John Geraci, a well-know builder of virtual communities
A high-profile investor and lots of high-profile angels and advisers .. in the first camp Union Square (Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham) ... and in the second
We've still got a great list of angels involved as well. Marc Andreessen just wrote in out of the blue to say that he really liked the site, and to ask if he could help out with the financing. Esther Dyson, John Borthwick, George Crowley, and Richard Smith -- it's a fantastic list of people to have behind you. (Along with our other founding investors, John Seely Brown, Mark Bailey, and Andy Karsch.)
Neighbors are registered users of outside.in. Each neighbor has a profile page that shows a bio, photo, neighborhood, website, plus all the stories, comments, and places they’ve contributed to outside.in. (Right now it’s a little tricky to find a specific neighbor, much less communicate with them — but we’re working on it!)
Stories and Comments are the content you add to outside.in about your area. When you add them to the site, they appear on the home page of the area you specified for everyone to see, as well as on your neighbor pages.
Stories are content that comes from other sites, like blogs or newspaper websites, that you submit to the site via the submit a story link in the right column of the page. Add stories to outside.in that relate to your neighborhood and that you find interesting and want to share with your neighbors.
Comments are content that you write yourself, directly to the outside.in website. You add comments to Places, which are any location or venue in your area. Add a comment to any Place you want, either to point out something you like, or just to talk about something interesting in your neighborhood.
Places can be everything from restaurants to playgrounds to schools — or even more subjective categories (most dangerous intersection, best spot for winter sledding.) Any story or comment can be attached to a Place. The cool thing about these Place pages is that the become an archive of everything that’s been said online about a given place — comments from outside.in Neighbors, blog posts, newspaper reviews, discussion threads.
The recent announcement that YouTube will share advertising revenues with members who contribute their work to YouTube is yet another marker is the steady march towards dissembling the structure and dynamics of the traditional broadcast media industry.
The other service cited in the article has been sharing revenue for a while, but is not the Web 2.0 darling status acquired by YouTube based on it's acquisition by Google.
Qumana's business model has since the beginning been based on sharing advertising revenue with users who use the Q-Ads service to attach relevant advertising to their social media content.
The bulk of social media sharing (the 'social' in the term social media, tho' there's more to it than that) still happens on and in blogging networks, and IMO this is unlikely to change in the near future.
As advertising gets more and more relevant to niche markets, and gets easier to identify, pull and place into or alongside media-born work created by personal publishers, we believe that Qumana's value proposition will get stronger and stronger.
Joe Eigo, a martial arts expert in Toronto, used to pay hundreds of dollars a month for computer and hosting services to distribute his own acrobatic and martial arts videos on the Web, in the hope of raising his profile in the TV and film industry.
Today, not only is he able to distribute his content to millions of people at no cost using a popular online video-sharing site, he has also been paid nearly $26,000 (U.S.) by the site owner.
Welcome to the new world of user-generated content on the Internet. What some people consider quirky material at best, companies are increasingly starting to view as a valuable asset. So valuable, in fact, they're willing to pay for it.
Metacafe, a private firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., and Tel Aviv, has been paying thousands of dollars to participants for over a year.
Every video on Metacafe that is watched more than 20,000 times, and is rated 3 out of 5 or higher by viewers, starts earning the producer $5 for each subsequent 1,000 visitors.
Metacafe rates Mr. Eigo as its top earner. One of his clips has been viewed more than five million times and has helped him attract the attention of several producers and film companies, he said.
“It's an amazing opportunity for anyone who wants to produce their own material now. The Internet has become more popular than television,” he said.
We consider Performancing to be a competitor for both Qumana and Q-Ads, and we have noted in the past that they offer a fine blogging editor for Firefox and have or had a good concept for an advertising network.
Personally speaking, I hope things over at Performancing get sorted out .. they are or were helping with progress in this space.
Apparently Wilson, who says he still owns 35% of the business, isn’t happy about the closing of Performancing’s ad network. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have known it was happening. On his personal blog, he writes:
"I don’t know what the communication problem between Performancing management is, but there appears to have been some decision making without the benefit of having all the facts.
When I resigned from the company and passed the reigns to Chris, the situation needed a lot of work, but was OK - we had a couple of options on the table for moving forward including picking up talks with one prominent blog player re the aquisition of PFF, or ScribeFire as it’s now known.
I’ve emailed Chris and Patrick, though at the time I’ve no idea if Patrick will still be playing an active role as him and Bill, from Text Link Ads need to dump their shares in Performancing this year due to non-competes after their MediaWhizz aquisition.
January 16, 2007 – Vancouver, B.C.: Qumana Software Inc. (Qumana) is pleased to announce it has released a version of the Q-Ads tool for IE 7, Microsoft’s newest version of its flagship browser. The new Q-Ads tool for IE 7 can be downloaded at the Qumana web site (http://www.qumana.com/qads)
The Q-Ads tool for IE 7 helps users who have upgraded to MS IE 7 choose and place text-based advertising into content that they have created. It provides an easy-to-use and innovative way to add advertising to the content people are creating for the Web.
Q-Ads for IE 7 complements the existing versions of the Q-Ads tool, which work with IE 6 and with Firefox 1.0 and 2.0.The Q-Ads program is designed for personal publishers who want to add advertising to content they create, and for social media and web properties who want to offer their users ways to create and share advertising-based revenue.
Qumana also offers the Q-Ads tool for MS LiveWriter and the leading Qumana offline blogging editor Qumana 3.0, designed specifically for bloggers and others who assemble and remix content from the Web.
Content attracts attention ... attention drives advertising. Use Qumana’s Q-Ads to place effective text-based advertising directly into your content … like online direct mail advertising meeting your readers’ attention.
About Qumana
Qumana Software Inc. is an advertising and web services company that provides web properties and personal publishers with market-leading methods for delivering and adding advertising to online content. Qumana’s mission is to make blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers globally. Qumana is run by Internet industry veterans, hardcore bloggers, software purists, and world-class designers committed to keeping things simple. For more information, visit http://www.qumana.com/
For more Info: Fred Fabro - CEO and President, Qumana Software Inc.
At leat two of them are pertinent for users of Qumana, and those who may have heard of Qumana and Q-Ads but have yet to try the tools and service, or are wondering about why and how to integrate them into their work flows.
3. Blog advertising will become the hot ad medium of the year and ad agencies will screw up big-time as they learn the ropes.
Savvy advertisers have already learned that it is possible to have outrageously high click through and conversion rates through obscenely cheap and highly targeted blog advertising.
Bloggers won’t tolerate invasive, annoying, flashing, heavy-handed ads, and agencies will stumble as they try to understand the type of advertising that can beat any traditional medium, hands down, when properly executed. I have consistently achieved click thru rates as high as .857%, and averaging .268% with niche-focused blog ads.
People who read blogs are looking for specialized, high-touch information from experts in particular areas. The right ads directed to those niche audiences can work wonders.
4. Widgets in new Mac and PC operating systems will introduce millions to truly customizing their online experience.
The age of invasive advertising is over and companies will have an enormous branding experience if they provide/sponsor the information people need and want to see every day in widgets.
Essentially, widgets are a way to provide RSS feeds in a frame the user loads onto the page or site of their choice. They allow people to use stupidly named RSS feeds without understanding that they are transferring code.
By lightly branding widgets, companies that provide information consumers want to keep on their desktop or home page have the enormous opportunity to have their brand name in front of customers every day in a positive, almost subliminal way.
Detecting click fraud collaboratively and in real time should be quite a feat. I suppose it would mean much less relative arbitrary auditing, and probably much more transparency about why any given click would be approved or not.
If it succeeds, it should make quite a difference.
Just in case the Googles of the world ain't paying attention:
This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will provide a commercial solution to click fraud identification and prevention. The current existing solutions can not detect the so-called software click. This STTR project proposes a real time collaborative click fraud detection and prevention system to detect these software clicks. The approach draws on data mining techniques for fraud identification using detailed user activities. An accurate and efficient classification method based on association rule mining and data stream mining will be formulated to identify the click frauds.
The system will protect Pay-Per-Click advertisers from click fraud and improve their return on investment. The new data mining techniques discovered during the course of this research will be applied in multiple fields related to online business marketing, user analysis and other fraud identification processes.
It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.
Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.
Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.
Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.
Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.
Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.
Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.
Blogs of all political stripes spent most of yesterday detailing reports of voting machine malfunctions and ballot shortages, effectively becoming an online national clearinghouse of the polling problems that still face the election system.
And in a new twist this year, many bloggers buttressed their accounts of electoral shenanigans with links to videos posted on the video Web site YouTube
That's an environment custom-made for inserting relevant ads wherever you want to IN the content.
Try out Q-Ads and get accustomed to it. We think that the ease of use and pacing ads close to content is going to become one of the ways many publishers will address "small targets, loosely joined".
Blogs are where the content provided by mainstream media circulates; more and more that is the case. Become a Q-Ads user and help us get more profile, more ad impressions and a wider range and depth of ad inventory, for your use.
Everybody knows by now that Google has just acquired YouTube (Globe and Mail), adding the major play in online video clips to its arsenal of services where content meets advertising.
The deal is by far Google's most expensive in its eight-year history. The lofty price underscores how important Google expects on-line video to become as more viewers and advertisers migrate from television to the Internet.
While it has been able to extend its lead in the lucrative search market, Google hasn't been able to become a major player in on-line video.
“This gives Google the video play they have been looking for and gives them a great opportunity to redefine how advertising is done,” said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li.
Regular readers of the Qumana blog will know that Qumana makes inserting YouTube clips into blog posts a two or three click operation ... copy the html from YouTube, paste it into Qumana's "Insert HTML" function and hit "Post".
Then, click on "Insert Ad", type a keyword related to the blog post content or the video clip, and click once more ... voila, a relevant ad is inserted into the blog post alongside, above or below the video clip ... wherever you placed the cursor.
Advertising meets blog post and video clip content. Qumana gives bloggers "choice and control", and functionality that is very closely aligned with Google's overall strategy.
SANTA CLARA, California (AP) -- Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO Jonathan Schwartz recently became "un blogeur" when he started publishing his Weblog in French and nine other languages.
Schwartz, whose online journal attracts 50,000 viewers each month, says going international will generate new customers attract prospective employees in Europe, China and elsewhere. That puts the 40-year-old chief executive at the vanguard of a trend in corporate communications, one that tears down barriers between executives and consumers.
"The blog has become for me the single most effective vehicle to communicate to all of our constituencies -- developers, media, analysts and shareholders," Schwartz said in an interview in his Silicon Valley office. "When I go out and have dinner with a key analyst on Wall Street or a key investor from Europe and ask them if they've read my blog, they almost universally say yes."
CEOs of smaller companies have already seized on blogs, and big companies are increasingly joining in -- despite the potential for disastrous backfires. In its unfiltered form, blogging lets them bypass the public relations department, journalists and industry analysts and speak directly to the public.
We've been very busy working on important bug fixes, enhanced stability and the addition of valuable new features designed to expand users' publishing capabilities andoverall ease of use.
More specifically, here's what we've addressed and accomplished over the last two months.
First, we recently completed Phase One of a formal usability study, which essentially told us everything you, the users , have been telling us since our beta launch in mid-February. It has been very useful to have all the bugs and improvements grouped together in one place, and organized such that we can either say ... "oh, good, that's been dealt with" or "thanks for that recommendation .. now we know for sure how and why (and where) to implement that", and so on.
Next ... we recently completed and made available versions of Qumana in French, Dutch and Spanish. With this release we will be adding a German version to the suite of Qumana blogging tools.
We’ve made major improvements in the stability of the editor, notably, Qumana no longer freezes when a user is moving an image around in the editor, and the quirkiness some users have experienced when dragging and dropping text onto the DropPad and thus into the editor has been fixed.
The rather annoying problem with blockquotes has also been fixed, too.
On the font front, you can now set not only the face (we list the common fonts all users will have), the size, andthecolour!
Finally, we have made it easier for the average user to add video clips and other web-based objects or services that use HTML snippets into their posts... whether it be a video, a podcast, an mp3 ... you get the drift. Look for the blue button between the Insert Link and Check Spelling buttons (represented by a closed brackets icon to denote HTML code).
We've also been reading a lot about Windows Live writer and thinking what it's appearance means for us.
We think it means two things. We'll be glad to hear your opinion, too.
First, it seems a clear signal that Microsoft is declaring that "blogging is NOT a fad" .. the release of MS Live Writer helps to raise awareness of the need and market for such applications. We believe this is good news for us .. and for Ecto, Blogjet, Zoundry, Performancing, w.bloggar, Marsedit and other similar applications. May the best amongst us find traction, niches and ways to prosper.
Second, it sharpens the issues about what adds value to blogging … what is it that reflects users' input, doesn't waste time, or valuable resources, and still delivers a -free product that offers use and value over and above the basics.
We’re proud of this new version of Qumana, which offers greater ease of use, stability and reliability and the ability to post video clips to a wide range of blog platforms with one or two clicks. Thanks to Ianiv Schweber and ou suppliers / colleagues in the development process …
How often can you count a two-time Olympic medallist as one of your friends? Scott Goldblatt is a friend of mine and a fellow b5 blogger on the swim blog Timed Finals. Scott is also visiting our fair Province covering the PanPac international swim meet in Victoria for b5 and Speedo.
Qumana is pleased to be the sponsoring/official blog editor for Scott at the PanPacs. Scott is live blogging the events (watch out for the water and the laptop Scott!) and just posted his first podcast (hosted on Speedo's site). Give a listen, because Scott has a great "radio voice" and for his first podcast, I think he rocked it. Give a listen.
Scott has this to say about Qumana:
"Qumana has allowed me to blog "on the fly" here in Victoria at the Pan Pacs. The ability to save my thoughts offline within a single editor and blog live on the pool deck has been indispensable. Qumana allows me to write, edit, and publish the results and news as quickly as it happens."
I'm hoping to get over to Victoria to hang with Scott a bit this weekend. Have fun Scott!
I realize that you need power to run computers. Obviously, after your computer's battery runs out and you can't recharge it, it's hard to keep composing blog posts ...
When there are power outages or other related systems outages that affect the Web but you still have computer power for your individual machine, you can still compose blog posts with Qumana, and save them to be posted later.
George Ou reports that 100-degree weather coupled with widespread power outages have made for a miserable weekend in the Valley. George spent his afternoon assembling a gas generator to power his AC, refrigerator, DSL modem, wireless router and laptop...
Here's how I used to do things before I started using Qumana regularly:
I'd be browsing, and I'd be reading something which triggered a thought and then the desire to blog about it.
I'd leave the page, open my blog page, go to "Post New Entry", which would take me to the blog software's editor (which had taken me a while to learn).
Then, I'd put in a title, and maybe write a sentence or two. I usually quote an excerpt from what I have been reading, so I would have to go back to the web page I was on previously, highlight the excerpt, and then go back to the blog software editor .. where I would paste what I copied.
Then, I write some more to flesh out the post. And then, if I wanted to include some links, I'd have to start the round trips back and forth between the web pages where I would copy the links, then go back to the blog software editor and type in all the <a href> tags, and any WYSIWYG effects such as italics or bold, etc.
And THEN, on top of all that, I would have to preview and proof read, because I am not a hugely accurate typist.
AND THEN ... what if I wanted to include Technorati tags ? I still don't know how to include Technorati tags in a Blogware blog post using the Blogware editor.
Lots of work, demanded lots of concentration ...
Now, using Qumana ... here are my newly developed blogging work habits:
I'm browsing, and I read something which triggers a thought and the desire to create a blog post around the quote.
I highlight what I want to quote, drag and drop it onto the DropPad .. double-click on the DropPad, which opens the Qumana editor.
I add a title, I write some text to flesh out the post. I go back to the quoted page, or surf to another page (leaving the editor open), copy the URL of the links I want to include, go back to Qumana, use the Insert Link function to create the links (it's just pasting the URL into the dialog box).
There' still some back and forth, but it's much easier because the Qumana editor window is open just "over there" on the left.
There's spellchecking, so the final review is much easier (for me).
Tags ? Click on The Insert tags button, type in the Technorati tags you want to include, and click OK. That's it, that's all.
Adding images and video clips is easy .. and will get easier still in the future (it's one of the things we are working on).
If you're a blogger that wants to use advertising on her or his blog, that's easy too .. but just because it's a function available to you in Qumana doesn't mean you HAVE to use that functionality.
I'd never go back to the way I used to compose blog posts ... no way.
In a misguided attempt to supposedly curtail terrorists communicating on blogs, BoingBoing reports the following:
India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. Indian ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. SpectraNet, MTNL, Reliance, and as of Monday afternoon, Airtel. State-backed BSNL and VSNL have not started yet but likely will soon. The known list of blocked domains is *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/*.
Yes folks, the Indian government has decided to censor blogs and refused to explain why. This morning Shivam Vij managed to talk to Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue directives to ISPs. His response: "Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?"
"The block is still spreading through Indian ISPs. This recalls Pakistan's Blogspot ban during the Danish cartoon controversy and India's Yahoo Groups ban in '03 to shut down a separatist forum."
lSnip ...]
"We're treading with a little caution before we go whole-hog at the government. There is a possibility that it is a mistake - where a directive from the government on a few blogs might have been misrepresented by ISP's here - who have blocked the entire sites."
Update (from BoingBoing), 11AM PT:
An Indian political blog is reporting that the ban was initiated by the Indian intelligence service to stop terrorism: Link. According to their source, the terrorists are using blogs to communicate.
Not only is this useless (because the terrorists can simply use proxies), it's akin to shutting off the country's telephone service because terrorists talk to each other through phones.
