DISQUS

Good post, but it seems like you could almost chop this into two categories:

Companies Google has acquired and all but killed (e.g. Dodgeball, GrandCentral, Jaiku)

and

Products that Google created that are floundering (e.g. Lively, Voice Search, Answers)

I'd also like to nominate Knoll for the list too!

I like the moniker 'Caterpillar Cone' best. If only I could remember which one of my tweeples called it that.

So, how is Google not 'letting' startups get any market share? Simply being the dominant player isn't the same as blocking these startups from growing.

Failure to support thesis statement. C+ work at best.

Nice follow-up on deep faith. It also reminds me of the concept of 'economy of motion' taught by Bruce Lee in Jeet Kune Do. He believed that the best approach was to use simple, effective methods as needed. It's a much more elegant approach to fighting, entrepreneurship and life.

Nice post, Ben! Well written, insightful and timely.

Thanks for a job well done, Captain Obvious.

If the Display Ad market doesn't matter, then Mashable has much bigger problems than worrying about AOL.

I'm in the same position! The touchscreen on my Pocket PC died and I can upgrade. I really want GPS, but it's actually cheaper to get the iPhone than another Windows Mobile phone and the developer community for iPhone is already cranking out location based applications.

I'm psyched for Friday!

A counter culture group using it's *money* to oppress a *lone prankster* through the court *system?* We got way too much ego and apparently too much money goin on around here.

Time to move on, people. There's nothing to see here.

Unfortunately I'm not sure that Nokia will garner much attention from the developer community, especially compared to Apple or Google. Plus making Plazes a handset specific device automatically means that many people won't use it.

You can't make the social graph proprietary. Do they think they can buy all our friends?

That's a really fantastic idea. I wonder how long it will be before you can drive down the road and see the closest listings to you automatically!

I want,I want, I want!

Even the Washington Post cited the actual press release. Is Mashable really that stingy with links that it won't cite sources?

Callwave does it too. The transcription isn't perfect, but it usually tells you what someone wants without having to listen to your voicemail which is totally sweet!

I think that location presence is the big evolution that we'll see in 2008. Hopefully Fire Eagle will provide good support for their API and a developer community will rally around it.

You can actually see my location and latest post or status on my blog or Google gadget. I like to think of it as location-based blogging.

My guess is that their optimizing for speed and centering of the logo are part of a search play.

I don't know if Starbucks needs a social network any more than Bode Miller needs to release the SkiSpace skiing social network. It's the sheer number of users that create the network effect and make a social network valuable, so niche sites are automatically shooting themselves in the foot. At least, IMHO ;-)

Great insight again Douglas. I think the same thing when I see people direct their content at a geographic region. It's like getting up in front of the entire world with a microphone and only speaking to the first row.

Blog globally, drink locally!

Ain't it purdy!? The new simplified admin interface looks really sweet.

Thanks for the correction Mikw.

Go me. Can you tell that I'm the new guy around here?

Douglas- I'm a huge twitter fan as well. It enables you to communicate in little snippets that are the essence of what you are thinking or sharing. Plus Twitter is full of savvy early-adopters and web enthusiasts. I hadn't heard about auto-follow, but it's a really cool feature! Thanks for sharing that one.

Hi Mike, I agree that FriendFeed can be an interesting way to aggregate all your social web data. The things that stuck out most for me in looking at it were information overload and considering whether all data streams are equal.

Sometimes I'll have a post on my blog and mention it on twitter, which in tun gets syndicated out onto the web. This is duplicative and would force me to post updates through twitter, but move my readers to friendfeed as to avoid information overload. The other consideration is whether a particular service or account is actually important. My digg feed may or may not actually be useful since I'm pretty active in the digging community and so all my diggs may overload the stream nor indicate much about my actual interests.

I like friendfeed's functinality and the ease of building a feed, but I'm still waiting to take the big jump!

"...since Yahoo doesn’t have a product that’s directly competing with Bebo"

You mean like Yahoo 360 or their latest foray into social networking, Yahoo Mash?

Using the AIM Libraries will expose more functionality and fields that were undocumented or undiscovered. It should make those libraries more robust.

While the Linkedin overhaul is a vast improvement, the site is still in the awkward teenager stage. The one thing that I would have to disagree with is comparing them side by side.

They are both social networking sites, but have different target audiences and purposes. Linkedin as a business networking tool actually has a more common and useful purpose than Facebook, in my humble opinion.

While I don't mind having work friends on my Facebook, I prefer to keep my business contacts in Linkedin.