Weekly Wrapup, 28 Apr - 2 May 2008
Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side: this week we took a look at our readers' favorite web apps, we covered the social news space in depth (including posts on digg, Mixx and a new app called BlogRize), we brought you the latest news from Facebook, Adobe and YouTube. On the trends side: Bernard Lunn wrote a 'must read' 3-part series on the new Web, we analyzed Tim O'Reilly's recent call for 'big ideas' on the Web, we celebrated RSS Day, and we interviewed a top Microsoft exec about Live Mesh.
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The Favorite Web Apps of RWW Readers
A couple of weeks ago we held a competition, asking you to tell us what web 2.0 apps most excite you currently. We had a great response, with 113 comments. I decided to list each web app mentioned in a spreadsheet and count up the most popular. What surprised me was the number of web apps that got at least one mention: 161. No doubt some of those were left by the developers themselves, but many were left by seemingly passionate users. The most popular were the usual suspects: Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed, Google Reader. See our post for the full list.
BlogRize: Social News Gets Personal
The idea behind BlogRize is that the "wisdom of the crowds" works best if you have the right crowd. While sites like Digg.com have chosen to go mainstream, BlogRize believes that finding the best content from the web should be a more personal experience. To achieve this goal, BlogRize's solution is to build news communities based on the blogs you like reading the most...blogs like the one you're reading now, for example.
Related:
- How Best to Submit Our (Or Any) Stories to Digg
- The Decline and Fall of Quality on Digg
- Mixx Launches Innovative API - Continues to Challenge the Digg Experience
- Yahoo! Tries to Spread Buzz, Adds Widgets, RSS
A report on BBC's technology program, Click, has exposed yet another security flaw in Facebook - one that could comprise users' privacy. This particular hack involves using a Facebook application to steal a users personal information - and the information of all their friends - without the user's knowledge.
Related:
Adobe to Publish Flash File Format Specs
Adobe announced this week the "Open Screen Project", which will seek to create a consistent runtime environment for rich media across a myriad of devices. In other words, Flash on the web, mobile, desktop, television, and other consumer electronic devices. As part of this initiative, Adobe will be releasing the file format specifications for Flash (.swf and .flv/f4v) and removing all licensing restrictions involved with the Flash format. In the future, the project will be expanded to include AIR.
YouTube Aims to Monetize in a Post-TV Era
Google CEO Eric Schmidt made big promises of mysterious, highly-interactive new methods of monetizing YouTube in a CNBC interview this week. "We believe the best products are coming out this year," he said. "And they're new products. They're not announced. They're not just putting in-line ads in the things that people are trying."
As all established media (not just newspapers) face a growing challenge from the internet, with its on-demand, highly personalized and infinitely interactive social connections - can TV, and TV on the internet, learn keep up with the times?
SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY
Web Trends
Dancing With Gorillas: The New Web Era
This week we ran an intriguing 3-part series, by Bernard Lunn, on the new Web. Part 1 was The Whatchamacallit, Post Recession Phase Transition, Part 2 was The Emerging Main Street Web. Part 3, Dancing With Gorillas, is highlighted here -- but do read the whole series!
The new Web era is about the mainstream. This is when millions of small businesses and digital free agents make a good living by providing better products to a much more savvy market. This is the point in the Crossing the Chasm model when all the innovation stops, start-ups get consolidated into a few mega players and it all gets a bit boring until the next wave of innovation hits us.
Nevermind The Recession, The Web Will Change The World!
Since the Web 2.0 Expo last week, two parallel questions are being asked about the current era of the Web:
a) Are we about to enter into a recession, and if so does that mean an end to the current 'web 2.0' era of innovation in web technology?;
b) Why aren't we (meaning startups) tackling the "big, hard problems" with web technologies?
In this post we explore those questions. See also Sarah Perez's post entitled Wanted: 5 Startups To Change the World, in which she commented on Umair Haque's open challenge to Silicon Valley: find a problem to fix that will change the world for the better and he will help you do it.
Interview: How Will Live Mesh Integrate With Windows Live?
One of the highlights last week at Web 2.0 Expo was the launch of Microsoft's new cloud computing play, Live Mesh. Mesh is a new development platform for syncing user data between the desktop and the Web, and across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but it'll support mobile, Mac computers and other devices in the future). It can sync data for single users, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users. Currently Live Mesh is in "technology preview", so it is not a finished product. Even so, we couldn't help but notice the overlap between Live Mesh and a number of Windows Live products.
To find out more about how Live Mesh will integrate with Windows Live, RWW editor Richard MacManus interviewed Microsoft's Brian Hall - GM of Development for the Windows Live Platform.
An Ode to RSS, On RSS Awareness Day
There's just a few hours left in what should be an international holiday - RSS Awareness Day. Thought up by the good folks at DailyBlogTips.com and unknown until this morning to even RSS forefather Dave Winer, RSS Awareness Day is a fantastic idea. May 1st is a lot of things already but what the heck, let's pile another one on. We'd like to take a few minutes to reflect on the world-changing tool that RSS is, and consider how different our lives would be without it.
Related:
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
AltSearchEngines Update
By ASE Editor Charles Knight:
This past week at AltSearchEngines was a very rich one for the quality and quantity of our Guest Authors. On Sunday, Erick Schonfeld wrote a post entitled Is keyword search about to hit it's breaking point? On Tuesday, Stephen Arnold conducted an interview with Exalead's François Bourdoncle. Wednesday Nitin Karandikar reviewed the recent Alternative Search Engines Day, and Kaila Colbin from Search Insider wrote the intriguing "We're not a Google-killer" is the new Google-killer! Then we had a second interview when Susanne Koch of Pandia interviewed Venky Harinarayan, the co-founder of Kosmix. And finally Paul Heymann asked, "Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search?" We were very fortunate to have such a distinguished group of guest writers, and I hope you'll have time to read some of their posts.
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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Weekly Wrapup, 21-25 April 2008
This week was a hectic one, with a number of RWW writers present at the annual Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The big Internet news of the week was the launch of Microsoft's Live Mesh. Yahoo also announced key support for Social Graph and data portability. In social networking news, MySpace officially opened its Application Gallery to all users. In our web trends coverage, Sarah analyzed a Forrester report that claimed Enterprise 2.0 will become a $4.6 Billion industry by 2013, Marshall looked at what will build on the emerging foundation of ubiquitous APIs, Josh investigated the current fad for 'Web 3.0', and Alex looked at the increasing stress in our online lives.
But wait, there's more! This week we held the Alternative Search Engines event, and ReadWriteWeb turned 5.
Sponsor:
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Live Mesh: First Look at Microsoft's New Platform
The new Live Mesh service that just launched as an invite only "technology preview" is Microsoft's attempt to tie all of our data together. Live Mesh synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud. It can sync data across devices used by a single users, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users. On the surface, Mesh is a lot like competing file sync services such as Dropbox, SugarSync (which we covered in January), and even Microsoft's own FolderShare product. But what sets Live Mesh apart is its platform approach.
See also: Ray Ozzie Memo Explains Live Mesh Strategy; Full Text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo
Yahoo! to Rewire for Social Graph and Data Portability
Yahoo! announced at the Web 2.0 Expo the availability of the first program in its large vision for a dramatic overhaul of the company across all its properties. The Search Monkey developer platform will let site owners alter their search results listing, including through semantic markup.
Search Monkey is just the first of many steps that Yahoo! discussed at Expo. CTO Ari Balogh said that the entire company was rewiring, across all its properties, in the spirit of the social graph and data portability. Flickr's influence was tangible. In this post we present a high-level overview of some of the biggest changes.
Social Tools for the Office Worker: How to Subvert I.T. and Play at Work
We can't all eat, breathe, and live social media 24x7, as much as we might like to. Some of have day jobs that require a bit of our attention, too. And unlike the web-app embracing startups we read about, the policies at more traditional companies actually discourage mindless web surfing, tweeting, facebooking, and the like. However, there are still plenty of ways to fit in your social media addictions at work, without getting noticed by your nosy co-workers or getting blocked by I.T.
MySpace Apps Are Go For All Users
MySpace officially opened its Application Gallery to all users this week after launching it in public beta last March. In that time over 1,000 applications have been approved and added to the gallery and there have been over 2.1 million application installs across the site. MySpace began promoting applications to users by adding an icon for the gallery on MySpace.com and a link on user control panels.
See also: When Will Facebook Be Ready for Business?; Start Pages: The Next Social Networks; Study: Social Networks Mirroring Reality TV
SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY
Web Trends
Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013
A new report released by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013.
See also: IBM Wants a Piece of Web 2.0 Pie
So we're only half a decade at most into the Web 2.0 era, and we still don't really know what "Web 2.0" is. Yet for some reason, over the past couple of years there has been an even more confusing meme that seems to keep cropping up: "Web 3.0." It already feels like we've been talking about Web 3.0 for ages, even though we don't know yet know exactly what Web 2.0 is. What are the various ways that Web 3.0 has been defined over the past three years, and why is it helpful to talk about what the next web will look like?
See also: There is No Web 3.0, There is No Web 2.0 - There is Just the Web; Tim O'Reilly: Tackle Big, Hard Problems With Web 2.0
So You're Launching a Platform: After Ubiquitous APIs - What's the Next Frontier?
We're here at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and are getting inundated with press releases about new APIs and developer platforms, many from companies we've never even heard of in the first place. How long ago was it that the forward-looking thinkers argued that APIs and platforms would soon be available everywhere?
That time is clearly fast approaching and it makes us wonder: now that this matter is settled, what comes next? We asked a variety of people here and around the web what they thought will define the next frontier, what will build on the emerging foundation of ubiquitous APIs. We got some interesting answers.
Faster - Why Constant Stress is Part of Our Future
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a weekend piece entitled In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop,
which focused on the stressful nature of blogging. Using our friend Marc Orchant's death and Om Malik's heart attack as examples, Matt Richel built a case for web journalism as the cause of certain health woes because of its non-stop, 24/7 real-time nature. There is no doubt that news blogging is stressful.
But it is not just blogging. Real-time anything is stressful. Take TV news, is Anderson Cooper not stressed? Looking broader,
what about air traffic controllers or traders on Wall Street? Any human being that has to make decisions in real-time will be under a lot of stress.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
Special: ReadWriteWeb Turns 5
On 20 April, 2003, ReadWriteWeb was born. My first post here was appropriately entitled The Read/Write Web and it began: "The World Wide Web in 2003 is beginning to fulfil the hopes that Tim Berners-Lee had for it over 10 years ago when he created it." At the time I started ReadWriteWeb, web 2.0 hadn't yet been invented, Google Adsense hadn't launched (it would do so in June '03), Internet Explorer had 94% of the browser market share (followed by Netscape with 2%), the top blogs of the day according to Technorati were Slashdot (listed as number 1) and Where is Raed ? (a weblog from Baghdad; it closed in 2004). And 5 years ago, there was no money in blogging.
Today the blogging landscape is vastly different. The top blogs now are full-on media businesses. ReadWriteWeb, which started out 5 years ago as an evening hobby for me, has evolved with the times and is now the 11th ranked blog on Technorati's Top 100 - closing in on #10 Daily Kos! [Update: by the end of the week we'd got to #10!!] The reason we have continued to grow is because ReadWriteWeb is no longer just me. We have a great team of smart, web-savvy and passionate bloggers: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Josh Catone, Sarah Perez, Alex Iskold, Bernard Lunn, Emre Sokullu, and many other occasional and guest writers. ReadWriteWeb nowadays is also a network: last100 (Steve O'Hear and Daniel Langendorf), AltSearchEngines (Charles Knight) and ReadWriteTalk (Sean Ammirati).
Special: Alternative Search Engines Day
This week, before Web 2.0 Expo, our network blog AltSearchEngines held the first ever Alternative Search Engines Day, in San Francisco. It started out with a keynote talk by ASE editor Charles Knight, who noted that alternative search engines only have about 1.7% market share combined. He thinks this is too small, so he wants all of the "alts" - you can see a list of them on our subsite The Search Race - to band together to make a bigger impact on the search market.
The overarching theme to AltSearchEngines Day was to encourage the alts to band together and help each other reach the mainstream audience. Anyone who regularly reads AltSearchEngines will know that there is a ton of innovation in search, literally hundreds of niche and vertical search startups. So this effort to join together to compete with (or complement) the likes of Google and Microsoft is very commendable - and as I mentioned in the opening panel, ReadWriteWeb heartily supports it.
Special thanks to Charles Knight for the vision and pulling this day together, and also LA Lassek and the SeeqPod team for organizing the event. Thanks as well to the sponsors of this event: SeeqPod, UpTake, HealthPricer, MatchPoint, GoPubMed, BlogDimension. Charles is "the voice of alternative search engines" in this industry. He is galvinising and leading the alts forward as a group, so be sure to subscribe to AltSearchEngines to track this initiative.
Last100 News
From our network blog about the digital lifestyle, last100. In Internet TV news, Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate announced a joint venture to create a new premium TV channel and VOD service, to be rolled out in the fall of 2009. The project will include a strong online component.
In digital music news, Sony BMG has became the second major label to sign up to Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ service, whereby customers who buy a supported handset will get a year of unlimited access to “millions of tracks”. When Nokia first unveiled its all-you-can-eat music offering last December, Universal Music was the sole partner, a natural fit considering that the label has been busy touting its own flat-rate plan known as Total Music. However, the two remaining majors, EMI and Times Warner, have yet to commit to Nokia’s scheme.
Read more: last100 Weekly wrapup, 21-25 April 2008
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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Weekly Wrapup, 14-18 April 2008
Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side, we analyzed the increasing mainstreaming of social news site digg; and we reviewed some awesome new web apps (Grooveshark, SixApart's BlogIt, Twhirl, Alert Thingy, and others). On web trends, there was a meme this week that declared the Mobile Web dead - we begged to differ. We also looked into two 'real world' issues for Web tech this week - the impact of social media on "real people"; and real world data portability.
Sponsor:
Web Apps
The Decline and Fall of Tech on Digg
If you're a fan of digg, you've probably been noticing that tech stories are becoming less and less a feature of the social news site. The reason? Digg is attempting to attract a large mainstream user base. Just how low has tech sunk in digg? We have new data that shows that the number of frontpage tech stories is halving every year on digg.
Is it time to accept that Digg is no longer an equivalent to Slashdot, and that it is as much a mainstream news site as say BusinessWeek or People magazine?
SixApart's BlogIt Could Be the Start of Something Big
SixApart launched BlogIt by TypePad this week, a Facebook app that lets you post to SixApart blogs and other blogging software like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr, to your Facebook Newsfeed and to Twitter all from one place. It's the kind of app that makes Facebook all the closer to being a one stop social media experience.
The service could be more fully developed but it's certainly in the lead compared to other services aiming to do the same thing. A close look at the details leads us to believe that this could be a much bigger move than it might seem to be. This post lists a few reasons why we believe it's so interesting.
Grooveshark Launches Awesome Streaming Music Service
Gainesville, Florida-based Grooveshark, a music sharing startup that we first profiled in August, this week launched their latest product: Grooveshark Lite. Lite is a slick, flash-based streaming music service that takes Grooveshark's huge catalog of uploaded music and makes it available to stream, no registration required. Grooveshark Lite is fast, easy to use, and free.
When we reviewed Grooveshark last August, we called it "one part Last.fm, one part Limewire, and one part iTunes store." With the addition of Grooveshark Lite, the service is now also one part Pandora.
Battle of the AIR Apps: Twhirl vs. Alert Thingy
The battle between the two most popular AIR apps has begun. Earlier this week FriendFeed AIR app Alert Thingy, having only just launched on April 13th, was already getting an update - this one to include Twitter support via a built-in "Tweet" button. Not to be outdone, Twhirl wasted no time in providing an update of their own, seemingly crafting their updated version overnight. Now Twhirl includes FriendFeed support and Alert Thingy does Twitter, but are either of them really giving users what they want?
SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY
Web Trends
Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes
Former Yahoo! Mobile evangelist turned startup entrepreneur Russell Beattie announced this week that he's calling it quits for his company Mowser, because the market for mobile browsing is taking a fast turn for the worse. "The mobile traffic just isn't there," Beattie says, "It's not there now, and it won't be."
Beattie's announcement comes just two months after mobile blogger and consultant Michael Mace wrote a much discussed post titled Mobile Applications, RIP. "The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices," Mace wrote.
Be sure to check the comments of this post, there were some excellent counterpoints made on both sides of the argument.
Real People Don't Have Time for Social Media
Let's be honest here: we're all a bunch of social media addicts. We're junkies. Whether it's a new Twitter app, a new Facebook feature, or a new social anything service, we're all over it. But we may not be the norm. The truth is, being involved in social media takes time, something that most people don't have a lot of. So how can regular folk get involved with social media? And how much time does it really take?
Where's Our Real World Data Portability?
In a recent Slashdot thread, someone sought advice on an electronic cash register set up that would output sales data in an open format. While the asker was looking for information from the point of view of a shop owner, it got us thinking about data portability. There's been a lot of clamor over the past few months about who owns attention data and a major online movement has started with the aim of pushing companies into granting access to that data to the users who create it. But what about offline attention data? Should we demand access to that as well?
13 Seed Funding Options For Entrepreneurs
One of the most difficult parts of starting a startup for any entrepreneur is finding that small bit of seed capital to get things going. As evidenced by small seed funds like Y Combinator, a little can go a long way for startup entrepreneurs, but raising that chunk of change to get started can be tricky. Luckily, there are a number of different roads you can take to get from concept to Series A. This post lists 13 seed funding options for startup entrepreneurs.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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Weekly Wrapup, 7-11 April 2008
Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side, we analyzed the increasing mainstreaming of social news site digg; and we reviewed some awesome new web apps (Grooveshark, SixApart's BlogIt, Twhirl, Alert Thingy, and others). On web trends, there was a meme this week that declared the Mobile Web dead - we begged to differ. We also looked into two 'real world' issues for Web tech this week - the impact of social media on "real people"; and real world data portability.
Sponsor:
Web Apps
The Decline and Fall of Tech on Digg
If you're a fan of digg, you've probably been noticing that tech stories are becoming less and less a feature of the social news site. The reason? Digg is attempting to attract a large mainstream user base. Just how low has tech sunk in digg? We have new data that shows that the number of frontpage tech stories is halving every year on digg.
Is it time to accept that Digg is no longer an equivalent to Slashdot, and that it is as much a mainstream news site as say BusinessWeek or People magazine?
SixApart's BlogIt Could Be the Start of Something Big
SixApart launched BlogIt by TypePad this week, a Facebook app that lets you post to SixApart blogs and other blogging software like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr, to your Facebook Newsfeed and to Twitter all from one place. It's the kind of app that makes Facebook all the closer to being a one stop social media experience.
The service could be more fully developed but it's certainly in the lead compared to other services aiming to do the same thing. A close look at the details leads us to believe that this could be a much bigger move than it might seem to be. This post lists a few reasons why we believe it's so interesting.
Grooveshark Launches Awesome Streaming Music Service
Gainesville, Florida-based Grooveshark, a music sharing startup that we first profiled in August, this week launched their latest product: Grooveshark Lite. Lite is a slick, flash-based streaming music service that takes Grooveshark's huge catalog of uploaded music and makes it available to stream, no registration required. Grooveshark Lite is fast, easy to use, and free.
When we reviewed Grooveshark last August, we called it "one part Last.fm, one part Limewire, and one part iTunes store." With the addition of Grooveshark Lite, the service is now also one part Pandora.
Battle of the AIR Apps: Twhirl vs. Alert Thingy
The battle between the two most popular AIR apps has begun. Earlier this week FriendFeed AIR app Alert Thingy, having only just launched on April 13th, was already getting an update - this one to include Twitter support via a built-in "Tweet" button. Not to be outdone, Twhirl wasted no time in providing an update of their own, seemingly crafting their updated version overnight. Now Twhirl includes FriendFeed support and Alert Thingy does Twitter, but are either of them really giving users what they want?
SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY
Web Trends
Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes
Former Yahoo! Mobile evangelist turned startup entrepreneur Russell Beattie announced this week that he's calling it quits for his company Mowser, because the market for mobile browsing is taking a fast turn for the worse. "The mobile traffic just isn't there," Beattie says, "It's not there now, and it won't be."
Beattie's announcement comes just two months after mobile blogger and consultant Michael Mace wrote a much discussed post titled Mobile Applications, RIP. "The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices," Mace wrote.
Be sure to check the comments of this post, there were some excellent counterpoints made on both sides of the argument.
Real People Don't Have Time for Social Media
Let's be honest here: we're all a bunch of social media addicts. We're junkies. Whether it's a new Twitter app, a new Facebook feature, or a new social anything service, we're all over it. But we may not be the norm. The truth is, being involved in social media takes time, something that most people don't have a lot of. So how can regular folk get involved with social media? And how much time does it really take?
Where's Our Real World Data Portability?
In a recent Slashdot thread, someone sought advice on an electronic cash register set up that would output sales data in an open format. While the asker was looking for information from the point of view of a shop owner, it got us thinking about data portability. There's been a lot of clamor over the past few months about who owns attention data and a major online movement has started with the aim of pushing companies into granting access to that data to the users who create it. But what about offline attention data? Should we demand access to that as well?
13 Seed Funding Options For Entrepreneurs
One of the most difficult parts of starting a startup for any entrepreneur is finding that small bit of seed capital to get things going. As evidenced by small seed funds like Y Combinator, a little can go a long way for startup entrepreneurs, but raising that chunk of change to get started can be tricky. Luckily, there are a number of different roads you can take to get from concept to Series A. This post lists 13 seed funding options for startup entrepreneurs.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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Weekly Wrapup, 31 Mar - 4 Apr 2008
Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. This week we brought you 'The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients', we explained why Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future, we analysed the latest developments in MySpace music and Flickr, and we peeked into the future of the Chumby - the Wi-Fi video and widget displaying device. There's also a bit of April Fools fun, web geek style!
For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.
Web Products
How We Tweet: The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients
Last November we put up a guide to the most popular Twitter clients. For that post we looked at a random sample of 717 tweets from a handful of heavy Twitter users and identified 19 different ways people interacted with the service. Twitter has one of the fastest growing application ecosystems of any web service outside of Facebook. For this post, we looked at 37,248 tweets and found 142 different ways in which people interact with the Twitter service. Some of the results, which we presented in this post, were rather surprising.
Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future
Loic Le Meur's video chat service Seesmic announced this week that it has acquired leading 3rd party Twitter client Twhirl. Seesmic is still in closed Alpha status right now - though we have invites if you'd like them: email marshall@readwriteweb.com with the word Seesmic in the subject line and we'll send you one.
How could the acquisition of an app that runs entirely on the Twitter API, by another service that isn't even publicly available yet be a big deal? Let us count the ways...
Chumby Gets $12.5M...Here's Why It's Taking Off
Chumby Industries, makers of the Wi-Fi video and widget displaying device, the Chumby, have just announced $12.5 million in Series B funding today. The company notes that this new financing is going to be used to "accelerate growth of the company, and expand and broaden the Chumby Network to other screen-based Internet connected devices." How did this little gadget get so popular? And why would you want one? Read on to find out.
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
Web Trends
Flickr's New Friend Finder: Data Portability or Privacy Violation?
This week Yahoo! owned photo sharing site Flickr launched a new feature - the ability to search your Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail contacts list for people on Flickr so you can add them as contacts. Many services let you do that, but almost all of them require you to give up the user name and password for your email. Flickr did it right and it was exciting, for us at least. GMail users are taken to a GMail page, where GMail asks for their usernames and passwords - then asked if Flickr should be given one time access or ongoing access. That's great. We've been calling on applications to use best practices and emerging protocols to access user data without asking for passwords for some time. The risks are too great, otherwise.
Some Flickr users, though, are really upset. They don't want anyone who has sent them an email to be able to easily find their photos on Flickr. What some people call Data Portability, others call a privacy violation.
MySpace Becoming a Portal to Artists' Own Networks
When MySpace first launched, one of its main draws was the music offered by independent artists on the site, something which generated a strong following among new musicians and their friends. These young artists were using the platform as a way to get their name out there, share their tunes, and attract a fan base.
Related: Live and in concert: Why MySpace music has a chance against iTunes (last100) and MySpace Music Store: Where's the Long Tail? (RWW)
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
April Fools Highlights
Top 10 Places to Get Fooled on April 1st
Observing April Fools Day has become a time-honored tradition for many web companies. Much like changing your logo to celebrate holidays, pulling a fast one on your users on April 1st is something that many web services and applications have really taken to heart. But keeping creative year-after-year is tough, and some companies have learned how to consistently deliver.
Exclusive: Sneak Peak at Google DreamAds!
ReadWriteWeb has discovered the existence of a stealth Google project, called DreamAds. It is a very ambitious project, topping even the wireless balloons which Google is also looking into. Essentially DreamAds is Google's latest plan to extend AdSense - this time into our dreams. It may sound far-fetched, but an inside source at Google told us that it is very possible thanks to the latest in cheap magnetic resonance scanning and mind-reading techniques developed at Stanford University. Our source also revealed the thinking behind DreamAds: Google is aiming to become the first company to monetize a totally wasted period of time in human life: sleep, which takes up almost 1/3 of our lives.
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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