Impact of the internet: Many blogs that you read are produced by 'content farms', low paid writers paid by article http://bit.ly/dh0mKP
[Direct Link]The Twitter Effect: Mashable vs TechCrunch vs BoingBoing. http://r2.ly/3xde
In May 2009, @Mashable, @TechCrunch and @BoingBoing were about equal as three of the biggest blogs on the planet. Each had about 1.85-1.90 million unique visitors in that month.
Fast-forward just a year later, and everything has changed. BoingBoing has dropped almost a million visitors, TechCrunch has gone nowhere, and Mashable has gained a million.
Why? Twitter.
@Mashable has over two million followers. Twitter started to really take off early in 2009, and Mashable totally capitalised. Twitter has easily become their primary focus point – they write a ton of Twitter content, and share heavily on the network. (As a comparison, Mashable has ‘just’ 207 thousand fans on Facebook – a tenth of the network size.)
@TechCrunch has a little under 1.4 million followers, but they don’t push anywhere near as hard as Mashable does on Twitter. That said, it’s enough to keep them in the game. (54,210 Facebook fans.)
@BoingBoing has just 43,219 followers. And doesn’t push hard at all. Indeed, BoingBoing isn’t even on Facebook. Which suggests to me that they either don’t really get the value of social media, or don’t think that they need it. For example – they don’t even use a retweet button on their blog.
After all, let’s face it – BoingBoing and Mashable aren’t all that different. Both are heavy recyclers of external content (although Mashable does write a lot more original material – TechCrunch is almost all original material and opinion). The main difference is Mashable is very much more attuned to the modern social media audience, both in content and presentation. Indeed, they made dramatic, intentional adjustments to capitalise on that audience shift.
BoingBoing did nothing. And until they realise that, and want to change, their numbers are probably only going to get worse. They’re still thinking old-school – Digg, Reddit, Delicious and Stumbleupon. And while you can still get some traffic spikes from those sources, it’s very much on the wane, and doesn’t begin to compare to the Terminator-like, never-ending, cannot-be-stopped onslaught of Twitter.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know this is Compete, and yes, I now that this mostly represents US traffic. But unless you can prove to me that the relationship between these numbers is dramatically different around the world – and can show me where you get those numbers – it’s largely a moot point.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
O.M.G. If it was april I'd swear this was a joke.
- felix12 More Websites To Show You the Hottest Twitter Topics http://bit.ly/dtdmLH
In the past two articles, 9 Websites To Show You The Hottest Stuff on Twitter Now and 10 More Websites To Show You The Hottest Twitter Topics we’ve taken a look at just how much information can be found when you dig a little deeper on Twitter. Going beyond the list of people that you follow, there is no limit to the amount of realtime information that you can find.
In the third and final part of this article we’re going to take a look at how to use Twitter on the go when you’re travelling in a foreign country, how to find content that is personalised just for you, how to find the authoritative voices on Twitter, and a few other specialised sites that use Twitter to find information on specific topics or hobbies.
Twittorati takes a slightly different approach to most Twitter related sites. Rather than plug straight into Twitter to establish what is popular, the site makes use of Technorati’s resources to determine who to follow on Twitter. The site tracks the tweets coming from the most popular and influential bloggers according to Technorati’s stats. It specifically features the Top 100 blogs, but there are plans to expand to include more influential voices from around the web. Tweets on Twittorati can be browsed by categories such as Technology, Business, Parenting and more.
The Twitter accounts include both the blogs’ official Twitter accounts, as well as the personal accounts of the people behind the scenes. You can also browse the most popular links being tweeted from these blogs, and their latest photos. Tweets are accompanied by additional information about the user, including real name and job title, as well as their Technorati authority rating. Logging in with your Twitter account allows you to reply or retweet directly from within Twittorati.
One of the great things about Twitter is how easy it is to access it when you’re on the go, which makes it a great resource to use when you’re travelling. Twaller allows users to share tips and information when you’re on the road, and accessing that information couldn’t be easier. Using the site, you can either search for specific information, or can browse by region or city, with major cities in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and South America included on the list. Each city’s tweets is divided into several sections, including where to eat, entertainment, things to see, weather and shopping. Twaller relies on hashtags to provide it’s service so the website is only as good as each city’s residents choose to make it. Signing in with your Twitter account allows you to submit tweets about the city you’re in directly from Twaller, as well as reply and retweet.
A great travel Twitter resource to take a look at before you hit the road is Travel Note’s directory of all things travel related – from airlines, to travel agencies, to travel writers, if it’s on Twitter, it’s probably listed here.
If you’re looking for a more personalised experience to avoid information overload on Twitter, there are several options available.
After both signing up for a Feedera account and connecting to your Twitter account, Feedera will proceed to create a personalised digest to be delivered to your inbox on a daily basis. The process can take several hours to complete. The digest consists of what is considered the best content shared by the accounts you follow, divided into photos, links, videos and music.
Popular content is determined by how often the link has been shared on Twitter, as well as on Digg, Facebook, Delicious, and a few others. Each link is accompanied by the number of your friends who have tweeted that story.
Signing up for an account with Chatterbox gives you a little bit more control over the kind of content that you will get to see. You can create as many “ChatterBoxes” as you like, each of which can consist of specific keywords mentioned on Twitter, and can even be further narrowed down to keywords mentioned by specific users.
ChatterBox takes it one step further, allowing you to share your results with other users of your choice. ChatterBox can come in handy when a company or team needs to be aware of specific information being shared on Twitter. For example, all Tweets about a specific brand can be listed in one ChatterBox, and shared amongst the staff. The members of the ChatterBox can then assign the response to a specific user, add categories, statuses, and priorities to these tweets, and even respond to users directly from within ChatterBox. ChatterBox is the perfect accompaniment to any corporate or company Twitter account.
Also be sure to take a look at Mahendra’s article, 3 Little Known Ways to Use Twitter Without Information Overload, which includes another great site for creating personalised feeds – Cadmus.
Twitter’s search feature leaves a lot to be desired, but luckily there are a few websites that make up for its shortcomings.
Topsy is a Twitter search engine that uses Twitter as a basis for the ranking of its search results. They are based on how popular a link is, as well as the influence of the Tweeple sharing it. You can search the web as a whole, can search specifically within Twitter, and can also do an image search. Results can come from within the last month, week, day or hour, and can be sorted by relevance or date.
Signing in with Twitter allows you to retweet directly from within the website, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed of any given search, or even create an email alert. Opening a link will show you who has tweeted it, what’s been said, and influential Tweeters are distinguished from the rest, with the ability to filter the tweets down to only influential users. Topsy also overcomes one of Twitter search’s main drawback – the inability to search beyond the past 10 days.
Microsoft search engine Bing has decided to get in on a little bit of the Twitter action with their dedicated Twitter search engine. The home page features some of the trending topics and popular links. Search results consist of the most recent tweets containing the search term and the most shared links on Twitter.
Any given link will be accompanied by two tweets mentioning it, which can be expanded to display more tweets organised by relevance or date.
If you have a hobby that takes up a lot of your time, chances are, there’s a Twitter-related website that you could find useful.
If you’re a wine aficionado check out WineTwits for the latest Tweets about wine related topics and events.
If you’re a sports fan, Twackle brings you the latest buzz on Twitter about the NFL, NBA, NHL and much much more.
For the latest on all things stock market related on Twitter, check out StockTweetApp
If health and fitness is what matters to you most, Wellness Tweets will definitely appeal to you.
And TwitArcade is the place to go if you want to share and find out about new online games.
What websites do you use to keep up with the hottest topics on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.
WordPress fans take note: it looks like we now have an iPhone app that may remove the pain from blogging upon our iDevices without resorting to “the way of the geek.”
BlogBooster has released an iPhone app that allows you to not only insert multiple images, but also includes a formatting bar allowing you to italicize, embolden, underline as well as strike through text without having to manually type in the coding. You can also manually insert hyperlinks as well (another plus!).
Although the app seems geared towards WP fans, BlogBooster also supports Blogger, Typepad and Tumblr, with more platforms on the way (not to mention an upcoming iPad app!).
Priced at $4.99 USD, some may wonder if the app is worth it, especially when their are less expensive rivals like BlogPress (not to mention free official alternatives for WordPress, Typepad and Tumblr).
So before you hit the buy button, here is an in depth review highlighting the good, the bad and the awesome regarding this new blogging app.
Currently BlogBooster is the only multiblogging app with a formatting bar. While the app is not the first to introduce this feature (as the LiveJournal.app launched a similar feature in 2008), BlogBooster is the first that I recall that allows you to format the color and size of the font (the former which will appeal to artistic bloggers).
You can also insert multiple images (as highlighted above), but BlogBooster goes one step further by allowing you to find images suitable for your post using their “Autocontent” feature.
Autocontent also allows you to locate blogs and news media discussing similar topics, and will allow you to insert a hyperlink from them automatically within the post.
BlogBooster also allows you to preview your post within your iPhone app, which will let bloggers know how their formatted posts will appear upon their blog.
You can also choose whether or not you want to save a draft on your iPhone or on your server (which means you can edit the post later on via the notebook).
For those of you who are fanatical about their image sizes, you can not only adjust the image size, but align them to the right, left or center of your post.
BlogBooster also supports tags, so BlogSpot fans and Tumblr freaks will be able to categorize their posts, although the app currently lacks categories (which will probably not please WordPress guru’s or Typepad addicts).
While I am glad that BlogBooster launched with a formatting bar, users may find formatting text near the top of the screen to be frustrating (as the “Select All” bubble will block the bar at times). They may want to consider moving it down near the bottom of the screen.
Also inserting images was not as smooth as its rivals, as the app would constantly favor inserting the images below the text, and not where you last tapped.
Speaking of images, I noticed that BlogBooster does not support uploading images upon the server (it supports Picasa Web only), a feature that will probably only appeal to BlogSpot fans.
While BlogBooster does highlight on their website that the app supports video, the app in its current form lacks video uploading capabilities, and only supports uploading images (so video bloggers are out of luck here).
Last but not least geo-location was surprisingly missing from this app, which is surprising as all of the official apps have this, not to mention a few of its rivals as well.
If you are a Typepad fan or a BlogSpot lover then this app will appeal to you, especially if you are heavy into formatting your posts (as well as loathe all things video).
This app will probably not appeal to Tumblr addicts (as it lacks a tumble-stream) while WordPress fans may want to hold out until the WP Masters unveil their upcoming iPhone app (which is rumored to include video support) before hitting the buy button.
If BlogBooster is able to find a way to support video uploading (perhaps via YouTube like BlogPress?) as well as images upon each platforms respective servers, I could easily see this as the blogging app for the iPhone worth $10 (let alone $5).
Image via Wikipedia
Blogging is just one form of content creation and creative expression available to us all on the Web. The term blog, or weblog, has been around for twelve years. People were journaling and posting articles and other content on the Web long before that. People have been self-publishing in other media for hundreds of years.
Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on.
Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on.
It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered.
But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…
WHY?
Why do we blog? Why do we write? Why do we spend hours upon hours slaving in front of computers? Why do we wring our brains madly on a regular basis trying to think of new and interesting things to say? Why do we get frustrated when the words won’t come?
Some people create content in order to make money directly off their blogs by selling advertising, using affiliate links to sell stuff (I do this through my book reviews but I try not to be a PITA about it), selling their own products, etc. That’s fine. It’s pretty obvious that some people are trying to make their living directly through selling stuff on their blog and that’s cool.
Then there are tons of us who aren’t focusing on direct monetization, including a huge group of people who aren’t in it for the money at all.
That is what I’m interested in learning about.
Why do we blog? More specifically, why do YOU blog?
Yes, it’s reader participation time and I’m writing this specifically for YOU. I’m being nosy today and I want to know why you do it. What are your goals, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and wishes from this powerful medium:
Many of the items in this list apply to me (although I can’t prove that I’m channeling an alien intelligence… yet…)
I’m really curious about this. I think introspection is a powerful tool and we can learn a lot by examining why we want to do things. I think we all learn from seeing these ideas in print.
Please share your thoughts in the comment section so we can all learn from this. If you write your own post about this, link back to this post and I’ll create a link back to you in this post.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f15b6e3e-2c91-49fd-8565-d75780875c6e)
Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on. Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on. It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered. But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…WHY?
- Mark KrynskyCreate Playlists from Music Blogs with ExtensionFM - http://bit.ly/dBTXX2
[Direct Link]
One of our readers – Beeba – asked a question via our MakeUseOf Answers regarding this topic: “How can I sell files online and protect the download link?” Beeba was afraid that people who bought his digital product will just share the download link and others could download the product without paying. Among many answers, there was one proposing the use of memberships to sell products. The basic idea is to put the download link in the members area which can only be accessed by paid members.
The membership itself is also something that you can sell. There are people who create new products on a regular basis and instead of selling each product individually, they put everything inside a members area then give ongoing timely access to members who pay regularly. Something like magazine subscriptions.
But it’s not always about money. Membership-only sites can also be utilized as online education centers where registered students can access their learning material; exclusive clubs where different level memberships will allow different access; or maybe a place to gather ideas for a project which restricted to team members of the project only.
This idea of a membership-only site raised more questions in my mind. How difficult it is to build your own membership-only site? Is it even possible for common people like us? What about the security issue? To answer those questions and more, let’s explore the possibilities of creating membership only websites..
The first things that came to my mind about building a membership-only site is a self-hosted Wordpress and a membership plugin. Actually, any Wordpress blog is already some kind of members-only site. But a plugin specifically built to handle membership will surely enhance the functions.
So I go to one of my experimental Wordpress blogs and do a quick search for a good membership plugin.
I launched the plugin page and click the “Add New” button. You can also use the “Add New” link from the plugin sidebar.
To save you the searching time, I’ll just tell you what I chose: a membership plugin called s2Member. Enter the name into the search field:
And you will go directly to the plugin.
Click the “Install” link at the right of the box.
Click the “Install Now” button in the lightbox confirmation window.
Please note that s2Member plugin is tested to work with Wordpress version 2.9.2 and above. Use it under lower version of Wordpress at your own risk. And it also requires PHP version 5.2 or higher.
After the installation, click the “Activate Plugin” link at the lower part of the notification.
Due to the complexity of the membership site management, the first greeting that you will get after activating the plugin is an advice to read the Quick Start Guide.
And I personally think that you should at least take a peek at the extensive guide.
Up to this point, your membership-only site is already up and running, but there are several adjustment that you need to make. The plugins has tons of settings that you can customize to shape your site to near perfection. You can access the settings from s2Member sidebar.
But before you modify anything, you would want to create a Wordpress page that would serve as “Membership Option Page”. This is the page that your future member will see whenever they try to access materials which are restricted as “Members only“: the product that you are trying to sell.
To create a page, simply click the “Add Page” button from the “Pages” sub-menu of the sidebar.
After the page is set, go to the plugin’s General Options.
Open the “Membership Options Page” and choose the page that you’ve just created.
Customize the PayPal Options by following the instructions one by one, then you can continue with generating PayPal buttons.
The generated PayPal button should be placed in the page that you use as “Membership Option Page“.
To restrict the content based on membership level, go back to the “General Options” and adjust the settings in several of the “Restrictions” options.
With this basic settings, your membership-only site is ready to take new members, accept payment and provide access to restricted content.
We will cover more advanced settings of the membership site in the next discussion. Meanwhile, you can play along with the basic settings, then share your thoughts and opinions using the comment below.
Image credit: healthserviceglasses and ttarasiuk
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How To Create A Membership-Only Website using Wordpress
- Rob DianaHow to Build Your Personal Brand Working For Someone Else by @LisaBarone - http://bit.ly/9hBnUT
This is a guest post by Lisa Barone and part of a series of guest posts that will be featured on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog all week long. Lisa outlines the benefits and how-tos of personal branding within an organization. Read on and enjoy!
 Photo by vauvau, CC-BY |
Don’t adjust your monitors; Lisa really is back blogging on Bruce Clay, Inc. If you listen closely you can almost hear the sounds of Bruce having a heart attack. Weee!
If you’re new to the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog or me (hi, I’m Lisa), you may not know that this blog served as my stomping grounds for nearly three years. It was my baby and where I formed my own personal brand, a brand that allowed me to move from LA to New York, write for some well known marketing blogs, and eventually, start an SEO consulting company called Outspoken Media.
That’s right. My name is Lisa and I built my personal brand on someone else’s dime. And you can do it, too.
Branded employees sometimes get a bad rap for being time-wasting job hoppers, but the truth is forming a strong personal brand while working for someone else benefits both the employer and employee when done correctly.
How?
How can you go about building your personal brand while working for someone else? Here are a few suggestions.
Before you start a campaign to create a personal brand, talk to your employer. You don’t want to start putting yourself out there only to accidentally brand yourself “unemployed”. When you have “the social media talk”, you want to show how building the Brand of You will directly benefit the company. Stress how it doesn’t make you a flight risk, but instead will allow you to bring more value through increased brand awareness, speaking opportunities, press mentions, and a larger network that the whole company will be able to utilize.
When you get the okay, you also want to have in writing who the owner of the social accounts will be. You’re going to be building your name accounts (at least partially) on their time, but you want to make sure you own it, if possible. Stress how much more authentic this will make it feel for your audience. Obviously you hope to be with your employer for a really, really long time, but things do get messy when you break up. You want to prevent mess down the road.
When you’re building a personal brand, you stop being an employee. You’re now an asset, both to the company and to yourself. This realization changes how you work. It’s not about being there 9 to 5, it’s about figuring out how you can bring the most value to the company you work for and then putting that idea into action. For me, it meant working overtime to create an engaging blog that the search community wanted to interact with. It meant differentiating myself at conferences by NOT being the drunk girl at the bar, but instead being in the front row of a session an hour before it was even set to start so I could liveblog. It meant responding to comments at midnight if that’s when people were talking. It meant working like an entrepreneur even when someone else was still signing my paycheck.
Whoever you are, you have some skill that no one else in the organization has and something that you can use to build a name and provide value back to the company. Figure out what that thing is and change how you work to leverage the hell out of it.
I’m of the mind that you shouldn’t be basing your personal brand off exactly who you are. Your personal brand should be a heightened, slightly exaggerated version of who you really are. This will help you to exaggerate the trait and qualities in you that will attract others. Because you’re basing the brand off traits you actually possess, you don’t have to worry about it not feeling authentic. Remember that entrepreneurs (and brands) are created to be respected, not loved.
Putting yourself out there is going to expose you to people who want nothing more than to kick you in the face. It may sound harsh, but it’s a truth we need to accept. There’s a dark side to being the face of a community. The character you create becomes your shield. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows out there in personal brand-land. You’re going to need it.
What you do is just as important as how you do it. So once you get your character figured out — start being it. Start that exact moment.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with personal branding is that they wait for permission. They know what makes them different and how they can stand out, but they convince themselves they “can’t” act that way.
Listen: You find your readers and your following by BEING your brand, not by waiting for permission to be it. Or, as Justin Kownacki once wrote: Don’t wait until you’re popular to start being relevant. You don’t become popular asking for permission and you definitely won’t attract an audience that way.
If you want to create a brand, you’re going to have to work for it. And that may mean setting aside otherwise good sleeping or TV watching time to put things into action, because personal branding is more than just building an active Twitter account. It’s about differentiating yourself by busting your ass.
Look for opportunities to promote your company by bringing what you bring. If you’re a strong writer, then that may mean picking up some extra guest writing opportunities to portray you as an expert within your company. If you’ve got the verbal thing down, maybe it’s speaking or providing training services to people inside and outside your organization. Maybe it means going off the beaten path for what your company typically does, creating something new that you can use to go rogue. Virginia created Bruce Clay’s SEM Synergy podcast. Susan co-authored the SEO for Dummies book. It’s up to you to create opportunities to build your brand and the company. The more opportunities you create, the luckier you become, and the bigger your brand grows.
[If you’re seen working your ass off, you’re also likely to get less resentment from your coworkers who haven’t hopped on the brand wagon and actively hate their lives. Actually, no, they’ll probably still hate you.]
This is the part of personal branding everyone always thinks of. It’s when you’re on Twitter during the day and afterhours talking to people. It’s when you’re sharing what you’re up to, the problems you’re facing, what you’re working on, what you love, and answering their questions to help lighten their load. It’s when you’re making connections by having real conversations and showing the person behind the company. It’s the chatty side of brand building.
This step is important. It’s important that you’re visible, accessible and that you create as many touch points as you can for your brand. The more out there you are, the more you help yourself become the “go to” person for a specific topic. People have to know that you exist to care about you, but don’t get stuck here. Twitter can only help your personal brand if you have something else to bring to the table. Remember that.
You can build a personal brand while working for someone else and you can do it in a way that benefits not only yourself, but also your employer. Focus on that value.
How to Build Your Brand Working For Someone Else was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
BruceClay - How to Build Your Brand Working For Someone Else
- Chuck ReynoldsHow to Build Your Personal Brand Working For Someone Else by @LisaBarone - http://bit.ly/9hBnUT
- Chuck ReynoldsRT @Joab_Jackson: HP explains why printer ink is so expensive - Computerworld Blogs http://bit.ly/b27TCL
- Dennis HowlettDiscovering some very interesting blogs from he BBC: http://bit.ly/bLVmXo
[Direct Link]Valuing Blogs: Is $20 Million For PerezHilton.com The Right Figure? - http://tinyurl.com/2eworpc
[Direct Link]Valuing Blogs: Is $20 Million For PerezHilton.com The Right Figure?
- Duncan RileyEvery few months, I like to share some analytics on this blog's audience. Here's the google analytics refer logs for the past thirty days:
The thing that jumps out at me is the magnitude of the direct audience. If you add the direct category, this blog's RSS feed (Feedburner), and the avc.blogs.com domain (the original domain of this blog which still works), you get roughly 86,000 visits which is roughly half of all the visits.
That's a lot of direct visits for a website given all the distribution channels out there (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Techmeme, Hacker News, etc).
I think it reflects two things:
1) the loyalty of this blog's audience - many of you come to read this blog every day and I suspect that you come via a bookmark, the feed, or some other way you've set up to remember to do that.
2) Twitter - most of the traffic that comes from twitter clients still registers as direct traffic in google analytics. i hope Twitter and Google work out some way to fix that soon. it's been an issue for years now.
SInce I don't use a feed reader of any kind, I often forget how powerful that distribution channel is. I was one of the first users of Feedburner and was an investor in Feedburner before it was sold to Google. I don't think about Feedburner much any more. It's a set it and forget it sort of thing. But Feedburner is a huge distribution channel for this blog. Here are some stats for the past thirty days:
The reach number is the number of different feed readers open a post from this blog per day. Feedburner tells us that an average of 11k readers per day open a post from this blog in their reader. Google Analytics says the number of web visits per day to this blog is between 5k and 10k on most days. So that means that there are more readers of this blog via the feed than the web.
It's pretty eye opening to be honest. I spend so much time thinking about internet distribution channels and the impact of search and social media on audience and traffic that I don't pay as much attention to the value of a loyal and consistent audience and yet that is exactly what we have here at AVC. Kind of ironic.
RegularGeek post: Android vs Apple, We Have Seen This War Before http://bit.ly/dq9nN0
With Google I/O several days behind us, you are starting to see fewer posts about the announcements. Now, you are starting to see some personal blogs with their personal analysis of various products and competitors. This post will be no different in that respect. However, I am taking a view that may not be too popular, at least for the Apple fanboy crowd.
Google announced several products and upgrades during the conference, and they are attacking competitors on various fronts. There were tons of upgrades to Google Apps to compete with Microsoft, they announced Google TV which will compete with Apple TV, and they announced Android 2.2, codenamed Froyo, to compete with the iPhone. This last bit, the Android 2.2 release, is what I want to focus on.
With the most recent release of Android, Google is trying to spread its mobile operating system as far as possible. They are trying to get as much marketshare as they can if you are selling a smartphone that is not an iPhone. People are seeing this trend already, in particular Cedric Beust has needed to respond to John Gruber because of his heretical opinions. You will need to read the two blogs to get a little history, but Cedric has an interesting second response yesterday. In particular he has two opinions that will likely be repeated or complained about several times in the next few days:
2010 will go down in history as the year where the iPhone was dominating the phone market. 2010 will also go down in history as the last year that the iPhone was dominating the phone market.
This may be a bit drastic, but he does have a point. He mentions that Android has more marketshare than the iPhone already. Granted, this is for all versions of Android, but in the long term that does not matter. Gruber has not responded to this yet, but he has some post I/O thoughts:
Google’s competitive focus on the iPhone at I/O was intense and scathing. But it’s Microsoft’s lunch they’re eating. Apple’s and RIM’s game is selling the integrated whole — their own devices, running their own software. Google is playing Microsoft’s game — licensing a platform to many device makers.
Gruber focused on the right points, but came to an interesting conclusion. He does not see Google’s Android efforts as really affecting the Apple and its iPhone. He also mentions a key point in the Google plan, “Google lets carriers and handset makers license Android for free.” He mentions this in support of his argument against Microsoft’s chances in the smartphone market. However, I think he may be missing the bigger picture.
We have seen this war before. Back in the early to mid-nineties there were really two platforms fighting for personal computing supremacy, Windows and Macintosh. Windows was making good progress in the corporate world, while Macintosh owned education, graphic design and desktop publishing. In order to accelerate their growth, Microsoft released the Windows SDK which made it easier to create programs for Windows. Apple had the Macintosh Toolbox, which was similar in concept to the Windows SDK, but was known to be harder to develop on.
Overall, the tools did not really make the difference, the applications that were developed helped Windows a little, but the real difference was just marketshare. Windows could run on PCs from various different manufacturers. Apple took a purist view of their platform and only wanted the Macintosh OS on their own hardware. They continued this idealism by suing various companies that tried to make a Mac-clone.
Fast forward fifteen years and you see that the iPhone is a superior user experience and runs only on Apple made hardware. Apple is making life difficult for developers by needing to approve every application in its app store, using a somewhat niche programming language in Objective-C, and rejecting applications they see as cloning functionality provided by Apple. Android is trying to get as much marketshare as possible, has an app store of its own and uses one of the most widely used programming languages in the world.
Apple is following the same path it did all those years ago, and fully expects to have a different outcome. Macs still have a superior user experience when compared to Windows, but Windows has the developer mindshare. iPhones also have a superior user experience, but they are rapidly losing developer mindshare due to their somewhat draconian approval processes. Unless Apple decides to open up their platform a little more, they are destined to the same fate as the original Mac platform. Apple may out-design and out-innovate their competition, but they never did learn that companies can create something a little similar that is good enough. The mass consumer does not care about how beautiful your design may be or that you were innovative, they only care if it works good enough.
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So, Google's plan is to offer things like SQL on apparently engine; it's just going to cost you. I think that's smart. It hits a developer pain point and gives them an on ramp. They'll still have scaling issues, but at the enterprise level, these issues often aren't as apparent
In case you weren’t paying attention, Google announced a few things yesterday. You have to admit, Google knows how to make announcements and they made a bunch. That link has a nice summary of most of the releases, and you can go to many of the major tech blogs to get a good feeling for how much of the Google ecosystem has changed.
My focus is on the developer related items, specifically my post regarding Google Apps Script and the updates for Google App Engine for Business. In my post, I talked about how Google was trying to win business customers that need small departmental applications:
You can connect to MySQL and build a custom user interface if you have the Premier Edition. There is also more integration with Google Docs. Does anyone remember how many applications were written using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and Microsoft Access? What Google is trying to do is take that model and put it on the web.
With the new App Engine for Business, Google has now made the barrier of deploying to the web disappear. Two days ago you heard about the Apps Script changes, but you still had to get someone to publish the website. Yesterday you learned that Google wanted to be your new application host:
Just in case enterprise hosting was not enough, they decided to go after startups too. In a separate post that describes some basic updates to App Engine, they sneak in this nugget:
We’re also demoing a few upcoming features of App Engine at I/O as part of our sessions:
- Mapper API – A simple library for executing work in parallel over a large dataset, such as all your datastore entities or line-based data in a Blobstore blob.
- Channel API – The Channel API lets you build applications that can push content directly to your user’s browser (aka “Comet”). No more polling for updates!
Basically, the Channel API is adding push capabilities to your App Engine application without a huge amount of work. The Mapper API is a little different, and you would have to follow Google’s technology to understand what this means. Basically, a library that allows you to execute work in parallel over a large dataset is the high-level description of the MapReduce framework. So, it looks like everyone will be able to crunch data like Google in the near future.
These two posts really point to Google going after developers and the enterprise. Ad revenue may not grow forever, and Google seems to have learned from Microsoft that developers can be king-makers. If people build enough applications on App Engine, Google can slowly grow a massive revenue stream. They also give you a nice taste of the future with their App Engine roadmap. Take a look at the other features they are planning in the next six months:
If you look at this list, it screams enterprise support. SSL, background servers or daemons, backup and restore, server and application monitoring, and authentication. These are all the pieces that an enterprise would need. Do we need any more proof that Google is going after enterprise applications? Or do we need Ballmer to defect to Google just so he can yell “developers, developers, developers!”
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"If you haven’t played Portal now is your chance. The multi-award-winning video game is free for PC and Mac users until May 24 as part of a promotion for download service Steam. Portal is a bewildering and original game from the makers of the Half-Life series, Valve, who also happen to run Steam. Armed with a portal gun and advised by a computer, GLaDOS, the player has to negotiate a series of test chambers. The portal gun can fire a portal entrance into a surface in one part of the chamber and a portal exit into another part of the chamber. Walking through one will transport the player to the other. The result is a mind-bending puzzle game that’s best understood when seen. A sequel is due to be released later this year." - download it here: http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/
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Facebook Clams Up After Meeting on Privacy http://bit.ly/caZK1D
As we reported yesterday, Facebook's high and mighty summoned unto them their employees to talk about that savage beating the company has again been taking in the media, on blogs and among users, big and basic. The meeting, held at 4:00 pm PST has produced no audible results.
When we asked a Facebook spokesman about the meeting we got the same boilerplate as every other organization.
We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest.
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The only news of the meeting we have found came from Computerworld
In an e-mailed statement to Computerworld, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said, "We had a productive discussion where comments were made and questions were asked and answered."Noyes declined, however, to say if the social networking giant made any decisions about changing its contentious privacy policies or if the meeting was simply to allow employees to ask questions about the brouhaha that has arisen over them.
The notion of an open culture as the PR trope from Facebook just seems silly at this point. The company will not issue any substantial comments about a meeting that was called in response to the poor reception to its recent changes, which included objections to what some see as underhanded changes and poor communication.
Jim Finkle, reporting for Reuters:
Ellison says he learned that Sun’s pony-tailed chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, ignored problems as they escalated, made poor strategic decisions and spent too much time working on his blog, which Sun translated into 11 languages.
“The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn’t succeed,” said Ellison. “Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.”
Heh.
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