SOMEWHAT FRANK

MySpace is the "______ of ______"

Fred Wilson, technology VC, recently compared MySpace today to AOL of the 1990's by saying:

"I've said several times in this blog that MySpace is the "AOL of blogging." I see blogging as the most open form of social media so that's why I used that term. MySpace made it simple and necessary for people to have a place on the web that represents them, the people they like, the things they like, etc."

I see what Fred's saying about the social media aspects of MySpace since products like MySpace, VOX and AIMPages are as close to a blog as many people will get. He also eluded to the way AOL acted as a catalyst for community building and interaction online back in web 1.0. When the Internet was still scary and unknown, AOL gave the Internet a friendly yellow face making it safe and accessible for people to get started. I have had conversations with friends and family members who are not in the technology or web 2.0 industry about blogging and often we end up discussing their usage of MySpace since it is the easiest connection they might have to what the heck I am talking about. For many, MySpace might be the beginning of people dangling their toes in the oceans of the blogosphere.  However, I don't think I would use the analogy that MySpace is the "AOL of blogging" and would be comfortable saying MySpace is the "Geocities of personalized webpages."

Google.org a 'For Profit' Auto Maker?

Google's philanthropy organization, Google.org, brought Larry Brilliant on board back in February and was highlighted in a report today in the NY Times which had the blogosphere buzzing. Interestingly, Google.org remains "for profit" so they can fund startups which is not the norm for philanthropic organizations or sites using the .org domain extension. Another interesting point is that Google.org plans to develop an ultra-fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid car engine that runs on ethanol, electricity and gasoline. Yes a Google car - I cannot wait to see it!

TechCrunch Feed Metrics Explained

TechCrunch, the popular technology blog created by Mike Arrington which I have had the pleasure of occasionally contributing to, allowed FeedBurner, the feed management powerhouse, to dissect its feed metrics publicly with this recent article by Traci Hailpern.

I found the entire article extremely interesting as it gives in-depth answers to a number of feed related questions and is the first article I have seen of this nature. It most likely will be a hit as it will make an excellent bookmarked reference for months to come.

The following are points worth noting:

• The subscriber number featured in TechCrunch's FeedCount chicklet is an approximate measure of the number of individuals who have opted in to receive regular updates to TechCrunch content.
• Due to the way feed-reading tools behave, it is completely normal for this number to fluctuate on the weekends.
• Feed "Reach" is the total number of people who have taken action — viewed or clicked — on the content in a feed.
• TechCrunch subscriptions represent 0.47% of FeedBurner's total subscription base
• The most active day (based on the "Reach" statistic) was September 6, 2006
• Subscribers to TechCrunch come from all over the world including Denmark, Germany, Brazil, Poland and Thailand.
• There are a total of 503 different feed readers, 7 email services, 5 Web browsers and 46 bots accessing the TechCrunch feed on a regular basis.

Ironically, September 6, 2006 was also the most active day (to date) for Somewhat Frank due to this article.

What is Green Monster Games?

Green Monster Games is a startup founded by an interesting combination of people which includes Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, the creator the the comic book Spawn, Todd McFarlane and sci-fi writer, R.A. Salvatore. With this all-star cast of founders it appears they are hiring programmers to actually develop the product.

GMG is looking to change the landscape of online gaming. It is not totally clear what type of games they are looking to create but I think it would be safe to assume that it is going to be some sort of epic journey looking to engage players for hours and hours (i.e. Second Life or World of Warcraft).

Second Life Breach Leaks Real Life Data

Second Life, the online virtual world, recently encountered a privacy breach. According to a bulletin posted by Linden Labs, the San Francisco-based parent company, decided to take a proactive approach to reponding since they admittedly did not know what information of its over 660,000 users was accessible by hackers.  Cory Ondrejka, CTO of Linden Lab had this to say:

"We're taking a very conservative approach and assuming passwords were compromised and therefore we're requiring users to change their Second Life passwords immediately. While we realize this is an inconvenience for residents, we believe it's the safest course of action. We place the highest priority on protecting customer data and will continue to take aggressive measures to protect the privacy and security of the community. "

This incident reminded me that your online life which could include blogging, your online photos, email, calendar, search queries, phone conversations via VoIP or in this case your Second Life information is not totally separate from your first life, your real life. Therefore, privacy and safety should still be something that is taken into account while performing actions online.

9/11 - Five Years Later

The world changed forever on September 11, 2001 - we will never forget.

*Image taken of a flag which was recovered from ground zero at the WTC. 

Realtors Turning To Blogs & Web Services

Listing my Chicago condo for sale last week coincided with a Classified Intelligence report (sorry no direct link available) which examined the latest marketing and advertising patterns of real estate agents. The report concluded many interesting trends about Realtors. Most notably the report showed a reduction of print ad spending while increases in online spending. An article by Kate Kaye highlighted the same report and explained that while overall advertising spending by real estate agents is increasing the bulk of the spending is on their own Web sites. Andy Beal believes the online spending is going to the creation of blogs.  

What does this all mean? There is huge opportunity for a company looking to offer tools for real estate agents, buyers and sellers. A prime example of this is the recent explosive rise in popularity of Zillow and its Zestimates which have already almost become a household term. Furthermore, there is a HUGE opportunity for a blog platform for real estate listings. Wait, isn't there a product already doing this? YES, thats right, edgeio!  

Edgeio is an online listing aggregator which enables a user to create a listing online. I highlighted edgeio before here, here, here and here. Keith Teare of Edgeio recently explained:

"Edgeio is an excellent tool for syndicating out listings. Edgeio is an aggregation of listings for real estate and other categories. With the influx real estate agents getting into blogging for the sole purpose of posting listings Edgeio can also act as a blog platform for agents."

Edgeio currently displays over 227,000 real estate listings. Edgeio fits perfectly with the trend of web site development spending being made by Realtors since edgeio can crawl and aggregate listings from regular web sites and blogs at no cost to the Realtors.

Google Base also is positioned perfectly for the online web site trends of Realtors. Sam Sebastian of Google recently conveyed that his team is going out to educate Realtors about Google Base. They are explaining how to get listed on Google Base by just creating and submitting a simple feed of Web site contents to Google Base which places items accessible as results directly via Google search results.

Bottom-line: Real estate hunting is solidifying itself as an "online" activity as Realtors have been spending more  on online ads and their Web sites so there is a huge opportunity for real estate related sites and online services. Ultimately, products like edgeio and Google Base could threaten paid inclusion sites like Move.com and Homescape among others. 

CrunchCast is Back with Kiko Discussion

TalkCrunch the podcast which is part of the Mike "Captain Crunch" Arrington powered CrunchNetwork, is back!!! TalkCrunch has released a new podcast in which host Mike Arrington interviews Elliot Noss. They discuss Tucows and ths purchase of the Ajax calendar of Kiko via eBay. Yes they bought Kiko on eBay for just under $260K!

The twenty minute podcast interview is worth a listen. All I can say is thank god TalkCrunch is doing podcasts again - its been too long!

Facebook Saves Face, Listens to Its Users

Facebook recently redesigned its site and added a few features which were not well received by its student users. After a huge student revolt against the updates and features Facebook has added the ability for its users to personalize the Facebook experience. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, posted an open letter on the Facebook blog which started:

"We really messed this one up. "

The piece went on to say:

"This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it. But apologizing isn’t enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly.So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. "

I like the way that Facebook listened to its users after an admitted mistake. Personally, I do not think the new features were anything to be ashamed of since similar features were already incorporated into various portions of the site. However, by listening and taking =action Facebook gives its users what they asked for and should gain additional respect and "street cred" with its over 9.5 million users.

Rojo Networks Acquired By Six Apart

Just a few days ago I reported that Rojo was missing its mojo and now it appears not only its mojo but all of Rojo has been sold to Six Apart. Six Apart has acquired Rojo Networks, which includes Rojo one of my favorite online feed readers, as I previously conveyed and NooZ.com, a community edited news site. The Six Apart press release can be found here.

The move puts Six Apart in a pretty good position with blog platform products for the three main blog niches (personal, professional and social) plus a solid online  feed reader and blog search engine in Rojo.

The Rojo blog has reported the following plans:

"Six Apart plans to spin the Rojo service out – so we will continue to innovate and improve the service. As proof of that, stay tuned in September for a very significant release of Rojo. We are migrating Rojo to a new architecture – one that we built when we launched NooZ.com – which will greatly enhance the speed and usability of the service. Details will follow soon."

Is Six Apart fueling Rojo as they prepare to flip it?Or are they branching out the product line to position themselves to be acquired? It's hard to say but it will be interesting to see what happens.

Blog Comic Relief with Being Five

Every so often it is good to get your fix of comic relief. I previously mentioned a number of web 2.0 and blogospheric comedic outlets but wanted to also point out Being Five, a comic blog that I recently crossed paths with.

Being Five is a comic strip by George Sfarnas about a kid who blogs using voice recognition software. If the blogging premise doesn't make you sort of chuckle than I would advise you to take some extra B vitamins and get some sunshine cause comics are not going to help. I would give Being Five a whirl when you need a laugh.

Facebook Redesign Angers Students Over Invaded Privacy

Facebook launched a redesign today (September 5, 2006) which changed the layout of the homepage and introduced a few new features.  The Facebook redesign introduced, "News Feed" which on the surface appears to be an excellent feature. It leverages the users attention to show the most recent activity of the 9.5 million users in the community and displays it on the homepage. The "News Feed" display items in a feed reader like "river of news" stream of Facebook updates. The redesign enables Facebook to harness the attention of its users as TechCrunch highlighted by saying:

"It’s interesting because Facebook clearly gets the idea of an attention metastream, where page views aren’t the currency that matters but rather how effectively the service allows users to communicate. Facebook users will now have a much easier way of staying up to date on what their friends are up to."

Alternatively, the users, mostly undergraduate students around the country do not agree, as they find the "News Feed" feature (shown to the right) an invasion of their privacy and "basically creepy."  Using the "groups" feature of Facebook to rally together, one user, Ben Parr of Northwestern University, created a group called "Students Against Facebook News Feed."  The group's description reads as follows:

"We want to feel just a LITTLE bit of privacy, even if it is facebook. News Feed is just too creepy, too stalker-esque, and a feature that has to go." 

Open since early this morning "Students Against Facebook News Feed" already has over 60,000 members and is growing literally by the minute (it was only 50,000 members when I started writing this article). Group members are pledging to stop updating their profiles until the new features are removed or altered.  There is also a call to "boycott" Facebook on September 12th.

Will users grow more comfortable with the new design? Or will  more of the 9.5 million Facebook users join the revolt? It will be interesting to see how Facebook handles the situation since privacy settings have remained the same yet students feel more exposed.

*Special thanks to LBJ for assisting with this article.

Feed Alerts Over Instant Messenger & SMS

Do you want to stay connected with latest news updates from your favorite sources? Would you like to receive feed alerts and updates via instant messenger or over SMS? If the answer is yes to either of those questions you might want to read further as a few new services have popped up recently that might make it possible to get feed alerts anywhere.

FeedCrier is a new service created by Adam Kalsey, founder and former CTO of Pheedo. FeedCrier offers the ability to deliver feed alerts or updates via AOL Instant Messenger. Rick Klau of FeedBurner was the first to draw my attention to FeedCrier. Interestingly, Rick created a piece of FeedFlare to be added to the bottom of a feed. In case you do not recall what FeedFlare is, check here for refresher. The FeedFlare places a link at the bottom of your feed which offers you the ability to opt-in to FeedCrier instant messenger alerts. Rick has placed the FeedCrier FeedFlare here if you are interested in giving it a try.

TechCrunch also recently published a piece on FeedCrier which highlighted a few other similar services which included ZapTXT and Rasasa. TechCrunch had this to say about them:

"These other services are not limited to AIM, they offer autodiscovery bookmarklets and both ZapTXT and Rasasa incorporate SMS and email alerts as well. Rasasa’s push technology is the smartest, but isn’t supported by all US mobile vendors."

Read/Write Web wrote a piece on ZapTXT, sizing it up as a possible replacement for the keyword search product PubSub which recently folded.

While all products mentioned are innovative and pushing RSS feeds and syndication to new limits, the ability to not only instant messaging updates but also SMS alerts for on the go updates positions ZapTXT and Rasasa as slightly more appealing options.

The History of the Personal Homepage

The Internet has changed a lot in the last twenty years as the days of the flat world wide web have been replaced by the interactive live web. Personal homepages, one stop shops for news updates, calendars, email and everything else, have become more prominent as the web has become so much a part of everyday life. This development could explain the influx of Ajax based homepage products that have been recently  catching people's attention and getting funded.

Niall Kennedy recently published a brief history of the programmed personal homepage which is worth taking a look at. It offers a good point of reference in determining how far the homepage has come which could lead to a better understanding of direction homepages are going.

One interesting comment by Greg Linden came from the article's ensuing conversation in which he pointed out:

"The vast majority of My Yahoo users do no configuration at all; they use the default, non-personalized page.

The problem with customizable pages is that they require work to set up.  The vast majority of people are unwilling to do work."

This is a great point and as homepages continue to evolve this will have to be taken into account.

*Thank you to Brooke Novak for the image via Flickr and CC licensing.

I am headed to AOL

Yesterday, I bid farewell to Classified Ventures' Apartments.com as I have taken a senior product management/development role at AOL. So I will be moving out of Chicago to work at AOL headquarters in the Washington, DC area soon.

I have truly enjoyed my time in the Midwest, growing up, attending college at Purdue and Northwestern and working my entire career but I am ready to try something new. I could not have asked for a better opportunity to work in the web 2.0 new media space I am so passionate about. So I am extremely excited about the new role helping to guide the direction of AOL on a number of web 2.0 initiatives.

AOL has been in the headlines a number of times recently as they have switched business models from a paid service provider to an advertising supported model leveraging new media. The new AOL is developing products not only for the loyal AOL subscriber base but for the entire world to enjoy. Somewhat frankly, AOL draws parallels to west coast hip-hop icon Dr. Dre and his lyrics to his 2001 track Forgot About Dre which basically say don't underestimate Dre, or in this case AOL, because more hits are on the way.

You probably are wondering - what about TECH cocktail? I want to assure you that TECH cocktail will continue as planned. Eric Olson and I have worked through a number of the details and we stay well connected. We have a number of people that are working with us to help ensure the next event it just as good if not better than the first. We expect some great new things at our next event in October and I hope to see you there if you are in the Midwest. Right now, I had better get to packing - I move to DC very soon!