You know things are getting frothy when a company that just took $75MM in funding can justify double-dipping (into the wallets of individual investors) through an IPO.
What's more interesting (in my mind) is that FastClick is going public in a segment that's ripe for consolidation. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so; on Tuesday, someone was referred to my blog after doing a Google search for “FastClick buys DoubleClick”. The last time that happened, it was someone at IBM searching Google for “Google buys Keyhole” 36 hours before the deal was announced…
If this does come to fruition, we may have uncovered the penultimate way to monetize blogs…
I can only imagine how hard it's been for Susan Mernit to hold back all manner of snarky remarks after the announcement from AOL that they were planning to offer free email accounts to "compete" with Yahoo, MSN and Google.
While Susan's never said such things (to me), friends of mine who have worked at AOL have been very vocal about the company's craptacular email service, and the rather clueless manner with which it's been managed (as a product line) for the last, oh, 10 years.
Personally, after finally flushing my AOL email account a month or so back (after being an AOL ISP and then email only customer [in conjunction with other email accounts] for 12 years or so), I can tell you that the only way I'd use AOL as my primary email service is if I were forced to as a condition of employment with the company (which seems unlikely given posts like these).
Knight Ridder adds saved RSS search option to classifieds
I had a nice, long chat yesterday morning with a savvy Biz Dev guy over at Yahoo! around a number of interesting things happening at the intersections of personalization, aggregation, RSS, media, newspapers, etc.
One of the minor (but culturally significant) developments he noted was the ability to save searches as RSS at the newly revamped classified listings engine now gracing many of Knight Ridder Digital's online properties; here's a link to a SERP showing the option and here's a live feed example [site registration probably required].
Of equal interest is the inclusion of a My Yahoo button in the 'Save Search Options' page element...
It's not clear to me if this represents a fundamental shift in thinking over at KRD with regards to RSS, but it's clearly a positive sign. (To their credit, they are also doing headlines-only article feeds, and of course, everything Tribe.net is available via RSS.) I'll be watching to see if KRD drives RSS across newspaper JVs CareerBuilder and Classified Ventures.
Officially, my 'beat' will be "the business of blogging and big company activities", and is to start the first week of 2005.
At this point, my mind is much more focused on which of the Little People Fischer Price toys would be a good gift for my newphews, so I'd welcome (and appreciate) any ideas on topics you'd love to see covered; I've signed up for six weeks, so the more ideas the better!
More social networking than you can shake a stick at
Who's using social networking functionality as part of their online services? Movie sites. Job sites. Dating sites. Search sites. The list is endless.
Well, not exactly endless. Judith Meskill (Social Software blog at Weblogs Inc) has a scary-long list of web sites that are using social networking functionality as a component of their online offering.
Don't forget to check the 175+ comments, most of which contain at least one (if not two or three) sites for Judith to add in her next version of the list.
eBay acquires Rent.com for $415MM; Monster.com next?
Michael Bazeley of SiliconBeat.com reports that eBay has agreed to buy Rent.com for $415MM; $385MM in eBay stock, $30MM cash. Wow!
With the acquisition of Rent.com, eBay is once again squaring off directly with the newspaper industry, most notably with Classified Ventures -- a Joint Venture of Gannett, Tribune, Knight Ridder, Belo, McClatchy and The Washington Post -- which runs Apartments.com, Cars.com and Homescape.
So let's update our eBay vs. The Newspaper Industry scorecard. eBay has:
1) Gutted the 'General Merchandise' section of newspaper classified listings through its second-hand auction/direct-buy marketplace
2) Positioned eBay Motors against newspaper auto classifieds, and indirectly, Cars.com
3) Just bought Rent.com to compete with Apartments.com
And, perhaps most importantly, eBay managed to acquire 25% of Craigslist earlier this year, a disruptive (i.e., commoditizing) force in all of the aforementioned classified categories (and several more).
With eBay stock at nosebleed levels ($76.7B market cap, up ~80% this year), it seems like an opportune time for eBay to finish its assault by buying into the newspaper's last classified "stronghold", recruitment classifieds, through the purchase of Monster.com ($3.88B)...
Like anyone who blogs (or is alive long enough), I occasionally hear about interesting job opps through friends, referred exec recruiters, etc. Dotan Saguy, who I met at Overture, emailed me about a new position he's just created at his small, but growing (and profitable) SEM-driven E-commerce company:
Here are some details about the position:
The position is a COO type position who will be responsible for running and scaling the operations of my multi-line ecommerce business from the current 2 lines (a mature GPS line and a brand new baby gear line) up to a huge operation with 50+ lines and potentially hundreds of employees.
Here’s how I see the ideal candidate:
• Immense drive / Hunger to make the business fly. / Very entrepreneurial.
• Very rigorous, disciplined and prioritized
• Obsessed with Optimization of operations: Architect at heart. Master at building clocks that tick on their own with perfect accuracy.
• Experience leveraging technology to optimize and scale Operations
• Believes in growing people within the organization (GE-style). Viewed by their direct reports as a leader, an approachable mentor and an inspiration.
• Good with planning/budgeting, setting goals and following through
• On top of Financials
• Creative problem solver
• Thrives in competitive business environment. Obsessed with getting an edge over the competition.
• Can be a hands-on manager & roll-up his/her sleeves.
• Conservative but rational spender (spends right on the curve, not ahead of it and not behind it)
Prior experience:
Must have proven the ability to not only run a large operation, but also to scale a small operation into a large one.
Bottom line: He/She must be the kind of person you give the keys of your business to and yet you sleep better at night.
Potential Pluses:
• Retail experience is a plus
• Search marketing experience is a plus
• Previous Ecommerce Ops experience would be huge!
Peter Krasilovsky emailed me to let me know that the Yellow Pages Association has put together a Local Search Guide... essentially their version of a Who's Who guide to Local Search.
I'm not sure what criteria was used in constructing this guide, but appearantly the folks behind it don't yet see (or care to acknowledge) the the meta-data connection to Local Search. *shrug*
Despite the above, and the clear snubbing of buzzhit! as a Local Search resource [smirk] , the guide's free and fairly informative... and that beats a poke in the eye. Have at it.
I won't be reviewing it personally (or, at least not for several days), but if you haven't already heard it from 10 other sources, Microsoft (MSFT) is launching MSN Desktop Search this morning, joing Google, Yahoo and everyone else.
Remember, the point of desktop search from a provider perspective is to "own" a user's "searching activity". This is strategically important for any number of reasons, the primary ones being:
a) Current manifestations of search functionality have limited user lock-in; and
b) Searching is the monetizable component of SEM, with native searches having substantially more value than acquired searches (i.e., a search on Google is worth substantially more to Google than a search on AOL, given traffic acquisition costs [TAC], etc. Google was able to steal the AOL partnership from Overture because Google could subsidize the TAC because of the revenues they were generating with their native search volume.)
My point? Don't seed your search activity to any of these providers unless you have the distinct impression that they're working hard to earn it. Co-branding someone else's product w/o adding (material) unique value (Yahoo!) or rushing a partially-baked solution to market (Google) isn't "earning it" in my mind...
Kevin Newcomb of ClickZ takes a look at JupiterResearch data that indicates that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) agencies now control most search money. A very interesting development, indeed.
In the "I like to be right" department (hey, who doesn't?), I'm going to continue to press the point that there might be something else to the rumor a week or so back about Google talking to advertising agencies. As I noted in my alternative perspective on the rumor:
"To date, Google has primarily been seen as a competitor to Overture in the search-related advertising space (e.g., SEM, Contextual, Local, et al). However, with the Yahoo! acquisition of Overture, Yahoo! now has the opportunity to market additional advertising services (across all of Yahoo!'s properties) to Overture's base of 100K+ advertisers.
Google doesn't have a comparable offering... but a strategic partnership with (or acquisition of) a respected advertising agency would give them the ability to co/cross-sell advertising services, influence spend allocation in a multi-channel marketing strategy, etc."
(There's a bit more if you follow the link.)
It would be a far harder task for agencies to backward integrate into Google/Overture's business than it would be for Google/Overture to forward integrate into the agency business (both companies already provide rudimentary agency-like services). That, plus control over the bidded marketplace, puts the search co's in the dominate position (IMO), despite agency control of advertiser relationships.
That makes an acquisition less urgent... but strategic partnerships (including automated advertising, i.e., an API into the bidded marketplace like the one I worked on over at Overture) could pay off handsomely for all parties.
John Battelle notes the launch of Syndicate IQ, a service whose objective is, "To manage, measure and monetize syndicated content."
Finally!
I had an email exchange with a senior exec (who I'll call "Bob") at a company focused on Feed advertising services (which inspired this post about Privacy When Conversing With Bloggers) about the overwhelming need for Feed measurement solutions some months ago. Bob wasn't convinced that there was a business opportunity in it, and I quickly gave up trying to persuade him otherwise.
While Syndicate IQ's solution doesn't exactly match the one I outlined to the crowd at the Vendorcon after party for BloggerCon 3 (namely, it messes with your Feed URL -- I'm obsessed enough with GUIDs to understand why this is necessary to get the most precise measurement info), it's fantastic see new services emerging in this space.
Bob, you know who you are! ;) Drop me an email if you want to talk some more (this time without the legal mumbo-jumbo, if you please).
3. Now, according to Pamela Parker over at ClickZ, Yahoo! will rebranding Idealab's X1 - regarded by some as a better desktop search tool than Google's - as Yahoo! Desktop Search.
It wasn't so long ago that idealab's investors were suing the incubator for mismangement and rushing for the door. Now, it appears, the company is once again bearing fruit (though certainly not [yet] on the scope of its blockbuster hit of old, Overture Services).
Congrats to Bill Gross and team for finding a (near-term) role as innovator and arms dealer to the Search Giants... a position that's likely to be profitable for some time to come.
I'm neck deep simultaneously packing boxes for my move this weekend and cranking on a consulting gig (hence the slow posting), but need to take a quick break to acknowledge an interesting development (and a good man)... and of course speculate like crazy!
Wow! This is a significant loss for the Merc from an audience perspective (Dan's blog draws a huge audience, and rightly so)... but more importantly from a 'forward looking' perspective; as Matt and Michael point out, "[Dan] was a great inspiration for us. He was a trendsetter, starting one of the first blogs from within a major news organization, and winning awards for his class."
Potentially though, it's a huge gain for all of us; Dan is likely to be involved in something interesting... something that we all might turn to as a new source of credible news and information. I wonder if it has anything to do with "stealth" projects Back Fence or Pegasus News? Or, perhaps, Yet Another Hyper Local News (YAHLN?!) offering??
I also wonder what the good folks at Topix.net think about all of this new found "validation" in and around their space...
(Disclosure on involvement in this general space.)
It's no secret that I'm passionate about Search and see RSS (well, Feeds in general) as the next wave in the industry, likely having as disruptive an impact on (careless) established Internet players as online has had to offline players over the past five years. (It's also no secret that plenty of folks who are far smarter than I am have the same or similar view... they just aren't as open or blunt about it .)
As I wrote in the piece linked to, above, when word "leaked" on some of Feedster's backers, I have some significant doubts around investments in this space:
"Still, it's important to understand how 'smart' the money is going into these companies, as their ability to stand alone in the wake of the Search Giants waking up and taking RSS seriously is an open question (at least in my mind).
So what do you think? Do you see Feedster, Technorati, PubSub, Bloglines, Pheedo, TypePad, Feedburner et al around 3-5 years from now? Or will their foundation in open standards (RDF/XML/RSS, etc) lead to quick commoditization (or, perhaps, "cheap" acquisition) by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft?"
While I still see significant consolidation/M&A as (highly) likely in this space, the answer around the 'smartness' of the money feels like it's been answered in spades.
(BTW, I didn't comment on it last week, but SiliconBeat did a good job covering Newsgator's follow-on round.)
Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion blog) ponders the possibilites of podvertising (i.e., advertising in, and around, podcasts).
It's an interesting read, both from the perspective of the solid job Rubel does laying out the (obvious) near term possibilities... as well as for indirectly highlighting inherent limitations of Apple's iPod as a marketing platform. (In fairness on the 'obvious' comment... the blog post is a cross-posting of an article intended for a wider, less technical audience, who may not know what a Podcast is, and probably haven't started thinking of how to frame the opportunity Podcasting represents from a marketing perspective.)
Rubel lists a number of options, including Audio Spots, Sponsorship, Promotions, RSS Ads and Rolling Your Own (i.e., doing your own Podcast).
While there's room for argument, the "problem" with all of these options from the iPod-playback perspective is that they are all branding oriented, as the iPod is not (yet) a viable direct response vehicle... I find this somewhat ironic, given that Podcasting was birthed on the Internet, leverages RSS, aggregators, MP3 (et al) codecs, intermediary middleware (iPodder) and on and on.
What we have here is a 'last mile' problem (of a sort)...
Of course, this "problem" becomes much more solvable if we think about Podcasting on, well frankly, smarter devices, such as Smartphones and PDAs. There, given just a bit more effort, we could allow for interactive Podcast content, be that voting in a listener survey, requesting additional info from an advertiser/sponsor, or any other activity reasonable on a small form factor device.
I've been a daily (at worst) reader of Techdirt for the last year, drawn by front man Mike Masnick's insightful commentary (delivered with a consistent level of snarkiness that I can only envy).
I knew Techdirt was selling some sort of research/analysis service, but certainly not at the level (as this Wall Street Journal article points out) of having Volkswagen as a customer. (Nice!)
But, to the point... as Susan Mernit noted the other day, a variety of smart folks are talking openly about the on-going topic of interest to many of us: how to make money in the blogosphere.
While I can't add directly to the conversation until my current consulting relationship ends or changes in nature, I will say this... Techdirt, knowingly or unknowingly (I'll go with the former), is leveraging multiple points of the 'blog content lifecycle', which is interesting both conceptually and in practice, as witnessed by a) the rather large audience that Techdirt has accumulated, and b) the substantial monthly fee they are successfully charging their clients.
The talking heads would be well advised to, as they say, 'factor this in'.
Note: If you don't have a conceptual reference or framework for the weblog content lifecycle, I hereby unabashedly point you to some thinking that my good friend Deeje Cooley recently posted (and floated in early form as far back as Feb 2003). I have a different image in my mind, which I'll try to commit to graphics at a future date... but it'll largely draw on Deeje's work.
Scott Knowles of Websense points to the recently launched QuackTrack (a spin-off by the folks who produce BlogShares), which has a nicely structured index (i.e., directory) of 85,000 blogs.
85K blogs is a small, small percentage of the 4MM-15MM estimate of blogs worldwide... but it's substantially more comprehensive than the My Yahoo! Directory (which itself just recently launched).
As the number of bloggers (and blogs... and feeds) continues to increase, discovery of new and relevant information sources with unique perspectives will take on increasing importance. While I don't see Directory as the most desirable end-user experience long-term, a) it's of value near term, and b) it may well serve as a basis for longer-term discovery techniques (i.e., as a data source).
Jeremy Zawodny (of Yahoo!) rips RayG (of Feedster) a new one for asking if search engines could increase revenues by inserting affiliate links into their search results.
Jeremy states (emphasis mine):
"If a search engine dropped in affiliate links in their untainted reuslts, they'd suddenly be lableing a lot of their links as "sponsored" or something similar, wouldn't they?"
And while I agree with Jeremy (Ray, this would only be acceptable, IMO, if it were properly disclosed, an opt-in option for end-users who wanted to help support the search engine co, etc), there's more than a laughable amount of hypocrisy in his statement.
Why? Because Yahoo!'s "organic" search results are anything but untainted. Yahoo! (unlike Google, MSN, and Ask Jeeves) offers paid inclusion, via its Site Match offering. Most of us in the industry know it; most users don't.
So JZ, can we assume your stance presages a policy change at Yahoo!?
(Note, to be fair to JZ, he posted his comments on his own blog, which means his views are his own and not that of Yahoo. I'm just curious as to whether Yahoo is finally ready to give up the paid inclusion ghost.)
Nothing like the peer-pressure of consumerism in America at Christmas to spur a little Big Media advertising!
I can almost feel the joy the National Advertising Sales teams at various newspaper chains must be expressing today in response to the stories breaking about Wal-Mart's Newspaper Ad Blitz; it is, after all, an extremely rare event to see Wal-Mart take out full-page color ads in 50 different markets.
However, while Wal-Mart is clearly spending more aggressively then usual on advertising (across all mediums), part of this story is also about them shiftingdollars around, as this BusinessWeek story points out. In brief, the BW article indicates that Wal-Mart is canceling its December national print circular and is instead committing to an online ("digital") circular, which gives the company more flexibility to adjust pricing up to the last minute.
A Wal-Mart online circular could be a rare opportunity for ShopLocal.com, an offering of Cross Media Services (CMS), which as you may recall, was recently purchased by Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder... as well as CMS partner AOL.
In your roles, you may or may not be familiar with (let alone be daily readers of) online grassroots journalism (aka, blogging).
As such, you may not know that there are now thousands of bloggers (who reach millions of readers) writing about their outrage over how Sony TV is handling a 'fair use' issue with long-time blogger Jason Kottke.
According to this article from AdWeek, Forbes has decided to stop using Vibrant Media's "contextual keyword advertising technology" (known as IntelliTXT) in their editorial content, due to objections from their Editorial staff... but will keep using the technology in their non-editorial content.
Amen.
I don't fault Forbes for "experimenting" (a nice, face-saving term), and I don't having anything specifically against Vibrant Media or IntelliTXT, but IMHO, the last thing I want as a reader (or as an author) is to have ads embedded (even 'just' as a link) in the article I'm reading. It's like product-placement gone bad.
Interestingly, I don't feel the same way about affiliate links; at least there, the author is trying to provide me with value by giving me a time-saving link directly to what s/he's talking about. VM links don't create the same value in my mind.
As an aside, Vibrant approached Knight Ridder Digital during my tenure there. Let's just say that during my evaluation, KRD's head of editorial was... less than enthusiastic... about the concept.
Hat tip to CC for taking the time to gently point out a rather embarrassing typo. One day I'll learn...
Update: Kevin Newcomb wrote a solid article on Netflix Friends that touches on the business benefits of the new functionality. I'm quoted liberally, so if you've had enough of me after reading my product review, below, you might want to pass...
Alright, I've finally had a chance to play with Netflix's new 'Friends' functionality; if you read my ramblings on even a semi-regular basis, you'll recognize 'Friends' as a nice consumerism for the ever awkward 'social networking' term analysts and investors prefer.
High level, Friends is well conceived and well executed, with nits to pick for those of us who are either a) more familiar with social-networking functionality from a technical perspective, and/or b) overly curious about the impact of 'Friends' on basic Netflix functionality, which isn't (for good reason) spelled out on their site.
Let me elaborate...
1) Invitations By its nature, Friends is meant to be a viral mechanism to create a network effect for Netflix (i.e., grow Netflix's subscriber base for far less than the ~$35/user acquisition cost they pay today).
Inviting people is easy; type in a name, email address, click send, and you're done. Invitation emails are sent quickly, and include bifurcated messaging (i.e., separate messaging for existing memebers as well as non-members). Non-members are offered the standard one month free trial.
What's missing:
- No spiff to the 'inviter' for getting friends to sign-up (i.e., Netflix could super-charge this by offering members $5 off next month's subscription fee for every friend they get to sign-up)
- No Outlook (et al) address book upload; reasonable, given that this is aimed at a very mainstream audience (and is a first release)
- No external repurposing of your Friends list; Netflix built their own solution instead of using FOAF (et al) and continues to exhibit a very non-Web 2.0 'lock-in' mentality (e.g., I can't export my movie ratings)
2) Meta Friends page Once signed-up, you can click a top level Friends tab (next to the standard Browse, Recommendation and Queue tabs) to navigate to your 'meta' (my term) Friends page.
From the Meta Friends page, you can view and manipulate lists of:
- Movies your friends have Recently Seen, Loved or Hated (including ratings, add to queue, more info, etc)
- Friends (invite more, drop people you no longer like, etc)
- Invites (see a list of slow pokes you've invited but who haven't responded)
Clicking the name of any of your Friends takes you to their 'Individual' (my term) Friends page, where you can see broader set of what they've recently watched, as well as a larger subset of their favorite (i.e., higher rated) movies.
What's missing:
- Personally, I'd like to explore my Friend's rated movies in greater detail. Why tell me they've rated 700 movies and only let me see 10?!
- Netflix doesn't give you the option to see your own Individual page (unlike LinkedIn), so that you can see what other people see when they click your name. However, I did uncover a workaround for this... The URL that Netflix constructs for an Individual Friend page is as follows (http://www.netflix.com/SharePage?tz=1023). If you replace "1023" with a numeric value that does not correspond to the number of one of your Friends (like "1", which probably belongs to Reed Hastings), you'll see your own page! Good enough.
3) Around the site Most anywhere on the site where you'd want guidance from your Friends, it is readily available. This is most compelling on the movie description pages, where each of your Friend's rating of a movie (along with their "Two Cents") show up in a separate, clearly defined area.
"Two Cents", by the way, is a new "quick review" concept, where Netflix members are encouraged to add a very short description of their thoughts on a movie for their friends (and only their friends) to see (vs. writing a full Review for all Netflix members to see).
What's missing:
- It's not clear to me how my Friend's rating of a movie impacts Netflix's guesstimate on how I'll like a movie. In other words, if on average 2MM Netflix members rated Shrek 2 four stars, and my three Friends rated it one star... would Netflix show me four stars, 1 star, or some weighted average in between? It'd be nice to know (in general), and/or be able to toggle between the rating scales on views that only show one score (e.g., search results, Queue view, etc).
- Friend reviews and RSS are a natural combo. I'd love a Feed where the title of each post was "FRIEND NAME rates MOVIE NAME XX stars", and the body of the post contained the text and/or a link to their Two Cents and Review (if any). Obviously, I'd also want links to manipulate the movie (add to queue, etc).
In closing... despite my sometimes harsh commentary on Netflix, I love the company and its people. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is simple: they work harder than anyone else in the industry to give me a great experience. Netflix Friends shows that Reed and team are still at the top of their game, still setting the pace for innovation in the industry, and still putting customers first. Moreover, one of the core benefits of Friends (helping Netflix members feel more confident when renting a movie) just plain works. Well done Netflix.
Update: Decided to actually proof read this (and make a gazillion grammar/clarity edits) after Michael Bazeley (SiliconBeat.com) direct linked to this post (thank you MB)...
Appearantly, Sony TV thinks throwing the hammer down on bloggers who are earnestly helping them spread their memes (i.e., Ken Jennings defeat on Jeopardy) is a good idea; at least if the BS happening to Jason Kottke is any indication.
Tip of the hat to MikeK over at HackingNetflix.com for the heads-up to me (and all of his readers) about the webcast today:
Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, just announced at the CSFB conference, that Netflix will be adding a social networking layer to allow mutual-contacts (i.e., friends) to see what movies they've watched, their ratings & reviews, etc. Cool!
This is something Chris Darner and I talked about in 2002 when it was obvious to me that Netflix wasn't developing a true network-effect; I also wrote about it here in reaction to their rollout of RSS feeds.
Update 1:
Clearly I don't have access to this yet, and Netflix made it clear that there's more functionality that will be rolling out next year... but based on something I heard Reed state as a competitive advantage (roughly paraphrased -- "we have 400MM movie ratings") makes me believe that they are still missing the big picture... that movie reviews/ratings + blogs = a huge low cost customer acquisition opportunity.
Netflix, don't keep those reviews/ratings locked away. Help your users set them free (e.g., even a simple "my netflix ratings/reviews" blog widget as a start); I firmly believe you will paid back in spades.
Update 2:
Both Michele Turner (VP Product @ Netflix) and MikeK at HackingNetflix were both kind enough to invite me. I've invited about a dozen social networking CEOs, social media bloggers and journalists (so if you got an invite from me, now you know why!). If you're not in but would like to be, and I know you, drop me an email or leave a comment.
Feedster rolls out the welcome wagon for MSN Spaces
(Note: Disclaimer due to an active relationship around this general space.)
Scott Johnson (VP of Engineering and Co-founder of Feedster) announces a new bit of Feedster functionality that allows users to search only MSN Spaces blogs by heading to spaces.feedster.com.
(The functionality actually allows you to restrict your search to any Host, rather like Google's advanced search 'site' feature. Scott's posted, linked above, has the details.)
Dave Winer's post about MSN Spaces pinging Weblogs.com reminded me that I hadn't blogged a semi-interesting idea...
I mentioned to one of the senior execs of the company working on blog related offerings that I'm consulting to that there seemed to be a problem with Ping latency and/or lossyness. He agreed, saying that while he didn't have hard numbers, he guessed that the servers might be losing as much as 30% of all pings (at peak). Obviously, that's not workable now, and only likely to get worse at the rate of growth this meme is seeing.
I blurted out that UltraDNS seems like the company that ought to be running the servers, given the importance of pings to Feeds and UltraDNS' experience with extremely high volume, high availability transactions.
Jeff Clavier, is this something you think UltraDNS would be interested in? (Admittedly, there likely isn't much of a business in this at this time... but I suspect you would at least generate goodwill in the blogosphere, which might result in more DNS clients.)
Aside from everything we knew yesterday, there's one additional tidbit of note in the press release... It looks like Microsoft is in 'fast follower' mode, and intends to add RSS support to MyMSN shortly, ala MyYahoo. (Scott Gatz and crew, you should be flattered.)
More thoughts here after I've played with it.
(As I've noted for months, and like my friend Susan Mernit said today, I'm hungry for a new solution given Blogger.com's continuing availability problems -- let alone the poor feature set. Let's see if Spaces makes the bar...)
Update:
In brief... competent, but not compelling (at least not to me). Clearly a very consumer-minded solution.
The 'good':
WYSIWYG editing
Cutesy animated emoticons
Mobile-blogging and email posting supported (IM posting to follow early next year)
Lists, Photos and Music support
C-A-T-E-G-O-R-I-E-S (can you tell this is important in my mind), but not nested
Trackback support
RSS
Built-in reporting
Permissioning allows you to restrict to a 'friends list'
The 'bad':
Can't host on my own server and/or with my own domain!
WYSIWYG, but no HTML editing of post
No HTML editing of template/layout
Only pings weblogs.com
Commenting support on/off at a blog (vs. post) level
No control of archiving
10MB storage limit
.NET/Passport sign-in required
By the time I finished typing this up (10 minutes?) the service crashed! (Update 2: Service didn't crash; still rolling out across the cluster and expected to be available at ~9PM PT tonight. See comments for details.)
As usual with a Microsoft 1.0 offering, this gets them in the game... but it certainly isn't sufficient to get me to leave Blogger (despite its hideous warts), nor for me to recommend it as a solution to others.
Analysis of online business and technology trends, including: Search and Directory, Digital Media, Social Networking, RSS, and E-commerce. Written by buzzhit!'sTony Gentile.
