The Community Engine Blog: Business Archives

Relearning Less Is More for the 100th Time

Bottom line, least common denominator messages demonstrate you know something to a wider group of people than the specialist stuff you probably like best.

Measuring your site visitors is eye-opening. For instance, you find the site you are empassioned about is pulling in 40 visitors per day, 56% of those from search. Hmmm, could this be a full time activity? Well, not at those levels. But as Darren Rowse points out, maybe the better lessons come from looking at what makes people suddenly start to come visit you.

Recently, we began to start releasing some of our podcast videos from MuscleVentures onto the popular service, youtube as well as google video. By far our biggest hits are coming from footage of a bodybuilding show. Why? Well, I suspect it is a least common denominator effect. People can look at it and appreciate it without really having to have any particular, arcane knowledge or exerting much effort to understand.

You might be tempted to recoil at that, but in almost all activities, only a few people have time to become experts. If you want to make money in your area of expertise, you have to find ways to immediately make people see the value of what you are doing without having to think a lot.

Bud posted this on May 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Search and video

Media search seems wide open for anyone with even mediocre search optimization skills. maybe people who produce media just don't like to write metadata.

Back last August, I wrote about our business blogging bootcamp and the various techniques we used to gain search visibility for local searches. I've done two bootcamps since, and those basic lessons still hold. In later bootcamps, we stressed community development and building networks of sites based on students' interests. About that time, I developed a personal blog about fitness.

One thing I noticed in that exercise was that when I posted video clips, those posts would immediately gain more visibility for relevant search terms. Well, if that wasn't proof enough that video was hot, services like youtube and google video kept on popping up, with Om Malik reporting on constant venture money coming into the category

These services are like little walled communities unto themselves. That changes the dynamics of search a bit. If you just follow the basics of metadata and target areas that are less well covered, you win bigger right away with good search rankings on terms like bodybuilding that are maxed out by optimizers in the regular index. Further, with Google Video, these rankings seem to translate into better search placement in the overall index.

For instance, click on this search for my training partner Nancy Arnold. As of today, this google video and this second google video occupy positions 14 and 15 with 469 and 250 views each in addition to being linked from our video blog.

The key lesson here is that the space is wide open for anyone with even mediocre search optimization skills. Maybe people who produce media just don't like to write metadata. Metadata in these video services doesn't come for free like it does with regular blogging.

Bud posted this on May 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A podcast community

We've started a podcasting site, Muscle Ventures. The local community seems to be working. Let's see what we can do for the distributed Internet community.

For some time, I've been wanting to create a video podcast site and see if I could get a community going around it. Based on things I've learned from blogging bootcamps and dealing with consulting clients, I'm convinced most successful communities have to have some real world basis. It's not that purely online communities cannot thrive, it's just that they tend to be composed of true topic devotees who are also facile with computers and use them as a principal means of accessing information. That tends to limit the possibilities of what can work.

By the way, by community, I don't just mean site visitors but rather people who are aware of each other and care what each other is doing. So, I'm not just talking about pulling in readers with adwords and getting them to convert.

So, what we have done is put together a site called Muscle Ventures. It offers text content, exercise analysis videos, and podcasts. The site seems to be working for the local community. We'll see what we can do for the Internet community. I'll be writing more on this topic as the situation evolves.

Bud posted this on May 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

In the Tail of the Long Tail

Blogging is about communicating with specific audiences. In and of itself, it is not really a commercial proposition.

In January, I wrote a note regarding the long tail, in which I said the whole notion of people writing blogs to hit it big at the scale of mass media is crap. After completing the last formal session of a recent Web 2.0 Business Bootcamp at Michigan's Ross School of Business, I think that even more (see participant blogs aggregated here). Participants created blogging projects to communicate with other, well-defined groups of people. Some of them absolutely did not want to hit it big, but all were thrilled by interaction with a previously unknown audience. In other words, the motivation seemed to be primarily social and communicative.

So, how do you make this kind of activity economically sustainable? Research shows that attempts to monetize individual content through ads and other promotion make it less credible. People wonder if they aren't being spammed, and bloggers themselves feel the pressure to conform with the advertiser's wishes. That kills the advertising revenue model. The subscription model is also probably dead since it runs counter to a small-scale blogger's desire to be heard.

The remaining revenue model is ecommerce. Believe it or not, I suspect many bloggers are missing out on affinity products. Scoble has it somewhat with his Channel 9 guy, but what he really needs is a scobleizer t-shirt. Perhaps more in line with many bloggers self-perception, the other version of this opportunity is sales of professional services and other products such as online courses. So, maybe Dave Winer is right, blogging is really just advertising for the other stuff you do. Make money using your blog to sell that.

Bud posted this on February 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)

Why can't you just produce and consume interaction streams?

I want to see the interaction going on at your site. That way, I'll know whether to give you my attention.

So, I read with interest Matt McCallister's plaint last week about how long it is taking RSS to reach the mainstream. The weird thing is that by many measures, RSS is mainstream but just not widely recognized as such. After all, 31% of the online population use it, it's just that 90% of this group don't know they are doing it.

Given the gnarly technical nature of RSS, Matt wonders, rightly I think, what the sales pitch is to the average user. Why is it useful? Well, it's clear that the idea of being able to subscribe to the sites you want in your portal page is taking off. That's where the 31% comes from. But, it could be better. Instead of treating blogs and other small publishers as junior content producers for aggregation by the monetizing big boys, why not make it just as easy to subscribe to a small site's stream of interaction. I get the site-owner's data as well as the site's stream of comments and trackbacks. That's really where it's at for many small sites I deal with.

Sixapart and Blogger, two of the biggest blog providers could easily provide these streams. Their SPAM controls are adequate that the signal-to-noise ratio on interaction streams should be quite good. That way, as a consumer, I'm free to join community as I see fit without having to visit the site every day. Portal publishers should love it because it is yet more free content. Maybe their allied community sites won't though because it breaks their ownership of the community space.

Bud posted this on February 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

live.com superior to google personal home page

Live.com wins hands-down when it comes to tracking smaller blogs.

I started off liking Google personal home page. It's neat. You can load RSS feeds and have your gmail account right there. Gmail is the best webmail client I have ever used, though Yahoo Mail Beta comes in a pretty good second.

When live.com came out, I dismissed it. Would it conform with web standards? Would it work on non-Microsoft browsers? The answer to both these questions is yes. Further, live.com performs much better with individual blogs than google.

To see this, look at the following two screen grabs.

Continue reading "live.com superior to google personal home page"

Bud posted this on January 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Small Business: The Internet Value Proposition

For most small businesses, I think the Internet is ancillary to their central economic activity. It's easy to know what to do in that case, outsource.

Ken Yarmosh, Oliver Thylmann, and I have been having a nice distributed conversation about the value of the Internet and, a bit more specifically, blogging to small businesses. Cutting directly to the chase, I think Ken's central point is that Internet visibility is important to small businesses largely because Internet search drives sales. Further, Internet communication can be much more efficient. Oliver and I have countered that learning the Internet can just be too costly in time for people scrambling to make a buck, and actually Ken's original post gives us some credence. He was describing accessing some material about the Internet and small business that he had just not had time for up till then.

Let me state for the record that I pretty much agree with what I have outlined as Ken's value proposition of the Internet for small business. The real question in my mind is how to achieve it.

Continue reading "Small Business: The Internet Value Proposition"

Bud posted this on January 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

How much Internet can small businesses digest?

A problem that most Internet cognoscente face is that they don't realize the difficulties others have in keeping up.

With limited resources, small businesses seriously need to harness the Internet. The web gives small businesses more bang for their buck. As is the point with this particular teleseminar, the Internet can provide a system to help small businesses be more efficient, productive, and strategic with their time. Definitely worth the investment.
Ken Yarmosh - TECHNOSIGHT » Small Businesses Need to Harness the Internet

At first blush, it's hard not to agree with this sentiment. But, if you deal with real small businesses where owners are time-constrained and chasing to make a buck, you start to wonder.

Continue reading "How much Internet can small businesses digest?"

Bud posted this on January 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

I quit using my feedreader for a month, but I've started again

I'm back to using a feedreader instead of just simple aggregation sites. We'll see how long that lasts.

So, I quit using NetNewswire, my main feedreader for a month. Why, well as one of the students in our current business blogging bootcamp said, “What about information overload?”

What I had taken to doing instead was setting up aggregation sites. That way, I can share the information with the world easily. Hey, just go to this or that site, grab a feed or an OPML file if you want, but you're not required to know all that stuff. Your plain old browser will pick it up fine. Those aggregation sites also tend to be focused.

What convinced me to start back up with a feedreader? John Nardini, EVP of Marketing at Denali Flavors, makers of moosetracks ice cream came to give a lecture in the bootcamp. He showed how he was tracking competitors in his reader and basically using it to manage his own information space. Well, sounds good. My information space needs cleaning out, though.

Bud posted this on January 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Blog Burnout or Burning the Other End of the Blog Candle

Ken Yarmosh helps me avoid blogging burnout by giving me something to rant about.

An issue with blogging is that it is public speech. People get to reading your blog and developing a perception of you. You feel you need to live up to that expectation. Blogging slows dramatically or stops as you attempt to stay on message. Ken Yarmosh might call this one type of bloggin burnout.

I let this blog go for a while in December at a time when I thought I might actually accelerate. As it turns out, I was actually blogging elsewhere, almost daily. Sometimes since Christmas, I have been blogging multiple times a day on a personal blog, Michigan Muscle Boy, “A michigander who sometimes feels like a god in the gym”. Hey, who's going to debate the finer points of the long tail when they can talk about feeling like a god. Not this correspondent. I was also blogging in the BIT320 Remix trying to corral the final round of student activities.

Frankly, I got tired of debating things like the long tail. I'm just not convinced they are an adequate description of what motivates people. I think I'm blogging as a part of a larger social enterprise. I'm a bit amazed that I am now keeping a personal blog, something I thought I would never do. But, it's refreshing.

I also got a little tired of blog gaming, commercial enterprises that seem to try to manipulate the blog conversation for their gain. I think commercial speech in blogging is fine, but sometimes you just want something you know is what the person really thinks. That's not always the case when it's team against team as it often is in the commercial arena.

Much in store for the new year by the way. We've got another bootcamp on the way this Saturday.

Bud posted this on January 9, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mashups are more than just using big company data

There is a real mashup business model in providing infrastructure for people to create their own ad hoc mashups. I agree that, if you are basing your business plan on a creative way to redisplay some large company's data, heaven help you.

A lot of perspectives on business opportunities for mashups are just too driven by the idea of using big company data. The real value-add in any information business is the information, hard to easily duplicate if the business is viable. So, of course, companies are not just going to give this away for you to generate revenue off of. Matthew Hurst and Greg Linden state this well:

On the other hand, the commercial examples are, as Greg points out, making offerings with no guarantees. In fact imagine the following example: data is made freely available; everyone throws in their idea; whenever a killer app emerges, the data is suddenly no longer free (I believe Alexa has been very open about this strategy). Now what do you do with your users?
There is no business model for mashups. If Web 2.0 really is just mashups, this is going to be one short revolution.
Is Web 2.0 Nothing More Than Mashups

Data Mining: Greg on Mashups

But I think this misses a larger point.

Continue reading "Mashups are more than just using big company data"

Bud posted this on December 2, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Helped develop and now have joined the Corante Network

The Community Engine played an important role in developing the new Corante hub network. In future posts, I'll be writing about the technology challenges we faced in bringing the network together. I also have some ideas for how to create bottom-up communities across network member blogs that I will share in future posts.

As Stowe Boyd mentioned yesterday, Corante has established a network of topical sites that re-aggregate content from “thought-leading” bloggers and provide editorial insight on emerging trends. I'm honored to note that this blog was chosen to be part of Corante's web hub. I'm also proud to announce that The Community Engine played a pivotal role in getting the technological infrastructure to work.

Continue reading "Helped develop and now have joined the Corante Network"

Bud posted this on November 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Is Business Ready for Social Software

To achieve its highest value, social software has to exist outside of the corporation.

Participants are: Stowe Boyd, Seth Goldstein, and Kaliya Hamlin. The central question seems to be why is business adopting social software now? Stowe Boyd thinks there is huge potential for businesses to transform themselves. My question is this: do existing institutions want to change? Or is it that new institutions will arise?

Seth Goldstein seems to think it is the API. How many people know about APIs? I don't know of any managers who are thinking about APIs. My wife who now uses social software does not know about APIs or any of the mash-ups they enable. She just likes to communicate. She also likes being able to look back on past conversations

Continue reading "Is Business Ready for Social Software"

Bud posted this on November 15, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Internet Weightlifting

Our search for good weightlifting blogs hit gold when we used Technorati's blog finder. Once we found one legitimate good blog, that blog led us to many others. In essence, we used that blogger's knowledge of what was good and bad as a guide for avoiding SPAM.

I've been working on a little project with a friend to try to figure out what legitimate weight training resources there are on the Internet. Most specifically, we are looking for weightlifting blogs and sources of practitioner knowledge.

We're doing this because weight training is a sport that is sparsely practiced, making it hard to find good information. Further, the information that is available is a mix of oral tradition and science. In such a situation, a good approach is to look for many sources of information to see what are the general practices and different people's reviews of what works and what not. Blogs would seem like a natural place to look.

Our search was instructive because it shows, even with a good knowledge of search technology, how hard it is to get to find non-spam content when information is relatively scarce and disorganized. The key seems to have been finding one good source of information and then following his links to discover a whole knowledge network.

Continue reading "Internet Weightlifting"

Bud posted this on November 5, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Ning

Ning might fill a sweet spot where non-programmer entrepreneurs can create applications for groups of people who want to interact with each other. That's the missing link in today's social software value proposition.

I've been trying out Ning, which has been written about by many people. Ning is essentially a platform for creating interactive web apps. Here's one of them:

Dave Winer thinks it's a product that does not do anything original. I have a slightly different view. It's a product that has some potential if it can make developing and maintaining interactive web apps so easy that non-programmer community entrepreneurs can do it.

Continue reading "Ning"

Bud posted this on October 4, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

MBA Bootcamp Changes Local Web Search Landscape

Over seventy percent of households in the U.S. use Internet search to find local products and services. We ran a bootcamp where Michigan MBAs used Web 2.0 technologies to compete with a prominent local business for searches on its targeted keywords. Bootcamp sites beat the local company in just under half of the searches and placed on the first page of search results over half the time.

From May 10 through June 23, 2005, we ran the first High Octane Blogging Bootcamp for 33 MBAs at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Our client for the bootcamp, Coach's, served the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan market for disaster cleaning and restoration services. Recent surveys indicate that over seventy percent of households search the web when shopping locally for services such as Coach's. We wanted the bootcamp to demonstrate how Web 2.0 technologies like weblogs and RSS could help better establish a company's search presence to take advantage of this channel. To really push the idea, we informally set a goal that bootcamp participants' team weblogs outperform Coach's site on searches for its own keywords.

Continue reading "MBA Bootcamp Changes Local Web Search Landscape"

Bud posted this on August 11, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)

Innovating for Value in Blog Search

Innovation in blog search will be more and more driven by the extent to which it can be used for business intelligence. Three players, bloglines, technorati, and blogpulse have all made important advances in this regard. Rests to see whether they can capitalize on them.

In response to my post about blog search imitation on Wednesday, Marc-Olivier Peyer of pointblog has asked if we could not benefit from a little more innovation. That seems reasonable, and I'd like to frame my response in terms of where we have already seen innovation based on the revenue potential. I expect that that is where we will see more in the future.

The first thing I note is that blog search engines exist because blogs are different from traditional web pages. Blogs are increasing at a faster rate than the rest of the web. Blogs, with an average update frequency of once every 10 days, are updated more frequently than the rest of the web. Blogs, with an average of 100 outbound links, have more outbound links per site than the rest of the web.

As a result of these differences, the value of blog search engine's indexes is closely tied to timeliness and the ability to represent linking relationships in addition to the traditional elements of coverage and relevance. Businesses in search of market intelligence seem the most easily monetized market for this kind of data. Businesses are typically aware of the need for market intelligence, and they are willing to pay when they perceive significant opportunity. By contrast, monetizing blog readers through contextual ads does not offer significant revenue potential.

Continue reading "Innovating for Value in Blog Search"

Bud posted this on July 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Imitation is the surest sign of success

I disagree with Jason Calacanis. IceRocket's adoption of tagging using a format invented by technorati indicates that technorati is achieving wide marketplace acceptance. By my estimates over a million bloggers are using the technorati format.

Today, Jason Calacanis wrote about how icerocket, a blog search engine, had added tagging support. Jason's remarks were, typically for him lately, riding technorati a bit.

But it's how IceRocket supports tags that's the real kicker. They're using the reltag microformat invented by Tantek Çelik, Kevin Marks, and Derek Powazek of technorati as explained on this IceRocket help page.

Continue reading "Imitation is the surest sign of success"

Bud posted this on July 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Work Overload

I've been busy, keeping me away from blogging.

I've been away from blogging because I have been caught up in other things. I'll be back to posting more regularly. Let me list a few of the things I have been up to:

I attended both Vertical Leap and Where 2.0 in the Bay Area.
We're getting another High Octane Blogging Bootcamp up and started.
I got xFolk moved onto microformats.org where it seems to be getting a lot of attention.
Various consulting engagements have been keeping me busy.
I have been strategizing a microformats plug-in for reblog.

Bud posted this on July 17, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Microsoft's Virtual Earth and the remixable web

Web 2.0 hacking with things like Virtual Earth is seductive but subject to potential lock-in. What we need are open data formats that can match the speed of hacking development that will make these services more plug and play. I wonder if microformats are up to that challenge.

I'm at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 today. Microsoft has presented a neat application, Virtual Earth. It's not out yet, but you can see propaganda at the site I linked.

What's neat about this service is that they make explicit allowance for social applications. You will be able to do things like put up reviews of local businesses and integrate them with maps. I had been talking with Ryan King at technorati about this just two days ago in discussing a location microformat. I wanted to find a set of reviews for local gyms near my sister's house in San Francisco. Sure, she and her friends had ideas, but they were not tuned in to the kinds of things I look for (I am a workout addict).

Continue reading "Microsoft's Virtual Earth and the remixable web"

Bud posted this on June 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

More on Web 2.0, price discrimination, and commoditization

My continuing discussions with search industry participants at Where 2.0 about the business case for offering your data for free.

As announced at O'Reilly's Where 2.0, Google released their mapping API as did Yahoo. Microsoft is also mentioning that their Virtual Earth will be for free. I'll leave it to others to discuss the key elements of these APIs. From my perspective, the kicker is the licensing terms. For instance, Google is offering their API for free as long as people can use your mapping web application for free.

I had a chance to follow up a bit with Mark Law from Microsoft's Virtual Earth on their licensing terms. In particular, what does it mean to be non-commercial? According to him, non-commercial means you are not making money off the map data, so it sounds like Google. They plan to introduce a tiered pricing structure for access to the data for commercial use, based on volume and number of services used.

Continue reading "More on Web 2.0, price discrimination, and commoditization"

Bud posted this on June 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Is web 2.0 really just about price discrimination?

If data is a commodity, can you price discriminate even if you spent a lot of money collecting the data?

I'm listening to “What is a sustainable business model for data?” at O'Reilly's Where 2.0. The guy from Navteq has mentioned that they sell data based on use. In other words, they are trying to price discriminate. Non-commercial use is free. What is non-commercial? Maybe it means not making a lot money yet, so we won't pursue you.

Continue reading "Is web 2.0 really just about price discrimination?"

Bud posted this on June 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Copyright and the remixable web

Will remixing the web encourage people to use more liberal copyrights because the value of participating is higher than the value of retaining an exclusive lock on their data?

I'm listening to the John Battelle panel on local search at O'Reilly's Where 2.0. John Frank of Metacarta just raised the point that dhtml (aka ajax, an easy javascript technology for mixing in content into web pages from web services) enables copyright infringement, a bad thing from the perspective of the recent Supreme Court ruling on file sharing services. You're probably okay if you do not encourage stealing of copyrighted materials. I wonder if things like microformats and easy data sharing will push more and more providers into putting more liberal copyright restrictions on their work that allow for sharing.

Bud posted this on June 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Microformats provide immediate search visibility

Unlike structured blogging, microformats offer tangible business benefits that are being realized by companies today. Technorati's use of the reltag microformat to propel itself to high search visibility offers one case study.

Recently, John Battelle and Charlene Li have taken up the subject of structured blogging. The underlying issue is making publishers' data visible to specialized web aggregators. These aggregators make a business of publishing specialized content like movie reviews, typically perceiving revenues from advertising placed around the targeted content.

Most reviewers perceive the discussion so far to be largely theoretical. This perception is actually incorrect. Technorati, a blog search engine, has been making profitable use of a related but simpler technology called microformats for the past six months.

Specifically use of the reltag microformat has propelled technorati to top search results for niche terms like podcasting and “social software”. The increased search visibility translates into more traffic to technorati's pages and more exposure for their sponsored links.

Continue reading "Microformats provide immediate search visibility"

Bud posted this on June 14, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Folksonomy makes tag aggregators king of search rankings

Technorati tag aggregation pages are achieving top ten search results for significant, niche terms like podcasting, folksonomy, and blogosphere. Technorati's introduction of the seemingly obscure reltag microformat is at the root of its rise in the search rankings. Competitors seeking to duplicate technorati's results need only adapt the reltag or xFolk microformats to their own ends.

Current wisdom has it that, in web publishing, content is king. As the web has grown to upward of 11.5 billion pages, search has become the default way of navigating the web. Search engines determine a site's ranking based on indexable content, so content as seen by search engines had better be your king if you want to be found.

What current wisdom has not allowed for is the idea that folksonomy tag aggregators like technorati might form an intervening layer between content providers and search engines. There is evidence that this has started to occur in topics related to social software during the six short months since technorati began to aggregate weblog posts by tag.

Continue reading "Folksonomy makes tag aggregators king of search rankings"

Bud posted this on June 13, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

xFolk — Blogmarks really steps up to the plate

Blogmarks has provided excellent support for xFolk in their Blog Sync functionality.

I meant to post about this earlier but have been very busy with client work. Blogmarks has really stepped up to the plate with xFolk support in their newly renovated blog sync functionality. Blog sync allows you to republish in your blog the links you bookmarked that day.

Continue reading "xFolk — Blogmarks really steps up to the plate"

Bud posted this on June 12, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

de.lirio.us implements xFolk

Steve Mallett of de.lirio.us has formatted their folksonomy listing pages using xFolk. When folksonomy publishers implement xFolk as their output format, their users still have the same hassle-free bookmarking interface and gain more highly semantic markup for no cost. The more semantic the markup, the better Internet visibility.

Steve Mallett, creator of de.lirio.us, has formatted their folksonomy listing pages in xFolk:

I set up de.lirio.us to do this [publish using xFolk markup] a few minutes ago. I must say I do like this a better than the technorati tag format thing. I like technorati, but it's a bit too technorati-centric.
Conversation on tags & liberating tagged data - I did it anyway | Fooworks - 'blog of Steve Mallett

Steve's major issue was how using xFolk would affect the end user, a point raised just today by Tantek Çellik in regard to gaining acceptance for microformats.

Continue reading "de.lirio.us implements xFolk"

Bud posted this on June 5, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

An xFolk 0.4 Implementation for Blogmarks

xhtml microformats like xFolk make sharing information easier. Their greatest value is realized when they are used by large numbers of people. To that end, I am pushing for xFolk's implementation as a publishing format for several social bookmarking tools. Blogmarks is the first to respond.

As put so well by Peter Merholz among others, xFolk is:

... a markup extension to allow tags to be created anywhere, not just through systems like del.icio.us.
You’re It! » xFolk - technology for decentralized tagging

Just to be clear, the “tagging” he is talking about is when people bookmark things they find on the web under informal categories (tags). These tags can make that bookmark easier to find later and to quickly find related (similarly tagged) resources. Systems like del.icio.us enable the tagging (labeling) itself, and they let users share the tagged bookmarks among themselves. Tagging has proven to be quite popular, at least among a certain group. You might think of it as appealing to the same urge that causes people to become coin, art, or music collectors.

The point of xFolk is to make it possible to easily share your bookmarks outside of systems like del.icio.us. One important step in getting this vision to reality is to get services that enable tagging to use the xFolk format. BlogMarks.net (a social bookmarking tool originally signaled to me by Jonas Luster) has been kind enough to share template code that you can use with their blog sync feature to make xFolk formatted bookmarks from their service appear in your blog.

Continue reading "An xFolk 0.4 Implementation for Blogmarks"

Bud posted this on June 3, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

High Octane Blogging — Susie Gardner weighs in

Susie Gardner has given great, detailed, and constructive feedback to the High Octane teams. She focuses on effective communication strategies, the key to succeeding in an essentially textual enterprise.

Susie Gardner has provided s

The Community Engine

Creating Effective Information Communities

Business

How information communities and the tools used to create them can help businesses