Author Archive

Many have suggested that Google overpaid for YouTube, with the price tag of $1.65 billion. Others are speculating about why Conde Nast bought Reddit and what the price tag is – but wondering if it’s worth it, given that Reddit doesn’t seem to have a revenue stream other than the store. Do people really donate, or buy the stuff on offer, in sufficiently large numbers?
It isn’t necessary. There’s a great deal of money to be made and being made in [...]

Blogs or other social networking sites provide a great opportunity for a webmaster to interact with readers / viewers – through comments on posts, or a contact form. But wouldn’t it be great if you as webmaster could chat instantaneously with them – or allow them to talk to each other? That would make commenting much more of a “conversation” than just having comments that get replies after hours!
Help is at hand. From Geesee! They provide a simple HTML / [...]

Anywhere. Anytime. Anyone, and Any-name-ity (oops sorry, that should have been anonymity, but I couldn’t resist the wordplay). That’s what the Net offers, especially if you have a WLAN equipped notebook and a Starbucks to sit in. Some like Lonelygirl15, revel in that. But if you want to share, plenty of options – and help.
Findmeon gives you a way to link all your web identities together. Using different names and profiles for email, screennames and IM – especially because someone [...]

Unlike the foundation attributes, it’s rather difficult to quantify the experience attributes in terms of their effectiveness. But make no mistake, these are the make-or-break factors; most personal decision making is based on a combination of both rational and emotional factors. To the provider, this could provide valuable revenue at minimal cost.
Consider another experience – eating popcorn. Rather trivial and relatively inexpensive; nothing special about it, under most circumstances. But if you’re on a visit to the movies, the situation [...]

After years of competition, Microsoft’s finally done a turnaround. With a 5 year agreement to work with Novell on harmonizing Window & Linux, offering Suse Linux Enterprise customers maintenance and support for compatibility, and working towards MS Office – Open Office compatibility.
Additionally, Microsoft will officially recommend Suse Linux Enterprise for people who want to run both Windows and Linux. No longer an enemy, but an ally.
Some see this as a Trojan Horse strategy by Microsoft. Others, as a sellout by [...]

Traditional business transaction systems are typically one way – from the producer to the consumer, through a channel that makes it easy for the flow outward. But most often, these don’t have as smooth a channel for reverse flows, from the consumer to the producer. Groceries, toiletries, consumables, appliances – or even broadcast media like radio and television have been organized around a creation process followed by a unidirectional distribution.
In such systems, the growth of the system scales linearly with [...]

The best resources to understand the Long Tail are Chris Anderson’s original article on Wired, and his blog. In the last two years since the article, there’s been a lot of discussion around this, and how it impacts businesses, as well as other activities. The same holds true for community building and interaction, as well.
The foundation for the Long Tail rests on a set of premises – a comparison of transactions in an Economy of Scarcity versus an Economy of [...]

Looking at the Foundation Attributes that Brandon Schauer identified, let’s consider how these elements are qualitatively different for Web 2.0. As the original article mentioned, some of these aren’t new – there have been a number of first generation web sites which have had these present; and there may well be examples in non-internet activities and businesses. What differs is the way that these reinforce each other and the strength of that reinforcement.
User-Created Value : The norm in most physical [...]

There are times when discussions about Web 2.0 remind me of the old tale of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Each person has his or her own measure of what makes (or doesn’t make) a Web 2.0 story.
And if you can’t describe the beast, how can you measure it, leave alone estimate its capabilities and values? Or from the part descriptions, can we still approximate what the possibilities are?
Part of the reason why Web 2.0 is so fuzzy, is [...]