Micro Persuasion

links for 2006-12-01

• frankie roberto blog - 10 Add-ons to consider for your website
  A great list covering everything from microformats to RSS and more.
  (tags: RSS microformats Web Marketing)
• 7 Google Reader Tips and Tricks -- “Johnny’s Brain”.thoughts do {|t| t.blog }
  (tags: Google RSS Tips)
• UniveRSS - a 3D Vista RSS reader
  Slick feed reader where items are projected on an animated cube.
  (tags: RSS WindowsVista)
• Financial Times Tech Blog
  A new tech blog from the FT.
  (tags: Newspapers Journalism Blogs Web2.0)
• NewsGator Inbox: Introducing the NewsGator Screen Saver
  NewsGator's got a neat RSS screensaver for Windows.
  (tags: screensaver RSS newsgator)
• Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR News - Brand Republic
  "Habbo, the brand behind virtual world Habbo Hotel, has expanded its web community with the launch of a social networking feature, Habbo Home."
  (tags: SocialNetworking habbohotel Europe)
• CNET's James Kim and family missing -- have you seen them? - Engadget
  If anyone has information, please contact the authorities. My best to the Kims.
  (tags: Journalism CNET)

Chat with Me Live Tonight

I will be a guest on Scott Baradell's online radio program tonight at 9 PM EST. Feel free to drop in. The call-in number is 646-915-8556. Get all the show details here.

Why Yahoo is Backing Away from RSS

Has anyone noticed that Yahoo's love affair with RSS seems to be withering? In 2004 and 2005 Yahoo was all over feeds. It was an early leader in driving adoption, as a matter of fact. But in recent months I question whether they remain committed to RSS as a platform.

This is more than conjecture. In the past few weeks Yahoo has rolled out three major new web sites - Yahoo! Food, Yahoo! Advertising and Yahoo! TV. They're great sites, but none of them has feeds. There's a reason why - eyeballs.

First, think of the lost opportunity here. The food site should have an RSS feed for recipes. The TV site could have streamed programming listings with feeds. And the advertising site should take all of those great insights they're now getting from the ANA and package them into feeds. What's worse is the advertising site has podcasts that you can't even subscribe to! (See comments - you can subscribe to the podcasts)

All of this is a bit of a head scratcher. Why is Yahoo, a site that had been an ardent promoter of RSS, now seemingly putting it all on the back burner? They shipped three heavily promoted sites without feeds. This isn't an oversight. It's deliberate. Something bigger is going on here.

My gut feeling is that Yahoo is trying to create content that you can only get on their sites and nowhere else. It's all very Lloyd Braun. They want consumers spending as much time as possible on their properties. If they put RSS feeds on these sites, it will mean fewer page views because people will only click in on content that they really care about. In other words, it means less time spent. Browsing and clicking creates page views. By skipping RSS, they will serve up more ads.

Could this be the beginning of a larger trend?

::Later: more from Rafat Ali on Yahoo's eyeball strategy and from W.B. Macnamara, who reminds us that the media is still all about pageviews.

More Fundraising with Widgets

Nonprofits are catching on quick that blog widgets can raise money for causes. One campaign is within reach of its goal. Beth Canter blogs that he Sharing Foundation, an NGO that works directly with local officials, orphanages, and others in Cambodia, is within reach thanks to widget marketing.

Heifer International rolled out a similar initiative to tackle hunger and poverty in developing nations.  Thanks to wordsthatwork for submitting via del.icio.us.

links for 2006-11-29

• Google Alerts Tutorial To Help You Stay Ahead of the Curve » Digital Inspiration © Amit Agarwal
  (tags: Google alerts RSS Email)
• antimatteruniverse. » Jay-Z on Jimmy Kimmel tonight…in Second Life…and WE ARE THERE!
  The King (not Elvis, the other one) is back - and he's virtual.
  (tags: secondlife Music avatarmarketing)
• Zuma360
  A blog on Zuma, my favorite Xbox 360 game. It's written by someone who is one of the best players in the world.
  (tags: xbox games Blogs Zuma)
• Authorati-Home
  "Authorati is a portable ratings system that allows readers to rate your blog or online articles."
  (tags: Blogs reputation ratings)

Newsgator Launches Java RSS Reader for Mobile Devices

Newsgator has rolled out a beta RSS reader for phones that support J2ME (a flavor of Java). This includes Blackberries. The reader is in partnership with Freerange Communications and syncs up with Newsgator's servers. This ensures that what you read in one place won't show up in the other. Newsgator launched a reader for Windows Mobile devices earlier this year.

Blastfeed Filters Your Feeds

Once you've been bitten by the RSS bug, it's hard to turn back. However, at the same time you're likely to fall prey to it's biggest disadvantage - information overload. It's very easy once you get started to gorge on feeds. Before you know it, you can have hundreds of them. This is giving rise to new kinds of utilities that manage your feeds for you.

One new one that caught my eye is Blastfeed. The company, based in France, can take one or more RSS feeds or an OPML file and filter them based on certain keywords. This is a really handy utility. Think about it. Let's say you've identified the 100 or 200 most influential feeds (note I said feeds, not blogs) that cover your industry. You can import these into Blastfeed and get alerts via email, IM or RSS when certain terms are mentioned, e.g. a client or a competitor.

Blastfeed isn't going to get me to unsubscribe to my favorite feeds. However, what it will do is give me a way to track more closely what's being said within them. I have added a couple of these feeds to my browser and my personalized start page for quick and easy monitoring. Right now the site is in a private beta, but I have five 100 invites (thanks guys!) to give away first come, first serve to folks who email me.

This is only the beginning. Filtering services are going to get a lot smarter and probably will be integrated into existing RSS platforms. It's all going to get to a point where the reader knows which feed items you're more likely to read first and will prioritize your lists accordingly. In the meantime, Blastfeed is a winner if you're looking to augment how you read feeds.

YouTube on YourPhone

The New York Times reports that YouTube has hooked up with Verizon Wireless in an exclusive deal that will bring its videos to cell phones. You need to be a Vcast subscriber to view them.

links for 2006-11-28

• Baseball Stats, Graphs, Analysis | Fan Graphs
  Graph the career statistics for thousands of ball players.
  (tags: visualization Sports baseball)
• MediaPost Publications - AMA: Social Networking Boosts E-Commerce
  "Nearly half (49%) of respondents in a recent survey reported that they would seek out shopping information, including information about sales and discounts, at social networking sites if they offered such information."
  (tags: SocialNetworking e-commmerce shopping)
• eMarketer.com - Analysts Bullish on Online Ad Spending
  "US Internet advertising revenues reached a record $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2006"
  (tags: Advertising Stats)
• M-Commerce
  Hot mobile companies to watch.
  (tags: Mobile)
• AJAXWorld Conference & Expo
  I will be there.
  (tags: Ajax Events Web2.0 NYC)
• search rootly
  A new search engine for news.
  (tags: Journalism Blogs Search)
• mindmap2
  Online mindmapping tool. You need to hit print screen to save your map.
  (tags: Mindmapping)
• BlogTalkRadio: Media Orchard Live
  Scott Baradell is conducting a live call-in interview with me later this week.
  (tags: Blego blogs Podcasting scottbaradell mediaorchard)
• Reel Pop: BBC: Online Viewing Erodes Television Audience
  "Online viewing is eating into traditional TV viewing in the UK, according to an ICM survey of 2,070 Britons."
  (tags: TV Video BBC UK Europe)

Best Buy Sponsors Blog Roll-up

Kudos to Best Buy. The have partnered with Federated Media to sponsor the ultimate holiday shopping blog for gadget freaks. The site rolls up some of the best consumer electronics bloggers on the Web. This is a smart marketing idea, although it would have been nicer to see Best Buy participating too.

How One Blogger Hustles for Stories

Marshall Kirkpatrick doesn't have a nickname, but if he did it should be something like Charlie Hustle because it conveys exactly what he does week in and week out. (Please forget for a moment that the real Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose, has issues with gambling! No connection here.)

If you want to understand what it takes to become a popular blogger, read Marshall's post. He was doing a fantastic job as one member of Techcrunch's "staff," but now he's on to bigger things like saving the world. His tips cover ...

• Using a startpage
• Organizing a feed reader
• Subscribing to high priority sources via SMS

Oh and if you read carefully you'll notice something. PR people are not mentioned. Coincidence? Hardly. We're being circumvented by good feed reading techniques and online sleuthing - at least in the blogosphere. The solution is to become part of it. Make it easy for bloggers by giving them compelling feeds, not just your press releases.

For a model, take a look at what Reuters Alertnet is doing with feeds. Not only can you subscribe to feeds for particular countries, but you can even create low graphic feeds, strip out news for blog-only RSS and more.

Good luck to Marshall.

Digg Issues Cease and Desist to Diggdot.us

Diggdot.us, a site that mashes up digg, del.icio.us and Slashdot, has received a cease and desist letter from digg's lawyers. Other similar mirrors have received the same. As a result, diggdot.us has changed its name to Doggdot.us, however, it continues to index digg's feed with an asterisk in the name.

Digg has spurred a cottage industry of Web sites that scrape their feeds. In most cases, these sites layer on value-added services. For example, duggtrends caches all digg pages and provides rich stats.

Doggdot.us (formerly digggdot.us) continues provides direct links to digg pages, which makes it a lot easier for the user. They skip the visit to digg entirely and go right to the page. I subscribe to their feed. I want non-stop service, but digg loses the opportunity to serve me with ads. You gotta wonder how long that will keep up.

links for 2006-11-27

• MOO | Share your contact info and your flickr photos
  Make business cards from your Flickr photos.
  (tags: Flickr Photography)
• YourGMap
  Simple way to plot multiple locations on a Google map and share it.
  (tags: Google Maps Mashups)
• » More than 15% of people carry two wireless phones | IT Facts | ZDNet.com
  (tags: Mobile survey Stats)
• ASCII-O-Matic
  Convert any image into ascii.
  (tags: ascii art fun Photography)
• rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » Blog Archive » NPR is ‘flickr’ing’
  Rex says "Listeners were invited to add photos to the Flickr group's pool."
  (tags: NPR radio Flickr Photography)

links for 2006-11-26

• Smart Playlists.com
  A great resource for developing better iTunes playlists.
  (tags: iTunes iPod Music playlists)
• Anshe Chung: Millionaire - Second Life Insider
  "Anshe Chung is poised to announce that she has made a million dollars in SL since her business's inception roughly two and a half years ago."
  (tags: secondlife avatarmarketing)
• 7 tricks to Viral Web Marketing - Baekdal.com
  Seven great tips.
  (tags: viral Marketing wordofmouth Video Tips)
• LoveToKnow Diet
  A wiki on diet and nutrition.
  (tags: Wikis Health)
• Burger King Wireless
  Wireless version of BK's site. (BK is an Edelman client)
  (tags: Mobile Marketing)
• MenuPix.com
  "Restaurant Menus, Ratings, and Reviews - New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Los Angeles"
  (tags: Travel restaurants locationbasedservices local)
• Main Page - WikiNotes
  "an invitation to collaborate on building a learning and research environment based on Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom"
  (tags: Wikis Books crowdsourcing)

links for 2006-11-25

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Brands - New York Times
  "A new word-of-mouth research firm, the Keller Fay Group, is attempting to demystify chatter in the offline world."
  (tags: wordofmouth WOM Marketing research)
• STLtoday: Lawyer blogs raise a legal question: Are they advertising?
  "a debate about how attorneys communicate -- and advertise. "
  (tags: Blogs law Advertising)

Without Jason, Weblogs Inc Will Lose Its Edge

I was saddened to hear about Jason Calacanis' recent departure from AOL. I don't blame him for leaving. It looks like he felt there wouldn't be any support for his initiatives under their new CEO. So what now?

Companies are about more than just one individual. As much as we would like to think that Jason Calacanis or even Steve Jobs for that matter are indispensable, they're not. It takes a village.

Still, a charismatic leader sets the direction and the tone. And there's no doubt that once such a person leaves an organization, there are changes. Post Calacanis, the rest of the  Weblogs Inc team including co-founder Brian Alvey and its key bloggers like Peter Rojas and crew continue to remain on board. But I would expect changes. Weblogs Inc will become even more sanitized.

It's tempting to look into a crystal ball and predict what will happen. There are usually signposts to guide you. In this case, it's edginess. Since AOL bought Weblogs Inc I feel it has started to lose that editorial bite it once had. The posts on blogs like TUAW and others have been very informative, but extremely safe. Jason's blog and Engadget are the key standouts. (Note, this is not about singling out anyone blog but looking at the tone of the network as a whole.)

Meanwhile, Gawker Media, Weblogs Inc's chief rival, has been pushing the edge - which is what I look to a blog media company to do. After all, if they don't they're simply using blog technology to replicate traditional media. It's the editorial sizzle here that makes the blog steak sell.

Consider Valleywag, for example. The tech gossip blog, operated by Gawker Media, has been on fire since it launched. It could never have come out of AOL. It's too edgy for them and therefore too risky because it could alienate deep-pocketed tech advertisers. Even though some of that has been toned down a bit now that blogger Nick Douglas has moved on, it still has bite.

Weblogs Inc once had a similar editorial tone across all of its blogs. It feels more sanitized under AOL. In the end, the greatest value AOL will get from Weblogs Inc purchase is the Blogsmith publishing platform. The blogs are just too corporate and safe now and I suspect many of the bloggers will leave once they can now that Calacanis is gone.

This is now Gawker Media's game to lose.

:: Later - Reactions from Calacanis, Denton, their bloggers and more

links for 2006-11-24

• Kevin Rose Admitting Digg Has Moderators
  A post with one digg made it to the front page.
  (tags: digg)
• Face value | The universal diarist | Economist.com
  Profile of Six Apart's Mena Trott.
  (tags: menatrott sixapart Vox Blogs)

Google Tests Shows Blog Results in Web Searches

The Google Operating System blog points to a post by Andy Boyd showing that Google is now highlighting blog results in Web searches, much as they do for news. This is another Google test. I am not seeing this in my results, but it would be great if they released this widely.

links for 2006-11-23

• CBS clips top YouTube charts, boost its TV ratings - Yahoo! News
  "CBS Corp. video clips from David Letterman's talk show and drama 'NCIS' are among the most watched on popular Internet video service YouTube, giving the network a boost in TV viewership"
  (tags: cbs youtube TV)
• New Media Musings: Squirl: a social cataloging tool
  "Squirl (love the name!) is a social cataloging tool that helps you catalog practically anything. It lets you organize your stuff into collections and meet others with similar interests."
  (tags: Web2.0)
• Rezzible - Completely Immersed
  "Rezzible is a website builder and a hosting plan built strictly to serve SecondLife."
  (tags: secondlife hosting Web2.0)
• ANA Marketing Maestros: Marketers: Why No Blogs?
  "Every day this CMO reads the blogs that mention their company. What a good role model for all ANA members." Amen
  (tags: Blogs Marketing)
• Accenture Employee Podcast Series
  Accenture has podcasts by employees as a tool for recruiting.
  (tags: recruiting Podcasting HR accenture marketing)
• Consumer Reports Shopping Blog
  "As the holidays approach, we hope you'll check out the Consumer Reports Shopping blog for time- and money-saving tips, and other need-to-know advice to make the season more enjoyable"
  (tags: deals Blogs shopping)
• Wikiversity:Main Page - Wikiversity
  "where teachers learn, and learners teach."
  (tags: Wikis Education)
• RSS Compendium - RSS Resources
  Great list.
  (tags: RSS Web2.0)
• Frogs for blogs - Yahoo! News
  "France has nearly one million bloggers, making it the most active European country in terms of the Internet personal websites, a new study published by the US firm Forrester Research showed."
  (tags: Europe France Blogs stats)
• Send Yourself Reminders Via An RSS Feed - CyberNet News: Keeping you plugged in!
  "create a reminder for in the format of an RSS feed"
  (tags: RSS Lifehacks)

Pew: 12% Have Listened to a Podcast, But Only 1% Download Daily

A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 12% of Internet users have downloaded a podcast  for listening at a future point in time. This is up from the 7% surveyed earlier this year. However, they're not addicted. A scant 1% download podcasts on a typical day. In other words, they're probably not subscribing via RSS, but simply plucking them for later use. Download the fulll report (PDF).