Web 2.0 This Week (August 7-13)

Web 2.0 This Week
August 6 – 13

This has been a week of challenges and successes. Challenging because I am on a driving trip from Anacortes, WA to Los Angeles, and although you can now get internet access while flying, I have no tools for getting access in a car, or dealing with sun glare. Successful because we’ve met and profiled some great new companies (see no. 1 below), and have had a number of great links to our site. Thank you to everyone who visits our site or reads our feed.

Here’s this week’s summary. For additional web 2.0 information, thinking and reporting, I highly recommend Richard MacManus’ Web 2.0 Weekly Wrapup. Check out this week’s wrapup here.

1. TechCrunch Profiles This Week

Indeed (raises money), YouTube, MSN Filter, Podshow (raises money), Browster (firefox version released), Pluck (new product releases), Qumana (new feature), Pheedo, FeedCatch, Consumating

2. Technorati published Parts 4 and 5 of “State of the Blogosphere”

Dave Sifry and Technorati further updated their March State of the Blogosphere data (see last week’s web 2.0 summary for Parts 1-3) with information about Spam and Fake Blogs and The A-List and the Long Tail. “[T]he most influential media sites on the web are still well-funded mainstream media sites, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. However, a lot of bloggers are achieving a significant amount of attention and influence. Blogs like bOingbOing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit are highly influential, especially among technology and political thought leaders, and sites like Gizmodo and Engadget are seeing as much influence as mainstream media sites like the LA Times.”

For other news/gossip on Technorati, see our post Technorati (being acquired?). Also, see Susan Mernit, saying “Update: Latest word– this is an untrue rumor, not reliable.”

3. Behaviors of the Blogosphere: Understanding the Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences

Comscore published a blog report on August 8 with some seriously contentious data. It was announced by Fred Wilson on August 9, and everyone’s been buzzing about it this week.

Comments include “Clearly the data is way off” (see the comments to Fred’s post), “I don’t know what Comscore was thinking when they printed this data” (Jason Calcanis), “Jason Calacanis is having proper conniptions over the comScore marketing study on blogs released this week” (Jeff Jarvis – this is my personal favorite quote), “I know it galls Jason Calacanis that his sites are about as memorable as Burger King franchises, and that none register among the top blogs, except Pete Rojas’s Engadget” (Nick Denton) and “Chill out guys” (Fred Wilson in a follow up post).

You gotta love the two way web.

4. Odeo receives funding

From the Odeo Blog on August 10, 2005:

Odeo receives funding from Charles River (plus: Kapor, Kraus, O’Reilly, Kopelman, Conway…)

I’m proud to say we’ve acquired some fuel for our little enterprise from a great group of folks.

Leading the deal was Charles River Ventures, featuring George Zachary. Noah and I were introduced to George by our mutual friend James Hong back in March. George has an awesome track record and a great reputation, and we got along well. Before and after meeting George, we took many other trips to Sand Hill Road earlier this year, meeting with many other firms. We also did a lot of deep thinking and soul searching about what we were really trying to do with Odeo, which is a crucial part of the company-building/money-raising process. And we ended up doing a deal we’re really happy about.

In addition to Charles River’s involvement, we included another small firm, Amicus Ventures, and a substantial group of individuals (both in number and weight) in the funding round: Mitch Kapor, Joe Kraus, Tim O’Reilly, Ron Conway, Josh Kopelman, Don Hutchinson, Dave Pell, Mike Maples, Francesco Caio, Barbara Poggiali, Emanuele Angelidis, James Hong, and Ed Zschau.

Ariel Poler, who’s helped build a number of successful Internet companies, is also on our board and an investor.

See Om Malik‘s and Jeff Nolan‘s (“BitTorrent: VC’s Wanted – If podcasting is getting millions, BitTorrent deserves more”) thoughts on this (and bittorent) as well. Here’s Om:

If those companies can snag millions, then Bit Torrent is definitely worth a lot more. Let me put it in the old world terms. The podcast start-ups of today are like Wine.com, while Bit Torrent is Cisco of the digital content revolution. It has actual technology that will help grow the open media. It has the technology that will help distribute the “video content�? next generation bloggers will create or whatever. It is infrastructure – and we know who makes all the money. That explains the cat who licked the cream smile on Navin’s face.

5. Steve Rubel is a God

In an interview by Debbie Weil, Steve Rubel says he gets up at 4:30 or 5 AM every morning so that he can”pick the best stuff and get it up on the blog early so it can reach European readers”.

I find it hard to get out of bed earlier than 9 in the morning (something Keith complains about constantly). I’m not lazy. It’s genetic. Seriously. If I tried to get up at 4:30 AM in order to get an early start to my blogging day, I’d be surprised if I could actually get my computer turned on. Steve, Europe is all yours. :-)

From Kevin Burton.

6. Seth Godin requests our help, and I’m going to do exactly what he asks

Seth is publishing a new book, The Big Moo by The Group of 33, and he’s thought up a brilliant buzz strategy. He’s allowing a small group of people to pre-order 50 galley versions of his book for $2 each, if they promise to give away copies to sneezers (if you don’t know what a sneezer is, read one of his books – I’m a sneezer, and so are most other bloggers and blog readers). I’ve put in my order, and will give them out to people for free on my site. More on this as it develops.

7. CNET says “I’m sorry” to Google (not)

ZDNet Uk, a sister publication to CNET, issues an apology for the CNET article on Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. In the article, they claim they spent 30 minutes on Google finding some very personal information on Mr. Schmidt. Google responded by blacklisting CNET for a year – “Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues.”

This all happened last week, but the ZDNet “apology” is a classic:

[W]e cannot avoid responsibilities for our own actions. Acting under the mistaken impression that Google’s search engine was intended to help research public data, we have in the past enthusiastically abused the system to conduct exactly the kind of journalism that Google finds so objectionable.

Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts, let alone in capriciously using them to illustrate areas of concern. We apologise unreservedly, and will cooperate fully in helping Google change people’s perceptions of its role just as soon as it feels capable of communicating to us how it wishes that role to be seen.

Unfortunately, we have been unable to ascertain this. Google UK has told us that we’ll have to talk to Google US to find out whether we too have fallen under the writ of excommunication. As we share all information with our American brethren it is hard to see how it could be any other way, but we humbly await news of our fate.

As I said above, you gotta love the two way web. And British humor.

From StellarBay.

8. Will Price, VC, looks back over the last 10 years

Will writes:

Reflecting on the staggering impact NSCP, VRSN, YHOO, and AMZN have had on our lives, economies, and careers reinforces the promise and excitement of innovation, while reminding us how hard it is to appreciate non-linear developments, and harder still to foresee their ultimate impact.

As investors and technologists, let’s all hope that 1995 is a spring board for changes still to come, and let’s us also hope that we have the foresight to recognize “it” when/if we see it.

Will, good post. It’s here, now, and I’m betting you are one of the ones who sees it.

9. Want to know what the blog-o-sphere will look like in 2015?

Nivi writes:

Want to know why everyone will have a blog tommorrow, just like everyone has an email address today?

Because your blog will be your avatar in virtual reality. And you can’t play in virtual reality without an avatar. So you’re gonna need a blog, baby.

When you blog today, you are participating in a Massively Multiplayer Online Conversation (MMOC). Today’s text blogs are like the text-based MUD games of yesteryear. These MUDs eventually grew up to become today’s 3-d MMOGs. And inna future, blogs will grow up from text to audio to video. And blogs will come to resemble the avatars in today’s MMOGs.

10. The Trump Blog

Donald Trump launches a blog, but it isn’t very Web 2.0 (he, or his people, are editing comments).