Top 5 web trends according to RWW

Available online for free

For me this cute but powerful culture jamming-concept is a perfect sign of our times. Skillfully condensed in a small sticker ... available online for free...

Freenomics - time to sober up

With the current economic slump and 2.0-ish businessmodels being challenged, it would be tempting to think that business is returning back to normal. With "normal" meaning traditional advertising, segmentation and mass media campaigns. Or that was at least the impression that I had the last weeks when reading mainstream media.

While discussing the "dismissal of web2.0 economics" with friends, this presentation from Web2.0 Expo Berlin came to my mind. It's an interesting piece of thinking because it confirms from a business pov that the conventional view on freenomics is indeed not built to last. But on the other hand it also shows which adjustment need to be made to make 2.0-ish businessmodels viable. (click on thumbnail to enlarge)

Imagining the "internet of things"

Timo Arnall from Oslo School of Architecture & Design did a visionary tour on the subject during last month's Web 2.0 expo in Berlin. Thought provoking and solidly reseached. If this was a book, it would be dog-eared by now. Click on the full screen-icon and "fit to height" to see the presentation properly.

Hat tip to Guido for twittering the URL of all Web2.0 Expo presentaions.

Facebook defies the recession by selling virtual guitars

Just read an interesting Business Week article today on Facebook's strategy in the current doom & gloom economy. While the article details why Facebook keeps persuading a "spend now make profit later" strategy it also reveals a interesting take on Facebook's planned revenue streams :

Facebook hopes to make money in three ways.
- Online advertising is far and away the most important, accounting for an estimated $200 million to $225 million in revenues this year.
- The company is also selling digital goods—electronic versions of guitars, flowers, and the like that Facebook friends give each other. Charging $1 apiece for these goods will generate $30 million to $40 million this year, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew.
- The third leg of Facebook's business may be the most controversial. The company is seriously considering a plan to take a cut of money from the software developers who create applications for the site.

Original article "Facebook's Land Grab in the Face of a Downturn", here.

Starting the conversation from within

Tom Himpe's is thinking exactly the same thing we're saying to our clients when we talk about "Building brand beyond the promise" so we thought we'd share his brilliant presentation here.

"You're Not Stealing From Us Because We Give It To You For Free. So There !"

The relation between YouTube and the owners of popular audiovisual media copyrights has always been a most tempestuous one.  As an outlet for marketing and branding activities, the popular video site is a media company's wet dream, but as soon as someone else starts playing with their toys, all hell breaks loose.

Enter venerable British comedy anarchists Monty Python.  Even though they have been a YouTube member for more than two years, they only just started posting their own videos, for free.  Here's their rationale :

“For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.  We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell.

But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.  No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.  What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!”

You have to admit, it sounds better than "If you can't beat them, join them".  So, all hail the Pythons !

Blogs are better influencers than social networks

This one comes straight from Jan VDB his never ending facebook news stream. It goes against the idea that blogs will be replaced by the big social networks… If you want to have influence it’s still necessary to write a blog it seems.

Jupiter Research

Innovation Update Oktober

Here at Boondoggle we have regular internal sessions in which we discuss the newest and most innovative stuff. From now on we’re going to try and make it a habit to post a short summary of the topics discussed.

Has RSS adoption peaked?

Steve Rubel writes RSS adoption is at 11% in the USA… but seems to have peaked.

Although RSS remains pretty geeky (it’s XML dude!), I don’t think it has actually peaked. It will become more integrated into operating systems and people won’t get confronted with the ugly XML code anymore, but I think it will become one of the more important opt-in communications.

One lesson we as marketeers should take into account is the following sentence from the Forrester Research:

"Unless marketers make a move to hook them — and try to convert their apathetic counterparts — RSS will never be more than a niche technology,"

This means you should do more than simply put the RSS icon somewhere on your site, you need to explain to visitors what it means, what they can do with it and how they can start using it.

Do you follow this site via RSS?