The future is in specialized businesses working together. With this in mind, I definitely think Yahoo! can increase its valuation by dividing itself into separate businesses that maintain interoperability. Although I wouldn't expect it to happen any time soon. -- KM *********** A...

Google won't be beat by another search company, but rather by something disruptive -- something that commoditizes search, and creates value atop of it. Mahalo is close, but the basis of competition needs to change to something besides search. My money is on community governance. -- KM ...

YouTube is an infrastructure player; their primary duties are to host videos, match them with ads, and allow for syndication. As the web continues to evolve, niche communities will form around sites that republish YouTube videos (like KidMercuryBlog! :D). First, though, YouTube has to understand...

A victory for the villians of web 2.0. -- KM ****************** http://www.techmeme.com/071005/i9.jpg Please support our dying business model — A ruling has come down in the case of the record industry vs. Jammie Thomas — the single mom who took her file-sharing case to...

Outstanding essay here by Paul Graham; definitely covers the most important trends in business. The part about standardization is huge; we'll see business networks emerge, and they will compete on the set of standards they offer. When I say "standards" I am referring to every sense of the word:...

See Dan Pink's book "A Whole New Mind" for a deeper look at this topic. -- KM ******************** For decades financiers of one type or another have been the “Masters of the Universe”. People who, as Bob Dylan once sang, “make the rules, for the wise men and the fools”. In the 1970’s,...

As I noted in a previous post, forecasts say holiday spending will be down, except online. The US housing market is affecting advertising spend too. But again, online advertising is the bright spot. This is according to ZenithOptimedia. ... Go to Full Article

The Chinese Government has added a blanket ban on all RSS feeds, according to a report at Ars Technica. There has been reports previously that Feedburner feeds have been blocked, but to-date information delivered by RSS feeds has ... Go to Full Article

A great example of the edge owning the core; 7 application developers choose their own operating system, and they choose an open source one. Note to Facebook developers: find yourself an open source version of Facebook that really lets you do whatever you want with it (hint: it's called...

The "next Techmeme" is simple Techmeme + community moderator. In other words, KidMercuryBlog! :D -- KM *************************** It was intriguing for a day or two, but now it's clear that the Leaderboard was the dumbest idea ever, because now more than ever, people are gaming Techmeme...

October 12 is the deadline for many states, so be sure to register Republican. I know the idea of registering Rethuglican hurts the thoughts of many Dumbocrats -- just remember that it will hurt a lot less than having Hillary in office, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who can possibly beat...

I’ve always been fascinated with the cover font color choices magazine editors make. Looking at the top 20 has shed some light on some of the most interesting color choices in the industry. Starting with number twenty, we’ll take a trip back through the world of publication color. Go to Full...

Insight into why social networks are a niche game; it's how you can build communities of shared interest. Communities with a sense of purpose. -- KM *********************** Microsoft's Steve Ballmer: (via) "“There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people...

There has been a lot of coverage this past week about the recent upgrading of search engines' user experiences to include other content-type results. Yahoo unveiled new enhancements on Tuesday, Microsoft launched refined Live Search ... Go to Full Article

Great post here by Josh talking about the need for data silos to be broken down -- a common theme that many people are talking about. The issue is incentivizing interoperability. A network of loosely coupled niche consumer-facing business services is, in my opinion, the answer -- and is exactly...