Blog

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)

Yes, I’m trying the BlogShares thing. No pain… and probably no gain (in audience/attention). Very smart viral marketing plan of theirs… strong incentive for the blog to include the graphic on its home page. Sure, I buried it like everyone else, but it’s there. Maybe this market will measure time as a currency, eventually. Right now, it’s more of a popularity engine. Technorati still seems more compelling, although I admit to just scratching the surface on both.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has a long column explaining why he’s adding advertisements to his site. He makes several interesting points along the way (jabbing at Business Week specifically, and the “corporate” media in general), and I enjoyed reading most of the essay, but I was surprised by his mild defensiveness about his decision to include advertisements. It was only mild defensiveness, but he didn’t need to apologize for anything. There is nothing wrong with trying to make money from a blog. It may or may not work, and if you don’t make money, that doesn’t make your effort a failure — but everyone is welcome to try whatever they like. Your audience will reward or punish your efforts either way, with their time or their absence. And that’s the part that Gruber pinpoints so well.

… The lone natural resource in the media landscape is attention. Your attention is what all media are fighting for, and the laws of physics place finite limits upon it. … So effectively, Google’s AdSense is an exchange system for converting your attention into money. … Don’t sell yourself short — your attention is valuable, and advertisers are willing to pay handsomely for it. [Three discontiguous sentences from a long essay: forgive me.]

Given my bent — remember this site’s tagline re: time? — my readers will understand that I think these opinions are nothing short of brilliant, if not novel.

One other part of his essay worth noting was his stated interest in quality of audience over quantity. Quote: “My goal for Daring Fireball is not to attract the largest possible audience. Rather, I’m trying to attract the smartest possible audience.” It looks better on his site, with curly quotes and all, but you get the idea. Scoble wrote something similar in April: “Personally, this whole world worries too much about quantity, and not enough about quality. Give me a small audience, please! Even if it ends up being just my mom.”

Long night leading up to first day back at work. Manageable day, but oh boy I need some sleep.

Random other thoughts: (1) I finally want to take the plunge for digital cable. Tour de France coverage is the reason, on OLN. (2) What’s going on with Userland? John Robb leaving, Dave Winer hinting at things. Time will tell. (3) Good night.

During an early dinner on July 4th, I took several family snapshots. I threw in this landscape shot just because, and to see how it would turn out. 4 megapixels isn’t enough to replace film, but it’s getting there. Taken near Hyde and Chestnut in San Francisco. WARNING: The full picture is about 1MB, and I didn’t cut it down from its width or 1704 pixels, or its height of 1770, so you’ll have to scroll, probably.

This New York Times story “The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?” feels like an old story. Technology lets us stay ‘always on’ and all of us, especially business folks, are taking advantage of the opportunity… perhaps without any true productivity benefit. If you’ve read James Gleick’s Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, written in 1999, you’ve heard this tale before. And I’m sure Gleick is just the most recent teller of this tale… if I were to go pull the book off the shelf, I could re-use one of his historical examples which remind us that these tendencies are not new. Anyway, with all that griping, I’m glad I read the article, if only for this quote:

ACCORDING to research compiled by David E. Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, multitaskers actually hinder their productivity by trying to accomplish two things at once. Mr. Meyer has found that people who switch back and forth between two tasks, like exchanging e-mail and writing a report, may spend 50 percent more time on those tasks than if they work on them separately, completing one before starting the other.

I think this is true, at least personally. I find myself fighting the urge to start the next task before I finish the one in progress.

(I’ll update the NYTimes.com URL later with the archive-friendly URL when I see it in NetNewsWire.)

With some helpful babysitting from the in-laws, we rushed out to see Whalerider. This movie is set in New Zealand, among the Maori. Good story, well told, mostly about how family and cultural relations mix (or don’t).

Originally a book (which I’ve neither read nor heard of), Whalerider was quick and beautiful. By quick, I mean the movie ran 90+ minutes. I appreciate a movie that takes as long as necessary, but no longer. Editing saves time. I wasn’t in a rush, but the pace of a story must move faster than most directors seem to want to move… maybe too enchanted with their story-telling. By beautiful, well, this movie made New Zealand look gorgeous and sunny. I’ve only spent three weeks in New Zealand, but I think only half of the characterization is necessarily true: NZ is gorgeous, but I don’t think it’s nearly as sunny as portrayed. Minor quibble. See the movie.

Mild understatement. P is not sleeping well. No surprise. Argh. Back to bed, if not to sleep.

What is not mentioned in this post about kissing up to Google-bot is that these are generally good guidelines for usability. Maybe not hard and fast rules, but you won’t go wrong with these. The only one that really bothers me is Radio’s use of the same title tag for each page/post. I know there is a way around it, but I’m lazy.

Ray Ozzie just posted an essay called Extreme Mobility. Starting with the ascendancy of laptops over desktops, he goes on to discuss (software) architectures that support mobility, with different types of mobility explained. Interesting piece, with no direct applicability to my life right now, but worth noting.