Category Commentary

About That Blogging Thing

0 comments Filed in Commentary Tagged with Blogging•Tumbling February 4th, 2008

I have been thinking a long time about the blogging thing. It all started out as a fun time waster and then soon took other dimensions

A bunch of housewives enjoying the site and commenting
A gaggle of whiny whores commenting, mostly loving flames
In the background I discovered several awesome people and made one error. The most unpublished story.
Paid blogging gigs, on blogging, design, video tutorials and some more
URL hopping and several domain sales
Drama, backstabbing and more drama
Some awesome totally personal and private entries

Most of all, this, and the other blogs, are characterized with a really low level of quality content, not to say there’s no quality at all. I’ve tried several things: sarcasm, irony, flames, my so loved geekery and then some utter nonsense lately.

Right now, I can not say that I want to focus on one topic, not at all. I want to tumblelog, spam your feedreader with links to all over the place and hopefully even occasionally craft a great entry.

Actually, I want to start creating quality again and maybe some day pick up the problogging thing again.
Right now I still have several domains, some known ones and other ones unknown, but I have no idea how to spread the content, hence why I resorted to the good old fashioned AIFN. I will try to pick up a blogging rhythm again over the next days, week, but don’t hold your breath if you’re hoping to read many personal entries. Not here or at any other site you might have squatted.

I do know that no one reads this site right now and I can’t say I’m really bothered by this. I like my little quiet garden and will just blog as I feel like.

Until I have a little more clue again.

And the design? I love the sarcasm in it and might keep it up a little longer.

Will Facebook Take Over The Internet?

0 comments Filed in Commentary Tagged with Anne Zelenka•Editorial•Facebook•Online June 17th, 2007

I actually wanted to wait some more days before getting overly ~~critical~~ editorial again, until a new writing opportunity on an existing and READ blog started, but the conversation at Web Worker Daily and my inability to shuttup made me reopen this blog today already.

Anne Zelenka worries that Facebook could take over the Internet after the introduction of the F8 platform. And as I’ve written here before MZ made a strategically very smart move.

But today, only some days of Facebook fun with friends later, I think that FaceBook also has dugg its own graveyard. Let me correct that : battlefield.
Due to the nature of Facebook, every day more applications go viral and application developers, sometimes even already existing platforms such as iLike get deeper in trouble. In trouble due to their popularity.
Over the weekend iLike sent out an email to Valley companies, asking for servers until they could buy new own servers, only because of the popularity of their FB application. Read more at pmarca (scroll down to #4 of the Cons).

Together with the very viral nature of F8 many smaller overnight built applications, such as iGift, SuperPoke or FoodFight, and their developers have gotten in trouble : F8 requires the developer to host its own application, on own servers.
Exactly this could turn FB in to a battlefield over the next months, years. Most developers won’t be able to afford the hosting costs for their quickly whipped up application and we will see VC money and a whole new economy around FB/F8.
Applications will be sold and with time the Big 5 (think Google, Yahoo!, MS, Amazon and Ebay) will become more present at F8, not only with their own applications (Amazon already has a book review app on FB), but also with acquisitions.
Dollars will flow towards developers and the Big 5 will fight to increase their influence on the F8 platform.

I see only 2 possibilities right at the moment:

MZ is REALLY smart and sells out now. Not going to happen.
Within 18 months FB is an economical, influence Internet warfield. And MZ will be the loser of the year. Due to FB’s growing dependence on external applications, applications then owned by the Big 5, a sell out strategy has become impossible for FaceBook.
Any major investment in FaceBook would be too risky, because any other player could pull its own platform of applications from FaceBook.

Contrary to what Mark Andreesen wrote at pmarca [via Mathew Ingram], the platform will not win in latter case.

Drama scenario for my thesis were if FaceBook really has the money to buy omst platforms themselves. To pull a Myspace.
But I can’t find any revenue stream at Facebook, big enough to compete with the Big 5 and the likes of CBS (last.fm).

Update: Finally it seems other people start to think buy Facebook applications.

F8, Did Facebook Just Pull A Myspace

0 comments Filed in Commentary Tagged with Editorial•Facebook•last.fm May 25th, 2007

Yesterday’s excitement was huge, everyone seemed to like Mark Zuckerberg‘s presentation about the new platform Facebook.

The integration of multiple mini-sites was a major buzz and of course every Facebook member will love it to be able to show off all their web20-geekiness, without having to leave Facebook.
But if we put down the buzz and hype for some minutes, at least the time needed to read this entry, we can analyze a little better what happened last night. And before I pound my egg, let me tell you that from now on I consider Zuckerberg, AKA the guy who is rumored to have turned down a $1bn bid, a master strategist is.

Probably the creators of most implemented platforms are still after-buzzing and seeing vertical statistic lines instead of USD signs in their best nightmares, maybe even finally dream of dollars too.
Several of the implemented platforms are still without a real revenue stream and might now hope to finally generate some revenue.

WRONG!
Zuckerberg doesn’t need all 30 for Facebook. Zuckerberg isn’t interested in helping to develop their platform and user base. No, the only thing that counts is to continue the development of Facebook.
Facebook as a platform. Facebook as the new and geeky MySpace. Open to anyone and everything you want to, is available. A little like Virb, except… well, Zuckerberg is smarter.
Instead of building everything himself, he lets existing and rather popular services join the popularity and fame of Facebook. Smart and proven dev-team integrate their platform into Facebook.

One $mart dude, Mark. So, actually Zuckerberg just pulled a MySpace. But still a number smarter : without investment.

I wonder if that’s the reason wy last.fm isn’t part of the party, although they have announced that something was/is in the works.
There is no doubt that Facebook’s F8 will boost the popularity of many of the 30 integrated sites/services/applications, but what will their value be after 12 months if they had to live without facebook? Null, zilch, nada, noppes.
Suddenly X million of users would disappear from their [falsely inflated] user base, because they have never signed up for any of the services, but used them within Facebook, statistics would drop even faster than they will grow over the next weeks.

Nothing more or less than a master stroke of genius.
Zuckerberg, the master strategist.
Zuckerberg the MySpace 2.0, but also the founder of an unaffordable platform.
Zuckerberg, the creator of the post-Yahoo era?

And I don’t seem to be the only one who thinks this way, it seem that Tony shares shares the same view, but differently. :)

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