Richard MacManus

A look back at the week that was in the world of Web 2.0. This week: Google’s AutoLinks feature, IE7, NY Times buys About.com, more Big Media blogging coverage, Bloglines hacks. Sponsored Link: Shout-out to my sponsor, Marqui. Their CMS software now powers Chicago radio station WVON’s website. AutoLinks and Annotation Ever since Google made … Read more

It’s been a while since I’ve published a book review on R/WW, so I’m going to briefly review 5 books that I’ve read during the past few months. Four of them are Web Technology-related and the other was an eBook that I bought. The Nudist on the Late Shift : And Other True Tales of … Read more

Andrew Nachison from The Media Centre raises some interesting issues regarding RSS content aggregation. He boils it down to these 3 questions: 1. Machines vs. humans? [in regards to aggregation] I agree with Andrew’s conclusion: “This isn’t an “either/or” theory but a “both/and” reality.” P.S. also check out The Media Center Matrix. Rich Skrenta from … Read more

Elise Bauer has posted a comprehensive analysis of Weblog Authoring Tools market share. As with RSS Aggregator market share stats, there are a lot of caveats. But much can be gleaned from Elise’s post, which is a continuation of an analysis she did in August 2004. The data is gathered from what Elise calls “Google … Read more

Try saying that three times fast! Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson recently had another chat with Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher. The resulting post from Eric pretty much confirms my theory that Bloglines was scared off its contextual advertising strategy by vocal publishers (big and small). Here’s what Eric wrote: “[…] It turns out that Mark … Read more

What’s been happening in the world of “Web two dot oh” (as Jeff Bezos pronounces it) this week? Let’s find out. First allow me to give a shout-out to my sponsor, Marqui. Their CMS software now powers the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission website. Bloglines Sale (my last comment on it, I promise) The Bloglines sale … Read more

Andrew Watson suggests that my post about Bloglines being scared off its advertising strategy would make a great Oliver Stone movie 🙂 Heh, I won’t sell my screenplay to Stone for less than a cool million! 😉 Seriously though, it’s possible my post did sound like a Conspiracy Theory, but I suspect what I wrote … Read more

Provocative post by Jason Calacanis on the Bloglines sale. He says it’s “a horrible business and it will never make money.” The reason? He reckons “95-99% of the RSS reader market” will belong to the Big 3 of Yahoo, Microsoft and Google within 2 years. That’s the ‘bigco will crush littleco’ theory, which is an … Read more

You may be getting sick of ‘2.0’ being stuck onto the end of everything, but I can’t resist pointing to this excellent post by VC Fred Wilson. He characterises the mid-to-late 90’s era of Web content creation companies like About.com (ex-The Mining Company), Geocities and Tripod as “blogging 1.0”. The likes of Denton’s Gawker, Calacanis’ … Read more

Here’s my summary of what went on in the Web 2.0 world this past week. Headlines inspired by tabloid newspapers. Bloglines Shocker! Butler Buys Master of the Blog Universe! The big news of the week was Mary Hodder’s scoop that Bloglines has (probably) been bought by Ask Jeeves, the genial but non-trendy search engine company. … Read more

Rafat Ali over at PaidContent.org goes on a bit of a rant against Reuters and their form of branding. But first, allow me to give a shout-out to Marqui, a CMS (Communication Management Software as a Service) vendor. They are my sponsors and I have to link to them once a week. Anyway, Rafat says: … Read more

Last week I wrote about topic/tag/remix feeds. I think these may in future become more popular than people feeds. So to follow that up, here are some practical tips on how to get started with topic and tag feeds (I’ll address remix feeds in a separate post). The first thing I need to point out … Read more

Mary Hodder has the scoop, which if true is huge news in the Web 2.0 world. Also quite eerie given what I wrote yesterday! Here’s what Mary blogged: “Ask Jeeves Buys Bloglines (Updated 12:30pm. This was apparently going to be announced Tuesday, not Monday.) That’s the scoop. Ask Jeeves is integrating Bloglines into their search … Read more

Richard Koman over at SiliconValleyWatcher gets the scoop from Flickr CEO Stewart Butterfield, on whether Google will replicate Flickr’s photo-sharing service (as suggested by Om Malik). Stewart is quoted as saying: “Given our growth, the technologies cooking in the lab, and that we’re still completing the feature set and infrastructure build out for version 1.0, … Read more

Anybody with an interest in the publishing industry will be familiar with the dream of Print On Demand, whereby you order a book from a kiosk or similar service and a paper book is custom printed before your eyes. Former publishing honcho Jason Epstein is the person most commonly associated with this vision – he … Read more