Written on January 12, 2008 – 12:02 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
As we already in 2008, it’s a good time to look back and see how much the Internet landscape has changed in the last year in Japan.
Internationally there have been some big shakeups, led by the dramatic effects of the meteoric rise of Facebook to prominence, both good and bad. On these shores, too, there has been plenty of online action, so we’ve rounded up some of the events that have reshaped the Japanese Internet landscape this year.
The big hit
Nico Nico Douga
Any discussion about the top Internet stories of 2007 starts and finishes with Nico Nico Douga. This video-sharing site is uniquely Japanese, blending online video-sharing with user-created, short chat-like text comments that are synced to the movies, allowing whole conversations to flow across the frame. The type of content has ranged from the crude to the incredibly insightful and inventive, and some users have even subtitled music videos with the song’s lyrics. The videos themselves are a geek’s paradise, consisting mainly of anime, video-game footage and videos of young ladies. The unique format and addictive nature of the Web site has millions tuned in, giving it one of the most dramatic growth surges ever as it went from a January launch to become the seventh-most visited Web site in Japan as of December, according to global site-ranking service Alexa.com.
Mobile gaming gets the big company treatment
Disney Wonder Days
Following in the footsteps of the innovative 2006 avatar-based mobile-gaming platform MobaGe-Town, this April Disney threw in its hat with a big press push and its own avatar-based game and social-interaction platform. Disney Wonder Days capitalized on the brand popularity and makes its money from monthly subscriptions. The range of games is pretty slick and offers Disney fans a healthy selection of characters. What it represented mostly was media giant Disney jumping into the mobile social media space to capture the hugely lucrative children’s market. You know the scene is changing when the big names get involved. (more…)
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Written on January 7, 2008 – 9:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After waiting for a year, it finally happened today: Jimmy Wales launched an alpha version of Wikia Search. After such a long wait, people have high expectations. Unfortunately, Wales didn’t manage to live up to them. TechCrunch’s Micheal Arrington called it ‘one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing’ and ‘an inexcusable waste of time’. Stan Schroeder from Mashable wasn’t very pleased either: “Wikia Search looks like something that was cooked by two guys in one month in a basement”.
“We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it.”
We interviewed Wales last weekend, and he sounded a bit like he knew what was coming. Wales: “The social network we’ll launch on Monday is just a project to build a search engine. We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it. This is just the beginning. We expect it will take at least two years before we have Google- and Yahoo quality.”
When that time comes, Wales expects people will switch to his engine: “It’s very easy for people to switch from one search engine to another. If we do a good job I’m not too worried that they will switch to ours.”
The positive attitude of Wales has been rewarded before, yet it’s still a huge challenge to compete with Google. Doesn’t it need some hash promotion techniques? When suggesting that Wikia Search could take advantage of the Wikipedia pages always showing up in the top results, Wales answers determined: “No no, Wikipedia has absolutely nothing to do with Wikia Search”.
“I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
With that in mind, it sounds even harder to reach the audience. Wales however, doesn’t seem to worry about it: “I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
I must admit though, that the plans of Wales and his team sound revolutionary. For instance, by keeping the code of Wikia Search open source, they give other search services and organizations the opportunity to create the perfect search engine together. This sounds logical when you take in account that Wales thinks search won’t be competitive element anymore. Wales: “Good quality search is becoming a commodity item. The search quality of Google, Yahoo and Ask are actually very similar. So the idea that Google is some kind of technological powerhouse, is actually not longer true.”
Bringing the social aspect into search successfully is something we haven’t seen yet. Though the social network they have on-line now isn’t very spectacular, the promises for the future sound good. “One of the weaknesses of current search engines is that their algorithms take a long time picking up new good sites. If you look at the way Google ranks sites, it all depends on the number of important sites that link to you. In our project, it takes only one community member that finds a good new site and lets the community know. That will affect the ranking immediately.”
But what happens if a large company tells its 500 employees to give their corporate site a ‘thumbs up’ on the Wikia search engine? Isn’t that a big threat for the validity of the search results? Wales: “That remark is very similar to questions that people would have about users doing bad things on Wikipedia. It’s very difficult to fool a community. Ranking a search result is a public act, so people can see what you’re doing and will rank the contribution very low.”
“We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent”
Sounds like Wales is actually planning on competing with Google. “As with every open source project, we will have a high number of languages covered. We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent.” Did he receive any reactions from Google HQ? Wales: “I see the Google guys socially from time to time and told them about the search plans. But they didn’t give a real reaction yet.”
Written on January 1, 2008 – 10:55 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Every year it takes webmasters a few days (or months!) to realize that it is a new year and they should update the copyright notices at the bottom of their websites. I know, it is trivial, but I just can’t help but smile when I see the most expensive and well watched frontpage of the world display ‘2007′ when it is actually 2008
Google and Yahoo: both wrong
CNN and Reuters: Reuters wins!
Wired and Techcrunch: both wrong
Apple and Microsoft: sorry Apple fans, both wrong
See any other funny examples of outdated websites?
Written on December 11, 2007 – 12:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Evan Williams, creator of Twitter, asked an interesting question:
What can we take away, to create something new?
Williams thinks that adding constraints to your service can help your users. “The more options you offer, the less often people will use it. If you look at Twitter for example, it’s a blogging app without tools as commenting and images. And of course, there is the post limit of 140 characters.”
When Twitter launched, people started building applications right away. Williams gives us two reasons for this: “Firstly, it’s text only and so integrates with almost everything. Secondly, developers wanted to make up for the lack of features. Some Twitter users even say that if services as Twitteriffic didn’t exist, they wouldn’t use Twitter at all.”
Some other examples of services that had success by leaving something out:
- Fotolog allows its users to post only one photo a day. It had a positive effect on the amount of comments. Now, the average number of comments on a single photo is eleven. Moreover, it lowered their costs.
- When Facebook started, it limited the people who could join: just college kids. They opened up later.
- A very successful dating site only shows their users a photo with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ buttons.
- When Google wanted to compete with Yahoo, they removed all of Yahoo’s functions, expect for the blank text field and a search button.
Written on June 6, 2007 – 11:44 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Here is another ‘There isn’t any real news so lets create some’ article from none less than the Times.
They listened to Tapan Bath at The Next Web who literally said:
“The future of the web is about personalization. Where search was dominant, now the web is about ‘me.’ It’s about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user”
The Times translated that to:
“ Search is history, says Yahoo!“
When asked about his statement Tapan refined his words:
“We’re not admitting defeat. Search still matters, but we need to be providing a wrapper around search to turn the info search offers up into something more useful.”
Ok, so Yahoo isn’t saying that Search is history at all? Nope. Yahoo isn’t saying anything. Tapan is saying that search just can be improved upon. But that wouldn’t make an interesting headline…
Read the whole article here: Search is history, says Yahoo!
Follow up: Read/Writeweb wrote an article based on the Times article but then posted a rectification the next day after Yahoo contacted them. Check both posts:
Yahoo!: The Web’s Future Is Not In Search
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_personalization.php
Not So Fast, Search Isn’t History Quite Yet
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_search_not_history.php
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