Here’s a new feature I’m trialing on Read/Write Web. It’ll be a daily shot of Web 2.0 news. Each item will have a main link, one or two lines of commentary from me, and views of the story from other bloggers (if I have time).
It’ll take a while to settle into a decent format, so bear with me while I experiment with this.
Why the coffee picture? Well I’m hoping this feature becomes like a morning fix of caffiene for my US readers, as I’ll be publishing it in time for breakfast over there. For my non-US readers, maybe it can be a mid-afternoon Diet Coke or evening Hot Chocolate 🙂
Become.Com Goes Live
They claim to have the Web’s “Largest Search Engine For U.S. Shopping Information”.
Key quote from CEO Michael Yang: “This shows the ability of our vertical search strategy to produce the first disruptive technology in internet search since Google”
Views:Susan Mernit is curious about revenue and customer acquisition models. The Internet Stock Blog compares Become.com with Shopping.com (and others).
My comment: who knew spell check was such a crucial feature? (ref the press release)
AP challenges Google News
MarketWatch: “…the Associated Press is “concerned” about its material being distributed through Google and other news aggregators” and is “trying to persuade Google to buy a license”.
Views: Here’s the original story from LA Times, who frame it as Google vs Yahoo (the latter pays license fees for their content). Threadwatch notes that whatever the outcome, it will set a legal precedent. PaidContent says “this [Content Providers looking for payments] will probably become a trend.”
My comment: On one hand, as a Content Provider myself, of course I’m backing AP. On the other hand, long-term I think AP (as a bigco content provider) is better off trying to build their own aggregation and syndication services, rather than worrying too much about other aggregators.
del.icio.us funding round
Joshua Schachter, creator of the popular social bookmarks tool del.icio.us, announced an investment by a group including Amazon.com, Marc Andreessen, Tim O’Reilly. Joshua says it’s “a minority stake, which will keep me in control of the future of del.icio.us.”
Views:Niall Kennedy, softechvc, Om Malik (who thinks the funding was “less than $2 million”), PaidContent (which notes of the investors: “Several already back or have backed tagging enterprises”).
My comment: This has been heavily linked to today, so chances are it’s not new news for you. Let me just add that I still think one of the big companies will buy out del.icio.us at some point, probably before the year is out. Who can resist becoming a dot com millionaire? 😉 My money’s on Yahoo…
Bonus Link (froth on the top)
Excellent post by Chris Anderson detailing mainstream media meltdown: music, tv, radio, newspapers, magazines, books were all down in sales last year. Movies, video games and the Web were all up.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)