Is Web2.0 Culture Risking Democracy?
Over the weekend I had an opportunity to discuss all things internet with people with varying backgrounds and perspectives. Everyone there was a blogger, but with their own approach and profession, everything from health, business and music to journalism.
A straw poll showed hardly a hand full of people regularly read a newspaper or TV news. Very few read online newspapers routinely, choosing instead to get the information they were interested in from their own sources, such as blogs and Digg.
This is great news for those of us with a vested interest in social media, but what are the negative side effects?
We are increasingly in a self-service and self serving culture. I want, I need, is the order of the day. We don’t want to be told, just consume on our own terms.
Traditionally we have been told what was the news of the day. Told what is important via headlines and front page stories. Journalism was an important check against our elected leaders straying from the path. If we in the mainstream are all tracking the latest Britney/Hilton/Miley Cyrus story and overlooking anything dull or downer like politics, could democracy suffer?
There will always be individuals who hold our politicians accountable, but who will speak for and defend them? As one person pointed out, we say we dislike lawyers and journalists, but when things go bad these are the people we often need most.
You could say Digg and such like are the new newspapers, but as someone who works in social media I know how easy these things can be gamed to promote or bury a story. Also there are only so many times these sites can cry wolf before we ignore those too. We need the journalistic rigor and fact checking (even if this has been failing lately).
What do you think? Am I being overly pessimistic? How will journalism evolve to fit into a web2.0 world?
Putting a Value on Community
Two of the challenges people often talk about with “web2.0″*, are
- How do they make money
- How do you value a company that makes no money
(* much as we all hate that word, it is here and people use it)
These startups are funded by venture capital. Guys who know where and how to invest. Other than IPO and exit plans, do they actually believe there is value there? The VCs can often make their cash back by selling to a bigger concern, but how often is that the startup equivalent of grifters selling bits of the Golden Gate Bridge?
To give one example, did you see the talk of Twitter raising funds? Much as I love Twitter, I wonder if some of the expectations of the service are artificially high.
Michael Arrington asks How Much Is Twitter Worth?
Valuations range from $60 million on the low end to more than $150 million on the high end. There is, clearly, a bit of salivating going on around Twitter.
I have drunk enough of the social media kool aid to appreciate the benefits of an engaged audience combined with owning the platform and plumbing. I get that.
Some estimates put Twitter at around 1 million users. We must be looking at future growth as a means to estimate the company value. While I would be happy to pay, Flickr style, a small amount for guaranteed service and to avoid ads, how many users doing the same would it take to make that kind of valuation?
Could Twitter make money selling API access to services built on top of their infrastructure? How much?
My worry is we are still valuing eyeballs, which harks back to the dotcom bust. In the current climate is banking on advertising revenue a good business plan? How tolerant will Twitter users be of being targeted with even contextual advertising?
Is Alexa Relevant Now?
Alexa have announced a shakeup to their traffic measurement service. While they have always claimed to be able to tell you how much traffic a particular site gets, that has never really been true.
Before they relied on data from their toolbar. Sounds great until you realize that hardly anyone actually had the toolbar installed. The only people likely to have it would be people who had it forced on them, or people who wanted to check their own or competitors rankings.
No surprises then that webmaster-centric sites ranked highly.
Now they are going to take in data from “multiple sources”. For anyone who has been using the service for comparative data, you will be disapointed to learn they have dropped their historical toolbar-only data, with the oldest records only 9 months old. Part of the previous appeal was to see your own traffic increase over time, now even that small morsel of utility is gone.

Hopefully the new methodology will allow for greater accuracy, but that would depend on what these sources are. Unless they are hooking into all the popular analytics programs, or have access to ISP data, this might not turn out to be that radical an improvement. Yes, the data has changed, and some are saying looks more even handed, I think the jury will be out for some time.
A.Viary First Impressions Review

I have been playing with A.Viary image editor since I got my invitation to take part in the test version. Right up front I have to say I am super impressed with it.
This tool is an online image editor. The idea is not new, we have seen tools before, but unlike those simple “crop and rotate” jobbies we have seen before, this bad boy is comparable to my much used and bulky desktop tool of choice, Photoshop Elements. 
In fact, it can do some stuff that software can’t.
Testament to how much I need to do image editing work, despite not being an artist or digital imaging pro, I have a copy of Photoshop Elements for both my Mac and PC. This tool has the potential to make those packages largely redundant. Consider how many people in the world need these tools but not enough to buy a full copy?
A.Viary can do all that I use Elements for but in my web browser, wherever I am in the world. Hook it up to Flickr (there is seems to be an option to do this in future, although the dialog is empty) and my imaging needs will be pretty much sorted.
I look forward to seeing how the tool progresses as they fix bugs and flesh out features. Right now there are some rough edges but I am sure this is going to be fantastic when complete.
Take a look at a feature comparison of online editors at their blog here.
Mixx Fixes the Breaking News Problem

I am a sucker for the plucky under dog. This is always certain when said under dog tries harder and is much more friendly than the dominant player. Sometimes these under dogs turn out to be the winner over the long term, just look at Google.
My current fave plucky upstart is Mixx. I’ve written about how and why I like Mixx before. They just seem to want to improve the experience more than the competitors. It’s not just about the traffic but about actually sharing interesting and relevant stories.
A big problem with all these social voting sites is the vote process itself takes time, and that can mean once the site is popular breaking news takes so long to appear on the front page it is no longer breaking. Digg especially is lousy for news. Once it is on Digg front page you can be sure the news is 24 hours old or more.
Mixx though has a solution, but one that might well upset the more democratically aligned users.
They have announced that certain Super Mixxers will have the power to nominate a post as breaking news, which will catapult them right to the front page in a special breaking news area. You will still be able to vote up and down on the story, but everyone will get to see it regardless until it is no longer breaking I guess.
As I mentioned, there is one big problem with this already, and that is the level playing field of web2.0 is no longer level. Of course there have always been power users, but this makes it explicit and obvious.
The second problem as pointed out by Michael Arrington is they are depending on Super Mixxers actually being “Super”.
I’m sure the digg guys will be watching this carefully. Mixx are aggressively working hard on features, it might not be too long before they take the lead in innovation and people are calling new Digg features Mixx clones.
Joy and APIness
Chatting with some geek friends the other night we were trying to work out why Twitter was winning out amongst “micro blogging” services despite having stability problems and fewer features.
I argued that it was almost certainly community. People go where the people are. Just look at eBay. It looks like ass, isn’t particularly user friendly, and hasn’t really improved much over the years in comparison to glossier competitors, but buyers and sellers flock there because that is where the action is.
My friends agreed but had a different take. Twitter, you see was first with the public API.
A public API is a way to allow third party programmers to take advantage of your service in their own software. They get access to your features so they can build applications that integrate and extend the basic system.
In Twitters case this means there are several desktop applications that make it easier and more productive to Tweet, plus services nobody at the company could have predicted that rank, graph and link up users in creative ways. Pownce on the other hand rarely makes a headline in comparison.
My learned friends are on to something I think. Twitter are not the first to offer API access. One of the things I love about Flickr is that I can geek out on the techy innards of the service. This last weekend I re-wrote a script that downloads all the pictures from my Flickr library. Loads of people have written cool tools that work with Flickr, from uploaders to picture galleries, screensavers and WordPress plugins.
It’s not always clear initially how a public API will help a company. When Yahoo! released their API many people thought they were playing into black hat SEO and spammers hands. I am sure though in the case of Twitter it has given them a competitive advantage.
I still think I am right and it is the community that brings people back to Twitter, but I am willing to admit their API helped attract that community
Create Your Own Widgets with Sprout
Sprout is an online service that aims to make it easy for you to create widgets, although they call them Sprouts.
Everything is done in your web browser using Flash. For some reason it wouldn’t work for me using Firefox but worked fine in Safari.

Creating your sprout is very intuitive. All the tools will be familiar to anyone used to graphics packages or development tools. The main draw will be the items found in the Components area, from images through to more dynamic content like Google Charts and RSS feeds.



For my test widget I dragged an RSS component to pull in the latest headlines from chrisg.com - it is all very easy and my widget was complete in under five minutes.

Once you are happy with your widget you can publish it to grab the embed code. It works just like YouTube etc where you are given some HTML to put into your website or blog post.
Here, in theory, is the finished widget/sprout …
Do These Three Web Apps Signal the End of Desktop Applications?
A while ago I wrote a post wondering if we were seeing the end of the desktop application. With the new web development abilities being offered by Adobe and Microsoft, and applications such as these I feature here, I wonder if we are nearly there.
After all, what do we need in any application?
- Features/Utility
- Speed
- Stability
- Storage
- Access
You notice I do not mention price. To be honest I don’t think price is that big of an issue. While I can’t afford to buy Photoshop CS3 on my megre income, nor do I need the full power of that application either. Those businesses that do have a pressing need find the money to pay. While web applications tend to have the advantage of an ad-supported model, there is no reason why a desktop application couldn’t be ad-supported.
If you have a play with the applications I list below you will see they all approach each point in their own way but the results are compelling. The main worry that they need to overcome is the problem of #3.

Splashup is an online image editing package.
Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.
With an online Photoshop on the way and basic third party editing being placed into Flickr, the online photo editing space is hotting up.

Buzzword is an online word processor but far more funky than Googles offering.
Buzzword, the first real word processor for the web. Buzzword makes it easy for you to create a document from any computer on the Web, share it with colleagues, and review and revise it as a team.Buzzword works on any PC or Macintosh that is connected to the Internet and running Adobe’s Flash Player. Buzzword runs from Virtual Ubiquity’s secure servers, and your documents are stored there, so they are … well, ubiquitous: always available on the Web. And always securely private, except from the people you invite to share them.

SlideRocket promises to be an online version of Powerpoint. The twist is, rather than go for a subset of the desktop applications features, these guys think they can go beyond them …
Unfortunately we can’t get to play with it but the demo results look stunning.
All these applications have the big advantage that, at least in theory, they are there on demand as and when you need them with no installation or upgrade hassles necessary. That in itself could be sufficient draw.
While big corporates might shy away from bootstrapped startups offerings, those backed by Google and Adobe are sure to get the corporate vote. For home and casual users there will be no such worries. This could be an interesting time.
So, are we going to see the end of the desktop application and if so … how soon?
Tweetmeme Tracks the Twittersphere

With more and more people piling on to Twitter it is getting to the point where it would be impossible to personally track every interesting person to find the compelling links. Enter Tweetmeme, a Techmeme for Twitter.
Just like Techmeme, Tweetmeme looks for the hot topics and aggregates the conversations into a list so you can see at a glance what people are discussing. Popular topics that are being covered by Twitter power users bubble to the top, with items categorized to split out audio and video from text.

Right now the top story is Tweetmeme itself so how useful it will be remains to be seen. I can see it doing very well providing it really can track every conversation, something other services have struggled to do.
I have said a few times now that I am increasingly getting my news from Twitter. Services such as this one just might take that trend even further. Techmeme had the power to send a flood of traffic to listed blogs, I wonder if this service will create Twitter celebrities?
Last.fm Deploys Full and Free Music Tracks

I have long been a fan of the music recommendation, social networking community, and online radio site Last.fm. Now it just got even better. Where before they used to post short clips of most of the music, now all tracks are available in full.
Yes, free and in full. Your friend recommends an album? Go listen to it. If you like it then I am sure you will go buy it, but right now you can listen three times for nothing. More from the Last.fm blog …
As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website. Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be. Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries.
Right now the artists and labels get a share of advertising revenue but they are working towards a subscription model.
Signing up is completely free. As I said above I was already a fan because it was the main way I discover new music ever since I left the world of office work surrounded by iPod owning colleagues. The ability to get recommendations and listen to the recommendation in full is just brilliant.

Along with those cool features, there are also iTunes and other media player plugins to allow you to record your listening habits and display the currently playing track in your IM client. Like most services now, you can create a profile, tag and make friends, all the trendy web2.0 stuff.
If you haven’t already tried Last.fm, now is the time to check it out!

