Does anyone out there know what the business model is for:

Twitter
FriendFeed
BrightKite
Identi.ca
Plurk

I would assume that all of them are eventually looking at methods of advertising to subscribers, but have yet to figure out how to do it in a non-intrusive way that won’t disrupt their monthly visitor ramp-up.
I feel a little sheepish for even having [...]

Filed under: Consumer Web, Social Computing | 3 Comments »

Making sure to not let Google steal the spotlight for more than a few moments, Facebook announced their Facebook Connect platform is now open to developers to seamlessly connect Facebook accounts to site authentication and identity information:

Ok Google Connect.  It’s your move now.

Filed under: Consumer Web, Google, Social Computing | Comments Off

First off, a few disclaimers: no, I didn’t just slam my hand down on the keyboard to write the title of this post.  And no, I don’t have much of a background in accounting or finance, but I have spent a good chunk of my career working in IT operations, managing budgets and expenditures.
One [...]

Filed under: Cloud Computing, Enterprise Web, SaaS | Comments Off

The new Google Reader look and feel was released today, and it looks… Terrible.  In fact, when it first was changed, I thought my browser was failing to load a CSS file or something.  It looks like the whole left side of the screen is broken.
Here’s a sample of the new left sidebar:

But, according [...]

Filed under: Consumer Web, Google | Comments Off

Not to be outdone by recent news of advancements in adoption of Facebook Connect, Google launched their Friend Connect beta site today.
Google’s Friend Connect differs from Facebook Connect in that it’s leveraging open standards (OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial) instead of the (arguably) closed and proprietary Facebook Connect standard.
Google also launched a developer site with [...]

Filed under: Consumer Web, Google, Social Computing | Comments Off

Here’s another nice little tidbit that’s worth keeping in mind for anyone currently building the next killer web application:  the SMS text messaging market is predicted to nearly double by 2013 to over $224 billion.
In a new report by Portio Research titled ‘Mobile Messaging Futures 2009 – 2013’:
Traffic volumes and revenues continue to confound predictions [...]

Filed under: Mobile Web | 2 Comments »

If you’re looking to buy yourself or someone you know a new printer for Christmas, you might want to head over to Printer.com before plunking down $70 on a printer that’ll ultimately cost you $500 in ink over 5 years.
Printer.com calculates the total cost of the printer plus the average cost for ink over 5 [...]

Filed under: Consumer Web, Hardware | 1 Comment »