[iDC] Will you delete your Feedburner account?

Fri Jun 15 22:58:44 EDT 2007

Hi everybody,

I just want to remind that today is the last day (June 15) if you  
want to delete your Feedburner account. Tomorrow the rights to your  
data will transfer from FeedBurner to Google.

- - -

Trebor's email reminded me the interview with the founder of  
Delicious Joshua Schachter, October 25, 2005
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/berkman_joshua_schachter.html

"Q: What's the financial model?

A: The same as any other advertising-backed discovery engine, like  
Google. The people who are using it are paying us with information.  
Ten times the number of people are on the site but not signed in than  
those who are signed in."

I think what is important and valuable to everyone is not the sole  
data but the networked data. I can't see any value in downloading all  
my bookmarks to my hard drive. A service provider like Delicious  
enables networking, with all the technical, semantic, and social  
protocols for organization. Within this organization my bookmarks are  
not just bookmarks but a kind of "delicious bookmarks". I think  
Delicious bookmarks become more valuable and aesthetically  
interesting in the context of their own constructed network.

burak

On Jun 12, 2007, at 2:33 AM, Trebor Scholz wrote:

> It's easy to generalize about "users" or "prosumers"-- the  
> participants
> in the sociable web. What follows is a close-up look at the "user"
> perspective of the acquisition of the social bookmarking site
> Del.icio.us. I'm not focusing on the rights or wrongs of the  
> acquisition
> itself; the goal is to look at some reasons behind people's  
> rejection or
> acceptance of it.
>
> On December 09, 2005 Joshua Schachter, a Morgan Stanley analyst who
> created Del.icio.us in 2003, announced on his blog that his company  
> has
> been acquired by Yahoo. It was sold for somewhere between $15 and $30
> million.
>
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/01/01/
> 8368130/index.htm
>
> 244 out of the 505 comments to this announcement of the acquisition  
> were
> congratulatory and 261 people rejected it or were doubtful. Within the
> group of negative voices I also counted a few spam messages. This
> suggests a slightly higher number of skeptical del.icio.us users. More
> interesting than these numbers, however are the stated reasons for  
> being
> in favor or opposition to this acquisition.
>
> http://blog.del.icio.us/blog/2005/12/yahoo.html
>
> The supportive voices celebrated the fact that Joshua Schachter, the
> Del.icio.us founder made millions of dollars and on December 13, 2005
> one blog commenter with the screen name "Naomi" summed up the  
> sentiment
> of many who commented on the blog, reveling in Joshua Schachter's
> ability to strike it rich by writing: "congrats! seems American dream
> live and well!"
>
> The practical impact that the acquisition will have on them as "users"
> was secondary to their appreciation of somebody who "made it," which
> they took as an indication that such financial  success is also in  
> reach
> for them.
>
> Many studies have shown, however, that such dreams of economic and  
> class
> mobility in the United States are not based on fact at all. In  
> 2005, The
> New York Times ran a series called Class Matters that confronted the
> myths of the American Dream with the realities on the ground. The  
> report
> showed that income is heavily based on the economic background of  
> one's
> parents and education. Schachter, for example, has a B.S. in  
> Electrical
> and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He hardly  
> rose
> from waiting tables to the ranks of a multi-millionaire. In 2007, The
> Wall Street Journal reported that American men in their 30s today are
> worse off than their fathers' generation. (American) Dream over.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2005/05/15/national/class/index.html?
> adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1181557942-BQmDuVxw6rNLn0dYALVM4g
>
> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118005313993514160-
> ffyvlR98p8u9Sorpc2R_TwOs50w_20070601.html?mod=blogs
>
> On Schachter’s blog there were also other comments that pointed  
> more to
> the possibility of a big corporation like Yahoo to support large-scale
> sociality. "Chris" wrote on December 9, 2005 Joshua: "Pay no attention
> to all the whining naysayers, and welcome aboard! ... No doubt your
> voice will be a powerful force, and you'll have the unique opportunity
> to shape the experiences of millions of people worldwide on a much
> higher level than you've already achieved. Things are about to get
> really interesting!! I'm so excited for you!"
>
> “Chris” proposes that Yahoo will be able to cope with large numbers of
> users in opposition to a small or non-profit organization that  
> can’t. On
> the other hand, the reasons for negative responses to the merger
> included Yahoo's support of China's human rights violations.
>
> "Considering Yahoo's complicity in the arrest of pro-democracy  
> activists
> in China, I can't say I'm pleased, commented "sad_delicious_user" on
> December 10, 2005. Others suggested moving to competing social
> bookmarking sites." "Gabe"  wrote on December 9, 2005:
>
> "So.... where should we go now? www.shadows.com www.wink.com
> www.furl.com www.blinklist.com I'm bummed, but looking forward to  
> trying
> some new stuff out."
>
> In addition, there were also demands for payment for the bookmarking
> labor. Juna Duncan wrote on December 12, 2005:
>
> "So where's the payback for all of us storing stuff on del.icio.us,  
> who
> are now not only 'social bookmarking' but building a big database of
> 'the most important' websites for Yahoo! ... There is no kidding
> ourselves that this is social bookmarking for society anymore. It is
> social bookmarking for Yahoo!s profits."
>
> There are open source social bookmarking clones such as sa.bros.us,
> Simpy, BlinkList and Furl but none of them has a sizable community of
> Del.icio.us, which makes the site a useful research tool among many
> other possible uses. The users on Del.icio.us can download their own
> data freely through the API in an XML or JSON format, and the data can
> also be exported to a standard Netscape bookmarks format. It is a true
> sharing site that supports individualistic collectivism. The rules of
> the game are transparent. Users are aware that Yahoo owns the site and
> the walled garden effect that is obvious with MySpace and Facebook  
> does
> not apply, as exit costs are extremely low.
>
> The favorable comments about the Del.icio.us acquisition on the
> company's blog are in part based on the hope of users that one day  
> they
> follow in the food steps of the Del.icio.us founder and become  
> wealthy.
> These dreams of class and economic mobility have been shown to be
> delusional by the cited NYT and Wall Street Journal reports.
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/sabrosus/
> http://simpy.sourceforge.net/
> http://www.blinklist.com/
> http://www.furl.net/
>
>
> Trebor Scholz
> http://tinyurl.com/2aaos8
>
>
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