Monday, October 10, 2005

Yahoo News Search with blogs. Okay now we're talking. Yahoo doesn't put blogs in the kiddies section, instead we're indexed along with the grownups. Screen shot. That's good. Now, why did they just roll it out with the mainstream business press? Come on guys, that's half-clueful, now let's go all the way. When you roll something out, include us in the roll out, esp when the service relates to blogs.  

Major site launch: http://gada.be/. 

See Chris Pirillo's comments, and TechCrunch preview. 

I think it's intriguing and really appreciate the excellent OPML support. 

PDF of WSJ article about podcasting. 

4:14PM Pacific: Arrived safely at SFO. 

Checking in from Gate A22 at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. Excellent TMobile here. The airport has Boingo service and there's a Laptop Lane with Wayport.  

To Tom Forenski: I would have sold weblogs.com a couple of years ago and any time inbetween for the right price to a tech company capable of operating it better than I could. Not really too complicated. This layer is ready, time to build another layer. (BTW, UserLand, which I remain a major shareholder of, would like to sell some of its assets too.) 

Oy vey! There's another major site launch coming, this one at 3PM Eastern today. I'll miss that one too, probably -- today's a travel day, from Greensboro back to SFO. Don't worry there aren't any more submerged deals to leak out while I'm traveling. I think.  

podcasts.yahoo.com 

Major site launch: http://podcasts.yahoo.com/.

I got an advance look at the site and had a chance to sit down with the team on Sept 21 in Sunnyvale, CA. We talked about formats, protocols, how to work with the community at a content and technical level, and linking into the community directory. At this point, I'm not sure how much of this Yahoo did, we'll be diving in over the next few days for sure. But they were the first podcasting network site to do this, Odeo didn't do it, nor did Apple or Podshow. No matter what Yahoo did, at least they talked, listened and trusted, and that's a start.

To Apple and the others, we didn't leak their product, we respected their right to keep it confidential.

Anyway, net-net, it's great to have Yahoo in this ballgame.

Last week Scoble was trying to guess what this product was, he figured that Yahoo had to have something to announce -- he said Yahoo is not Steve Jobs, and I kept thinking, so true, and I'm so glad. We need more steady leadership from the big companies, less flash, less attention-hogging. This leaves room for new ideas to get a chance from individuals and small companies, which is, btw, where new ideas actually come from, Steve.

9/2705: "Yahoo is rapidly becoming the statesman-like technology company I've been hoping would emerge. Too many tech companies throw their weight around, and try to act like scrappy upstarts, when taking the long-term big-picture view would serve themselves and the community much better."

1/9/04: "Hey Steve, you just had a really great idea!"

Yahoo also briefed Andrew Grumet and John Furrier, so look for comments there.

Amazing grace 

With very few exceptions, maybe just two or three, the response of the blogging world to the Verisign deal for weblogs.com has been universally positive, collegial, appreciative, happy, and wonderful. And remarkable, in the truest sense, there are remarks to be made about it.

I was expecting something different, I guess I expected a flameout extraodinaire. I decided we could go through it, for the principle and yes, for the money. I'd be willing to endure some virtual flames for a couple of million dollars.

But what I didn't expect, and now find most gratifying, is that people seem genuinely happy about the deal. I have a guess why, it goes like this. Hope. If Dave can do it, so can I. It's not so much money that you can't imagine yourself making it (these days, after taxes, it buys a modest family home in the Bay Area). More important, weblogs.com is the kind of thing a person can do, in his spare time, while doing other things (like writing a blog, running a company, driving around the country, recovering from major surgery). It's not exactly like a hobby, but then again, it's not exactly not like a hobby either.

I think news, good or bad, is always received this way: "What if it were me?" And this idea fits well into people's minds that way. It actually could be me, they think, and I think that's great. We need more people starting projects for the community, that build the community, and then have the perseverence to stick with it, in the hope that there will be a payday someday.