Month: April 2007

Top 10 of Web 2.0

So I was checking out rev2.org’s list of the Top 10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups to Date this morning, and noticed something interesting: Not one of them has IPOed or announced plans to do so. All of them have either been acquired by Web 1.0 companies (several of whom did IPO) or are still privately held.

The other interesting thing is that there’s no mention on the list of whether any of the companies is profitable (or was before acquisition). Wikipedia, being a non-profit, is off the hook there, but what about the others?

You’d think that after all the craziness in the last go-round, this time, any real definition of success would include some amount of actual profitability, but maybe I expect too much.

UPDATE 4/15 In comments on his site, rev2’s Sid clarifies:

Since most Web 2.0 companies are private and don’t release any information at all on profitability and revenues (with the exception of perhaps YouTube which we have some data on) I decided to leave that out. While I realize that’s one of the important things in terms of ‘most successful,’ Web 2.0 is really more about ‘who can get acquired for the most money’ than ‘who can make the most money.’ That was Web 1.0, and those companies are now the ones who are buying these.

Having lived through Web 1.0, I seem to recall it was all about the “eyeballs” and about IPOing as fast as possible, not about profitability, but hey, maybe old age has clouded my memory.

Friday Cat Blogging

[Kitty in a Comforter]

From the archives — Tommy decided to make a nest for himself in a comforter that had been left out following a guest’s visit.

Rain, Rain, Don’t Go Away!

Because it’s looking like it’s going to be a long, dry summer around these parts. And that’s not good news:

More than 2 million Bay Area water users could face mandatory water restrictions this summer if they do not cut back on consumption now, the head of the San Francisco Public Utility Commission said Wednesday.

The Sierra snowpack — the major water source for people in San Francisco, parts of the Peninsula, the South Bay and southern Alameda County — is less than half of what it should be for this time of year. As of the beginning of the month, the snow pack was at 46 percent of normal.

[snip]

Officials will look at the measurements at the end of May and make a recommendation on mandatory restrictions for San Francisco’s 2.4 million users, said Susan Leal, general manager of the city’s Public Utilities Commission.

Mandatory restrictions could mean reducing consumption up to 20 percent. Customers who do not comply could face fines or have their water turned off.

False Positives

A month or so ago, I posted a blog entry noting that I was having a problem with comments vanishing when I posted to WordPress blogs. Thanks to the kind operator the Burbed blog, who listened to my complaints and took the time to do some testing, I finally have an answer to why my comments were vanishing into the aethir.

Apparently, my ‘handle’ of Fiat Lux is classed as ‘definitely spam’ by one of the common WordPress spam filters (presumably Akismet).

That’s moderately annoying, since I’m rather fond of that phrase.

It’s Not That Hard

So in the wake of the Kathy Sierra situation, Tim O’Reilly has created a draft of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct.

Frankly, I don’t see why deciding to moderate one’s comments is such a big deal. We all do it already in order to mitigate spam; this is not all that different. It doesn’t need badges and it doesn’t need a long, painfully worded Code.

Here’s mine, from December 2005:

I reserve the right to remove any comment left on this site, for any reason or for no reason at all. I pay for the web hosting; I get to decide how my disk space and bandwidth are used. However, I do not edit comments; that seems unfair. If they do not get tossed into the bit bucket, they remain as their authors wrote them.

I see no need to change that policy. I support the rights of free, anonymous, and/or pseudonymous speech online. However, that doesn’t give you the right to say something I don’t like on my dime. Don’t like it? Go over to Blogger or Vox or WordPress and get your own site. Problem solved.

UPDATE 1:50 PM:

Tony Hung gets it absolutely right:

Bloggers don’t need a code of conduct, because it isn’t the content of blogs that are in the question. What’s being called into question is the cowardly personal attacks that are sent by email, and left in the comments sections of blogs.

And if that’s really the issue, then calling for a Bloggers Code of Conduct is pointless.