Registration for this year's Northern Voice conference in Vancouver opens today and tickets are going fast. As of 4pm today, 100 of the 300 available spots were spoken for by eager attendees.
Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging and social media conference held at the Forestry Sciences Centre, 2424 Main Mall, UBC main campus, Vancouver, Canada on February 20-21, 2009. This is the 5th annual incarnation of this event.
If you're interested in attending, I suggest you get on it now as it should sell out in record time this year.
Craigslist addicts like myself will be interested in Craigsphone, the new iPhone app from Next Mobile Web. Craigsphone offers a clean UI; the ability to post, upload and share location while mobile; a saved viewing history, location-based suggestions, and instant-dial numbers. The Next Mobile Web crew is claiming that there is much more to come. "The internet is raw and beautiful because it is Us," they say, "and no site is more Us than craigslist." While the ability to "see stuff, fun and people nearby" is currently limited to San Francisco and Manhattan, Next Mobile Web says they will "take the best local site in the world and make it truly local." It will be interesting to see exactly where they go with that. This app might end up being the greatest thing since sliced bread for those people who constantly scan the Missed Connections hoping to find themselves described.
craigsphone from Next Mobile Web on Vimeo
We are mobile geeks working hard to improve the web. [more]
Christmas card season is behind us and Techvibes received our fair share via snail mail and electronically this year. The Stories of Giving package we received from the People at Cossette (& Optimum PR) stood out - I'll let fellow card-receiver Rebecca Bollwitt explain.
Cossette is an international communications firm with operations in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. It is one of the top... [more]
Last week Jeremy Wright of b5media shed a little light on how his company has managed to monetize their network of 300+ blogs and bloggers should take note. In a glowing Toronto Star article three days before Christmas, Wright broke down his traffic and revenue numbers and bloggers worldwide grabbed pencil & paper to work out what their blog could/should/would be making based on b5's metrics.
Toronto-based blog network b5media boasts more than 300 blogs written by 200 professional writers. Each month it receives 30 million page views and 10 million unique visitors.
Those numbers mean revenue. Large numbers of visitors and page views mean b5media can charge more for advertising. And it's been working out fairly well. In 2005, for instance, b5media brought in revenue of $70,342 and in 2007 that number had grown 1,798 per cent to $1,328,885. And it continues to grow.
Based on 2007's revenue ($111K per month) and today's pageviews (30 Million per month), b5 is monetizing well but not as well as some people might think will a CPM of approximately $3.70.
Any bloggers out there? How does your site compare?
b5media is a global new media network featuring more than 255 blogs on a wide variety of subjects ranging from entertainment and news to technology... [more]
According to Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr, 2009 will be the Year of the Uber Blog.
Some may moan at the use of the word uber, so feel free to substitute it with big or large, because the meaning remains the same. An Uber Blog is a blog that combines different content streams into one large blog, with one primary top level url. The Huffington Post is an example I’ve used before. The blending of content can be in related fields, or non related fields; for example, you might blend specialties in tech into the one tech blog.
Riley may know what he's talking about. He has a solid blogging pedigree that includes co-founding the b5media blogging network and contributing to Techcrunch during its meteoric rise. Riley's reasoning is remarkably simple: it’s easy to sell ads on one blog vs many blogs. One 'big' blog means increased traffic to the core blog making the sales pitch more appealing.
Riley notes that ReadWriteWeb, Silicon Alley Insider, and Gawker have successfully gone from a traditional blog network to the uber blog model while Techcrunch and GigaOm have preferred to collect seperate online properties like they're going out of style.
In 2009 big will be better. Not big networks of many sites, but big blogs that break out of the narrow niche focus that has been typical of commercial blogging until now, and instead go wide in content but focused on one brand and one url.
The rise of the uber blog will also mark the beginning of the time new media starts to surpass old media. The thing holding back new media to date has been its obsession with niche plays that didn’t naturally lead to scale that sets them up well to compete with old media titans that went wide online as they did offline in print. The new media uber blogs of 2009 and beyond will offer real substitution of old media like we haven’t really seen before, and with lean structures that are best placed to last the recession, could ultimately emerge on top.
I like the way you think Duncan Riley. Techvibes is on its way to becoming a uber blog that gives its readers an easy way to slice & dice content hyperlocally all on the same trusty url. We're looking forward to the New Year.
Today on IT Business, Jeff Jedras covered Grand & Toy's new venture into the social networking space with Grand & Toy Empower. Think Facebook, but for SMBs.
The idea is to leverage the latest social networking and Web 2.0 capabilities to provide SMB owners and operators with a portal where they can network, share best practices, and gain new business at a time and pace of their choosing.
Valerie Jones, general manager of e-commerce for Grand & Toy, says the retailer is going strongly after the SMB. Its strategy is to become a trusted advisor to SMBs, and to help them connect, learn, grow and network.
“We want to be positioned in the market as an organization that cares about the SMB,” said Jones. “We're their advocate, here to help rather than just sell them products. We're here to help them grow, and what better way to do that than build a Web site with resources specifically designed to fit their needs?”
According to Grand & Toy's research, SMBs turn to online networking when they don't have time to attend their local Chamber of Commerce of Board of Trade events. Empower promises to connect SMB owners outside of business hours, on their time table. Better yet, Grand & Toy believes SMB owners will share best practices with people in similar business areas across the country as they won't perceive them as direct competitors.
The Empower Web site, which is free for SMBs to join and use, offers a library of articles, videos and podcast presentations on topics such as writing a business plan and marketing. Online seminars will provide business tips, virtual trade shows an opportunity to showcase their wares, and a job board will aid in both talent acquisition and job search.
As a company, we've always been very proud of our ability to provide great selection, service and value for the office product needs of our many... [more]
Starting February 17, 2009, the CRTC will start a public hearing on the future of broadcasting in a new media environment. CRTC regulations, including those that mandate a quota of Canadian content, don't currently apply to Internet content (since 1999) and cellphone/mobile content (since 2007). Much has changed since 1999, with the Internet quickly becoming the primary vessel of content for many Canadians.
Further to this consultation, the CRTC now invites comments on specific questions related to:
- the definition of broadcasting in new media
- the significance of broadcasting in new media and its impact on the traditional broadcasting system
- incentives or regulatory measures for the creation and promotion of Canadian broadcasting content in new media
- access to broadcasting content in new media
- other broadcasting or public policy objectives, and
- the appropriateness of the Commission's exemption orders for new media and mobile broadcasting services.
Thoughts of taxing ISP or content providers or mandating a quota of Canadian content are bothersome to anyone working on web properties in Canada. Today Quebecor Media released a statement against internet regulation.
In the belief that the Broadcasting Act of 1991 does not provide a credible basis to justify regulatory action, the company finds that a regulatory approach is neither appropriate nor available to ensure that Canadian content has a presence in the virtual world where citizens have access to an impressive range of content offered by more than 185 million sites. Quebecor holds that the government, and ultimately the Parliament of Canada, have the responsibility to develop policies and determine appropriate ways to meet the challenges of the digital revolution, as well as the development of the Internet and new media.
The document goes on to argue that Canadian new media has blossomed because of a lack of regulation. Taxing ISPs to fund content would be unproductive, illegal(?), and wrong because they are only in the business of transmission. Quebecor criticizes the Canadian Television Fund for being too bound by regulation and criteria to be effective. Canadian content regulations are impractical on an Internet where consumers have a choice of hundreds of millions of sources.
In the lead up to these hearings, it will be interesting to see who else comes out with a stance on Canadian new media. Obviously it's in the self-interest of ISPs to oppose content regulation or taxation; maybe your web or new media company should as well?
Via CNET Webware, today both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect launched. Both are services that let you sign on to third party sites using your credentials from the respective site. While this feels like a trip back to 1999 when Microsoft launched Passport as a single-sign-on service (what was Passport is today Windows Live ID, and it's not open to third parties anymore). Arguably Microsoft's biggest mistake back then was asking thousands of dollars in licensing fees for those wanting to implement it. In 2008, in Web 2.0, you can't charge for anything, so there's no cost associated with either.
Both Facebook and Google's Connect services go beyond what Microsoft was offering back then. Both allow the third party site to access the user's contacts, in the case of Facebook, a user's privacy settings as propagated as well. Facebook Connect lets those sites then publish items back to the user's news feed. Google Friend Connect ties into OpenSocial, allowing third party sites to make use of social widgets. The root functionality of these two services— single sign-on—is the same, but the implementation and other features offered differentiate them a fair bit.
These systems still run into the argument that many used against Microsoft Passport: a single point of failure, controlled by a corporation. OpenID, an open protocol, decentralized single sign-on system, has come to maturity lately, but uptake and use is slow. Many large services such as Google and Yahoo act as OpenID providers, but much fewer sites actually accept OpenID credentials. Google Friend Connect actually accepts OpenID among others, but to an average user who already has a Google and Facebook account, OpenID is just something they don't understand. For many developers, the closed system where most people already have an account is much more appealing.
Eight years after Microsoft tried to solve the single sign-on problem, it's intriguing that it's taken this long for others to try in their footsteps. That's eight years of making separate accounts for every site you use. We have the technology to solve this, but can we settle on agreement of how?
A week of intense Canadian Parliamentary drama ended—or at least postponed—today with the Governor General agreeing to prorogue, or suspend, parliament until January. It all happened so fast; just a week ago there were rumours of backroom talks of coalition, which amplified over the week, then became official on Monday, led to a televised address by the Prime Minister Wednesday night, and now today, Thursday, it's all been suspended until the new year.
It also happened very fast on the Internet, where Canadians seemed to take greater interest in their government this week than they did during the whole recent election. Whereas a typical CBC news story might attract 30 or 40 comments, stories on a coalition were raising 6500+ comments. I found myself inundated with anti-coalition Facebook group invites from acquaintances in Edmonton, to which I politely replied with pro-coalition group invites. The anti-coalition side seems to be most vocal with the largest group, "Canadians Against a Liberal/NDP Coalition Gov't" at 100,000+ members in just six days. Various other groups have 10,000-20,000 members. An anti-coalition event planned for Saturday at different locations nationwide has 15,000 signed up. An online petition for "Our Right to Vote on the Coalition Government" has surpassed a quarter million signatures in the same time, reasonably more impressive than the Canadians for a Progressive Coalition petition currently at 28,000+ signatures. The #coaltion hashtag has been continuously one of the top ten trending terms on Twitter, peaking last night during Harper's televised address (which I watched streamed online).
After a very apathetic election, it's positive to see that Canadians do actually care about their governance when meaningful change is at stake. Further interesting to see how the web has become a core means to further the debate.
The thing one must admire about Twitter is how far they can cut back service while still retaining a rabid user base. This morning comes news that outbound SMS messages to Canada have been disabled due to rising costs.
Unexpected changes in our billing have forced us into a difficult situation with our Canadian SMS service. We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212).
There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world.) We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress.
Note that you can still send messages to the shortcode and have them posted, that doesn't cost Twitter anything, but you won't receive any back. Shortly after this announcement went out to all users, b5Media's Jeremy Wright made a good suggestion:
WTF?!!! TWITTER LET ME PAY FOR PRO SERVICE SO I CAN GET MY F*CKING SMS'S IN CANADA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whether Twitter has a clear business plan brewing or not, a solution is obvious: people are willing to pay for services that have been disabled due to cost or scalability issues. Another suggestion would be a model similar to Flickr, wherein free accounts would be limited to a certain number of followers, and a yearly fee for more. The window to pull this off is closing, because sooner or later, a worthy competitor will emerge. The many early adapters that make up Twitter's user base wouldn't hesitate to migrate if a compelling alternative existed.
Perhaps the larger issue is that a text message, which amounts to no more than 200 bytes, can still command a price vastly higher than any other data service anywhere. Why should I be paying for "unlimited data" and an allotment of text messages? At the end of the day text messages, web access, email, and even voice calls are all just data, transmitting over the same network. Differentiating these different types of communication only serves the billing desires of wireless providers.
Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006,... [more]
