Join us as Adriana Gascoigne tours the Meetro HQ in downtown SF, filled with fun, beer, and hackers.
Tour of Meetro HQ (5 minutes, direct download)
We got the chance to interview Guirec Courbon of Wengo. For those of who don’t know, Wengo let’s you sell your expertise through live conversations. They have nearly 2 million registered members, and are going strong.
Interview with Guirec Courbon of Wengo (5 minutes, direct download)
A few weeks ago, we went over to the Meetro headquarters and had a chat with Vinnie Lauria, the VP of Product Strategy. Meetro is a location aware IM service, and is growing in popularity with San Francisco and Chicago leading the way in terms of numbers.
In the interview, Adriana Gascoigne talks with Vinnie about the demographics, features, and inspiration behind Meetro.
Interview with Vinnie Lauria of Meetro (10 minutes, direct download)
SponsoredReviews, which recently launched, is yet another service that promises to pay bloggers for their opinions. They do this by connecting advertisers and bloggers in a harmonious relationship of money and reviews. In a perfect world, this would mean that the blogger, showered with money, would still be totally unbiased in his opinion of the products. Many people are highly skeptical that this would ever be the case.
Tony Hung makes a good point by saying
While more details are sure to come in SponsoredReviews, when bloggers set their own price, and it turns out to be a princely sum, how can anyone possibly be expected to write an unbiased review?
The real issue is that anyone, no matter how much integrity they may claim to have, will, with enough money, become biased. The price point may be significantly different for different people, but, the price point will always exist.
A BETTER SOLUTION
I used to write for a blog on the Weblogsinc network, and was paid a few dollars per post. But, the difference was that I wasn’t being paid by advertisers, but rather, an intermediary. Weblogsinc never took money from advertisers and demanded that we write about their products. On these networks, bloggers are more apt to write unbiased reviews and opinions.
Paying bloggers directly is always going to be a slippery slope. A better solution is to form a hybrid between services like PayPerPost and Weblogsinc. The service would have various blogs focusing on different categories of products, and, a number of certified bloggers in each category. Advertisers would pay the service to have their product promoted, but, the amount paid would never be shown to the bloggers.
The bloggers would then be able to see products that are requesting to be reviewed, and based on how interested they are in the product, they would review them. Only after they review them would they be paid an appropriate amount for their post. In this way, bias would be kept at a minimum.
It’s a bit frightening to think of a blogosphere teeming with bribed bloggers, and hopefully, these services won’t be riding on the slippery slope. Perhaps what we need is a microformat that contains information about how much an advertiser paid for the blog post:
<span class="amountpaid">$30</span>
I hate using the 511.org Trip Planner, which is the only integrated solution for mass transit trip planning in San Francisco. The interface and functionality can be maddening–maps are displayed separately from directions, locations can’t be saved, and the maps are horrible to navigate around in. I always end up using a combination of 511.org and Google Maps in order to fully plan out my trips.
Enter Google Transit, which may be the saviour for people that are tortured daily by mediocre local mass transit planning sites.
The interface for Transit is identical to Maps: you simply type in the origin and destination, and Google calculates the best route. In this case, however, Google assumes that you can use the local transit system. The result are directions to your destination broken out into walking and transit segments.
A nice feature is that Transit allows you to choose between different transit times–for example, you can either choose to board the bus at 1pm, or earlier at 12:30pm. The map and directions update instantly, complete with estimates of walking times.
Google Transit currently works on a few select transit systems, including Portland’s TriMet, Orange County’s OCTA, and Honolulu’s TheBus. I’m definitely going to keep my eye on Transit as it expands to other cities.
And, maybe, I’ll just be rid of 511.org for good.
UK based Musicovery is a music discovery service not too different from Pandora. Instead of choosing specific bands, albums, or songs, you simply click on a variety of sliders and buttons, including the ability to hone in on specific genres.
Currently, you’re able to choose a genre, date, mood, or dance tempo for your stream. Musicovery then displays a colorful map of your personalized song playlist. You can skip around the playlist and choose a specific song to play. However, just like Pandora, there isn’t a way to play a specific song, nor is there a way to systematically go back to songs that were played.
Overall, I like how Musicovery lays out all the songs in a virtual playlist map. It allows you to easily see at a glance the energy level and genre of each song being played. However, I still prefer Pandora’s method of choosing genres based on specific artists and songs.
It’s been quite a year for social web technologies — blogs, social networks, and online video broke into the mainstream consciousness, even earning a tip from Time Magazine for person of the year. And, this has definitely been reflected in the 9 months that BuzzShout has been online.
Top categories
The top company categories for BuzzShout from this year are:
I really wasn’t kidding when I said that companies are springing up all over the place. For some the weeks, I was literally hearing about company launches on a daily basis. The Web 2.0 bubble is growing, and with it, we’re seeing a glut of companies that are all doing very similar things.
Go ahead, try browsing any one of the top categories for a glimpse of the ever crowding spaces.
Growing trends
Some trends have planted their seeds this year, and should begin to blossom in 2007. These include:
Predictions
2006 really was a wild ride, full of mashups, agile development, and quick hacks. In contrast, 2007 should bring a more mature look at Web 2.0 (and, I daresay, Web 3.0). In particular, we’ll be seeing a lot more focus on creating fully functional web applications, and not just simple tools.
I expect 2007 to bring a healthy shake up of existing companies. There are just too many social networking and video sites to be sustainable. We’ll probably start seeing this happen in the latter part of next year, as major players get bought out or go big on their own.
Early in the morning today, Kevin Rose announced a major site redesign on digg. The changes include a fluid layout, a top 10 hottest stories list, a podcasting section, and most importantly, a concerted emphasis on video. I’m actually pretty happy about this, since I primarily go to digg for my intake of viral videos.
Nobody can deny the proliferation of online video within the past year. Time magazine has even named “You” as the person of the year, implying that YouTube has allowed everyone of us to easily broadcast ourselves. Watching these videos are millions of bored office workers needing a quick viral video fix during their five minute break. Online video has proven itself to be a huge industry, and, digg’s redesign addresses this.
Digg’s video section was originally located alongside the other categories. Now, it’s been prominently elevated to the top bar right next to News and Podcasts. I’m happy to see this division, because I don’t consider viral videos of your brother singing his rendition of the Backstreet Boys news.
For certain videos, you’re able to view the videos without leaving digg via a lightbox interface. Simply click the play button next to the video thumbnail and watch. The result? Users have easier access to the videos, and, will have a less likely chance of leaving digg.
Digg’s video section is definitely one of the fastest growing sections of the site, and, the redesign is a good response to the demand. I still find digg’s video portal into YouTube to be much more interesting and effective than YouTube’s own featured videos page. And, I’m one of the many people that are consuming YouTube via a third party site.
I never got sucked into the MySpace phenomenon, though my girlfriend uses it religiously. When we got our Maltese, Puff, a few weeks ago, I recommended she sign up for Dogster, which is a social networking site for dogs. She signed up for Dogster on Friday. The simple sign-up process involved a question/answer format and picture upload. She had finished creating our dog’s Dogster page in just a few minutes.
We immediately wanted to show him to the Dogster community, so we clicked on the groups tab where she found the Maltese Mommies group. She joined and invited another Maltese to be friends with our dog. I checked the site later to find that Puff had his first friend, Charlie. That’s when my addiction began– I was overwhelmed with the unexpected obsession of making my dog the most popular pup on all of Dogster!
After we had one “pup pal”, I quickly jumped on the opportunity to garner many more. I received an invitation to join another group called OnLy PuPs, which I accepted without delay. It is my unfounded belief that the more groups I join, the more pup pals Puff can get. I started shooting off invites like a madman. To my chagrin, I’ve sent out fifteen invites, but Puff only has four friends.
I really like the fact that I can tell how many people have viewed Puff’s page. I dislike that I can’t tell who has given him a bone. In fact, Puff has eight bones, but I’ve given him six of them.
Users are given ten Zealies, the Dogster currency, after joining. Users can buy more of them, or will be given twenty-five a month by signing up for Dogster Plus ($19.95/year). You can use zealies to buy stars or rosettes to give to other dogs…or your own. A rosette is basically a ribbon you would get in a first grade spelling bee. I can see how some people enjoy these, but to be frank, I could care less about them. That is, unless you all want to login to Dogster and give Puff a lot of them!
I’ve given Puff a good start, but he and I have talked, and he will take over further responsibilities for finding new friends on Dogster. Though, it’s such a great site, I will probably still help him.
There’s been a lot of controversy about Digg over the past few months, ranging from cries of secret moderation to condemnations about its worthlessness as a news site. Recently, Jason Clarke of DownloadSquad wrote a scathing article about why Digg is doomed.
For the most part, I tend to agree with Jason about how Digg is more an entertainment site rather than a news site:
Although digg claims to be a news aggregation service, in the scheme of things digg articles skew much further towards the Entertainment side of the online content spectrum than they do to the News side. Therefore, a better analogy to illustrate the problem with the digg community would be to liken it to a rock concert that gets out of control where a riot breaks out. The people in the crowd at the concert weren’t looking for a riot when they showed up at the concert, they were there looking to be entertained. The problem is that when a few idiots in the crowd begin taking part in antisocial behavior, the “wisdom of crowds” tells the people in the crowd (particularly those who feel anonymous) that it’s okay to take part in the nonsense.
A few of my friends and I were at a coffee shop discussing the state of online social media. One of us asked the fabled question, “How do you consume Digg?” All of us agreed that it’s basically the technogeek’s equivalent of reading trashy tabloids on the checkout aisle of the supermarket. I don’t go to Digg for serious news, but rather, for a quick peek at some viral videos and articles.
And, I always have a feeling of guilty pleasure.
However, I think it’s sensationalistic to say that Digg is doomed. There’s a place in the online social ecosystem for entertaining quickie types of links. I’m not sure if this is the vision that Kevin Rose had two years ago when he started Digg, but, it’s the reality at the moment.
So, how do you consume the content on Digg?
Editor, Founder
James Yu
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