Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 47/2008

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obamoidaNo more denial, it's official by now: no more outdoor swimming 2k8, winter has kicked in Vienna. Yesterday, the little white thingie called snow was floating around in the air, which is nice, if you live near the Alps (skiing season!), but which sucks, if you live in Vienna: as soon as the first snow is falling, car-drivers get crazy: no matter if the streets are actually slippery or not.

Seth on Trust: I trust you, says Seth, but if you abuse my trust once, you won't be part of the inner circle next time. No need to comment on that, expect: full akk:

If I believe I'm talking on the record, to everyone, I need to be a lot more careful in what I type. Of course, there's no way for me to enforce this. No way for me to sue you or something if you start taking my words (in context or not) and post them here and there. Except for one: I just won't trust you again.

Craig's face gets redder: Obviously, Facebook wants to re-furbish its marketplace. Classified are big business, which currently is largely covered by Craigslist, MSN and eBay (via Kijiji). According to TechCrunch, Facebook chose Oodle, who probably won the pitch thanks to their previous field-experience aka Walmart Classifieds – the relaunch will take place in December. If Facebook manages to offer a better product than their competitors, this could mean some big buck: the combination of a social network with a classifieds-system sounds like a very good idea – but obviously, something was missing so far, since the current marketplace is one of the least busy areas in FB-town; let's see if Oodle will change that.

Monty Python on youtube: No more need to illegally upload MP-sketches: the British comedians are going affirmative and created their very own Channel, which not only features the well-known pieces but also rarities from the vault. I bet fan-numbers will increase rapidly! [via Laughing Squid]

A quantum of what? Glad I don't have to watch the newest JB movie, as Dan reviewed A Quantum of Solace and came to the frightening conclusion that there is actually no bond girl in this movie. Actually, his resum

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 45/2008

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Last week, photo number 3.000.000.000 was uploaded to Flickr. Yes, they do indeed have a collection of 3 trillion pictures (probably including the private ones) by now. Unfortunately, there are no additional stats or data online. What FlickR needs is a Stats Fiend as Seth puts it.

O'Bama did it

70-something days: that's the remaining time span for George Bush as leader of most superlativious nation in the world. And experts warn that the hardest-disliked president ever might do everything to leave behind a right-wing mess. Indeed, if Georgie wants to damage civil rights, he's gotta do it fast – the New York times issued a warning. I was really amazed by the latest episode of South Park: these guys tend to react pretty quickly, but this was just hilarious: Barrack and McCain working together to stage the greatest heist ever – I just love this kind of weird humor.

Wanna marry rich? Get a LinkedIn Account

Since otherland is still in the making, the rich folks are dwell at LinkedIn's [via TechCrunch]:

Nearly 60% of users have incomes of $93,000 or more. Executives with an average income of $104,000 make up 28% of the 2,000 random users polled for the study. Another 30% are self-identified “consultants” with an average income of $93,000.

That still doesn't make the network mechanics less annoying – but successful entrepreneurs kind of seem to enjoy the pleasure of connection requests.

The SEOsphere week

Twitter is raising a couple of eyebrows: the everlasting fight against spammers taking over has entered the next round, as Twitter announced that there's an internal blacklist: if your account is on the list, nobody can follow you – and it even might get deleted at some point. That's not the way SEOs like it, but whatcha gonna do? The gold rush is over, the master of the walled garden is just doing his duty.

And that's pretty much it for this week. Btw: the one-day delay was caused by my trip to Graz in Styria where Elevate Festival took place. DJ Spooky, Danton Eeprom and gazillions of other DJs rocked the floors. And Professor Lorenz, head of programming of Austrias public (and state-financed) television dropped a legendary line during the opening discussion: “I don't care about this shit-internet”, he said, and indeed he clearly did not intend to make a joke, as he is pretty sure that TV is the most influential media. I'm kinda glad that mighty Moe makes it so easy for average Joe! Thanks for watching reading, c u next week.

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 44/2008

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Yup, I jump into your rss reader completely unexpected and start a ritual on my int'l blog that I've been diligently following on the German langue version datenschmutz for almost two years: from this very Sunday on I'll publish a weekley report on current events in the blogosphere. Of course there will be international and US news, but with a special focus on “good old Europa”, as information exchange between the two continents is not working as well as one might imagine in the era of communication worshippers. It's not a 1:1 translation of my German weekly-roundup, but the title will also include the word “Blogistan” (my kinda-Russion-sounding nom du guerre for la Blogosphere). So enjoy my first English weekly blogistan round-up, it reads a little something like this:

This week in goold old web 2.0 Europe…

Ernerst & Young teamed up with Burda Media to conduct a study [in German] on monetization/feasibility of web 2.0 services. In short, the conclusion offers nothing new: customers are not yet willing to pay recurring fees, traditional mdoels make more money than the social web and future ads will be a lot more personalized. Like I said: nothing new in here.

But this connects smoothly to the next news: Facebook might be needing money sooner than expected, as the social network is growing “too” fast while not even making enough money to cover it's monthly costs, left alone development. Good luck with that: may the hope for better times be with FB! In times like these investors favor short-term return strategies. But Dubai might offer a solution, and that's where CFO Gideon Yu travelled recently – probably not just to ride the camel.

In Other News

Consulting in times of crisis: Consulting Pulse interviewed marketing legend Seth Godin on the difficult topic of “consulting in times of crisis”. btw: you can't satisfy them all.

The MTV conspiracy: CrunchGear reports a strange case of civil un-disobedience: MTV is seriously bleeping out the names of filesharing networks when playing Weird Al Yankovich's “Copyright Song”. Hey, once you had an impact on pop culture – lighten up! Bittorrent, E-Mule, Kazaa… that was not so hard, ey?

Le video du week

Vote, vote, vote. Or don't vote? Or what the heck is Stevie Spielberg trying to tell the public in his new short movie? Work of a genius, check it out and watch till the end:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX40RsSLwF4[/youtube]

This week it was like that / and that's just the way it was. Thanks for your priceless attention, read me again on Monday.

Blog Action Day 2k8: Against poverty

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blog action day 2008Blog action day 2008 is fighting global poverty by raising collective awareness in the blogosphere: Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world

Pictures from Barcamp Vienna

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Last weekend #bcv08 took place at HP headquarters in Vienna. The weekend was incredibly intense, special kudos go out to all the guys from Bratislava who came to join us. We're thinking about a bi-city barcamp, a (really slow) ship might make a great location. The two cities are so close, it's time to start connecting!

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The State of the Web, Summer 2008

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Matthew Inman has taken over the extremely difficult task of reducing all current web trends into one simple page that says it all: and indeed it does. Mr. Screwturner pointed me to this great and all-so-well fitting masterpiece: The State of the Web, Summer 2k8.