Applevolution

Thanks to Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog for pointing out this YouTube video of Apple products through the ages. 

Without paying attention to the fact that they're Apple, they're like a trip through our technological form-factor development-- getting more and more like our science fiction imaginings over time. (Those who read or watch science fiction will get what I mean. If you don't, that's OK.) More curvy, metallic, less boxy. What's important is the stuff inside, software miniaturization, power -- but the human 'touch' aspect matters, too.

"Web 2.0" Declines - Because it's Part of Us

Robin Wauters on TechCrunch talks about the end of "Web 2.0" as a term, and ponderswhat the decline in use of the term means (giving some evidence as to why it's declining).

But as "Web 2.0" declines as a term, that doesn't mean that what Tim O'Reilly was describing in coining the phrase is declining, as well. As we use the linking, grafting, sifting and sorting technologies, mashup our own media, build a continuing Web of interlinking info-clouds, Web 2.0 is a meaningless term because we all know what it is. It's just air. It's there. We don't talk about Web 2.0 any more than we talk about the technology that brings TV signals to our TV sets or voices into our ears via the telephone.

Some day, we won't talk about ".com" (just as we seldom say "www" anymore). We'll just do what we want via whatever interface without talking about . We'll use Twitter-like short bursts, and share photos mapped via locating technologies and share videos and photos and accessing information, and conducting commerce and what-not. But less and less will we talk about the methodology. Rather than fascination with HOW things get done via whatever fulfillment mechanism or description of the technology or methodology, we'll just be doing it.

What's Twitter, Anyway? Don't Ask Russell Simmons

Twitter might be, as Nate Westheimer writes, a billion dollar business (because they can become a P2P payment system, he says) , but that doesn't mean that most people know what it is.

For the Naked Media show, we took our mic and camera out to a park in financial district today, and of about a dozen people we asked -- including Russell Simmons, who happened to be sitting with a woman in the park -- only one (not Simmons) had even the vaguest idea of what Twitter is. The one who knew said she doesn't use it, doesn't blog either. "I read, not write" -- important for us all to remember, sometimes, that not everyone is a content creator.

Twitter might become as ubiquitous as eBay or Google or Yahoo. It ain't there, yet. And another way it could be a billion dollar biz (he says, hyphothesizingly) would be if it became part of something else, so people would be using Twitter technology without knowing it. In the same way that RSS is used in myriad applications, such as NetVibes or MyYahoo, with only a small fraction of the millions using them knowing what RSS is.

You'll be able to watch the episode, which was webcast live at noon ET, on demand soon, at ScribeMedia.org, or through TeemingMedia.com.

Social Networking Apps for Mobile

It has to come to this: social networking through the mobile device.

(Story about a company called Frengo that lets folks use their mobile devices, cellphone and so on, to network through Facebook. One is a dating app.)

Yahoo Had a Lot First

Reposting a comment from Fred Wilson's blog, on which he says they need new management and a few folks are replying:

Others here are saying that if Yahoo had the team of 1997, they'd do great. Yahoo had a lot what's currency today before it was currency: social networking (Yahoo 360), bookmarking (MyWeb), email and, of course search.

The problem, from my perspective, was in the execution and sometimes the marketing. The email product was good for its time, but hasn't been updated in ages, and is still very glitchy. Small business email, paid, doesn't have the functionality of Gmail or many other services.

Web building services are more expensive and less functional than others who've overtaken Yahoo in functionality as a host. (A site I have there recently was very slow and it was only after I called -- 45 minutes on hold! -- that I found out they'd been having server issues. Then the told me they'd escalate the site.)

I don't know what team it was in '97. But I do see tons of great ideas and opportunities that were not seized on.

Jury Duty! Jury Duty?

I loved everything about the WiFi connection at the NY State jury room at 111 Centre Street except that for some reason it wouldn't let me log on to blogger to post here. Well, I got some other work done as I sat around all day. Was going to say WiFi for people waiting to be empaneled as jurors is one expense I don't at all mind paying for -- even though it also blocked my email client, Entourage, from sending outgoing messages. The laptop stations -- there was a room of about a dozen cubbies -- were full, and another dozen or two people with laptops working away, in a room of maybe 250-300 people.

But blogger.com and blogspot.com couldn't get through, instead giving me a NY Supreme Court page. Hmmmm. They thinking I'm going to blog the procedures? They care that I could do it over Wordpress or Typepad or Twitter (didn't try that, actually) or 100 other ways? They took my camera  (which I, darn, forgot to pick up from the security desk!), but I can just take photos from the computer or my other cellphone... Funny mix of 2008 and last century thinking.

It's all media, all the time. Showed the same video about the court system hosted by Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer (whom I'm guessing got off jury duty by doing the video) as I saw five or so years ago. What if they put it online and just let us watch, and check off that we'd watched and come a half-hour later? That'd be too crazy.

Twitter for Journalism II

More on Twitter for journalism, from OJB:

Finding contacts (UK is the example, but valid elsewhere), tools, publishing and distribution, etc. Good tips.

Ziff Davis Enterprise Will Change Name in Q3

The B2B media and events company Ziff Davis Enterprise will change its name in Q3, according to CEO Steven Weitzner. Speaking on the new Scribe Media 'Print to Digital' show, he noted the confusion over the name (for the record, I had that confusion -- check out his memo on the topic), and that he knew something had to change when three clients asked him about matters pertaining to Ziff Davis Media.

The latter, Media, is the publishing company, probably best known for its PC Magazine, that is moving to emerge from bankruptcy, on what may be a  faster than expected timeline.  They sold Ziff Davis Enterprise to Insight Venture Partners in 2007.

Weitzner, who joined in January, oversaw a re-org in April after installing a new management team and hinted there might be more changes afoot. Though he did say there is room for people who want to write long-form articles and not necessarily do lots of digital, blogs and the like -- albeit fewer than in the past. He didn't say what the companies new name would be, even when pressed by host Matthew Schwartz.

ZD Enterprise calls itself an "integrated media and demand generation" company -- meaning, basically, lead generation in the tech space. Its well-known brands include eWeek and CIO Insight. Weitzner talked, too, of having events in virtual reality, something they've experimented with in the past.

While we're on the topic of Scribe Media and shows: The show I'm hosting, which my company Teeming Media partnered with Scribe on called "Naked Media" launched on Tuesday and will be available on demand soon. Our next guest is Dave Morgan, former head of Tacoda, June 4 at noon ET.

In Mobile: Sex Sells (And SEO Will)

Adult content is a big application for mobile search, says Farhan Memon, senior product manager of AOL Mobile Search. Speaking at a iBreakfast meeting in New York, Memon noted that AOL blocks terms that would look for illegal content (think "teen" or "underage"), but is looking for ways to appropriately allow other searches, and monetization of the search, for adult content. Mobile is "about things that are not meant to be consumed in public," he said. Pressed privately, later, he wouldn't say how much of search adult counts for.

Other things discussed:

• PPC -- Pay Per CALL (not click) ... in other words, someone clicking on an ad on their phone to call a number. Something only phones can do.
• Localization on phones. Geographically targeted ads can be served because a lot of queries on phones are geographically specific -- what times the movie here, or where's a restaurant. Phone numbers can be correlated, too, though they're less reliable for obvious reasons (people move around and take their numbers with them). Can't yet triangulate location based on cell towers because the carriers aren't allowing it. One targeted ad from a company called Apptera let a singer, Rianna, tell folks who'd asked for a message from her tell them that she'd be in concert in their city (New York).
• No single form of advertising is enough to cover the cost of content. That's why AOL is putting as many as four different kinds of ads on mobile search pages (SERPs), according to Memon.
• There's a burgeoning market of women over the age of 35 using text messages to communicate with their children, according to Randy Haldeman of Apptera.
• Mobile is 99% spam free, he says. (Carriers are the main culprits, he says, while blocking spam in general.)
• Mobile search takes off at the time when computer-based search lessens. IE, as people leave their desks at the end of the day and on weekends, they're using their devices, instead.

On the last point: I wouldn't be surprised if mobile content takes money away from computer based search over time -- if people doing localized ads in Google and Yahoo start to put them into mobile in a couple years. In fact, I think it's fairly likely that it will. Which is probably one of the reasons Google is coming on strong in mobile. (And it's not talked about a lot, but Yahoo already has a big presence.) Today, mobile search has not developed to where folks are finding mobile sites serendipitously -- so a lot of marketing is being done to get folks to use the mobile sites that are created. That will change, over time, and I bet we'll start to see SEO and SEM for mobile sites.

NYU's New Journalism Innovation Program

Waiting for the on demand edited version of the Naked Media show from Scribe Media, but in the meantime can say a few things that came of it beyond Jay Rosen gamely and graciously trying to come up with business models for the new journalism:
- New York University is launching a new program, in Fall of '09, that somehow mingles innovation with journalism, perhaps in a business or tech way. It's not an entrepreneurial journalism program. Rosen didn't want to say too much more.
- Talking Points Memo is profitable, and something he holds up as a model of journalism in the new era -- very lean, involving its like-minded even opinionated community of a half-million readers or so in information gathering and parsing. He also doesn't consider it a full developed model, yet.

Twitter-nalia: A Cloud Burst is Forming

I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter, recently. (Twitter, in case you’re not in the thumbs-of-steel set, is a technology that allows people to send short bursts of text under a unique logon about anything they want.) Sometimes, it’s journalism -- an executive just said “this!” Other times, it’s banal musings about what someone -- even journalists from The New York Times -- are doing with their day: laundry, eating dinner, riding a bus.

Someone on a blog I contribute to called Rebuilding Media poo-pooh’d Twitter, saying the audience was miniscule compared to blogs. Others have said Twitter won’t be around in a few years because there's no business model. I don’t think it matters if Twitter, itself, survives, what the business model is. What Twitter represents, though, will survive. There’s an information cloud forming. What if in the stadium when the Pope was talking, if you could have a few hundred or a few thousand people Twittering their observations on what was happening, and then somehow assemble them into a cohesive whole. You could get a more meaningful and perhaps more accurate read of what the crowd felt or the “mood” than any single journalist could provide, whether with camera, microphone or by writing.

On Rebuilding Media I suggested that If you’re going to Twitter for the benefit of others, you should do it intelligently, consider Twitter a medium, figure out how to do it intelligently, not waste their time. But maybe that’s not necessary. Blogs have lots of good information and tons of drek. The good comes through. As this cloud of micro-bursts of information forms, and more people link to and reply to the other bursts, ways to sort and sift and retrieve will -- I hope -- form. Useful information will start to coalesce around a whole. Artificial intelligence will -- again, I hope -- get better, good enough to sort and sift for me, and keep me from having to go through it all myself (but still allow me to do so when I want to spend a serendipitous 20 minutes or so).

There’s not only Twitter, but all the offshoots of Twitter or things that interrelate to it and all other kinds of information feeds -- FriendFeed, and Twirhl and Twitpic and Tumblr and Twitterfeed and more I’m forgetting -- all applications that let you decide what to read from whom and assemble them in one place and perhaps intercorrelate them, distribute or aggregate them as you wish.

In one way or another this all will survive, and inform how we relate and interrelate and handle information and relationships with each other, and commerce and information.

Blogs Are More Than All That

Riffing on SAI's post on eMarketer's analysis of how much ad money blogs actually get. One of the commenters pointed out a strength of blogs -- that they're optimized for search, and are a powerful publishing software. Here's my take:

Blogs are optimized not only for search, but also for all kinds of other exchange, import, export, sharing, "clouds" and so on:  tagging, comment sharing across blogs, integration with all kinds of feed readers and bookmarking systems, easy feeds through RSS and the like, import into Widgets, trackbacks and pings that tell folks when you've linked to them, integration with Twitter and other third party apps, including some yet to be built.

Not to mention posting of all forms of media, easily, by a single individual -- video, audio, podcast, Flash (if the file's been built), images, graphics, etc. etc. And the individual needs next to no HTML experience on many of the platforms.

They allow for easy categorization and tagging, are optimized for flexible templates with CSS that allows changes throughout at a whim, with -- depending on the platform -- easy integration with email blasts and ads and on and on.

Blogs are a CMS, a publishing system, yes, but I would argue a publishing system that by their interactive and flexible and easy sharing and cross postin are much more likely to create what I'll call a three-dimensional network of media and information than other systems. They can be one-to-many, many to one, many to many, machine to many and many other permutations and combinations.

Yes, regular old Web sites can be build to do all the things I've said above. But one person with a minimal amount of coding expertise can do everything I've specified above. Not true for other kinds of sites I'm aware of.

Is Yahoo Messing Around with MyYahoo?

I use Yahoo for a few things, including some of my business (the main site for TeemingMedia is hosted by their Small Business service), an old personal email account, a MyYahoo page I don't look at as often as some other aggregators, a MyWeb account that dates from before DIGG and Delicious got traction, Flickr, and I'd use the Overture keyword finder if it still existed. I sometimes use Yahoo Groups, which is still, I think, superior to Google groups, although it requires users to have a Yahoo logon. (A flaw with a lot of the Yahoo services; they essentially require you to become a Yahoo to use them.)

Twice today, and a couple of other times in the page week or two -- using Macs with OSX and a Safari and perhaps Firefox browser -- I've been redirected from the Yahoo service I wanted to the new Beta MyYahoo page. One time, I was trying to access the business emails to set up a new email account, another time, I was trying to log into my business email. Both times, I landed on cm.my.yahoo.com. (I was able to access my mail from that page.) In the bad old days of jacking up numbers, I would have put this off as an attempt to drive people through a certain page to jack up its numbers. Couldn't be that. Could it?

How to Make Money When Copyright's Not Protected

Shelly Palmer asks at JackMyers.com today how one can make money from content in a copyright free zone like China. He’s in Shenzen, the town that’s literally a subway ride a way from Hong Kong, and has gone from a pig- and farm town with dirt streets to a bustling metropolis in less than two decades. (I saw the tail end of the pig days. If you think New York changes quickly and has constant construction, you ain’t seen nothing; the changes are stunning.)

Here’s an answer: The content becomes an upsell for something else. Hard to justify making millions of dollars of material as a marketing play, but it’s done very successfully in multiple venues. Bloomberg, for example, almost gives away its news product -- and did, literally do so for years -- to help sell its proprietary stock and bond market terminals and information. Reuters, now part of Thomson, also gets a minority of its budget from news, which it sells on its own but also feed its proprietary terminals. For mediabistro.com, the editorial product gets membership and attracts ads, but it also helps attract users to the big kahunas: jobs and classes.

What, though, if you produce entertainment, TV shows or movies and the like? How can you make money from a drama that’s cost millions to make, and you want to sell, if everyone gets illicit digital copies? That’s a tougher one to answer. Perhaps, if ads are embedded, the ads are paid for even if the program is copied and distributed free. If you give the programming away, or make it tremendously cheap, the counterfeiters can’t outsell you. You can take a brand you’ve created and launch ancillary “products,” as
Disney’s done with the Miley Cyrus concert tours (no way to counterfeit a live concert). Add enough value to a the paid experience through a controlled distribution channel that people will want to pay for those additions.

Widgets as a Productivity Tool

Widgets to spread content, or ads -- we've considered that.

But as a productivity tool, to communicate with the team, right on their desktops -- intriguing.

Summize

Twittered that Summize might have traction and today see that Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land loves their mashup with Twitter that allows searching by region.

Twitter Journalism

What do you think are/should be the rules of Twitter journalism?

A few folks have been using Twitter as a kind of live-blogging mechanism, so folks following a Twitter feed can read what a reporter has to say about an event or news scene as he/she types it in a handheld device. That can be perfectly valid, but it’s important -- as with any medium -- to consider the audience, and how they’re likely consuming what’s being provided.

A lot of the Twittering I’ve seen reads as if you have to be at the event to understand what was said -- you have to be so much an insider that you’re already on the inside. If that’s the case, what’s the point? To be pedantic about it, some questions:

Do your readers need more information? Should you give a full name of whom you’re talking about?

• Shouldn’t you say specifics rather than just allude?
  
• Can you sum up, or should you quote?
• Yes, it’s only 140 characters, but as Mark Twain might have said: I wrote a full article because I didn’t have time to Twitter. Writing intelligently in 140-character bursts is a hard thing to do.
  

What else?

Targeted Ads -- For Phone Cards, of All Things

I used to joke that there isn’t enough advertising in the world. Why, I asked, can’t someone put an ad under your eyelids so every time you blink, you get to see their message? Or, perhaps, a sponsorship of each ring on your phone. “Ring ... eat at McDonald’s ... Ring... special sale today at Macy’s ... Ring ...”.

Only, now that second one’s not a joke. A company called VoodooVox is targeting ads to people who use phone cards to call internationally, part of what they call “incall media”. You may know that today you can at stores and stands and kiosks all over the world for a couple or five or ten bucks pick up one of the cards that lets you have inexpensive calls overseas using VOIP technology. The cards also come with various kinds of fees and penalties if you don’t use them quickly after activating them.

The targeting comes in because there are a bazillion offerings and permutations and combinations: cards that are cheaper from New York to Mexico, or from U.S. cellphones to Haiti, or the Philippines, or France, or between London and an African city and on and on. If someone in the U.S., say, is buying a card that’s written in Spanish and has great rates to Mexico, there’s a good chance got strong ties to that country. So, if, when dialing in to activate and use the card, an ad comes on that gives special offers to someone with an affinity for Mexico, that would be pretty decent targeting. JetBlue could advertise a special deal on flights to Puerto Rico for people using a card likely to be interested in that offer. VoodooVox has partnered with IDT and other long-distance providers to try to offering and plans (today?) to release a study from Millward Brown that shows the ads have been effective in reaching the Hispanic community.

I do see a few potential downsides: The folks buying the cards are often immigrants without a lot of disposable income. People buying the cards might get annoyed at having to listen to ads (I have been, on occasion, annoyed at an in-call announcement when I’m paying already). As easy as it can be to navigate, it’s very counterintuitive to jump away from a phone call to activate an offer, and you may not remember the offer after the call. Is there enough scale, over time? Will there be enough people calling Puerto Rico on specially identified cards to make it worth JetBlue’s while?

But it is a way of thinking about targeting ads that uses both technology and smarts to reach a targeted audience in a way that’s not all about the latest set-top boxes, or Web 2.0 applications.

Twitter and the Zeitgeist

I’ve said (and perhaps blogged -- who can remember) that while I find Twittering for its own sake inane, from a societal perspective utility will come when enough people Tweet that a cloud is created to monitor the zeitgeist. So, let’s say a few hundred, or thousand, people give their thoughts on the Pope from inside his talk at Yankee Stadium. Or a bunch of people from a disaster zone (this is not them asking for help -- which is also valid -- but rather getting an idea of the general tenor of a situation): panicked; need help; all’s fine; more food. And so on. Amalgamate them and we can start to get a sense of what folks think or feel, at least feel enough to Tweet.

Today, BuzzMachine pointed to Twisorti, which parses for emotive words like “love” or “believe” or “wish”. It’s a start of the kinds of intelligence that will become the semantic Web. Imagine if the application were smart enough to not only search for specific words, but look at Tweets in general, and see what trends and thoughts are emerging, in general. Cross-reference that with search or SMS messages ... well, you get it; it becomes a read on “society” -- or at least the society that’s using the technology. (And of course, if we want to put our marketing hats on, a way for brands to monitor messages, at some point.) Even better is if and when the cloud can include not just Tweets, but all the bursts from everywhere. Like, whatever becomes the main competitor to Twitter. (Because, as we noted earlier, Twitter has a problem that may hinder its survival.)

Intel Chief: Don’t Follow My Tips

The fifth of five tips from Intel CEO Paul Otellini in today’s WSJ interview of him: “Be careful about tips: No set of rules meets everyone’s needs.” Nice.



He also indirectly notes how carriers might become competitors of phone manufacturers. Both are inquiring with Intel about chips, he says.