YouTube and NBC jump into bed together
YouTube has settled a six-month dispute with NBC, after the TV network decided to relax and climb into bed with the video-sharing behemoth.
The turnaround is unbelievable, and a huge positive for YouTube. Some months ago NBC’s legal department forced YouTube to remove the 'Lazy Sunday' sketch, taken from NBC-owned Saturday Night Live. Like much of the content on YouTube, the clip was used without the permission of the copyright owner, in this case NBC.
Ajax driven London Tubes route finder
David Tran has launched an Ajax driven route finder widget for London tubes, with Rails driving the backend. And it works pretty much as it says on the tin too!Is Fjax the best use of Flash ever?
When the big tech brands like Amazon start using Ajax to improve their user interface you know the tipping point has been reached. So how long will it be before the great and good embrace Fjax, aka ‘Ajax 2.0’?
The business case for site search
In 2004 we discovered that half of all onsite searches returned no results, despite the fact that products were actually available and could be found by clicking navigation links.
What did this tell us? Well firstly, it made us shudder. Half of all onsite queries returned NO results! Why was this happening? The main problem seemed to be related to poor quality metadata, but we also realised that some of the big retailers had site search tools that were perhaps not up to scratch.
Roll forward to 2006 and we figured that it was about time to investigate the site search market. What tools are available? What are the trends and issues in the marketplace? Why should site search be a priority if you’re selling online?
Web 2.0 is changing the content battlefield
It used to be that there was this top down content pyramid in operation (operated by traditional media and the big online players), where the quantity and quality of news / content was controlled by relatively fewer organisations.
This is changing rapidly, becoming flatter and more diverse (we’re not really interested in the why’s right now), which can either be seen as an opportunity or a threat. Organisations that embrace this change are going to benefit (think Murdoch buying MySpace), so the question then becomes how one capitalises on the opportunity...
Let's look at some of the key strategic issues to consider.
Wetpaint social wiki’s launch - user generated content silver bullet?
Wetpaint is something that I came across a while ago when researching Wiki’s and the effect they’re having on knowledge in the enterprise, and as a subset of social software as a whole.
To be honest I was both really interested but also quite concerned about their business model. They seemed to be long on innovation, but short on long term sustainability. That said, they are working with VC so perhaps someone holding the purse strings knows more than I do!
Web 2.0 startups in the UK – questions to consider
There’s a pretty great post on Particletree about the kind of questions VCs ask when you’re doing a startup, so I thought I’d highlight them here as there seems to be a profound lack of 'noisy' UK-based Web 2.0 startups, and maybe finding finance is one barrier for entrepreneurs?
Where are all the UK web startups? Maybe everybody is just being very quiet (to fail in complete obscurity), or perhaps things are as dead as they seem to be (more than likely). The UK seems almost entirely barren compared with what's happening in the US.
It’s probably worth noting that local VCs seem to be a little behind their US conterparts (two local startups that I can think of off the top of my head have been approached by US investors – names of the innocent withheld). This too could be part of the problem.
Web 2.0 and customer relationships
Web 2.0 isn’t all about rounded corners and social software – there are real benefits to leveraging the Web 2.0 philosophy and technologies in business, but the key is selecting the right entry points to start conversations with your customers, and then to grow from there, using the community you’ve developed as your sounding board.
Netscape is reborn, now resembles Digg
Netscape is back, only this time it looks a lot like Digg.com, the social news aggregator that allows readers to submit and vote on news stories. The more votes, the more likely a story appears at the top of the list.
Are all AJAX homepages doomed?
Dozens of personalised homepages (aka "AJAX homepages") have emerged over the past 18 months as developers started to programme lovely drag and drop interfaces, allowing users to customise the layout of their personal homepage. Cool technology, great use of AJAX, but is there trouble ahead?
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
