You have to hand it Web 2.0’s digital socialists - they’re very quick on the uptake.
One of my favorite kool aid drinkers, Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins over at Mashable, earlier this week announced that he had discovered offshore hosting.
According to Hopkins, OpenTape, the open source answer to the RIAA’s smackdown of the popular Muxtape online “mixtape” service, could thrive if enough people get hip to the possibility of acquiring offshore hosting accounts out of the reach of the RIAA:
Wall Street Applied to Technology Entrepreneurship
Just what does Drama 2.0 do? One of activities I’m most heavily involved with is the trading of financial instruments (primarily option contracts).
Trading is a wonderful exercise not only because there’s a lot of money to be made (and lost, of course) but because the most powerful human emotions - fear and greed - are grappled with an on almost daily basis.
There are a lot of life lessons to be learned and many of the “rules” of trading can be applied to the world of technology entrepreneurship, especially in a day and age where startups are built to be “flipped” and entrepreneurial employees jump from one startup to another in search of the “big hit.”
Scoble: The Idiots vs. the Non-Idiots
I was sent another classic Robert Scoble post from a reader in which Scoble coins another Web 2.0 euphemism - “passionates.”
Who are passionates? Early adopters. Which means, of course, that there are non-passionates, or late adopters.
Scoble discusses passionates and non-passionates in the context of a post by Dare Obasanjo, who points out that Web 2.0 companies should consider that building products that appeal specifically to early adopters can be problematic because early adopters don’t represent the mass market consumer.
Obasanjo concludes with a pragmatic piece of advice:
Are These Charts Worth $8 Million?
Investors have funded the startup that runs the website whose traffic is displayed in the charts below to the tune of $8 million.
Ask yourself: would you invest $8 million in this startup? Would you be pleased with the results thus far if you had invested $8 million in this startup?
Any reader who can guess the startup behind this website by August 25, 2008 will win a decommissioned Soviet Projektu-613 submarine. Pick up at the Zvezdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk only.
Note: I recognize that traffic statistics from Compete and Alexa are imperfect but they’re reliably trend-indicative.
Google Shows Its True Colors, Says Privacy Cannot Exist in the Modern World
One doesn’t need to be incredibly perceptive to detect that while Google professes its respect for privacy, its actions demonstrate a profound disregard for it.
In its efforts to “organize the world’s information” (and make lots of money doing so), the more information Google collects, the better.
This, of course, includes information on Google users and as Viacom’s lawsuit against Google , there’s an awful lot of it.
When Google launched its Street View initiative last year, which enables Google users to view street-level panoramic photographs on Google Maps, it didn’t take long for people to become aware of the privacy implications.
Social Media in the Inc. 500 - Promotional Bullshit Masquerading as Research
It’s getting awfully difficult to find real “research” these days. As I seem to be pointing out on an increasingly regular basis, “studies” being published around topics such as social media are almost transparently by the interests of the people conducting the studies or the studies’ sponsors.
To be sure, bias in research is nothing new. Unfortunately, it seems that the ability to hold bias in check has been all but lost and much of the “research” being published around “social media” is little more than promotional bullshit masquerading as research.
Introducing The Conversation Sphere
Recently, Web 2.0 partygoer, photographer and PR guy Brian Solis introduced the Conversation Prism to the world.
Calling it his “contribution to a new era of media education and literacy,” Solis explains the importance of the Conversation Prism:
The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.
Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.
Facebook’s monetization are well known and I’ve discussed them in some depth. I’ve also raised questions about specifically, as have .
When Facebook hired former Googler Sheryl Sandberg to serve as COO, transforming Facebook into an advertising powerhouse was clearly one of the goals she was supposed to help the company accomplish.
After all, Facebook’s announcing her hire mentioned that “she built and managed Google’s online sales channels, which represent the majority of Google’s customers worldwide, for both AdWords and AdSense.”
While I’ve always believed Twitter to be a useless service and have questioned why a person would want to use it, I’m increasingly starting to believe that many Twitter users might be more than misguided - they just might be stupid.
First came the humorous example of Twitter users, including Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang, falling hook, line and for a fake Exxon Mobil Twitter account.
Of course, Owyang turned his faux pas into an opportunity “brand jacking” and the fact that he used “blogging best practices” when he admitted that he didn’t exercise any common sense.
Sponsor Shout-Out
Thanks to the sponsors of The Drama 2.0 Show for lowering my out-of-pocket costs for bottle service.
Finnish startup bills itself as a “single place for all your online needs” where “you can create and customize a website, save and share any media, decide who can view it, embed anywhere, and use any device.”
is “the UK’s leading online publisher of best practice internet marketing reports, research and how-to guides” and serves as .
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Drama 2.0 spikes the Web 2.0 kool aid by providing critical analyses of Web 2.0, its people, its startups and its impact on the world of media. Other topics are explored when Drama 2.0 has been drinking too much 1975 Dom Perignon. Read more about the Internet's version of Keyser Söze here.
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