DISQUS

OK, you're gonna have to fill me in on this MLS issue you're talking about, Joe. What on earth are you accusing us of this time?

You're assuming that they will cast a favorable light on these terrorists. Their intel has never been right before, so why give them the benefit of the doubt this time? Oh, that's right - you've got your guilt to deal with - get over it!

So sad.

If you have lived in any other big city in the world you'd be shocked at how ridiculously Seattle deals with its cyclists. Everyone I speak to about this agrees that we have a cycling culture here that believes it's both indestructible and above the law. The fact that cycling on the sidewalk is legal in Seattle is a major cause of this attitude. We're telling cyclists that it's OK to ride wherever they want just so that they can get from A to B as quickly as possible. It's pretty laughable that in a city that still religiously polices j-walking, you're likely to get run over by a fat cop on his bicycle on the sidewalk. If we don't get the bikes off the sidewalks and start to fine riders when they pull these dumb-ass tricks in traffic this won't be the last tragic accident.

You just got GOOG - congrats!

Got it. Since I'm already all in I'm sorry to say I'll be rooting against you filling these but GOOG is looking very close ;-) Good luck!

Fred,

I've also been buying APPL and GOOG. You seem to be trying to call the bottom. What made you choose those price targets? If you're truly long you should be asking yourself if you'd be more upset about missing these prices or missing the next 3 years' gains.

Chartreuse hits the nail on the head. Why would you allow anyone to change history?

The initial assumption here is incorrect; comments are not blog posts. Never will be. I certainly agree that *some* comments can stand alone and that those could be re-posted on blogs though I would caution bloggers that you don't win too many friends when you seek to control a productive discussion by hijacking it onto your blog. 'nuff said on that topic. It's certainly a comment author's right to republish their comment and "blog this comment" is a feature disqus should probably consider adding.

A comment is a part of a conversation. Altering a comment alters the conversation. The conversation does not 'belong' to the person that left the comment. Allowing users to remove or edit their part of a discussion will take you on a short-trip to moderator hell in a vibrant community (I learned this the hard way.) I personally believe the best implementation allows comments to be edited (for typo's etc.) only within a limited window of time (say, 10 min's) and thereafter, edits are disabled.

I was a fan of disqus but honestly, with this post, you've lost my trust. Disqus has an obvious bias for controlling comment content and that bias dents your credibility in this discussion; please reconsider your position on this issue.

Great post, thanks! I took a shot at summarizing the "9 things" here - let me know what you think. http://poductivity.blogspot.com/2007/04/scobles...

Great idea but question 4 is incredibly dangerous. It suggests to me that the whole premise behind facebook's closed networks was in fact to create a false economy and was not purely in the interests of secure networking.

Thanks Pete - the splogs on google have been killing me lately and Technorati is so far from comprehensive. This seems to be a much better solution. Google's competitors should really be paying more attention to this space.

Let's face it, these priests, nuns and teachers could just be intimidated by competition on Myspace ;-) A simple comparison of the pedophilia convictions in the catholic church vs those of mysace users would probably put this great story nicely into its absurd context (no, I don't have the numbers - be my guest). Can someone explain to me why we haven't banned catholic schools yet?

Popshops.com is another awesome startup in this space.

i just went and did it. it is an incredibly intuitive account mergre experience. these are my steps:
1) goto www.flickr.com - unchanged
2) enter my y! p/ward and submit - first time I've used it on flickr but same cookie'd experience as on y! V.smart to create stub accounts for y! members.
3) it recognizes my gmail addi (how?) which is registered to my flickr a/c and asks if I want to merge the 2 accouts?
4) I click once to accept = the only extra step in the entire process.
5) done.
It doesnt get any better or more low-cost (i.t.o. churn) than that. I also think that they would have calculated the risk -- as you point out, y! had the 2005 backlash to help inform their assumptions. Desite the hype, they probably lost no momentum then and probably won't now.
imo, this is a calculated move with immense upside that was beautifully executed.
i think you'll still stax of user value added through this via integration of your flickr data with the rest of your your y! data. I'd imagine that a deep y!answers and deli.cio.us integration to flickr would add value to all 3 services for example.

Interesting that these are all cash-for-media sites -- media wants to be free -- I don't expect any of these to make many members rich other than those that are just ad-serving engines like revver -- and even then, success is more dependent on your publishing prowess than your creative talent.

The most productive online community in terms of cash-paid-to-members is still e-bay. In the monetization of communities, media is not where the big $'s are. On the topic of weird social networks that are paying dollars though, there's probably nothing more ballsy than weblo.com.

I'd also like to see apple blog. It's surprising that Steve doesn't - how 'bout a video-blog? c-mon?

To their credit, apple hosts one of the most lively and useful converstions on the web: got to discussions.apple.com --> their forums, by product are well used and content-rich.

Henrik reminds me that I should have disclosed --> I am a (lazy) contributor to iStockPhoto and have also purchased image licenses with my profits there.

That reminds me --> the primary reason I recommend iStockPhoto to photographers is that it's the site that is most likely to help improve your talent. On iStockPhoto, every single picture I upload gets critiqued by professionals - their feedback is sometimes brutal but my accepted rate has improved dramatically since I started listening to them.

Free photo communities will never compete for the same consumer as microstock websites --> buyers of stock images need garuanteed unambiguous commercial licenses and they need very targeted search capabilitiies where free sites don't actively enforce copyright and benefit more from browse than search.

So, iStockPhoto doesn't need to worry about ZOOMR but likewise, I don't think Getty's going to get into photo hosting and "interestingness".

iStockPhoto, which was acquired earlier this year by Getty, already addresses your criticisms of Getty, Robert. As far as I know, iStock preceeded both Flickr and Zoomr -- and could teach both companies a lot about actually monetizing their great graphic content.

Getty has to still play to their traditional media customers but with time, I suspect you'll see the bulk of their business organically move to the iStockPhoto brand.

Last point on this is that photographers typically specialize. Those that specialize in Stock should probably stick with Getty, but those that specialize in events / sports etc. should absolutely use tools and networks like Flickr to promote their work.

ah - ads ;-)

This is a actually a content product that might not be able to employ ads - or if they do, it'll severely limit the number of publishers who'd use them. I haven't seen advertising and images combined (well) yet. Google images is useful - but do you think it makes money?

They will have to facilitate stores for photogs - that's a good idea, Pete - a smart way to do it may be to let the publishers not only have a role in marketing but also in merchandising - mashup style i.e. I offer the images on t-shirts - but you sell posters on your blog.

May be one to watch - not having the advertising option could force innovation - either way, this will be one that proves that even web 2 companies need a business plan - - or a gymae acquisition.

PlinkMe would be the perfect product if it weren’t for one thing:

ummm ... how about revenue?

That's actually a good idea - the blogosphere is a platform, just like myspace is - it's surprising you don't see more companies building on that. Interesting find, tx Pete.

Pete, I gotta call B/S on this post. What is your problem with advertising (far right sidebar = excluded, of course)?

Any time you provide new tangible value to users for free, advertising will be accepted by them - or at least ignored - but no-one's going to leave facebook because of this.

For the "faces" that "get" the feeds, there is huge value in their existence. Rolling them out without controls was a mistake but that doesn't mean the feeds don't have (massive) utility. Feed users now save a bunch of time and view a fraction of the ads they would have had to to stay equally informed. Every other feed post could be an ad, and users would still see fewer ads by using feeds than by checking the site.

Feed-based advertising is nothing new; feedburner's been doing it for ages. It actually accomodates better content distribution because publishers are garuanteed revenues even when content is syndicated on 3rd party sites - not that Facebook should go there.

The only time a community looses users is when it takes away their control or launches features that they can't control - that is not happening here. If you don't like the feed-ads, don't use the feeds - all that info is on the site - something tells me, the average user will choose the feeds with the ads.

OK - it was about myspace (really, really need that sleep). If I post again, ignore me!

dude, where did I get myspace from? Universal are sueing the wrong company -- and I need some sleep -- stories on mashable are all blending for me. thanks pete for dishing up the goods -- as always.

Oooohh -- this is gonna' hurt myspace and for very good reason.

Probably the most damning evidence is that Myspace's head of PR recently made the analogy that myspace music is like the music you hear in a store -- she stupidly made that comment in defense of not paying royalties -- totally neglecting the fact that stores & malls do indeed pay to play the music you hear. Right there is the confession of guilt -- we don't even need to hear the verdict on this one -- myspace will pay.

It's actually astounding that the labels have let it go on this long -- which may be the myspace's only defense, but bottom-line, they're screwed here -- cheats never prosper.

Nice - very nice. I hadn't thought about it before, but this type of thing could be the ideal strategy for taking content from a free-for-all posting scenario (flickr) and bubble it up to be monetized as microstock (istockphoto).
That's a viable web2 business model you can take to the bank.