Spaces on the Wall

Low Tech Yet Effective

Powerful Partnerships

Google and MySpace have tied the knot. Google is going to crawl MySpace's 127 million user pages - essentially opening up a whole new slice of the web to feed off of. Facebook should be concerned - even with last weeks standards launch.

Netflix is partnering up with Xbox and TIVO to integrate their services into already established hardware. Blockbuster's response is to force you buy a (ugly) product that will be outdated in 6 months in order to obtain the same level of on-demand video rental services.

I think there's a pattern developing here.

Collaborate: unite with powerful partners in complimentary ways or Isolate:  struggle alone by making everything (half-assed) on your own. Last week I would have said Facebook's bold move to go it alone was brilliant. This week, I'm not so sure.

What do you think?

But It Sounds Nice

A few weeks back, I attended a small, local networking event. Usual suspects: Financial Planners, Life Coaches, and Local Business Advertising Reps.

I've noticed the latter growing exponentially (and their really scummy too). They see the popularity of online lists, and online categorizations of businesses as the next Internet Goldrush - ready to sell false hopes and inflated impressions. EVERYONE of these reps claim their directory is the biggest in the county, and that their directory is going to be the next Google killer.

Let's be honest.

The 1,000,000 hits you claim a month are not really "hits". Hits are the amount of times a server request gets pinged. This could be a for a piece of text, an image, or whatever. After some probing, I find out the real answer. The unique visitor count actually equates to about 500 a month. That's like 12 people a day. A far cry from how you originally framed it. His response: "1,000,000 hits sounds better right"?

It just upsets me when someone like that pollutes in my environment.

Influencing the Masses