Unlike Tim Bray, I’m not surprised that default placement in (some) news aggregators is for sale. I was amused to see that Adam Curry blew $10,000 about 18 months ago for default placement in Userland’s aggregators. It’s the land grab mentality, and it’s been around forever. In some businesses, it even works. I don’t believe that the RSS/content syndication game is one of those businesses.
Read Tim O’Reilly’s comments in this Infoworld interview. [found via Emergic.com]
…But there’s not much difference between Barnesandnoble.comæand Amazon.com in the software they have. What are different are the customers they have, and the amount of customer contribution to their data. With eBay it’s even clearer. The fact is, it’s the critical mass of marketplace buyers and sellers and all the information that people have put in that marketplace as a repository. So I think we’re going to find more and more places where that happens, where somebody gets a critical mass of customers and data and that becomes their source of value.
The one with the most customers, and the customer data, wins. While demographic data is important (explicit information), the real winning formula is usage data, which cannot be replicated or copied. Of course, just collecting the data isn’t enough. All websites gather data (like barnacles, even). Some businesses use their website intelligently and incorporate feedback loops, both directed and undirected, which build upon the usage data to change the nature of the application. It’s not about the software, but the combination of functionality + data. O’Reilly calls out Amazon and eBay as platforms, a ringing endorsement of their competitive advantage coming from a technical publisher, who deeply understands the power of a platform in the software world.
So… will ‘Sooners’ be rewarded in the RSS world? Naaahhhh… too easy to get turned on to smart, intelligent voices through the general spreading of information on the web. And how many sites can recoup any payments? (How did Curry make his money back? Ads on his site? I don’t read him regularly.)
You stuck with me this long… if you don’t recognize the term ‘Sooner,’ read on:
WHAT IS A “SOONER?”
The following text was taken from “Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues,” A Study of Oklahoma’s Cultural Identity During the Great Depression, by W. Richard Fossey: “Originally the word “Sooner” meant a person who had illegally crossed the border of Oklahoma’s Unassigned Lands before they were officially opened for white settlement on April 22, 1889. The Sooners who arrived early had the best choice of land and only had to lie low until they could safely emerge and file a claim. They were naturally disliked by the immigrants who entered Oklahoma legally, and in the early days to call someone a Sooner was to attack his character.” (quoted from the State of Oklahoma website)