1. I *highly* doubt the MySpace/Facebook graph...

Especially considering that Facebook is now open to 2,000 colleges, and recently opened for 25,000 high schools... 25,000. Granted, most of the kids who would be likely to snag a facebook account already have a myspace account.

Are they [facebook] too big for their britches? NO... the $2 billion they asked for was simply a negotiation tactic... and we are all falling for it

Posted at 9:09PM on Mar 31st 2006 by Landon Howell

2. It seems as if the reason you are insisting on seeding your own stuff is indeed self-promotion. Looks to me like the policy is doing exactly what it was intended to do by stopping that.

There's a very basic thing you should understand here: We're not trying to be another Technorati. Technorati grabs everything it can, as automatically as it can. The result is a lot of stuff. That's great for what they do. The idea at Newsvine is to only feature what is nominated by users. You can't nominate yourself in most democratic elections and nor should you be able to in a democratic medium like this. If your stuff is good, people will seed it for you. That's the point. Over time, people build up reputations as seeders and their placement around the Vine is affected by this. Sure it's easy to get good placement now but it likely won't always be. If you had a shill somewhere seeding every post from your weblog, number one it would be pretty easily detectable, and number two, the shill's rep wouldn't be too high.

But back on topic, keep the suggestions coming. I may not always agree with them, but we're the first to admit that we still have a lot to learn about our community. Anybody who says they've completely figured this space out is either a) lying, or b) cocky enough to actually believe they have.

Posted at 10:55PM on Mar 31st 2006 by Mike D.

3. Mike... no offense, but as competitive as th Internet is today, having to take time to "completely figure out" a space is a death-nail.

That's the beauty of the MySpace's, Digg's, and YouTube's of the world. Simplicity.

I like Newsvine alright.... but the lack of catchy colors and words like "seed" are gonna keep me (the young opinion-leaders) away while I go off and become addicted to the easy-to-use and uber-hip, Digg.

Posted at 11:06PM on Mar 31st 2006 by Landon Howell

4. We're in the same position you are with Blogsmith, by the way, and I too only agreed to build our own system from scratch at the behest of our CTO and developers. I am almost ashamed to admit I suggested starting off with a system like Drupal in order to speed up development. In the end, as Gawker may be finding out, there's nothing like a scalable-from-the-start, custom-crafted publishing system that you own, love, and control the development of.

Posted at 11:06PM on Mar 31st 2006 by Mike D.

5. Landon: I couldn't disagree more. None of the companies you mentioned have completely figured out their spaces. That's what business is all about... constantly listening to your customers and the surrounding landscape and making changes as they become beneficial and/or necessary. Foolish is the leader who thinks he knows everything at any given time.

There's probably only one company in the world who has completely figured out their space and that's DeBeers... and that's only because by literally owning all of the diamond mines in the world, they simply control the entire market. It's a stranglehold so strong and so monopolistic that they aren't even allowed to have offices in the United States. People talk about Microsoft being a monopoly! Ha! At least that's a temporary one.

Posted at 11:15PM on Mar 31st 2006 by Mike D.

6. I never said "completely"... however, considering the time that they have existed, compared to yours... they're done a pretty dang good job.I never said *ompletely*... however, considering the time that they have existed, compared to yours... they've done a pretty good job.

Posted at 12:32AM on Apr 1st 2006 by Landon Howell

7. My link/comments hit bump on that last post.... here's the link: http://www.alexaholic.com/myspace.com+youtube.com+digg.com+newsvine.com?y=r&r=2y&z=1

Posted at 12:43AM on Apr 1st 2006 by Landon Howell

8. Whiny A-listers -- can't keep them happy when you are rippng them.

Posted at 1:22AM on Apr 1st 2006 by King Bastard

9. Landon: Again, I'm not sure I understand. We launched four weeks ago. Digg launched in December 2004... almost a year and a half ago. MySpace launched even before that. It takes a bit of time to tend to your community, adjust to your strengths, and really hit your stride.

Posted at 3:13AM on Apr 1st 2006 by Mike D.

10. Gotta say I think it's sort of ridiculous that Newvine puts restrictions on authors seeding their own articles right off the bat. As many people are pointing out, traffic generated from being featured on Newsvine is currently almost nonexistent, so whatever money an author would purportedly make would have to be negligible. At this point in its life, Newsvine should be all about getting bigger.

The reason Digg got as big as it did as fast as it did is in part because there aren't all these arbitrary rules about what is or isn't allowed - the community decides. As Mike D. states in the discussion thread on Newsvine "that's life in a democratized medium". Digg got it right. Newsvine had better adapt or risk obviating itself.

Posted at 4:24AM on Apr 1st 2006 by Jason Clarke

11. "Denton calls out SixApart. I'm so glad I trusted Brian when he insisted that we create Blogsmith as the foundation of Weblogs, Inc. If we had put our faith in those guys we would still be on blog number 10 or 15--like Nick is!"

Amusing, but not accurate. There's a number of blog networks with blogs numbering the dozens or hundreds that are all powered by Movable Type, and of course many companies run blog farms internally, ranging up to the thousands of blogs. Nick hardly called us out -- he's looking for people with expertise to help him, and he'll find them. If you get stuck and Brian's busy or gets sick, who fixes Blogsmith? Who knows how to work with it? Who's scaled it up to sites larger than your own?

Posted at 9:47PM on Apr 2nd 2006 by Anil