53 • как всё происхо и смотрит на тебя.

How Big Is the Apple iPhone App Economy? The Answer Might Surprise You | Om Malik | Techmeme

If I were to tell you that Apple’s app economy was worth more than $2.4 billion a year, you would laugh hysterically, shake your head and walk out of the room, yes?  Surf on over to some other web site?

Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3 | PC Pro blog

The number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people’s bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. No fewer than 25% of Firefox 3 refuseniks cited this as the reason they wouldn’t upgrade. In fact, almost all of the people who provided feedback had tried Firefox 3, didn’t like what they saw, and headed back to Firefox 2.

[…]

“In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you.”

Nokia just became PayPal with the launch of Nokia Money; built on top of Obopay

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) just announced “Nokia Money” which will be shown off next week at Nokia World. We told you about the Nokia Money trademark a little over a month ago, and it looks like the service is going to launch some time early next year.

Gmail Nudges Past AOL Email In The U.S. To Take No. 3 Spot.

Good thing Gmail is out of beta. It is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S. In July, Gmail nudged past AOL Email with 37 million unique visitors compared to 36.4 million for AOL, according to comScore estimates.

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Перспективы ради: третье место Гмейла в США — это больше, чем весь российский интернет.

Y Combinator Starts Seeding Ideas To Startups

Y Combinator sees no shortage of startups that apply to be a part of their funding cycles.  But they don’t always see all the ideas they’d like to see come out of the classes.  So starting with the upcoming Winter 2010 cycle, they have a new idea called RFS, Requests For Startups.

So what is the first RFS? Well, it’s something near and dear to our hearts: The Future Of Journalism. Y Combinator is wondering what the online content sites will look like in the future when print publications are gone. Certainly some, like TechCrunch, have gotten large enough to support themselves now, but most content sites are still built on the notion of content first, monetization later. Y Combinator notes that in the heyday of print media, the approach was often the opposite, there was a business plan in place before the launch. It believes that approach can still work, and has laid out a rough outline of what it’s looking for from startups that want to do this:

Groups applying to work on this idea should include at least one writer who can write well and rapidly about any topic, one or more programmers who are good at statistics, data mining, and making sites scale, and someone who’s reasonably competent at graphic design. These functions can of course be combined, and in fact it’s even better if they are. Xooglers would be particularly well suited to this project.

NewsGator Discontinues Online RSS Reader, Points To Google Reader - Techcrunch

NewsGator Online, one of the first online RSS readers I used back in the day, is being tossed in the deadpool by its parent company in a move that signals its newfound focus on desktop applications and social computing tools for businesses.

Users of the online feed reader are kindly requested to migrate their subscriptions over to Google Reader before August 31, and NewsGator will provide step-by-step instructions and in-product reminders to make sure all goes smoothly.

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Чтобы жизнь не казалась мёдом, Аррингтон спустя несколько дней заживо хоронит Bloglines: Bloglines On Life Support. This Story Needs An Ending.

Какая-то жесть происходит в мире — все прежние направления, где жило по несколько продуктов, схлопываются, остаётся от силы два, а то и вообще один выживший.

Гугл-ридер, который, как и остальные «двадцатипроцентные» проекты мало кто воспринимал всерьёз в начале, превратился в стандарт де-факто, в контентную платформу, к которой подыскивают документацию на API, всячески оглядываются на неё и с трепетом ждут, что же будет дальше.

Мне вся эта история чем-то напоминает скупку компанией Адоби небольшого конкурента под названием Макромедиа. Теперь же даже скупки не нужно — конкуренты сами умрут. Будь то рынок коротких ссылок, онлайн-ридеров, или вот история с покупкой Фейсбуком Френдфида.

King Of The Apple Geeks — Джон Грубер, одинокий всадник

Indeed, Gruber has effectively created a job as one of the few self-sustaining, solo Web “columnists” out there — a job that didn’t exist five years ago. (Others include Jason Kottke, Dooce’s Heather Armstrong, etc.) The downside — from a business perspective, at least — is that no one will want to buy that business from you. Once the founder leaves — or needs to take more than a few days off — it has lost much of its value to readers.

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Jason Kincaid/TechCrunch) - Techmeme

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now. — At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match.

Даже не знаю, что и думать теперь.

Techmeme: tr.im R.I.P. — Regretfully, we here at Nambu have decided to shutdown tr.im, the first step in shutting down all of our products and services within that brand. — tr.im did well for what it was, but, alas, it was not enough. We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it

Тр.им закрывается из-за того, что не стал первым в своей нише (и не сумел придумать удачную схему для того, чтобы в конце концов монетизировать свой трафик — при том, что пользователи за этот сервис платить не хотят, из твиттера их вытеснил бит.ли, за статистику платить тоже некому. Грустно, грустно.

UPD: Бит.ли предлагают придти на помощь утопающим ссылкам и взять на себя массив тримовских редиректов (mashable).

UPD: Парни решили сыграть в «волки, волки», и явно не сделали себе лучше, сначала сыграв в drama queen, а потом пойдя на попятный — Tr.im: We Were Just Kidding About Cutting You Off. Also, We’re Still For Sale.

UPD: А Betawerks, с присоединившимся к ним Гнипом так и продолжают — «On Friday, Gnip is announcing that it’s releasing a public database that will give URL shortening companies a place where they can archive or escrow their short URL directories, in the event their services shut down. The database would provide a way for another company to take over the services of the closed URL shortening service and keep the mapping of short-to-real Web links alive.» (cnet)

Razorfish Bidding Saga Over: Publicis Buys It For $530 Million; 5-Year Bing Ad Deal Included | paidContent

Кто покупает: Publicis Groupe SA, owner of the Saatchi & Saatchi ad firm.

См.также: Consumer Experience Report от Razorfish — реклама пикселями, глянцевые диаграммы и журнальная мимикрия

PollDaddy Goes Automattic — Matt Mullenweg

It’s another exciting day here at Automattic. Today we finally get to announce that we’ve acquired the market-leading poll and survey service PollDaddy.