for example. Rather than get all 30 stories a day, the focused reader would get 2 to 10. It's not about reducing options, it's about being a smarter consumer.

I see the onus to be on the reader to better maintain their consumption of news than it is on the newsmaker to reduce their output. In the world of massive information, we as consumers should get ever more adept about how we get our news, and how we share it. So Ryan, don't worry about us being forced to read too much. Let us make the hard decisions, and you keep focused on bringing the news.

Monday's Record Blog Traffic Leaves Digg Hangover

It's hard to know which posts are going to gain attention in the blogosphere, and which ones won't. Though I sometimes can call winners early, on occasion I am surprised. Sunday was one of those times, as a quick post I submitted on Google's Earth Day logo which featured the Google name as a melting iceberg was distributed throughout the Web, first landing on Robert Scoble's Link Blog, then on TechMeme, and eventually hit the front page of Digg, if only briefly. My observation that the company had subtly highlighted the crisis of global warming resulted in a wide range of comments here and on Digg, and multiple blog posts from supporters and detractors of the theory.

All told, after seeing above-average traffic Sunday, Monday morning's traffic went from surge to explosion. Hitting the front page of Digg saw visitors pour into the site at the rate of 1,500 in one hour - quite the achievement for me, considering peak traffic to the site for a single day was previously less than 600 (That's what I get for being small potatoes). At one point, Sitemeter said that if the rate kept up, I'd be over 1 million individual visits in a 30-day period. By end of day, we ended up with just under 3,000 unique visitors, 98% or so who had come just to see the Google Earth Day logo story. And as is very common with visitors from Digg, they didn't stick around. Though my total RSS feed subscribers bumped from 54 to 62, there was no momentous surge.

With the dust settled, we're almost back to normal here, staying under the fray. But in the wake of yesterday's traffic binge, you can see some of the conversations that emerged.

CNET: Google logo take Earth Day temperature
IP Democracy: Has Google Taken a Stand on Global Warming?
JD on EP: Google "Earth Day"
SearchViews: Green Advertising Moves Online for Earth Day

Any concerns I previously had about not meeting March 2007 traffic (See post: General Blog Direction: Up and to the Right) are now gone. Yesterday's spike put April ahead of March for good. Now I have to see if I can sustain the momentum.

CEO Search Caps A Busy Week for Technorati

David Sifry, CEO for Technorati, the Web's leading resource for blog statistics, searching and tagging, offers up an excellent case study for transparency for companies immersed in the world of Web 2.0. After I had guessed earlier this week that Technorati was going after spam blogs and later, that the company was about to give an update to the "State of the Blogosphere" or "State of the Live Web", no less than Sifry came here to confirm that was indeed the case. He even posted a comment letting me know when it was published. Yet, rumors continued to swirl around the company, saying that Technorati was either up for sale, or that he would be leaving the CEO role. Today, he wrote on his blog that Technorati was indeed looking for a new CEO.

Earlier this week on louisgray.com, David wrote, "I'm not going anywhere, I'm very very happy at Technorati!!!", to a commentor who suggested his departure was imminent. He again today said "I have no intention of leaving," and in his version of events, says that it was he who approached the company's board with the idea to change roles. While it's not too uncommon to see early founders change roles as companies grow, it is less common to have that change initiated by the founder themselves, so its possible the board and others had been exerting pressure, but of course, I have absolutely zero insight there.

In the Web space, customers care a lot more about products, services, functionality and integration than they do the individuals pulling the levers and writing the code. Kevin Rose at Digg is a great name and icon for his company, Mena and Ben Trott do the same for Six Apart. But even as transparency in blogging increases communications and openness, the mega-egos of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison who ruled tech in the 1980s and 1990s are going to be less important, I believe. Sifry, as far as I am concerned, continues to do a great job marketing and promoting the service, above marketing himself. Technorati, despite its occasional bumps is still unparalleled in its capabilities, and I've particularly enjoyed some of the new widgets they released earlier this week, which you can see on this blog, from blog reaction tallies to a button displaying Web influence.

So David, if you're still visiting and still reading, we wish you luck in the search, and hope that whichever direction the company takes, that you continue to promote great technology and innovation.

(Additional Coverage: TechCrunch and Startup Meme)

Hype It Up: Ballhype Is Here to Change the Game

Take the community submitted news engine of Digg or Slashdot, the fanaticism of sports followers from SportsBlogs Nation, sprinkle in Google-like spidering of more than 1,600 sports blogs, and you have what just may be the perfect recipe for a breakthrough destination sports site. Ballhype, who suggests you can "Change the game" and "Hype it Up", offers all this and more, officially launching today after an extensive beta, of which I have been part.

Like Digg, Ballhype users can find new stories and post them to the service. Users can vote to "hype it up" or "vote it down" (like digg and bury), and those stories with the most positive votes rise to the top of the most-hyped list. Like Digg, you can discuss specific stories, but unlike Digg, Ballhype also pulls down stories from around the Web's vast sports blogosphere, from SportsBlogs Nation sites, including Athletics Nation and Sactown Royalty, to others including Deadspin and The Hardball Times.

More than just a story submission and voting site, Ballhype takes fans where they want to go, to a near-live scoreboard showing the day's games from all major sports, including the option to pick the winners before the games start, and have your own win/loss record ranked among the leaders on Ballhype. (I have to admit I started strong but was later shown I should stay out of the sportsbook at Vegas)

Ballhype also features extensive automatic tagging. If I submit a Sacramento Kings story involving Ron Artest, both the Kings and Ron Artest are tagged, and I can see all stories that have the same tags. I can also drill down by team or player, or specific blogs to find out as much or as little as I want to.

But best of all, the site is by the fans, for the fans. Some of the earliest participants, in addition to me, are the very bloggers behind some of the most popular sports sites. Fans have already created groups for "Bay Area Sports", "Basketball Addicts" and "Philadelphia Sports Fans", for example, so those with shared interests can find others who bleed the team colors and bite their nails all the way from preseason to the off-season draft picks. This is fanaticism at its finest, and yet another great example of how the Web can foster community regardless of location.

So, hype it up. After all, an authority no less than TechCrunch already noticed that "Sports Fanatics Will Love This". They will.

Digg Hits 1 Million Users - World Domination Next

There's rapid growth, and then there's exponential growth. If you're a growing Web-based business like Digg, where the massive number of users and page views can be monetized to accelerate revenue, the latter is clearly much more preferred, and today, Digg founder Kevin Rose was excited to announce the site had passed the 1 million user mark, in just over two years after the site's start. Crossing the milestone signals continued expansion for the site, which has eclipsed Slashdot in tech news relevance, if not yet in total users, and has become a go-to site to see the day's popular news and oddities.

While the achievement is fantastic, and as Rose mentioned, "a point I never dreamed of", Digg isn't the only Web 2.0 company to reach such an illustrious mark.

* StumbleUpon achieved 1 million users in July of 2006, four years after its inception, and, like Digg, enables users to submit stories and rate them. (Source: Mashable)

* Del.icio.us reported 1 million users in September 2006, just under three years since its start, and saw its growth accelerate following acquisition by Yahoo! earlier that year. In fact, at the time, reporters lauded the service for being much larger than Digg. (Source: TechCrunch)

* In January, Second Life said they were set to exceed 3 million users, and that 1 million of those accounts had logged in during the previous two months. (Source: Second Life Insider)

* LinkedIn says they have more than 9 million subscribers, with 1,070,300 or so being 3 degrees away or less in my network alone.

Meanwhile, Slashdot, the original Digg-like story submission engine, has well more than 1,000,000 users, even if they don't have all the buzz. I clocked in as user 104,197 some time back in 1999, though I haven't been all that active, constantly reading, occasionally submitting stories, but mostly just watching.

What does this mean? Simply that the Web has a lot of active users interested in sharing news and information, and that the most popular brands will quickly gather millions of users if they offer differentiated services. That Digg has gotten there as fast as it has is quite laudable, if not a surprise. Good luck on your race to 10 million, Digg.

Digg Running Circles Around Slashdot for Tech News

Slashdot used to be the ultimate site for all news geek-related. If you got your news article or blog post on the front page of Slashdot, it was hallowed ground, promising tremendous traffic. One of the Internet's new media pioneers, the site relies on users to submit articles, and for these articles to be selected by one of a handful of editors for addition to Slashdot's front page. Yet, for the latest tech news, Digg not only has a wider range of articles, but front-page news hits that community much more quickly. By the time the news hits Slashdot, it's almost guaranteed I've already read it.

Today, it was announced that Viacom asked YouTube to remove more than 100,000 videos, ostensibly for copyright infringement. By early morning, Digg user "tommytrc" posted a Reuters story announcing the demand.

Less than an hour after his submission, the story had received enough Diggs to be considered popular, making the front page. As of 9:30 pacific time, it had received 897 diggs, and 134 comments.



Yet, it wasn't until 7:30 p.m. pacific time that it reached the front page of Slashdot, more than 10 hours later.



The second most recent important story on Slashdot at the same time, covers a growing lawsuit against Nvidia by Vista users who feel misled by the graphics card manufacturer. It reached the site shortly after 5 p.m. Pacific tonight.



Yet, on Digg, the same frustrations toward Nvidia had erupted nearly two days ago, in a piece submitted by "sadonomic" called "Nvidia - Peeing on the Vista Community?", which garnered 570 diggs, and more than 200 comments.



If Slashdot is to regain its lead in tech news against newcomers like Digg, which rely more on community participation and voting than editor moderation, it will have to make massive changes. Unlike traditional journalism, Slashdot's editors don't author original stories, or add much of an editorial bias, so their role as gatekeepers is highly limited. If the site's editors aren't there to add value, but instead, just to add time, users, like me, are going to move to Digg and leave Slashdot behind.

WTF? Technorati Unveils Heat Index

On the Web, there are three types of downtime - one being that you are overloaded with traffic and can't respond to requests, the second being for scheduled maintenance, and the third, when new products are being introduced. If The Apple Store is down, herds of Macophiles jump into a tissy, and last night, Technorati followed YouTube's footsteps by taking the entire site down to launch the anticipated WTF feature, standing for "Where's The Fire"?

Though the site's frequent instability still causes me concern, the WTF feature shows Technorati is trying to capitalize on the details they have on the blogosphere's tendencies to link and talk about specific topics in near real-time. Just as Google Reader announced Trends, based on the data they had on its customers, Technorati is similarly expanding their feature set, due to their database's detail.

The company's CEO, David Sifry, explains the introduction, saying, "WTF is a big experiment; we're entrusting the most valuable real estate to you - our community - and we think it's going to be a powerful way to make Technorati more useful to you."

This explanation further pushes the blog search site into the user-generated content realm that is so hot in the social networking space these days. I guess one of the first things that will debut in WTF is WTF itself.

Good luck, Technorati. We'll be watching to see if WTF stands for "What Technical Foundation?" or "Wow, They Fixed it!"