DISQUS

Wonder if this is first step to charging twitter apps that wan't more than 20,000 requests / hour ?

Ad network Magpie was widely criticized for selling ad space via twitter tweets. I wonder if sending out affiliate links will get a similar reaction. My feeling is that doing either/both is absolutely fine since Twitter is an opt-in service. If you don't like it, opt out and unfollow!

Adam, I disagree with you about celebrity tweets being
rendered useless if Twitter implemented groups (which, to be
realistic, ain't happening any time soon, I'd think).

People would still need to build their celebrities-on-
twitter list, which would be a huge pain in the ass for
most.

Now, if Twitter created groups and *then* said, "hey, here's
a pre-packaged group of celebs if you want to sign on to
that," then I guess this site wouldn't make as much sense.

I'm really intrigued by aggregators that take social media participation seriously as it better captures the true pace of the social web. TechFuga is an interesting piece in this, I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Great round up, thanks Mike !

That's very cool! I've also been digging FiveThirtyEight.com this election season

Thanks Katrina !

Very interesting thoughts, and I'm much agreed. Traditional media companies that get hip to this way of thinking are going to find ways to survive in this brave new climate. There's a major generational shift going on, and you see journalists like Mathew Ingram reaping the benefits.

Great post Mike - really enjoyed reading bios of people we see often on friendfeed

I think that's a good way of thinking of the two Reilly, they're different kinds of "lifestream services." The great thing about both is that you have the ability to customize them to use in ways that work best for you.

Hmm... So the argument you're making if I'm reading you right is that accountability leads to less fun/creative ads? I actually believe the opposite -- if you're hitting the right people at the right place at the right time, I think there's lots of room to be fun and creative. People groan at Punch the Monkey or seeing a boring insurance ad for the millionth time, but seeing a beautiful banner for an album that you're interested in while on a fave music site... that's actually a valuable experience, "ad content" that's you (in this example) actually seek out.

Very interesting thoughts Reilly. In a very real sense the Internet is revolutionizing both content and advertising, creating unlimited means for distribution and consumption while at the same time creating means for measurement (which to be sure are still in very very early forms).

No wonder why Hollywood is scrambling to figure out what to do about it !

Well, I think it could be a game changer in terms of how high end content producers (Hollywood, TV people, etc.) think about how to break through on the Internet. And it has potential to lead out how web distributed content will be produced and consumed. I guess we'll see !

I would argue/predict that the things that poise the Kindle for mass use -- ease-of-use, relative affordability (down to $350 or so, no monthly fee, discounts on most purchases vs. print), lightning quick download speed, portability, tie-in with Amazon account, etc. -- will also add value for many college students. While the purchase price will be expensive for many -- match it against the overall cost of college texts, throw in some discount pricing... and you can make back the cost relatively quickly once the academic publishers are rounded up and books brought to digital format.

Granted, there's bias there if only to defend the prediction that Google's purchase of YouTube wouldn't pay off longterm, but I still see some solid basis to the fact that YouTube has a longterm problem in monetizing UGC video... along with every other UGC video platform out there, by the way !

That said, it should be noted that Google is in the rarified position of not necessarily basing YouTube's performance directly on revenue. They snatched the most popular video site on the Internet away from anyone else with the purchase, and now have the ability to experiment with video on the web -- including video advertising -- on the greatest scale possible.

What an amazingly powerful feature -- I think FriendFeed is just starting to scratch the surfaceof its full capabilities.


And congrats on being a new dad !

I think most web publishers understand that making money online is extremely difficult. Most do it for the enjoyment of the process, to take part in the greater online conversation, and if a couple of bucks can be made from it, all the better.

Lets remember too that ALL forms of publishing are extremely competitive. Web publishing at the least is egalitarian -- anyone can do it, which may of course lead some to have unrealistic expectations.

That's a great description / dynamic, succinctly stated, about Digg's and Reddit's transition. Will ponder some more on that topic.... cheers, EB

Agree with Lucas -- that was my first thought: $36 CPM seems awfully high. Perhaps they get it for a limited amount of inventory but can't imagine it's across -the-board.

Also agree with Mathew that Ars could be a good fit for Conde -- they're putting together a pretty interesting digital portfolio.

Great job as always Louis.

Semi-related: I've been wondering how friendfeed decides to provide users with friend-of-a-friend updates -- anyone know how that's done ?

I'm getting pretty frustrated with the outages too -- hope they get their scaling issues under control one of these days

Thanks so much for liking, posting, stopping by, and all of the above ! :-)

Thank you !

You should do a competing Louis Gray List, pulling from your monthly column ;-)

Congrats Zoli!

I share your surprise and delight in being included in the list (thanks again Richi and Ian!), and the extra bonus is that I'm able to discover great sites such as yours.

Totally see what you're saying Reilly but I think the counter-argument -- that I'm somewhat but not 100% sold on -- is that if the curated detritus is yet more detritus... is there a point to the whole operation?

That's why I completely agree that the future as I see it for the social news platform is to find niche environments and niche communities -- probably with some sort of editorial overlay.