Casey McKinnon just twittered about the launch of YouTube Canada. There’s a blog as well.
Archives for 2007
A techie on the writer’s strike
Marc Andreessen has written an interesting post about the Hollywood writer’s strike: Suicide by strike. The title’s a bit misleading though – his main questions are about the bosses, not the workers.
You’re faced with a massive, once-in-a-lifetime shift in mainstream consumer behavior from traditional mass media, including film and television, to new activities that you do not control. […]
Is this really the right time to pick a fight with the writers over royalties from DVD and Internet sales, leading to an industry-wide shutdown and massive economic pain for all sides in the world of traditional scripted film and television content?
Internet CanCon?
The news following the ADISQ Gala (and the media attention that gave them) earlier this week was that they – in conjunction with several other arts-related groups – want the CRTC to consider regulating Canadian Content on the Internet. Of course Michael Geist has the story: ADISQ Seeks Internet Canadian Content Requirements.
Personally, I am a big fan of CanCon regulations in terms of radio and TV. I think the success of the Canadian musicians in recent years is largely attributable to the fact that CanCon ensured that there was a Canadian music industry. But I also think a large part of the most recent success of those musicians is even more largely attributable to the wonders of the Long Tail than any regulatory scheme. For me, then, although I would support targeted funding to artists (NOT industry-run, though) and other such mechanisms to ensure that they can adequately represent themselves on the Internet, I am certain that content regulation is not the way to go. It’s actually a bit of a joke, the very idea that such regulations could be considered.
Also, check out Casey McKinnon’s views on the subject to understand an artist/producer’s point of view. (Casey runs the great Galacticast with my former colleague Rudy Jahchan.)
An update on OpenSocial
Today Google announced that MySpace, Bebo and SixApart are all joining OpenSocial in addition to the initial group that was reported two days ago. I was under the impression that Six Apart was already on board, but MySpace is the biggest news here anyhow.
This news makes the story even bigger than it already was, but I’m not sure that it checkmates Facebook, or even that it’s an aggressive move against them. I presume they are welcome to join OpenSocial. If there’s a checkmate here, it might be Microsoft whose king has been toppled. The MS investment last week in Facebook was based on a valuation that to a great extent relied on the perceived lock-in that Facebook has on its users. If that lock-in disappears, it completely changes the game.
Even more interesting for me than the Facebook-Microsoft angles to this are some of the unheralded partners in OpenSocial – particularly Salesforce.com and LinkedIn. Facebook is phenomenal at what it does, but what it does well is quite limited to “real” non-business social relationships – and despite what many have proposed, I don’t think there was a way for Facebook to route around that. OpenSocial, with both business-focused and personally-focused partners, has potential for growth in far more directions than Facebook has.
One question: whither OpenID? One of the great promises of OpenSocial is federated digital identity plus profiles… Can/will Google make this happen in a way that will keep communities that have thought long and hard about this happy? I sure hope so.
YASN? Not really (whew)
Michael Arrington (in TechCrunch) has posted a piece about a new social network (-ish) site coming from Google: OpenSocial To Launch Thursday. He has posted a fair amount of detail:
What they haven’t done is launch yet another social network platform. As more and more of these platforms launch, developers have difficult choices to make. There are costs associated with writing and maintaining applications for these social networks. Most developers will choose one or two platforms and ignore the rest, based on a simple cost/benefit analysis. Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks.
From what I’ve read, this seems like a big bet on Google’s part, but a bet that’s very much worth making. And one that I hope they can win. The trick, it seems to me, will be to make the system sophisticated (and non-grabby) enough for big developers with lots of existing users to join in the fun, but also make it accessible for very small developers and hobbyists. There’s still a large long tail out there beyond who Facebook has signed up, and if Google can grab that as well as the existing users of large sites like Linked In, they might just have something worthwhile – and game-changing.
Update: Here’s Marc Andreessen’s take on OpenSocial from his perspective as the founder of Ning, a site that allows anyone to create their own social network.
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