Tom Altman’s Wedia Conversation

This reminds me of a talk Stowe Boyd gave at the 2007 web 2.0 expo. It was a concept called “me, mine and market” or “people, group and market” and it was basically a way for you (me/people) to ask a group of peers (mine/group) for a recommendation from a retailer (market).

example: I need a new pair of shoes, so I ask my circle of friends what kind to buy - they give me recommendations and if I use one, they get a cut.

So that brings us to Mr. Cuban’s new application.

Cuban’s approach is distinguished in one significant way: The application introduces commissions to those who display other people’s listings and help close sales. By providing even nonsellers with a chance to make money,

I think concept is solid - to me the issue is the same-ol-same-old, how do you get the ads? If Cuban can get the number of ads up - then this could be very interesting.

I’ve been out of town for a couple of days - so I’m posting this from a Caribou Coffee house. The post makes an interesting point…

My advice is instead of going to journalism school, go to school for something concrete like medicine or some kind of science or something and then use the knowledge you get in that field as a wedge to get yourself into journalism. What journalism really needs is more people who are reporting who actually know something.

Man I wish I had time to do it all - this will be a very cool place next week, SES Chicago at the search engine conference.  I really used to love working and griding on the search engine optimization when I was building and tweaking sites.

If anyone reading this is going - please send us an email update…this should be a very cool expo.

This is just cool!

“It seems a team of clockmakers broke into the Pantheon in Paris in September 2005 and spent a year fixing the historic and neglected clock, which had been abandoned by the authorities. They were prosecuted for breaking in, but have just been cleared of the charges in court. The group, “Untergunther” have a catalogue of subterranean lo-jinks to their name.”

I enjoy reading posts at Social Media Today, this one is called “How Do Community Managers Report Up?“

Bill Johnston over at OnlineCommunityReport recently released the 2007 survey results from those running communities online. Fifty respondendts commented on the average yearly spend, staffing and other statistics. You can get the report here from Bill.

From a post on 11/20/2007 from Social Media Today:

When it comes to blogging, faster is often perceived to be better. GigaOm and TechCrunch are all over the trends, covering the same announcements, often within minutes of each other. I’ve become even more aware of this as I’ve spent some time with Jeremiah Owyang, our new analyst, who produces posts at a prodigious rate, not just on events, but on whatever’s happening with him, complete with photos and videos. And this stuff is interesting.

I’m not sure I agree with the author’s final message:

You may think corporations don’t get it, but they do, eventually — they just move more slowly and carefully. I’ve now spoken with dozens — they’re spending real money, moving forward with projects, making mistakes, learning, and mobilizing. They have lots of money and big brands. As the mass of regular people absorbs these social phenomenon, many of those companies will be there to meet them, and laugh if you want, but they are not all clueless — not any more.

I do think bigger companies seem to move slow - but they have to be moving very quickly behind the scenes - if not they will not have time to turn that big ship in the ocean of the internet.

It seems like Facebook has has a 2:1 women to men ratio.  Say what?  That is very interesting, seeing as we normally assume the opposite ratio.

 A blogger named Paul Francis went to the trouble of gathering Facebook user data via an advertiser tool that facilitates audience targeting. He pulled user numbers for the top countries, broken down by male/female.

Read/Write Web has a very in depth post on “The Rise Of Hyperlocal Information” posted Wednesday (11/21/2007).

The net effect of all of this is the increasing availability of fine-grained information about locales. This information is both interesting and valuable. It is sought after by people living in these places and by advertisers who are trying to reach these people. A handful of startups are recognizing the big potential of local information - relevance.

Take some time to read this article - it is really good and really deep.  It talks about many different aspects of hyperlocal.

Despite globalization, hyperlocal information is very valuable both to people and advertisers. In the coming years, we will be seeing the rise of a new way to look at information - geography. Inspired by utility and the promise of hyperlocal advertising, startups are racing to build businesses that deliver highly relevant, local information to users.

The GigaOm posted Tuesday (11/20/2007) that Verizon is boosting FiOS speeds. That is great - because broadband speeds in the US need boosting…take a look at this chart from ars technica - we rank third from the bottom.

It really makes you wonder if we will get them via the current technology - or we will have to wait for WiMax or other over-the-air options?

Mashable posted this article Tuesday (11/20/2007) about manipulating AdSense/AdWords.

 Today at Reddit we have proof of such behavior. Redditers are calling everyone to click on Rudy Giuliani’s paid ads simply because they cost him money. Think about it: a mass of people which is Reddit or Digg can actually create quite an AdWords bill for poor Rudy if they all start clicking like madmen; at the very least, Google will have problems evaluating the campaign and determining the “false” from the “real” clicks.

If they just encourage 10,000 clicks on a given ad - that could add up pretty quick.