Fred Wilson makes the case for the WSJ.com to abandon its paid model and move to an advertising supported model like the NYTimes.com. The WSJ is noticeably absent from the conversation in the blogpsphere, and if Murdoch wants to jump start his newest property, he might want to take Wilson’s advice. A free WSJ would be a formidably competitor in the online echo chamber.
HBO video comedy site shut down
Variety.com – HBO comedy site shut down
“This Just In, the comedy site HBO envisioned as both a brand extension and a potential development pipeline, is being shut down just six months after launching.”
Video is hot, and advertisers love it, but it’s not easy to compete with the 800lb gorilla in Mountain View.
IPhone Activiations Fewer then Expected
IPhone Use Disappoints; Apple Slides – New York Times
Looks like the honeymoon is over for the iPhone, and now it will have to accept its lowly position as the best merely smartphone on the market.
Apple’s shares slumped 6 percent on Tuesday after AT&T said the early surge of iPhone buyers starting service on its network was smaller than some analysts had anticipated.
Generator Failures Caused Outage at Popular SF Web Host
Generator Failures Caused 365 Main Outage – Data Center Knowledge
This is a reminder of how this high tech wired world of ours is dependent on old school low tech things like electricity and generators.
“Several generators at 365 Main’s San Francisco data center failed to start when the facility lost grid power Tuesday afternoon, causing an outage that knocked many of the web’s most popular destinations offline for several hours. The disruption, which began at 1:45 pm PST, occurred during a grid outage for Pacific Gas & Electric, which left significant portions of San Francisco in the dark. Parts of 365 Main’s data center lost power, causing downtime for customer sites including CraigsList, Technorati, LiveJournal, TypePad, AdBrite, the 1Up gaming network, Second Life and Yelp, among others.”
Time Spent to replace Page Views at Nielsen
Nielsen scraps Web page view rankings – Yahoo! News
With AJAX, online video, microchunking, widgitization, RSS, etc, the trusty old page view has become less and less relevant and useful as the base key performance indicator for the modern online property. If your site’s content consumption isn’t consistently based on an HTML page loading inside a browser window, then what does a page view really measure? In the case of RSS feeds and widgets, content may be consumed without generating a single page view.
The industry has been debating what KPI should be the gold standard for months now, and in response Nielsen is shifting their focus to Time Spent. This move will address the impact of AJAX and online video on the dilution of the Page View’s usefulness, but it doesn’t truly solve the analytics challenge surrounding syndicated content such as RSS and widgets – because what defines time spent on a widget or feed surrounded by widgets and feeds from other providers.
A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.
The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful.
Teen socioeconomic divisions reflected in choice of Facebook vs Myspace
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Researcher Danah Boyd studies youth culture and social networking websites. Her research, which is largely anecdotal and observational, has identified that socioeconomic class is an indicator of what social network sites a teen is likely to use. No real surprises here, because Facebook was originally founded as a tool for college students, but “hegemonic” kids who play sports, do their homework, and go to college tend to favor Facebook. Non hegemonic kids tend to favor Myspace.
The report, while not up to high academic standards, is interesting and definitely worth printing out for the train ride home.
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.
MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
