Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 24th April 2009
15 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Andrew Keen says that blogs are dead.
Matt Mullenweg says that blogging is only getting bigger.
Of course, they are both wrong.
The ways to promote yourself online are increasing every year. Once upon a time all we had was homepages with hard to remember urls at free hosting services which plastered our pages with bright and animated ads. We used the Blink tag, lots of animated gifs and some text. The most used sentence, no doubt, was “Under Construction”.
After that we evolved and started blogging. No more blinking eyecandy but nicely designed Themes with lots of useful widgets in the sidebar. And Google ads so we could earn some money. We wrote 2 posts a day in the first week, 1 posts a day in the second week then 1 post in the next month and then we simply stopped.
Now we have Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace pofiles, a personal and business blog, Delicious and StumbleUpOn tagged links collections and a Twitter and Flickr account.
I remember when I blogged a lot on my personal blog I used to start with a simple idea (one that would probably fit in 140 characters) and sit down to write a blog post about it. I wrote an introduction, 3 examples and a conclusion. Then I added an illustration, some tags and a few hyperlinks and published. That generally took an hour.
Now I just tweet the simple idea I started out with and I’m done.
So, are blogs dead? No, of course not. Blogs are maturing and starting to follow basic economic principles where wealth (visitors, readers, audience) is unequally distributed. In the year 2000 the richest 1% of adults alone own 40% of global assets. That is how wealth is distributed in our world. When blogging started to hype the general idea was that everybody could make money from his or her blog and have an audience. Wealth (our readers) would be equally distributed.
In reality it turns out that most blogs have no more than 10 followers a month. In terms of audience these are the worlds poor. The bottom 50% of the world owns barely 1% of global wealth. Blogs are no exception to this unfortunate fact. We were hoping that the Lorenz Curve (the 80/20 rule) wouldn’t apply to blogging.
We now know it does.
On Twitter or Facebook these numbers work differently. If you have a Twitter accunt with 100 followers you might be perfectly happy with that. There is no need to make money on Twitter or get a huge following. A few interested listeners can make the whole experience worthwhile.
All of this leads to a huge shift from blogging to Twitter. Or to Microblogging in general. Matt Mullenweg told the audience at The Next Web Conference that in his experience blogging was actually growing. What he probably meant is that the top bloggers are receiving more visitors because Twitter and Facebook make sharing links easier.
I have no doubt however that a lot of people who would have started a blog 2 years ago are now building their profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook or simply sticking to Twitter.
Anyone who says that blogging is dead has little or no sense of history. New technologies never ‘kill’ their predecessors. Television didn’t kill Radio and the Internet didn’t kill the Television. They all get a share of our attention and find their own audiences.
Blogs are dead?
No, The rumors of bloggings death have been greatly exaggerated…
Written on 2nd April 2009
3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
We are proud to announce another keynote speaker for The Next Web Conference: Jeff Jarvis
Jeff is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism and consulting editor of Daylife, a news startup. He writes a new media column for The Guardian and consults for media companies.
Jeff is also one of the internet’s A-list bloggers. His blog, BuzzMachine, is part of the top 1000 most popular blogs in the world at number 558.
Jeff recently published ‘What Would Google Do‘. As Jeff describes:
“I try to reverse-engineer the success of the fastest growing company in the history of the world, the one company that truly understands how to succeed in the internet age, and then take those lessons and apply them to a number of industries, companies, and institutions, from carmakers to restaurants to universities to government.”
Yesterday Jeff published this PowerPoint version of his book. Browse through it for an idea of what it is about but make sure to visit us at The Next Web Conference 2009 so you can experience his talk live.
We previously had Nova Spivack scheduled to speak again during this years conference. Unfortunately he had to drop out at the last moment. Luckily we were able to replace him with Jeff!
Written on 9th February 2009
10 COMMENTS
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
With so much information on the internet today and the content continuously growing, it can be very difficult to discover an online media site where your voice can be heard. Uncovering a place where you can make a difference and have an influence is even more difficult. A new Israeli start-up, BloggersBase.com hopes to fill that void. This unique blogging platform is an online citizen journalism magazine that is powered by its readers. Here, readers and bloggers alike can discover top quality content while simultaneously influencing the magazine.
BloggersBase.com is a competition-based content discovery platform where bloggers submit content on a variety of topics, and based on readers’ ratings, the highest quality content is discovered and featured on the site. The magazine consists of multi-authored blogs, each on a different subject. There are four main topics categories: Entertainment, Technology, Lifestyle and World Affairs, containing together ten different blogs. Based on reader ratings and responses, the highest quality content is discovered and featured on the site. The rating system is not the standard vote “up or down/yes or no” as seen on other social networks such as Digg or Mixx, but rather is on a scale of 1-10 and is based on a variety of criteria from professionalism and relevance to writing style and creativity. The more accurately you rate, the higher your influence becomes in deciding which content makes it to the main blog. This reader influence is one of the things that make BloggersBase such a unique platform.
The rating system applies to more than just the actual posts, but to the users as well. When you first register for BloggersBase, you are given a title as a reader and as a blogger. As a blogger, you begin as a Newbie and work your way up the scale to Scribe, Penman, Composer, Essayist, Columnist, Author, Wordsmith and eventually Scholar. Your rank is determined by the number of posts you have submitted, their scores, and the responses generated from these posts. As a reader, you start off as a Subscriber. In the beginning you aim to match the crowd’s opinion and as your ratings become more accurate, you gain influence and begin to move up the reader scale to Appraiser, Commentator, Reviewer, Critic, Analyst, Trend-Setter, Sage and Oracle.
Another distinctive quality about BloggersBase.com is the ongoing competition across all categories. This competition enables bloggers to take advantage of reaching their target audience while also earning the chance to receive money and maximum exposure for their blog. To be eligible for the competition, bloggers submit posts a.k.a. “Nuggets” into the “Goldmine”. At the end of each competition time slot, the top bloggers in each topic earn the opportunity to co-author the main blog for their category, resulting in added exposure and respect. In addition, the top two bloggers in each topic receive special monetary prizes and have the privilege to co-author the main blog for the following week and continue competing.
Although BloggersBase is a new platform, it seems to have great potential for becoming a reliable source for quality content which it’s bringing to the web in an exciting and different way, giving power and influence to its readers as well as exposure and prizes to its bloggers. To read some of the highest rated and most viewed posts on BloggersBase visit the links below:
Woman, Are you still touching yourself for Cancer?
Why You Should Turn to Social Media During this Economic Crisis
The Four Stages of Twitter
Inauguration: Left behind, but still Thrilled
Written on 11th September 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Google has just challenged Yahoo’s MyBlogLog in a face-to-face battle by posting a very peaceful-like announcement on the Official Google Blog:
At Blogger we’re passionate about helping communities form around blogs. To further that goal, we’ve introduced a new feature that lets you easily follow your favorite blogs and tell the world that you’re a fan. To follow a blog with the Followers’ Gadget, simply click the “Follow This Blog” link. You can show your support for the blog by following it right from your Blogger Dashboard or in Google Reader.
So as you can tell by this message, Google starts the battle in a guerrilla manner since the MyBlogLog rip-off boxes are only featured on Google Blogger blogs. Probably just to test the service for a while and preparing it for the real clash with MyBlogLog.
Not another rip-off
I think this follow box will particularly popular with beginning bloggers (like Blogger.com bloggers). The ones who are more experienced have their MyBlogLog tracking script running and aren’t waiting for yet another “connect to your friends”-tool.
Google’s secret weapon
But.., Google has one secret weapon, a deadly feature that might after all wipe out MyBlogLog: the address book. Calender, Reader, Gmail, and Docs all revolve around this feature. That’s what gives the Google tools structure. The address book is the glue that keeps them all together. No, it’s even better. It’s the DNA of Google’s web apps collection. Whether you want to share a Google Doc, invite somebody for an appointment or tip a good article from a feed, all your contacts are easily available for your sharing-needs. And now, your blog friends are included.
Written on 30th May 2008
2 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Patrick and me are currently waiting for our morning flight to Greece. We are attending Greek Blogger Camp 2008 at the island Los. We will be staying at the fabulous Ios Palace hotel on the golden sand beaches of Mylopotas. The hotel offers free Wi-Fi in the conference area and next to the pool.
No, we are not complaining!
I’m not just attending the conference to blog about it. I am also one of the international speakers there next to Timothy Ferris (”productivity guru” and author of The 4-Hour Workweek) and Matt Mullenweg (founding developer of WordPress and founder of Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet.), to name a few. I’m very proud to be mentioned in the same sentence as those two guys.
We will blog about the conference here (Tagged: gbc08) and we will post photos to Flickr (Tagged: gbc08) regularly too.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
