Connecting the dots ...
One can learn a lot from analyzing the visitors’ log. I typically look for referrer sites, keywords, and my own most popular pages. Today I’m baffled: the most frequent referrer site is my own TypeKey page. Why? How do readers even get there? I can’t figure it out, if anyone has an idea, please comment below.
Thanks.
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blog Analysis, Log Analysis, Visitors Log,
TechCrunch recently featured Blogbeat, a nice-looking blog analytics solution, a’la Measuremap. I have doubts regarding their business model: after 30 days trial, $6 month. That’s not a huge sum in itself, but when a pro-level blog platform (TypePad, Blogware ..etc) costs $8–11 a month, an add-on to it for $6 is relatively expensive.
That said, I wanted to give it a try. It’s way off. This morning it showed 70 less visitors then StatCounter, but I thought it may be caused by time zone differences (the new calendar day starting at different hours). However, by the afternoon the gap between the two systems grew to 115, so BlogBeat is definitely missing a few “beats”. 
Tags: Blogs, blogging, BlogBeat, MeasureMap, Blog Analytics
This is my most meaningless post. Ever. Just helping Steve Rubel to construct a little meme-tracker-race.
Taking a clue from Scoble’s Brrreeeport test for web/blog search, he now wants to compare Memeorandum and Tailrank by counting Breememe -related posts.
OK, let’s see.
Tags: Memetrackers, Breememe, memeorandum, Tailrank, Brrreeeport
The Web 2.0 in the Enterprise panel discussion hosted by TIE was exciting. In fact it wasn’t really a panel discussion, rather a most interactive group event. Jeff Clavier as moderator with Charlene Li, Ross Mayfield, Jeff Nolan as panelists quickly threw away the traditonal “moderated discussion followed by Q&A” format (that’s-so-web-1.0), and turned it into a vibrant, lively, interactive, “Web 2.0-style” conversation.
In fact the conversation was hectic enough that I’ll do this in a reverse order: first attempt to organize some of my thoughts, then just publish my rather raw notes.
Key thoughts:
Far too broad subject. Lots of different interpretations: A technology? Marketing label? Software delivery method? New functionality? Business Model? Human interaction, collaboration? ..etc. As Jeff put it the day after in his blog: “It’s pretty hard to focus on the concept of mashups when you are also introducing blogs/wikis, or talk about the signifigance of scripting and hosted software delivery at the same time. “
Conclusions from the Panel:
Now, my unedited, raw notes:
Intro Round:
)Web 2.0 is People. Ajax is a cleaning detergent. 🙂 Real change: how we sell software: bottom up.
Ad-hoc groups forming standards, foresaking institutions, e.g. mashup camp .
Evolution:
KM failed us: fill form -> contribute knowledge -> some system magic processes, shares. Now people have the tools, the social interaction and provide knowledge together.
You let go of control, get back value.
Q&A:
Q: Can SAP, Oracle …etc absorb Web 2.0 ideas or will new companies emerge and displace them?
Jeff Nolan: History is against us, few companies make the transition. But rules exist to break them 🙂 Today’s vendors invest hugely in technology. Story by Shai Agassi : CTO of Prcoter & Gamble told him if the SAP system goes down for 4 hours, it takes out the quarterly profit.
Oracle is buying its own LAMP stack. They can only beat SAP by changing the game : removing licence revenue entirely… of course this is speculation only. One could argue that Oracle and SAP are already in the subscription business: maintenance revenue.
Charlene: Microsoft is pulling pieces of Web 2.0 into Sharepoint.
Jeff Clavier: Enterprise tactic: as soon as there is a noted leader, they will make a move: acquisition.
Jeff Nolan: Sales is what’s broken, not the technology. Example: after SAP’s investment in Socialtext he receiveed dozens of emails from various groups inside SAP, who had already been using the hosted wiki, just hadn’t told anyone.
Q: VC’s don’t want to invest in Enterprise software …
Ross: Cycles back and forth. Problem is the business model: 50-60% of cost is sales. They have too much legacy in place. Moore’s law does not matter. The disruption to watch for is not in the technology, but in the business model.
Cost of personal publishing trends towards 0, cost of forming groups trends towards 0. Simplicity key for user experience.
Jeff Nolan: “lots of rounded boxes” 
Ross: Wikipedia – no other software that gets a group of strangers together so effectively
Jeff Clavier to Charlene: What will it take for IT to embrace web 2.0?
Charlene: They ask: “How do I stop it?”
Q. (actually a remark) from an Ernst & Young Consultant: his Client is using Socialtext to document SOX compliance procedures.
Ross: Stages of penetrating a large Client:
Quote from Clay Shirky : Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity .
Clarification: transactions stay in SAP. We’re a conversation backbone, not a transaction backbone.
Q: Somewhat longwinded question, basically questioning the “Appliance” model, and outsourcing in general: “wholesale outsourcing is far-fetched”.
Ross: Appliance: it’s just a different way of SaaS, a matter of network topology.
Counter-example to the hosting Q: One of the world’s top 10 companies want ALL their applications hosted.
Jeff Clavier: Look at some of the huge salesforce.com implementations.
Q: How will all Web 2.0 solutions work together? – e.g. put some Basecamp functionality into Wikipedia? What’s the future role of a CIO?
Ross: Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a huge investment bank appointed an Exec just to oversee usability testing, make sure all systems fit together.
CIO’s in the future will not only be concerned with driving down cost, but instead with driving innovation. They can go back to thinking more strategically.
Q: Flickr… etc are in the consumer space, Socialtext is a tool. What are the emerging applications for the Enterprise?
Q: Collaboration, but inside a “walled garden” is not Web 2.0, is it?
Jeff Nolan: Brings example of blogging inside SAP, IT was stonewalling, so he went ahead, bought a bunch of licences and started it himself. But now he starts seeing “entrepreneurial” opportunities inside the corporation: if there is a large enough blogging community, he could start using Adsense inside. Basically it’s not about creating new applications, but discovering new opportunities.
Charlene: It’s not about tools, it’s about people, collaboration.
Q: How do I use my “old” transactional data in a wiki-type environment?
Jeff Clavier: Integration layers, RSS ..etc.
Charlene: RSS Transport, open formats… Business managers can pick data, make his/her own “application”.
Q: (more a remark): Microformats: great, but not enough standards agreed upon.
Charlene: Give it a little time …
Q: Haven’t heard what problem Web 2.0 solves.. other than being a gateway to VC’s 🙂 What will it change?
Jeff Nolan: There is this mistaken expectation that whoever is doing Web 2.0 will do something new, change things. It’s not “Web 2.0” , it’s YOU.
Ross: Do you interact socially online differently than before? (yes, and a lot of commotion from the audience). There you go …
Q: (actually a remark) from the audience, that sums up the essence of the night: “We just did Web 2.0 here, getting an answer from the panel would have been Web 1.0, now you got 25 answers from all of us, that’s 2.0″ 🙂
Ross: Fostering of transparency will change management principles.
Kids are doing homework on MySpace.
Jeff Nolan: Craigslist+Google Maps mashup: a third person brought it together, it was not initiated by Craigslist, not by Google.
Jeff Nolan: There are about 1500 major business processes in any company, of which 20 impact revenue.
Ross: Process going away.
Jeff Nolan: Disagrees. (actually me, too .. or I am in between … but that belongs to another post)
Jeff Nolan: Value of IP is not in code, but in community -> Open Source.
Charlene: Enterprise has identity, authentication, reputation system, which does not exist out in the open – i.e. consumer space.
Ross: Build Wikipedia inside a corporation, a.k.a “SAPedia ” Goes on explaining how Socialtext can give away a good deal of its software and get paid for related service.
Q: Will the Web be able to handle the incerased traffic?
Ross: On issue of Attention: I don’t have to read the New York Times, I have trusted friends who will refer to what’s interesting… point is, use feeds, subsrcibe selectively, use the “unsubscribe” button.
Q: On small businesses adopting blogs for marketing, for customer acquisition
Charlene: SMB: Office Live, Basecamp..etc > not apps, but platforms. Hosted Services. (this is where I left the room for 5 minutes, if anyone has notes, pls, contribute…)
Jeff Nolan: We may think of a stripped-down giveaway version of CRM, supported by advertising. In fact, we could by our own ad network.
Q: (more a remark): Companies are run like command economies . Technology empowers workers to be more entrepreneurial.
Charlene: Mindsets will change. Enterprises need to start small, bottom-up.
Jeff Nolan: Quotes a story from SAP, when one of his employees new to blogging sent him a draft blog post for approval. “No, I don’t want to approve, just post it”
Q: We talked about enterprises adapting to new Web 2.0 technology. How about existing “old” products? Is the current IT infrastructure a bottleneck?
Charlene: Everybody is using a browser, there is a lot of information in those sessison that we don’t know about, don’t share.
Ross: Just do it in a socially acceptable manner.
Q: Will viruses come to Web 2.0? What standards will safeguard community?
Charlene: Pollution comes with social interaction.
Jeff Clavier: Splogs: companies work together fighting it, in a collaborative way, not alone.
Ross: Blogs are individually owned-> individual policies for fighting spam.
Wikipedia is figthing spam not using some feature, but through human intervention, collectively.
Digg is another example for collective filtering.
Charlene: Comment-based reputation systems don’t work. Pulling identiy info from various systems through API’s better.
Jeff Nolan: Microsoft gave up the Passport concept when they realized it won’t work.
Q: For time critical info, e.g. in Customer Support, how can Web 2.0 help?
Ross: There should not be escalation, the system should be better organized, i.e. wiki for Help Desk: make it available to more people, not jus the Help group. A group of people have to agree on how to use it.
Q: (from a consultant): Web 1.0 made a lot of people rich. Where is the money, what are VC’s investing in.. what should I start tomorrow? (huge laughter in audience)
Charlene: VC’s keep on asking me the same. If I knew the answer, I would not be here 🙂
Concern: they all chase the consumer Internet… should look towards the Enterprise.
Jeff Nolan: Joshua Schachter , founder of del.icio.us is a good example, he was thinking more like an investor than a founder … keen on building something he can scale up.
Ross: Entrepreneurism is just experimenting. Start small, use open source, build, test. Company, business model, $$$ comes later.
SugarCRM as example of disruptive business model
Jeff Clavier: Companies that are successful are all built around large communities.
Don’t try to be 10% better than and existing one, do something new.
Charlene: Nobody is providing Social Networking for companies. (debated by some in the audience)
Platforms are big, see NING.
Ross: NO! Start with an application, which becomes succesful -> then convert it into a platform
There was an endless stream of questions, the host had to cut it, due to time constraints.
It was a lively, intense discussion, special thanks to Prashant Shah , TiE SV Charter Member. I am told the video will be available in about a week.
Update (2/17): Other Blogs on this event:
Update (4/10): Jeff will moderate another session on the subject at IBDNetwork.
Tags: TIE, Software SIG, Web 2.0, Enterprise Software, web20enterprise, Collaboration, Business Model, Empowerment, AJAX, Social Nteworking, Social Software
Tips on how have “multiple blogs” in one…
Michael “TechCrunch” Arrington long ago started his personal sideblog, CrunchNotes; “GigaOM” Malik also felt compelled to launch The Daily OM, both feeling that the occasional lighter, shorter tidbits they feel like writing about are a distraction from the main theme of their professional blogs. Others will likely follow: “In the year that I’ve been blogging in a daily basis, I’ve also felt the need for an alternative page where I could have shorter, pithier posts, focused perhaps on a broader range of subjects.” says Michael Parekh.
He does not want to start a new blog though, instead wonders when blogging platforms will offer multiple tabbed sections, more flexibility to present content, essentially becoming full-fledged publishing platforms: “We need to break out of the strait-jacketed approach to blogs to date and think more out of the Blog box. It feels like we’re overdue for some change.”
I’m looking forward to the dream platform (as long as it’s still simple to use), but until then here are a few tips to get more or less of what Michael is looking for.
Have more creative ideas? Please comment or trackback.
Update (2/17): I did not expect this discussion to rise to Memeorandum, but it’s there, as well as on Megite. Others on the subject:
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, blogging platform, TypePad, BlogWare, BlogHarbor, Categories, Creative Blogging, Virtual Blog
(Updated)
This has been quite a week for all of us unhappy about missing the other half of the Conversation: in rapid succession three comment-tracking products were announced.
First came coComment with a spontaneous (?) yet well-executed viral campaign that spread around the Blogosphere like wildfire. Other than the “big names” supporting the launch, key to their overnight popularity was the fact that it really was the long-awaited first (so we thought) solution to a problem that’s been bugging so many of us. I do like coComment, it has a lot of bells and whistles, and potential to do more.
Then I received an email from Diego who had launched MyComments a few days earlier, but only on Spanish-speaking blogs. The original launch went pretty much unnoticed but when it got Scobleized, word got around fast …
Originally I favored coComment, since it places the “burden” of a click on me, the commenter, whereas MyComments is dependent on the blog owner implementing a plug-in. However, I did not realize that coComment still needs all other commenters to click their coCo-button, otherwise I get nothing… That said, I really don’t know which approach is better, both leaving me dependent on others
Third time’s the charm: today without much fanfare Robert announced co.mments, the third, and IMHO best solution. Simplest and best. No more dependency on plug-ins, other people clicking ..etc… it just tracks the thread and sends me RSS updates. I still need a bookmarklet to mark the comment threads I’d like to follow, but that’s OK with me, at least I can be selective with which threads I really want to follow.
(While I am writing this, the site went down .. .at this point only the author’s blog is available. I guess that’s what happens when your server capacity is not ready to be Scobleized… )
Related posts:
Update (2/14): What a coincidence; just as soon as I declared co.mments the winner, my coComment box disappeared… (Yes, I know, cheap shot, it’s just an error, but I couldn’t resist…)
Update (3/14): Now that TechCrunch profiled co.mments, perhaps they will receive due attention Talk about attention, here’s Steve Rubel.
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blogosphere, Conversation, Blog Comments, Comment Tracking, Conversational Index, Tracking, coComment, myComments, co.mments, co.mments.com
Here’s my personalized Megite page. It’s definitely narrower than the Scobleized version … and now, brrreeeport 
Update (2/15): brrrrrrrrreeeepppport is now the #1 search term on Technorati..wow. OK, let’s share some link love with some other brrreeeporters … hopefully some will love me back 
Need to write that brrreeeport
Robert Scoble on how to increase blog traffic
Tags: Megite, Memeorandum, Scobleizer, brrreeeport
(Updated)
I’m not trying to be funny with the title. I think a pretty good indicator of being in Bubble 2.0 is when we see cute new applications that everyone likes yet very few use. 3Bubbles, announced by Stowe Boyd, featured at TechCrunch is a really neat idea: adding real time chat to blogs.
But how many blogs are there to support a lively chat? My guess is less than (the Technorati Top) 100.
When I wake up early morning (PST) the little flags on my MapStats view are all over Europe, Asia and Australia. Later the day as we wake up here most of my visitors are from the American continent. Blogs do for conversation what wikis do for collaboration: enable a dialogue between people who are far apart not just in terms of geography but in time, often in different time zones. Only hugely popular blogs will have the critical mass of readers coming together for a real time chat. My feeling is that even with enough participants around, chat is not an easy way to convey a coherent message. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong though.
That said, I’m sure it will work on TechCrunch – and a few others. Is the business model than to deliver ads to a handful (a few dozens?) of blogs?
Update (2/12):
3bubbles is cool — but so what?
Update 2. (2/13). TechCrunch reports 3Bubbles is (are?) open for a limited beta. Right now there are 16 chat participants… I’m sure some of them expressed their opinion, but I can’t see that, since they all are in the chat session instead of leaving comments. It looks to me that 3bubbles’ instant “achievement” is to reduce the conversation that used to span over days and different timezones to only the people that are present at the same time. 
Tags: 3bubbles, bubble 2.0, conversation, blogs, blogging, wiki, collaboration, chat, blog chat
After repeatedly crying out for a solution, I was really happy to become a beta user for coComment. Little did I know that there were actually TWO comment tracking solutions announced almost the simultaneously.
The coComment launch was a masterpiece of viral marketing: all it took was a couple of A-list bloggers (Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Steve Gillmor, Cory Doctorow, Richard MacManus, Stowe Boyd, and others) and a wildfire started. Of course it did not hurt that coComment addressed a real burning need. Or was it the 109–yr-old Cognac the Raclette and the jacuzzi? 
More on the launch by Don Dodge.
The other announcement, that of myComments, although it happened a few days earlier, went almost unnoticed. No wonder, Diego, the author announced it on his own not-so-widely read blog. A lesson to learn in marketing.
I have not had a chance to try myComments, so my initial comparison is based on what I read on his site, and some email information from Diego.
Both products essentially do the same: if I leave a comment on someone’s blog, I can receive an RSS feed of all subsequent comments – the full conversation. They have a fundamentally different approach getting there though:
CoComment requires a bookmarklet or a FireFox extension, and I have to click once to activate coCo before posting my message.
MyComments on the other hand requires a plug-in to be installed in the blog where I go to comment. If the plug-in is present, I don’t have to click anymore. At first glance this appears to be more convenient, since no extra step is required before posting the comment. There is a problem, however – this is a great concept once it is widely used, but how do we get to that scale? I want the results, but I can’t do anything about it, I am dependent on the host blog having the plug-in. We’ll have to see if this solution can take off – until then, it’s coCo-time.
Related posts:
Update (2/6): Here’s a comparison of the two services, and a comprehensive review of blog commenting in general.
Update 2 (2/16): Apparently there is a better solution, see here.
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blogosphere, Conversation, Blog Comments, Comment Tracking, Conversational Index, Tracking, coComment, myComments
Despite some initial glitches (hey, it’s pre-beta 
) I enjoy using coComment. It is HOT. Scoble announced it yesterday, then it quickly got profiled on TecCrunch, and people (including yours truly) were begging for invitattion codes to the closed beta, and now it’s all over Memeorandum, Megite, Tailrank .. you name it. (See more ref’s at the bottom).
Of course it did not hurt to have “brand names” like Scoble and TechCrunh jumpstart it, but coComment could not have possibly spread like this had it not met a very-very basic need. Until now, we’ve been missing half the conversation in the Blogosphere.
The missing half is comments left by bloggers (or non-bloggers) on other people’s blogs. As Stowe Boyd’s new Conversational Index sharply shows, the real vibrant blogs have far more comments than original posts by the blog author. From the commenters’ pint of view, assuming they are not all A-listers (they can’t be… with 26 million blogs around), well, many of them participate in the conversation mostly this way, not on their lesser-known blogs. In fact, there are hyper-active commenters who don’t even write their own blog.
Michael Parekh has proposed that these blogless bloggers should have their Virtual Blog:
“There are possibly several times more folks who COMMENT on blogs as those who MAINTAIN their own blogs. These are the “Lurkers” of old (remember the good old days of message boards?) who occasionally come out and say something when they really feel strongly about.
Imagine if every person who comments had a PRE-SET user name that worked on all blogs in the system. Then imagine is that user-name could be used, with the user’s permission of course, to construct a “virtual blog” for that user on the fly, listing their comments across various blogs, WITH the under-lying context. Voila…we’d have millions of new bloggers overnight with their own virtual blogs, WITHOUT them having to go through the EFFORT OF MAINTAINING A REGULAR BLOG AT ALL.”
Responding to Michael I pointed out that the the foundation for the preset username he proposes largely exists, in the form of Typekey by Typepad, Reader Accounts by Blogware… and whatever other authentication schemes the major platforms use.
Today there is another proposal on coComment’s forum about creating Virtual Blogs:
“Now, that’s interesting! Think about it. Czheng is an active “commenter” participating in conversations. Now, the Next Big Thing would be for coComment to have “virtual blogs” which are automatically created from the conversations they monitor. The more control they give the commenter, the more seamless the transition would be between commenting on other people’s blogs, and having those comments begin to populate your own blog automatically. Of course, you could then “tailor and edit” the content you’ve already (via commenting) put on your virtual blog….”
coComment-ers seem to have embraced the idea. They are probably overwhelmed with feedback / ideas for a while. Other contribute a lot more than ideas: Brian Benzinger not only provided a detailed review, but overnight he created a Greasemonkey script to automate the process.
The Genie is out of the bottle … there is no stopping now. This is a good day for bloggers.
Related post (just a sampling from the deluge):
At last, a way to track blog comments
I give up, the list if far from complete, check out Megite, it’s dominated by coCo
It’s a real CoCorush
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blogosphere, Conversation, Blog Comments, Comment Tracking, Conversational Index, Tracking, coComment
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
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