AOL isn't future-proofing with HuffPo and TechCrunch - it's standing still

First TechCrunch, now the Huffington Post. How hip, radical, transformational even, AOL suddenly appears. (ah hem...)

It's almost as if AOL is seeking to reinvent itself as a successful web-based media company through acquisition.

Companies acquire for two key reasons - a short cut to growth or a short cut to skills that equate to competitive advantage.

AOL badly needs the latter. And if it's able to retain the services of the likes of Huffington and Arrington (any other web entrepreneurs ending in 'ington' you can think of?) then it gets to learn.

It gets to learn how to exploit the low cost distribution model of the web. But essentially both TechCrunch and HuffPo are large scale broadcasters powered by very traditional ad models. So that's what AOL gets to learn: How to maximise old models.

These are not the best-fit with the network (rather than broadcast) nature of the web but I have no doubt they will continue to be successful in traditional terms (ie with traditional advertisers) for the short term. (image courtesy)

But make no mistake; this is not AOL preparing for the future, it's simply getting by in the present.

Related articles

• First TechCrunch, now AOL buys Huffington Post (techvibes.com)
• The Ultimate Snub: AOL Buys The Huffington Post and Doesn't Tell TechCrunch (inquisitr.com)
• AOL Buys Huffington Post for $315 Million [Breaking] (gawker.com)
• I, For One, Welcome Our New Huffington Overlord (techcrunch.com)
• Three things to know about AOL's Huffington Post merger (shortformblog.com)

Companies that harness the power of the network will win

Very interesting deck from Sean Parker - one of the driving forces behind Facebook - in which he argues:

"The companies that harness the power of the networks will dominate the internet"

Regulars here will find that rings very familiar (hence my book, The Power of the Network).

Here's his deck (hat-tip to @msamayoa ) which has been sparking comments galore at Techcrunch

Sean Parker's Web 2.0 Summit Presentation

I agree with all the sentiment. Couple of points though. I didn't see a slide on Reed's law (the 2n formula which explains the exponential value growth in large networks - particularly ones with humans involved and which also explains the dominance of niche groups over lowest common denominator hits in a networked world).

Here's one of my more recent decks which includes the Reed's law explanations:

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Social Media

View more presentations from david cushman.

Also, you can make the case for Google being a people-powered connector all of its own - getting connections beyond the silo is what really counts (when one extra node on the network doubles its value) so search is still very very important in that regard - which I blogged about here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Will social networks kill Google? A Facebook founder (naturally) says yes (dailyfinance.com)
• You: Sean Parker's Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google Presentation (Full Slide Deck) (techcrunch.com)
• Google Social Search Goes Live (mashable.com)

200M Facebook users and a whole heap of secrets

Via Techcrunch it turns out Facebook is now claiming MORE THAN 200M ACTIVE users, with the fastest growing demographic in the over 35s (almost literally everyone and their mother is now on Facebook).

The average user has 120 friends (helpful for those of us calculating the eyeball-focused numbers required of 'reach' in social media.

Half (100M) log in every day and one in ten update their status every day.
Which, I guess means on average 60 of your friends log in each day to see up to 12 status updates from the rest of your friends each day.

And that leaves 90M social netlurkers (as Iain Harrison neatly put it) popping in for a lurk at what their friends are up to each day. If they contributed we'd have a little more for everyone.

All of these big numbers mean its increasingly important to brands and organisations to understand what people are saying about them in this big old bruiser of a social network - which is of course pretty much hidden away in Facebook's password protected vaults (which won't help the user if their preference is to publish in a brand's face).

Even tracking the relatively public formation of groups and pages is a challenge. It requires a human to log in, conduct a search, note and sift the old and the new etc.

For my part, right now, I'd find it really useful if there was at least an automated way in which I could get alerts when a new group or fan page is created relating to my choice of keywords.

If anyone has put together a way of delivering that, please let me know. If not, watch this space.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Top Reasons for Using Twitter | Online Social Networking (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• The Growing Complexity Of Facebook Is Confusing Your Mom (techcrunch.com)
• Facebook Rising - Comscore's Top Social Networking Sites for 2008 (webmetricsguru.com)
• Facebook Week: Facebook Resources, Analysis and Insights (mashable.com)
• Who Has The Most Photos Of Them All? Hint: It Is Not Facebook (tsurch.com)
• Facebook Grays: Over-35 Users Double in 60 Days (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Social Media Makes Real-Time Important (kennykellogg.com)
• Social Media Marketing and women of a certain age (clearcastdigitalmedia.com)

Searching together: The biggest challenge yet to SEO?

This video, from Techcrunch, shows an experimental version of google which includes digg-like social search functions.
Quite a challenge for traditional SEO? It seems like a huge one to me.
Would love to hear some thoughts from anyone in SEO - and from anyone else!
It's clearly a huge step forward from google's previous efforts in social search.

Scoblegate? Untwist your knickers!

There is much talk in't blogosphere about Robert Scoble's inglorious boot up the behind from facebook over data scraping.

While it's worth reminding ourselves not to take all this (or ourselves) too seriously (read JP Rangaswami's Applauding Our Own Behinds) I do think it's worth considering why people are getting their knickers in such a twist (if only because I'm one of Robert's 5000 friends - whose email address, date of birth etc have been 'plundered' by the plaxo app he was testing).

Scott Karp at Publishing2.o sums it all up quite nicely, referencing Dave Winer, Nick Carr and Paul Bucheit. I'd also recommend a quick squint at Jeff Jarvis (who in turn refers to Mike Arrington at TechCrunch).

I have two thoughts. First is a response to Scott's post. Scott says the fuss over Scoblegate(tm) serves to reveal a coming war over the control of data.

War implies mighty armies clashing. I think this will end up much more a free-for-all. Perhaps Scoble is going guerilla?
Seriously; what I want is an ID key which opens the safety deposit boxes of my choice. And when I leave that deposit box, I take the whole key with me. You only get to access the data I choose to share while your application does something useful for me. Then I’m gone and you’re back to doing your best to keep the conversation going between us.

Persistent conversation rather than owned/farmed/harvested data will win. The battle, for me, is not about owning data but about owning relationships.

And relationships are not based on what I did last year or even last week. They are based on engaging with me about things I care about, and doing it regularly.

Those applications/institutions/things that are good at that will win digitally just as they do in the real world.

My second point seeks to untwist knickers.
The main force in twisting knickers in the Scoblegate affair appears to be who 'owns' the personal data. ie My name, email address and date of birth is MINE. It is not SCOBLE'S!!!! (followed by much gnashing of teeth, wailing etc)

Calm down.

It's hardly For Your Eyes Only stuff is it? Your dob (and I'm speaking from the UK) is a matter of public record, my email address is far from secret (it's a business one). And isn't it about time we lightened up about email address sharing? I mean, why is it any different from letting someone know your physical address. You can get junk mail at both. So what? Bin it.

Oh, and what was that third element? Oh my gosh - Robert Scoble now knows my name. Call the cops.

If other people (or applications, if you will) knowing this much about you sends you into palpitations I suggest you buy a campervan and head for the desert.

And if knowing this is enough to unlock something meant to be truly secure and personal - go back and redesign your bloody lock!

This paranoia over identity is getting out of hand. We saw it writ large in the UK before Christmas when the Government managed to lose loads of 'personal data'. But that was a load of alarmist tosh, too.

Scoble responds and explains himself.

Ubiquitous computing - pervasive web - takes a giant step

Techcrunch has this on Microsoft's announcement of surface computing.

Its initial market focus seems to be for restaurants, transferring data from one device from another etc - but that's just the simple stuff - the way in which old things are done more efficiently with the new tech.

Watch the video below and you might start seeing some of the new stuff - the social impacts of new tech which go way beyond those simple efficiencies.