MappingTheWeb //

After Google announced the acquisition of JotSpot, Conde-Nast announced that it was going to acquire YCombinator funded Reddit. Though not as popular or widespread as Digg, this democratic news portal has garnered a significant amount of traffic and a loyal following. Add to that the fact the company only employees 4 people and you start to develop some admiration for the team and the venture.

As a side note, Conde-Nast owns several magazines and websites (including Wired). The price tag of the deal was not disclosed.

From a personal standpoint, I am not convinced there is a fit here. I am going to have to delve further into the strategic direction of the publishing company, but my gut feeling says this doesn’t make sense. TechCrunch reports that Conde-Nast will leave Reddit as a standalone site, but also integrate it into other web properties, which I don’t get. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this pans out before we jump to any solid conclusions.

Congrats to the team at Reddit.

Try and say that 10 times fast.

Google is on a buying spree. Up until this past year, Google has been very weary when it comes to acquisitions. That all changed. With YouTube, Writely, and now JotSpot among many others, Google is making a much more aggressive push in the acquisition area. However, the old dilemma still holds true - whether to build a product/service from scratch or just buy an existing company at a premium. But with cash like Google and aggressive plans, it seems that the former option is the preferred.

Today, the company bought JotSpot, a wiki service founded by Excite-founder Joe Kraus. Financial terms of the deal were not released, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the price tag was around $30 million - but don’t hold me to it by any means.

With this acquisition, Google continues to make an aggressive push into the social application arena. Mash this together with Writely, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Calendar, and you have a full web-based social application suite. Robust, powerful. For this very reason, I think that the acquisition is a good fit for Google (Steve Rubel agrees), assuming the price tag was reasonable.

Here is an interesting note on the deal from TechCrunch:

“Other than a wiki, most of Jotspot’s plug and play applications are things that Google already has its own versions of. The acquisition may have been largely motivated by the desire to bring on board an agile team able to quickly ramp up lightweight hosted business applications for collaboration. Google may push Jotspot primarily as a project management application, one of the most important missing pieces of the company’s office platform. In fact, far more than a wiki, I’m going to guess that when Google reopens Jotspot to new users it will be as a wiki based project management service.”

Let’s just hope that the name G-Spot doesn’t stick - no pun intended.

Not likely. In fact, I am even more sickened by their recent move than I was when I heard they raised a round of VC financing. Talk about drinking the company Kool-Aid. These non-sensical juveniles at PayPerPost (PPP) have been brainwashed to the point of being unable to distinguish right from wrong. I do not believe that they have any morals or ethics left. Sure, there are sketchy behind-the-scenes business deals and corporate scandals occurring every second of every day - but this company has made it their underlying business model. Sad. Distasteful. Nauseating. I hope these clowns go bankrupt.

Today, they announced the launch of a new site called DisclosurePolicy.org. The purpose of the site is to take attention away from their underlying, evil business model and attempt to generate some positive PR. Unlikely chumps.

What does the site claim to do?

“This site is designed to provide you with the tools you need to provide transparency to your readers about the content on your blog. By including a disclosure policy you are protecting the integrity of your blog and providing a service to the advertisers, sponsors and organizations that you support you. Disclosure encourages trust amongst your readers and promotes an ethical blogosphere.”

I call bullshit. This is just another slap in the face to the blogging community. All I can say is this: If you’re going to get compensation for a post, disclosure is 100% necessary. No questions asked. And get this, they even pay if you post a PPP disclosure policy on your blog. Ridiculous.

Excuse me while I grab some Pepto-Bismal to settle my stomach. And no, I wasn’t paid to say that.

There once lived a blogging software project called b2. Then along came a developer named Matt Mullenweg. He takes the project to the next level, renames it, and benefits from some good timing. The successor has experienced phenomenal growth and thrived among the blogging community. What is it? None other than WordPress.

In fact, the Internet’s best blog, Mapping The Web, uses WordPress as a back-end ;). But all jokes aside, the blogging software is extremely powerful and user-friendly.

When Movable Type moved to a licensing structure in 2004, this provided a huge opportunity for the free blogging platform to prosper - and it did indeed. This still remains one of its strongest features against other blogging platforms. Add to that other outstanding features such as trackbacks, plugin support, and search engine friendly link structure, and you have a top-level piece of software in a hot market. No wonder it caught on so fast.

The thing I like most about WordPress is its ease-of-use. In the past, I’ve come across daunting CMS systems and hard-to-implement back end platforms. WordPress is relatively easy to set-up and extremely intuitive to use. After using the platform for a mere few days, I understood the gist of the system with relatively no effort involved. I think that’s a true testament to the developers.

A hosted version of WordPress is available with the domain being http://USERNAME.wordpress.com. Robert Scoble of Scobleizer fame uses this free, hosted system. Although functionality is limited, it is a great stepping stone for novice bloggers - not to say Scoble is a novice though.

I highly suggest everyone check it out. And if you are thinking of starting a blog, this is definitely the system to use.

NOTE: Snippets of info for this article were pulled from this Wikipedia article. Please read it for added info about WordPress.

In an attempt to gain added exposure and recognition within the web 2.0 world, MappingTheWeb applied to the 9Rules network on Wednesday. Results of the submissions should be posted within the next week or two. Other notable blogs in the 9Rules web 2.0 category include Mashable, SolutionWatch, and Postbubble. Because very few blogs are accepted into the prestigious network, it will be a real honour indeed if MappingTheWeb does get approved.

For more information about the network itself, visit 9Rules.

For more information about Round 5 of submissions, visit the 9Rules blog.