--- title: "Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 10-16 Oct 2005" date: 2005-10-17 author: "Richard MacManus" categories: - name: "ReadWriteWeb" url: "/category/readwriteweb.md" tags: - name: "2005" url: "/tag/2005.md" --- # Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 10-16 Oct 2005 **This week:** Geeks being creative, Yahoo! RSS research, Reading Lists, Making money with Mash-Ups, Techie Post of the Week – Dave Winer on Nerd TV [sponsored by:](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.webmail.us/)[![webmail.us](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638im_/http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/webmail_us.gif)](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.webmail.us/) ## Geeks being creative I’m now back in my home of New Zealand, after spending two fantastic weeks in Silicon Valley. As I look back on my time there, and look forward to going back, I’m reminded of [this post from Susan Mernit](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://susanmernit.blogspot.com/2005/10/start-ups.html). She pointed out there’s a lot of start-up activity going on right now in the Valley, but what I liked best was the non-cynical way she put it: *“The Valley is humming with activity and with what some say is acquisition fever, but is often the happy sounds of geeks being creative.”* Now that’s something a lot of us can identify with: geeks being creative. With that in mind, here are some of the start-ups I have my eye on: \* [Flock](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.flock.com/home/) \* [edgeio](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.edgeio.com/) \* [Sphere](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.sphere.com/) \* [Measure Map](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.measuremap.com/) (not a start-up, but Adaptive Path’s new product – which is kick-ass) \* [Zazzle](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.zazzle.com/) \* [Zimbra](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.zimbra.com/) \* [zvents](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.zvents.com/) (companies whose names start with Z is obviously all the rage) There are loads more I could mention – but give me a break, I have jetlag 😉 [TechCrunch](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.techcrunch.com/) has profiles of all of the above. ## Yahoo! RSS Research During the Web 2.0 Conference Yahoo! released a [ research report on the takeup of RSS](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.scottgatz.com/blog/2005/10/07/research-rss-crossing-into-the-mainstream/). The resulting white paper was entitled [RSS – Crossing into the Mainstream](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss/RSS_whitePaper1004.pdf), which is a good indication of both the findings of the research and what Yahoo! is attempting to achieve in their use of RSS. The main points in the research were: \* Only 12% of the Internet population has heard the term RSS \* Only 4% of the population knowingly uses RSS \* 27% of the internet population uses RSS but *doesn’t know that it’s called RSS*. The conclusion is that we need to evangelise the **benefits of RSS** rather than the technology itself. Or as Yahoo!’s head of RSS [ Scott Gatz wrote](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.scottgatz.com/blog/2005/10/07/research-rss-crossing-into-the-mainstream/): “Focus your message on what your service does for consumers, not how it does it.” Scott has [a follow-up post](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.scottgatz.com/blog/2005/10/08/reaction-to-our-research/) that wraps up all of the reactions to the research. ## Reading Lists [OPML](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML) is an XML format for outlines, developed by [Dave Winer](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://scripting.com/) (you may remember him from such developments as RSS and weblogs.com). OPML is beginning to be used more as a compliment to RSS – for example as a way to import and export peoples RSS subscriptions from one RSS Reader to another. Recently a [new use for OPML](webreakstuff.com/blog/2005/10/reading-lists-a-new-way-for-opml/) has been discussed which may make it more mainstream – Reading Lists. Dave Winer and [Niall Kennedy](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/) of Technorati [met to discuss](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/2005/10/13#a1032) the idea of Reading Lists. Dave has a more detailed explanation, but what it boils down to is this: a Reading List will enable you to **subscribe to a group of RSS feeds** in your RSS Aggregator of choice. Whenever the group is updated, the Reading List automatically updates too. [As Mike Arrington pointed out](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/16/my-thoughts-on-reading-lists/), this will be perfect for our [Web 2.0 Workgroup](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://web20workgroup.com/) – which is a group of premium Web 2.0 blogs. We’re in the ongoing process of adding new members to the Workgroup, so wouldn’t it be great to have a Reading List OPML feed that users could subscribe to. It has two main benefits for users: 1) they only need to subscribe to one ‘feed’ – the OPML file; 2) the Reading List automatically updates whenever the group is modified. For publishers, it makes it easy to promote groups of like-minded websites and it’s very convenient to manage. ## Making money with Mash-Ups This week [I wrote up my notes](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=29) from the Mash-Ups panel at the Web 2.0 Conference. I concluded that although the technologies underlying mash-ups are still being sorted out – for example many mash-ups still use old school scraping to collect data – the business models are full steam ahead. A couple of days ago we saw a graphic illustration of this, when [craiglist](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.craigslist.org/)[told](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://oodle.typepad.com/oodleblog/2005/10/wheres_craigsli.html) classifieds ‘meta’ search engine [Oodle](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.oodle.com/) to stop scraping its content. That generated a lot of [healthy debate](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://battellemedia.com/archives/001930.php), but as yet there’s no sign of a compromise between craigslist and Oodle. Dare Obasanjo has an [ interesting post about the case](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=549c34a0-3e19-4535-be08-97294f47eee7), in which he suggests businesses that provide data and services need to “decide where it makes business sense to open up their website or service as a web platform”. Essentially this boils down to companies deciding **how open they want their data to be.** It’s one of the hardest issues to grapple with in Web 2.0. A valiant attempt to do so was [this post by William Blaze](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2005/08/27/web_20.html) a month and a half ago, in which he rightly asked: “just how open are these \[Web 2.0\] technologies really?” ## Techie Post of the Week This is the first time I’ve made a video my techie post of the week. [Robert Cringley interviewed](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/) the father of RSS, [Dave Winer](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://scripting.com/). There’s a [text transcript](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315001638/http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/006.html) too and here’s a highlight from that, in which Dave explains why he developed his outliner program: *“And so it’s a very long story from there to the point where they’re actually – I had a commercial Outliner. But that is where I – that was the moment at which I flipped, and I said, “Okay, I’m not making a tool for programmers as much as I’m making a tool for people, for literate people – for people with ideas, for people with information that they want to organize.” And it turned out to be a very good tool for doing exactly that.”* The video is well worth your time watching, especially if you want to know one of the back stories to Web 2.0. That’s a wrap for another week! *Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_weekly_w_38.php))*