Category Archives: Websites

.travel domains – beware your expirations!

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Attention .Travel domain owners!   

If you own a .travel domain you’ll want to make sure you renew it.   Many are coming up for renewal about now due to the auction format that was used to distribute the .travels two years ago.    

It’s still not clear to me if this format is worth the usurous $99 annual registration fee  (compared to about $8 per year for .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz).   However as things shake out one of the ways search engines may determine site legitimacy will be using new barriers to cheap spammy entries, and one of these could be specialized domain names for special niches.  

In any case, if you have a .travel I’d recommend you contact your registrar ASAP.   I use Stargate for my only .travel domain:   “highways.travel”, and their system is making it very hard to renew the .travel even after emails and phone calls and account logins that show no activity pending.     

Mint Wins TechCrunch 40

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Mint, the very timely and innovative startup that offers to organize *and optimize* your personal finances, won the TechCrunch 40 “competition” in Silicon Valley today.

I’m optimistic that Mint could be a great new company if it can get past the obvious key challenge – gaining enough trust from users that they’ll share banking passwords. This is a non-trivial problem given the incredible vulnerability you’d have if *all* your banking information was taken. For this reason I’m wondering if there is any way for Mint to figure out a way to offer some form of “insurance” to guarantee the protection of assets in the even of a Mint security breach. The challenge for them is that the depth of liability here is potentially enormous since they are “protecting” all of a users financial information.

Mint.com | TechCrunch | Mint Wins | Mint reviewed by VentureBeat

The New York Times Online goes “all in” effective Tuesday Midnight

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The New York Times has come to understood that traffic, and therefore increased ad revenues, is a better way to go than paid content and tomorrow they’ll not only stop charging for subscriptions, they are going to put archives online without any paywall.

This is a win win for everybody. NYT has some of the best coverage in the world and it’s going to be easier and cheaper to get at that content soon.  That’ll bring millions more to the site, so NYT will also win big in this deal. Their quality content will drive millions of new visitors and tens of millions of new pageviews to the site monthly and increase their advertising revenue by (I’m guessing wildly here) approximately $600,000 per month (this is based on 40,000,000 new page views and the $15 CPM I think NYT can easily command from their huge stable of old and new advertisers) .

People have such a funny, contradictory, and largely misunderstood relationship to advertising. Like it or not, advertising in various forms drives not only much of the content we work with online, view on TV, hear on radio, and read in print. I’d argue that print is the least distorted by the relationship of the media to advertising though I’m not sure why that is. Online varies quite a bit from sites with very pristine content and no ads to those who monetize content with very relevant ads to “made for adsense” sites where the only reason for existence is PPC monetization. TV is probably the most distorted by advertising. Not so much because advertisers can dictate content, but because unprofitable networks or shows will fail, so the evolution of news has been to celebrity gossip and superficial garbage rather than the more important stuff that does not attract our prurient superficial primate interest in sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Britney Spears.

Battelle will be back at Mash!?

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John Battelle‘s already giving up on Mash and I think that’s too bad.   He’ll be back because I think it’ll catch on… unless Yahoo fails to evangelize properly.    Umm – wait a minute.   Yahoo !   Evangelize!!!!!

Here’s the comment I could not post over at Searchblog because I gave up on the  4th time with the captcha.   Searchblog is still a good resource though I think it suffered greatly when John went off to build the Federated Media Empire.   Today’s challenge posting was a perfect example of why I’m getting tired of putting in my “valuable” comments at A list websites only to be treated poorly by tech problems, short replies, or no feedback.

Social media / social centric blogging will soon trump the current elitism that is damaging blogging and that’s a good thing.    I’m finding the best stuff is coming from peole who are not read enough.  That can be fixed though Google’s ranking system is getting in the way of that for sure – but this is for another post.

——  To John at SearchBlog —-

Wow John, I think you’ve given up too soon.  Yes it’s too much like Myspace but there are some great features that bring Yahoo’s strength to bear in social networking.  Blog and picture integration are good features but the threaded conversations *across different profiles* is a feature I’ve not seen before – it’s a very good way to get people talking, like MyBlogLog does.

For example I’ve given up on SearchMob and even commenting here because as much as I appreciate your wisdom on things this is very one-sided.   I give my .02 in thoughtful comments and get back…very little, because most A list folks are far too busy building empires to actively engage with the rifraff bloggers out there.  That’s OK, but’s regular blogs don’t reflect the web in all its powerful 2.0 social glory.  The holy grail for blog/social media is where we get away from the “A list” and towards socializing that is spawned from the belly of the internet beast itself – ie where socializing springs from natural relationships of people and sites.   Facebook and now Mash are facilitating that change, and it’s a great one.

The rumors of PodTech’s death may not be greatly exaggerated?

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Update:   As far as I know PodTech is doing fine as of December 2007, and the rumors back in July were bogus or exaggerated.   Just heard from John Furrier that PodTech will again host a “bloghaus” at CES, one of the neatest “social tech” ideas last year in my opinion.    I’m a big fan of all that Robert Scoble has done to evangelize quality corporate blogging and really wish PodTech the best.

——————–

Mike Arrington is reporting that PodTech is in trouble. I think this is consistent with the idea that content is no longer king – it’s a pawn in the big game to leverage the flood of free content and social networking activity, a game where the winners will NOT be the product of doing the “right thing”, rather winners will be the survivors of the evolutionary process that drives our rapidly changing digital ecosystem. Biological evolution works *away from failure* rather than towards success, and it seems clear to me this is also how internet company evolution works.

Mike suggests that PodTech might survive in modified form by scaling back and lowering their “burn rate” and focusing almost exclusively as a production and advertising house focusing on their own clients. I wrote over there:

Good insight as usual Dr. Mike.

“… get their burn rate very low” ummmm – can you cite any examples of a companies that did this in time to survive?

I enjoy Robert’s perspectives and consider him a real blogging leader and a digital inspiratation to the rest of us, but I don’t have the time to invest in his videos or PodTech’s other rich content. (just the facts please!)

Producing quality content is now playing with pawns rather than kings, and for some time it will be the companies that leverage the flood of free content or help people process the maelstrom of content that will win. e.g Facebook, Google, and your personal favorite winner, TechCrunch!

The painful thing if PodTech dies is that they did so many thing exactly “right”. They saw video and blogging as sweeping new online paradigms, they hired Robert Scoble who is nothing short of a digital inspiration to bloggers and video folks – he’s one of the elite onliners who puts his blog, money, reputation where his mouth is and actually engages non-elites regularly and with gusto and stays about as Web 2.0 connected as you can without exploding. Also, PodTech sponsored what looked to me like CES’s best new idea – the Bloghaus.

But planning and quality don’t necessarily breed success in biology or business, and PodTech may be just one more example of the harsh new evolutionary realities facing any digital animal.

As Paul K infectiously notes business plans are overrated. Twitter’s lack of a business plan may be the flip side of the evolutionary challenges – disorganization won’t hurt them and might even be part of the reasons it’s looking like Twitter will be …. hugely successful.

Zillow Community

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Matt Ingram, in the wonderfully titled “Is Zillow Building a Ghost Town?” is skeptical of Zillow’s new community pages, noting the failure of BackFence. I’m also skeptical of Zillow’s prospects for online community building but I think for different reasons, and both of us are premature to call this so early. Zillow is a big player in the “city information” space and therefore should certainly look for ways to enhance social networking at the site.

I’ll waste a few electrons to duplicate what I wrote over there:

I’m also skeptical but this is no Backfence – here Zillow will not pay to have the content developed so if communities do sprout up they’ll be gravy to the Zillow bottom line which should only have to pay a modest amount to ramp up and keep this going alongside their core competency, RE listings.

However the *idea* of local voices is excellent, in fact I’m hoping to create a more tourism focused approach with local bloggers rather than contributors to a community in which they have little stake. Hyperlocal *news* will keep failing but hyperlocal *blogging* has only begun to flourish, and IMHO could become the dominant form of human communication. (insert trumpet fanfare here)

Airports Blog and Online Highways Blog

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Well, I’m going blog crazy these days and hope I can keep up the writing pace needed to maintain a bunch of blogs related to website projects. For me, the blog format makes it a lot easier to write a lot. Perhaps this is because I’m a very fast writer but somewhat design challenged. Blog content management allows me to focus only on the words and ideas and not much on the navigation, design, or overall site structure.

The new Travel blog is Online Highways, a companion to our mega travel site. I’m also starting an Airports Blog
as a companion to my languishing QuickAid.com Airports website project which *will* get a major overhaul as part of this process.

The President Picker blog is one I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up. Here I will try to keep current with the latest presidential stuff though president news is so overwhelming so early in the process I’m hardly providing much of a service here.

More likely to get maintained will be the Prescription Report blog. This will be a companion to the Prescription Report website. The idea here is simple – whenever I see an advertisement for a new prescription drug I’ll review the drug, trying to provide information about the basics of the drugs include the safety and about the pros and cons of the prescription drug as well as links to company sites and sites with alternative views about the drug.

Another one I have yet to start will feature detailed travel tips from Oregon. This is an area where, theoretically, I’m a big expert so you’d think it would be going by now … but … it’s not. Soon though, soon!

Facebook – Myspace = 100% revenue share

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Josh at Redeye VC has some *excellent* points about the coming big battle between Facebook and Myspace for web developers:

If you ran a venture-backed company and had to decide whether you wanted to focus your effort on: (a) a property that welcomed you in and let you keep 100% of the revenue you generate or (b) a company with a vague policy that doesn’t let you generate any revenue, which would you choose? I don’t think it’s even a decision. It’s an IQ test.

However, it is significant that Myspace remains far larger than Facebook in terms of a user base and also important is that users, not developers, have driven the success of Myspace.

Facebook is hard to analyze because until very recently they had a much more restrictive policy on new accounts, opening them only to groups associated with businesses or universities. To join Facebook I initially had to contact my old alma mater – University of Wisconsin – to get an alumni email set up, then redirect that to my current mail. No big deal but certainly a barrier to entry. Facebook now (wisely) has opened itself up to everybody and (also wisely) is pursuing a very open approach to API usage and social media. Most importantly Facebook is going to allow those who build applications around Facebook to keep 100% of the revenue those create.

I think this “100% revenue share” is a brilliant approach because the Facebook “whole” will be much greater than the sum of these parts. Thus Facebook can make a *lot* of money through the extra traffic and advertising created by websites and developers and users gravitating to the Facebook social media ecosystem. The loser in this equation would be Myspace and other sites (that would be MOST sites) that try to create social media environments but don’t share much of the revenues.

Jimmy Wales on Charlie Rose

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Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, discusses his Wikia search projectand the internet. He’s the chairman of Wikia, Inc. He thinks it’ll be 2-3 years before they have a robust product.

“Democratic, participatory” search project.
“Google, Yahoo, Ask” have similar, proprietary and closed search. He wants to break up the idea that a few companies should be so dominant.

Making search ubiquitous. He thinks Google may not have problems with WIKIA because they can keep matching up ads, advertisers, and buyers as they have been.

Wales thinks Facebook made the right decision to turn down Yahoo’s billion+ offer for Facebook, calling it an “interesting gamble”. “He’s a pretty sharp guy” (Zuckerman), and Wales thinks that unlike Myspace, Facebook is doing right by the customers. Notes increase of spam and advertising intensity of Myspace.

Wikia major initiatives: Search, Reference Works for humor, opinion, sports. 66 languages plus a “Klingon language” project. “Roll this revolution” into many other areas. What makes the internet great is that it’s a “global platform for people to share knowledge”. Keeping it “open” appears to be a key guiding principle for Wales, and his admirable efforts at Wikipedia support his sincerity in that mission.

Wales suggests that Firefox is the best browser, primarily due to features that he sees as the result of the open source development model that created Firefox.    He says that monopolistic activity by Microsoft has slowed innovation, but feels that Google is a friend of Open Source.     Wales recounted telling Bill Gates at Davos that Microsoft search is so bad people are switching away from it as the Vista default, and suggests that he’ll have fun trying to build a better search than Google with Wikia.