Ted Murphy ended day one of IzeaFest today by revealing a few new features of SocialSpark (the ability to donate proceeds to designated charities, an affiliate program, and what seems like an evolving desire to improve transparency amongst bloggers — good on him for the first and last of these things), but also a new program out of PayPerPost Izea that folks like Louis Gray should find interesting.
Its curently in alpha right now, but CloudShout is what looks to be a widget network distributed amongst the SocialSpark users (if not, then it will be very easy for them to implement). In short, CloudShout looks like a platform that is looking for developers to create widgets — like an IM widget, or a MyBlogLog widget that we saw — so that people will bring back conversations back to blogs.
RATHER — not just conversations, but *attention* back to blogs as a location for things to happen.
I spoke to Dan Rua (who, I should add is much larger in person than on his blog — much like John Chow, actually) after the talk, and I “get” where the intention of this is. They want to create an easy platform for people to develop stuff, so that the attention is focused back on blogs and blogging, and away from the splinterization of conversations — and therefore attention.
There weren’t any specific ideas around monetization, but one could see a scenario where Izea could get secondary gain from more traffic to blogs — leading to more attention to paid posts or advertising purchased on blogs. Or, the benefits of “owning” the platform if it gets hot.
Perhaps one analogy is “an iphone apps for blogs”.
As with a great many things, I think the details are in the execution, and the proof is in the tasting (of said pudding). I will give a large kudos to Ted and co for having some pretty ambitious dreams, and wanting to bring attention back to blogging. Being a blogger myself, I love the medium and as I said previously, it needs as many friends as it can get.
The biggest challenge — as I said to Dan — was that in all the thinking done around the splinterization of conversations, that I did wonder if something like this, as admirable as it is to want to bring blogs as a place to BE again, that if it was an attempt at something that’s against the grain.
That is, with the evolution of things like Twitter and Friendfeed, if conversations — and therefore attention — will *naturally* splinter across different media *within* media. That as good an effort as CloudShout is — is it therefore *un-natural* in its efforts to move people back from where they came from?
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think in order for that proposition to occur, they’re going to have to do something really really right. It is going to be slick and sexy, and its have to take the best out of MyblogLog and capitalize on all of its lost opportunities, AND get its champions and evangelists on all sides lined up … *if* they’re fighting something that I suspect is a natural phenomena that we’re all witnessing in the social media scene:
The splinterization of attention.
PS. If you’re interested I have an extra invite … leave a comment and I’ll pick one at random in another day or so.
September 12th, 2008 at 6:49 pm | Permalink
Man Tony, you’re fast. It was great meeting you today; as I’ve been a long-time reader.
As you mentioned, the SocialSpark Causes, Blog for Charity announcement is a good one — unlocking the power of social media for charities, with advertisers and bloggers partnering to do good together.
I think the key for CloudShout as the first real-time click2install Blog Apps platform (analogous to iPhone Apps or Facebook Apps) is to not force a decision between one location or the other — just allow replication of app functionality on-blog that makes those other places so rich. This is where I think MyBlogLog could have gone, were they not stunted by the Yahoo acquisition.
If the function is there, and the readers are empowered to direct-connect in real-time (analogous to Facebook chat, for example), the power of blogs as someone’s lifestream/app page will flow naturally.
Even if the “big idea” takes time to culture, simply providing real-time visitor presence (e.g. Dan is visiting, Tony is chatting, Ted is playing checkers) and real-time communication (reader-to-reader and blogger-to-reader) is a leap forward from today’s Recent Reader widgets.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:35 pm | Permalink
[...] panel covering “Growing Blog Traffic” took place. The speakers on this panel were Tony Hung, Lea Alcantara, Brian Clark, Alex Schel, Steve Spalding and Tamar Weinberg. While some of the [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 1:14 am | Permalink
I did like what Izea has in the works, but I think it will be tough for them to get the installations/ exposure they will need for this type of service/tool to go main stream.
Not only will they have to pick up some big name blogs to carry the tool, but also none bloggers as well.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out…
September 13th, 2008 at 7:47 am | Permalink
@Dan — I appreciate you’re not “forcing” anything with the widget platform … I guess what I mean is if you’re asking people to move back to a place they’ve moved *from*.
Will they be happy to move to a place like a blog, if they’re already satisfied with a place like Facebook or Friendfeed? I’m not saying its impossible, but I think its going to need a lot of things right for it to happen.
Cheers
tony.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:50 am | Permalink
@Zac — I hear that. They need to grow both the install base and the buzz surrounding it. Unlike the iPhone or Facebook, the Izea probably doesn’t have the benefit of thousands and thousands (or, perhaps millions in the case of Facebook). Hotness or size of network are two relatively important things that would be attractive to developers.
(I think :)
Cheers
tony.
September 13th, 2008 at 8:42 am | Permalink
FVB > IZEAFest Day 1: Tweets Galore & So Much More…
Call me tired, but instead of detailing the first day of IZEAFest, I’m just gonna share live-tweets and the video streams. I’ll also provide a quick report card on the sessions:…