"These Park Avenue sophisticates who go to the Polo store and spend trillions of dollars on cashmere sweaters are going to buy gummy bears in my store. Just because they buy certain clothes and wear mink coats and whatever, they still have an inner child. They will buy lollipops."
-- Dylan Lauren, owner of Dylan's Candy Store, in a New York Times story on her expansion from candy into lifestyle products
"There's no limit to how far I could go in AOL - it's just the limits they put on me. I'm not in line to be CEO of AOL, but it's obvious that's where I'll end up, if I stay focused. Somebody's got to be the next CEO of AOL."
-- Jason Calcanis, quoted in Wired's Revenge of the dot com poster boy article
"We had these really big Web sites, but what we didn't have was a way of entering, in a quick and rapid and scalable way, into smaller categories of topical passion."
AOL EVP Jim Bankoff on AOL's acquisition of Weblogs Inc, in a Wired story on why Jason Calcanis is now a media genius.
So 8 am this morning there's a knock at my door and a woman outside telling me to move my car out of the lot cause the lot is gonna flood in the current storm. She says the creek is 2/3 up the drain and that last time it rained this much some of the streets flooded--and yep, I'm in a flood zone (arrgh) that overflowed in 1998.
The city web site says:
"There have been major floods, though, with the 1950s being noteworthy: once, Baylands levees failed and a large area extending into Louis Road was flooded; another time the entire area from Middlefield Road at San Francisquito Creek to the Oregon Avenue/Bayshore area and beyond was flooded, with water flowing over the Bayshore Highway; this event was largely repeated in the disastrous flood of February 1998, considered roughtly to have been a 70 or 80-year flood. "
It's a career move that is starting to seem somewhat familiar: a Web 2.0 start-up vet moving from entrepreneurial status into a leadership role within a large company. This time it's Khoi Vinh, principal at design co Behavior, who's joining the NYTimes as their design director, a job that's been vacant almost a year, since Sumin Chou moved on. Vinh's blogged about the switch, and says: " I have grand visions of what can be done as the Design Director of The New York Times Online, but I also have a pragmatic view of what needs to be done in order to realize those visions: to make design work, especially in this position, will require dedicated labor, genuine diplomacy, judicious management and earning the respect of peers and colleagues."
Involved in the Onion redesign, Vinh clearly has both creative chops and technical skills the Grey Lady can use, and best of all, he's got that fresh point of view--that vision--bigcos are so eager to acquire.
Update: Best hed on this story I've seen so far: Designer of fake news sites now works for NY Times.
"The Flickrizers most ambitious goal is to turn Web searching itself into a social event -- the idea being that you can find what you're looking for faster if you first see pages saved and tagged by people you know and trust. Done well, it could play as the triumph of the humans over Google's cold mechanical approach.
This is an especially attractive idea to Yahoo veterans, since it harks back to the vision Yang and Yahoo co-founder David Filo had in their Stanford University dorm rooms: Categorize the Web and recommend the best sites for its users, using human editors. That vision had to be abandoned when the Web got too large. But this time the users and the editors will be one and the same, there will be enough to tackle the entire Internet -- and Yahoo won't have to pay them."
(Via Scott Beale)
Wired and Socialtext's Fortune 500 Business Blogging wiki--how cool is this?
Chris Anderson writes: "...we've decided to open source the project.... It's a wiki'd version of the above spreadsheet that anyone can edit, adding new Fortune 500 blogs as they're found or revising existing entries. It's released under a Creative Commons attribution license, so anyone is free to use it any way as long as they point back to the wiki."
Susan sez: This is a great example of how new tools can drive new paradigms--bet this will be a very useful list in a week or two, maybe less.
Wired and Socialtext's Fortune 500 Business Blogging wiki--how cool is this?
Chris Anderson writes: "...we've decided to open source the project.... It's a wiki'd version of the above spreadsheet that anyone can edit, adding new Fortune 500 blogs as they're found or revising existing entries. It's released under a Creative Commons attribution license, so anyone is free to use it any way as long as they point back to the wiki."
Susan sez: This is a great example of how new tools can drive new paradigms--bet this will be a very useful list in a week or two, maybe less.
In my 2005 lists, I left off two people who have given me incredible positive emotional support and challenged me intellectually during the past year-- Lisa Williams and Julie Leung. Lisa is one of the quiet greats--she's not only involved in podcasting, citizen journalism and her own family life, she's a tremendously energetic and compassionate friend.
Julie is also someone who has given me a great deal this year--both by example and through her friendship.
Thank you both for everything, and hope 2006 brings everything you want.
And finally, one other person to single out-- Richard MacManus. Richard and I have worked together a good bit this year, and he is always on time, accurate and smart--gotta love it.
Thank you all for being who you are.
In my 2005 lists, I left off two people who have given me incredible positive emotional support and challenged me intellectually during the past year-- Lisa Williams and Julie Leung. Lisa is one of the quiet greats--she's not only involved in podcasting, citizen journalism and her own family life, she's a tremendously energetic and compassionate friend.
Julie is also someone who has given me a great deal this year--both by example and through her friendship.
Thank you both for everything, and hope 2006 brings everything you want.
And finally, one other person to single out-- Richard MacManus. Richard and I have worked together a good bit this year, and he is always on time, accurate and smart--gotta love it.
Thank you all for being who you are.
WeightWatchers reports that weight loss is the #1 New Year's resolution. Is anyone surprised?(Via SPIP)
So how does Google collect and rank search results? Details here. (Via no fancy name)
Dave Beisel: Do new web services make the transition from serving digerati to usage in the mainstream? (Or, in other words, how does something new make it into the mass market?)
Tim Watson: His picture of the year, via Rocky Mountain News.
Slate: Why opening a cute little cafe will put you in the poorhouse. (Via Amy)
Richard MacManus games Digg.
Confession: I made the mistake of thinking I wouldn't be one of the sniffling, wheezing hordes complaining about cold and flu this week--but I was wrong. It may be almost a week since Christmas, but my nose is as red as Santa's coat and as runny as Rudolph's eyes(ugh).
Writing year-end charity checks and trying not to ach-oo on them; the dog doesn't understand why I don't want to go outside and run around with him. Arrghh.
"Do you have more kids than you do blogs and struggle with finding that oh-so-special quiet time to write (I mean think staight)? Or are you overwhelmed with 20 blog mouths to feed while your realworld kid eats oreos in front of the TV?"
-- Jeaneane Sessums
Blogebrity co-founder Jeremy Hermann was on of the passengers on the Alaska Airlines jet that depressurized at 30,000 feet, wrote about it--and took pix with his Treo.
Jeremy writes:
"Nothing can describe the helpless feeling you go through during a time like this, when you are absent any control, you cannot breathe, and everyone around is stunned into fear. It all started with a loud bang - the cabin air began to swirl and the engine sound became deafening. As a GA-VFR pilot, I knew something was terribly wrong. As the smell of acrid AV-gas/JP4 and burning plastic filled the cabin, it created more fear in the eyes of the holiday passengers around me. We were all gripped in silence, surrounded by the white noise from the engines that eerily engulfed the plane into a surreal atmosphere. And as the oxygen masks deployed from the ceiling in a familiar, video-esque manner, we all grasped them in fear - trying to figure out how to breathe through the flimsy pieces of plastic..."
Susan sez: Yeah, the coverage this story received--and the big media pickup --show citizen journalism is moving into the mainstream, but my main impression is gut-chilling fear at the situation--and relief everybody was okay.
Update: Seems like some folks using an Alaska Airlines IP address had some mean things to say to Jer...
"With podcasting just over a year old, the current maleness of the podcast audience at the aggregate level is consistent with gender usage trends of the early web. The fact that so many women who have listened to podcasts have done so recently signals the beginning of a trend toward a more balanced gender composition of the podcast audience. It's also reflective of the ever-increasing variety of podcast content with broadening appeal."
---Mark McCrery, Podtrac Co-Founder, CEO.
Demographics of podcasting, from the just published Podtrac survey--
Some of the citizen journalists who have been posting at Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere site for the past year are wondering what will happen to the site--and their involvement--now that Gillmor's moving into a series of academic appointments and a new nonprofit.
Mimi Kahlon writes:"...Dan, your leaving us in the dark about the future of this venture, as you move on your next one, seems directly opposed to some core principles of process that I thought were an essential part of Bayosphere - commitment and accountability to the community that Bayosphere has invited and encouraged. Sure, people can (and do) come and go from Bayosphere, and when the community is fully 'bottom up', we might expect that to happen without fanfared farewells. We're not at that stage yet, and the venture still has Dan's strong imprint. Given that, it's not responsible, Dan, for you to quietly walk away without giving us a sense of what's going to happen to the project that we've all invested in."
Other posters wonder what's happening with the tools, blog links, and support services.
While there are some cynical comments-and probing questions--being published, the bottom line here might be translated as 'What happens to community when the funding runs out/moves on?"
I imagine there will be clarification once the holidays are done...meanwhile, there's a lot of interesting detail if you follow these links.
I don?t like year-end predictions, so I am going to skip making any, but I do want to look back at some of the people, events, and technologies that rocked my world. A few things that stand out:
Best wishes for the holiday season to everyone who reads this blog!
Heading home today from Maui. Yes, it was great. When I go to the beach, I truly relax...and this was a great break after a busy fall and during an even busier winter.
Some trip highlights: snorkeling (though I got seasick), hiking the coastline, Paia, road to Hana, especially the arboreteum and the roadside BBQ, Da Kitchen, Mama's FishHouse, yoga by the beach. Also enjoyed watching the LA entertainment lawyers flock together like HS kids by the hotel pool as the hotel got more crowded, spending more time in the gym, and the 'get off your computer' comments from friends (thanks).
And Z--you are a super travel buddy.
"We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you, and believe that our new agreement with them will only create a better experience for you in 2006 and beyond..."
--Marissa Mayer, Google,
Susan sez: I'm fascinated by Marissa's statement that AOL will help improve the Google consumer experience, and terrified to imagine what that might actually mean.
Update: I am probably being too subtle, so let me spell out what rings false:
a) AOL has been a Google investor and partner for many years--are they really going to do something new now they didn't do before and say it isn't preferential? Advise AOL on optimization for the first time? Naahh.
b) You get what you pay for--what is not yet clear is what Google is paying for--but this ain't the whole of it.
c) No, no, and no--when I give Marissa's post the truth test, it doesn't sound like the whole deal--it's just won't be that simple, easy and tidy-is it ever, with these two?
Kinja relaunches with blogger dashboards, aka cards
Alex Bosworth does BozPages
Disney & Zazzle: A new deal leads to neat new stuff
Evhead: The social media top 10, according to Alexa data
"Yesterday Tribe.net removed all its "mature" age screening pages in favor of making any Tribe marked as formerly "mature" or flagged by anyone who objects to the content, invisible unless you're in the Tribe. Why care? For one, it's an interesting experiment to see what happens when interpretation of 2257 porn record-keeping requirements is taken to its extreme, and essentially made into a censorship tool anyone in a tinfoil hat can enforce. Another reason is that they're censoring users' content and profiles (mine included). It's also interesting because you can see just how fucked up and useless the 2257 laws are. It's like 1984 in there; anything deemed offensive is made to go away. I'm giving them a report card on Fleshbot about how they scored, and below is where I reveal more information about Tribe and 2257, and why I'm feeling a cold, cold anger toward Tribe.net about this whole thing."
--Violet Blue, tinynibbles and Fleshbot
Ditto the vacation chill--here's some interesting notes from the inbox:
CivicSpace Labs builds Goodstorm.com, a Drupal-based ecommerce site designed to sell items for non-profits.
Via Dave Sifry: The new, new Technorati has LOTS of new features.
Bob Wyman: Structured Blogging has a mailing list.
Scoble: Geek dinner in Palo Alto, CA Dec. 30th...all invited.
Dan Gillmor is launching a nonprofit for Citizen's Media, with support from two major universities.
Dan writes: "the center will collaborate with the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. As an I.F. Stone Teaching Fellow, I'll do a class next fall, and my principal physical office will be at Berkeley as well....Our Atlantic-facing partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School, where I'll be a Research Fellow. I'll visit there regularly -- at least once a month -- to work with other fellows, faculty and students."
Silicon Beat wonders what will happen to Bayosphere; Steve Rubel notes Dan is moving to non-profit status.
Dan sez: "Why do this? We need a thriving media and journalism ecosystem. We need what big institutions do so well, but we also need the bottom-up -- or, more accurately, edge-in -- knowledge and ideas of what I've called the "former audience" that has become a vital part of the system."
Susan sez: "Dan will be a good teacher and a voice for bottoms-up efforts--it will be great to track his work in parallell with Jeff Jarvis.
Because I am on vacation (I really am relaxing!), this is just a quick list from the news filling my inbox:
Pegasus News, the Texas-based citizen journalism business helmed by Mike Orren, is getting ready to roll out and will include music/entertainment site texasgigs.com, according to Steve Outings column. Fans of this new site will also want to check out Robert Duffy's Ohio-based donewaiting.com.
Web 2.0 workgroup (yes, that name is so 2005, lol) adds Stowe Boyd, Steve Rubel and Ben Barren to the roster.
Announced: 2006 finalists for the Digital Edge Awards of the NAA, known as the Edgies. Washingtonpost.com is a finalist in six categories, PalmBeachPost.com has five finalist entries. AugustaChronicle.com, BonitaNews.com, Boston.com, Chicago Tribune Interactive, HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com, KnoxNews.com, LJWorld.com, NYTimes.com and Online Athens are represented with three or more finalist entries. Awards given at conference in February.
NYTimes: The secret life of a teenager who was lured into selling images of his body on the Internet over the course of five years--with interviews and, yes, pictures.
For the past 24 hours, the cell phone has been in the hotel room.
For most of the day, the computer has been off.
Taking a step back from the frantic pace of life feels great--hope everyone has a chance to slow down over the holidays.
David Hornick: Where's the money in the long tail? "...there are essentially two general classes of technology the will benefit economically from the Long Tail -- aggregators and filterers."
Forbes: Comparision shopping referral sites are raking it in this holiday season-how come?
Berkman Center: Training new bloggers , advice therein (Via Beth Kanter)
Mark Cuban: NYTimes talks to Mark Cuban, marverick movie producer (and a damn good one, it seems)
Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington report on the no-sale of Riya to Google, with additional comments from Jeff Clavier and VC Peter Rip who says "The glitter of the rumor of instant tech wealth is the affirmation we all seek for devoting ourselves to the irrational pursuit of the Myth."
Or, to put it another way, no deal is real til the agreement is signed and the money changes hands.
Back in September, I said Google would end up buying AOL--well, they didn't get the whole thing but they got $1B worth--5% of the company, according to tonight's NY Times article.
Apparently, to get all those sweet ad placements on AOL screens, Google agreed to showcase AOL content results, breaking--for the first time ever-their link rank/relevancy rules in favor of filthy lucre(does any still wonder if these owners of this immense money machine have "sold out", whether or not they take custom winnebagos to burning man?)
I remember, back in 2000, when some Netscapers wanted AOL to buy Google, for, I think $3-10 million, and a certain very rich executive, who shall remain nameless, bellowed down the halls "Search?No one on AOL cares about that!" (Of course, he was over-ruled and AOL joined Yahoo in investing in Google, making enough on the stock deal to compensate for a few rotten quarters.)
Anyway, now Google will be the overlords, using AOL screens to host and carry their cash-bearing ad algorithms...hatching their nests of keywords inside community and content and...Ugh, sounds like a science fiction movie starring a horde of ad-driven locusts.
Okay, a head-clearing deep breath--other side of the deal is that AOL gets to sell ads on Google, making them the biggest inventory-dealer in Agency Land. Plus Google pushes AOL Video within their video offering, Plus, the AOL guys get to ride on Serge and Larry's plane--nah,I made that up.
But you get the drift--in a year, we'll be watching a very different Google--one that may have morphed into something alot more like AOL was back in the day, when they were fat and sassy and thought no one cared about search.
In 24 hours, I am going on vacation--the laptop is coming, but the goal is to switch gears--snorkel, take scuba classes and chill fora couple days before 2006 kick starts.
Expect light postings for the next week, except for those inevitable crazy bursts of blogging insomnia once in a while.
" The qualities I look for in a man are the qualities I look for in a blogger: passion, relentlessness, risk taking, and a light touch."
-- Ariana Huffington, quoted in Esquire, Jan 2006 issue
Been meaning to comment on these new blog network rankings for a couple days--According to the new blog network list, the Web 2.0 workgroup is in the top 10 blog networks and this blog is number 56 among more than a thousand blogs.
While this is very cool, and amazingly flattering, Miz Skeptic here feels it's a little too good to be true--or, to put it another way--it's a list that measure what it measures (I notice that both Dave Winer and Steve Rubel's blogs are not on the list of what they are measuring, for example).
"What should be really alarming for newspaper owners is that the same process that ate their classified income is going to affect their other revenue streams. Just as classifieds went from costly to free, the display advertising will begin to dry up, as youth-seeking national advertisers follow their targets to the online world. And the very core of the newspaper product, the professional news report, is under siege, thanks to a myriad of missteps in the newsrooms and the rise of amateur (in the best sense), free alternatives."
-- Scott Rosenberg on newspapers and digital media
Via Battelle and Tech Crunch, the news that Alexa is making its data available on the Amazon.com Web Services platform. Specifically, Alexa is opening up its 5 billion web documents and 100 terabytes of data to anyone who wants to use it--including the much-studied site rankings based on toolbar users.
What does this mean?
In brief, anyone who would like to can use Alexa's crawl, Alexa's processors, Alexa's server farm to mash up data, build new apps, create new services.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Another superb move by Alexa founder Brewster Kahle and the Amazon team.
Another view: Jeff Clavier-- Repeat after me: the index of a search engine is a commodity
No, PubSub's not acquired, they've signed a deal that allows users of all CBS local affiliate news pagesto get keyword search results delivered via PubSub's RSS alerting technology on .
There's an example on the WCBSTV web site--but it doesn't seem that active, yet--but it's good to see a media company deploy some new tools that can serve users' national and local interests.
(Via Micropersuasion)
A recent eMarketer report says that Yahoo is #1 in the number of unique visitors to its sites, and also the top destination for news. According to their for-sale study, Nielsen//NetRatings data shows that in August Yahoo topped the pack in terms of unique visitors (see chart below). However, in addition, during the week ended September 4, 2005, nearly half of all Internet users logged on to Yahoo!--
This suggests that Yahoo's strategy of offering cool tools, quality data, and an integrated web environment may be working for them across the globe better than it does for #5 portal (in unique visitors) AOL, who is also pursuing an a la carte, integrated strategy--but with much weaker tools.
Susan sez: What is most interesting here is how Yahoo and Google continue to pull ahead of the pack--and what AOL and MSN will do to keep pedalling. More acquisitions, anyone?
AOL founder Steve Case says it's time to spin AOL out, again: "Any half-hearted move toward "liberating" AOL is no more likely to succeed than the half-hearted effort toward "integrating" AOL over the past six years. Given that Time Warner failed to capitalize on AOL's potential during a period when it owned 100 percent of AOL, it seems doubtful that a scenario in which it has a lesser, but still controlling, stake will work better...AOL has spent the last six years wrestling with integration issues -- it needs to be independent now so it can start to regain its leadership position."
Steve says:
As a single unit, AOL could buy small companies, a la Yahoo and Google and compete
(Susan sez: As a conglomerate, hasn't it continued to do that--with more than 8 acquisitions in the past 2 years?)
Steve says: As a free standing unit, AOL can better compete in the social network space against MySpace and Facebook.
Susan sez: And why do you think that? Given that many of AOL's highly experience community staffers have been there more than 8 years, and that much of the moderation is now outsourced, what would AOL suddenly be empowered to do differently?
Steve says: The current effort to make AOL Portal #1 is a waste--portals are over and verticals are in.
Susan sez: I totally agree on this one, but don't see how spin off would help it do this any better--unless Steve wants to come back and reinvent it.
Conclusion: I don't agree with Case that spinning AOL out is a good idea--but my reasons have to do with the management--I just don't believe that a stand-alone AOL would be any more nimble or able to act on the good ideas Case suggests. In this instance, it's just too late--the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.
(Via The Washington Post)