Wikipedia to color-code “trustworthiness” in its articles
Wikipedia will be employing a new feature to more effectively measure content "trust-worthiness" by applying a tool called WikiTrust, according to Wired.com. New edits to the site will be applied an orange highlight, which will fade to white over time, the idea being edits with no disputes will remain on the site for longer: less highlights means less disputes, and more trustworthy articles.
Facebook Fan Pages soon to publish Twitter updates
A new Facebook feature was announced earlier today, one that's a long time coming: pushing out Facebook activity to Twitter without the need for a middle man service, which GigaOM fondly calls "coopetition". It will be limited to Fan Pages however, which I'm thankful for. If this were to be rolled out to individual profiles, Twitter spam would likely increase tenfold.
Scribd redesigns, aims “to be the largest book club”
The popular document sharing service Scribd will be relaunching on Monday with a new design that will encourage more participation among its members. The upcoming Scribd redesign aims to foster an environment where writers would be able to get feedback on their posted work and discover other user-generated content.
Virtual worlds members reach 579 million members
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According to Kzero, members of virtual worlds have reached 579 million by the second quarter of 2009. Some of the sites that have seen most growth are poptropica.com with 76 million registered users, Habbo (135 million), Neopets (54 million), Star Dolls (34 million) and Club Penguin (28 million). While these sites may have less members than Facebook and Twitter, virtual worlds are often profitable via micro-transactions, and this growth is fairly noteworthy, given the current state of the economy.
Yahoo’s redesign: Are homepages coming back?
Web 1.0 was all about the rise of portals-- so called jumping off points wherein users could be caught up to date. Web 2.0 was more about users telling each other what's going on, and less about some editor creating a homepage for users to peruse. Yahoo, the largest Web 1.0 portal to survive, is trying to mix the two together and create something more useful. Will it work, or is it destined for the bin of failure? We ask two tech journos, Mike Rose from TUAW and Jonathan Strickland from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Why did the Web 2.0 Expo crater? Plus, What to do about AOL?
It might seem like just yesterday that Facebook was announcing its application fund and platform at the Web2.0 Expo, but this year's slate of big announcements were notably absent from the conference. We talk to Josh Lowensohn of CNET's Webware and Alfredo Padilla of Reviewed.com about why they think the conference was such a bust.
Also, former Googler Tim Armstrong takes over as CEO of AOL tomorrow, and on his first day on the job we lob our ideas of what we think AOL is, and how he should change it. We're hearing all sorts of suggestions from around the web, and even a Reuters report talking about Time Warner potentially spinning out the company on its own. My take? Exit any service business NOW, and truly become the killer content company AOL has been striving for, and think about M&A opportunities like Twitter only after the lagging service businesses have been shuttered. Seriously, no one needs a dial-up ISP anymore, and if they do, there's always Earthlink.
What do you think? Can AOL be saved? Will Web 2.0 recover next year? Sound off in the comments.
O’Reilly: Web2.0 isn’t a version number
Tim O'Reilly kicked of Web 2.0 by declaring the term not as a version number, but instead representing the "next web" after the dot-com bubble's collapse. Even with the economy in relative shambles compared to last year's Web 2.0 expo, VentureBeat reports the organizers are expecting about 8,000 attendees, which is 500 fewer than last year.