December 2009 Archives - 2/6

3 great new iPhone apps from Absolute Radio

December 17, 2009 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

I’m obviously biased, bearing in mind I’ve been responsible for them, but three great new Absolute Radio apps are now available for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

They combine a really nice alarm clock with bespoke wake-up messages from either Christian O’Connell, Dave Gorman or Frank Skinner. And once the message has played, you’ll automatically hear your choice of Absolute Radio, Absolute 80s or Absolute Classic Rock.

The most difficult part of the project was probably stopping feature creep with all the other great ideas we were having – the important thing I had to remind myself is that the app has to function as a really good alarm clock first and foremost, otherwise there’s not much point. After all, we’ve already got a fantastic and extremely popular streaming radio application, with the iAmp (Now updated to feature Absolute Radio, Absolute 80s, Absolute Classic Rock and dabbl). And with various studies and reports suggesting that up to 70% of people have done away with an alarm clock in favour of their mobile, we’re hoping the apps will be popular.

So check out:

The OC Clock Radio

Dave’s Clock Radio

Frank’s Clock Radio

One of the really nice touches is the app store icon, with a great moment of creativity from AR Web Editor Anthony, which sets it off really nicely, and means it looks great alongide the iAmp and LiveAmp on your iPhone.

Lovely.

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Twitter introduces contributor bylines for tweets

December 15, 2009 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

There’s been a lot of talk about the proposed revenue model for Twitter which will seek to monetise businesses and brands using the microblogging service. But as yet none of the paid services has appeared – but one business-specific feature is now in a limited beta test.

It’s called ‘Contributors’ and manages multiple users to a single account by placing the byline of the user to their tweet on the main account. Imagine @Biz tweeting as part of the @Twitter account:

It’s supported by the API and interesting, the post revealing it on the official blog explains that it’s in beta to get feedback, but then says:

‘After we kick the tires a bit, we’ll do a full launch to all business users and ecosystem partners. Stay tuned!’

Could this be the first paid service? It’s definitely something which will make managing a multiple user account (as I do) a fair bit easier – if you’ve got a long brand name as your Twitter username, you often find there’s no room for attribution on a multiple user account.

But I’m not sure many businesses would pay (if this is released as part of the revenue plan). Although it’s a hassle, I’m not sure it’s enough of a pain to justify payment to sort – but it does show that the Twitter team are definitely focusing on the business users who could pay their bills

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Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: api, brand account, business account, contributors, microblogging, multiple user account, news

Did Microsoft China copy and clone Plurk?

December 14, 2009 By Dan Thornton 3 Comments

Is Microsoft China’s MSN Juku a straight theft of code and design from Plurk, the microblogging service which has had major success in the Asian world?

Despite fading after initial interest in the West, Plurk now claims to be ten times bigger than Twitter in Taiwan alone, and the preferred method of microblogging in many Asian countries, despite access to the site being banned by China in April 2009. At the time, Plurk’s top five countries were Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, the U.S and China, so it was a big issue.

Now the issue has got even bigger, as described in a blog post by Plurk co-founder and lead developer, Amir, which states what they think has happened:

Microsoft China officially launched its own microblogging service, MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub, some time in November, 2009.
The service’s design and UI is by and large an EXACT copy of Plurk’s innovative left-right timeline scrolling navigation system.
Some 80% of the client and product codebase appears to be stolen directly from Plurk!
Plurk was never approached nor collaborated in any capacity with MS on this service.
As a young startup, we’re stunned, shocked, and unsure what to do next and need your support and suggestions.

And judging by the images and code displayed on the Plurk blog, it seems far too suspicious to be a mere coincidence.

Spot the difference:

And again…

And once more with feeling:

It’s pretty amazing that a company of the size of Microsoft China would even think about stealing code to power a new launch, and that it’s gone this far if so. The only logical reason could be that China’s internet laws and lack of access to the outside world could lead to people thinking no-one would notice.

The question the Plurk team is asking is how to tackle the problem?

My guess is that the bad publicity wouldn’t necessarily worry Microsoft China, but might worry Microsoft itself a little more, particularly given all the efforts to fight Chinese piracy and protect intellectual property that Microsoft has supported. It’s a big harder to do that when you’ve got a clone of a reasonably well-established and successful company sitting there for all to see.

Techcrunch has also covered the story, and I’m looking forward to seeing what, if any, response they get from Microsoft.

My guess will be that MSN Juku will go quiet for a while, before perhaps reappearing with a slightly more unique codebase and design. If not, perhaps the only other option will be for Microsoft to get into acquisition mode – something that didn’t work out well for Google and Jaiku, and isn’t likely to work when the starting point is a complete rip-off!

Update: The outcome is that yes it’s a clone, but apparently done by a third party developer when everyone else was obviously on holiday or in a meeting. The site has been taken offline indefinitely, and the only remaining question is whether Plurk, which is a pretty small and young startup, will bother to try and take matters further, which given the legal resources MSN has, is probably unlikely…

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Filed Under: Plurk Tagged With: clone, code, copy, copyright, design, microsoft, microsoft china, msn juku, plurk, questions, stealing, theft, user interface

Content farms most threaten UK media firms

December 14, 2009 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

The ‘content farm’ strategy of building huge numbers of writers producing content for relatively low payments has been receiving increased coverage as aol concentrates on becoming a content firm rather than a technology firm.

It’s a tactic also being used by the likes of Demand Media and Answers.com, and has also been utilised by companies such as Yahoo. The fear is that a few thousand writers will produce enough content to severely distort the internet ecosystem and lead to a web ruled by low-quality content which targets the lowest common denominator.

Aside from the irony of bloggers using ‘low quality content’ as a criticism of another internet content strategy after the label has been unfairly levelled at them for years, I’m sure that it’s not the blogging companies and individuals that have most to fear.

It’s traditional media companies that will be hit first by another broadside – they have formal structures which will be impossible to change in time to respond to a new threat.

Based on my experience working for the largest UK magazine publisher for many years, (talking to many other people reveals most companies aren’t too far removed), the structure hasn’t radically changed for most people with print taking the majority of resource (Including designers, sub-editors, etc), and the digital teams still fighting to either gain parity or integration as the inequality between print and digital revenues continues to hold them back.

Now they’re about to get hit by an army of content writers. More importantly, this army will be hitting SEO-friendly articles in a more effective way than print teams have managed, and they’ll also have the benefit of significant resource and big brand names/internet properties as bases to build from.

If any large print company radically alter what they’re doing in a timescale of less than 6 months, it’d be a miracle.

If they want to take on this threat head-to-head, it’d require a complete focus-change and retooling within days and weeks.

And UK media companies are in an even worse position than their generally more evolved US counterparts, with a smaller geographical area and audience, less subscription-based revenue, and a small pool of extremely low-cost freelance talent if they were to try this route.

Meanwhile I actually think most blogs will be fine – the most general sites may experience problems, although I think the likes of Techcrunch and Mashable mix size and flexibility well enough to adapt as needed. And individuals who are producing far more specific niche content should have an advantage in producing articles which not only target SEO traffic, but also provide far greater value – and they’ll also be able to get more specific as necessary. Yes, they’ll have far bigger challenges to grow their readership, but they’ll be able to differentiate with higher-quality, longer, more in-depth displays of their specialist knowledge, and hopefully many of them will finally embrace and prove the ‘1000 true fans’ theory.

Bloggers of all sizes also have one huge advantage – they’ve built their success on a personal brand, whether it’s Mike Arrington, Pete Cashmore, or someone writing about collecting vintage bottle caps. This is something that is difficult to replicate or attack, and means that existing audiences are likely to show greater loyalty, whilst also being more likely to commit to sharing via word-of-mouth and social media.

The widespread belief seems to be that Google will solve all of this by putting more weighting on real-time sharing of content, and less on generic content of the type which has seen spam blogs tackled to some extent. While I think this will happen, it’s going to take some time, and some Twitter users are susceptible to Retweeting anything with a snappy headline.

So what can UK media companies do? Well, they may get a brief window in which to change, bearing in mind all the content farms are primarily America, so certain differences in language should preserve a reasonable amount of UK traffic.

They have to personalise their content producers and their brands, produce numerous niche sites with extremely small editorial teams, and prepare for low profit margins for the foreseeable future.

Besides the fact I’ve worked for a number of traditional print-based companies for years, and spent a long time at one in particular, I’m confident about the possibility to still be able to build a thriving online property around content – so much so that I’ve committed to a new side-project with a couple of great people which will hopefully reinforce my point. Expect more details on it shortly!

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