Tech analyst, AI & the web
I founded the tech blog ReadWriteWeb in April 2003 and ran it until October 2012. During my time running the business, it was well known for its cutting edge content (“What’s next on the Web”) and its influential global audience. At its peak, RWW was ranked among the top ten blogs in the world by Technorati.
This category contains all of the articles I personally wrote for RWW, now archived on ricmac.org for easier browsing and search. If you’d like to explore the original context, you can also view a year-by-year archive with links to the Wayback Machine
In a recent post I floated the theory that Content Creators need Media Companies to help them attract mass eyeballs to read their carefully-crafted content. It would be a symbiotic relationship – the Media Co’s get compelling content and the Content Creator gets mass readership. It’s win-win and I think this is one way round … Read more
Welcome to the second in my series of Web 2.0 interviews, in which I interview people in the Web community who are building or shaping Web 2.0 – i.e. the Web as Platform. And who better to talk to than the person who organized the hugely successful Web 2.0 conference held in San Francisco in … Read more
Summary: Let bloggers focus on getting the content right. Delivering that content to a large readership is another business altogether and one which media companies are best suited to provide. My previous post was a rumination on whether the future for Web content creators is getting brighter, with the increased interest in bloggers by media … Read more
UPDATE 12/11/04: An interesting conversation has developed in the comments to this post, spurred on by Phil Jones who disagreed with my position. Joshua, Liam and Matt Scofield also contributed thoughtful comments that are well worth reading. I’d like to get other opinions too… do you think there is a future – finally – for … Read more
I’m exploring the Design for Data thread and later in this post I’m going to get arty on ya’ll. I think tomorrow I’ll begin to investigate Atomflow, but for now let me give you an informal overview of my thoughts so far: – it’s about movement of data/content (in time); not places where data/content resides. … Read more
Oh boy, this gets better… check out this extract from the latest issue of Fortune magazine (hat-tip Susan Mernit): “The latest version of MyYahoo! allows its users to create custom home pages that automatically bring up headlines from any blogs you select, using a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The software can also draw … Read more
Quick follow-up on my post from last night. Over the past week James Enck has been writing a series of posts about ‘analyst blogging’. Ross Mayfield called it a “blog-based research model” and I wrote about it too. Now to be honest I’m not too sure what a “sell-side analyst” is in the investment industry, … Read more
Nearly a month ago I left a comment on Jason Kottke’s weblog, in response to a post about his upcoming Web 2.0 conference workshop called Design for Web 2.0. He had listed 15 questions that were to be discussed in that workshop and one in particular caught my eye. It was: “Right now, Web design … Read more
My fellow bloggers: like a lot of you, I’m disappointed that Kerry lost. FWIW here are some quick thoughts from a non-US citizen: – I watched the coverage on CNN and BBC yesterday (yes we get both tv networks in New Zealand). CNN seemed to be very cautious about predicting results… a bit like Kerry’s … Read more
Jeremy Zawodny has written a terrific post about what makes a successful Web 2.0 company. It all comes down to ubiquity, according to Jeremy. The themes he covers dovetails with my next Web 2.0 interview (coming soon!), so I’ll review his main points here in anticipation of that. Jeremy starts by noting that the main … Read more
Interesting line of thought inspired by Ross Mayfield’s post Blog-based Research Model, where he talks about research services shifting “from the end analysis product (.pdf) to the open process of research”. That is, instead of relying upon bulky and expensive PDFs from the traditional analyst companies (Gartner and so forth), we are seeing blogs form … Read more
Nothing like a Slashdotting to bring out the warm fuzzies. Marc and Lucas both have nice things to say about my interviewing style: Marc: “The process is fascinating – an interview where you get to decide what’s talked about, an intelligent discourse happens at your pace and you even get to read it before it’s … Read more
UPDATE 6/11/04: I decided to nominate The Fractal Blogosphere and Evolution of Corporate Web Sites for the Best Software Essays of 2004 book that Joel Spolsky is editing. If you enjoyed either one of those articles, please leave a comment on Joel’s discussion board to support my nominations. Click here to second my Fractal nomination, … Read more
Welcome to the first in a very special series of Web 2.0 interviews I’m conducting on Read/Write Web. My goal is to interview at least half a dozen people in the Web community who are building or shaping Web 2.0 – i.e. the Web as Platform. My first guest is Lucas Gonze, creator of the … Read more
This is about as political as I’ll get here on Read/Write Web, but I couldn’t resist posting this cartoon by fellow kiwi Tom Scott. It also reminds me of the Getting paid for blogging controversy that is polarizing bloggers right now. For the record, I think it’s a worthy experiment by Marc Canter… why does … Read more