Richard MacManus

John Battelle is speaking to Barry Diller of IAC. John asked straight off: why did you buy Ask? Barry: search box would keep evolving and more convergence through it. They “plunged” into an arrangement with Ask. If they failed and didn’t gain share, that’s OK – because it (Ask) has “enormous promise”. Barry says a … Read more

Time: 1:30pm – 2:45pm Panelists: David Madelorot, VP Search Content, Yahoo! Search Will Johnson, VP & GM, Yahoo! Publisher Network Online Anne Frisbie, Sr. Director of Category Search Marketing, Yahoo! David: ecosystem: publishers, users, advertisers; incorporated into mission statement; yahoo being glue in the middle; overarching vision: FUSE. Find: re Search Subscriptions product –> not … Read more

24 Hour Laundry, the secretive start-up of Marc Andresson, has just released their new product – Ning. It’s a free online service for “building and using social applications”. Basically it’s a Web 2.0 development tool aimed at non-developers. Developers too will benefit from it, because it sounds like a Ruby on Rails for mash-ups – … Read more

My post yesterday asking if Bloglines has dropped the ball in the web-based RSS Aggregator market provoked some interesting responses. Among them were a couple of comments from Jim Lanzone, Senior VP of Search Properties at Ask Jeeves. In his second comment Jim asked for more feedback from people who want Bloglines to improve. Jim … Read more

Yahoo! has bought upcoming.org, Andy Baio’s events service: “In just a few years, most of it spent on nights and weekends, the Upcoming team has built an excellent site with a loyal and growing following. Now that theyve joined Yahoo!, together well build a social events platform that will integrate with our existing events offering … Read more

Lycos, search engine portal and owner of Wired Magazine, has announced its intention to rebrand as a media company. According to the press release Lycos has released a service called Planet, which enables its users to create “mini sites” that include photos, blogs, slideshows, animation, special effects and other multimedia. ClickZ referred to Planet as … Read more

Yahoo! is teaming up with The Internet Archive to help build a digital archive of “globally sourced digital collections, including multimedia content”. I understand this means books, academic material, audio and video media. Question: does this crossover with OurMedia.org – or will there be arbitary boundaries between ‘professional’ and amateur media content? Called the Open … Read more

This week: Defining Web 2.0, Web-based office, Yahoo media/tv, Google Wifi, Techie Post of the Week: Tim O’Reilly’s What is Web 2.0. sponsored by: Defining Web 2.0 A lot of online trees were felled this week to write about what Web 2.0 means. Tim O’Reilly’s definition is a very comprehensive one and is more satisfying … Read more

I’ve written a few times now about being disappointed with Bloglines this year – and their lack of progress since they got bought by Ask Jeeves. Now Russell Beattie has come out and said it too – and he got a response from Bloglines chief Mark Fletcher in the comments. Mark said (excerpted): “You’re right … Read more

I arrived in San Francisco yesterday, in preparation for the Web 2.0 Conference next week. I’m spending two weeks in Silicon Valley, kindly hosted by TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington, Keith Teare and Frederico Oliveira. They’re having a great time with my accent (“yeeeeeaa”). I’m having a great time in general and looking forward to the conference! … Read more

Next week is the last week of my sponsorship arrangement with Onfolio, so I’m putting feelers out for another Web 2.0-savvy company to sponsor my popular Weekly Wrap-up. I’ve been writing this weekly column since the beginning of January this year – never missed a week. It’s become the premium offering of my weblog and … Read more

The ‘What is Web 2.0?’ meme is everywhere and everyone seems to have a different interpretation. Here are some of the latest: Om Malik: “a “collection of technologies – be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a … Read more

Phil Wainewright wrote an excellent post recently entitled The great Web 2.0 application (s)mash-up. He starts by quoting Mohan Sawhney, professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management: “Five years from now, the concept of an application will be obsolete,” Sawhney said. “They will all be services, combined, mixed, matched and reused as needed.” Phil goes … Read more

Mike Arrington thinks Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 meme map should be simpler and Dave Winer responds, saying it’s a complicated self-serving meme and pointing out that the map doesn’t include RSS. I’ve been looking at the meme map closely, while working on the latest chapter of Josh’s and my O’Reilly book on Web 2.0 (so … Read more

Fascinating post by John Blossom on the evolution of content in the Web world. It’s similar in theme to AP chief Tom Curley’s famous Content and Containers speech last year – and my own extensive thoughts on the matter. Riffing on GoogleNet, Blossom wrote: “As content and software services merge into common XML-based objects, the … Read more