:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 2.27.2003 ::
:: Additional Blogger Gets Googley-Eyed story research ::
I'm still researching a story on the Google/Blogger deal for a monthly computer rag, sending out e-mail interview requests. Here's another great response, this one from Matt Webb:
Google's acquisition is significant both for webloggers and users of the www. For webloggers, because it frees Pyra to build cool new features. It's got some catching up to do -- Movable Type is a really good product and competitor. (Pyra have had to put a lot of effort into Blogger's infrastructure, but now that's taken care of.)
For users of the www, it says quite loudly that there is value in weblogs. That is, there's value in ultra low cost, ultra low effort ways of individuals *writing* on the www, not just reading. So expect to see others making their offering soon.
As to what that value is... that's the big question.
Google could use the database to make their results 20-seconds-timely. That could be the next battle front of the search engines, not just breadth but up-to-the-second. Or Google could use Blogger's users as a representative constituency of the www to introduce novel new forms of searching (trails, etc).
My concerns are those of someone who values the weblog software ecosystem. It's not good for a single company to make money out of searching the content, but control the generation of the control too.
If Google extract a lot of value from weblogs, they're milking the whole weblog community. I like that people put effort into weblog readers, aggregators, Daypop's WordBursts, reading suggestions, etc. If people feel like they're being taken for a ride, like what they do is just feeding into a profit-making company (Google) they'll go elsewhere, and I'd prefer that not to happen. If this happens, Google better give something back; I think they know this, and I think they'll do it.
posted by me
:: 5:03:00 PM [+] ::
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