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Socialmedian: Personalize Your News Filter

Clipped from www.readwriteweb.com:
social news network Socialmedian is now open and available in a public beta
The foundation of Socialmedian is its user created ‘news networks
Users can add links to these networks, but Socialmedian also automatically suggests stories based on keywords users can add when creating a new network
This is a very smart idea, as it allows even small networks to have a constant stream of updated news
To share items on the site, users can either use a bookmarklet or ‘clip’ any story already on Socialmedian and share it on another network
Users can, for example, vote on the ranking of the keywords and sources that are used to seed the networks
its personalized networks and extensive social networking features set it apart from most of its competitors
Socialmedian is a very nicely designed social news network with a feature set far too extensive to cover in this short post
almost everything on the site feels very well thought out
 

Dave Grossman says:

Heads up on this new entry in the social news space. Not necessarily a direct competitor, but their positioning overlaps - and if they are working on an enterprise plan than we could run into them down the line. From the tech side, they have a bookmarklet and use the “clip” terminology. Also, i like that they serve up related content based on key words input when a user sets up a new network…simple, but effective.

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Posted by Dave Grossman  1 year ago

Why Google hasn’t bought Digg

Clipped from www.alleyinsider.com:

howard-cash.jpgThe price is wrong.

Digg is truly the most useless of the big Web 2.0 sites. It won’t make you money and it can’t make money. Its early investors and founder will make money, and if they pull off a sale, management and the founders will have done their job.

The latest rumor is Google buying Digg for $200 million. That would imply that Google (GOOG) needs traffic from the lunatic fringe. They don’t.

So far, the media companies have not liked what they see, be it price and/or opportunity. No surprise to me.

 
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Posted by Mike Baumwoll  1 year ago

“Web slices” in IE8?

Clipped from news.cnet.com:

Microsoft also said that the first beta of the browser, intended for developers, will be available after today’s keynote.

One of the new features, WebSlices, allow users to break a Web site into parts and only get updates from the part they want.

In IE 8 users can subscribe to parts of Web page,” Hachamovitch said. He showed an example in IE 8 where users can use Web slices to subscribe to a single eBay auction.

Apple has its own Web-clipping subscription method that is part of Mac OS X.

 

Eric Skiff says:

Interesting - we should probably take a look at this beta and understand how this relates to our current technology and the old amplify.

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Posted by Eric Skiff  1 year ago

Great Review of Clipmarks for Firefox

Clipped from www.fmtech.co.za:
So, as promised last week, I’d like to list some of what I regard as the best Firefox add-ons
there are thousands of extensions and themes available and so this is a highly selective list

Here are my must-have Firefox additions:

* Clipmarks: A handy extension for people who need to capture information from the Web. It lets you capture exactly what you want others to see (text, images of video). Clips are saved on clipmarks.com and can be easily syndicated to Twitter, Facebook and other sites and they are available from any computer with an Internet connection.

 

Dave Grossman says:

Nice write up from a South African Tech blog akin to Techcrunch. Check out the story for the full list of recommended companies’ extensions

Lets see if we get a spike from S. Africa

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Posted by Dave Grossman  1 year ago

Google’s wikipedia…Adsense as incentive

Clipped from www.techcrunch.com:
Today Google has launched Knol, its Wikipedia alternative that holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each article is created by a team of authors who receive attribution, and are allowed to take part in a rev-share for AdSense ads on their page. Other users can submit changes, but they have to be approved by the article’s original authors before they go live on the site (it’s basically a moderated Wikipedia).
The big news here is that by assigning ownership and allowing authors to include AdSense ads on their articles, Google is effectively offering a monetary incentive to create good content.
Wikipedia works well because it’s almost like a charitable organization. Everyone contributes what they can in the hopes of furthering the world’s knowledge. Knol’s community will likely be far more concerned with earning money than the general welfare, which may hurt both its credibility and the amount of participation it sees from the community.

Mike Baumwoll says:

Adsense could serve as incentive for an even higher quality of clipping. Not to mention a source of cash for those clippers who might be getting tired of clipping. Clip. Learn. Make some cash.
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Posted by Mike Baumwoll  1 year ago

Digg close to deal with NYT or Wash Post

Digg, a popular news site where readers rank stories, was the subject of renewed takeover rumors on Wednesday, as the Valleywag blog, citing anonymous sources, said a “major media player” was close to acquiring it for $300 million to $400 million.
The report said that neither Microsoft, Yahoo nor Google were in the running for the site, which recently signed a $100 million advertising deal with Microsoft.
Valleywag cited The New York Times Company and the Washington Post Company as possible suitors.

CNET News.com noted that social news and bookmarking sites have indeed proven to be hotter buys for media companies rather than technology companies, with Conde Nast’s acquisition of Reddit a year ago and Forbes‘ very recent purchase of Clipmarks.

 

Dave Grossman says:

Surprised to see NYT in the mix…those two seem like strange bedfellows.

Clipmarks mentioned in last paragraph.

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Posted by Dave Grossman  1 year ago

Google interested in social search

Clipped from venturebeat.com:
Google has been quite interested in “social search” for months — broadly defined as the use of social data like you and your friends preferences, to help determine search results. It has more recently been experimenting with letting its search users vote on the quality of rankings, similar to how Digg users vote on stories. Just maybe, Digg could teach Google something about social search.
 

Eric Goldstein says:

This is an important perspective as we consider how to position Clogs - certainly one component of a Clog is that you and a group of people are jointly creating your own search engine with just the content and sources you choose to add.

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Posted by Eric Goldstein  1 year ago

Facebook launches new design: targets Clipmarks



Clipped from news.cnet.com:


One of the ideas behind the redesign is to make the site more compatible with micro-blogging–adding snippets of text, images, or video clips.






Wow, Zuckerbook sounds like he’s going after Clipmarks.com

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Posted by Dave Grossman  1 year ago

The “Techcrunch Crowd” might not be our Early Adopters

Techcrunch and related blogs reach an audience of early adopters, but these may not be the earlier adopters that you want. After all, what’s the point of launching a music startup on Techcrunch, for example, if your startup is primarily for the teen mass market?

And thus as a corollary, if your market is moms, there are cool moms that are likely to try out the new technology. And if your market is Asian immigrants, there are cool members of that group who are trying out new technology

In 99% of all cases, the Techcrunch early adopter crowd is probably NOT the ideal early adopter crowd to go after - your target market lives somewhere else

The exceptions I’ll make to this are B2B tech startups like Gnip, or companies primarily trying to target VCs in their announcements.

 

Neat insight from Andrew Chen….

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Posted by Dave Grossman  1 year ago

Fred Wilson on launching a prod/service for free

Clipped from avc.blogs.com:
When Seth Godin released his first marketing book, Permission Marketing, he gave away the first four chapters for free via pdf to over 150,000 people. It generated a lot of buzz about the book and was a big factor in the book’s success when it eventually became available in hardback.
when he followed up with Unleashing The Ideavirus, he went one step further. He gave away the entire book for free in pdf
over 2mm copies were given away
And yet when the book was published in hardback it went to #5 on Amazon
It was a demonstration of the very tactics Seth was evangelizing in the Ideavirus book
by giving away your product early to your greatest fans who will do more work and put up with a less than optimal experience, you prime the pump for the mass market
because your early fans will spread the ideavirus and market the book for you
 

Dave Grossman says:

Fred has offered up Seth Godin’s books as an example of how giving away your product at launch may work better despite being counter intuitive to most people. This was just a piece of an article that considers whether or not first mover app builders have an advantage within the new iPhone App store economy. This example stood out to me but the whole article is worth the read.

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Posted by Dave Grossman  1 year ago