Del.icio.us Lesson

I was reading an blog post by Mike Butcher, and found a reference to Joshua Porter’s “Del.icio.us Lesson.”

From now on I’m going to call this idea the “Del.icio.us Lesson”. This is the lesson that personal value precedes network value: that selfish use comes before shared use. We’re seeing it more and more everyday in services like Del.icio.us, Flickr, and is an interesting aspect of networked applications. Even though we’re definitely benefitting from the value of networked software, we’re still not doing so unless the software is valuable to us on a personal level first.

Porter nails what we think is a major key to the current round of Internet innovation: personal value precedes network value. That doesn’t mean shared use isn’t valuable, in fact what we do at Scouta is use the community to benefit each individual with highly relevant recommendations, but it’s those recommendations, or what each individual member gets out of it that’s most important.

It’s interesting what happens when you turn social software on its head.

“Videoblogging is about to really take off.”

Sometimes it’s hard to see the Internet for all the discussion of video these days :). My head is so buried in Media 2.0 topics that I wonder if I’m getting a distorted view. So the following statement might seem a little biased/stupid/outdated/obvious.

2007 is the year of online video and audio. As Scoble says, “Videoblogging is about to really take off.”

Everyone tell me when they get sick of me saying stuff like this :).

One such area that demonstrates the potential, as used by Scoble to make the point, is a deal signed by Ask A Ninja and Federated Media.

Heather Green spoke with the creators, and they stated it “guarantees them a contract for sales in the low seven figures this year.” It essentially sounds like FM will sell advertising on Ask A Ninja, and give the creators the majority of the revenue, with a guaranteed minimum.

If you haven’t watched any Ask A Ninja, have a look, it’s damn funny. I’ve been a fan for about a year.