Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb.
Top Web News
All of the big Web companies were in the news this week, but probably the one that made the most impact (as usual) was Apple. Steve Jobs is the master of getting attention, and his call for record companies to abolish DRM was no exception. It turned out that not many commenters agreed with my stance that Apple could do more than just pass the ball to the record companies. A commenter named ‘mark’ noted these reasons for Jobs’ anti-DRM article (comment #21):
“As for self-serving reasons: MS holds key DRM patents, which makes enhancing FairPlay for new innovative uses (such as wifi sharing) difficult unless Apple is willing to pay MS for licenses.
And there’s another self-serving reason: Apple’s negotiations with the labels are coming up.”
But Michael Meiser seemed to agree with me that more can be done by Apple:
“Apple can offer musicians the opportunity to sell non-DRM mp3’s. The major labels aren’t the ONLY ones with music to sell. There are plenty of independant musicians.”
The other big news of the week was the release of Yahoo Pipes, an RSS Remixer. R/WW readers love to think big and so William Peterson left a comment suggesting that Yahoo could go further and develop “the ultimate mashup maker”. He wrote:
“What if you could apply that same sort of logic to ANY web content? RSS feeds, news sites, email, any sorts of web services!”
The other main Web news of the week:
- Google Ramps Up Personalization, Prepares Online Presentations App
- China’s Internet Boom, Yahoo Panama Launched, Google Integration, Digg Anti-Gaming
- Microsoft Supports OpenID, Gmail Opens Up, Amazon/TiVo, Google and Cable Operators
- Pipes reactions, Windows Live Hotmail & Mobile 6, Baidu Video Search, IBM QEDWiki
Analysis Posts
As usual, the various Read/WriteWeb authors and guest bloggers taxed your brain with in-depth Web analysis. Jawad Shuaib’s post entitled 6 Startup Lessons For The Year 2007 got some excellent feedback. Comment #10 from Emil sounded a note of caution about focusing on niches:
“If google offered a Seccond-best-in-breed solution to all the webservices I’ve signed up with I would personally be glad to trade a superior solution with a single login and easy adaptation.
In that sense a small startup with a carefully carved niche may still find them selves competing with MySpace simply because they are still that deadly one-extra-click away from the site the user is already on.”
Mike Rundle chimed in at comment #13, also disagreeing that niches are necessarily good:
“What’s wrong with coming up with an original idea and doing it huge, doing it for the entire planet, regardless of if you’re a teacher, designer, geek, or anything else? Why not tackle the huge and complex problems, aren’t those infinitely more satisfying? Why go after the small fish when you could be busy with your app that exists for $500 million instead of $5 million?”
RJ then defended the niche in comment #17:
“Real entrepreneurs solve problems regardless of the size. There will be plenty of opportunities to create gigantic start-ups as new (online/offline) technologies appear, so you should never forget about the big picture. At the same time, looking at the current state of the web…there are clearly a lot of opportunities for niche and the super-niche.”
There’s more excellent comments on that theme – well worth perusing if you’re a budding Web entrepreneur.
Other analysis posts this week:
- SuperBowl Advertisers Fail To Impress Online and on Social Network Sites
- Next Generation of Online Invitation Sites
- MySpace Love Triangle With Google and eBay
- Customized Video Advertising Disrupts Ad Industry
- The Hybrid Design World of Digital and Physical – Nine Online, e-paper, iPhone
- Pre-Teens and the Web: An Overview of Popular Websites, Trends and Online Activities
Startup Action
We did a thorough review of 30 Boxes, which turned 1 year old this week. If you want to read some practical lessons gained from a best-of-breed site focusing on a niche (and battling Google to boot), then check it out. Also see our review of Change.org, a Social Network For Social Activism. We gave it top marks, but commenter Matthew Ogston rightly pointed out that offline social action needs to happen too:
“I’d love to see some of the content, ideas and support taken further than just this site. It’s great to experience an online social network like Change, but you could reach a new , more mature audience if the service evolved into offline events, gatherings and meetups.”
Change.org founder Ben Rattray responded to that later in the thread, noting that they have “an “Actions” feature for facilitating just that”.
We also reviewed the following three innovative startups this week:
- Flixster: Analysis Of A Movie Social Network On The Rise
- Zlio Launches in US – Build Your Own Online Shop
- TVTonic Turns Video Podcasts Into TV Channels
Poll
Finally this week’s poll was kind of admin-focused: What type of content keeps you coming back to Read/WriteWeb? But the results are illuminating for us, so thanks to all who participated.
1. Web Analysis 30% (278 votes) 2. Startup Reviews 24% (227 votes) 3. Web Tech News 19% (173 votes) 4. Web Design Discussions 13% (117 votes) 5. Bigco Products (Goog, MS, Y!, etc) 12% (108 votes) 6. Other (please leave a comment) 3% (25 votes)
That’s a wrap for another week!
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)