Why the TechCrunch Economy Will Falter
Reading yesterday that AppLoop has apparently shut down impressed upon me a fundamental flaw in the startup economy promoted by a wide swath of pundits and proponents, that starting is more important than sustaining.
Now, we’re hearing rumors that the startup is in trouble, and they appear to hold some truth. For one, the company’s website [...]
Digg’s Recommendation Engine
We’ve been developing filtering technologies based on behaviors and expressed likes/dislikes. It’s hard stuff and one thing is evident, relying on a single mechanism or ideology for recommendations is a strategy fraught with risk.
If you rely on active participants, people training the recommendation engine, you simply won’t get the data inputs necessary to deliver good [...]
What makes a blog post popular?
Our friends over at mSpoke posted part 1 in a series about what makes blog posts popular. This is an in-depth look at the factors that contribute to popularity, here Paul is looking at post writing quality and correlation to popularity.
To start, we’ll need a bunch of feed items and measures of popularity [...]
Google Blog Search, Still a Work in Progress
Here’s why the revamped Google Blog Search left me unimpressed:
Just how in the hell are they filtering and organizing content if the top stories in the Business category are from Huffington Post, Autoblog, and Daily Kos (there were 2 Daily Kos top stories, the other below the fold)? First impressions are everything for a product [...]
When Web Services Turn Off
Michael Totten is one of the more successful independent journalists and in addition to advertising revenue he relies on individual subscriptions in order to cover his travel and equipment costs. I had subscribed to his site last year and it wasn’t until he posted this note today that I realized I had not been seeing [...]
Maybe Blogging Is Just a Loss-Leader?
But I doubt most bloggers are trying to be the next Arrington. Most of them just want to support themselves blogging, right? This post reminds me of the phenomenon a few years back as the open source movement was taking off.[From SarahLacy.com: Maybe Blogging Is Just a Loss-Leader?]
I get asked a lot why [...]
The A.P. Blogger Wars of 2008-
UPDATE: Here’s an update from the AP on the AP.
If the AP doesn’t want bloggers quoting their stories, why make RSS feeds available?
And insofar as “telling bloggers what is acceptable”… nuh-uh, the AP doesn’t get to define their own set of copyright laws and as any first year law student will tell them, attempting to [...]
Blogs I Like
I clicked on Thomas Hawk’s site recently after far too long an absence, it’s still a kick ass blogs that serves to not only feature his passion - digital photography - but also provide compelling commentary on the tech industry, public policy and other interesting observations.
Hawk is CEO and chief evangelist (redundant titles, I’ve never [...]
Conversations vs. Comments
The issue of comment fragmentation has been rearing up every other week or so since the initial discussion flared up in early April, but of late, I’ve been thinking about the purpose of comments in the first place. When you make a comment on a blog, is it to respond to the blog [...]
The Action Heats Up in Blog Comments
I met up for coffee with Jitendra Gupta and Tedd Corman just a week ago and we talked at length about where they are as a company and the spectrum that includes comment tracking systems (e.g. CoComment) on one end and comment replacement services (e.g. Intense Debate) on the other.
The net takeaway is that blog [...]
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About
My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. These are my thoughts on technology, innovation, management, public policy and pretty much anything else that I find interesting.
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