What seems to be THE fastest growing services in the history of the internet is now (only) one of the fastest growing services.
Another source posted a very interesting graph with # of daily Twitter messages. I wonder if these numbers are accurate, and if so what led to yesterday’s spike? I have a feeling it is related to Paris (option A, option B)
Lijit is a a blog search engine that uses people, content and connections to influence on relevance of results.
They used data their spiders collect when visited over 8000 blogs to analyze the Widgetsphere and released thier findings a few days ago.
Below are a few highlights:
- Snap is leading the Search category with almost 50%! The Snap Shotsstrategy pays off (Bloggers get free utility that enhances their site’s user experience, Users get a tool that saves them time while surfing the web, Snap gets search traffic and brand exposure).
- Beyond Snap, bloggers also love Google Analytics & even more they love Google Adsense (I am sure Google also loves the data collected from blogs in order to optimize the Adsense algos). One question that I ask myself is what do bloggers do based on their site analytics findings? Are they using the two services in conjunction? How many apply site optimization techniques and change the design in order to improve Google Adsense CTR? How many change their writing style to make thier posts shorter in order to keep information above the fold (when people read in detailed post mode, not just excerpts)?
- Although it is considered one of the most popular Web2.0 web sites, Digg badgets are available on only 1.5% of the blogs. I assume most of Digg’s traffic comes from other sources of information such as stories on large publications
- Twitteris in a similar position – lots of noise but only on about 2.5% of the blogs. On the other hand they are the 3rd leading content widget (after MyBlogLog and Flickr).
- 14 companies operate in the analytics category. Many are free of charge and not a clear plan for monetization. I am sure there will be some consolidation soon.
- I was a bit surprised to see meebome only at the 48th position. It might be related to the demographic of the sample site.
Last crazy idea – As this industry grows, and more and more companies enter the Widget space (check out the latest from Ebay), a financial institutation should create a Widget Companies/Categories ETF. This would be a nice interaction between the financial world & the blogesphere, and potentially another way to make money out of blogs.
You could spend over $25K on a Prius or change your home’s lights to Energy Saving Light Bulbs for a few hundreds $. But if you are looking for a free energy saver try out CO2 Saver, a lightweight program that makes it super easy to reduce electricity usage and to save on your electricity and cooling biils.
When your computer is idle CO2 Saver gets into action. It turns off the display, the hard-disk and the CPU. The less electricity produced, the fewer harmful emissions and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are released into the atmosphere.
One neat feature is the ability to see how much CO2 you’ve saved since installed (I will post from time to time updated stats), and how much everyone saved. If you are part of a ‘green group’ and using a group version (like Earth911 or Oceana) you will see how much CO2 was saved by all group’s members.
Organizations who would like to create a custom version should contact Snap and ask for one.
Check it out.
Ideacodes (Emily Chang) released a new project called Twitterverse. It lets you explore what people twitter about in a time frame (1, 5, 10, 24 hours) and display a tag cloud of the most interesting words. Once you see the list you could zoom in and see the full context inside the messages and the members who sent them.
Twitter is an amazing social phenomenon. It is also a business that I can not really figure out (how are they planning to make money if they have to buy huge amounts of bulk text messages?).
I find the Twitterverse mashup interesting as it provides a unique point of view on the lives of those who use the service especially on thier language:
- Vocabulary is fairly limited. Only 1049 words were used by the community in the last 24 hours. One caveat – not all words sent are added to the index.
- “Twitter”, “Going” and “Work” were the most popular in the last 24 hours. Does it mean people twitter a lot when they are going to work?!
- Twitter is more than just a site/product/brand. It is at the point that it turned to a verb (embody verb potential) and have spawned words like: tweet, tweets, twit, twitter, twittering, twitterrific, twitters, twittervision
I am sure one day someone will make this the topic of his Linguistic thesis.
Just added AddThis, the popular social bookmarking aggrigation service, to my blog.
