eBay has recently announced a series of additions which embrace the Web 2.0. These include Wikis, blogs, social shopping, comparison shopping etc.

Coming at a time when eBay signed it’s 200 millionth member, it talks well of their intent to empower the customers to further enhance the eBay experience.

Interesting how Meg Whitman put it in the Annual User conference: “EBay Inc. has now registered 200 million users of its online auction services, which would make it the fifth-largest country in the world if its members could form one nation.”

eBay partnered with a number of Internet startups to make this possible.

Read more:

I found this website which is a good example of a Mash-up (or mashups). Aytozon combines data from Amazon and Ebay to allow users to compare the prices of products in both. A good source for online buyers who frequent these two sites.

What is a Mash up? A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom) and JavaScript.

Sphere is a new entrant in the list of growing search engines for Blogs. With around 30 million blogs on the web and growing fast, Sphere aims to make a mark due to their superior algorithm which focuses on more relevant results.

According to Sphere, ranking parameters of the blogs would be based on an algorithm which considers the following parameters:

a. Ecology of relationships between blogs (links and weightage of links)
b. Metadata of the blog
c. Frequency of the posting on the blogs
d. Length of the blogs
e. Contextual matching

The algorithm seems to be edging towards evaluating parameters that Search Engines like Google factor in ranking webpages.

Sometimes one wonders if there are too many blog search engines already there. How many would succeed and provide superior service consistently? As long as the new search engines keep coming with superior technology and usability, loyalties would shift – preferring the platform that provides superior user experience (relevant results, speed, coverage, usability).

Google is probably the best example here. It sure wasn’t the first search engine, but has continued to enjoy the top position due to a better technology.

Whether Sphere goes the Google way or becomes just another Blog search engine needs to be seen.

I found this neat web directory called 2.0websites.com – for web 2.0 related sites and products.

Quote:
“2.0 Websites is a web directory for those interested in what’s available and happening in the Web 2.0 arena.”

The directory would include list of sites which are in the areas of Web 2.0, including the evolving areas of Security 2.0, Identity 2.0, Media 2.0, Data 2.0, Programming 2.0.

Certainly worth checking out & bookmarking.

I read an interesting article on Vinod Khosla’s advice to start ups and lessons to be learnt from the failures of Web 1.0 companies. Use the money you raise judiciously, remain creative and not become comfortable with a business plan.

Quote:

“My friend Mark Leslie, founder of Veritas Software, says that the more money you give a company to start with, the less likely it is to be successful. The more money the founders have, the more confident they get about their business plan, the less they experiment.” He goes on, “The right way to build a company is to experiment in lots of small ways, so that you have plenty of room to make mistakes and change strategies.”

Read the complete article here.

Web 2.0 has another new entrant. Sabeer Bhatia, the co-founder of Hotmail, launched one of his latest ventures – BlogEverywhere which lets you read and write blogs on any website apart from other features. He has been working on this project for the past 2 years and has invested $5 Million from his own personal fortune into it.

How does it work?
You need to download the BlogEveryWhere Blogbar (currently available only for IE on Windows) to get started with reading and writing blogs for any webpage. People who are visiting those webpages (using the BlogBar) would be able to read your views and also post their own.

In order to post your views, you have to sign up with Blogeverwhere, which will assign a username to you, which would be displayed in front of every comment you leave.

Other Features:
- Search the web using your favorite search engine
- Block pop-up ads
- Zoom in/out on any web page
- Highlight keywords

Corporate websites could be uncomfortable being exposed to anonymous individuals leaving their remarks for everyone to see. Possible pitfall could be the mis-use of this by random posts of people who have some malintentions towards a website/business.

One of the things that came to my mind was that since this is not moderated, it could also lead to spamming. If you were to see the entries made by some of the people on popular websites like Google you’ll notice posts for losing weight, someone selling some service etc.  I wouldn’t be surprised that once Blogeverywhere starts enjoying a lot of usage, some companies would aggressively start posting un-related entries for self-promotion.

Overall a very neat tool and it seems that it would make a lot of impact in times to come.

Cheers Sabeer!!!