Black Web 2.0

I had the pleasure of being able to talk with Brett Wright of UptownLife.net. UptownLife recently relaunched, a little over a couple a weeks ago, and is more or less the online version of Uptown magazine. See below for the full email exchange: (more…)

I am officially addicted to Slideshare. There is a very insightful deck from this years Web 2.0 Expo by Erika from Mule Design. I originally came across it on Anil Dash’s site. I often hear that in many organizations, especially content driven ones, there is a battle between design and editorial/content. Designers think it is all about visual presentation while content owners think it is all about the written word. Both are actually right, it is a marriage of the 2. The “Copy as Interface” deck talks a little about this but also goes over “Web 2.0 writing” as well as some do’s and don’ts. You can view the slide below or on Slideshare: (more…)

Today Carol’s Daughter conducted a bloggers roundtable on Ustream in lieu of a press conference, bloggers and influencer’s were invited to participate, Black Web 2.0 was fortunate to be one of the participants. (more…)

Though I have been dedicated to Netvibes for a while now I may be making a switch back to iGoogle. Not long ago we covered Netvibes’ launch of Ginger, it’s not shabby by any means and also has lots of cool features, but if you are looking for a start page that can match your personal style or clothes you may want to consider switching to iGoogle. Why you ask? iGoogle recently launched (not sure exactly when but I just noticed it yesterday) Artist Themes. Artist Themes are basically skins by fashion designers and artists. Some notable designers and some of my personal favorites are: (more…)

At this years past SxSW “Where are the Black Tech Blogger” panel one attendee asked a very logical and thought provoking question of all of the panelists:

“Is there a place where we all meet or a group that we all belong to?”

Seems easy enough to answer right? (more…)

According to the latest U.S. numbers from Hitwise, the top niche dating sites are steadily gaining market share while their big mainstream counterparts stagnate. This report compared the overall market share of the top 5 dating sites; Singlesnet, Plentyoffish, TRUE, Yahoo Personals, and Match to the market share of some of the top niche categories (sexual preferences, race, and religions). The Black niche category included; BlackPeopleMeet, BlackSingles, BlackChristianPeopleMeet.

While mainstream dating websites declined in monthly market share (-7%), Black niche dating sites grew 14% from 5.26% to 6.01% of US market share.

This decline in market share for mainstream dating sites could be due to a number of reasons not examined by this article including; lack of space for mainstream sites to grow and an increase competition from mainstream social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook being just some them, but one thing’s for certain, the “one size fit all” sites are not meeting the needs of the entire population, creating opportunities for success in the niche market.

Source Tech Crunch via Online Personals

It was going to happen sooner or later. Google took a step forward in intertwining the almighty “G” into one of its acquisitions today. Google will integrate its Adsense product into Feedburner RSS feeds. Mashable first reported this development from a coy hint from Allen Stern via Feedburner’s blog:

FeedBurner will start to look and feel more like a set of Google services, and we will be completing much tighter integration into other Google services such as Google AdSense. (If you are a feed advertiser, don’t worry: we have some happy surprises coming for you as well, and if you are an advertiser who is not yet a feed advertiser, you too shall be blessed with good fortune.

Hmmmm…Hopefully this will be opt in for publishers. Google contextual ads for Black content is not a good look.

Source:

via Mashable

Filmmaker Spike Lee has teamed up with Nokia to direct what is being dubbed the “the world’s first social film”, comprising videos made entirely with cell phone footage from everyday people.

The film’s theme will evolve around the way in which music tells the story of humanity. The final film will run across three acts. Each act will be announced online and people will then have four weeks to produce their submission. “You are seeing first hand the democratization of film,” Lee said in a statement on Thursday. “Aspiring filmmakers no longer have to go to film school to make great work. With a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker.”

People can submit text, music, video or images anytime between now and August 21 to here. Nokia will choose 25 submissions and then allow the people to vote online for their favorite. Spike Lee will then choose the winning submission from each act and direct the film through the Web site.

The final film with the three winning submissions and other contributed content will premiere later this year in Los Angeles.

Interesting post on TechCrunch about Facebook publishing a guide to viral marketing on their site. See below for a full embedded version: (more…)

PaidContent reported yesterday that Essence will team with Warner Bros. TV to launch a new video heavy site this summer. You may remember when we reported on Essence’s “30 Dates in 30 Days” webisode last fall and our initial reaction on the it. Lets take a quick look at what this partnership means for Essence since most of the articles I have read on this only covers what this mean for Warner Bros.: (more…)