Web 2.0 This Week (October 9-15)

Tons of new companies launched this week. My guess is they were aiming for the Web 2.0 Conference last week but had to delay. This may have worked out for the best as the covereage they received was probably much better after the press chaos last week.

Most bloggers have probably noticed that Dave Winer is back in the bay area. It’s good to have his brain around here again. I’ve been invited to a couple of his weekly breakfasts with Steve Gillmor. I try to keep my mouth shut and keep my listen to talk ratio as high as possible. These guys aren’t always right, but they’ve seen and done enough that even when they’re wrong, you can learn a lot by being around them.

We said goodby to Richard MacManus, who stayed with us for during his trip to silicon valley. Based on how warmly he was received, my expectation is that Richard will be back soon. His eloquent goodbye post was excellent.

We launched something called the Web2.0WorkGroup last week. It’s an experimental sandbox that a bunch of bloggers focused on writing about the new web are working on. Right now its a directory of participating blogs. Soon it will be much more.

Here’s this week’s wrapup:

1. TechCrunch Profiles This Week

Kahuna (update), Gada.be, Google Reader (update), Yahoo Blog Search, Google Bookmarks, Wink, MeasureMap (update), Memeorandum (update), Yelp, Qumana (update), RememberTheMilk, Sphere (update), PreviewSeek, Reading Lists, Inform

2. Smart PR and Dumb PR

Smart: Give the blogosphere an exclusive preview and announcement rights of your new product and let the accolades roll in.

Dumb: Launch a product that breaks Firefox, ignore blogger input and give the New York Times an exclusive. Bloggers respond.

3. 100 Million Blogs Strong

Blog Herald reports that there are over 100 million blogs. Breakdown by country. Awesome. The BBC also reports that the web has grown more this year than ever before.

4. Dave Winer on Nerd TV

Dave Winer is interviewed by Robert X. Cringley on Nerd TV. It’s a big download but worth it. I’m glad stuff like this is being recorded for historical purposes.

5. Robert Scoble writes about Real Time Search

It’s a cross between a rant and a classic essay, and it’s important. He’s continuing his theme of comparing search results on the existing blog search engines.

let’s talk about what the state of time-based search is.

In a phrase: it sucks.

No one is doing it well.

I can just hear everyone saying “huh? I thought Feedster, Technorati, IceRocket, Bloglines, and Pubsub, among others, are doing time-based search?”

Yes, but they all are unsatisfactory. Why? Well, for one, they’ll never have the traffic of MSN Search, Yahoo, or Google. Most of the “normal” people around me never will use a search engine other than these three. Heck, most of the people in the world have never even clicked on “advanced search” and you’re gonna try to get them to visit something like http://blogsearch.google.com ? Yeah, right.

Everyone said search was “good enough” before Google. Blog search isn’t even “good enough”.

6. List of Large-File Sharing Apps

Massimo Curatella takes the time to list large-file sharing apps. Bookmark it.

7. Oodle loses Craigslist Feed

Oodle got it right when they went for the decentralized content approach. Craigslist felt threatened and turned them off. Oodle responds diplomatically.

This is not great for Oodle, but I also think it’s not great for Craigslist. Data must be open. Sites that try to horde it will lose in the end.

8. Tagging Essay

Fred Oliveira writes about Tagging, with a focus on why people tag. I hope he’ll still be in the bay area for Tag Camp on October 28 to share his ideas with that group.

9. Chris Pirillo Fires Off on BlogSpot

A post by Chris Pirillo launched a huge blog discusson on splogging and the fact that BlogSpot seems to be the main source of it. Google owns BlogSpot and has a clear incentive to allow this to happen – they serve ads on every one of these splogs. This is not a new problem. Google needs to take action.

10. Bury this Hatchet

Dave took the first step. Yesterday he reached out again. These two guys need to work together to make the blogosphere and the web a better place to hang out. I hope they find a way.