Jun

26

Are Google Reader shared items the new del.icio.us?

Filed Under PointOfView | Leave a Comment

deliciouslogo Since its debut in 2004, del.icio.us has been the market standard for social bookmarks.  Its reputation was further enhanced in late 2005 when it was acquired by Yahoo!.  Social bookmarking was going places.  It wasn’t that long ago that every second blog (particularly in the tech niches) had some type of del.icio.us widget in a sidebar somewhere.  Sometimes it was a simple list of the latest bookmarks the blog author had while other times it was a tag cloud of recently added items.  Either way, del.icio.us seemed to be around every corner.

There have been many pretenders to the social bookmarking throne - Furl and Ma.gnolia are just two - but del.icio.us remained the place to go to see what other people felt was worth bookmarking.  Even Google had a stab at it with the horribly named and feature free Google Shared Stuff.  Nothing has been able to gain the traction that del.icio.us has managed.

greader However, with the digerati clamouring for the long-awaited release of Delicious 2.0, something of a vacuum has appeared in the social sharing space.  Are Google Reader shared items filling this void?

Shared items have arrived at an interesting time and in something of a perfect storm.  RSS is increasing in popularity and verges on mainstream acceptance.  Lifestreaming services are popping up all over the place (see 35 ways to stream your life on ReadWriteWeb for example) and many of these services allow RSS feeds to be imported.  Every Google Reader shared items page has an RSS feed.  The recent addition of notes functionality allows individuals to add a note to items as they share them from within Google Reader.  Add to this the Google Reader Notes bookmarklet that allows you to share any web page, and all bases seems to be covered.

I see more and more “link blogs” that are the blog author’s re-purposed shared items feed. Services like FriendFeed are full of other people’s shared items.  Other services like Readburner absolutely depend on other people’s shared items feeds.

Yahoo! had better watch out.  If Google Reader shared items aren’t the new del.icio.us yet, it’s only a matter of time before they are.

Will shared items replace del.icio.us for social bookmarking ?  Let me know what you think in the comments.

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Jun

11

Why internet TV is failing and torrents are winning

Filed Under PointOfView | 12 Comments

I understand that content owners have licensing agreements around the world and feel that they can’t open up television programs globally to protect the financial investment of various regional licensees.

However, content owners, you need to understand that if you deny people a way to legally access your product simply on the basis of geographic location, they will get it anyway without you.  Once people realise they can get the same content more easily and at a better quality than anything you provide, they may never return to you as a paying customer ever again.

There is a market out there absolutely begging to be serviced. Unclench the fist or it will squeeze out through your fingers and be gone forever.

The WB

Hulu

 

Adobe Media Player

 

The Office Season 4 on The Pirate Bay

 

The Colbert Report on The Pirate Bay

Jun

3

Google spam?

Filed Under news | Leave a Comment

google_spam

(click picture to embiggen)

Apparently, no one is safe from the Google spam filter.

Jun

1

Google and Jaiku

Filed Under housekeeping | Leave a Comment

I recently wrote another guest piece for Sarah Perez:

Stocktake time. Despite the fact that Jaiku has everything that the hottest 2.0 properties have, all tied up on one neat basket, Google has failed to get any mindshare at all amongst users and developers. Unless Google has some fiendishly cunning plan for world domination, it really looks like they’ve dropped the ball here.

Click through to read the rest of Google dropped the ball on Jaiku at Sarah’s site, Sarah in Tampa.