Share - it's fair!

Swedish politician Carl Schlyter has launched the site iwouldntsteal.net in response to music and media businesses large lobbying efforts on sharing media. Where media companies compares file sharing [of copyrighted material] with stealing. That comparison is fundamentally wrong, it's said on the site, since file sharing is based on someone creating a copy of media that he (or she) has bought. Another main concern of iwouldntsteal.net is that the lobbying groups are using their huge profits (they are very profitable) for lobbying, imposing laws on people that are totally unreasonable.

It's an interesting site on file sharing and piracy, complete with a pretty fun video.

Common Sence Search Engine Optimization for Web2.0 startups - SEO is neither good or evil!

In my contact with many companies there is a lot of talk about SEO, search engine optimization. Everyone knows that Search engines as Google are incredibly important to your sites success, but many seems to focus solely on SEO.

So here is my thoughts on Search engine optimization:

Follow standards
Be aware of how SEO works and follow optimize titles, keywords and styles when developing your site. Google should have index every dynamically created page of your site, and they all must have effective page titles.

Get external links to your site
Optimize your PageRank by getting links from sites with high PageRank. When submitting news, do it blogstyle and ping bloggindexes such as Technorati and others. Use Digg and digg-clones to get coverage of your blognews. Convince other blogs to write about you.

Focus on your users
Design your site for your visitors, not for Google. Don't focus too much on the SEO, a great site will get a high PR anyway, and happy users are more likely to link to you than unhappy ones.

Use the Long tail
Take advantage of the Long tail effect - when writing news, avoid general titles and try to be unique. It's probably easier to show up on the first Google result page for "Alchemists in Lithuania" than it is for "USA".

MeeboMe - maybe not so great after all

Well, I tried Meebo Me widget here on my site, and now I'm not as impressed.
Of course, the Meebo messenger was pretty nice to use, however it was hard to get notifications of new chats. But what was more annoying was that the javascript actually hanged my Internet Explorer after only 30 minutes of usage (yes I'm using both ie and firefox). That isn't acceptable.

I gave it a chance, I am still impressed with the site's interface, but I don't think I'll try it again for a while.

It would be interesting to hear your impression of the Meebo service.

Meebo - chat enable your blog!

Well, since they just got a crunchy award you've probably tested this service.

I am extremely impressed! If you don't know, Meebo is an web based messanger service, which is very useful if you're using Internet at a cafe, a library or at work where MSN is disabled. You log in with your msn, aim, yahoo, google talk or meebo account, and voila, you get the normal messenger experience as with a regular, standalone browser.
If you log in using a meebo account, you'll get all your messenger accounts in one window, which of course is pretty useful.

The service is very well designed and easy to use, every view and button does just what you expect it to, and the setup of the service is fast.

Moreover, meebo has a widget called Meebo Me that let you chat enable your blog. A few clicks for customization, and the embeddable code for your site of choice. As you can see, I've "installed" the widget here on my blog, so now all you fans out there can finally chat with me, and I don't have to give you my msn-login. Good for your privacy as well as for communication with visitors of your site.

So the service does what you expect it to, the interface is flawless, and they have a great widget feature. But what can be improved?

I have three requests for the Meebo team:

• Adobe Air functionality
  
• Gateway between your ordingary messanger acccount and the Meebo Me widget
  
• Mobile phone integration through widset or a similar service
  

The Adobe Air functionality is pretty easy. I think the one instance / all chats is great but at home I like to have a separate window for my chat, so the Meebo window is highlighted (blinking or something) when new messages is delivered.
Also, to make Meebo Me a successful service, I need Meebo to be my messenger of choice, autostarting on windows login.

Making Meebo acting as a gateway between the Meebo Me and your messenger service would be great; I want it to work even if I don't login to Meebo. This might be a tricky one to accomplish, but the Meebo team seems to be pretty good, so they can solve it ;) When Meebo releases their Air functionality this feature wont be as important either.

The Mobile phone integration isn't as important as the other functionality, but I still think it's a pretty nice feature. There are loads of free messenger services for your cellphone, but I'd still love the idea of just entering my cellphone number at Meebo, receiving a sms with the download link for my phone, and be up and running. An alternative would be to create a Meebo widget for Widsets, the mobile phone widget service.

Another thought would be to integrate Rebtel, EQO or Jajah functionality into Meebo - that would be a pretty nice Mashup.

So in conclusion: Meebo is a great service with the best interface I've seen. Try it out!

Steve Jobs 90 minute keynote in 1 minute - Apple, MacBook Air, IPhone :)

This is really cool, and you probably read about it on Techcrunch. But it is really cool, and I want that on my blog!

Anyway, Steve Jobs keynote speech at the Mac conference is not worth 90 minutes of my life. It is, however, worth one minutes attention. The Daily Manolo was kind enough to compress the speech for the rest of us, and here it is:

Urbanshortcut.com - web2.0 startup now in open beta!

Urbanshortcut.com is a brand new site for finding interesting places when going to European cities. It's a great site to visit before travelling to one of the featured cities (London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen) - you'll find places in four categories, Stay, Eat & drink, Shop and Nightlife, and all places are ranked by it's relevance to your profile.


Your profile is created with a two minute image test, and matches your profile to that of local residents of the cities you choose to look at.

I think it's a great tool to use before any trip to a European city! Why not try it out before the Next Web Conference 2008 and search for a cool nightclub or bar in Amsterdam!

Social networks of the future - personalized social networks...

In a near future, OpenSocial will come to a site near you. And this is how it will work:

1. You come to a social site because it's all about your niche interest. The site has great content in the niche, a professional editor picks the best of user generated content (blog posts, news, videos) and combines it with custom made material.

2. It's a great site, so you decide to join the network. When you join, you use your OpenId identity - no new password to remember, and you import personal data of choice from other sites that you use.

3. When your account is created, some standard third party applications are installed for you on the site. It's a messaging system, news aggregator, a forum, a niche marketplace, and a calendar, all picked out by the site editors.

4. Once in the network, you continue to take part of and create new niche specific content. When you create content, you can also share it on other sites where you are a member, but only if it's in the interest of that site and your contacts on that site. As you are registered, the niche site creates a profile for you, so that you get even better matched content (and probably better matched ads) each time you enter the site.

5. When visiting friends profiles on the site, you'll notice that some of the applications they have added on their profile page are of great usage for that niche. Some third party applications are used more broadly, and as on Facebook, you'll add some of them to your own profile. Applications spread viral, as on Facebook, but this time they are actually relevant to your interest rather than lowest common denominator applications.

Now the site is perfect for you, great content, relevant third party applications, and you only share with the crowd of your choice.

7. Four years later, your no longer interested in the niche (you don't play WOW anymore ;-)) and you choose to delete your profile from the site. You can save your settings to a private file, if you want to rejoin the site later without loosing your history. Your posts are still there, but once you delete your profile, the site owner can no longer access your personal data or email.

The next big thing - Not a single social network...

It's pretty obvious that Facebook has lost its charm of novelty by now. Superwalls, vampires and comparison tools aren't as interesting as they were for a few weeks back in 2007.

So what is the next step in social networking? Just as before, most people will continue to use Social networks based on the social site's niche. If you're interested in music, you'll go to a niche music site and communicate with your likes there, if you need to communicate to your real life friends, you'll be using a messenger service, and if you want to stay in touch with school friends you'll use a site as classmates.com.

What people don't want is to communicate to all contacts and friends in the same way. I don't want my professional contacts to see me in a picture drunk and I want to be able to create a online persona in my own niche not influenced on my status in say, High School. I also want to feel special and interesting, which I do on a niche network, but not on a very general network (lets face it, Facebook is as niched and interesting to be part of as the telephone directory). So the online behaviour of people will shift back to the one prior to Facebook.

At the same time Facebook and others has made us very spoiled - networks should be as easy to use as Facebook, people should be as easy to find as on facebook, and third party applications are great, even greater for a niched market.

OpenSocial and other related ventures are the answer - you'll get the best parts of the facebook / myspace phenomena, but you are the one in control. Simplicity with single login, single messaging tools, but different content, third party applications and active friends for each of your network. And even more important, not a single, powerful owner of all aspects of your social life!