Susan Mernit's Blog

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)

from we make money not art: Two Buddhist monks pray in the Wat Tham Yod Thong temple, in the Ratchaburi province, Thailand. Their helmets protect them in case of falling rocks.

I'll be at the syndicate conference in San Francisco next week--if you want to meet up, get in touch.

Tech Crunch has the scoop-Yahoo bought delicious!!!

"Nothing is more important to the future of our web ambitions than to engage our sophisticated readers. Blogs are one way to do it."
Jon Landman, DeptyManaging Editor, New York Times, via LA Observed

The Guardian, one of the largest--and most innovative online-- newspapers in the UK, has launched a branded feed reader powered by Newspoint. See the quick guide.

So we've all established that online shopping is a good way to save on gas and avoid the mall, but this just in news suggests that this year a bigger slice of the online transactional pie is going to comparative shopping search engines, those referral banks that allow consumers to compare distributors and prices.
From Nielsen/NetRatings: Traffic rose 61 percent at online comparison shopping sites in the week ending November 27 compared to the week ending October 30. Regular online retailers saw a 35 percent rise in traffic during the same period. Comparison shopping sites, including Shopping.com, BizRate.com and Shopzilla, accounted for 0.3 percent of all Internet traffic -– a 24 percent increase over the same period last year according to Hitwise. (data via Kelsey and zdnet.)

Susan sez: Common belief is that consumers typically use these engines to find fair prices from companies they find reliable--I wonder a) if what is being purchased via these engines is the same as last year, or different? b) how many of the users driving the metrics surge are new users of these services?

Yahoo Answers, IMHO, is YAAN--yet another answer network--another attempt to build community out of tagging common questions--and therefore attitudes and interests--among a wide and loosely joined network of people--but it looks and feels very much like 43 things to me.
One of the questions and answers I dug out of Yahoo Answers Love & Romance was how can I find a russian bride without paying for her?--the Q&A format seems amazingly like 43 Things--with similar social network ethos--only, of course, Yahoo can link this (and they should) throughout more of their apps--and among their 82MM global users.
As Gary Price points out, YA is also reminiscent in some ways to Wondir.com and has some cross over with Squidoo (as Parekh points out).

Feeling a little cynical this morning, my take is.....once it's integrated into other services it could be great--as a stand-alone, yawn.

Dimitar Vesselinov's dream media team--
President: Richard Branson
CEO: John Battelle
COO: Jason Calacanis
CEB (chief executive blogger): Robert Scoble
CTO/CIO: Max Levchin
CSA (chief software architect): Mark Canter
Editor-in-chief: Chris Anderson
Chief customer representative: Craig Newmark
More here.

PS-- D is Bulgarian, reads a huge quantity of blogs, and is smart...nice variation on who wojuld play you in a movie..the make believe hiring list.

Earlier this week, I saw a demo by Yahoo Communication Products team leads Brad Garlinghouse and Jeff Bonforte of new phone services that are integrated into Yahoo Messenger--but the meeting was embargoed-that is, till Newsweek broke the embargo (and scooped the bloggers).

The core of the new product announcement was the news that a dialpad has been added to Mesenger, turning it into a phone service able to make domestic or international calls to regular telephones. at a price of 1 cent a minute--but the bells and whistles include the ability for anyone anywhere to purchase a phone number with which to receive calls, free voice mail, news ways to store phone numbers and chose contract methods working off a buddy list, and the hope of integrating the phone capabilities into all sorts of Yahoo verticals.

What impressed me the most about this product announcement--aside from Yahoo's obvious determination to launch a global product to go after Skype--was the opportunities it offered for integration into Yahoo premium services like Personals and Fantasy Baseball as either product upgrades or new revenue streams. To put it in other words, one of the ways Yahoo can compete with Google, IMHO, isn't to try to match then in product sets and feature to feature upgrades but to figure out what they can do differently--and do it amazingly well--and integration of tools across media and life management platforms seems like one smart way to go in this regard.

Besides the fact it's about shopping, and it has a name that actually means something, Gawker's new Consumerist site promises to be the place where the editors--and the readers--can bitch and moan, sort of an untested Consumer Reports for the global nomads locked up in every suburb in america.
The subhead is Shoppers bite back (think Jarvis Dell Hell, folks) and the implication is these word-mincers will roar.
Editor Joel Johnson says: "Each week The Consumerist will guide you through the delinquencies of retail and service organizations. The Consumerist will highlight the persistent, shameless boners of modern consumerism -- and the latest hot deals, discounts, and freebies around."

Anyone wanna bitch? Sounds like this is meant to be the new whineatorium.

• Jarvis: "The syllabus for the digital journalism course Howard Rheingold is teaching at Stanford is just great. Word file here."
• Rubel: SEOmoz | Beginner's Guide to SEO spills (some of) the beans
  
• Dave Beisel: (The Beginnings of) Social Commerce--smart post on a favorite topic--ecommerce and community
  
• Kottke: Do you have secret (blogging) sites? Why? See Secret sites
• Podtech.net: InfoTalk Podcast Series PodTech.net will now provide technology, business, and national news and reporting via podcasts.
• Kevin Burton's feedblog: The Future is in Clusters --it's scalability--and modularity that sustain product success
  
• Nokia N90: Can I mention how much I want one of these to use for vblogging and podcasting?

* "How a Giant Software Maker Played Hardball", New York Times, October 1998:

"For both software companies, a deal with America Online, which had five million subscribers at the time, could mean a big surge in browser use and market share.

Netscape seemed the natural partner for America Online, since both companies were Microsoft rivals. On March 11, America Online did announce that it would buy Netscape technology, but it was a standard licensing deal based on a payment-for-use formula. The next day, America Online announced a more significant deal with Microsoft making its browser the default technology -- the browser America Online subscribers would use unless they specifically asked for Netscape's Navigator.

To win the deal, Microsoft offered to give America Online a start-up icon on the Windows desktop -- precisely the kind of equal treatment on the main Windows screen that Case had asked the Justice Department to require of Microsoft. "After we agreed to its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft allowed us to be bundled on the Windows desktop," Case said. "It was an example of Microsoft's pragmatic side."

--From Michael Parekh, writing on how AOL may have failed to do an equity acquisition deal with Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, and so might dump Google adwords to team up with Microsoft against the big G--and recalling 1998's browser bait and switch games.

Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal highlights technology blogs--Memeorandum and Tech Crunch among them--as high quality and influential.
Quote of the moment: "The difference between the old media elite and the new blogging elite is that the latter gets redefined much more frequently. All it takes is attracting links from other bloggers."

Susan sez: Well, it's not quite that simple--these two work their tails off.
Congrats, gentleman--it's well deserved!

Adrian Holovaty of the Washington Post just released his latest project--a U.S. Congress Votes Database, which lets readers browse voting records from the U.S. Congress since 1991.
There are RSS feeds for the data, an RSS page for core info, aggregated data for each Congress, includingf votes that happened after midnight, vote missers and, on vote totals by astrological sign. Best of all--andmost useful--you can see voting records, as in this page for San Jose CA House member Zoe Lofgren.
The site doesn't have a good search tool yet, but it's a tremendous start on something much needed-and probably soon to be the basis for some cool mash-ups!

In a world where Google and Yahoo are leaders, it will be interesting to see other large media and consumer experience cionglomerates with diversified product lines fight to get into the other sweet spots where ad dollars significantly flow.
If Jordan Rohan is correct, and Time Warner's Dick Parsons never meant to sell AOL whole, just to build up interest and get better terms from Google, then one way to think about the recent turn of events is as a solid slap at the New York Times, another company that has been making a sustained and serious effort to grow into the portal ranks.
Not only did NYTimes buy About.com to grow their page views and diversify their platform, they bought it to further increase their consumption and targeted delivery of Google AdWords--putting them much close to AOL as Google's biggest (and most preferred?) client.

So doesn't a new (and presumably enhanced) AOL/Google deal shove the Times back down the food chain a bit--again?

"Parsons has done a masterful job of making it look like AOL was for sale when I don't think it was. The most likely outcome is simply an improvement in the terms AOL gets from Google."
--Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, quoted in NY Times

Jeff's eloquent on newspapers, as in future of news in this long post about some European innovators and the usual crowd back here in the states. A snippet:
"Our task is to stop seeing old failings everywhere and start seeing all the new opportunities before us, to exploit the future and expand news, to exhibit a passion about the possibilities, as Rafat Ali told the Online News Association. And we must accept the reality of the marketplace and stop wishing it wouldn't change."
and
"From a business perspective, we need to stop whining about readers moving online. If that's what they want to do, then go with them, damn it!"

(You know, Jarvis was my boss for a while, and not only was he just as smart (and sharp) back then--he taught me a hell of a lot--and still does.)

"...Entrepreneurs have come to realize that social networks are enablers of other compelling consumer experiences. Thus, social networks are becoming an important ingredient of all sorts of consumer experiences. Social networks inform the conversations that take place among friends on LiveJournal. Social networks enable the discovery of new music on MySpace. Social networks enhance the multi-player gaming experience at Xfire. Social networks now empower recruiting on LinkedIn. And dozens of new social networks are emerging to enable specific, valuable consumer experiences that are enhanced by the underpinnings of the network."
--Dave Hornik, VentureBlog

"Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today's young generation largely ignores the difference.

Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share passions for dogs, say, or opera. But for the most part, their social lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face interaction.

The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Increasingly, America's middle- and upper-class youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours)."
--The MySpace Generation, Businessweek

but it made me smile--The periodic table of candy.
(Via candy addict and slashfood)

WSJ: Chamath Palihapitiya, AOL's IM lead, quits to VC at Mayfield Ventures where he will help the firm *get* what young people want(and have a amazing life, right?)
Workbench: Geeze, at Wikipedia, it looks like Adam Curry might be snipping credit for others out of the podcasting entry. As Wikipedia editor Jeremy Hunsinger said: "For some reason a person at 82.108.78.107 keeps removing vital material that explains some of the history of the development of podcasting."
Comscore: Consumers between the ages of 35 and 54 years old accounted for more than 45 percent of all online video watched in August 2005; 35 to 54 year-olds are 20 percent more likely to watch online video than the average Internet user.
Top Ten Sources: Blog bundles, by subject, from a smart site found via Halley.

Yesterday's post about the Craigslist story has all sorts of interesting discussion going on now in the comments--and the blogosphere.
The writer, Ryan Blitstein, said that there were no female sources for the story because "Sadly, few media critics and leaders of the citizen journalism movement are women. "
That has provoked some good discussion from Elisa Camahort, Halley Suitt, Nancy White and others--and a lot of frustration at another journalist who doesn't seem to get it.

Watched photog David LaChappelle's documentary RIZE on krumping, a style of hip hop dancing that's violent, expressive and the center of an alt culture in Los Angles, Long Beach and nearby areas. Given that LaChapelle is the man who shot a Lolita-like Britney for Rolling Stone, the movie is suprisingly fresh--Though it does drag on too long, the dancers' intelligence and vitality is obvious.

Bakotopia's developer, Dan Pacheco, just got honored as one of the NewspaperAssociation's 20 Under 40.
Quote to note: "...I'm amazed at how much I've been allowed to accomplish through a small family-owned newspaper company like the Californian. I'’m allowed to work much faster than I ever could at gargantuans like The Washington Post and America Online...One of the many reasons I chose to work where I do is because I absolutely could not believe what I was hearing about what the '“indie' Californian was doing. Here I was at America Online, with a job many people work their whole careers to get to, and people in Bakersfield with far less money and resources were pulling off stuff that I'’d been trying to push through for six years."

"Honestly, we have spent the past 24 hours mulling over former New York Press owner Russ Smith's Mugger column in the alt-weekly's latest issue, in which he details the sale of Gawker Media to the New York Times Company for $32 million. As this is utterly ridiculous and unequivocally not true, we imagine Smith intended the piece as some sort of quasi-parody.

But we can't look away from Smith's column, and it's not because we think it's particularly insightful or witty or even otherwise worth discussion. We're fascinated, quite frankly, because we don't get it."
--Jesse Oxfield and Jessica Cohen, Gawker editors, Dec. 1, 2005

Susan sez: Oh, now I get it--after reading 2,000 boring words, Smith is using Gawker to swat at the Times. As in NYT you are screwed. Quelle Brilliant (not).

Afterthought: How about someone send Russ Smith out to the Hamptons and have him do EST with Tom Wolf? Or maybe to Berkeley to intern with the Daily Kos?

Afterthought 2: Never mind, let Russ Smith go work at Gawker--they obviously got him started when they interviewed him back in 2004.

Jeremy Wright, Darren Rowse, Duncan Riley, Aaron Brazell, Ingrid Diaz and friends are taking a run at the consumer market (having first focused on bsiness blogging, right?) with a new set of entertainment and celebrity blogs, including CelebArmour --a true homage to PerezHilton as part of their b5media blog network.
There are The Hilton Files, Top Model Gossip, MTV Reality World, a batch of blogs about beauty and so on.
Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, or the easiest way to shoot for $25MM in success?

Ryan Blitstein's done a lovely job profiling Craig Newmark in SF Weekly, digging into both Craig's smart simplicity and the profound disruption his efforts have caused.
Favorite snippets:
Describing Craig monitoring CL in his unfinished home office: "This is how the multimillion-dollar global corporation that is Craigslist Inc. remains operational: with the founder sitting at home for hours a day, pointing and clicking on a "Sweep the Leg!" button. Yet the consequences of this bare-bones behemoth's rise now stretch far beyond Newmark's home and the Craigslist community."

And:
"Newmark now suffers from a moral dilemma: He feels guilty about helping cause job losses and poorer-quality papers, but he's excited to accelerate the decline of the big, bad mainstream media. He seems determined to remedy his sins against the media by changing it for the better, lending his name and dollars to a citizen journalism movement populated by J-school professors, idealistic techno-futurists, and so-called citizen journalists. A self-described news dilettante, Newmark believes his recent journalism-related work could be more important than Craigslist. Citizen journalism, though, may not be enough to plug the news hole created by his site's success. Newmark's well-intentioned campaign to repair the institution he inadvertently injured could very well be in vain."

And:
"As a private for-profit, Craigslist doesn't have to publicly disclose anything. SF Weekly parent company New Times doesn't release many financial details, either. Newmark, though, views his creation as something different. "We do a better job as a nominal for-profit," he says, "but we exist in a category that doesn't really exist in the law." That "category" allows Newmark to keep the domain Craigslist.org, a name that gives the false impression that the site is a nonprofit, by using ".org," an extension almost exclusively used by nonprofit companies and foundations. Craigslist's marketing materials call this "a symbol of our service mission and non-corporate culture." (Craigslist.com, which the company also owns, draws far less traffic.) It permits Newmark to use the word "non-commercial" twice on Craigslist's "Mission and History" page, and to bury the phrase "No charges, except for job postings" in the third line from the bottom."

This is the best piece on Newmark and CL I have read--and a must read for anyone interest in Craig, online classifieds, citizen journalism--and--surprise!-- the role of women in new media--as in why are they missing in action in a 10,000 word story like this one?

Yep, one interesting side note here, not the focus of this terrific story--is that every single person mentioned or quoted in it--except for Craig's unnamed girlfriend--is male.

(Susan sez: And what do you make of that? Anyone still wondering why Blogher was so special? I smell the new boys club... or unthinking writers...)