http://www.cocomment.com/comments/mfjm2000 Copyright 2007 coComment.com 2009-11-24T06:13:29.218+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/images/logo4rss.gif http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1137676&comment_id=22479661 The Foo Just curious to see where the 5 million went to. Online classifieds is tough market to be in. The ones that make it seems to be the ones that are linked to an established site and not startout on their own. The ones that do startout on their own were there first (like craiglists). Personally there wasn’t anything behind Edgeio in the first place. Where (and what) was the differentiator? It looked like a Web 1.0 styled company trying to be Web 2.0. The search was not real good too as I would click on a suggested term and it would come up with no results. With the $5 million given, how much of it went into the development.. because I didn’t see any major changes to it from when I went there year ago and now. 2007-12-07T16:52:43.623+01:00 2007-12-07T16:52:43.623+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1137676&comment_id=22479659 The Foo Just curious to see where the 5 million went to. Online classifieds is tough market to be in. The ones that make it seems to be the ones that are linked to an established site and not startout on their own. The ones that do startout on their own were there first (like craiglists). Personally there wasn't anything behind Edgeio in the first place. Where (and what) was the differentiator? It looked like a Web 1.0 styled company trying to be Web 2.0. The search was not real good too as I would click on a suggested term and it would come up with no results. With the $5 million given, how much of it went into the development.. because I didn't see any major changes to it from when I went there year ago and now. 2007-12-07T16:51:24.928+01:00 2007-12-07T16:51:24.928+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1117850&comment_id=22275855 The Foo think i'll be sticking with FF 2 for a while --- no reason to do it besides curiousity. Can't afford anymore bugs and playing around with getting it to work. I am seriously thinking of digging out my old FF 1.5 download and reinstalling that one. 2007-11-20T14:12:41.171+01:00 2007-11-20T14:12:41.171+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1105971&comment_id=22189538 The Foo "....is a place for advertisers to interact with bloggers who are willing to take pay per post type advertising and run with it. " so as an advertiser, you create a profile, mingle with would be bloggers that may end up advertising for you or writing about your service/product. i see the idea BUT i don't get it what is in it for them (i.e. IZEA)... what will stop an advertiser from bypassing Payperpost (and paying PPP commissions). with this social site, i can save on having to pay the commissions by going directly to the blogger, right? On top of all that, I get the chance to choose the blogger that I want rather than putting it on the PPP criteria driven marketplace. Maybe we are only getting a generalistic view of what it can do and there is more to it then this post reports. However, based on what i just read someone tell me otherwise --- Aren't they shooting themselves in the foot by launching this? isn't it potentially going to take business away from PPP? 2007-11-11T05:46:25.179+01:00 2007-11-11T05:46:25.179+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1096837&comment_id=22047422 The Foo Ego booster -- that's what it is. Like #8 said, big following doesn't really mean much. Someone today said in twitter that the quality of the following has more value than the amount of following -- i tend to agree fully. 2007-11-03T05:04:06.029+01:00 2007-11-03T05:04:06.029+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1096289&comment_id=22046297 The Foo i think it's great to see colleges having applied courses like that -- it certainly expands the mind and ones creativity rather than learning everything from the book. nothing better than learning something practically and it ends up prepping someone better for the real world too. i wish i had a courses like that when i was in college -- education has certainly changed for the better. with where education is heading, i am not at all surprised how much younger an average tech entrepreneur is compared to years ago. 2007-11-02T18:34:06.053+01:00 2007-11-02T18:34:06.053+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1095235&comment_id=22043244 The Foo Yes $700 a slice is a pretty expensive slice. what i am trying to say is that the way things are going now, development of apps need to consider another factor -- is it google friendly. That really should NOT be the case as when one starts doing something like that, it does hamper the freedom of development. It will come to a certain extent that Google can manipulate how apps are made just because their search engine or whatever backend works that way. So we'll see "Google Approved" or "Google Compatible" apps being made instead of just Web/ Internet apps -- can you see the picture i'm trying to paint? This sort of unhealthy monopolistic situation is not good for the web. We have to remember that the whole basis of why the internet has grown so big and so fast is because it is due to one major area -- the freedom to create without boundaries. That is what i'm a little concerned about -- it is the whole Microsoft rules and the old AT&T rules all over again but just on the internet. 2007-11-01T21:23:03.845+01:00 2007-11-01T21:23:03.845+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1095235&comment_id=22043193 The Foo Personally don't think they should penalize blogs that don't observe the no follow implementation. it should be up to the individual blog owners to whether they want to allow that or not and is not google to say whether it is good or bad. To have something being "approved" before putting it up just shows that they have become too big for their own good. It is no longer the case where the internet is big and free anymore -- it's a case of doing something as long as you are within the boundaries of Google's rules. Who are they to determine what is spam and what is not. I think a better way to combat spam is by capthas instead of the no follow -- which most blogs already have anyway. It also looks to me like an easy way out of how they want to manipulate their spidering with least work on their end i.e. making the blogger or website implement something on their end instead of working on a way to combat spam with specific algorithms on their own engine. Don't get me wrong, I think Google is a great company with great offerings, but they shouldn't be allowed to govern and rule how the marketplace, the web and blogosphere is run in such a monopolistic manner. 2007-11-01T20:47:19.966+01:00 2007-11-01T20:47:19.966+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1095216&comment_id=22043155 The Foo Nice writeup and summary Andy. It makes sense, if you have evolved into a company with many different products/ services, there should be an umbrella name that is different from their flagship product. If PPP happened to be both the previous umbrella name AND the product too, it would be logical to separate it out. I can see the big perception (and negative connotation) of separating a controversial product name from the rest of its offerings. Not sure what the real reason is as only Ted Murphy will know it as his response was very PR like -- he would never come out and say it even if it was the case that they wanted a name change to get away from the negativity. My response to this is ... "so what?", what exactly is the big deal about this. It is not the first time a company has come up with an umbrella name for all its product. However, this move just cements his business savvy and strategic thinking. Regardless of how much he is bulked by A-list bloggers, you can't deny that he is pretty good at what he does i.e. to grow a company and make it successful (against all odds). Personally, I think that all the A list bloggers should stop winning and complaining. It's starting to sound like a broken down record player. There is enough revenue around the web/ blogosphere to go around with PPP in the picture. Play nice and share guys. Even with him implementing disclosures (which what you guys wined about in the first place, the negativity continued). To me, it just looks like a bunch of spoilt kids in a playground trying to protect their turf -- and THAT is just what it boils down to. A cat fight, that is what it is. You all should have the sense to know that the more you continue to talk about him and the company, that he is receiving tremendous amount of free publicity and he is laughing all the way to the bank. Funny thing is how you guys never once mentioned smaller companies like BLOGVERTISE and BLOGITIVE which are doing almost the same thing -- just because they are not as big to threaten your turf. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to put it all together to show that the so called A list bloggers are feeling something they have never felt before -- vulnerability and being threatened by an up and coming company that is making a lot of money. All of a sudden their throne is not so comfy anymore. It's certainly good entertainment you guys (i.e. the A list blogger) are putting up for us going back and forth with the PPP negativity. And through all of it, I can just see Ted Murphy smiling everytime one of the A listers start saying something negative or start stirring up negativity about his company. Don't you guys get it... the more you talk about him, the richer his company becomes. 2007-11-01T20:21:24.588+01:00 2007-11-01T20:21:24.588+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1091426&comment_id=21934111 The Foo my thoughts on this post is "so what?".... this seems to be more of juicy gossip that one worthy of Techcrunch. #2 is right -- this seems better for perezhilton. 2007-10-29T18:47:17.967+01:00 2007-10-29T18:47:17.967+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1090798&comment_id=21926012 The Foo bah! i just lost my whole comment because i didn't put in the right spam word. shortened version: cute pic of the little one! royal hawaiian is the one we want to stay at when we next visit Hawaii. when we were on our honeymoon, we stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian village close to it -- i'm sure you know where that is. love hawaii! 2007-10-29T06:38:39.913+01:00 2007-10-29T06:38:39.913+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1090798&comment_id=21926006 The Foo cute pic of the little one. Royal Hawaiian is the one we want to stay in the next time we are in Hawaii -- what a great hotel! When we were on our honeymoon, we stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village (not far from it). I just love Hawaii! 2007-10-29T06:36:30.926+01:00 2007-10-29T06:36:30.926+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1086020&comment_id=21868312 The Foo Yeah don't see how this one will survive given its business model. Gmail offers 4 gig using something like Firefox Gspace to access it, so what is the advantage of using this one. I also don't like the idea of my files being distributed among other peer computers -- how is that safe security wise? It'll take a lot to compete with Xdrive, MediaMax or Box.net right now. To me a distributed peer to peer storage system is a bad idea and will cause more headache than not for a user. Sad to say but this one might end up in the Deadpool pretty soon and yes the logo is horrible! 2007-10-24T23:43:40.967+02:00 2007-10-24T23:43:40.967+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1083716&comment_id=21861300 The Foo @Jason That is exactly my point ... you don't vote because someone tells you it is good to vote for him or her -- that defeats the purpose of why you vote in the first place. it really doesn't matter whether it is this site, newspaper, news channel, a mega star or the nobel prize winner tells you its good. Decide for yourself, by yourself and with YOUR own opinion -- not because you are influenced by a particular person, site or media outlet. my thing about it is if you need be told who is the ideal candidate, you shouldn't be voting in the first place. i think voting for someone should be more than just choosing your issues online, then matching the ones that is closest to the ideal. it should also be much more than choosing a candidate that says what the public wants to hear, based on their official policies and popular opinions. take in the facts, process it and form your own opinion but for goodness sake don't allow a site to crank out a so called leader based on algorithms and calculations. These sort of systems are a serious injustice to the whole American system. Why not just let a machine tell you what to do, right? or better yet, let's flip a coin. What would stop the fictitious Homer Simpson (or your average Joe next door) from running for president, stating the best possible answer for health care, education, national security etc. and then this organization choosing Homer or Joe as the ideal candidate based on his so called best policies? Dumb Jack Blogs comes along, has to vote but doesn't know who to vote for... gets on this website, finds out that Homer (of average Joe) is the ideal candidate and votes for him. With enough exposure and reach (which is not hard to do with money nowadays), this organization can start to manipulate votes real easily. All they have to do is get an A-list blogger to talk about it positively and it'll start spreading like wildfire. This may be a silly/ extreme example but i think you get the picture of what i'm trying to paint. The level of biasness of this company is impossible to measure -- so we won't know whether there are hidden agendas, whether this company was paid off by a presidential candidate's party or funded by a rich source supporting a particular candidate to sway votes. My fear is that people will start using this site to more than what it is ... to the extent of personal judgements being distorted/ clouded and where people can't think for themselves. It's bad enough that the media plays a big part in swaying someone, you don't need an organization like that (whom you don't even know where its loyalty lies) to tell you who is ideal and who is not. A very bad idea, I can't even stand to imagine our American president being voted into office on the basis of an online organization saying that he (or she) is the most ideal. 2007-10-23T20:33:14.502+02:00 2007-10-23T20:33:14.502+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1083716&comment_id=21859328 The Foo Bad idea. Just what America needs, a president elected on the basis of a web service. If you need someone to tell you who to vote for, you shouldn't be voting in the first place. Next thing we'll see is the presidential candidates paying tonnes of money to companies like that to sway voters (if it hasn't already been done). 2007-10-23T13:23:40.248+02:00 2007-10-23T13:23:40.248+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=489178&comment_id=21856004 The Foo ignore my previous comments ... i'll have to experiment with adding twitter and pownce as in the instructions. btw: the Chris Davis WP plugin link doesn't exist as it looked like he changed his blog around. 2007-10-22T22:26:16.148+02:00 2007-10-22T22:26:16.148+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=489178&comment_id=21854367 The Foo @Mark i looked at your lifestream and then at the elliot back wordpress plugin and i noticed his didn't have any twitter implementations. Your lifestream has it and you said that you used the same plugin -- how did you implement that one? is there any other WP plugins that implements twitters and pownce (out of the box) without extra coding - not really a coder. 2007-10-22T18:31:14.357+02:00 2007-10-22T18:31:14.357+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1082476&comment_id=21853759 The Foo congratulations on the new design. good stuff! btw: which twitter plugin are you using on your sidebar. 2007-10-22T16:45:55.513+02:00 2007-10-22T16:45:55.513+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1032634&comment_id=20225078 The Foo I really can't think of an advantage of having the multiple random url feature. Stats is a good though. although it may seem unrelated to their other business, if you look at it closely, the stats part may actually be used by them to gather demographics, geographical info and more. Is it that they are trying use URL brief to create an indirect less than obvious analytics solution (after failing to get performancing earlier in the year). There is got to be something that benefits the PPP revenue model as they won't spend their money, time and energy on making something unrelated (and just for fun). 2007-10-09T16:01:35.795+02:00 2007-10-09T16:01:35.795+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=mfjm2000&conv=1028272&comment_id=20080580 The Foo When I first saw the site, my first impression was "this is just too much information". I like the idea of aggregating the hottest news but there must be a way to get that information into a better visual user interface tailored to the average reader. I believe the key to selling this to the average reader is how fast it delivers the information to the reader visually. I'm not talking the how fast it aggregates news (with its backbone), I'm talking about how fast it catches the attention of the user when you first look at a page. You have to remember that the average reader has a very short attention span. That is why techmeme is great because you can go to the site and glance for the info that interest you quickly. You can't with Tailrank because you'll have to sift through 20-30 articles of the same topic (which may bore you) before you get to the next topic. Now if that next topic bores you as well, you'll have to go through the next 20-30 articles to get to the next topic too. Then I'll reach the bottom and I see there are 2700+ more articles and it just took me a longer time that I wanted as I had to sift through the articles and topics to see what interest me. I think you get the picture. That on its own is such a put off and you won't find many readers coming back just for that fact. It might be good for someone having lots of time to spare but I believe the type of readers using Tailrank (or the type of readers you may want to target) won't fit into that category. The fast pace and little-time-to-spare techs, reporters, executives that are going to read Tailrank won't have that luxury. Personally, I think the first page and inner category pages should only show the title/ topic and how many blog/ site links to that topic. You really don't need to show the 20-30 of the popular sites/ blogs that write about the topic. If someone is going to be interested in it, they'll click on the link that would bring them to the summarized page of blog links/ site screenprints. You don't need to force someone to look at 20-30 posts before seeing the next topic. That way, a reader can glance at the topic and move on if it bores him. Alternatively, if you really insist on showing the 20-30 blog articles, change the one column layout to a multicolumn one, concise it into a cloud format or something of that sort. As I said before, the average reader has a short attention span and to scroll down to the bottom and see that there are 2700+ hot articles more is kind of daunting. I am interested to see how many people go past the 2nd or 3rd pages with lists after list of blogs of the same topic. One other thing you may have to change is how users perceive the site when they first go to it. Michael Arrington and many of us here had the impression that it is an up to date news aggregator like Techmeme. I know understand that it is not, but only after you reading through your comments and the site further. You will lose a lot of readers with those perceptions when they look at a site with a topic that is 1 day old. If you have the ability to aggregate up to date news, you should put it up on the menu or somewhere more prominently. The fact that you had to point someone to http://tailrank.com/river in a comment here on how to find the latest and greatest is not a good way to do it. I think a filter that shows hottest news in the past hour, 1 day, 5 day and 30 days would be a good option too -- that way you give the reader more options too. I see the differentiators, but it is not clearly defined. People are comparing this site to Techmeme and you need to change that. 2007-10-05T17:01:31.290+02:00 2007-10-05T17:01:31.290+02:00