Can YouTube's founders make leftovers Delicious?
Social media may be alive and well, but some of the most prominent web properties that rose during 'Web 2.0' have seen better days.
From Digg to Delicious, if the rise and fall of companies that were supposed to change the web, if not the world, reminds us of anything, it's this: the consumer internet market evolves rapidly, and can be as brutal to the losers as it is rewarding to the winners.
But can a Web 2.0 has-been be brought back to life by a couple of entrepreneurs who built one of its biggest winners? Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, who founded YouTube, hope so.
Digg's demise: are VCs and founder cash-outs partly to blame?
Digg is dead. Sure, the company won't be disappearing today,
tomorrow or next week, but to anyone who lived through the first .com
bust, the writing is on the wall: the company's redesign woes and
yesterday's 37% staff reduction don't bode well for its future prospects.
For Digg to survive and thrive once again, it's going to have to beat the kind of odds that few companies do.
The democratization of news media? Perhaps not
Back when social media first burst into the mainstream in a big way and popular Web 2.0 services like Digg and Flickr were the subject of articles touting phrases such as "the wisdom of crowds" and buzzwords like "democratization," it might have seemed that the web was truly changing the fundamental dynamics of information distribution.
But a new CNN study hints that some of the hype around this notion has been overblown.
Is 'mafia sourcing' really a bad thing?
Social media and Web 2.0 (a term that, incidentally, we don't hear much of anymore) were supposed to make the internet a more democratic place. On today's internet, just about everybody has a printing press, and the little guy has equal opportunity to distribute a message. The best, we're often told, will rise to the top.
Of course, anyone who is involved with user-generated content and the popular web services through which user-generated content is shared and promoted, eventually learns that the internet isn't as democratic as it's supposed to be.
Is Digg digging itself into a hole with its new design?
Digg may have been a Web 2.0 pioneer, but out of all the mature startups loosely grouped into the 'social media' category, it's one of the companies some might argue is well past its prime. While other upstarts born around mid-decade, such as Facebook and Twitter, continue to rise, Digg seems to be treading water.
That, of course, is not to say that Digg isn't very popular. It is. And that's not to say that it can't do wonderful things for publishers who hit the front page. It can.
But for both consumers and publishers alike, the Facebook and Twitters of the world have largely become more important when it comes to sharing and discovering interesting content on the web.
Web 2.0 needs Customer Service 1.0
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. These are but a few of the services many of us have come to enjoy.
Yet there's one thing that seems anything but enjoyable about them: dealing with their customer service.
Is the unique visitor an endangered species? Duh
Metrics matter. Every online publisher and every digital marketer knows this.
In a new article, BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy asks the question: is the 'unique user' metric an endangered species?
Site review: Hellomagazine.com
Hellomagazine.com, the online version of the celebrity magazine, was redesigned a couple of months ago.
I've been having a look around the Hello website to see if the revamp has improved the site, and how it compares to those of its rivals; sites like iVillage, More, and heatworld.
ITV updates its video player
ITV has been tweaking its online catch up TV service, and has introduced a few improvements for customers viewing video on its website, using Microsoft Silverlight.
The service is going to be rebranded as the 'ITV Player', which is at least a bit more distinctive than 'catch up'. As well as a new name, ITV needs to be improve the usability of its online video, so what difference has Silverlight made to this?
Scott Adams on confusopolies
Scott Adams is best known as the creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip. Dilbert, of course, has risen to popularity by poking fun at the typical white-collar office that so many of us have experienced first hand.
