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Twitter’s Entire Archive Headed to the Library of Congress

cgseo — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:25:24 +0000

The U.S. Library of Congress announced this morning via its official Twitter account that it will be acquiring the entire archive of Twitter messages back through March 2006. In addition to a massive printed collection, the Library already has an extensive collection of other digital assets. The Library of Congress is the biggest library in the world. The Library does extensive work with data format standards , the semantic Web and other platforms for outside analysis. The addition of Twitter into the organization's offerings could foster an enormous amount of academic research. From a new kind of historical record to an unprecedented opportunity for discovering patterns of social interaction, this is big. Sponsor When the Library of Congress was founded in the year 1800, publishing was very expensive and relatively few people did it. Today, thanks to blogs, YouTube, Facebook and certainly Twitter it's a new world. Publishing is far faster, easier and more accessible today than at any point in human history. That might seem obvious, but on a day like today it's worth thinking about some more. For now there are more questions than answers with regards to this Library of Congress Twitter news. Will the archive include friend/follower connection data? Will it be usable for commercial purposes? Will there be a Web interface for searching it, and will that change the face of Twitter search for good? Is there any way that the much larger archive of Facebook data could be submitted to the same body for analysis of the same kind? These kinds of large data sets are poised to become one of the most important resources the Internet creates. As Kenneth Cukier wrote in The Economist's recent Special Report on Big Data , "Data are becoming the new raw material of business: an economic input almost on a par with capital and labour." The Library's blogger Matt Raymond put it like this in the blog post about the announcement : Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I'm certain we'll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive. Nate Anderson at ArsTechnica offers this context: There's been a turn toward historicism in academic circles over the last few decades, a turn that emphasizes not just official histories and novels but the diaries of women who never wrote for publication, or the oral histories of soldiers from the Civil War, or the letters written by a sawmill owner. The idea is to better understand the context of a time and place, to understand the way that all kinds of people thought and lived, and to get away from an older scholarship that privileged the productions of (usually) elite males. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said today that there are 105 million registered users on the service. How will those users feel about their tweets being archived for posterity? Will non-U.S. users be included (it is a U.S. based company) and object? Lots of questions remain. There's no word from Twitter itself about this news but we expect details to become public during the Chirp developers conference starting in just a few minutes. Update: Twitter HQ just told us that a blog post about this news is forthcoming. It's hard to imagine a more significant milepost in social media's early march toward becoming an essential component of our social experience. Discuss

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Twitter's Entire Archive Headed to the Library of Congress

Twine CEO to Startups: Be Modest With Your Money

cgseo — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The semantic web is one of the leading trends we track here at ReadWriteWeb, so it was big news to us earlier this month when Evri announced it was acquiring Twine creators Radar Networks . Following the announcement, Twine CEO Nova Spivack wrote an inspiring and lengthy farewell blog post detailing the acquisition, and the story behind the development and growth of Twine. Towards the end of the post, Spivack outlined some lessons for budding entrepreneurs based on what he learned through his startup experience. Sponsor The number one piece of advice he suggests is to raise as little funding as possible from venture capitalists, and to stick with revenue funds, bootstrapping or angel funding to get by. Based on Spivack's experiences with raising VC funding, he believes the conditions and strings that are attached to it aren't worth it if the company can get by without raising any funding, especially in the current economic situation. "It is no easy task to get a startup funded and launched in this economy," he writes. "The odds are not in your favor -- so play defense, not offense, until conditions improve (years from now)." Part of playing defense, he says, is to curtail spending as much as possible - a suggestion that goes hand-in-hand with the modesty of raising as little venture capital as necessary. Spivack urges startups to avoid quickly spending and expanding upon bloating their bank account with investor dollars; instead, he argues for responsible saving and planning for unexpected downturns and crashes. "Assume the market will crash -- downturns are more frequent and last longer than they used to. Expect that. Plan on it," writes Spivack. "And make sure you keep enough capital in reserve to spend 9 to 12 months raising your next round, because that is how long it takes in this economy to get a round done." One of the things we hear VCs look for in potential investments is traction, but Spivack, interestingly enough, says traction is not always a sure-fire bet for funding and success. He says VCs are more concerned with finding a company that is producing revenues preferably at a break-even level - something he attributes to an evolving VC landscape. "Venture capital investing has changed dramatically -- early stage and late stage deals are the only deals that are getting real funding," writes Spivack. "Mid-stage companies are simply left to die, unless they are profitable or will soon be profitable." Spivack provides a number of other lessons he learned from his time with Twine, and be sure to read his entire post for a touching story behind his company. For now, note his most important lessons regarding modest spending and modest fund raising. A lot of startups enter the scene looking to become as flush with cash as possible, but in some cases, with some entrepreneurs, having too much money can be a bad thing. Discuss

Insights: Three Reasons Why Zoho Joined the Google Apps Marketplace

cgseo — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:49:15 +0000

Since the announcement went live yesterday about the Google Marketplace , we've had a number of companies come to us about how its applications will fit with the service. We'll do a fuller look at these companies this week but for some immediate perspective we decided to take a look at Zoho , a service that competes with Google Apps. So it is it interesting that the company joined Google Apps Marketplace in its launch. Sponsor Buy why would Zoho offer its applications to integrate with Google? Yes, the companies compete. But Raju Vegesna of Zoho says that it is far more important to complement Google Apps. Over the past few years the company has worked to make it simple for Zoho customers to use its services in tandem with Google Apps. Zoho offers Google Sign-in, Google Apps Sign-in and recently it integrated with Google Docs. Vegesna gave us three reasons why Zoho decided to be part of the launch. His perspectives should provide some insights about the symbiotic relationship Google Apps Marketplace will foster. Extending The Relationship For many developers, integrating with Google Apps represents a significant business opportunity. Google announced at its launch that it passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend. Vegesna: "First, we have 50% more apps than Google, especially on the business side (CRM, Project Management, Web Conferencing etc). This means, these additional apps can really complement Google Apps. Google has over 20 million users on G Apps and our Business apps can be sold to those customers. " Google Dominates The Landscape To play in this era, you have to play with Google. They dominate as much as any company has in the past 30 years. The domination in large part is now solidified by its investment in its cloud infrastructure. Vegesna: "Second, we understand that this is going to be a Google dominated eco-system (IBM dominated Mainframe era, Microsoft dominated PC era and Google will dominate the web era) and we wanted to be an important player in this web era. We talked more about this here and here ." A Platform Built On Email, Not CRM Yesterday, we touched on why the marketplace makes sense for companies standardized on Google Apps. With all the contacts in one place, people can add applications to fine tune Google Apps. Does a company start with the same foundation if the platform is built on CRM? Vegesna: "Third, when someone builds a platform, email is a great app to build the platform around, rather than CRM (which salesforce did). We think it'll be a good and succesful platform for online apps which will move the web app momentum forward and we want to be a key player (the same way Adobe was a key player in PC era)." For more about the Zoho integration: Discuss

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Insights: Three Reasons Why Zoho Joined the Google Apps Marketplace

Google Launches Apps Marketplace for the Enterprise

cgseo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:00:38 +0000

Google launched an application marketplace today comprised of services from third-party providers that integrate with the Google Apps ecosystem. The news has been anticipated for some time. In particular, it shows how much Google is embracing open-standards and leveraging its search and Google Apps platform to attract third-party developers. Sponsor Google made the announcement at its Google Campfire One event tonight. The emphasis Google is putting on the enterprise is apparent in how much attention the company put into the event. Over and over we heard that Google passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend. It is that mark that Google is using as its hook for attracting developers to its platform. Developers will be charged $100 to join the program. With that entrance fee, they may add as many apps as they wish to the Google Apps Marketplace. The marketplace supports OpenID to provide a single sign-on for developers. Authorization is integrated into the platform. The customers get access through OAuth, the open standard for authorizing users. A "manifest page" is the foundation for the service. The developers provides information when adding the application to the marketplace that identifies it. Developers then provide additional information about the product. The system is a controlled. Application developers submit the app for approval, which might take a few days. Intuit provided an example of how the system works by showing how payroll could be managed. The customer accesses the account. With Google Apps integration, the customer accesses an account where they have the employee information. It's that collected contact network that is then integrated with the payroll application. Atlassian showed how Studio, its project management application, would integrate with GMail and Google Apps. Again, if the company is standardized on Google Apps, the information is available through the network. Manymoon is another project mangement application that was demonstrated. It uses Google Apps to develop features such as a calendar, showing how a startup can leverage Google Apps to add features to its service. Other companies that were a part of the initial launch include Socialwok and Appirio . At its core, the marketplace is built upon Google's search capabilities. Google Apps can be extended with applications. In turn, developers have access to the built-in capabilities of Google Apps. Perhaps the greatest value to customers will be if they are centralized on Google Apps. If so, they can get some pretty powerful capabilities of the marketplace. Discuss

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Google Launches Apps Marketplace for the Enterprise

Mediagazer: Techmeme Launches Memetracker for Media News

cgseo — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:31:32 +0000

Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera just launched Mediagazer , a new memetracker for topics related to media news. This new site will be based on the same technology as Techmeme , memeorandum , the gossip site WeSmich and the baseball memetracker Ballbug . The content on Mediagazer will be edited by Megan McCarthy. Sponsor As McCarthy notes in her announcement , "media business is in tumult" and this is a news vertical that lends itself to memetracking. Not only are there lots of interesting news stories from a large variety of sources, but these sources all tend to link to each other a lot, which makes it easier for the algorithm to find related stories. Mediagazer is the first new service that Rivera's team has launched in four years. As both Rivera and McCarthy note, the team has spent the last four years learning about what works (and what doesn't). Based on this experience, the team has "outfitted the site with the latest iteration of our automation engine, and have launched it from the outset with a dedicated human editor." It will be interesting to see how Rivera's team will manage the overlap between the tech news and media news sites. Currently, for example, this VentureBeat story - which is about both the tech and the media business - is featured on both sites . Unlike Techmeme, Mediagazer doesn't feature a leaderboard , but there are mobile sites for smartphones and feature phones . Judging from what we have seen so far, Mediagazer will surely become another must-read site for anybody interested in the media business, be it blogging, e-book or the state of the newspaper industry. For more information about the role of the human editors at Techmeme, also have a look at our interview with Megan McCarthy . Discuss

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Mediagazer: Techmeme Launches Memetracker for Media News

Twitter Turns On the Stream for Big and Small Alike

cgseo — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:20:00 +0000

Twitter has just announced a number of partnerships with a companies engaged in "real-time search and discovery". According to the blog post, the company is "happily turning the Firehose on for some new partners focused mainly on exploring the incredibly rich field of real-time search and discovery." This partnership is sure to dramatically increase the number of people reached by Twitter's current user-base and could mean some big things for the microblog, not only in terms of exposure but in terms of its much rumored ad platform. Sponsor According to the blog post, the full spectrum of data available in the "Firehose" was previously only available to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. With this announcement, Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search will all join on as partners with Twitter and have access to the entirety of Twitter's data stream in real time. The Firehose, as compared to standard API access, does not have the same limits on how much a program accesses the data, which means much more real-time interaction is possible. Gerry Campbell, CEO of Collecta , said that these partnerships show that "real-time is real," calling this "the natural progression of the validation of real-time as a mode of information gathering." Twitter's blog post , titled "Enabling A Rush of Innovation", reads at times like a proclamation from above, but we have to admit we're excited to see what can come of this. "Full investment," reads the post "in this ecosystem of innovation, means all our partners should have access to the same volume of data, regardless of company size. With access to the full Firehose of data, it is possible to move far beyond the Twitter experiences we know today. In fact, we're pretty sure that some amazing innovation is possible. " Twitter seems to be making a point that even the little guy can get access to the full wealth of the Firehose and if this is true, then real-time interaction is just moments away from the smallest of startups. But for now, the fact that this wealth of data is suddenly available to a number of real-time search engines can mean something big for the ad platform. As we wrote last Friday , Peter Kafka uncovered some details on the proposed advertising platform, one being that "the ads will only show up in search results." These partnerships could mean that these advertisements just gained a new real-time audience, outside of the big three. We asked Twitter about this but have yet to receive comment. Discuss

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Twitter Turns On the Stream for Big and Small Alike

Unlaunched Comic Company Buys 10 Year Old Comic Fan Community

cgseo — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:06:29 +0000

Boulder, CO based Graphic.ly has put some of its venture capital to work and rolled up 10-year old comics community iFanboy . Graphic.ly is developing an as-yet unlaunched comic and graphic novel reading application for Windows, Adobe AIR and mobile phones. The company has raised just over $1 million in backing. According to Joseph Tartakoff at PaidContent , the company already has clients, including Disney's Marvel. The iFanboy site is a place for comics fans to find reviews, audio and video shows. It publishes under a Creative Commons license and sees just over forty thousand visitors per month, according to Quantcast. Some portion of those visitors are paid subscribers. Sponsor The iFanboy community appears to be embracing the merger enthusiastically in comments on the official announcement . That's not something that can be taken for granted. The site's journalistic objectivity comes under scrutiny now that one vendor owns iFanboy, something the site founders discuss explicitly in their announcement. Graphic.ly CEO Micah Baldwin describes the deal in lots of detail on his personal blog and says the two companies were introduced by Joe Stump, co-founder of hot pre-launched geolocation API provider SimpleGeo . Graphic.ly came from Boulder's TechStars incubator and raised its money from a diverse group including but not limited to Houston's DFJ Mercury, Starz Media, Northstar Equity Partners, Dave McClure, Chris Sacca and Paige Craig. Comics and graphic novel fans eagerly await the launch of Graphic.ly. We eagerly await seeing this tech-savvy startup in an eye-catching niche publishing market make its next move. Discuss

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Unlaunched Comic Company Buys 10 Year Old Comic Fan Community