I’ve recently founded the Web 2.0 Wikia. Currently, it is very small, but I could do with the assistance of as many people as possible to expand it!

Qvey is a website which aids to create social surveys. In many survey sites, like Ciao, large companies ask for opinions on surveys, and the members of the panel are paid an amount (my experience is 70p upto £3). Often, an individual - or very small business - may want an opinion, but doesn’t have the resources to go through large consumer research firms.

A small business could use an online poll site like dPoll, though this does not allow you to do in-depth survey. Also, it does not give you the option to offer an incentive! Qvey allows you to carry out a survey with multiple questions, and also allows you to offer a financial incentive.

All recent surveys are listed on the site’s homepage, some have financial rewards (generally 1 cent, 3 cent or 10 cent) and some don’t. Naturally, you are more likely to do ones with a financial incentive, as every penny counts. Surveys are also placed into categories.

You can add cash to your account in order to create a paying survey, or answer other paying surveys. This, interestingly, is not done via. PayPal but through a credit card handler. Qvey charge 10% on every survey, so if you ask 100 people for a cent each you must pay $1.10. This is calculated through a nifty looking calculator, which probably uses AJAX.

To create a survey, you simply fill in a form where you specify a title, description, amount of users to ask, if you want it to be private or public, category and the amount you are willing to pay (anything from $0.00 to $30.99). A private survey removes it from public lists, and allows you to send the URL to the people you want to do it. After that, you add questions and the way in which they should be answered (short answer, long answer, rating or yes/no. You can attach links to questions, or files under 5MB like pictures, music and movies. I have created a survey here, feel free to complete it.

When you complete a survey, you see the results. These are generally displays as either a bar graph or pie chart, depending on the format of the question. The charts are animated and displayed in Flash, not AJAX. The site uses very little AJAX, and I’d love to see it when answering a survey or adding a question, for example.

The site’s design could also be improved. The colours aren’t very vibrant, and I’d like to see it handle higher resolutions better, perhaps centering the sites content - like the way this blog does. Also, I’d like to see the ability to view other user’s profiles, and perhaps add communication. This would show the site’s social element further.

Tags: web2.0, web 2.0, web 2, web2, social, social web, qvey, market research, survey, online survey, online surveys

I have always found the amazingly-fast growth of YouTube amazing; in 6 months jumping, from 200 daily pageviews per million to a peak of over 4000 daily pageviews per million in the latter part of May. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out this is a 2000% increase! The below graph, courtesy of Alexaholic, visualises this (I made it static, not the AJAX version).

YouTube is now the largest Web 2.0 site, with the exception of MySpace and the Wikipedia. It is much more well-known among the non-geek (and perhaps geek) than more conventional, and older, Web 2.0 sites like del.icio.us, Digg, and Flickr.

Pageview-wise, YouTube overtook Flickr in February, at around a pageviews per million of 600-800. From them, it has just gone up and up. It is now the 21st biggest site in the world. Reachwise, YouTube overtook Flickr in mid-January.

YouTube is getting extremely close to the Wikipedia now, and on pageviews it has already taken over it. Which site do I respect more? I would say the Wikipedia, but I’m fairly certain the majority of the public would find YouTube more amusing!

The Wikipedia has problems with copyright, but I doubt they are as bad as YouTube’s. YouTube is full of copyrighted material, and even Bill Gates admits to using YouTube to breach copyright! Somethings of these copyright problems on YouTube are major, like full TV shows, though some are stupid (like people dancing to copyrighted music!). The RIAA are taking advantage of YouTube to sue people for pointless things, like dancing to copyrighted music.

But the question is: will YouTube survive? Hypes come and go, and is YouTube a six month long hype? I personally think that unless it gets brought down by the MPAA (or RIAA :P), it will survive. The public love YouTube, geeks love YouTube, everyone loves YouTube. YouTube must handle terabytes of data a day, and if it keeps growing I doubt it’s advertising will subsidise the bandwidth. Most big sites can cope as they deal with text and/or images. Videos and audio is a different matter though.

So, why is YouTube so successful? It appeals to all audiences. With the re-launch of Digg possibly approaching, it will begin to appeal to the mainstream, though I think geeks will go off it. Digg is my favourite tech site, but I don’t want it mixed with celebrity gossip and such.

Naturally Alexa stats aren’t 100% accurate. Lots of users with Alexa are people riddled with spyware, and may not truly represent the population.

Tags: youtube, web2.0, web 2.0, hype, business, vc, digg, flickr, wikipedia, del.icio.us, alexa

Until now, MyBlogLog has mainly stayed in blog statistics. However, at the end of May it launched a blog-centric social networking site called MyBlogLog Communities. The site aims to link readers with blogger, which is currently mainly done through comments. I know however, that I have over 100 regular readers but only a few comment, and currently the only form of social networking through comments is through CoComment or one of it’s clones!

When you can fill up, you fill out a profile with all the usual things, but also Digg, MySpace, Flickr and IDs for other services. You can then choose who to disclose what to. Interestingly, many social bookmarking sites, including del.icio.us, are not included. Though the ability to add your IDs on other services is interesting, I do not think this is really a key feature of this service.

Each blog on MyBlogLog Communities forms a community. If you read/enjoy a blog, you join it’s community. In the community, you can see fellow readers and also send a message to the community. The communities are the main aspect of the site, but to be frank I do not see much happening in these. It is basically a list of names, a list of newest posts, if they use MyBlogLog a list of popular outgoing links, and a few comments. I do not see much discussion taking place here, and it may be a good idea to aggregate feeds from CoComment onto these pages too. Also, it might be clever to add a way to have the blogger answer certain questions regarding his/her blog.

You can add a member to a friendlist under various different levels. If you decide to add someone, they are automatically added as a contact - though you can class yourself as a fan or friend, and some others. I find it clever how you can make it one or two way.

The site should automatically grab a screenshot of your blog, though if it is wrong, or you lack one, you can manually add one. The site comes with a built-in cropping tool which is also used for avatars. This saves having to mess on in PSP or Photoshop in order to get it at the right size.

The site is heavily linked in with MyBlogLog, which is also interesting. However, I think it needs another name and to be moved to it’s own domain if it wishes to gain any respect. Currently, it just seems like a sub-project. However, I have yet to see how this site commercially benefits MyBlogLog.

I would like to see the ability to integrate this into blogs (such as the amount of members in the community). This would promote the site, and make the blog’s community grow.

Also, the site could do with much more AJAX. I have seen it at use in the cropper, though nowhere else on the site. It could prove useful when sending a message. Also, the site’s design does seem a little heavy. Lighter shades of colours would be much better, though their current scheme seems fairly effective.

I must say their customer support is very good. Their site seems fairly instable at the moment, due to the fact it is facing lots of mySQL errors. When I reported one though, I got a friendly and appreciative response within minutes.

Our community is here.

(via Mashable)

Tags: mybloglog, web2.0, web 2.0, web2, web 2, blogs, blogging, blogosphere

Minimo is a web browser, which is currently only for Windows Mobile 4.2 (PocketPC 2003) and Windows Mobile 5, which is based on the Gecko. It takes many of Firefox’s features onto a PDA; the most useful being tabbed browsing. In my opinion, it is interestingly Web 2.0.

Like Firefox, it probably takes more resources up than Internet Explorer, but PIE isn’t a pre-alpha, however it does boast some useful features Pocket Internet Explorer does not have. For those not familiar with PocketPCs, Pocket Internet Explorer does not allow more than one site to be open at a time. As you may imagine, this lowers productivity. Another advantage of Minimo is the fact it complies to more standards than PIE.

The browser shares many of Firefox’s characteristics. The most notable is that the tab view is basically the same, as is the options. Naturally, it differs greatly from Firefox as it needs to fit onto a small screen. So the navigation buttons (back, forwards and refresh), the menus and status bar are lost. Many features are placed into the two menus, which are launchable by the icons on either side of the address bar.

The user can choose to view a page as either a single column, under small screen rendering, or as it would look on a desktop PC. Overall, I would say this rendering is superb, and pages load well in both portrait and landscape. In desktop mode, it literally opens the page how I would expect it to on a desktop. It can even reads RSS, and converts it into a headline view. However, it is not an aggregator.

You also get bookmarks, which is pretty aesthetic. Sadly, I cannot get a screenshot of this, but the bookmark list opens into a tab. In this tab it displays a list, with favicons.

The program lacks the ability to add extensions, and also it lacks a search box. I hope these will be added nearer to it’s 1.0 release (currently it is 0.016!). I believe Mozilla should promote this project more, as Pocket Internet Explorer is subpar, and Opera costs money.

Digg!

Tags: minimo, mozilla, software, pocketpc, windows, windowsmobile, pda, firefox, web 2.0, browsers, webbrowsers, web browser, WAP, mozilla firefox