Mapping, Mining and Viewing the Blogosphere
It’s Alive !! Many have asked for it, and it always made sense, so we did it. That’s right, now Bscopes graphs are clickable. Each point on the graph can be clicked(is alive) to navigate to the source blog. This is true for Bscopes (single blog graphs) as well as Bspaces(group graphs). Also, this will be part of the user-defined spaces created when loading your own list of feeds.
Try it and let us know what you think.
Ok. I now concede that I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I would like. You may have noticed that it has been more than a month since I wrote a blog post. Apparently if I’m writing PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript, I can’t write English. I’m not sure about walking and chewing gum either!
Because you requested… based on popular demand…
Ok, not really. But the next thing Steve and I knew we needed was to allow users to personalize their Bscopes experience. So we’ve now set things up so that you can create a login for yourself on the Bscopes site. Just click the Signup text in the upper right hand corner of any page. (Go ahead an do it right now… we’ll wait. Are you back? Let’s continue)
Following shortly from this will be the ability to save the feeds that you want to subscribe to.
And… I promise to now wait another month to learn how to chew gum and walk at the same time.
I’m here just geeking out these maps of blogs and trying to understand the data mining potential of it all. I needed a break, so I read these articles that Brad del-ici-ated — my new verb — and then harassed me to read (nag nag nag)
Erick writes about the need to manage the never ending flow of information. He’s right! The flow is overwhelming!! I share his frustration, and echo the call for better filters. I’ve written about the need for complex filters and even said that filters don’t solve my problems. But I disagree with his comment about less data. I see it as presenting the data in a form that can be consumed quickly, and in large quantity. A picture should be worth a thousand words (or feeds!). I wonder if that is this what he means by his use of the term Web 3.0?
This is in fact our core rationale behind wanting to graph feeds. I agree, using tools to reduce the noise of the web can be as much of an aid as a hindrance. If it’s not useful to cut through the clutter, the tool may be creating more of a problem than it solves. Bscopes is our effort to solve this problem for ourselves. Erik says: “Please? I need help.”, Brad says: “Yes, you do”, I say: “I’m on it!”
But I don’t see it as a problem, I see it as being more effective. If I want to catch up on reading, I open my reader and see 90 minutes of effort and I only have 15 minutes available. I can never catch up!
Clearly, I need to be more efficient as Ryan points out making Web 2.0 more efficient is what Web 3.0 should be about. I haven’t seen this as a consensus in the community writings, but if he’s right, Bscopes fits into the Web 3.0 genre. How’d that happen?
We intend the concept of a Bscope to help navigate the blogosphere. Not by providing less data, but by managing, digesting and presenting the data for consumption. The idea is to bring order from chaos. If that’s what you are defining Web 3.0 to be ……….. then yes, Bscopes is Web 3.0!
I hadn’t considered Web 3.0 until now. Maybe I should read more…
We want to do our part to spread the word about RSS Awareness Day. okay, okay, there’s really not that much more information.
Our reasons should be obvious………..but in case they aren’t. Digesting RSS feeds is what Bscopes does. Groups of them can be graphed to produce a map, called a Bspace. It’s plain and simple !
Now go and do your part.
– that’s all there is to say.
“Let me ’splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up” — Inigo Montoya
Ok. One more time. Why Bscopes?
What terms do I use to name the problem we see: overload, clutter, chaos, too much info…?
Here’s a quick list of a few of the more recent blog posts on these topics:
But if you think it is hard enough to keep up with e-mails and instant messages, keeping up with the Web (even your little slice of it) is much worse.
Web 3.0 will be about reducing the noise. […] I hope Gould is right, because what we really need are better filters.
Erik is almost there. He has nailed the problem, but not the solution. As we’ve said before, filters are not enough.
As the number of these tools grow the signal to noise ratio grows. As the noise grows, the experience becomes weakened, both for you and for people searching for you.
Right! This hits to the heart of what we think is important. Separating the signal from the noise is cutting through the clutter.
The information firehose is something that we all suffer from nowadays. I won’t even use the incremented number of Web x.0, that’s just foolish marketing, but we are beginning to try to tame the information beast by pulling more together. Is that the right course and will it save us?If services won’t save us, will better applications?
I like Tris’ term of “firehose”. It captures the sense of overwhelming information that we see. And, clearly, we think that applications can help with this problem.
Eric is right - if web 2.0 is all about creating and finding content; web 3.0 will have to be about simplifying the output.
Ryan also hits the nail on the head. Simplification is a key. We don’t think you can simplify text with text. We think you simplify a thousand words with a picture.
… we shouldn’t just be working on the OUTPUT problem by building better filters.
Scott understands that filters aren’t the answer. But I don’t think I agree with the rest of his content conservation approach. Except for the linking part. I like linking.
Finding ways to limit the firehose of information has become a common theme lately.
He then goes on to note that:
There have been several services released that are now attacking this issue for RSS readers & aggregators using interesting methods to identify and increase visibility of the “good” stuff. They’re using algorithms that take into account trackbacks, comments, Google reader share volume, and other data points to show items that are popular.
Mark is dead on target in describing both the problem and the concept of a solution. So naturally I agree with his brilliance 
Hopefully Mark will find Bscopes an interesting method in addition to the others he already knows about.
So here we are today. It’s like we’re all discovering search engines all over again. In a matter of weeks we’ve gone from “Wow! I can find everything here!” to, “Crap! Over 600,000 results for the phrase Serendipitous Discovery? How can I find the one reference I’m looking for?”
The huge opportunity ahead is a filter to bubble up the things you need to know without missing anything you want to know.
Ian is having déjà vu all over again. The overload is very much reminiscent of search results. But no, not filtering.
I’ve heard it said many times that one of the goals of the semantic web is to deal with complexity. There’s definitely a need for it, and that needs is only going to get more urgent as the information-providing services multiply. Bring on the intelligent information-filtering services!
Rachel, we hear you loud and clear. And we are bringing on the services as fast as we can.
The truth is, being involved in social media takes time, something that most people don’t have a lot of.
Sarah cuts to the heart of the issue. There are just 24 hours in a day. So, we need to make each minute count. We need to find the info we want quickly and easily.
And that’s just some of the chorus of complaints during April. This reinforces our commitment at Bscopes to cutting through the clutter by visualizing the blogosphere. We don’t think you can filter your way out of the overload. In our opinion, you need different tools to cut through the clutter of a massive overload of data.
So, overloaded bloggers of the world, take heart. Someone (well… technically at least two someones) has heard your cry. <insert dramatic John Williams score here>
Over the next weeks and months, we will continue to add more features to Bscopes.com that will enable you to see the Blogosphere more clearly. And as we do that, we really do want feedback from you on how you are using the tools and what works and what doesn’t. Leave us comments. Write posts and ping us with a trackback. Add a Bscope widget to your blog if you like.
As for me… I’m going back to adding another feature. After all, I just promised I would.
We have been influenced by the folks over at 37signals. We read their book: Getting Real a while back and loved it. This week we both watched a presentation that David Heinemeier Hansson did at Startup School 08. (If you, too, are starting a business, go watch it. I’ll wait… Ok, now that you’re back, let’s continue)
The content was great. I read the 37signal’s blog all the time, but I hadn’t seen David speak. I like his style. But, more than that, it was nice to get some validation of some of the principles that we both agreed on when we started Bscopes. There were many things, but the most important to us was starting up a business that would replace the salaries we get from our day jobs. So that we could then continue to do the little things in life: pay our mortgages, send our kids to college, perhaps even afford to eat 3 meals a day. You know… the little things. And David’s remark about how having only a few hours on a given day, or a few days a week, to work on the project causes you to focus on the important things — that really rang true for me.
Both of us have worked for many business before — ones both large and small. And, at each company, we were both directly responsible for making sure that the business made a profit. So now we are doing this for ourselves. And David’s calculations are right in line with the modest goal (YES, they are written down) we had as just two guys in their home offices. Neither one of us is trying to be the next Google or Facebook. Not that we would mind if Bscopes became that popular, mind you. But we’d be happy just having a company with enough revenue for two guys.
So early on we decided that Bscopes would have to produce a revenue stream and a profit. For Web 2.0 sites, there seem to be two common approaches in use: (1) entirely Google AdSense supported and (2) the Freemium model where we charge for premium Bscopes products. Currently, as you can see on each page of the Bscopes site we’ve got AdSense running on the sidebar. One of our next short term releases, in May, will add user specific capabilities to the Bscopes site. Letting people register so we can associate Bscopes and RSS feeds with each person will enable a number of new features to be added to the site. It will also enable us to go to a Freemium model.
But we still have a number of questions that we are debating. One of them is whether or not to continue running AdSense on the site. Paying customers don’t want to see advertisements, and we agree! Should we continue to use ads to offset the cost for the free features? Or, could the revenue from premium customers pay for enough servers and bandwidth to fund the cost of the other users? Without knowing exactly how many customers will sign up and the exact price points, it seems like we need to keep the ads running for now and only turn them off when we have the revenue to cover the costs. If you disagree, let us know in the comments or on your blog.
Or we could just put up a Paypal donate now button like the one Mark Evanier has over at NewsFromMe. Or what about a “Buy us a cup of coffee” button like the HT Guys have on their website (What a good podcast! Go subscribe to it in iTunes)? Or not… Hey, Steve, it was just a thought. Really. Put down that rock. Hey…. Ow…
Okay, okay… fine… back to writing code…
A friend (he who shall not be named) said “Why do I want a Bscope in my life?” It’s because of RSS Overload, plain and simple.
Over time, I’ve found that the more blogs I read the more time I spend sifting, sorting, and searching through the whole set. “Where’s that article I was reading the other day……” Because the more online content I read, the more I need a tool to help consume and organize it.
Feed readers I’ve used dutifully download the updates, and yes, they are organized into the categories I’ve specified. But, I have to work my way through each feed one at a time. Rather than displaying all of the updates from my feeds, a Bscope helps me pick it apart. I can select articles such as those with incoming links, outgoing links, or possibly a ‘conversation’ using the Bscope to aid the sifting and sorting process.
For me a Bscope offers a different granularity, much like the finer point in Dennis O’Reillys post, the graph yields a road map to a blog and that helps me navigate through the content. The map shows how the pieces of a blog relate to each other. “The leg-blog is connected to the ankle-blog, the ankle-blog is connected to the foot-blog…..” As is the case with any visual technique: a Bscope shows what is difficult to see by reading textual content and following links. It’s the ‘big picture’ I need to cut through the clutter and guide me to the gold — the path back to the article I was trying to find.
But finding old articles is not enough, I read blogs a group at a time. Whether it’s Technology, Renewable Energy, Politics, Personal Finance, Music, Cooking, Economy, and so on. I want the opportunity to dig through, or mine, a set of blogs to find information, relationships, new blogs that are only visible by performing operations on an entire group of blogs. These new found results of a Bscope mining operation are the gold I’m digging for.
I call this mapping a group of blogs a Bspace. A Bspace let’s me mine the blogosphere the way I see it. Because I want to control and manipulate a set of blogs directly. Operations like: search it, share it, navigate it, email it, and yes RSS it, to find what I’m searching for. It’s my own personal blogspace……and the tools to go with it.
As more and more online content gets published in blogs, the need for a variety of tools to manage groups of RSS feeds becomes essential, not optional. Matt (at 37Signals) makes this point effectively in his Taming the Beast article. If I want to drink from a firehose, I need a B-I-G-G-E-R mouth!
My friend asks “Why a Bscope?” and I say “I can’t manage RSS Overload without a Bscope!”
Back to it…..
This week we’ve added a new feature to the Bscopes site. You can now add other RSS feeds to the existing set of 100 that we already track and create a Bscope for. So, if you are curious about other Blogs and want to see how their Bscopes would look, you can now satisfy your itch. Simply head over to the new add a blog feed page to try it out.
As always, we’d love to know what you think. So please leave us a comment or send us some email. Or chocolate… chocolate is good.
That’s all for now. Enjoy…
Over at calacanis.com, Jason Calacanis just asked for reactions to his proposal for a new conference aimed at startups. This seems like a great idea.
And, speaking for both Steve and myself, I say “we are in” (and why not… should Steve actually speak for himself? Can’t I play Penn to his Teller?).
I like the general list of goals and approaches that are listed. The price being free to cheap is, certainly, necessary given the nature of a startup. And while I’m happy to put in as much of my time, I do wonder about the location. A remote location to promote the goal of intimacy seems logical. And I’ve seen this kind of retreat work well in the past. But I would like to know a bit more about the logistics and travel costs ($$ and time both). I also like the idea mentioned by Patrick J of holding the event over a long weekend.
I’d like to see the event focus on a mixture of aspects and issues faced by a (Web 2.0) startup and not just any one area:
Anyway… I’m sure I’ll have more ideas the more I think about this. But for now I’ve got to get back to paying the bills…
Earlier in the week I stumbled upon a blog post by Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb.com on the topic of Best Tools for Visualization. Wow, what a feast of info!
I’d seen a few of these before. Including the ones for Digg and YouTube. There were a ton of others that I’d never heard of.
I spent more time than I really had available reading the post and exploring the different sites Sarah points to. So don’t click on the link above unless you either don’t have a deadline or are in need of a good way to procrastinate.
Of course, I can’t look at all of those sites without getting inspired. So now Steve and I have an even larger list of possible new features to add to Bscopes. Our site is, of course, too new to have made this list, so I’ll ping them and point them to some of the Bscopes of blogs that we’ve made.
That’s enough for tonight…. gotta go add more features…
