Week of April 7, 2008

Selling Your Connections

Friday, April 11, 2008

Andrew Baron, founder of online television show Rocketboom, has created an interesting experiment: He is going to find out how much a person's connections are worth, specifically in an ability to broadcast to them. In this instance, Baron has announced he is selling his Twitter account, which currently has over 1,500 people following it. A person buying the account would instantly be able to broadcast to those people in the intimate nature of Twitter... via cell phone and web.

How much is that access worth? Well, it is certainly worth more for someone like Baron's list, which most likely includes some influential Silicon Valley people. As Techcrunch.com reports, the current bidding stands at $1,125.

What Is Traffic?

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Venture Capitialist Fred Wilson took bookmarking site Del.icio.us to task recently for its slowing traffic. An executive with the company responded by saying that defining their success by pure page visits is misleading--A lot of their platform use is via browser plugins and via aggregation sites like Netvibes. The result? Del.icio.us is much more successful than it looks via pure page views.

This is the challenge moving forward. As content and platforms are syndicated across the Internet, specific page traffic will have little value as an assessment tool. The future for online assessment is very murky at this point. The old pageview model is quickly becoming less than useful, and engagement by site is becoming less relevant. For media companies focusing on sites with reach and page views, this is a development worth watching.

Flickr Adds Video

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Flickr, Yahoo's fabulously successful photo sharing site has added video, something that's been predicted for over a year now. Videos are limited to 150 MB, and the service is clearly designed for home users to share their video in the same way they share their photos with Flickr. While this happens on YouTube, the YouTube experience tends to be much more of a "broadcast" mentality than a "share with your family" one.

The jury is certainly out on whether Flickr will have an impact on the long tail of YouTube users, but as a potential competitor, Flickr is formidable.

What is a 3G iPhone and why should I care?

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Walt Mossberg recently stoked the fires of hype around the upcoming release of the 3G iPhone, based in part on the fact that current iPhones are selling out across the country. But what is the 3G iPhone and what does it mean?

Well, 3G is the fastest carrier data network in the United States. It provides broadband speeds into cell phones. It is available now for phones like the Blackjack, but it was not available for the iPhone, which uses AT&T's slower EDGE network, which is basically double the speed of a dial-up connection.

All the current research on the iPhone shows that it is an Internet monster. A recent study showed that it is used more for its NON-phone features than as a phone, and a huge part of that is web browsing. With the release of a 3G iPhone, it will become even more of a desktop/laptop browser replacement.

Facebook Chat Launches

Monday, April 7, 2008

Doubters of Facebook often point to the inevitable entropy of the Internet away from organized walled gardens to a more free form aggregation of content. The textbook example used is AOL. It is interesting to note that Facebook has launched a feature that was one of the most widely used and popular function of AOL in its heydey--chat functionality. PMG friend Justin Smith has the lowdown at Insidefacebook.com.

When companies like PMG client meebo are redefining chat and messaging as open, it illustrates the pressure that Facebook (and other networks) are under.