Richard MacManus

Great news! Prompted by my December post about RSS Reader Market Share, Feedburner (the company I selected as the most promising Web 2.0 company of 2004/5) has just released their own RSS Aggregator stats. This is exactly what I asked for, because statistically the Feedburner data is much much bigger – and hence more statistically … Read more

I thought I’d trial a new feature on Read/Write Web, a weekly summary of news and views relating to Web 2.0 (Web as platform). Most of the links will be sourced from my linkblog, which btw I’m now managing with del.icio.us. So here are some highlights from this week: 1. Weblications is a must-read article … Read more

I mentioned before Christmas that I’m starting a new business and now’s the time to let you all know what it is. It’s a new business blogging company, called Weblog Solutions Ltd. It’s a 50/50 venture with another New Zealand blogger, who’s a bit shy about revealing his identity right now (but a lot of … Read more

Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing for Guardian Newspapers, writes: “Gizmodo gets handed an interview with Bill Gates. Good for them, I say – and a smart move by Microsoft. Now here’s a big challenge to traditional media: yes, anyone can run a blog and call themselves a reporter, but ‘access’ is operated almost on … Read more

One of my favourite articles of 2004 was a transcript of a speech by Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press. In it he said that “…content will be more important than its container in this next phase [of the Web]”. Why? Because “killer apps, such as search, RSS and video-capture software such as Tivo … Read more

Congratulations to The Robot Co-op for releasing their new goal-setting social software app, 43 Things, in time for New Year resolutions. I’ve only added a few things to my account so far. I’m still working out the balance between private and public goals, but once I sort that out I’ll add more things. Another observation … Read more

Time for my weekly plug for my sponsors Marqui. I’ve been following what the other paid bloggers are doing and a lot of them are writing up the stories that are being “fed” to us. That’s a sensible tactic, so I feel a bit guilty for not going with the flow and doing the same. … Read more

In 2005 I’ll be sharpening my blog’s focus some more, onto the topic of Web 2.0. I’ll explore what Web 2.0 means in detail in later posts, but for now a quick definition of Web 2.0 is: using the Web as a platform. A good way for me to launch into the new year is … Read more

Technical note: I’ve upgraded to Movable Type 3.14, at the request of my web host. They won’t host old MT blogs anymore, because it “requires too much server (CPU) resources”. The upgrade went smoothly (thanks to my hosts) and the only issue was that MT-Blacklist v1.6x isn’t compatible with MT 3.14, so I had to … Read more

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone! Also my weekly thanks to Marqui for sponsoring my weblog – I’m much appreciative of their support. I’ll be kicking up my heels for the next two weeks, ruminating over my goals for 2005 and re-charging my batteries. I’ll also be preparing my new business venture’s weblog … Read more

Still on the topic of business models for RSS Aggregators, Charles Coxhead asked a very interesting question in the comments to my post entitled Contextual Adverts in Bloglines in 2005. Charles asked: “Do you think there will be any issues for Bloglines in using others content for the purposes of building context for advertising, ie. … Read more

Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, wrote up a detailed response to my two recent posts: RSS Reader Market Share and Contextual Adverts in Bloglines in 2005. In his post, Mark analyses Boing Boing‘s web stats and draws some interesting comparisons between Google and Bloglines in regards to Boing Boing’s traffic: “Nutshell: Bloglines is the 3rd … Read more

Fascinating post by Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson, which outlines the Bloglines business model for 2005 – courtesy of a chat Eric had with Bloglines Chief Mark Fletcher. Eric wrote: “The essence of his answer is “AdWords on Steroids” (my translation, appropriate given their proximity to the BALCO scandal in Northern California). The idea that … Read more

There’s always a lot of talk about market share for web browsers, which is picking up again now that Firefox is starting to eat into Internet Explorer’s huge lead. But there’s been little talk of who is winning the battle for the eyeballs of RSS consumers. Mainly that’s because reading RSS feeds is still a … Read more

It’s probably pushing it to equate Bob Dylan’s career as an incredibly successful musician, with my nascent career as a Blogger. But there were a couple of extracts in the first volume of Bob Dylan’s autobiography that I, as a Blogger, identify strongly with. The first quote comes from page 18, where Bob was outlining … Read more