DISQUS

Audrey,
When marketing utilizes blogging to its fullest, you can get so much more:
* Bloggers are able to write content beforehand (a week or two before an important press release or product launch)
* More people get involved, bringing in more insights and world views into the process
* You can cover more ground than you can with bloggers, who are all doing it as part time job anyway

As for quantifying this - I guess we will be able to do that a year from now :-)

Dave,
You are correct with your statement, but the blogs are less targeted at SEO of our website or web presence.
Another issue we had is that our corporate website is based on different platforms/architectures/operating systems/technology - you name it. We wanted independence in our blogs to go wild and free, which is costing us in traffic, though I don't believe it matters in the long run.
Tsahi

As much as I read that Thesis is the best thing ever, and a lot of blogs using it look good; I still must say I liked your previous theme better from a visual point of view.
It might just be the fact that I am used to the previous one more...

The problem I see is that they are not fixing open issues in the speed required.
I have lost over a week now waiting to see a fix to MyBrand redirection, while they haven't even acknowledged the problem exists.
Their discussion group is full of complaints, but no answers - not even "we know, we're working on it".
Yes. It is a free service. But I have some serious thoughts on leaving it altogether and go it alone.

The problem I see is that they are not fixing open issues in the speed required.
I have lost over a week now waiting to see a fix to MyBrand redirection, while they haven't even acknowledged the problem exists.
Their discussion group is full of complaints, but no answers - not even "we know, we're working on it".
Yes. It is a free service. But I have some serious thoughts on leaving it altogether and go it alone.

Good luck!
I might take that plunge if it goes well for you :-)

Instant on is killer for me.
Just coming up of hibernation takes about half a minute at best.
I reboot about once a week because otherwise my laptop becomes to sluggish for me, and then the ordeal takes a few minutes until you can start reading emails (too much applications need to start on boot time).
Give me instant on, but don't sacrifice the OS's features for that.

Luda,
It would be very interesting to add to this comparison Google's G1 phone. It should be allow multitasking as well I think.
Tsahi

You definitely need kids. They will reduce the amount of movies you can see and write your reviews about, and will make me less jealous of the fact you have the time to go watch movies.

I must agree with Guy on this one.
Especially if you look at UGC that is not video-centric.
Flickr which does photo sharing builds upon pro accounts to its site, while they could try monetizing through advertising.
Stackoverflow.com does a kind of a forum based developers Q&A. They monetize through very limited advertising. While it probably doesn't bring much money it also doesn't cost a lot to host (text only).

Hi Luca,

Extensions are sticky for power users. Firefox currently has a large market share because power users have pitched it to their friends. I took the step of brutally installing it for people who used IE :-)
So if power users stay with Firefox, the masses probably won't go for Chrome.
If Google comes up with a way to write extensions, and developers flock to write them, then they will probably win the market.

That said, a lot think Chrome is focusing on embedded with the list of features they have introduced. If this is the case, then extensions is not on their minds. Only time will tell.

A few interesting days here and around the net because of you.
I sent this one to our marcom to see what to do with our own website, which is due for an overhaul.
I think most people didn't understand your rants - the fact that the companies have good products and demos doesn't mean that they can neglect their website. Totally agree with you on this one.

Downloadable applications can't succeed on their own - I had to explain this numerous times to our sales guys, without too much success. It bugged me so much that I ended up writing a post about it. But now that the iPhone 3G is out there, with an AppStore with too much hype, I just might need to refresh our sales team's memories.
That said, I think that the "mobile web" will become commonplace only in 2-3 years from now. The iPhone has shown that you can browse the net - only thing missing now is reasonable data plans by most of the world's operators and enough WiFi access points (and phones to use them with a roaming service) and better HSDPA coverage.

For an editor, check out Ekto.



While you're at it, there are other tools out there for Mac bloggers.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/17/essential-mac-os-x-applications-for-bloggers/

Aswath - I don't see a system where I need to assign a specific "Availability status" for each group as a usable system.

An effective and useful presence system should provide the following aspects in my view:

1. Being able to report presence on different networks

2. Being able to understand the different types of contacts I have

3. Being able to report different status for different contacts by knowing my behavior as a person



The third one is an important aspect. As long as I have to decide what is my status for each group - this will be unusable as the granularity of the system won't work.

The system need to learn my likes and dislikes and the way I treat my contacts in different situations and act upon it.

For the sole reason that most of the manual work there was done by others who don't share this cake, it is evil.

I think I agree with you regarding the current situation of both of these networks, but I think Facebook will win here due to the sheer amount of users joining in and the flexibility and openness to provides.

LinkedIn has stated they will provide APIs, but it might just be too late for them to win over Facebook as a phenomenon.

I still don't have many friends on Facebook, so I am not willing to switch my LinkedIn account for Facebook just yet though.