Rojo: Digg Stars; Google Matrix; ObamaSpace

select Rojo: Digg Stars; Google Matrix; ObamaSpace

RojoBlog (+subscribe)
By Rojo Team
2/16/2007 08:40 AM

Summary: Top Stories For the Week of February 12 - February 16 Diggbait anyone? The Wall Street Journal surveyed who’s who when it comes to influencing social-networking sites like digg and Reddit, and finds just 30 of 900,000 registered... Click to expand...

Top Stories For the Week of February 12 - February 16

Diggbait anyone? The Wall Street Journal surveyed who’s who when it comes to influencing social-networking sites like digg and Reddit, and finds just 30 of 900,000 registered digg users are responsible for a third of stories on its home page, blogs Business 2.0. It’s an odd time to be alive when 12-year-olds influence what is “news,” writes TechCrunch, and Bloggers Blog chimes in with an L.A. Times story showing digg now sends more traffic to news stories than Matt Drudge. Jason Calacanis sees the WSJ story as validation that raters can be paid and not be corrupted, and Blog Herald agrees that while Netscape’s voting system is completely transparent, digg’s negative-rating votes are secret and more vulnerable to manipulation.

Google lost a Belgian copyright case after disgruntled newspapers objected to inclusion in Google’s search index, or having snippets of stories and headlines on Google News. If you think the Belgians are joking, Mountain View was already staring at potential 1 million euro per day in fines for non-compliance, (via Web 2.0). John Battelle goes over the implications for Google News as Mountain View preps to file a second appeal.

Google’s other day in court didn’t exactly rock either—Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim writes that the search giant complied with subpoenas seeking YouTube users who uploaded 24 episodes, and you bet Fox TV is going after them. Those worried about what else Google knows should view Master Plan: About the Power of Google, an almost comically dark look at what Google can do, complete with British-accented narrator and ominous hints about Google research into molecular biology.

Meanwhile, publisher Arthur Sulzberger actually said it out loud: The New York Times will go out of print ... eventually. But Sulzberger also told Israel’s Ha’aretz that the Gray Lady is already thriving online (via Silicon Valley Watcher). Eat the Press reported that Sulzberger spoke to staff on Valentine’s Day speech to smooth any ruffled feathers. While the Times worries about where it will put news, MySpace is using video-fingerprinting technology to keep pirated audio and video files off its site, blogs NewTeeVee. Maybe content-hungry MySpace should call MTV, which will make some of Viacom’s vast programming library available for embedding in blogs and elsewhere—undercutting sites like YouTube.

Pity poor Microsoft, whose Vista launch inspired a collective yawn and now, lively blogosphere pokes at Vista’s security with its first Vista security update (via Silicon Valley Sleuth). Bruce Schneier slags Vista as less secure, less stable, less reliable and full of “features” you don’t want (via BoingBoing). Other Microsoft-watchers are looking forward to PlayReady, Redmond’s mobile-DRM system that will let users access content over multiple devices (via PaidContent.org) so stay tuned.

Elsewhere, eMarketer predicts podcast advertising will climb from $80 million to $400 million by 2011, blogs Micro Persuasion, so better hire an ad-sales rep. Meanwhile, ESPN bought the True Hoop blog and hired author Henry Abbott, who promises continuity and increased travel to games—on ESPN’s dime. Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed, but for $30,000, Blog Herald says you can buy Aaron Brazell’s TechnoSailor blog on eBay.

The First Blog scandal of Campaign 2008 is well underway: Two bloggers resigned from the John Edwards campaign under pressure for allegedly anti-Catholic remarks, writes Taegan Goddard. And then there were the death threats. Sen. Barack Obama had better news, launching a social network called MyBarackObama, even though he’s already doing well on Facebook. Brand Obama already has tons of offline supporters—this will just help them connect, writes Mashable. Fortunately there’s a new tool for following how Edwards, Obama and the other 2008 candidates use the Internet: TechPresident. It covers everything from ads attacking John McCain to which candidate has the most MySpace friends.

Finally in entertainment, an audacious new site from The Pirate Bay: a search-engine for torrents of this year's Oscar nominees, Oscar Torrents (thanks BoingBoing). According to the site: “To those worried about downloading in case they get sued: your chances of getting nailed are way less than your chances of winning the lottery. Don't think twice about it.”

Get the best of the blog world every week in your inbox with the Week in Rojo email newsletter. It's free! Sign up here. Or click the Rojo tile to subscribe to the Rojo Blog feed.