As I May Think...

LinkCounts now available from PubSub.com

To satisfy people's apparently insatiable hunger for statistics and to provide folk with something to digest while we continue to refine and rebuild our LinkRank system, we've started to publish some of the raw data extracted daily from the more than 9 million blogs that PubSub monitors. These LinkCounts are part of the raw input to the PubSub LinkRanks calculation.

LazyWeb Query: Are Creative Commons Licenses legal?

[Updated 24-Mar-2005 3:30pm]
A question for the LazyWeb: Has anyone done a patent search to determine whether or not the Creative Commons licenses infringe any of the hundreds of patents that cover software licensing and Digital Rights Management? [Mike Linksvayer of Creative Commons indicates in a comment below that he's unaware of such a patent search. See below for other comments.]

Newspapers Join to buy 75% of Topix.net

Earlier today I saw this in my PubSub search for news about Topix.net. Tony Gentile at buzzhit! reported an unconfirmed rumor that Knight Ridder is buying Topix.net. Well, just a moment ago, Rich Skrenta sent me a note clarifying the rumor:

Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), Knight-Ridder, Inc. (NYSE: KRI) and Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB) jointly have acquired a 75 percent stake in Topix.net. Ownership is split evenly, with each media company owning 25 percent and the Topix.net founders retaining a 25 percent stake.

I wish to offer my most sincere congratulations to Rich Skrenta and the hard working folk at Topix.net for their good fortune. The backing and support of these three companies is an impressive testament to the service that Topix.net has built.

bob wyman

Minor milestone: Of almost 9 million blogs, 5 million are "active"

We've almost reached 9 million total blogs monitored by PubSub(8,982,669 at last count) and yesterday for the first time we briefly topped 5 million active blogs. Then, we dipped below 5 million for a few hours but now we're back over the 5 million line again and I think we'll stay there. (Because the definition of "active" blog is time-dependent, the number goes both up and down.) In any case, it is clear that the blogosphere is growing more rapidly every day!

Microsoft to dominate Blogging sooner than expected...

[Updated: March 16, 10:59am]

The news seems full these days with reports that Microsoft is developing a comprehensive set of blogging and aggregation tools. Most recently, there has been a raging debate on /. about the Microsoft-Watch story which claims that IE 7 will include a free bundled RSS/news aggregator. Just a few days ago, the news was all about the web-based free news aggregator that Microsoft is developing on its start.com site (is this a Bloglines or Newsgator-online killer?). Also, we've recently heard about Microsoft's acquisition of Groove -- which will undoubtedly become the core of Microsoft's "business blogging" platform, the introduction of MSN Spaces (suddenly one of the largest free blog hosting sites) and RSS support in MyMSN. All of this follows on the regular news that dribbles out concerning Microsoft's plans to include new aggregators and other syndication/blogging tools in Longhorn. Microsoft certainly seems to be taking blogging very seriously.

tag URI scheme to become RFC

On Feb 24, the tag URI scheme was approved by the IESG for publishing as an RFC. This comes after almost five years of work on the scheme by Tim Kindberg and Sandro Hawke.

The key benefit of the tag URI scheme is that it provides us with an almost trivially simple means for just about anyone to create identifiers for objects which are unique "across space and time." Thus, as long as you follow the simple rules defined by the tag URI scheme, you can be sure that no one else will ever create the same URI that you do.

Friendster.com offers blogs powered by Typepad

In what is inevitably one of many more similar events, the news has begun to circulate that Friendster is now offering Typepad blogs to its users. In addition to the usual Typepad offerings, one can choose a free, "ad-supported" blog. Friendster is following the path recently taken by Le Monde who began offering Typepad blogs to their users last year.

This strategy of content sites offering blogs to their users is, I think, guaranteed to become much more popular in the future. What better way to ensure a loyal customer base then to have them almost permanently tie their on-line personas to your brand? How better to build links to your site then to ensure that thousands of the blogs you host all link to you? How better to establish your brand as the focal point of discussion for a community then to host that discussion?