the j. botter weblog

I tried Flock on the day it was released.  If you don’t know what Flock is, it’s a browser that’s based on Firefox code that promises to deliver more of a social aspect to your web browsing experience.  It behaves just like Firefox, but it has all kinds of built-in goodies, such as a blogging tool (which I’m using to write this post), Flickr photos, and seamless integration of your Del.icio.us bookmarks within the browser itself.  It has a unique drag-and-drop feature, in which you can either post stuff directly to your blog by dragging it into the blogging tool window or place the item on "the shelf" for use in the future.  It’s a neat way to avoid writer’s block, because you’ll always have something in there to look back on and blog about.

Anyway, the software (upon release date) wasn’t up to snuff.  It choked my machine to death with memory requests, and so I ended up uninstalling it and continuing to use Firefox.  It’s still in beta, but there’s been a few version advances since that time, and it’s a much better browser that I would highly recommend to anyone wishing to stay ahead in the blogging or tech game. 

The darling of the Demo conference thus far has been, by most accounts I’ve read, Blurb. Blurb is an online publishing service that lets anybody create and publish a book with just a few minutes of work. They offer high-quality products and allow users to put a professional stamp on a personal blog, photo album, cookbook, or anything else you can dream up.

Here’s the issue, though. This thing is expensive. I mean, really expensive. For the Beta, there’s an introductory price point, but even at this supposed discounted price Blurb is going to turn a lot of users off. Prices start at $29.95 for a simple 1-40 page book, and runs all the way up to $80 for a 300-400 page book.

Who is the target for this thing? I can’t imagine power users flocking to it in any way, shape or form. It’s too expensive. If geeks want to publish a book based on their blog, they’ll just use LuLu. It doesn’t cost anything to the author, and fees are only charged to the person actually buying the book. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper, too; a 300 page full-color book from Lulu will cost you roughly $45, which is a far cry from the $80 you will pay for a black and white version of the same thing at Blurb.

I can see this working for the single mother who wants to make a special recipe book with grandmother’s secret recipes for a potential Christmas gift, but I don’t see it taking off with any other demographic. LuLu does the same thing and does it far cheaper.

I’ve been doing research for my upcoming deployment to Iraq.  I kept a blog last time I was over there during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was the first soldier blog available on the net, and even though I set it up mainly for family and friends to keep up with what I was doing over there, it became popular because of a two-part entry I did on my participation in the mission that captured Saddam Hussein.  It became so popular that I started getting interview requests (google Jeremy Botter and see what you get), and the interview requests turned into a hassle for myself and everyone above me in the chain of command.  I ended up getting interview for CBS Evening News, which was great, but it made life even more difficult.  I attended constant meetings with people in HQ who were not happy about me blogging our mission, but they let me do it anyway.

This time around, I’m avoiding the pressure.  I’m keeping a private blog, so I’ve been checking out various options.  I wanted to use Project Comet from SixApart, but that’s not available yet, so I chose the next best thing: Yahoo 360. 

I haven’t been a customer of Yahoo for years.  I never use the search engine, I never use the email, I never use anything they’ve ever owned: until recently.  Two of my biggest addictions are Flickr and Delicious, and Yahoo now owns them both.  I figured that if Yahoo was wise enough to drop millions of dollars of cash on a good thing when they saw it, then I would try giving it a shot.

Yahoo 360 is not for power users.  Yahoo 360 is not for early adopters or edge cases.  Yahoo 360 is about, quite simply, taking various facets of your life and making it easy for you to share that with people.  I chose Yahoo because I can choose who sees what; I can let close family and friends see my semi-classified blog postings, while everyone else gets to see stuff that’s harmless, like my general profile or stuff I’m into at the moment.

I’m not saying everyone should jump on Yahoo because it’s the next big thing; I’m simply saying that Yahoo 360 is actually decent, and it makes it easy to share my blogs and Flickr photos with a select group of people. Once they integrate Delicious in, a lot of people are going to start singing the Yahoo praises, and I’m one of them.  Good job on 360, guys.

Update: You guys really gotta start leaving email addresses. If you want an invite, drop me a line (botter@gmail.com). I’ll get you hooked up.

I’ve got twenty invitations to NewsVine, and I’m giving them out on this blog. The only way to score one is to leave a comment on this post telling me WHY you want it. I’ll pick the best ones and send invites your way.

And boy, NewsVine is good. REALLY good. If Digg is worth $35M, then NewsVine is going to approach MySpace levels for a purchase. You can count on it.

We are focused on creating new features and expanding digg into new areas beyond tech.

Nobody should be surprised that Kevin is denying the Yahoo story. I can’t remember the last time someone came out and said “hey, we’re in talks with Yahoo and they’re offering us such and such amount of money plus really cool desks with a view of the Yahoogarden. And free wi-fi.” I can’t remember any instance like that because it NEVER HAPPENS.

It’s been a fun two days.

Don’t EVER let anyone tell you that the Digg Effect isn’t real, because man, it is.

Three days ago, my blog recieved 40 pageviews. I hadn’t been advertising it or anything; a select group of friends read it and sometimes linked to me. It’s more about my writing itch than popularity, as I believe it should be for everyone involved in blogging. Otherwise, you end up writing for traffic, and that never works out.

After the Yahoo/Digg story, my pageviews jumped. And I don’t mean a little jump, like “hey, that’s cool” kinda jump. I’m talking “where in the blue hell are all these people coming from” kind of jump. In one day, my Yahoo/Digg post recieved over 6,800 visitors. Some of them were from blogs linking in, but 99% came directly from Digg.

Today, the traffic is poised to double that, and it’s not because of Digg. The Digg story was demoted from the front page; I’m still recieving traffic from other people linking to the Digg story, but most of my visitors today have come from other blogs that have picked up the story and linked back. The two sites sending the most traffic my way today have been Memeorandum (where it’s the top story at the moment) and TechCrunch, where Mike linked to the post. There’s also a lot coming from WordPress.com Dashboards due to this site being ranked in the top three blogs on WordPress.com and being the fastest-growing WordPress.com blog, as well.

The moral of the story? Don’t ever doubt the effect Digg can have on your blog. I shudder to think how much that Digg link would have cost me if I were paying for bandwidth. Thanks, WordPress!

Since purchasing a hot web commodity seems to be all the rage these days, I thought we’d take a quick look at one social networking site that’s surely going to be a hot property one of these days.

MySpace was purchased by Rupert Murdoch for somewhere around $500 million dollars. Much like every other hot Web 2.0 property that’s being purchased, this one was done purely for the userbase. There is nothing extraordinary about MySpace or the software it presents to its users; in fact, it’s antiquated by a lot of standards and downright atrocious when you compare it to TagWorld.

So who’s going to purchase TagWorld? They don’t have the benefit of 50 million users, but they are quickly approaching one million or so, and given enough time they will surely have a gigantic installed userbase as well. Someone is going to come knocking at the TagWorld door with an offer, and that offer will be extremely hard to refuse.

I think you can discount the major players for the most part. Yahoo already has social networking infrastructure in place, so there’s no need for them to pick it up. Google has Orkut, a failed experiment if I’ve ever seen one, and the only way they’ll buy TagWorld is if the userbase grows to massive proportions like MySpace. I don’t see Google as a major player in the social networking scene simply because the social networking scene doesn’t furthur their goal of making all information in the world readily accessible to the public. If Google continues to march towards being first and foremost an advertising company (which is the route some believe they are taking), then yeah, I could see them picking it up. But as it stands right now, it wouldn’t be a good fit in the Googleverse. Microsoft would make the most likely candidate out of the major companies, but they’re not going to buy it, plain and simple.

So who does that leave? My bet is that an entertainment company such as MTV or the like will pick it up. Once the userbase gets huge, the suits will come calling, and TagWorld’s software would make a world of difference with MTV aiming at music fans and the younger crowd.

The cool thing about TagWorld is that they actually have the software to back it up. Instead of focusing on releasing horrible compilation CD’s which serve as nothing more than a marketing ploy, the fellas at TagWorld are taking the initiative to build a much better social networking experience. It’s a strategy that is brilliant in both the short AND long term, because instead of just trying to get millions of users, they’re building an interactive environment for when the day finally comes that they can boast a huge userbase.

Digg’s own Kevin Rose posted a response to the Yahoo aquisition rumors:

“Rumors… we are focused on features, not selling the company.”

First off, I never said Digg was accepting the Yahoo offer.  I merely stated that Yahoo has an offer on the table to buy the company.  Do I think it’ll happen?  Perhaps.  Kevin says they’re focused on features, which is all fine and good, but at some point, they are going to sell the company, and Yahoo, as it stands right now, is the foremost suitor.

And the price stated is probably just about right.  Users in the Digg thread leading to this page said that Yahoo bought Delicious for $500 million, which is totally way off base.  It’s a lot more likely that Yahoo probably paid somewhere in the range of $50 million, which would put the Digg numbers slightly lower, right around the same price that I stated in my previous post.

As I stated on the previous post as well, this is not confirmed.  I’m glad everyone is reading and commenting, but take it with a grain of salt.

I signed up for a MeasureMap invitation in either late September or early October.  I’m used to having to wait a little bit on these beta services; I understand that there’s a bit of a game in pushing the scale up when you have millions of bloggers who will sign up for anything with the “beta” tag attached to it.  It’s one of the “cool” things to do; sign up for the latest trendy beta service and advertise that you have an account on your blog so that you’ll be the envy of everyone around you and hopefully push your “status” up the list.  Bloggers are the ultimate marketers, especially when you are advertising a service aimed at Bloggers.
It’s nearing February, however, and I’ve never heard from MeasureMap.  I don’t believe I ever even got a confirmation email, nor anything correspondence updating me about the service and where they stand.  Maybe they don’t need to be in touch with users, but if I were pushing a new service that targeted bloggers first and foremost, I would probably do something about staying in touch with those bloggers.

The market for a stats package targeting bloggers is wide open.  People want to know more about what kind of traffic they bring and what kind of categories or tags are more popular than others.  WordPress.com has a great system (that’s powered by Google Analytics), but there are very few services aimed at people like me, who want a simple yet comprehensive overview of their blog.

MeasureMap could take a few pointers from Tara.

Tagged is a new-ish social networking site targeted towards the teen crowd. While most social networking sites are predominantly used by the teen set, Tagged is the only one that I know of that actually requires that you be 18 years old or younger in order to register for an account.  I had to fake my age in order to get an account; I didn’t plan on actively using it or anything, but I did need to sign up to research the service.

While MySpace is generally nothing more than a popularity contest, Tagged makes no bones about it.  The entire system is based on “props” and “tags”, which are essentially votes from friends much like TagWorld uses.  Instead of using tags in the same sense as the rest of the internet, Tagged uses them in the sense of you giving props or tagging your buddies with certain icons and titles.  It’s juveline, of course, but they do seem to be drawing a decent crowd.

They’re also apparently planning a reality show, to feature the most popular members.  I don’t see this drawing any sort of interest from television networks; I could see someone throwing money at a MySpace reality TV show, but they have 50 million members.  Tagged just isn’t there yet.