The Guidewire

It is entirely possible that I have tried every bookmarking service invented. It is the top tech headache on my list that has never been adequately solved. I promise you, if it exists, I’ve tried it. Some last longer than others - Yoono hung around for a bit, Del.icio.us went out the door very quickly, and NetRocket got me briefly excited - but none has exhibited staying power. Generally speaking, these services put too much focus on the social aspect and neglect to solve the basic problem - helping me find and work with my bookmarks quickly and easily. Will the recently upgraded Diigo, which initially launched at DEMOfall 07, prove to be the answer to my bookmarking headaches? Time will tell. One thing is for sure: with a slate of features that covers most every issue in the bookmarking/sharing/highlighting game, this service is sure to have something for everyone.

At first glance, Diigo seems all over the map. The service offers bookmarking, highlighting of text within a page, commenting on a site for others to see, sending options, groups for networking and much more. To label it as a simple bookmark service would be unfair; it’s much more than that and could very well emerge as an oft-used research tool in my browser (that would be Tech Headache #2 on my list.) There’s much I like about the service and a few things I dislike. Though initially overwhelming, Diigo has been made as user friendly as possible by its developers. The multitude of features could easily kludge up a site but the Diigo team has made quick work of them. It’s design and UI are top-notch - so much so that I recommended Diigo to another company as an excellent example of creating elegance out of chaos. I do wish the search function was a bit deeper and more robust; if a bookmark isn’t explicitly tagged, search doesn’t find it. For a bookmarking service to truly work its way into my heart, I need a better search. For more detailed reviews of the product itself, check out Web Worker Daily and Webware.

What I find most interesting about Diigo is precisely what turns some off: the scope. This is one of the most full-featured and in-depth Web 2.0 products I’ve seen in a long time. Rather than focus on one headache of the social Web, the company is aiming to solve seemingly all of them. Ironically, one of my bugaboos in startups is a company who casts too wide a net. Pick a target market or two and laser in, I always say. When it comes to this space though - the collecting of online content for future use - I think some aggregation is overdue. The myriad services dedicated to this purpose all have their upsides, but in general only end up adding to the noise. If I can depend on one site for all my bookmarking and clipping needs, that will significantly reduce the clutter in my tool bar. From my experience so far, it’s looking like that site will be Diigo.

In a post on Thursday, WebProNews’ Jason Lee Miller takes on the TechMeme weighting algorithm based on the rankings on the sites leaderboard.

In the post, Jason wonders whether No. 1 ranked TechCrunch is really as credible a news source as CNET (No. 2) , The New York Times (No. 3), or Reuters (No. 12). Never mind that the venerable The Wall Street Journal ranks No. 17.

Certainly, there are plenty of questions to be asked about TechMeme’s rankings. Reasonable people can debate whether a showing on TechMeme endorses the credibility, popularity, or legitimacy of any blog. But with due respect, I think Jason misses the point so obvious when reviewing the leaderboards’ Top 100 sources. Jason writes that:

[The TechMeme leaderboard] shows TechCrunch as the go-to blog for all things tech or, assumedly, tech-business related.

There’s no questioning TechCrunch’s popularity, but with just a 7% presence among the many links TechMeme mines and promotes, it can hardly claim total world domination. Nor can any of the other blogs that make the leaderboard’s Top 100.

The leaderboard, in fact, is a perfect illustration of the Long Tail. Referrals from TechMeme are highly distributed, just as blog readership is. The blog-reading public hasn’t landed on one or two sites as a sole source of news, information, and opinion about the tech market. Instead, these numbers suggest that the tech-interested public reads lots of blogs in order to get, one would assume, a diverse and complete read on the industry. Whatever you think about TechMeme’s algorithm, fact is that the site is discovering links from sources that’d the average reader wouldn’t have time to investigate on his own.

It is oddly paradoxical for any social media site to claim victory over any other. That would be, after all, an anathema to the very idea of linked social media as a conversation borne out in links and referrals. More people may go to the top ranked blogs more frequently than they do to other social media sources, but the fact is they are going to a wide range of sources for news and opinion.

We didn’t make the list, not that we’re surprised or even disappointed, really. The list? 24/7 Wall Street’s ranking of the 25 Most Valuable Blogs.

While I might argue the nuance of “value” (does audience size and ad revenue trump meaningful discourse?), I am impressed by the analysis Douglas McIntyre put into valuation and ranking of the top blogs. While admitting at the outset that “there is no way to accurately put a value on blogs,” the site drew revenue estimates from data and assumptions about advertising and other commercial revenue, quality and quantity of ads, traffic and traffic growth. The site then based total value on a multiple derived from estimated operating margins, longevity of the blog, outside funding, and the dependence of a blog on its founder or lead personality.

Omitting the blogs of large media companies and blogs as the market-facing vehicle for another primary business, 24/7 Wall Street’s list shapes up like this:

1. Gawker (including Gawker, ValleyWag, Gizmodo, and Wonkette, among others): $150 million.

2.MacRumors: $85 million

3. Huffington Post: $70 million

4. PerezHilton: $48 million.

5. TechCrunch: $36 million.

6 (tied): Ars Technica $15 million.

6 (tied): Seeking Alpha $15 million.

8 (tied): Drudge Report $10 million.

8 (tied): Mashable $10 million.

10. GigaOm: $8.4 million.

Valuations quick tapper off. No. 23 Talking Points Memo is pegged at $860,000. McIntyre assigns no price to No. 24 Travelpod and to his No. 25 pick, his own 24/7 Wall St. (I recommend reading the post in which McIntrye explains his reasoning for each blog, expecting his own.)

There are a couple of take aways from this analysis, and the first is clear: Read the rest of this entry »

By gum, I think I’ve got it. My post yesterday on breaking out of our insular tech bubble to evangelize to the mass consumer spurred a good discussion on FriendFeed. There was much agreement around the idea that sharing all these neat Internet tools with mass consumers is needed. But how to do that? There were a couple of angles to the conversation: one, how to share our general insider knowledge with consumers and two, how to get people involved in FriendFeed specifically. Clare Dibble made a good point regarding the latter; that non-techies don’t have to sign up for the myriad services on FriendFeed to delve into the site. Simply by adding the FriendFeed share button to their browsers, they can start submitting interesting articles and watch the conversations ensue.

It was then that the light bulb went off. FriendFeed is the gateway to Web 2.0 for mass consumers. Read the rest of this entry »

Every industry has a certain level of insularity. It’s human nature to want to be part of the in crowd and knowing the buzzwords and inner workings of a sector carries cache. The emerging tech industry, though, takes insularity to a whole other level. It’s easy to get caught up in the morass of social services and tools; a day spent immersed in tweets and status updates, FriendFeed links and Seesmic videos can easily cloud one’s mind. Spend enough time in here and you find yourself wondering why the gas company doesn’t just send your bills via Twitter. (On second thought, that’s a hell of an idea…) So it’s always a pleasant surprise to talk to my stay-at-home-mom friends, the ones I dragged kicking and screaming to Facebook. They give me a much needed reality check as to what’s going on in the real world.

I had one of those conversations this morning with my friend Polly, who is marginally tech-savvy, mainly because she’s too busy raising three boys to be otherwise. We talked about several tech-related issues, some of which I’ll post about in the coming days. But perhaps the most interesting talk concerned Facebook, in which she bemoaned the hesitance of some of our friends to join the site. Read the rest of this entry »

I talked with SyncTV last week, a TV download service that launched in private beta in November 07 and demoed a proof-of-concept device at CES in January. While others in this space like Hulu and Joost focus on broadcast content online, SyncTV aims to clear that elusive path from the study to the den, offering downloadable content online and allowing viewers to take it offline to view as they wish. SyncTV started as a skunkworks project within Pioneer Electronics and both parties are interested in spinning it out on its own.

SyncTV is an open-standards-based subscription service that allows users unlimited downloads of home-theater-quality television shows to watch when and where they choose. It currently works on Windows, Macs and Linux PCs and will work on consumer devices by the end of 2008, including TVs and portable players. Users subscribe to channels, each about $2 per month, and can download as many current and classic shows as they like from said channels, with no viewing limits and no expiration date. As long as you remain a subscriber, you have access to all your downloaded content, which is ad-supported. Each account allows for viewing on five home devices (TVs, computers) and 10 portable devices (in-car players, portable players). The company’s open-standards approach will hopefully facilitate quick development of devices by third parties. It will launch to the public later this year with at least three major broadcast partners.

To be honest, my excitement about SyncTV was tempered somewhat when I heard about the ads. Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to dash off a quick note and point everyone to an interesting conversation that happened here on The Guidewire. I’ve written about Songkick a couple of times recently, giving the service praise for its focus on semantic-based recommendation for consumers. In my most recent post, I specifically raved about its new capability of recommending concerts to users based on their music preferences. My friend Shellee, very much a tech outsider and a live music fanatic, gave Songkick a spin and wasn’t as happy with the results. She said so in the post’s comments and, after a request from me, the company responded to her in kind.

I say this not to needle Songkick, who posted an excellent, well-reasoned reply to Shellee, but to again stress the importance of the mass consumer, a theme we return to repeatedly on this blog. Rave reviews from The 250 are great in the short run, but end-user stress-tests are the only reviews that truly matter in the end. It’s a good lesson and ego-check as we tech insiders continue to debate our role in product analysis.

The blogospheric (I’m not sure that’s a word, but I like the sound of it) introspection that emerged from Mike Arrington’s post yesterday’s post is undoubtedly a good thing. The much-valued “conversation” of social media has become downright anti-social and if the civility of discourse continues on its decline, we bloggers will destroy the art form.

As Carla pointed out in her post, Robert Scoble’s mini-manifesto this morning called for a civil community to reclaim the values of early blogging. It’s high time. Buried deep in the post was this hidden gem:

Building a new thing is more noble than tearing something down.

Now some might misinterpret the message in all this conversation to be a return to the admonition of Moms everywhere: If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. I think to take that up as a banner would be as artificial as the manufactured mud slinging that too often happens on blogs now. Instead, heed my crusty grandfather’s advice: Keep a civil tongue in your head (words usually followed by a swift blow to the back of it).

But even that misses a larger point. Read the rest of this entry »

Many interesting results came out of our posts yesterday on the current state of the blogosphere. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what reaction to expect to my questioning of the role of analysis in blogging today. Things have become so ugly of late, with nasty epithets being tossed around like confetti, that I half expected to find a flaming bag on my front porch. But the overwhelming consensus is that people are tired of the anger, tired of the treadmill, tired of reading from-the-lip commentary that doesn’t serve the greater good. Some of the best comments:

I tend to prefer blogs that write fewer articles that are based on clear principles, identify interesting trends, and consider the larger picture. - Mark Johnson

I’m happy that my tiny audience is one that resonates with decision makers because I must be reaching the right people. - Dennis Howlett

I think we’ll overcome the hurdle of “content,” but only after we ride this national enquirer cycle out. In the meantime, some of us will work on quality because we know it wins in the end. - Eric Norlin

I’m still of the old-school that feels like quality should stand on its own without the constant whoring for Diggs and link-backs and attention. I’m a writer, not a prostitute. - Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

That last line is a personal favorite. One of the Web’s most prolific bloggers and pundits, Robert Scoble, contributed an excellent angle to all this today, noting that no great business or idea is built on the notion of beating another. What I found most interesting though was this little nugget from the comments on his post: Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote about Songkick last week, praising its focus on technology for the mass consumer and referenced an impending announcement. That announcement came yesterday, with the launch of a music recommendation service. Put three bands you like into the system and it returns recommendations of area concerts you might enjoy. Simple but brilliant. It works pretty nicely, too. I typed in two current obsessions - The National and Vampire Weekend - and one mainstay, PJ Harvey, and it returned Radiohead and The Cure. Two concerts I’m actually interested in seeing and will try to get tickets to. It should be said that I did stump the engine by throwing U2 in once. But perhaps it’s trying to tell me I need to update my music library.

What I like about Songkick, as previously mentioned, is that its creators aren’t interested in parsing the ins and outs of the technology. They instead want to spread their love of music through enabling technologies. I called it “music semantics” and, though the pundits in the semantic realm may take issue with that label, it’s time we embraced apps that are less wonky in their approach and focus. While Twine, Hakia, and MetaWeb are laboring in the code mines, working to build what will be the framework for the semantic Web, companies like Songkick are out in the market, showing consumers real-world applications of semantics. It’s vitally important all such players are represented, in order for semantics to develop fully and organically.