Wordpress

Wordpress is arguably the internet's most popular blogging platform, hosting 202 million websites as of September 2009. Started in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as an offshoot of another blogging platform, b2/cafelog, which was shut down that year. From these fairly humble origins, Wordpress underwent massive growth over the next few years.
Many large businesses have used Wordpress for its flexibility and customisation. Yahoo, Wired, Pepsi and Harvard University have all used Wordpress to create blogs.
Wordpress relies a great deal on it's community to offer technical support and customisation through the development of plugins. By making it's code open source, anyone with some programming experience can contribute to the development of the Wordpress software. Many of these third party developers offer their work for free, or simply ask for donations from users. Through the loyalty of their community, Wordpress has been able to vastly expand the usability of their product.
While Wordpress offers free accounts, it makes revenue from premium subscriptions, as well as advertisements. A premium account offers a unique domain name, additional storage space, the removal of ads and added customisation options.

WordPress Plugin Developers In Dire Need Of A Sustainable Business Model

Wordpress

Google Book Search

Google books provides information about a huge amount of books, and in some cases, where the work is out of copyright, also provides the full text of the work. Google has attracted a lot of controversy for its digitisation program that aims to provide access to millions of out of print and orphaned books. The fact that these books are out of print means that they are likely not particularly popular, however the sheer amount of works made available will likely mean that the database will have a very large user base. This sort of marketing strategy is referred to as "leveraging the long tail". The nature of the application means that Google can host and provide access to huge amounts of material, which allows them to target a much broader audience than if they were providing physical copies of the works.

Google books had its origin in a book digitisation program involving university libraries that aimed to provide access to research from all over the world. It has since grown to a project encompassing all types of print materials, including novels, magazines and technical guides. Google Book Search aims to make substantial portions of these works available for free, and the entire work available on a subscription basis. This is a truly revolutionary idea, with a number of rather severe issues that will fundamentally change how publishing and copyright works. A large number of authors are unhappy about the project, as well as the settlement reached between Google and the Author's Guild as well as representatives of the Association of American Publishers. Millions of the digitised books are not orphan works, and have easily found copyright owners that Google has simply not made an effort to contact, due to the scale of the project. Authors whose work has been digitised can contact Google and choose to either keep their work available for a fee, or opt out completely from the program. But many authors have stated the fact that Google has digitised millions of books without the authors' consent makes a mockery of the principle of copyright.

While the project is in many ways a wonderful concept, there are still many legal and ethical issues that have yet to be addressed. A global public library is a beautiful idea, but if it tramples on the rights of authors, it is ultimately worthless.

Haiku:
Every book on Earth
Available in digital
But owned by Google

Google Books
5 Ways The Google Book Settlement Will Change The Future of Reading
Google Book Settlement Market Analysis Q&A

Delicious

Delicious is a service that allows you to store and share bookmarks. Founded in 2003, then acquired by Yahoo in 2005, the site is similar in many ways to Digg, in that it is a form of "content curation", allowing users to find topics and links that have become popular on the web. It also allows users to access their bookmarks from anywhere, unlike the bookmarking abilities found in most browsers.
Since it's inception, Delicious has been updated at a frequent rate. This philosophy of "perpetual beta" has allowed them to consistently improve and expand their services. Recently they added the ability to save bookmarks sent via Yahoo Messenger directly to delicious, and are currently working on an extension for Google Chrome. What is interesting is that, according to the Delicious blog, demand for new features such as the Google Chrome extension has forced them to release features that are not fully functional. This is at odds with the traditional software development model, but offers some strong benefits. By releasing features with known issues, the developers can pinpoint problems with feedback from the user community. A consistent update schedule also keeps users interested and excited by changes.


Delicious
Google Chrome extension

Paypal

Paypal has become the ubiquitous method for transferring money over the internet. Anyone who has bought anything off Ebay, Etsy, or a huge variety of online sellers will most likely have a Paypal account. Created in 1998, the idea was simple and beautiful: send money via email. It's a little bit more complex than that, but that's the essential spirit of the service. There are currently more than 153 million Paypal accounts worldwide.
Paypal has responded interestingly to the rise in mobile technology. The newest version of the Paypal iPhone app allows you to transfer money to another persons account by simply touching two phones together, as opposed to manually entering the necessary data. It also allows the user to transfer money between their bank account and Paypal account. If the technology continues to grow at the rate it is currently, this sort of transfer could be incredibly useful to small businesses in the future.

Haiku:
Buying online made
Simple, except I always
Forget my password

PayPal Transfers Made Simple
Paypal

Gapminder.com

I recently found a fascinating website I'd never heard of before called Gapminder, which offers the beautiful tag line of "Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view". It's a non-profit initiative founded in 2005 to develop a program named "Trendalyzer" and provide accurate statistical information about world development trends. Unsurprisingly, it was acquired by Google in 2007.
The actual interface is a little confusing at first, for someone without much experience with statistics, but offers really comprehensive help and tutorials. The difficulties I had at first were simply due to the huge amounts of data and interactivity. At the time of writing, it offered world statistics for 430 indicators, including aid received, rates of teenage pregnancy and life expectancy, which can all be graphed on separate axes. These graphs can then be played to show development over time. It is really quite a beautiful way to visualise and make comprehensible world statistics. It also offers help and suggestions for teachers who want to make use of the website.
I really love this side of the web, the idea that information is power, and everyone's birthright. Which is probably the reason I'm studying to be a librarian.


http://www.gapminder.org/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2011420124_hans_rosling_to_reveal_zen_of.html

Digg

Digg is a web 2.0 application with the sole purpose of tracking and suggesting items that are popular on the web. In terms of usability, it's beautifully simple, allowing users to nominate articles and stories, which other users can "digg". Articles with high amounts of diggs are displayed prominently on the site. The site also allows you to follow other member's diggs and comment on articles.
On of the core strategies that Digg seems to be using is interoperability and open-standards. They recently released an update allowing Facebook users to log in and use the service immediately, a move which increased new user registration by 20-30%. They are currently working to do the same for Google and Yahoo accounts. This is an ambitious move, but also a highly logical one. While all these services offer the ability to share stories, they do not socially rank them in any way. Therefore, Digg has something different to offer these services. And by making the service exceptionally easy to access for anyone who uses any of the major social networking API's, they dramatically increase their appeal.
Peter Cashmore has written a really interesting editorial on Digg, where he talks about the rise of content curation. Because new information is being created at such a massive rate, sites like Digg help users to find content they are actually interested in, and filter out the rest.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/18/cashmore.digg/index.html

Foursquare

Foursquare is an interesting mash-up of location-based networking site, game and mobile application. Users "check in" at venues like restaurants, bars, offices or even their own home. The service notifies your friends where you are. The focus seems to be on helping people share their favourite spots and discover new ones in their given city. The website describes itself as an "urban mix tape". Checking in at various spots can earn users "badges". Visiting a spot more than anyone else will make you "Mayor" of that place. Many businesses are offering incentives like free food and drinks or discounts if you are the Mayor at that venue. Users can also add tips and advice about various venues, which are accessible when you log in.
Foursquare makes use of mobile technologies geolocation abilities in order to gather data about user's habits and favourite haunts. This simple, implicit method of gathering data is complimented by the encouragement of more explicit contributions by users by offering rewards in the form of badges and titles.
Of course, the site's usefulness is entirely dependent on its users. The more people checking in and placing tips at various sites, the more people will be inclined to use the system. Most of the tips and comments about venues seem to be available via http://fourwhere.com/, which does not require registration or log in. I can certainly see the attraction of a service that can recommend a restaurant or bar in the area. There are tips on favourite menu items, the kind of vibe of a venue, warnings for vegans.
In many ways I really like the idea of the site. Its kind of like a global grapevine, and I can see it being really helpful for small businesses who are doing really great things, but don't have the capital for advertising. Foursquare are also planning to release free analytics software for small businesses, so they can easily track their traffic and the information posted about their business. It will also allow business owners the ability to communicate directly with their customers via twitter. Users do have the option to keep their information private, thankfully.
However, what I find fascinating, and kind of disconcerting, is the use of badges as incentives. Are we so hungry for recognition and approval that people can be motivated by a .gif file? Maybe so.

Haiku
Broadcast where you are
every moment of the day
Win a fab new badge

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/foursquare-introduces-new-tools-for-businesses/
http://foursquare.com/learn_more

Last.fm

So this week we're talking about "harnessing collective intelligence", meaning using a web application's users to enable it to develop and grow. Users can contribute in an explicit sense by directly adding or altering content, or implicitly by their day to day use of the application.
Last.fm makes strong use of this on multiple levels. Last.fm is an internet radio site that builds a profile of the music a user listens to via a lightweight plugin, whether through radio stations, portable devices or computers, and recommends new music based on the listening preferences of others. By simply listening to music with the plugin installed, users are contributing data to Last.fm's "scrobbled" database. The site automatically generates pages for new artists once a user has listened to them. Users are constantly contributing implicitly to the database and site. The site also tracks popularity of artists and songs by the amount of times they are listened to.
The site also makes use of explicit contributions by users in the form of tags, videos and events. Users can also personalise their pages with avatars and personal information, as well as being able to embed their "recently listened to" tracks into sites such as Facebook and blogs.
The thing that strikes me about Last.fm is that it encourages user participation by allowing users who are passionate about music to connect with others. While Last.fm offers the ability to connect with people with similar taste in music all over the world, as well as to discover new music through recommendations and communities, I think a lot of the drive for people who contribute explicitly is to tell everyone how much better my taste is than yours. The Shoutbox on the page for the Melvins, one of my favourite bands, is a long stream of abuse between the band's fans and people who hate their music, but somehow feel the need to tell fans that they have terrible taste.
Photo from Flickr.

Haiku

Thirty million-odd
Hipsters waiting to tell you
How bad your taste is.