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Archive for March, 2007

Death of the Portal.

March 31, 2007 at 6:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, aggregator, clearspring, socialnetworks, web3.0, widget, widgetmanagement

I gave a talk on this topic at AjaxWorld. Since I love to share, I decided to post about it. As I started to write a post, however, it started to get a wee bit long. So, like any hacker, I chopped it up. In this first post, I will discuss the death of the web portal. In the next installment, I will cover the emerging replacement for the traditional portal - the Social Aggregator. The resulting parts are still not exactly short, so chew slowly. ;) p.s. I blogged some of this on this post about the changing media landscape. The story of the Web Portal The value proposition of the web portal was simple - we aggregate content for you to consume. In return for this service, you will give us your attention which we will monetize via advertisements. This value proposition made some people a lot of money. Most notably a little company called Yahoo. The foundational assumption of the portal model is that the user is a passive consumer of content. This assumption was adopted from the print mediums that were the forebears to the original portals. This is no surprise, especially given that the business models surrounding the web (page view) were adaptations of print business models. This concept used to work well because: 1. Content and service creation was difficult. 2. Aggregating content and services was difficult. 3. Computing, storage and bandwidth was expensive. 4. Majority of users were not familiar with GUI affordances. Things have changed At the inception of the web, data was almost entirely unstructured (HTML) and web-based applications were static because of the synchronous nature of the get/post mechanism. That is no longer the case. Web services, microformats, and structured data formats are swiftly proliferating. The increased availability of structured data, coupled with the availability of XMLoverHTTP has given birth to a new programming technique - AJAX. With AJAX, the rich interaction once only possible in desktop programming environments, is now available in the web programming environment. So where does that leave the base assumptions that made the whole portal model work? 1. Content and service creation was difficult.

Any fool with a web-browser can blog, or edit photos. Everyday new tools come out as costs of content production continue to plummet.

2. Aggregating content and services was difficult.

No more. As data is exposed as web services, it is pretty easy to grab. Just ask Programmable Web.

3. Computing, storage and bandwidth was expensive.

No more grass-hoppa. If you don't believe me, maybe you believe your hero Tim.

4. Majority of users were not familiar with GUI affordances.

Facebook generation rulez. Teens do not remember life before web.

The stage is set for a new paradigm Things are ripe for change. The amount of content is exploding. User attention is staying the same. But, we have some new tricks available. So what's next? To find out, tune in for our next episode, "Birth of the Social Aggregator." This is Hooman Radfar, signing off. technorati tags:

portal,

widgify,

web 1.0,

web 2.0

Comments (6)

Big Media vs. Brightcove

March 25, 2007 at 6:15 pm · Filed under media, syndication, video

Big media has stepped up the online video game with NBCU and Fox announcing a new joint-venture to counter YouTube. Peter Chernin of Fox claims that, "At launch, this will be the largest advertising platform on Earth." Mike Hirshland thinks that this is a good thing. And, of course Mike Arrington has had a field day with this one - posting about the rumor, notes from the analyst briefing, and even the name of the venture. Apparently folks at Google call it "Clown-Co." Now that's not nice. What happened to do no evil, guys? This announcement has clearly got folks talking about the face-off between Google and Big Media. However, there has not been too much discussion about how this new venture will impact that other online video player - Brightcove. A while back, I wrote a post entitled, "Brightcove vs. Everyone." In this post, I outlined how it seemed like Brightcove was competing with everyone in the online video space. Even with their whopping $59.5M in venture backing, this still seemed like quite a bit to chew on. Now that the media folks have made it clear that they intend to use their own platforms and the public uses YouTube, where does that leave Allaire and Co.? Any online video experts out there care to share? technorati tags:

nbcu,

fox,

techcrunch,

brightcove,

youtube

Comments (1)

Google Gadget Ecosystem Analysis

March 22, 2007 at 4:42 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Adam Sah, architect of the Google Gadget platform, pointed me out to an awesome study while we were chillin' at AjaxWord. In this post, syndication guru Niall Kennedy provides a great overview of the state of the Google Gadget ecosystem. Here are some interesting tid-bits: Summary: * Google's gadget platform contains over 4000 submissions, creating specialized content options beyond a web feed remix. * Google's gadget directory contains six times as many entries as its nearest competitor. * The top 10 Google Gadgets account for 57% of its reported gadget views across the ecosystem. * Productivity tools are the most popular Google Gadgets category, in terms of both gadget count and gadget views. Widget Gallery Performance Yeehaw

Gadget Authors in US

Gadget Authors in Europe:

p.s. Is it just me, or is there TOO much to write about in this space now? Sheesh... technorati tags:

niallkennedy,

syndication,

widgets,

google,

stats

Comments (4)

Feed-based Architecture? Um.

March 19, 2007 at 12:27 am · Filed under Uncategorized

WARNING: This is a long post. Proceed with caution. I have been absolutely overwhelmed with emails in reaction to Fred Wilson’s Post, How to Widget? In this post he asserts that the distributed media world should be powered by a single platform that revolves around feeds. Fred has since made a follow-up post entitled “Monetizing Widgets.” In this post, he clues us in to who he thinks should fill this role. Can you guess who it is? Rather than respond to the gagillion requests piling up in my inbox, I figured I would take a crack here. Let me preface this by saying that I think Fred is a sharp guy. I enjoy his blog and think he has some interesting insights. That being said, I just can’t resist. :) So here is a quick summary of his points: 1. Many leading widget solutions don’t support a feed-based architecture. 2. Widget syndication systems must be built on top of a feed-architecture. 3. There should be a single platform for all media syndication. 4. Feedburner is moving into widgets, so everyone should give up. Many leading widget solutions don’t support a feed-based architecture. What does that mean? Feed-based architecture? Well, since I don't really know, let's talk about RSS for a bit. First off, most media companies we talk to say only 2-3% of users actually subscribe to their RSS feeds. And this is after RSS has been pushed for over 8 years. From a development perspective, RSS simply does not make sense as the de facto RPC (remote procedure call) for distributed media. Why? The format is optimized for read access and for news stories. Perhaps most importantly, most widgets are XML-driven applications. The Clearspring-powered widgets for Time, CBS, NBA, NBCU and more are driven by XML. So how do widgets not support feeds? Widget syndication systems must be built on top of a feed-architecture. Well let's assume that feed-architecture means RSS. Tell Google, MSFT, and Yahoo that XML-RPC, SOAP, and all the REST (chuckle) need to be phased out because the world “must support a feed-based architecture.” Call developers and ask what they think of the only programmatic mechanism to access data being RSS. I doubt that they would be comfortable with that. There should be a single platform for all media syndication That would be nice. And, there probably will be a couple platforms that companies use to syndicate various types of content. However, I am pretty sure that you can become a pretty big content syndicator/distributor without having a core-competency in feed syndication. Ever heard of a company called YouTube? I think they did just fine, don’t you? And this leads us to... Feedburner is moving into widgets, so what’s the point? I get that he needs to pitch his own investment. That’s cool. In fact, I will help him. I L-O-V-E Feedburner. I use it. Furthermore, they have a great team. But just because they are good at RSS syndication, it does not mean that they are just going to magically take over the widget space. We have spoken with the CTO of Feedburner. Eric saw an early version of our platform. Fred can ask him how the technology requirements for application syndication/distribution are different than those required for RSS syndication. Anyway, that and $1.25 will buy you a cup of coffee. I hope you enjoyed our show.