Mike Butcher

A Jupiter analyst writes:

The biggest problem facing social networks, aside from their lack of a workable business model, is that users don’t stick around very long. Friendster has around 10 million registered users, but only one million visit the site in any month. It appears that people register, play around for a week or two, figure out that there’s really no point to a social network, and then never come back. (And no, dating isn’t really a use of social networks.

Evite’snew social networking tool pulls in bar and restaurant data from their sister property Citysearch, plugs that data into a customised Evite interface, and then tells you what your friends think about those bars and restaurants. Personalized city guides!

Evite still needs to get its users to come rank the bars and restaurants – but they’ve got a database of 66 million emails.

(Via Nate Elliott)

Real.com’s music service, Rhapsody, and video retailer Netflix get 20 percent of their sales from products not available in Wal-Mart and Blockbuster; Amazon.com gets 57 percent of its sales from titles you can’t find.

Wired’s The Long Tail explores the “new economy” of e-commerce sites that have endless inventory, without the costs associated with physical space

(Via Poynter)

Interesting article from the Poynter Institute says newspaper readers who follow blogs remain cautious, but they consider them a “vital newcomer to the media scene… All this has forced the traditional media to re-evaluate its relationship with readers newly empowered to speak out and challenge the system.”

Steve Outing, senior editor at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, thinks blogs are “are influencing mainstream media to become more interactive, to treat news more as a conversation and a bit less as a lecture.”

(Thanks to editorsweblog.org)

So notes Joi Ito
who points to a graph of showing the number of corporate bloggers. See his blog for the details.

I’m so looking forward to ads addressed at me personally on TV… Not!

The Guardian has launched “Web Feeds” – their renaming of RSS feeds. But no feed for Media Guardian. Why? Because it’s going to be part of a premium service? Or they want people to visit the site rather than read headlines via RSS? This seems like an odd omission.

I know a highly experienced web developer who has more experience developing amazing sites (which you’ve heard of) than anyone else I know. He is looking for a new role(s). Contact me for his details and interesting offers on mike at mbites dot com.

1. Sub-100 words stories. Want to know more? Sorry.

2. Bad categories: “Tech & IT”?! “, “Mobile and Wireless”?!

3. Advertises “PR services” alongside “News”

4. Allows anyone to write, such as a Web usability firm pushing its own releases and clients.

5. Scant editing: “Microsoft says it is ready to unbundled (sic). media player”

6. Rarely publishes comments on stories.

7. Lastly it sucks because despite all these appalling contradictions and compromises to editorial integrity it probably makes money.

Rewind>fast forward>play – mobile Napsterisation. A piece I have written for Vodafone’s futurology” type online mag.

Summary second bittest post to mbitesSummary bit.