Good use of Twitter?

News/Web 2.0/Website/Twitter
Found: twitter.com

Due to a power outage in San Francisco, many popular web 2.0 websites went down for several hours yesterday, sites like Craigstlist, Technorati, Yelp and Six Apart's VOX and Typepad. While most sites just waited patiently for the power to get restored, Six Apart was busy sending out updates via twitter.

Six Apart's twitter stream says it all:


An update on today's outage: http://tinyurl.com/2bebg4

TypePad blogs are back up; LiveJournal and Vox and the TypePad application are under way.

More at http://status.sixapart.com/ 04:50 PM July 24, 2007 from web

http://status.livejournal.com/ has LiveJournal status info, and we've got details back up on http://status.sixapart.com/ as well. 04:13 PM July 24, 2007 from web

http://status.sixapart.com/ is back up, and will be updated as we progress. 03:44 PM July 24, 2007 from web Power is being restored to our data center, and TypePad, LiveJournal, Vox are each bring brought back online carefully. 03:13 PM July 24, 2007 from web

TypePad, Vox, and LJ are unreachable for many due to a power problem @ hosting facility, also affecting Technorati and Craigslist.

NEWS: FaceBook’s First Acquisition: Parakey

News/Social Networks/Facebook
Found on: techcrunch.com

Why would Facebook, currently the hottest property on the Web want to make Parakey, the "web operating system" created by Blake Ross their very first acquisition? Simple - Facebook is in the process of transitioning from being a Social Network into the first Social Operating System - right?

Techcrunch.com post:

Their first acquisition: Facebook has bought Parakey, the yet-to-launch “web operating system” created by Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. The price isn’t being disclosed, but Facebook should be issuing a press release this afternoon.

Parakey was founded in 2005 and raised a seed round of financing from Sequoia Capital (although this was never confirmed). There is a good background story on Parakey, which will include both browser and client software, here.

Spinlets private beta program!

Web Culture/Web 2.0/Website
Found on: spinlets.com

I love getting invited to private betas, they make me feel important and well liked, well liked by other important people that are also well liked...uh okay, I'm totally being facetious, but I do get a lot of invites and not all of them are blog-worthy but this little guy, this little guy is pretty cool.

Spinlets post:

Spinlets are embeddable chunks of code that let you take content anywhere. Create your own "mash-ups" by bringing your favorite YouTube videos, Flickr photos or iMeem music to your blog or personal page. Spinlets work with MySpace, TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, as well as most other blogs, sidebars or webpages. No downloads or plug-ins are needed and they're free.

NEWS: Justin.TV Network Launches: More Shows to Come

News/Social Networks/Videos
Found on: techcrunch.com

Using a process called "lifecasting" sites like Justine.TV and Ustream.tv are taking off and reality television just made a huge shift over to the web. Both platforms provide a network and a set of tools to create your very own live show using a webcam.

Techcrunch.com post:

24/7 reality online TV show Justin.tv has has turned into a bit of a mini-phenomenon since launching just two months ago.Their apartment was raided by the police, and they were later evicted by their landlord. They were on the Today Show. Justin has hung out with famous rappers. They’ve taken extravagant dares from their audience, and a crowd always surrounds Justin and his ubiquitous camera. Hundreds of adolescent viewers watched (sort of) as Justin had sex on the show, although users were left with a black screen and silence until the Justin.tv team started playing porn music. The site has been far more successful so far than the founders anticipated.

Damn twitter cat!

Social Networks/Web 2.o/twitter
Found on: twitter.com

Twitter cat has taken over twitter again - for the love of god already, someone get that damn cat out of the server room!



twitter post:

Whoops! We're either deploying new features or there was a slight network hiccup (an issue we're working through). Please click here in a few seconds and you'll be back to Twitterin' in no time!

NEWS: Companies try eBay to sell themselves

News/Web 2.0/ebay
Found on: news.yahoo.com

Looking for a deal on a Web 2.o dot-com? Well look no further - USATODAY.com is reporting that there are plenty to be had on the popular auction site eBay.

USA Today post:

What do Beanie Babies, Pez Dispensers and troubled Internet companies have in common? They're all for sale on eBay.

More than 10 dot-coms have recently sought buyers on the popular auction site. Search engine DigForIt.com sold for $25,400 this month after promising bidders "great revenue potential." SynapseLife, an online calendar and organizational site, sold for $60,000 despite warning it had "no advertising revenue."

NEWS: Andreessen's Ning.com takes on MySpace

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Ning
Found on: news.com

I had a dream the other night that I got a phone call from my Granny; she was bragging to me about how she just put together a new "Myspace" in a just few minutes and that I needed to step up my game and before I could say anything in my defense she abruptly ended the conversation by dropping a "holla back youngin!" and hung up on me.

Alright, so I made all of that up, but if Marc Andreessen has his way there would be millions of little mini Myspaces and "Ning.com" would be leading the way.

Ning is a web based company that Andreessen is backing, he and the other investors hope that the new set of tools that they just launched will make creating your very own Myspace so easy, you guessed it -- your Granny could do it - holla!



News.com post:

In Marc Andreessen's vision of the future, MySpace is going to face stiff competition from a million mini-MySpaces.

One of the cofounders of Netscape and a symbol of the technology revolution of a decade ago is now backing a company called Ning, which launched a set of new tools on Tuesday designed to help even the most tech-challenged person build a social-networking site.

"(Ning) is essentially MySpace version 2," Andreessen said last week, adding that he is placing a bet that social-networking sites will follow a similar development as that of Internet service providers of the 1990s.

Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.

Web Culture/Web 2.0/Videos
Found on: Youtube.com

Tags ksudigg web2.0 digital ethnography



Youtube Stats (as of this post):

Views: 1,096,437
Comments: 3277
Favorited: 12950 times

Web 2.0 in under 5 blurbs:

This is the 2nd draft, and I plan on doing one more final draft. Please leave comments on what could be changed or improved, or what needs to be excluded or included. Subscribe if you want to be notified when the revision is released.

Some of my favorite comments:

aft3789

Wow, I'm so glad I'm replying on the third page, this is going to be watched like 12,457,553,778 times in a few weeks, and there will be like 75,352,235 replies soon.

Yea, I rule.

okcbkcom

Excellent video - very thought-provoking. The internet has certainly come along way in 10 years.

NEWS: Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines Second

News/Social Bookmarking/Google/David Sullivan
Found on: searchengineland.com

According to Sullivan's post on Seacrch Engine Land, people that are looking beyond Google to search the internet are flocking to social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit -- this could mean big trouble for Yahoo and MSN.

Search Engine Land post:

I've never encouraged a "Google First" or "Google Only" mentality for search marketers to follow. This is where you focus only on Google, figuring the other major search engines don't matter. Instead, I've said that all the search engines are important traffic channels to pursue. Don't forget the search engines beyond Google! But over the past few weeks, I've found myself more and more thinking that if you want to go beyond Google as a search marketer, the other search engines that matter first are the "social media search engines." After them come the other major general purpose search engines like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.

Make smart money decisions with Web 2.0 social networks

Social Networks/Web 2.0/Finance/Andy Chun
Found on: zdnetasia.com

Is your 401K not performing as well as you'd like? Are your stocks taking a dive? If you answered yes to either one of these questions, then you have to read this article by Andy Chun -- in it Andy writes about how emerging financial applications using Web 2.0 services are being used to pick the minds of hundreds of thousands of investors around world to help you make smarter investments.



Zdnet Asia post:

Everyone knows that you can't go wrong when you have the wisdom or "collective intelligence" of millions of people. This "collective intelligence" is what drives Web 2.0.

Successful Web 2.0 applications are usually successful because of its ability to harness collective intelligence; the ability to provide very simple mechanisms to collect and aggregate data that can then be turned into something useful for its users, such as for decision making or to find information.

For example, collective intelligence makes Wikipedia the most popular online encyclopedia. Collective intelligence in the form of spam reporting helps GMail filter spam. Collective intelligence on what people like to read makes digg the most popular site to find blogs. Collective intelligence, in the form of social bookmarking, makes del.icio.us the most popular site to find tagged links.

NEWS: Wikipedia founder remakes Web publishing economics

News/Social Networks/Wikia/Eric Auchard
Found on: reuters.com

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is a freaking visionary!

He announced on Monday that his for-profit company, Wikia, would be giving away all the open source software, computing power, storage space and network access that website developers need to create community collaboration sites for absolutely free!

Here's the catch - he's asking that they link back to Wikia.

Reuters post:

Wales is betting the plunging cost of computers and networks can help Wikia support the free services offer. "It is becoming more and more practical and feasible to do," he said.

WISDOM TO PREVAIL

"We don't have all the business model answers, but we are confident -- as we always have been -- that the wisdom of our community will prevail," he said.

The move follows the announcement last week that Amazon.com had become Wikia's first corporate investor and is acting as the sole investor in Wikia's second round of funding. Terms were not disclosed.

Wikia took $4 million in funding in March from Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, high-profile Silicon Valley "angel" backers including Marc Andreessen, Dan Gillmor, Reid Hoffman and Mitch Kapor and Joichi Ito of Japan.