What if you could measure how perfect your website was? If you could definitively say that your website was 100%, pure perfection, wouldn’t you grasp the chance to test how it fares in the test? Well, the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) recently released the results of a study commissioned by Rackspace Managed Hosting which claims to provide exactly this: the ‘Perfect Website Formula.’
On Wednesday, TechCrunch and Mashable reported the release of Stumble Video, the latest offering from StumbleUpon. Like the core offering, Stumble Video allows users to surf through categories based on preferences and previous ratings, serving up videos instead of websites into one central video player. Beyond a great idea, the implementation is clean and engaging, and happily, the interaction is kept consistent through one player with simple choices and great use of iconography.
On Tuesday, Techcrunch reported that MySpace has semi-officially overtaken Yahoo as having the most page views of any internet property. This revelation was met with moderate fanfare, and other prominent industry blogs like GigaOm and Searchblog did not even go there. There is good reason to take this news with a grain of salt, as it is misrepresentative and hides some very important facts.
On Friday, Techcrunch reported on a rumor that the major television networks were planning a joint effort to create their own video web site that would offer the networks’ own content. This seemed like a logical move to regain revenue lost to websites that profit from illegally disseminated property belonging to the networks. Alas, these plans soon fell apart when individual networks started to take favor with Google-owned YouTube after receiving payoffs. Not only is this a great case-study of game theory, it is also an excellent example of missed opportunities and foregone revenue.
Why don’t the individual networks make content available on their own websites?!
On Monday, Techdirt writes about the concerns that BitTorrent creator, Bram Cohen has regarding the integration of Digital Rights Management (DRM) into his widely popular “peer distributed” product. As the company approaches launch of a store which will controlled by Windows DRM, the issue of the DRM usability has been called into question.
This is a case in point of businessmen demanding that steps be taken to ensure revenue increases without paying due dilligence to the end-user and the ramifications of a poor user experience. Time will only tell how this negligence will play out, but it’s great to see an executive stepping forward to admit these failures and concerns. With formidable competition in the media download space such as Guba and DRM-free emusic.com the race to provide affordable download services with usable rights protection and platform compatability is at full force. Another player, Spiral Frog is set to enter the space this month.
From the original interview on BitTorrent’s future, Cohen is quoted:
We’re rolling out with some content DRM’d, using Windows DRM, at the insistence of our content partners. We’re very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces, and are educating our content partners about the lost commercial opportunity.