Archives for April 2006

I was talking to a friend this week about who I consider to be the core target audience of Performancing, the people that really matter to us, and the people that define who we are. I like to think of this group as “the real blogosphere”.

It’s not about a small group of noisey people in palo alto that think they’re at the center of the universe. It’s not about big media houses jumping on bandwagons. It’s about real people, quietly getting on with the business of blogging. It’s about people from all over the world striving to write about subjects they’re passionate about, using tools that help make their lives easier and wanting to earn money from their weblogs.

It’s about you, and it’s about me.

It’s about real people.

One thing that came up is how quickly Performancing has grown. With well over 12,000 members now, our combined influence is not inconsiderable right? We got there by ignoring (mostly) the blog snobs and the pretenders, and focusing on the real blogosphere, by promoting our members and their interests and by listening to the community.

Now though, it’s time for some more direction.

With work on the upcoming ad network going well, I wanted to find out what more we might do to help the community. What features, services or products we should look at developing.

One thing that came up a little while ago, suggested by Ahmed I think, was a forum for commercial exchanges. People looking to buy/sell service and start/join blog networks for example.

Let us know what you think, and what you’d like to see eh?

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In what can only be seen as a “tip of the iceberg” move, AOL have finally made their next play in the blogosphere. Tipped off byHeather Green posting for BusinessWeek I see AOL’s new BloggingStocks.com, a weblog about, yes you guessed it, stocks.

Heather has the details:

Bloggingstocks.com is a unique idea. AOL hired bloggers to write about product announcements, earnings releases, and commentary on 8 stocks initially. On its first day, the network will do live blogging of the Microsoft earnings call, for instance. (Good luck!)

So, what about the $64,000 question? Can the bloggers hold the stocks they are writing about?

Indeed. In fact, AOL encourages them to be stockholders, if not necessarily in the companies they’re writing about.

It’s the first big move since they bought AOL and like Heather, I’d expect to see a lot more. The fact that the “big boys” are starting to move into lucrative keyword areas in the blogosphere means that it’s probably only a matter of time before regular commercial bloggers start to really feel the pinch. And that IS interesting. What’s more interesting right now though, is if those “sponsored links” they have on the right (currently empty) are going to be straight, or condomed?

Afterall, GOOG now own 5% of AOL right? So we wouldn’t want anyone doing anything as dreadful as shoing text links for other sites now would we?

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How would it feel if after all the time you’ve put in on your blog, it suddenly disappeared from google altogether? And loaded at a crawl if someone actually did know where to find you and wanted to read your posts?

How would you like to pay more money for slower internet?

If that sounds good to you, say, $60 a month for dial-up speed access then DON’T click the link below and sign the petition. If you liked TV better when there were only 2 or 3 channels, DON’T click the link. DON’T sign the petition. If you wish that the only businesses you could shop at were big box stores, DO NOTHING. Because it’s easier to ignore stuff and wait for it to go away. A smaller internet will certainly be easier to keep track of. We won’t need to worry about googlejuice, technorati rankings or SEO if Congress passes this bill.

On the other hand, if you ever buy from small businesses, like to find
new music or video online, sometimes read stories or news from sources
other than the networks, or have ever wanted something unusual that you
just couldn’t find nearby, the Please Do sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality.

To be honest, I don’t believe in petitions and have lost most faith in
our political process, but if this bill is signed into law I could very
well go out of business. And so will a lot of the other people and
websites that you may currently enjoy. I don’t know if we can make a
difference, but I would feel foolish for not at least trying.

Several telecom and media companies have decided that they would like
you to pay more for the internet than you already do. More importantly,
they would like to achieve this in part by auctioning off what you can
see online to the highest bidder. For instance, if you go online to buy
a fire pit right now, you’ll find a link to my Great Bowl O Fire pretty
near the top of google. But if AT&T or Time Warner are able to get
this bill through congress they’ll be able to sell control of search
results to companies like Target or Walmart. I’ll still be online, but
good luck finding me.

These companies are also lobbying for the right to slow access speeds
to sites that don’t pay them off. So, the high speed internet access
that you pay a premium for will only load sites quickly if they are big
enough to pay the extortion fee. All the other sites you visit will
load as though you’d decided to switch back to dial up modems. Are you
okay with that? Because I’m not. Same with news… Do you want all Fox
all the time, or would you rather choose which sites you use to find
out what’s going on in the world?

I’ve tried really hard to ignore this issue. But the more I learn about
it the more I realize that it affects us all. The internet is something
that we have recently learned to take for granted, but believe me, if
the web becomes as limited as TV was before satellite and cable, we’ll
all miss the freedom we allowed Congress to take away. The fact that
it’s all about greed just makes it worse.

Below is a message from Moveon.org with more info and a link to an
online petition that will be read before congress when they convene to
vote on this bill. Please go sign the petition. It really does matter.

Do you buy books online, use Google, or download to an Ipod? These
activities will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law that gives
giant corporations more control over the Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard
to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Net
Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most
easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon.com
doesn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more
properly on your computer.

Politicians don’t think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of
them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the
verge of selling out to people like AT&T’s CEO, who openly says,
"The internet can’t be free."

The free and open Internet is under seige—can you sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality? Click here.

A list of all the ways you might be affected by Net Neutrality is available here.

To learn more, and get involved, you can do several things:

1. Educate yourself about the issues.  Read Doc Searls article from last year
   on the topic (this is what first alerted me to the issue, and allowed
   me to spread the word a bit, most notably to Liz Strauss, who took the ball and ran with it).
2. Visit the Save the Internet website and blog to learn more, and to send a quick and easy letter to Congress voicing your opposition.
3. Spread the word.  There’s a huge viral marketing campaign

   going on right now to spread awareness and galvanize support. Help
   spread the word with your blog, by email, or come up with a viral video concept.
   I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that if the big telcos and cable
   companies get their way, grass roots viral marketing will be a thing of
   the past.

   (list cribbed from Brian Clark at CoppyBlogger. You should be reading his posts on how to write copy. I know because I’ve seen about 400 articles on the net neutrality issue and his was the one that finally kicked me into gear!)

They WILL win if we are apathetic.  Do something, or find a way to earn a living that doesn’t involve the Internet.

The WebOS Market Review by Richard MacManus delves into the WebOS market, which is currently being played by small-timers like YouOS, eyeOS, XIN, etc. A WebOS is an OS on the Web that allows you to browse, eMail, chat, etc. Basically, the online counterpart of your desktop OS.

Ok. Stop. Let’ go back to that last one. Online counterpart of an OS? uhh, erm…

Hmm. Let’s try Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines WebOS as:

More generally, WebOS refers to a software platform that interacts with the user
through a web browser and does not depend on any particular local
operating system.

What? Let’s go through this one more time, step-by-step:

I boot my desktop OS. I fire my desktop browser. I connect to the World Wide Web. I access the WebOS. I see my WebDesktop. Now what? I fire up my WebBrowser and access the Internet again?

Er, excuse me, but isn’t that where I am already? So, which one is my, ‘true’, definitive OS? The one I booted to fire the (desktop) Browser, or the one that I accessed on the web? Moreover, how would you access such an OS in the future, given this logical inconsistency?

When I put forth this question, AutomanG replied with the following:

One solution would be to have something, say…, linux embedded into a box that’s sole purpose is to fire up a browser and initiate a tunnel to a remote server (where your webOS of choice is located.) It would be a borderless browser so to you, it would look just like you booted a computer arriving at a desktop.

This sounds really weird! No offense meant, but I just want to explore this a bit further:

Currently, looking at the larger picture, we have three OSes in the Desktop Market. Windows, Linux and MacOS. With this proposal the intention to make Linux a standard (irrespective of whether all people want it or not). Or Windows or MacOS. Some OS which can be universally accepted and moulded as and when need be. Which inevitably brings us back to Linux.

Agree though, the argument that Automan provides makes some sense on some level. Okay, it doesn’t matter what boots the embedded browser as long as what they see on their screens is the same all throughout. Interesting point, I admit.

But again, then there are many options for WebOSes now. There will come a time when we will have to choose one of them as a standard, or maybe, define some standard specs for a WebOS. How do you do that, then?

And if you were to do it later, why not do it now for the desktop OSes? And if you intend to write embedded software to run the necessary hardware, it still is an OS!

I still can’t fathom the need for a WebOS. The ability to store data online, more than makes up for the inability to access my personal desktop everywhere. After all the applications that you intend to put on the Web will be run by their desktop counterparts. What is the point?

Ok, I guess, I oughtta stop. I sound almost desparate now!

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