While Kiko’s functionality was solid (and improving, especially with recent releases), the team apparently wasn’t able to develop a viable business model to compete with the many other free alternatives (30Boxes, CalendarHub, Airset, and–oh yeah–Google Calendar).

I suggest keeping an eye on company founders Justin Kan and Emmet Shear–they’ve no doubt learned lessons here and will go on to bigger and better projects…

While I wasn’t surprised to see Wikipedia and MySpace, I didn’t expect HSBC or the Associated Press to make the cut…

Numbers of the day: 9 years ago, there were 2 million pay phones throughout the US.

Today, mainly thanks to cell phones (though neglect is also a factor), there are only about 1 million working pay phones (source: Newsweek).

What’s the next industry ready to be disrupted? It’s already well underway in TV, real estate, and even ice cream…

In particular, we’d like to find a chief architect (LAMP expertise important; knowledge of Ruby, Python or Drupal nice to have) and a lead designer (with strong CSS, UI and online graphic design skills). The right candidates will be knowledgeable and excited about emerging media platforms, social networks, syndication and web services–though what we’re doing doesn’t fit neatly into any of these categories.

NYC location preferred but not necessary.

If you’re interested or you know someone who might be, send me an email.

It starts with traffic. Wikipedia has entries for “the Digg effect” and “the Slashdot effect.” Both refer to what happens when either service posts a link on their front page to another web site; the huge numbers of users who then click through in an extremely short amount of time often cause the web server hosting the target link to shut down due either to server overload or to account bandwidth restrictions.

Clearly, a post’s tone, style, and conclusion can have a tremendous impact on the subject. However, an intensely negative post on an unread blog probably won’t have much impact. But almost any story on the front page of Delicious, Fark, or Slashdot will be read by a huge number of people. As a result, these sites have sufficient influence that product launches, reputations, and meaningful sums of money have been made and lost as a direct result of their links, posts, and content. Furthermore, popular posts tend to become even more popular as time passes because people often see stories that are already highly ranked, but miss others that are buried behind the first few pages.

A few examples:

• The Tale of The Abusive Internet Store. Thomas Hawk, who maintains a popular blog on digital media, takes first prize for his depressing experience with PriceRitePhoto, a questionable internet store (read the story–it’s sad). Today, 6 days after Thomas posted his story to digg, more than 7200 people have “dugg” the article, meaning that they found it worthwhile and thought it was merited attention from others (for each person who dugg the article, there are probably an additional 10-20 “lurkers” who visited Thomas’s link but didn’t choose to “digg” the story). In addition, diggers have contributed more than 1000 comments. Thomas’s blog post is now the number two result for anyone searching for “PriceRitePhoto” on Google. As a result, just two days after the story was originally posted, Thomas got a letter of apology from the offending store’s CEO. It’s unclear if Thomas would have received such a letter had his original post gone unnoticed; regardless, my guess is that PriceRitePhoto’s holiday sales will take a beating.
• Sony’s DRM SNAFU. In a dreadfully misguided attempt to control music theft, Sony included a piece of destructive software known as a “rootkit” with a number of music CDs they sold. On November 9, the Electronic Frontier Foundation posted an article listing infected CDs; within a few weeks, almost 2000 people “dugg” that article. On November 18, Sony posted an official apology. I, along with thousands of others, first learned about the Sony rootkit after seeing a post about it on delicious’s popular links page. How much has the bad publicity cost Sony?
• BellSouth an Free WiFi (a work in progress). Last Saturday’s Washington Post had an article describing how BellSouth “withdrew an offer to donate one of [their] damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters” because New Orleans officials decided to launch free WiFi to stimulate economic activity. This story appeared on Digg less than 24 hours ago; already, 1700 people have dugg it, leaving more than 125 comments. So far, I’m not aware of any response from BellSouth. But I bet they will have one, and soon.
• The Grateful Dead’s Music Crackdown. For years, fans have been able to freely download and trade Grateful Dead music. Recently (roughly 11/22), certain surviving members of GD decided to reverse that decision and take down more than 1000 soundboard recordings from a popular internet archive site. Boing Boing covered the story as it developed (here, here, and here). The fan response was so virulent that GD reversed its decision within days (though there is an ongoing debate as to the band’s “true intent”). Without BoingBoing’s coverage, would the band have changed its tune as quickly?

A few obvious comments: first, it’s hard to say definitively that any single web site was completely responsible for any of the actions taken by PriceRitePhoto, Sony, or the Grateful Dead. Second, one could argue that eventually, with sufficient pressure, these groups would have done the “right thing” as other forms of media provided coverage and commentary. Third, these systems, like all forms of media, are subject to gaming and, as such, discretion should be applied.

All that said, I think that the emerging internet services mentioned above have fundamentally changed the landscape and altered the balance of power in favor of the individual. Anyone, anywhere can now write a blog about any topic; with sufficient interest, their post will quickly be promoted to a top position on one service or another, where many thousands of people will see it–and have a chance to act. The Deliciouses of the world have added tremendous speed, transparancy, and power to the system.

It must be a scary time to be a vendor with questionable motives or product quality. For the empowered consumer, though, the story is quite different.

Blog networks are all the rage now–perhaps inspired by Jason Calacanis and the sale of Weblogs, Inc to AOL. While it’s unlikely that all such networks (here is a list of 35) will make money, I think the best do a good job of collecting interesting content. With that in mind, I’m happy to join the 9rules Network. Through the shiny logo at the top of my sidebar, this site is now connected to a number of other blogs–and they’re connected back to me. Click around and let me know what you think.

• From a panel with Jeff Jarvis: centralized control over brand and community identity is no longer possible. This is an interesting, scary, and empowering idea. Think about it: until recently, companies (especially large ones) could generally define and control their own corporate identity through advertising and marketing. Today, with a thoughtful blog, a single individual can create a global media platform; with common search technologies, like-minded individuals can find each other and move markets. Scary time to be a company with a misleading message or bad product. Empowering time to be someone with ideas who wants to be heard. Case in point: Kryptonite, the company that claims to “make tough locks for a tough world.” If you Google “kryptonite locks”, you’ll see that the second result shows a year-old Engadget article that explains how to pick a Kryptonite lock with a common bic pen. Basically, an enterprising individual figured out how to pick the lock, Engadget posted an article complete with a how-to video, and, from there, the message was out.
• Another noteworthy development is the practice of spontaneous, collaborative tagging, popularized in part by sites such as Del.icio.us and Flickr. The idea is that if enough people (working individually) are given a platform that enables users to freely label items of interest (web sites, photos, etc), an organic model will eventually emerge that meaningfully organizes the information in question. This is important because it allows people with common interests to easily find each other. For example, I can quickly find photos of today’s BlogOn conference by checking the “blogon” tag on Flickr. Clearly, I could find such photos in other ways, but tags work well, especially considering that no one decided beforehand that conference photos should be stored in this manner. For another example, check out the “popular tags” on del.icio.us/popular. You can easily skim a list of sites that interest others (today’s most popular site is a list of the top 20 free fonts)–and quickly find related, relevant sites, as well (by clicking on the design tag, you can find similar sites, such as this one showing web design mistakes).
• Finally, consider internet privacy. The difference in behavior between certain (generally older) users and others (generally younger) is astonishing. For examples, take a look at any number of random MySpace profiles–you can find mostly trival information like a person’s favorite band or book, but also more sensitive identifiers such as income, sexual orientation, religion, drug history, etc. It’s hard to know whether those who have relatively revealing MySpace profiles will eventually come to regret what they’ve chosen to disclose, or if increasing openness is just a part of today’s digital life. Either way, the amount of personal information easily found on MySpace (among other sites) is somewhat terrifying, especially considering that certain services, like the Internet Archive, intend to make a permanent archive of publicly available web sites.

• Google’s influence was almost everywhere. On the positive side, as Mary Meeker pointed out, Google has given many startups an advertising-based business model: while the company generated $1.4B in Q2 revenue, Google also paid out $494M in the same time period to thousands of partners (though programs like AdSense, which lets publishers easily serve ads; Google and the publisher split the proceeds)–more than enough, in many cases, to pay the bills. On the negative side, Joe Kraus noted that Google’s habit of leaving products in “beta” may work for them, but it’s often a dangerous example for others to copy. Basically, thanks to Google’s core advertising business, the company has sufficient surplus cash flow to finance dozens of internal quasi-startups, even if all are eventually shut down. Typical startups, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of a padded bank account. Therefore, they need to immediately think hard about measuring the right metrics and quickly getting to market with revenue-generating products–startups can’t stay in beta forever.
• Google also released an RSS reader. It’s pretty, but I won’t use it as my regular reader until it’s usable when I’m offline. For now, then, I’m sticking with NewsGator.
• Yahoo had a few intriguing developments, also. I liked their Tech Buzz Game–”a fantasy prediction market for high-tech products, concepts, and trends.” I doubt I’ll actively participate, but it’s interesting to see what others are betting on. For example, the Rumor Mill says the (hopefully) smart money is betting that Apple will soon release a video iPod. Separately, Yahoo also demonstrated a novel search system that sorts based on whether you are looking for commercial or informational results. Give it a try.
• I had a very favorable impression of Macromedia’s new Flex 2 development platform (click here to find out about the pending alpha release). While there was a lot of talk about Ajax’s potential to enable web applications, Flash is still useful and, in any case, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Certain applications, like MeasureMap, use both to very good effect.
• On the startup front, I had two favorites. First, Zimbra, a messaging and collaboration platform I wrote about earlier. Nice functionality (mouse over an address and a corresponding Google Map pops up, mouse over a date and Zimbra pulls up your calendar appointments for that day, etc), and looks like the team thoughtfully architected the server, as well (one small example: only one copy of a particular attachment gets stored per server; certain other email servers store one copy per user). It’s being marketed as a Microsoft Exchange competitor. Second, I liked Zvents, a local events search and events web service. For now, though, Zvents only covers the San Francisco area.

More Web 2.0 info via Richard McManus here and at TechCrunch here.

Update (10/12): Looks like the iPod Video bets at Yahoo paid off…

By themselves, the products 30gigs.com offers aren’t particularly innovative. Gmail already offers free email with 2.5+ gigs of storage (increasing daily), and there are hacks to turn a Gmail account into a networked hard drive.

That notwithstanding, 30gigs.com is noteworthy for two main reasons. First, it shows that storage is really cheap. Second (and more interesting), thanks to services like 30gigs.com, I believe we’ll soon have a functional thin client/network computer. This is important because thin clients can be extremely useful in the right circumstances. For example, relative to “traditional” thick clients (ie an Intel box with Windows), thin clients tend to be far cheaper and easier to manage.

Larry Ellison, among others, has promoted the “thin client architecture” for years–to little effect. Due to recent market developments and technical innovations, though, the thin client vision may finally be viable. First, many providers now offer high-speed internet coverage, which is needed to transfer the huge quantity of application and user data that thin clients and the servers that power them require (interestingly, Google now plans to offer free high-speed wireless access. You may wonder why an advertising company would want to do that–it actually makes good sense. I’ll offer my theory as to why in a moment). Second, thanks to Ajax and other emerging technologies, there is now a wide variety of fully-functional web applications providing word processing, spreadsheet capabilities, calendars, and more.

Here’s where 30gigs.com comes in. Using the “file locker,” customers now have an online disk drive in which files can be stored. 30 gigs is a lot of storage–enough for most users for a long, long time.

Still, there are a few missing pieces:

• Though much progress has been made, we need more complete and fully documented APIs. It’s still difficult to use most hosted storage solutions (including, but not limited to, 30gigs.com) with most web-applications; the integration isn’t there. For technically savvy users, this doesn’t pose much of an issue. For the average consumer, though, complex workflow is a deal killer.
• As the quantity and importance of digital data in our lives continues to increase, we’ll want better tools to authenticate and manage identity and reputation. For example, if you have accounts with multiple online services, do you want to separately provide personal data to each? Or, would you prefer to store sensitive data with a single, trusted company and let them share data with other companies–but only when you permit them to do so? Similarly, if you want to buy a product from a particular vendor, how should you know if the vendor is trustworthy? This is a rich topic, worthy of a separate discussion. If you’re interested in learning more, take a look at Sxip.
• For services like 30gigs.com to remain solvent, they need sustainable revenue models. Consumer-facing web services companies often rely on ads. Contextual and behavioral targeting solutions could still use improvement (though, to be fair, they are getting better at a rapid pace).

Back to Google: I said I’d comment on why they’re offering free WiFi. My guess is that they’ll soon offer a complete suite of web-based applications comparable to Microsoft Office (this isn’t a novel insight; TechCrunch even hears rumors that Google will release an Ajax-enabled Office suite sometime this year). Increasing broadband penetration is good for Google, as it increases the size of their target market.

I also predict that Google will start charging users directly for premium products. It might make sense for them to offer entry and professional levels of “GOffice.” The free version might have limited functionality and ads, while the fee-based alternative would come packed with complete capabilities and no ads. Of course, this is just speculation on my part.

The biggest winner here is the consumer–we get lots of new choices. One potential loser: Microsoft. Considering that about half of the company’s revenue–and almost all of their net income–come from sales of Windows and Office, they have a lot to worry about. Still, they’ve successfully pulled through tough situations before, so I wouldn’t count them out yet.

Update: 30gigs.com seems to be having service problems. As Om says: “approach with caution.”

Update2 (10/4/05): MailNation is now offering 1000GB email accounts (via Om).

Maybe this is why I like mashups (which is the new buzzword for composite applications created by combining existing applications into a single service). However, in addition to reminding me of my youth, mashups can actually be practical. For example, if you’re looking for an apartment on Craigslist and want to map available listings, you might like HousingMaps (via TipTechsheet). Want to explore a new city by looking at photos people have taken? Check out Mappr. You can even search personal ads by geography. See more examples here.

Want to build your own? You can find dozens of open APIs and web services–many, though not all, available for free–here and here (via ProgrammableWeb and WSFinder).

As an aside, mashups introduce interesting questions about data ownership, intellectual property, business models, and partnership. For example, if I create a mashup based on data from Google Maps and use it to generate revenue, does Google have a right to a share of the proceeds?