Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 28th April 2009
4 COMMENTS 
Giovanni,
WWW megastar Robert Scoble has reached such popularity that he’s become a blogger who doesn’t need to ask anything of their blog design – irrespective of the fact that he’s been known to slate startups for their poor site designs(!)
As simple as a paleochristian architect reinventing roman epic temples and palaces, Scoble seems to have given up even to a standard Wordpress blog template, to better contemplate the truth(s) of the social web.
With the only support of the Sandbox theme, Robert is bravely standing up against herds of commenters, simply asking for a font different from Times New Roman:
“I wanted to see if it would have a major impact on traffic. It did not. [..] I wanted to see who would complain and who would praise it. Some complained that it was too unprofessional. Others complained it?s hard to read on high resolution monitors (the text goes all the way across the browser)”.
To tell the truth, I’m finding the approach rather innovative; focus on content and let the social networking sites do the rest. Maybe, for blogs, the widgets and clutter era has really begun to fade away. Whilst we realise Scoble’s just ‘in between’ site designs and is likely to soon return to ads and perfectly implemented sidebars, it’s interesting to consider the days of widgets and clutter gradually fading away.
And by the way, Robert, please don’t let them turn Times New Roman the new Comic Sans.
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 31st March 2009
10 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Tumblr, the tumblelogs platform, have released a neat little Question and Answers facility.
Simply end your post title with a “?” and instead of comments, people can leave you answers to your question. It’s uncertain whether the feature will lead to a section of the site devoted to it. What’s more likely is that someone thought it would be a bit of fun to try out and they’ll see how things go from there! :)
Whilst I still can’t convince myself to commit to Tumblr, mainly because of the awful search rankings for most tumblr blogs (try finding the official Tumblr blog via Google)..it’s definitely a neat little feature all the same.
via Kristian Salonen in the Apps room on Friendfeed.
Written on 24th March 2009
3 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
A self hosted blog can bring great control and customization options, however for many of us, it also brings hassle. Thankfully there are plenty of hosted options out there that make launching, writing and managing a blog, a piece of cake.
RoyalPingdom monitored all major blogging platforms for a 4 month period, aiming to discover the most reliable – in terms of uptime – services out there.
The services were tested over the last four months and each services homepage was checked every minute from two different locations. They were judged to be ‘down’ whenever the site wouldn’t load within 30 seconds or returned an error code.
In all fairness, the uptime for most of the services is impressive, particularly with the most popular blogging services backed by major players; Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress. The two most notable downtimes were 13h 50m and 1d 12h from LiveJournal and Blog.com respectively.
Blog.com had a particularly January period which account for the considerably poor downtime.
As RoyalPingdom point out, it’s interesting to note that both TypePad and Vox.com, share considerably different uptime figures despite being owned by the same company, SixApart.
It’s worthwhile noting that the survey monitored just the homepages of each service rather than every individual blog hosted by it. However, we can safely assume if the homepage is down, the rest of the site is likely to be too.
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 6th February 2009
3 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Founders from Left to Right: Chris Price (remains), Katie Lee, Ashley Norris
Shiny Media, the UK’s answer to Gawker Media, has taken a severe knock today with the loss of a number of staff and their second co-founder Katie Lee.
Mike Butcher at Techcrunch UK received an email notifying him of the news which I have republished below.
August of last year so the loss of the first co-founder Ashley Norris who wrote a highly controversial discussion piece on TCUK, essentially highlighting the reasons why (he felt) blog publishing/networks ‘failed’ in the UK – well worth a read.
Moving Shiny forward
You don’t need me to tell you that that we are in the midst of some very tough times and sadly they affect new media networks like Shiny too.
We have held on as long as we could without restructuring the business but we now have to make those changes to secure the long-term stability of Shiny.
It is with huge regret that we are having to part company with several members of our team. They are very talented and extremely likable individuals, however ultimately in the current climate we are faced with no choice but to let them go.
We also announce today the departure of our editorial director and co-founder Katie Lee from Shiny. Katie played a massive role in developing Shiny and in particular several of its hero blogs. She has now decided that the time is right to leave the business. She does however remain a significant shareholder in Shiny and we are very grateful for all she has done over the years.
Shiny is a British new media success story. We have built a stable of great media brands that between them attract over three million readers each month. Times maybe tough now, but we are confident that this move, though painful in the short term, will leave us well placed to thrive and prosper in the future.
Shaftesbury Ave
London
www.shinymedia.com
Picture Credit – Guardian
Written on 8th January 2009
0 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Bloggers VS Journalist. It is a popular discussion during Internet Conferences.
Old media VS New Media? Who is right? Who is wrong and who has a future left?
Fact is that newspaper audiences are declining and so is advertising revenue.
Which brings us to Superman. Do you think his blogpost will make it to the Digg front page?
Written on 8th January 2009
6 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Now on first glance, you may wonder what exactly is so exciting about “post by moderation”?? Surely this is something which should have been integrated from the beginning. Well, this is why it’s exciting – the feature is for “group blogs”. Still confused? Let me explain…
Posterous is a blogging platform just like wordpress, typepad and others. How it distinguishes itself is that it focuses primarily on blogging via email and therefore making the process much simpler to use and open to anyone who knows how to send an email, Grandma.
Last month, the startup launched “group blogs” which allow for numerous editors to edit/post to the same blog. With this new update, a blog such as Posterous Recipes for example can hand out an email address, people can send in their recipes and simply moderate the various recipe posts they receive. It really couldn’t be much simpler and with the right idea, you could potentially have a great site with contributions from tens, hundreds or even thousands worldwide. I am curious as to how they’re protecting users from floods of spammers but it is curiosity rather than a possible flaw, these guys know what they’re doing.
If you haven’t at least tried Posterous out yet, you need to. Posting via email has never felt so good.
Written on 24th December 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When you’re blogging every damn day of the week, Wordpress becomes your main living environment. Thus a little disclosure would be correct. If you feel my reports about Wordpress are a little bit over the top (maybe ecstatic), it’s only because I spent too much time working with it. Now that we’ve got that out of our way: let’s talk about Wordpress 2.8.
In an article on the official Wordpress blog, Jane “working on experience stuff” Wells writes that after 600,000 Wordpress 2.7 downloads, it’s about time to work on Wordpress 2.8. Screw Christmas, let’s prioritize. That’s basically her message.
Instead of chewing away turkey, you better complete the Wordpress 2.8 survey before noon on December 31, 2008 UTC. In this long list, you can rate which new possible feature you’d like the best. Do you prefer an “Embedded theme browser/installer” or will a “Threaded view in comments admin for replies” improve your work flow? Cast your votes at Polldaddy’s.
Oh and you know what? The best thing of the story is that you don’t have to manually upgrade Wordpress anymore. Just hit an ok button, and 2.8 will be yours.
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 
