Richard MacManus

During my time in Silicon Valley I’ve been staying in the TechCrunch house with Michael Arrington and Frederico Oliveira (Gabe Rivera of memeorandum fame is also here currently). Mike, Fred and I all blog on the topic of Web 2.0 – so we thought why not create a Web 2.0 network. As you do. It’s … Read more

Tristan Louis did the numbers on the AOL-WeblogsInc deal. My blog Read/WriteWeb has 1,938 inbound links on Technorati as of today, so according to Tristan’s calculations Read/WriteWeb is worth over $1 million. OK, so there were other factors that contributed to the weblogsinc deal – the value of network effects etc. But I certainly believe … Read more

This week: Web 2.0 Conference Special sponsored by: The past week has been an amazing one for me. My first trip to America and I’ve met so many people that I’d previously only known via the Web (blogs, email, etc). The Web 2.0 Conference was held in San Francisco from Wednesday 5th to Friday 7th … Read more

Marc Andreessen popped into Alex Barnett’s comments to confirm the business goals of Ning. In response to Alex’s well-written analysis of what Ning is trying to accomplish, Marc commented: “Alex — your description of what we are trying to do is very well said. It’s an experiment, but those are the goals. We are going … Read more

The conference is over now and so here’s a summary of my blog output from it. I was pumping out the real-time notes over the last 3 days! I didn’t have much time for analysis – my brain was full to the brim just absorbing everything. I intend to dive into the details over the … Read more

Kim, CEO of SpikeSource: “the world has completely changed for building a software company.” Joe: talking about Jotspot, “DIY publishing” – wikis next step after blogs for web publishing. Jotspot heading towards “DIY apps”. Joe talking about Jotspot mistakes this year – not focusing on revenue. “Jotspot was in beta for way too long” –> … Read more

John: how you handling the success? Sergey: attributes success to luck. followed our hearts in terms of research areas. found they had something useful and impactful. early on talked about open sourcing, but eventually started the company. exciting and wild ride. starting to get used to it. John: brings up terry semel conversation, how he … Read more

This is a Show Me of new technologies. Rolf Herken talking, founder of mental images. 3D visualization component software. mental ray photorealism – worked on The Matrix, Alexander, 2046. “Rendering the imagination visible”. Thinks there’s need for 3D on the Web. e.g. 3D online entertainment, e-commerce, product stuff, mobile. Very heavy data – gigabytes. Current … Read more

Shows stats – 36k feeds that really matter; 14k “really really matter”, 60 feeds that are Paris Hilton hot; 1 feed is da bomb – slashdot. [will update these stats later] Long tail of searches – 95%. eg head queries: hurricane rita, maps, song lyrics. Long tail of verticals (or categories). Also long tail of … Read more

For me the Web 2.0 conference has been really exciting and the air has been full of energy. But I’m new in the Silicon Valley, so I’ve been curious to listen to what other conference attendees have been saying. A lot of them share my enthusiasm, but there’s also a fair amount of what could … Read more

Google just announced their new RSS Reader, called Google Reader. It’s browser-based (of course) and has similar look n’ feel to Gmail. Very Ajaxy. I’ll play with it some more and report back later. For now, here’s more info from SEW: “Google Reader is a browser-based application that works with virtually all popular browsers on … Read more

John: this idea of prosumer media, define more. prosumer media is big business Mark: started bloglines to scratch my own itch. other people must have this problem too, that was genesis. Rich: folks in newspaper companies surprisingly savvy about the Web. more and more content every day – our job direct people to that. Mena: … Read more

Open source client platform for messaging, communications. Shows email interface with links embedded in each message – with web services calls to various apps/services. e.g. mouse over for Google map, appointment, events, fedex package updates. Lots of mash-ups. Impressive. APIs are open, can write mash-ups. Has the ajax magic going on. Fully indexed backend and … Read more

John starts by grilling Jonathan: “are you talking to Microsoft?” [crowd roars]. Jonathan replies that AOL is in transition from proprietary mindset/business model to more open model – like Web 2.0. John tries again: AOL is an important player in platform market, Microsoft wants to create a partnership with AOL. Jonathan: “we’re the largest swing … Read more

weblogsinc bought by AOL for between $20-35 million. SocialText (the wiki company) is returning to open source. PubSub has announced an open source structured blogging initiative. Flock, the social browser, is expanding their beta. I went along with Mike and Fred from TechCrunch to check out their office, which is literally in a garage in … Read more