cocomment launched a new verion yesterday it’s proudly named “Jegi’s Work”. They highlighted some cool features. One thing they did to win me over was this new privacy feature. In the past I didn’t want to use the service because someone would inevitably find out where I was commenting and would just know too much about the blogs I visit. But with these features I feel a lot more comfortable using their service.

Here’s the highlight of the new version of cocomment.

First there is now a privacy feature. In your account page you can now hide yourself, or better your virtual identity from others. You can remove yourself from top user list or recent cloud or you can hide ‘Your conversations’ completely from others. Or just disable the blog box or the RSS feed.

The other important new feature allows to ‘pimp your blog’ even more. You now have a small box showing the top (co)users on your blog and a box with the top (co)tags. Both of these boxes can be added to your blog just as the current blog box.

via cocomment

Originally posted on March 23, 2006 @ 12:21 pm

David Krug, had a chance to sit down with Matt Jones, the founder of Random Shapes, a blog network written exclusively by teens. I personally haven’t talked to Matt however I think he’s pretty savvy and brave to set off on starting a blog network at such a young age with all the responsiblities of teen age life. After reading the interview. He sounds pretty smart in general. The network is really growing and has impressed me a lot lately.

David: What do you think of blog networks?
Matt: For a member, I think blog networks are a great way to boost your number of visitors. For the visitor, I think of blog networks as an updating bookmarks folder. It’s convenient and only holds the stuff that’s interesting.

David: So what is your vision for Random Shapes?
Matt:I see Random Shapes becoming a network that will encourage teens to write good blogs and change the way adults view teens on the web.

David: Let’s talk briefly about the “Myspace Generation” with roughly who knows how many myspacers how do you guys fit in? Is this Myspace Indie?
Matt:It isn’t really a Myspace Indie because we don’t think that Myspace is all bad, just mostly bad. I hope the network will spark interest in teens and make them want to change the way they act and blog on the web. Teens can suprise you especially if they are motivated to be better.

David: How do you see Random Shapes is it business or is it a community?
Matt:Definitely a community. I didn’t even realize all the business opportunities until it was already launched. It’s great to talk and share ideas with all the teens in the network.

David: Let’s talk about you for a minute. Tell me about yourself.
Matt:Well I’m a 17 year old senior in high school living in Arizona. I started doing web design in 2001 but I didn’t get very serious about it until this past summer. I finally decided to start a blog because of all the obvious benefits and everything has taken off from there. Right now I do freelance web design work for a few local companies and keep myself busy with school, sports, and my own side projects.

David: So who thought of this blog network was that you or was a team partnership idea? Tell us about the beginnings
Matt:I was reading up on blogging and started visiting sites that I noticed were part of blog networks. I found a few good teen blogs and I wanted to get to know them better. It’s hard to find a good teen blog so I thought it would be a good idea to create some kind of community for us to chat and share ideas with each other. A blog network would allow teens to talk with each other while gaining readership so it was perfect. I came up with the idea early January and I really wanted to make it work.

David: What happens when you all grow up and become 20
Matt:Well it just wouldn’t make sense to let people stay in the network once they’re no longer a teen but it’s also kinda messed up to just kick them out. What I plan on doing is adding a hall of fame to the Random Shapes site for past members. They won’t be a member anymore but by then they will have met so many new people even if they aren’t part of the network they will have lots of new friends and more recognition then when they started. This way no adults will be part of the network and everyone can leave happy.

David: If you RS could do one thing for you personally what would it be. I mean is it about the money or about the community and opportunities?
Matt:I hope to get more web design work out of this. That’s what I really like to do and I think the network can help me with that. It’s not easy getting this kind of a job as a teen but I’m trying.

David: Where do you see yourself and the network in a year?
Matt:Bigger and better. The network is slowly growing and the content gets better everyday. We aren’t professionals or even college graduates but we’ll compete with anyone. Teens have a lot to offer if you just listen.

For more information about Random Shapes visit www.randomshapes.com

Originally posted on March 15, 2006 @ 3:37 pm

Six Apart recently received 12 Million in venture capital something company outsiders have looked at with a wary eye. This may actually turn out to be huge if as CEO Barak Berkowitz says to the Silcon Beat is even an ounce of truth.

He’s going to get a group together to fight spammers. He’s looking to press Washington to pass legislation to ban computer generated comments on blogs. Right now, computer generated spam is legal, and spammers just keep coming up with more sophisticated ways of getting around filters. “I’m going to start getting a group together to take this forward,” he said. “There’s no real advocacy group for blogs, there’s no blogging association.”

– Silicon Beat

Speaking of spam I am off to clean up another pile of it. Legislation. I’m very much for blog spam legislation.

Originally posted on March 17, 2006 @ 2:06 pm

AM Update: Follow the conversation and check out the blatant patterns of misattributions. via Memeorandum

The editorial team over at Engadget blacklisted Dapreview.net a few months ago for commenting on their site about the use of their hard earned stories that were being “sourced” by Engadget. This was picked up by Fark,and Digg users. While no comment was made by the Engadget team I really doubt they would do this intentionally however the evidence has piled up and its looking kind of ugly. The story in question is a picture that edits the original credit to the source.

Read the original digg thread.

Ok so its really ugly if this is true – Engadget should fix this and apologize to the community.

Further Coverage: Design Technica
Comment from Ryan Block:
“Note from Ryan Block, Managing Editor: due to my own misunderstanding I mistakenly changed the source attribution and image on this post, but it has since been restored to its original form. I apologize for any harm or wrongdoing from this error, and respect DAPreview’s rights, content, and understanding.”

Update: I used strong words to make a strong point. Because Jason often does. And this time everyone and their brother is coming to his aid saying its all alright. It’s still not right to misattribute especially when you have railed hard on folks for creating a new css similar to your designs, or (link’s redirect sorry its gone) CNET’s editorial elitism as you call it. Or calling people flat out thieves. Overall however I subscribe to Engadget + Mobile and think its a great read. So keep up the work. Just try not to be “evil”. And you may want to answer this chaps questions too because that’s also not very ethical.

Originally posted on March 21, 2006 @ 12:51 am

At E-Tech earlier in the week Ross Mayfield blogged a conversation between Esther Dyson, editor at large for CNET, and Release 1.0 and Pierre Omidyar, the founder of Ebay.

O: Generally less choice can lead towards more satsification. I feel the need to reframe it. If less choice is good, then is users in charge good? It is so important because we are talking about individual self empowerment. When they are empowered, this leads to making the world a better place. What is important is what environment they are in when they are excersizing their choice and their power. With eBay, I focused on the environment where when people act in their interest it leads to a greater good.

Esther: a certain number in the middle that if you treat them well and give them power, they will become better and better. But some will do bad.

O:Focus on environment. I founded eBay on the notion that people are basically good, and 10 years later we have evidence this is the case. The kinds of structures I think are important:

1. Access: open access, level playing field, transparency, equal access to information are attributes of any environment with positive outcomes
2. Connection: enabling individuals to connect and interact with one another. Market solutions, collaboration and wisdom of crowds.
3. Sense of ownership: skin in the game lets individuals feel there is an investment required to participate and accountability (e.g. reputation systems).

One of the ways that you can limit choice is by creating a structure, a set of rules that says this is what this environment is about. So you do not have a choice to behave contrary to the rules. Doing this can make people uncomfortable despite wanting to be inclusive. Be most things to most people. If you are a bad actor we don’t want you in the community. I map rules to limiting choice in this context.

Esther: start with one set of rules, what are the rules for changing rules?

O: And interesting set of questions. If you start with the notion that people are good and enabling them to persue their self interest makes the world a better place, then you have to have the default assumption that allowing them to make their own choices is the right thing to do. That means for eBay, Meetup or other systems — you start with as little structure as possible, watch what they are doing and limit the behavior that is contradicting the environment you are trying to create. Lots of consequences for over regulation. Important to pay attention to what people do when they don’t make a choice.

At eBay we have made a lot of decisions where we had to respond to the community. In the early days we thought of the economic system and taxing behavior that we thought that was okay, but not great. E.g. imposing a tax on reverse price action because the price discovery mechanism was less transparent. That was a good way to do it, can’t think of a negative example offhand. You don’t want to legislate or criminalize all negative behavior.

Esther: many people have free services here and are trying to find how to charge for them appropriately.

O: My approach to this kind of problem is that if you are providing a service of value to users, you as the provider, designing for the user, create a sustainable business model. The best way to do that is derive revenue from the core value you are creating. With eBay, the transactions, rather than something that is happening on the side. We need to be looking for businesses that are a force for social good. But a lot of people do not believe this and think you have to make up for profits through contribution to charity. If you can charge a fair price and can use that to build more services at charge that pays employees and puts their kids through school — all this is a good thing.

Zoe Baird: can you talk a little bit about what you see as the next wave of tools to have both transparency and privacy?

O: Transparency in a system doesn’t mean transparency around individuals actions. Not every user action needs to be transparent. Having control over identity is critical. If you are in an economic system, buyers and sellers need to know each other or intermediaries need to be known, but full transparency is not directly complementary with commerce. Need to protect individual information with their own control, but some level of transparency is important.

Esther: allowing a second pseudonym that authenticates your identity (e.g. Opinity)

O: These are great solutions for privacy without loosing the ability to conduct commerce.

Gary Bolles: with eBay you have an infrastructure, but with the Network what are the kind of rules?

O: One of our important realizations is that business cannot be left out of the equation and can be a force for good. I recently rediscovered Adam Smith, the classic baker selling to shoe maker example where the profit is evidence of the quality of life increasing for both parties. Smith held that we needed competition and no negative externalities, but our modern economies are more complex. Which is where we get to Access, Connection and Ownership.

The wonderful thing about an enabling environment is that it leads to trust. Buy something from a stranger and it can teach you that you can trust a stranger.

Christina Koukkos: what example investments can you share? Someone else asks about clean tech?

O: Example of our investments would not include clean energy. Clearly clean energy is an example of a business that can be a force for good, something that can be sustainable as a business and a sustainable contribution. Compare to the current industry which has a ton of externalities, an industry you cannot be convinced that you are making the world a better place if you work for in it.

A lot of ON investments in this room. Linden Lab demonstrates connection and collaboration, shared interests within world sometime, shared ownership. Meetup: how does my group work? Eventful: has an event demand aggregation tool that increases the level of ownership and user empowerment.

Someone asks: how do I extend my reputation I built within eBay into other environments?

O: Because you can have different environments with different rules and different structures, the reputations you build don’t necessarily map to other environments. There is a desire to say a local reputation should be extended nationally (Mayor of a small town to President of the US), but while it is relevant it may not necessarily map.

***
This guy really is a genius. Ebay is a company that listened to its users and suceeded.

Originally posted on March 19, 2006 @ 8:41 pm