Well, my three-year-old Apple Powerbook laptop died. I lost a lot of data and I may not get it all back. I should imagine the two nasty drops it took over the last few months had something to do with it. Before you ask, yes, I backed it up. But guess what? Looks like the back-up didn’t work as well as I thought it would. Suffice it to say, don’t use Apple’s own Backup software. Try Carbon Copy Cloner instead. I know that… now. So – normal service resumes on this blog just as soon as I get up and running again…
Monthly Archive for May, 2006
The tbites.com podcast this week features an interview with Richard Anson, CEO of Reevoo.com, a new UK-based start-up.
The idea behind Reevoo is that customers can only review products they've actually bought, rather than the millions of half-baked reviews out there on things people have barely looked at. It is also a handy CRM exercise for online retailers. But listen to the podcast to get the full story.
News Update: Reevoo has just published its 10 millionth product review (and signed up Comet).
Download the MP3 file here (approx 12MB, 13 minutes long) or subscribe to the podcast feed.
This is the latest in a series of regular tbites podcasts, generously hosted at London private members club, Adam Street.
If you'd like to be a guest on the next Bitecast, where we'll be documenting some of the most interesting new developments in digital and mobile media, contact Mike Butcher.
I’m new to the new music scene of “Emo” (Emotional Punk, apparently), but following a link from a trends site I found Mylocalbands.com. From here you can find the site for Fall Out Boy. Here, fans can post pictures they’ve taken of their fave band and find out where eachother are for meetups etc. This seems to me like a fantastic mashup idea and pretty much confirms my view that most social software is pretty pointless until it’s applied to a content environment. In this case people are able to network around being a fan and into music. Similarly MySpace did well out of music. And of course, Last.FM. And last night I heard about a start-up that will apply social networking to people who like Wine. It’s a natural fit. So, while everyone works this out for themselves, enjoy Fall Out Boy’s latest offering.
The mbites.com podcast this week features an interview with Richard Anson, CEO of Reevoo.com, a new UK-based start-up.
The idea behind Reevoo is that customers can only review products they’ve actually bought, rather than the millions of half-baked reviews out there on things people have barely looked at. It is also a handy CRM exercise for online retailers. But listen to the podcast to get the full story.
Download the MP3 file here (approx 12MB, 13 minutes long) or subscribe to the podcast feed.
This is the latest in a series of regular mbites podcasts, generously hosted at London private members club, Adam Street.
If you’d like to be a guest on the next Bitecast, where we’ll be documenting some of the most interesting new developments in digital and mobile media, contact Mike Butcher.
An impromptu party organised by Mike Arrington of Techcrunch.com fame attracted upwards of 100 people to a central London bar on Monday night this week. One of the issues on people’s minds was when is the bubble on this latest Internet boom going to burst? Chatting over a beer Arrington said “When the market falls out of US house prices. Then people will start watching what they spend and the advertising market will drop.” He thinks its the ad market which is driving a lot of new Web start-ups. And he’s right, to a large extent. Look at YouTube / MySpace etc. ALl media plays.
Meanwhile, I ran into a few new start-ups which I’ll be writing about shortly…
Stumbling through London the other day after a long session at the Powerbook, I realised I just had to turn into a pub for a pint. Put it down to the call of nature. Incredibly, but who should happen by but Peter Nixey of Webkitchen. We got chatting over a jar, as you do, and he mentioned a new Web 2.0 project he was working on.
Now, before you scream “We hate Web 2.0″, just listen. His idea was to create a site which uses “no server-logic and stores no data of its own.” Very Web 2.0, I said.
The result is Eventsites, a true mashup of Google Maps, Flickr and a calendar API. This means anyone can create a web site for an event, with a map to the event and associated photos. All very easy and simple.
Now, I know you are going to say – that’s been done before. But the point is, it’s not been done in this way very often before, and the interesting thing about it, is that it took just one young guy who lives in South West London to do it.
Peter Nixey has a longer explanation on his blog about how and why he did it, but I just want to say that this kind of thing is, to me, what Web 2.0 is all about, both in culture and implementation.
Regarding the latter, if you read Dion Hinchcliffe’s quite interesting definition of Web 2.0, Nixey’s site fulfills pretty much all of the criteria. To quote:
“Key Aspects of Web 2.0″
- The Web and all its connected devices as one global platform of reusable services and data (Three APIs – Check)
- Data consumption and remixing from all sources, particularly user generated data (See above, plus Flickr pix – Check)
- Continuous and seamless update of software and data, often very rapidly (APIs updated as they go – Check)
- Rich and interactive user interfaces (Check)
- Architecture of participation that encourages user contribution (Flickr pix and comments – Check)
Regarding the former – culture. What I mean by that is that Web 2.0 represents the rise of very small teams, capable of implementing useful things very quickly and developing them in a continuous manner in concert with user participation. In this case the ‘team’ is just one guy. That’s why the Web 2.0 movement has so much potential power I think.
Internet Protocol TV is set to be a very interesting new area both for existing broadcasters and new players. Why? Because it potentially lowers the barrier to entry for new players, and they may be from the Internet space, just as much as from the older TV industry.
Thus, below are the details for an event I’m organising for NMK.co.uk.
I Want My IPTV (NMK)
date: 25/05/2006
time: 13:00 – 17:00
venue: 01zero-one, Hopkins St, Soho, London.
costs: Standard: £80.00
Reduced Rate: £50.00
Register and pay online here:
http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/821/register
Or email or call Hannah Weimers (hannah.weimers@NMK.co.uk, or call her on 020 7911 5000, extension 3947)
OUTLINE:
Alternative broadband providers and utility companies are shaping the early IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) market, mainly using video over broadband phone lines, or cable networks…
These early adopters have unleashed a technology that is now causing widespread disruption across the telecoms marketplace and is starting to impact on the future strategies of the traditonal TV market.
But why is this happening? Broadband telcos are scrambling to make extra revenues as so much telephony switches to Internet systems like Skype and local-loop unbundling puts pressure on prices.
So is TV going to be the great white hope of the telecoms business? What are going to be the opportunities for content providers in this new era?
• Will film studios switch to dealing with British Telecom and AOL instead of BSkyB and Warner Cinemas?
• Will the barriers come down for indiependent TV production houses to create and distribute their material direct to the home?
• Are the major online media players like Yahoo!, MSN and Google poised to launch services aimed directly at the box in the living room?
This afternoon event from NMK will present the latest thinking from a panel of experts, featuring debate and networking afterwards.
Chaired by Mike Butcher, journalist & digital media consultant, mbites.com
PROGRAMME
KEYNOTE:
Dr William Cooper – Founder & Principal Consultant, informitv.com
A specialist in interactive media services across multiple platforms, Cooper advises clients ranging from start-up companies to major corporations, providing a practical operational perspective. As head of interactive at BBC Broadcast, he operationally managed the successful launch and delivery of landmark interactive services on satellite, terrestrial and cable television across multiple channels and territories. Previously, as head of new media operations, he oversaw the exponential growth of the BBC’s online services. Prior to that, as product manager for the new media division of the Press Association, William led the launch of online syndication services, leading to the creation of a successful standalone business, subsequently acquired by Orange for £98 million.
Followed by Q & A
SESSION 1: IPTV – The “million channel” EPG, the broadcasters and the GYM Club.
What form will IPTV services take? And how will we navigate the myriad services available? What are the big online search firms like Google, Yahoo, MSN (GYM) planning in the realm of video into the living room?
The ISP Model: Broadband Internet TV
Richard Ayers – Head of Broadband Content, Tiscali
Interactive IPTV Case Study
Rob Walk – Managing Partner, NovaRising
Further speaker to be announced soon.
Q&A
SESSION 2: IPTV – Commercial opportunities for SMEs/indie TV production houses
Digital Broadcasters and their Strategies
Scott Gronmark – Interactive Media Consultant, Scott Gronmark Associates
HypTV Case Study
Bob Palmer – CEO and Creative Director, Hyp TV
Opportunities for Start-ups in the IPTV World
Alexander Cameron – Digital TX Limited
Richard Dreyfuss, Actor and Activist, spoke on “Media and Civic Discourse”
Dreyfus efectively criticised the MSM (mainstream media) for reacting too quickly to events without any thought or substance. “We transmit chapter headings but no chapter. We do not rewards. Broadcast gives only visual no text. There is no details. Our relationship with the Islamic world, our ability to be self righteous are all transmitted by image. We cannot overlook the older problems. If we speak for western civ then we must speak for dissent and debate. But we don’t honour it or allow it. We must have civility in the political debate. We have replaced it with melodrama. If you interrupt or are patronsing you can’t hear what they they say. No matter how sophisticated the technology, if you insist on one view and not allow others then the technology simply allows that mocking faster and more thoroughly.”
Technology can lead us to fatal conclusions without the time to change our minds.
“We no longer offer the differences between republican democracy or Islamic democracy.”
“It’s sold through a technology that does not allow for error.”
He said it was possible to kill black people on sight in the US South for 100 years, prior to civil rights movement.
Image how wrong we can be when we don’t have that time and our political classes are not educated to this scrutiny.
“Now there is a real clock on what damage can be done. No matter how angry you may get, you couldn’t do the damage that you can now, then.”
“In a minute. Now we can create hysteria in a minute.”
“How do you get people to read the good blogging and not the sensational, hysterical blogging.”
He’s talking about journalists reporting the most extreme points of view: “How do you reward journalists for providing the detail and the context?”
How do you create a generation of kids who like the process of learning.
This generation says – we never want to say I don’t know and I’ve changed my mind.
“We are the flap doodles of this culture and we are right now not taking into consideration the power of the tools we are working with.” (Reference to Swift).
Mashup 2.0! Get it? Actually this blog post was created live tonight (hence typos etc) at the second London Mashup event which was all about “‘Personal Publishing, beyond blogging”.
First speaker
As the main organiser Simon Grice gets to talk at the event but also happens to have founded Midentity.com.
He talked about “Personal Publishing” ( he used Dick Hardt’s style of presenting which is basically to flash words and pictures up on the screen – actually I’ve done this before but without the pictures – much nastier!).
So Grice reckons blogging changed the media business – which is no longer ‘the big cheese.’ So far, so predictable…
People can now publish, store and link. No big trad media firms have (normally) launched user blogs (but now BBC is investing 110m quid into blogs). ITV bought Friends Reunited, Murdoch bought MySpace blah blah. Oh, and E-Tribes runs blogs.
He thinks it’s about what he defines as ‘personal publishing’, not blogging. In this category falls things like user reviews on Amazon, Craigslist, TripAdvisor.com, and user ratings etc. (I think he’s wrong – these people don’t own media from which they profit, so therefore they are not publishers, just contributors – if powerful ones en masse – there is also the issue of whether they own the copyright).
Most people wouldn’t consider themselves as bloggers, but most people create content in the form of pictures, calendar events, comments on sites, etc. (Actually his theory sounds very similiar to Evan Williams’ “casual content“).
Ideally people would publish from one place and then send it to the place they want it to go, rather than have to log in to various sites. Obviously mobiles could be useful for all this.
Second Speaker
Jamie Kantrowitz SVP Marketing and Content for MySpace (who have landed in London recently) talked about ‘ the hard to reach 14-30 year olds’ on MySpace.com
She says:
MySpace is a place where people Express themselves, connect with Friends and discover popular culture.
They debut albums for artists (hold on, didn’t AOL do this first?). They do classifieds, etc. (go see the site).
“We don’t allow people to publish to other places yet…”
They are doing lots of other things like viral videos (a YouTube rippoff? Surely not), and comedian sections.
They ‘connect brands to the audience’ (read: advertising). However, they don’t ‘veil’ advertising, which is probably why it still exists for this marketing savvy audience.
MySpace now has 70m users.
In the UK they have 2.3m registered users (15,000 users a day) here – hence why they have turned up in London. 16-34 age groups. 21 min per session average usage among users. They claim it’s the 8th highest trafficked site in the UK. Hmnnnn…..
They’ve doubled in size in under a year, and are aiming for 98m users in a couple or so.
[Part of the success is down to people's vanity (my words!).] The ‘user profile’ is now a metaphor for their room/apartment they spend hours dressing it up.
The ‘MySpace generation’ has grown up with choice and customisation (time shifting content in iPods, TV etc), social networking online, and is comfortable with creating their own content. And it’s no longer geeky to network online or blog or listen to podcasts. For this demographic, it’s mainstream.
Q&A
“We’ve grown twice as fast since we were acquired by The Man” – Kantrowitz on the lack of user backlash since Murdoch bought MySpace.
Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango: Should we trust bloggers “No” (it’s too easy to blog basically, of course).
Tom Bureau, CNet publisher: “We run a lot of highly regarded publishing sites and the research says our products are trusted more than many old media outlets. So users are becoming very canny about what they see on the web. With blogging, there’s general rule of thumb that blogging is about opinion not news and fact, but the youthful demographic is very savvy about blogs.”
Yoz (from the audience): “Urban Myths archives like Snopes show people still circulate urban myths, but it’s about having the skills to work out what’s true.”
Kantrowitz: “You can’t overthink it. A lot of MySpace is entertainment. Some people do it seriously but it won’t produce the next Matt Drudge. It’s a place to put your life online very simply, so it serves its function. NewsCorp is committed to protecting the brand experience of MySpace – but at the end of the day we’re a business. We’d say we are a trusted network.”
On a show of hands most people at the event said MySpace was a good buy for Murdoch, apart from Paul Fisher from First Capital who said “where’s the business and where’s the money?”
Mark Canter from Broadband Mechanics weighed in with thoughts about ’structured blogging’. He reckons structured content, containing individual pieces, permalinks, event information etc. Blogging slams all that into one giant text block, but he reckons let’s take that flat text and structure it so that it becomes more searchable etc. [Yeah, because people so want to blog in a structured manner as they have SO much time...]
Someone in the audience pointed out that free-tagging is not very structured. But Grice came back with the point that this is being ‘worked on’ by companies. (He means microformats I think? – Meetup, Upcoming,org)
Kantrowitz said MySpace is being attacked by internal hackers all the time to see if they can hack into it – like, doh! – and talked about how MySpace would probably not get into Open Source (ie structured blogging). She added that over a third of the company is involved in making the site safe (so no naughty pictures etc etc). Also people try to create fake Britney profiles all the time – MySpace takes down copyrighted material – of course they admit it might be “good for viral marketing…”
[At this point my powerbook battery died - Macs eh? - however, I took some notes in "bits" (on paper) so I'll post those later].
Mashup 2.0! Get it? Actually this blog post was created live tonight (hence typos etc) at the second London Mashup event which was all about “‘Personal Publishing, beyond blogging”.
First speaker
As the main organiser Simon Grice gets to talk at the event but also happens to have founded Midentity.com.
He talked about “Personal Publishing” ( he used Dick Hardt’s style of presenting which is basically to flash words and pictures up on the screen – actually I’ve done this before but without the pictures – much nastier!).
So Grice reckons blogging changed the media business – which is no longer ‘the big cheese.’ So far, so predictable…
People can now publish, store and link. No big trad media firms have (normally) launched user blogs (but now BBC is investing 110m quid into blogs). ITV bought Friends Reunited, Murdoch bought MySpace blah blah. Oh, and E-Tribes runs blogs.
He thinks it’s about what he defines as ‘personal publishing’, not blogging. In this category falls things like user reviews on Amazon, Craigslist, TripAdvisor.com, and user ratings etc. (I think he’s wrong – these people don’t own media from which they profit, so therefore they are not publishers, just contributors – if powerful ones en masse – there is also the issue of whether they own the copyright).
Most people wouldn’t consider themselves as bloggers, but most people create content in the form of pictures, calendar events, comments on sites, etc. (Actually his theory sounds very similiar to Evan Williams’ “casual content“).
Ideally people would publish from one place and then send it to the place they want it to go, rather than have to log in to various sites. Obviously mobiles could be useful for all this.
Second Speaker
Jamie Kantrowitz SVP Marketing and Content for MySpace (who have landed in London recently) talked about ‘ the hard to reach 14-30 year olds’ on MySpace.com
She says:
MySpace is a place where people Express themselves, connect with Friends and discover popular culture.
They debut albums for artists (hold on, didn’t AOL do this first?). They do classifieds, etc. (go see the site).
“We don’t allow people to publish to other places yet…”
They are doing lots of other things like viral videos (a YouTube rippoff? Surely not), and comedian sections.
They ‘connect brands to the audience’ (read: advertising). However, they don’t ‘veil’ advertising, which is probably why it still exists for this marketing savvy audience.
MySpace now has 70m users.
In the UK they have 2.3m registered users (15,000 users a day) here – hence why they have turned up in London. 16-34 age groups. 21 min per session average usage among users. They claim it’s the 8th highest trafficked site in the UK. Hmnnnn…..
They’ve doubled in size in under a year, and are aiming for 98m users in a couple or so.
[Part of the success is down to people's vanity (my words!).] The ‘user profile’ is now a metaphor for their room/apartment they spend hours dressing it up.
The ‘MySpace generation’ has grown up with choice and customisation (time shifting content in iPods, TV etc), social networking online, and is comfortable with creating their own content. And it’s no longer geeky to network online or blog or listen to podcasts. For this demographic, it’s mainstream.
Q&A
“We’ve grown twice as fast since we were acquired by The Man” – Kantrowitz on the lack of user backlash since Murdoch bought MySpace.
Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango: Should we trust bloggers “No” (it’s too easy to blog basically, of course).
Tom Bureau, CNet publisher: “We run a lot of highly regarded publishing sites and the research says our products are trusted more than many old media outlets. So users are becoming very canny about what they see on the web. With blogging, there’s general rule of thumb that blogging is about opinion not news and fact, but the youthful demographic is very savvy about blogs.”
Yoz (from the audience): “Urban Myths archives like Snopes show people still circulate urban myths, but it’s about having the skills to work out what’s true.”
Kantrowitz: “You can’t overthink it. A lot of MySpace is entertainment. Some people do it seriously but it won’t produce the next Matt Drudge. It’s a place to put your life online very simply, so it serves its function. NewsCorp is committed to protecting the brand experience of MySpace – but at the end of the day we’re a business. We’d say we are a trusted network.”
On a show of hands most people at the event said MySpace was a good buy for Murdoch, apart from Paul Fisher from First Capital who said “where’s the business and where’s the money?”
Mark Canter from Broadband Mechanics weighed in with thoughts about ’structured blogging’. He reckons structured content, containing individual pieces, permalinks, event information etc. Blogging slams all that into one giant text block, but he reckons let’s take that flat text and structure it so that it becomes more searchable etc. [Yeah, because people so want to blog in a structured manner as they have SO much time...]
Someone in the audience pointed out that free-tagging is not very structured. But Grice came back with the point that this is being ‘worked on’ by companies. (He means microformats I think? – Meetup, Upcoming,org)
Kantrowitz said MySpace is being attacked by internal hackers all the time to see if they can hack into it – like, doh! – and talked about how MySpace would probably not get into Open Source (ie structured blogging). She added that over a third of the company is involved in making the site safe (so no naughty pictures etc etc). Also people try to create fake Britney profiles all the time – MySpace takes down copyrighted material – of course they admit it might be “good for viral marketing…”
[At this point my powerbook battery died - Macs eh? - however, I took some notes in "bits" (on paper) so I'll post those later].
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