Paul Scrivens articulately draws the dots together in a post on Why Blog Networks Failed.

But why did they fail? Were they just cool because anyone could start one and it was a sweet buzzword to associate yourself with for a while?

He makes some very strong points on content and community, all of which are right, but as Matt Mullenweg notes correctly in the comments, management was a serious downfall in that many just couldn’t or didn’t scale properly and hence the management (both in preplanning and in effect) was lacking….which are supringsly (perhaps not) my exact thoughts on the matter. Worth a read.

 

Tags: Paul Scrivens

Originally posted on February 21, 2007 @ 7:56 pm

Google has announced the launch of Google Apps Premier Edition, a set of essential business software tools that sees the search giant take on Microsoft in a key market area.

The new service costs $50 per employee account per year and includes telephone technical support, 10 gigabytes of storage per user and a service delivery guarantee of 99.9% up time.

Google Apps Premier Edition, as the name would suggest, is a paid version of Google Apps,a service introduced six months ago as a free service that offers gmail, Google calender, Google Talk and Google Documents and Spreadsheets, but set to the business’ physical domain (name.com).

According to a Reuters report, more than 100,000 small businesses use the existing free Google Apps service and hundreds of universities around the world are using a free version of the service that is free of ads.

“We have a volume goal … for millions and millions of users,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview. While big-business buying cycles will take time, he cautioned, “we have lots of indications of very large deals.”

Schmidt challenged Microsoft’s competing product Microsoft Live stating “We can offer a more functional product for a lower price”.

 

Update: further (later :-) ) coverage at CNet, TechCrunch, NY Times and Information Week.

Tags: Google, Google Apps

Originally posted on February 22, 2007 @ 1:12 am

SEO Book author and well known SEO blogger Aaron Wall writes at SEOBook.com that he’s seeing changes in Google including large authority sites being demoted in favor of smaller niche players. He notes in the post that he’s note sure if it’s correct to call it an algorithm update, but certainly something seems to be going on.

Are any 901am readers seeing anything in their SERP’s? sites down or up in a big way? let us know.

Originally posted on February 22, 2007 @ 2:32 am

I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to do so, but the RIAA has released a list of universities, ranked in order of the number of piracy notices they have handed out to students. So when it’s that time of the year again, and you’re looking at universities to apply to, here’s the list to avoid:

Copyright infringement notices handed out during 2006 – 2007 academic year:

1. Ohio University – 1,287
2. Purdue University – 1,068
3. University of Nebraska at Lincoln – 1,002
4. University of Tennessee at Knoxville – 959
5. University of South Carolina – 914
6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst – 897
7. Michigan State University – 753
8. Howard University – 572
9. North Carolina State University – 550
10. University of Wisconsin at Madison – 513
11. University of South Florida – 490
12. Syracuse University – 488
13. Northern Illinois University – 487
14. University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire – 473
15. Boston University – 470
16. Northern Michigan University – 457
17. Kent State University – 424
18. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor – 400
19. University of Texas at Austin – 371
20. North Dakota State University – 360
21. Indiana University – 353
22. Western Kentucky University – 353
23. Seton Hall University – 338
24. Arizona State University – 336
25. Marshall University – 331

The great folks at Ars have more.

Originally posted on February 23, 2007 @ 9:44 am

Scouring my feed subs last night, I found these new media/ Internet  news tidbits:

Banning Wikipedia

When is a reference not a reference? When it comes from Wikipedia, apparently. A number of colleges, including Middlebury College in Vermont, are now banning use of Wikipedia references in student papers. This isn’t the first college to do so, and even some high schools are getting in on the act. Everyone is ganging up on Wikipedia all of a sudden.

Personally, I think it’s wrong to assume that all Wikipedia references are not professionally written. I’ve scoured hundreds of references and found that some seem to be written by insiders from one industry or another (and I can back that up with knowledge I may have of that industry). But where do you draw the line if you are a school teacher or college professor? An educator doesn’t have the time to go read and parse suspect references for each and every student. It’s a shame.

Bloggers Are Valuable Say Americans

Steve Rubel wrote on Micro Persuasion recently that a poll by iFOCOS and Zogby found that 55% of the Americans surveyed felt that bloggers are important to the future of journalism. Obviously, this can only be good news to bloggers who want to live the new (media) American dream.

Internet Voting In Estonia

Well if Estonia is going to vote for their next leader over the Internet using a chip-embedded national ID card (likely an RFID chip), why can’t we Digg the next President?

Originally posted on February 22, 2007 @ 6:30 am