Dustin Woodard's thoughts on search, social media, filmmaking and the web in general.
In an effort to get more entries into the 2009 Webby Awards, the Webby Awards teamed up with some online video rockstars to promote entering. Eventually there will be five videos, but here are the first two:
From Stop Motion Studs, Tony and Paul:
Tony vs. Paul vs. Webby from Webby Awards.
From Jake and Amir:
Jake and Amir from Webby Awards.
Seems like a smart move. Who else should they have teamed up with?
Just received an email from LinkedIn announcing LinkedIn Apps. Here’s a quick look at the apps they’ve launched with and my thoughts on how they might help you with your career reputation management.
LinkedIn Applications available at launch (in decreasing order of first-glance importance) with my quick thoughts:
Obviously many of these applications are available on other sites or in other ways, but having them associated with your LinkedIn business network may bring about some interesting opportunities. It will be interested to see how popular these become and what other applications are added.
So far, I’ve installed Blog link (so far first person in my web savvy ~400 person network), WordPress (more control and better profile display than blog link), TripIt (two connections on it thus far), and company buzz (didn’t add to my profile, however). Of the three, I noticed blog link may suffer from speed issues (plus I removed it from my profile as I didn’t like the way it displayed) and company buzz doesn’t work very well compared to other twitter search tools.
Love to hear your experiences and thoughts about LinkedIn Apps.
It appears that Digg is finally closer to being purchased. The leading candidates are Google and Microsoft. While the final owner won’t be known for probably another month, the future of Digg is known:
If Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg.
Rather than trusting pesky humans to digg news stories, Google will implement an algorithm developed by a team of PhDs based on previous digg analytics data. The new algorithm will look something like this:
if (headline ((pro-Microsoft, -50, anti-Microsoft, +50) (“Apple”, +100) (any game title, +35)) + if (content contains (Scantily clad women, +85, -25) (“Hack”, +35, -5) (displays ads, -20)…
If Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg.
Dugg will be the result of the dust that quickly develops on Digg as it suddenly becomes uncool. To make matters worse, Microsoft will implement content restrictions like no Microsoft bashing, no discussions of Apple or Google, and all gaming diggs must be Microsoft-created games only. Within weeks, Dugg will be the wayback machine of the social news site once known as Digg.If it implements digital accessibility services then it will be a behemoth in the tech field that is unstoppable.
Ask will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”
I started playing around with the Google Sites which are definitely part of the Google Apps product suite. I suspect most individual non-corporate wiki creators will quickly be turned off by being forced to provide business information like # of employees (with 10 being the minimum example), business phone #, etc.
As I was reading through Google Sites terms and conditions, I noticed that I wouldn’t be allowed to write about the terms and conditions again as part of the agreement (so I am writing now before I even think about signing up):
“Customer agrees not to issue any public announcement regarding the existence or content of this Agreement without Google’s prior written approval.”
I’m not a big fan of reading terms and conditions, but I decided to read through them and have a feeling these will be deal breakers for many of the potential Google Sites corporate customers:
“3.2.2 Disclaimer Regarding Additional Content. Additional Content may be provided by third parties and may be modified or removed by Google at any time, including at the request of those third parties. Third party providers of Additional Content may include financial exchanges and may be delayed as specified by such financial exchanges or Google’s data providers…Customer agrees not to copy, modify, reformat, download, store, reproduce, reprocess or redistribute any data or information from the Additional Content or use any such data or information in a commercial enterprise without obtaining prior written consent. A broker or financial representative should be consulted to verify pricing before executing any trade. Either Google or its third party data or content providers have exclusive proprietary rights in the data and information provided.”
I’m having trouble understanding who the financial exchange partners are and what they have to do with content, especially considering Google Sites don’t include any revenue share.
“Ownership; Restricted Use. Google and its licensors shall own all right, title and interest, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined below) relating to the Service (and any derivative works or enhancements thereof), including but not limited to, all software, technology, information, content, materials, guidelines, and documentation. Customer shall not acquire any right, title, or interest therein, except for the limited use rights expressly set forth in the Agreement. Any rights not expressly granted herein are deemed withheld. “Intellectual Property Rights” means any and all rights existing from time to time under patent law, copyright law, semiconductor chip protection law, moral rights law, trade secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, publicity rights law, privacy rights law, and any and all other proprietary rights, and any and all applications, renewals, extensions and restorations thereof, now or hereafter in force and effect worldwide.”
Sounds like you won’t own your own content, though this part provides a little hope:
“Google does not own third party content used as part of the Service, including the content of communications appearing on the Service. Title, ownership rights, and Intellectual Property Rights in and to the content accessed through the Service are the property of the applicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other law.”
Strange. Third party content thus far sounded like Google partner or “financial exchange” partner content, but maybe they mean content from site members or participants. I wish they were more clear because I feel like most corporate customers are going to want to own their own content that the write themselves, and want to be able to move it elsewhere, if desired.
Being essentially a wiki, you’d think the Google Sites terms of service would spend more time discussing copyrights, collective content, creative commons license, user submissions, user contributions, and other content creation activity.
If you have a similar or different read on the Google Sites terms of service, do comment with your thoughts.
Google recently experimented with having their Gmail users upload short clips to make a fun collaborative video showing how Gmail goes around the world. Unleashing users to play with your brand can be scary for marketers, but in reality, Google had complete control over the process (they got to choose which videos to show). Kudos for Google for stepping outside the box and having people interact with their brand.
Check out the video for yourself: