Young Turk's Ramble: Web 2.0

At Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:40:49 GMT

I am in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. If you are in the Moscone Center today and want to talk about social networking direction at Microsoft, reach out. The weather is gorgeous outside, and we will be hanging out in SOMA before and after the expo.

A site for every need

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:45:50 GMT

One of the ways I used my Windows Live Space last year was to share book recommendations with friends. I do this using Amazon booklists on my page. Booklists are great for friends: you can tell so much about a person by what he felt like reading that month. They can also be great for yourself: showing off your recent shelf and reminding yourself of some good books (and ideas) a year later is satisfying in a way. Given the number of start-ups rushing to fill every need, niche, vertical, it should not be surprising that we now have a Seattle-based service built on this pillar: check out Shelfari. Michael Arrington even lists several competitors that I was not aware of. Interesting.

On CES floor...

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:00:02 GMT

I am still at CES and I will be on the central hall floor today showing Windows Live Spaces. Stop by, say hello, and get a free drive while they last.

Windows Live Spaces - Finally Here!

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 09:21:47 GMT

You have read about it in the SpaceCraft. You have checked it out on DiscoverSpaces. By this time, you should be playing with it on your own space. Windows Live Spaces is here! Have you checked out the new homepage?

This post from Moz summarizes well our business perspective and Mike has a great video to show you the goodness in the product. I do not need to add much to these fine gentlemen, except to remind you: we are hiring!

The quality and the speed of the site will go up, as we further stabilize the product. Please keep the feedback coming on SpaceCraft and on our blogs. We are working hard to bring you the best piece of social software.

Summer Days and TechCrunch Party

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 00:44:45 GMT

After a depressing winter, Seattle is getting more enjoyable by the day. Last week saw two of my favorite Seattle events: Northwest Folklife Festival and Seattle Film Festival. I got to see an awesome VamoLa show from the audience for the first time (I have not been doing rehearsals due to work, so I provided moral support from the stands this time), saw a couple of Turkish movies, and enjoyed some sunny Seattle days. With the Fremont Solstice coming soon, Seattle is showing her unique and beautiful side.

One thing Seattle does not have many of is tech parties. So it was great to have a TechCrunch bash last Wednesday, even if it meant missing the Pandora party.

What was good:

Meeting Greg from Findory, who has been on my OPML for a while.
Talking to the WetPaint guys in person, finally, weeks after MC pointed them out
Lots of food and bottled water (the beer was less interesting to me)
A few interesting demos
Good feedback from several folks on adCenter

What was bad:

Nametags. Very few people had written their companies on their nametags. I am very interested in talking to Kevin from WetPaint. I am not interested in talking to Bob, just Bob. If you are recognizable by your first and last name alone, or are wearing your company shirt, you are ok, in this context. The rest of you should be color coded into "have money," "need money," "covering event," "supporting relationships."
The actual speech or presentation of the event. Huh?

What was ugly:

The steam-room effect inside (maybe I was sweating because I had biked to the event, but it felt way too hot)
Using a wiki to sign-up (not ugly until people start deleting your replies).

I also ran into Natala at the event, who blogged about the event and linked to some pictures. Here is the attendee list.

Looking forward to more of these in my neighborhood!

big list of "everything Web 2.0"

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 20:11:58 GMT

I have been going through Bob Stumpel's list of everything Web 2.0. It is amazing how many players have popped up in the last few months and made this list. The more I see, the more I see. And I am also getting better at the likes of Web 2.0 or Star Wars character quiz.

Update: Findory

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:07:56 GMT

My post on Findory needs updating; it now lets you add your OPML file to drive results.

Update: Listible

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:53:29 GMT

Signing up to Listible is not smooth at all. I am still waiting for my confirmation email to activate an account, after three pings in three days. No wonder the relevance of certain list items shows as 50%, even though they are useless. If you are in building-a-community business, you want to remove as many blocks to onboarding that community as possible. Listible is doing a poor job at that, for the moment.

Cool: Joyent

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 06:01:50 GMT

Joyent provides a suite of web-based applications for small teams. With mail, calendar, address books, and email storage, it looks pretty cool. I did not yet have time to use and test their Connector. Does anyone have experience with them?

mapping "News 2.0"

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:41:41 GMT

I had mentioned that I love the big picture on one page. Paul Montgomery has a page on what he calls News 2.0.

With all this "2.0" talk and my "Web 2.0" category, I am as guilty as the next guy of abusing the overhyped Web 2.0 terminology. The problem is that the term soon becomes meaningful only to you, like SOA before it or "deity" through the ages, yet you are happy with your conception of it being different than everyone else. So if you object to my categorization, please suggest alternatives in comments...

Web 2.0 "wall of logos"

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:09:41 GMT

Talking about Web 2.0 services popping up in the previous post, an image rather than a list also caught my eye.

Cool: Listible

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:08:36 GMT

Listible got my attention today with the list of Web 2.0 services and the list of GTD recources. Two things I love to browse, and a smooth interface. Worth a visit. The actual lists still have some room for improvement though.

Cool: Findory

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 02:38:35 GMT

Findory is a homepage of news and blogs, which attempts to learn your interests from your clicks and customize the page. Cool idea, even though the initial UX is not yet perfect. Greg Linden posts about his 2+ years working at it.

what is the "battle" for Web 2.0?

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 02:20:27 GMT

SandyK, fellow Wharton alumnus who drives our online community techonologies, feels good about Microsoft's chances in Web 2.0 --saying that the battle is not over yet. I could not agree more. I think that the battle is still in early stages: to say that Google has "won" one area, Microsoft another, and Yahoo yet another, is premature at best. I do not even see the "areas" as well defined yet. For example, could any of you give me a good definition of social software that will not change in a few weeks? I thought not.

mapping blogging services, mapping social services, mapping animal services (!?)

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 04:10:20 GMT

In case you missed it, OJR published a comparison of several blogging services. Tables and maps like these are very interesting to me (send them my way if you have any); I love the big picture on one page.

I am working on putting together such a big picture (or several) right now for Web 2.0 and in particular social software --both for the lack of better terms. There are so many interesting things going on, and you can see from my blogroll that I am reading a lot on connecting people. There are some ambitous efforts to map the new world, but all will fall short with the innovation we are seeing. I need to ponder.

On a lighter note, I am always fascinated by the monetization models out there, just like Moz is. I recently saw a social network service with good vertical focus. How had they defined their service? By age? No. By geography? No. By demographic analyses? No. Well, to put it simply, by species (ok, maybe by favorite species, to be exact). Check out Dogster, a friendster for dogs. And before you aulirophiles get antsy, here is a link for Catster. I only was able to spend a few moments on the dog one, but I particularly liked the various tools from paws to bones to make the community interact. They probably generate a couple of million page views from some hundred thousand users (which is tiny, if you want it in context) but it will be interesting to see how they evolve.