Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

jonathan rose — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:09:37 -0000

Twitter has managed to achieve the media hype critical mass where it is mentioned everywhere and becomes a common word in everyday venacular

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

jerryclatham28 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:45:06 -0000

I see Louis Gray has posted a list of his 10 top new web services for 2008. I thought the list was missing a few of the best new services. So, I did two comparisons:I asked Twitter for what services they liked the best that were new. I compared all of Louis’ top services on Compete.com to my favorite new service, FriendFeed, to see how they measured up in traffic.First, www.chase.com let’s compare in Compete. I included TechMeme in the charts as a baseline since that news service continues to be popular.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Robert Scoble — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:16:15 -0000

Hal:

good points. Of those on the list, the ones I like and use often are here:

1. FriendFeed.
4. TweetDeck.
5. Disqus.
7. Qik.
8. Evernote.
9. TripIt.

So, six out of 11. But I think the other four are good, too, and will start using them. One thing I've learned about watching crowds of early adopters. They usually are right.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Hal O'Brien — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:27:32 -0000

"I asked Twitter for what services they liked the best that were new."

And then in your analysis, you say absolutely nothing about which services are "the best" or even (with the exception of FriendFeed) you like... No, you just constantly harp on, Did they grow quickly?

Those are two entirely different questions. So much so, it's almost a bait and switch.

The post could probably have made sense if you'd gone on to say, "Look at all these services that people like and admire -- and aren't growing. Shows yet again how quality isn't the main driver in this business!" But, no, there's not even that much self-awareness.

There's all this comparison to Louis Gray when there's no indication the respondents know or care who Louis Gray is, and -- again -- has nothing to do with the question as asked.

I'm not saying there may be interest in the points you raise. But the way you've presented them, it's almost like you lose interest in the answer to any given question before you even finish asking it and then move on, when the people who answered the question you asked in the first place have no idea you're already bored with the question they answered -- and you're now using their answers in a context they had no way of knowing would exist by the time you posted them.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Philip Baddeley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:36:39 -0000

How many of the top ten are angel and/or VC funded? How many are based in Silicon Valley?

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

iddaa — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:25:52 -0000

Thank my friend

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Andy Gongea — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:37:15 -0000

Friend Feed is for sure one of the most important names in 2008

Feedly is also a good one because of their product and good interface, although the growth was not so powerful.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Igor Poltavskiy — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:43:44 -0000

Note.Where's leading tech community's epicenter? Twiter,FriendFeed.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Eric Marcoullier — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:42:10 -0000

Robert -- thanks for writing about us. As Louis pointed out, we're at Gnipcentral.com, not gnip.com so please update your link if you get a chance.

Please keep in mind, we're not a consumer service. We don't help you keep track of your posts, or other people's posts or enable you to post elsewhere. We package and deliver data from services like Digg, Delicious, Twitter and Six Apart to services like Plaxo, MyBlogLog, Strands and EventVue. Our work is behind the scenes and as a result just looking at our traffic isn't the best way to take our pulse.

Have a happy holiday and let's all hope 2009 is better than 2008.

Cheers!
Eric

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Jonathan Deamer — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:37:24 -0000

Thanks for the mention, Robert. Good to see a nice bit of variation in what people have mention - all the usual suspects, plus some curve balls. I'm a big fan of Tumblr, and Posterous seem to be getting a lot of traction in the same space. Especially after the former's new round of funding the other day, this is going to be an especially interesting area to watch in '09.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

electromute — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:14:24 -0000

Nice post!

A couple of notes on Gnip, first, the web site URL you are using on Compete.com is incorrect (as Louis points out as well). Our web site URL is http://www.gnipcentral.com which is probably why you are seeing a flat line in web site traffic.

Second, our product offering is not a web-based destination, it is an API based service that facilitates data portability so that developers can create applications on any platform they choose. I'm not even sure using a comparator like compete.com is appropriate for us in this case.

What you are likely going to see are services that you know and love using Gnip under the covers, whether that fact is transparent or not, it will certainly make measuring our popularity under these standards a bit more difficult. I'm pretty excited about what we've got going on, and even more excited about some of the ways developers are using our service to create feature-rich applications.

Cheers!

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Louis Gray — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 12:19:49 -0000

One more note on Gnip... while they aren't striving for growth to their direct site, the example you gave cited a different URL.

http://siteanalytics.compet...

The above URL shows a similar graph, but 4 times higher than the URL you cited.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Craig Mische — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:25:17 -0000

Qik is my favorite but think they a) need to get into the App Store and b) give users the ability to embed live video on a site and allow viewers to send questions directly from the site without having to go to the video at qik.com.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Edwin Khodabakchian — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:08:15 -0000

Hi Robert,

I would like to add a couple of things regarding feedly:

1) Our current focus is not absolute growth but how many of the people who get to try feedly keep using it daily and tell their friends about it on Twitter. On those metrics we have been making steady progress *every week* since we opened feedly to the public in June. see [1].

2) Technically, feedly is designed so the mash-up of the data it is aggregating is happening in real-time in the browser. So the traffic you are pointing to does NOT reflect feedly usage but simply people who visit the feedly corporate website.

It has been an interesting problem to try to solve. We are not there yet but I believe that if we continue to listen to users[2] and make progress every week, 2009 will be an interesting year for feedly.

[1] http://search.twitter.com/s...
[2] http://www.getsatisfaction....

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Erin — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:09:41 -0000

Glad ShareThis rocked the the top of the list. They're making some updates too so I can't wait to see what's next.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Jesse Stay — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:35:31 -0000

I'm surprised Posterous isn't anywhere on the list. I see good things for them in 2009.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Gubbi — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:23:39 -0000

And yeah I need to include Disqus among my new favorites. Especially after they implemented syncing comments and moving comments out of their system.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Gubbi — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:22:07 -0000

Surprised that no one mentioned Mixx and Zoho. Compare Mixx with Friendfeed. Zoho isn't as impressive, but got a ton of coverage this year and has done fairly better.

As per my favorites: Nothing much new except Friendfeed this year. Just hopped onto Zenbe and liking it till now. Also, used SocialBrowse for quite sometime but it's usage dipped when I switched to Google Chrome.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Lucretia Pruitt — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 23:33:19 -0000

adjix.com which has just started out is growing quickly
kirtsy.com is still growing (albeit it dipped in july - it's on the rebound)
alltop.com slowed down but still growing (seriously - you invoke guy kawasaki and leave alltop off the list?)
twine.com seems to have gone off the charts in the past couple of months, but it technically was around before this year
soup.io similar situation to twine.com - suspect the impending demise of pownce is responsible for that.

All in all tho, I like both your list & Louis's - but I'm still not a friendfeed fanatic.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Susan Beebe — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:41:59 -0000

Nice blog post... wow.. serious depth and analysis... Thanks!

BTW, I am biased, but FRIENDFEED rocks the internet hands down. :)

You and Louis both know that!!!

Social Median is my #2 favorite new app...very impressive app and more impressive is Jason Goldberg, the genious "energizer bunny" that never quits...amazing guy there!

Cheers!
http://friendfeed.com/susan...
http://twitter.com/susanbeebe

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

George — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:44:03 -0000

Robert: In a recession, survival is #1, not growth. Calacanis was dead right when saying that the most creative thing a startup can do in 2009 is surviving.

So, growth is nice, of course, but not sufficient for survival. See the banking system. It sure grew like hell, but all that growth wasn't sustainable. The same happens to a startup that grows in users, but not in income.

For survival, generating enough income and a having a sufficiently high liquidity are mandatory. Growth isn't. There are companies generating more revenue with some dozen valuable accounts than certain startups with hundered thousands of users that don't yield a penny.

See Facebook: They grow, but still have no clue how to monetize (and whether users would appreciate being milked). So far, they're not even able to earn enough to have something left after bills were paid.

In my view, Facebook is one big fail story. The masses just have not realized it yet. Potential buyers will realise it soon and certainly not buy before there's evidence of a profitable business for Facebook. Same goes for Twitter or Friendfeed or 97% of all startups that follow the Freemium business model.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Louis Gray — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:27:27 -0000

Amend: I see you did... Sorry, hard to get everything while in the car.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Louis Gray — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:24:58 -0000

Great list and interactive response. I love Disqus and FriendFeed as much as you, but I was restricted by the 2008 debut. I also for the most part wasn't consulting growth as much as personal preference. I know I missed some and your readers have great suggestions.

Did you link to the original article?

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

mathewballard — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:22:33 -0000

I saw that Tumblr was mentioned on here. Personally for me, Tumblr started out strong. I used it everyday but then after a couple of months I got tired of it and how limited it was. Now, its just used as a dump for various things I post around the internet. And all that is done automatically, so I rarely ever visit Tumblr.

Re: Best growing newish services of 2008 (is Louis Gray right?)

Andrew Deal — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:34:03 -0000

Definitely great to see the list we aspire to for 2009!