Crenk » kevin rose

Top 25 Web Celebrities of 2009 According to Forbes

Steven Finch — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:46:47 +0000

At number one, we have “The Queen of Mean” himself herself, Perez Hilton.

Let’s run through the rest of the list…

#1 Perez Hilton

#2 Michael Arrington

#3 Kevin Rose

#4 Frank Warren

#5 Cory Doctorow

#6 Pete Cashmore

#7 Beppe Grillo

#8 Heather Armstrong

#9 Guy Kawasaki

#10 Jason Calacanis

#11 Robert Scoble

#12 Will Leitch

#13 Jeff Jarvis

#14 Wil Wheaton

#15 Nate Silver

#16 Om Malik

#17 Matt Drudge

#18 Owen Thomas

#19 Dave Winer

#20 Seth Godin

#21 Brian Lam

#22 Mark Frauenfelder

#23 Steve Rubel

#24 John Dvorak

#25 Leo Laporte

Kevin Rose and His 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Steven Finch — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:02:28 +0000

There is a post over at Techcrunch that seems to be getting a lot of hits today and I’m not entirely sure why! Kevin Rose the founder of Digg, Revision3 and Pownce, has written a guest post for Techcrunch which outlines the top 10 ways to increase your Twitter followers.

The 10 points that he makes seem be very basic and if you actually know how to use Twitter properly I’m sure they aren’t new to you. However what I find funny about this post is that Kevin has probably only really got his followers from mentioning Twitter on every Revision3 show that he does and by being hugely known in the USA as a tech boy pinup. It is just weird that he is trying to preach ways to increase your Twitter followers when he hasn’t really used any of these methods.

Pownce-ing On The Opposition

matt — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:58:55 +0000

It was a week ago today, that Pownce lost it’s bounce. Co-founders Leah Culver and Mike Malone took their team with them to work with the company that acquired Pownce, Six Apart, on a new micro-blogging platform called Motion.

Pownce launched with wild-acclaim, supported by the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, it seemed to have all the necessary features to put it toe to toe with Twitter, photo and video sharing, status updates and a delightful interface. It just never really took off, despite being more stable than Twitter.

What does this mean for other micro-blogging sites?

Twitter, the biggest micro-blogging site thus far, recently shook off a $500 million offer from Facebook. And rightly so. As pointed out by Cnet’s Rafe Needleman, “…when it comes to business philosophies, the companies do not mesh. And I’m not just talking about the well-reported SMS expense that Facebook would take on if it integrated Twitter. More than that, Twitter’s stated revenue plans don’t work for Facebook.”

Twitter, one imagines, see themselves as fighting in the same field as Facebook, but on the other side of the fence. They are competitors, but not competitive.

The likes of Tumblr and YouAre are the main rivals to Twitter’s crown. How will these guys possibly stand up to fight with a company that can brush off a bid of half a billion dollars?

The key thing is to offer user friendly tools, such as sharing photos and videos, which Twitter just doesn’t do at the moment, unless you’re a fan of the tinyurl. Secondly it’s important to make it easy to sign up (box ticked) and to make it easy to encourage your friends to sign up and be a part of the action.

My problem with a lot of the newer micro-blogging services is that they’re falling into the trap of being too customisable. Look at Facebook’s wide ranging apps – how many are actually useful in our day to day lives and make a difference to the way we communicate? Very few. Similarly with Bebo and Myspace – the integration of new and exciting things to put on your page is exciting for a moment, but nothing more.

If Twitter is to be ousted, or at least equalled, competitors will need to find niches that they can cling on to and exploit. I see Tumblr as being a brilliant way to share photos for example – the message boxes are just large enough for a high definition image to be shown clearly, but not at a size that will set your PC into meltdown.

It is this specialisation that will see each service acquire a following and then grow as that group develops a culture unique to them. All these different cultures will eventually begin to intermingle as users being to find each service useful for different things and then telling their friends to join them on xyz.

It comes down to talent in the end however. Six Apart will have known all along that they were really just after the Pownce team, and not their name or platform. The biggest challenge facing all of the micro-blogging services will be to hold onto their key staff, thinkers and doers alike.

Social Networking, at the moment, is a philosophy that is becoming increasingly tangible, but not ingrained in mainstream culture as Facebook currently is, yet.

Revision3 Acquired By Fox News?? Hmmmmmm

Steven Finch — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:18:47 +0000

It has been about 3 months since Revision3 launched the new version of their site and now they have been acquired. Techcrunch reports that in Episode 143 of Diggnation: Hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht announce the sale of Revision3 to Fox News at about the 2:05 mark. Rose says â€œWell, ah, we basically have a big announcement for everyone. Revision3 has been acquired by a bigger company. Weâ€™ll be moving to Fox News.â€ He added â€œIâ€™m thinking of getting a fox tattoo, its kinda part of my signing bonus, if i do it i get a little extra money.â€

Itâ€™s an early (very early) April Foolâ€™s joke, of course. Jump to the 3:45 mark. They are clearly playing off a story from two weeks ago, spread quickly via a credulous Robert Scoble Twitter message, that CNET had acquired Revision3 for $58 million. Bloody April Fool’s jokes. I think the American companies take it a lot more serious than any others. Well it was a nice way to get publicity and damm it, i fell into the trap!

Revision3 Has An Actual Site Now!

Steven Finch — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:51:25 +0000

Revision 3 has launched the new version of their website. The site has been under development for more than five months and has some great new features. Revision 3 is basically a production company that launches shows based around a tech type theme and the releases are only on their site.

The design itself is a great improvement on the last site. Overall, it is so much cleaner and has a much better generic layout. Plus, there are no stupid Google ads on a professional companies website.

The site has much better branding for Revision 3 itself, plus has better branding for each individual show. They have made it easier to find their shows and to find episodes you might have missed.

The key improvement for me is that the shows are now on a much bigger player. 555 x 337 window. Before i really hated coming to the site and only finding a small player with an option to increase to full screen, but this has been much improved.

Revision 3 has been talking about more improvements to come, so stay tuned.

Diggnation at FOWA Conference

Steven Finch — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:51:21 +0000

Diggnation live from the FOWA Conference in London. Enjoy!