- Doom-mongering: A 2009 Internet Media Plan: Last month Nick Denton predicted a 40 percent decline in the online ad market. Nick is gloomy even in the best of times, so I’m hardly surprised, but this time around? The pessimists keep winning their bets. 40 percent drop in ad revenue for ad-supported businesses is not a decline, it’s a cataclysm. If it’s right, we’re just at the start of a cycle that will be even worse for this industry than the 2000-2001 downturn.
- Peter Schwartz: Facebook's Face Plant: The Poverty of Social Networks and the Death of Web 2.0: Web 2.0 will die. Facebook is all trivia, and it will go the way of AOL. I agree with about 1/2 of this. Let’s forget about whatever “Web 2.0” is and talk about Facebook. FB’s effort to cut the difference between walled garden and open platform will work in the short run, probably help it keep growing and even figure out how to make some money through the downturn; but long term I don’t see how it keeps the most engaged users from jumping ship to truly open versions of its services, which will take maybe 5-10 years to go truly mainstream, but Will Happen, most definitely. See previous examination of these issues in previous examination of these issues in Technology Review from last summer.
- The 463: Inside Tech Policy: Learnings from THE Cyberporn Story: Interesting exhumation/recap of the big 1995 Time Cyberporn story fracas, which I followed on the Well and covered in the SF Examiner as an example of “collective online media criticism.”
Post Revisions:
- December 12, 2008 @ 15:29:15 [Current Revision] by Scott Rosenberg
- December 12, 2008 @ 15:27:10 by Scott Rosenberg