I have been writing about the lack of sports social networking platforms, and here I come across NBX via the a:c. It seems to incorporate much of what’s been on my mind: groups, video, photos and betting stuf.  However, for a global play, this needs to be for soccer (football).

Fred touches on the idea that MySpace has begun losing users to Facebook, spurred by NimBLOG.  The traffic stats suggest the opposite, as in the below graph.

However, I can’t help but agree with the point that the teen crowd is exceptionally fickle and I don’t know what unique characteristic MySpace has to keep them interested, and keep getting new users as new kids enter their teen years.  Facebook has the university angle which will keep feeding the funnel.

UPDATE: Ben Casnocha had made the same call two months ago, reporting from the field.

Rafat Ali posted that FIFA has lifted its restrictions on the digital publishing of photos.  My contention has long been that sports is the only other super-strong unifier of people (along with music).  This move by FIFA should unleash a web of activity of fans, led by those in the stands in Germany, publishing photos and commentary on the World Cup this year.  Get your camera phones ready.

Nick Carr has commented on the new subscription pricing on iTunes.  I am watching keenly as digital media distribution models mature.  I do not yet have a call on how the audio and video distribution and pricing will evolve, but I do believe that most experiments today have their roots in the analog world that we all grew up in: records, radio and TV.  I suspect that there will be a significant (albeit slow) change in the consumer behavior and, when the dust settles, the models we’ll see will have to take into account the inherent characteristics of digital media:

• malleability – microchunks ready for creative input and mashups
• portability – created for consumption over various mediums and formats
• flexibility – respecting the power of the consumer for her choices in form of payment

My friend Aycan Avci, in a discussion today, described how he’d like to consume music. It’s distinct from any of the available models today, which include:

• The purchase model (iTunes)
• The subscribe, pick and listen model (Yahoo! Music Unlimited)
• The discovery model (Last.fm)

What Aycan would like to see is the Netflix for Music model, where you have access to a set number of songs at a time, and you can consume that set in any manner you choose – on your portable player, PC, etc.  He suggested that it could be as few as a 100 songs at a time that can reside in your possession.  If you’d like to add a 101st song, you’d have to lose one of your existing 100.

Interesting.  My question would be if  this model would be in line with how music fans would like to consume music.  After all, there has always been a video rental business, but never a CD or record rental business (as far as I know.)  One usually watches a film once and has low utility from its subsequent consumption.  Whereas, the same person typically buys music and consumes it many times.

Aycan’s example for a use of this model would be for a party – say a reggae party where the subscriber would download 100 reggae songs, play the playlist for an evening, and swap out for something else, perhaps keeping a few of her favorites for a few more weeks.

Fred Wilson posted about shortcomings of text search. The same issue’s been on my mind since finding out about Hakia about a year ago.  Hakia is one of the few ventures into semantic search.

Fred gives the humorous example that his blog A VC is the third return when one searches for ‘allen iverson email’ in Google.  In Hakia, the same search returns a different,and to my novice eye, a better set of links.

Now here’s the odd part.  Being a semantic search tool, Hakia would like you to search using natural language.  So, I did a search for ‘what is allen iverson’s email address?’.  And guess what?  The first return was Fred’s blog!! 🙂

So, Fred, maybe you are the correct source for AI’s email address.

BTW, I have had a few conversations with Dr. Riza Can Berkan, the co-founder and CEO of Hakia, and know that Hakia is going through an extensive proprietary indexing process.  In fact, the Hakia website states that "Hakia’s evolution is 18% complete".  So, it is probably not fair to pass any judgment on its current accuracy and effectiveness.

Dave Beisel has a post on the future of podcasting.  It looks like he and I share the same questions. He calls for a unification of concepts and comments:

In some respects, it doesn’t matter what we call syndicated rich-media content to devices – it is what it is.  On
the other hand, it makes sense for there to be a general consensus
around the term podcast, so everyone is speaking the same language.
And I believe it’s just as important for the digerati to have the same
common notion of it as my grandmother does, as this clarification and
consensus will help further promote this new medium, whatever you call
it.

While I am very interested in the phenomenon, I don’t like the term and I suspect it may dissolve into a broader category.  As Dave says, it is just a form of content pushed to consumers.  In a way, a digital radio program is a podcast…

The differentiation between the forms and formats of content, and the analysis of each format as if a different phenomenon is counterproductive.  How is audio (podcasting) different from video (videocasting) content distribution.  The strategies surrounding both are very very similar.  If I read this blog post outloud and record it with a microphone and a digital video recorder, then distribute it as a blog entry, a podcast, and a videocast, is there really much difference in how one would approach each format?  I don’t really think so.

Podcasts, videocasts, blogs are all microchunks of content.  They should all be treated and analyzed in that context.

Steve Richmond pointed me to this hilarious video:  What if MS redesigned the iPod packaging?

Today, Cagan pointed me to Google Pages and Infogami.

I had heard of Google Pages a while back, with speculation that it was Google’s entry into the yellow pages space.  I think Google Local Search is more in the YP area.  Google Pages seems to me as an easy way to publish a page on the web, without the need for hosting services and HTML knowledge.  Very similar to any blogging service.  Unfortunately, Google Pages did not let me create an account – apparently, due to demand, they have frozen new accounts.

I was able to create an Infogami page.  For me, with no HTML or web development skills, the interface was less intuitive than that of TypePad.  However, I see that Infogami is a product of Paul Graham‘s Y Combinator, and that it’s organically related to Reddit, so I am confident that they will refine the product and end up successful.

Here’s the bottom line:  When web publishing keeps getting easier, the scope of the web expands.  This expansion feeds the search/find problem, which I see as the biggest challenge on the web (which, in turn, leads to the success of companies solving this problem, such as Google, eBay, Monster and Amazon).  However, when this expansion is fueled by Google, it gains context.  The next step may be templates, or even specific tags, in Google Pages for resumes, music, classifieds, or blogs.  Then we have a huge threat for the first generation of search/find solvers.

If I can use Google to search for resumes, which returns me the Google Pages (as XML files) of candidates meeting certain criteria, why would I need Monster?  Same for iTunes…  If any band can upload their music, tag it as required, it’s available to any searcher.

Connectedness and classification are the two biggest drivers of the next generation of web services.  We keep observing this change on the edge.