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Joost Needs a Boost

By Ian, on February 28th, 2007

For the last 3 remaining people in the universe who have not yet received a Joost invite: I have now got one. Nah-nah-na-na-nah.

Joost uses peer-to-peer technology, similarly to BitTorrent, to distribute copy-protected broadcast TV between users. It’s very simple to set up and you don’t need to tweak any settings to make it work perfectly. There are about 12 channels available with a choice of about 20 programmes on each channel. The video quality is very good compared to YouTube and similar — and probably better than regular TV if you sit 20 inches from the screen, the way you do with a computer. They make their money from short adverts every 10 minutes or so. Just a single advert, but presumably, because they have virtually no costs and highly targeted audiences, they can make a reasonable profit on these.

But it kind of reminds me why I don’t watch regular TV. The content they’ve managed to pull together appears to be a compilation of Channel 5 rejects (Channel 5 is the worst British TV station, overseas readers). There’s a whole channel of ‘The World’s Strongest Man’ and another devoted to a car programme that isn’t as good as Top Gear. I started watching the promisingly-titled ‘Indie Flix’ channel, but found that by ‘indie’ they really meant ‘unwatchable tripe’. Fratelli-TV, if you like.

There’s talk of a further deal between Viacom and Joost, which already has an MTV channel from the company. Viacom recently had 100,000 video clips pulled from YouTube. Hopefully, that content is about to find a new home and fingers-crossed that might give me the incentive to try it a second time.

Update: Stuart was clearly in the same batch of new testers as me and shares my feelings. Some salutary comments from Duncan to counter my impatience below.

The Victoria Line is my Friend

By Ian, on February 26th, 2007

The Victoria Line is not only the noisiest and grubbiest London Underground line; it is also my latest Twitter friend. In what may be the first known example of someone making Twitter, the ‘Seinfeld of the Internet’, do something useful, philosophy student and all-round clever chap Tom Morris has created travel update channels for each of the Underground lines feeding from Transport for London’s own updates. There are also RSS and Atom feeds for each. Since Twitter messages can be relayed to your mobile phone as SMS messages, this makes for a clever way to get personalised travel updates while you’re out and about.

It’s probably a good idea to start a new Twitter account if you are going to make use of this — if you’ve already got plenty of friends, you’ll find your phone filled with the usual trivia in moments otherwise.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Web Apps

By Ian, on February 21st, 2007

FOWA day two, then. Lots of learning for me, as many of the presentations had more of a developer angle. It’s stuff I’m interested in, but tend not to understand a lot of the time thanks to an arty-farty background. In general terms, I do not know my API from my elbow. I met and heard from a lot of people who do, though, and got filled in on the basics, fast.

One of the surprise hits of the day was Philip Wilkinson’s presentation ‘What Will Succeed and Fail in 2007?’ Surprising, not because Phil is normally rubbish, but because it was one of three short presentations voted onto the schedule by attendees after the ‘official’ speakers had all been booked. For those who don’t know, though, Wilkinson founded the comparison-shopping site Kelkoo (formerly ShopGenie) and has more recently launched a Web 2.0 style social shopping venture, Crowdstorm, and so you’d hope for some expertise on the subject matter. And why was it such a hit? Because he offered concise ideas and controversial examples. What follows is a paraphrase from my notes, and a couple of interjections where my opinion diverges from Phil’s.

Recognising the arrogance and nigh-impossibility of predicting sure-fire successes and doomed failures, it’s more reasonable to offer some criteria for what seems likely to bring success; a framework for a popular service, as it were. Note that in the list of hits and misses, these are examples of services failing under this particular criteria. A web app might fail on some of these and succeed on others.

1. Don’t roll out a clone of another product.

The second YouTube might be successful; but it’s not very likely to bring anyone $1.65bn of success. And if you are the seventh online calendar or the 22nd social bookmarking service, then you need to be offering something very much better than the leader to make an impact.

Hits: Netvibes, del.icio.us, flickr, photobucket.

[Counter-example: MySpace — definitely not the first social network, but maybe it launched at the right time to capture a wave of people who had broadband and a desire to use the Internet in this way?]

2. Simplicity is the key

Applications that try to do too much lose focus and fall between stools. Stellar successes do a single thing very well.

Hits: Twitter, flickr, StumbleUpon, YouTube

Misses: Odeo, hubpages, edgeio, 30boxes

[Counter-example: MySpace, again, doesn’t appear to be faltering despite its attempts to be all things to all users. Also, the Netvibes-style personalised homepage/RSS reader/search portal has dozens of functions and appears to me to be gaining ground.]

3. Don’t sell technology; sell user empowerment

Applications that are built for the readers of Techcrunch or for the development community might possibly get you the attention of a future employer, but won’t make your fortune. Don’t be a ‘technology tourist destination’.

Hits: meebo, spinvox, skype, eBay — all solve a proper, mainstream problem. They may have innovative technology, but that isn’t really the point.

Misses: Clipfire, Renkoo, wehanghere

4. Put the selfish individual before the social good.

Successful web-apps need to work for one user in order to get their buy-in and to start building a community. Network effects might add value, but they shouldn’t be the only value.

Hits: last.fm, del.icio.us, wesabe

Misses: 43 Places, Flixster, trustedplaces

[Counter-example: does last.fm belong on the ‘hit’ list here? My understanding is that it’s only through the presence of a community that the recommendation engine works? Also, my socialistic tendencies incline me towards the idea that people are naturally altruistic. The success of Yahoo! Answers would seem to confirm that — points and stars as your only reward.]

5. Don’t try a play if the big boys can copy you

The ‘big boys’ can presumably copy anything they like, but I guess that the point is that they can’t just take over your community. I’d guess that once you have a community then that becomes difficult to compete against. This would be why Google bought YouTube rather than just sticking with their own video offering, in my estimation.

Hits: digg, Facebook, YouTube

Misses: Metacafe, Kiko, wikio

6. Enter the Mainstream

Many, if not most, web applications appear to be built for the use and benefit of 20-something net-heads. Successful web apps will be able to ‘cross the chasm’ and get your parents using them.

Hits: Pandora, YouTube, Skype

Misses: last.fm, digg, del.icio.us

[Counter-example: the list here obviously courts controversy. Can any of those ‘misses’ really be counted as a failure? Also, I’d suggest that some of the people building vertical, Enterprise 2.0 applications will be failing all the way to the bank. However, I understand and appreciate Phil’s point.]

7. Ability to generate a large, loyal following

It stands to reason that some of the most successful Web 2.0 start-ups have enormously passionate followings. This sort of customer evangelism is clearly the best marketing that money can’t buy.

Hits: Threadless, last.fm, digg, flickr

Misses: Odeo, ecademy, flock

The Future of Digg

By Ian, on February 21st, 2007

I was lucky enough to be at FOWA today and to hear Kevin Rose speak about the future of digg.

I was unlucky enough for my Tablet PC to crash and lose my notes from the session [my own fault]. What follows is from memory. Forgive the consequent ‘notey-ness’.

Digg will support OpenID. The emergent portable, open ID system recently given support from Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! will also work on digg.

Digg will never pay moderators to check for false/lame stories. Rose doesn’t believe that is a workable — or rather, scalable — model for the system. The moderation, he thinks, needs to mirror the community to have any meaning. “Policemen every five steps won’t make any difference,” as Rose (probably) said.

The discussion pages will allow the upload of links and ‘other’ media to support stories. This will also be a part of the story validation system, whereby proponents and opponents of a particular claim can upload evidence to show this.

Digg can already spot spammers easily using their statistical data. 100 user accounts that all agree with each other on everything is easily spotted, for example. He showed us these rogue stories appearing on a graph available internally to the company and swiftly being buried. Rose did not state whether the managers of digg take any action in these circumstances. My impression was that he was saying that they do not, because users are more than able to detect spam stories and bury them.

Digg is working closely on making users’ data work better for them. In the not-too-distant future, it will be able to recommend friends to you on the basis of your common likes and dislikes, and also upon their geographical location. It will also be able to personalise the ‘upcoming stories’ queue to show stories you are most likely to be interested in.

On the flip side of that, digg will be able to personalise the people you interact with and do not. Rose hopes that this will counteract the effect of “900,000 people being in the same room and, of course, they aren’t going to get on”. Or, as a delegate put it: “people on digg are assholes”.

Rose confirmed that digg is actively mining users’ attention data in order to implement these changes. He professed ignorance of APML, but “there are a couple of engineers deeply into this stuff” back at digg HQ.

Digg will imminently introduce a ‘smart’ digg-this button for blog and website owners. A single line of JavaScript will detect whether or not a story has been dugg already and advertise the number of diggs a post has received.

A Flash toolkit is in the works that will allow site owners considerable flexibility over displaying data from digg on their own sites.

Generally speaking, great conference so far, but lack of internet access today means I’m still catching up. More news tomorrow, I hope.

In Search of Panellists and Speakers

By Ian, on February 19th, 2007

Cross-posted from www.vecosys.com with a little fiddling to make it come from my mouth, not Mike’s.

My employer, New Media Knowledge (NMK) is taking applications from people who would like to speak or appear on a panel at its annual new media conference in June this year. The conference programme is being organised by the sage and experienced hands of Mike Butcher and he’s looking for eminent folk wanting to appear on stage at the event. He’s also interested in hearing from bloggers who would like to cover the conference.

The day-long conference will feature panellists and digital industry luminaries from across the UK, along with international guests and keynote speakers. This year the conference will focus on getting real dialogue going between attendees and feature heavyweight sections about digital media, marketing, advertising, communities (social media etc) and commerce. This year’s programme is still in formation but in past years the keynote speakers have included people such as Bradley Horowitz (Vice President of Product Strategy — Yahoo!), Marc Canter (CEO — Broadband Mechanics) and Shel Israel (Author — Naked Conversations).

The event this year promises to be a fantastic opportunity to network and make contact with the UK’s new media “movers and shakers”. Last year, NMK ran the highly successful and well-regarded Content 2.0 event, the archive of which is here.

Some topics we’ll cover:

- The new platforms for media and advertising
– Entertainment in the new digital world
– Connected Consumers
– The new metrics of measurement in the attention economy
– Mobile as a media and social entity
– Brand strategy in the digital economy
– The future for search
– Social media’s next steps
– The UKâ€™s top technology startups
– Second Life, Virtual worlds, and the next stage

So, email Mike to:

â€¢ Indicate if you would like to *apply* to speak and on what topic area

â€¢ Indicate if you would like to participate on a panel

â€¢ Indicate if your company would be interested in sponsoring any aspect of the event (sponsor packages will including branding, networking/hospitality sponsorship, web/mobile sponsorship etc)

â€¢ Indicate if you have a blog relevant to the event and would like to be considered for the “Bloggers’ Bullpen”

Please contact Mike about any of the above, and please also remember that although we can’t fit absolutely everyone in (even though I’d like to), there will be PLENTY of opportunity to make your voice heard.

Man About Town

By Ian, on February 18th, 2007

Now that this Web 2.0 malarkey has become a full-time job, I’m getting out and about a bit more than was my wont. The next couple of weeks seems set to fry my brains completely. Do feel free to come and distract me with offers of beer if you’re coming along to any of these.

This week — The Future of Web Apps — excellent line up of speakers including the likes of Kevin Rose, Bradley Horowitz and Michael Arrington. Looks like it’s going to be a bit of a head-rush — ten speakers on each of the first two days, plus various networking sessions and a couple of panel debates.

Then on Thursday evening, it’s mashup*, where the assembled luminaries will be addressing the tangled topic of the semantic web. It’s being chaired by Sam Sethi of Vecosys. I’ve had various goes at trying to understand the semantic web on this blog over the last few months. The trouble normally comes at the point someone mentions the word ‘ontology’. From there, it tends to go downhill into XML, XML Schema, RDF, OWL, and SPARQL and a diagram that looks a bit like this (thanks, Wikipedia):

300px-W3c semantic web stack

I’m also keen to understand how to separate the semantic crowd from the failed ‘meta tags’ initiative. Why aren’t microformats and semantic mark-up equally susceptible to spammers? Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you come Friday morning.

I have also promised to throw in a mention of Working Together 2 (disclosure: NMK is a partner). It’s not until March 8th but promises to be pretty interesting with speakers including Peter Kellner, George Osborne and Ewan McIntosh. Basically, the point of it is that a lot of government agencies aren’t very good at communicating. Trying to gain access to services via the Internet tends to require some pretty Byzantine manoeuvres on the part of us citizens, often involving 8pt type and 33 subsections. Bizarrely, though, we live in a country whose digital communication industries are second to none. Why not ermm… get them together? — hence the name.