While much has recently been made of former Googlers striking out on their own and developing new Web 2.0 services, we shouldn't think "The Big G" is the only company ever to come out of Mountain View with entrepreneurial spirit. A number of Web services on the market, and some soon to debut, feature Netscape on their resume, including YokWay!, which calls itself a "knowledge networking service that connects you with the people you trust", mixing elements of Digg and FriendFeed in a simple service with a clean user interface.

YokWay! is headed by Cyril Moutran and Stéphane Osmont, both of whom come with resumes featuring stops at Vignette after two years at Netscape apiece. The pair have been working full-time on the project since late 2006, and are said to be launching in the next couple weeks. But you can log in to the service now through this link, seemingly with no restrictions.

The mission statement for YokWay! is, as with other lifestreaming and discovery sites, aimed to helping you share items you find interesting, and collaborate with your peers. (See the screen capture below of the Welcome screen)


Yet, unlike other services we've covered here in the past, YokWay! takes an old media approach to consuming the content, with words like "Channels" and a "Magazine", with each site subsection serving a different purpose.

My Magazine is a collection of all shared items from me and all my contacts within YokWay!. It's most similar to the Adam Stiles' LinkRiver or FriendFeed in this sense, in that I can see all items shared from friends in one place. However, unlike LinkRiver, it offers comments, and unlike both services, you can rate a posted item from one to five stars, and each posted site or item features a full thumbnail. (See below for an example. My comment is highlighted.)


My Memory quickly shows me those items which I've posted to YokWay!, without images or details, including comments, views or ratings.

My Blog shows everything from My Memory, but with full detail, including ratings, comments and view detail, as well as showing me all the contacts I have in YokWay!. This is most similar to my own stream within LinkRiver, or my own dedicated feed in FriendFeed. (See mine below)


While I'm mentioning LinkRiver and FriendFeed in the comparisons to YokWay!, I think it's more like the proverbial "Digg for Friends" that Dave Winer and others have been craving. Items get posted, and are seen only by the friends who follow you. YokWay! also features a wide array of subcategories, so instead of grouping data by popular Web services, as the lifestreaming folks do, it aims to put your content in the correct buckets, be they "Video", "Travel", "Software", "Innovation", "News" or many others. In case you were concerned, there's even a channel for "LOLCat", if you're so inclined. However, by default, most submissions go to "_root" and are seen by all. It's this "Channel" service that's unique, giving you the option to subscribe to as many of these channels as you like, making you not limited by users, but by content. Based on the Channels you choose, your Magazine automatically builds. (See some options below)



YokWay! features a clean, if at times spartan, interface. Adding contacts from the existing list of users is very easy, as you can see all users, and just have to click the "Add to Contacts" button to add them to "My Magazine". There isn't yet a way to invite users who aren't yet YokWay! contacts, but I would assume that would be a near-term addition as the site debuts.



Adding comments, like on FriendFeed, is also very easy. For any shared item, I can click "Add a Comment" and type in the textbox. If an item from one contact is particularly interesting, I can also click "Share" and send it to any of my existing contacts, or surprisingly, I can send this item to a contact not using YokWay! at all, simply by posting their e-mail address. (I should point out that in my one test, this didn't yet seem to work)

YokWay! looks a lot like a number of other promising Web services I've run into over the last few months - aggressive, clean, and happy to add new levels of interactivity to existing content through leveraging existing contacts with similar likes and interests. While many are clamoring for the perfect solution to integrate RSS with comments, or to reduce the amount of noise at other social bookmarking and aggregation sites, YokWay! is trying to do just that, with ratings, filters by channel, and of course, comments. For a service that wasn't even supposed to be out yet, they're already ahead of some I've seen that said they're ready.

Get your login to YokWay! now. You can find me here.

February 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,228

Total stories published in February: 41
(About 1.4 per day, down from 1.9 in January)

Total stories in February with comments: 36
(87% of all stories, from 37 and 64% in January)

Total comments on February posts: 135
(About 3.3 per post, 3.8 per commented post)

Technorati Authority Ranking: 261 (up 70)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 621 subscribers (up 183)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 26 subscribers (up 6)
MyBlogLog Members: 67 (up 17)

Twitter Followers: 167 (Newly tracked)
FriendFeed Followers: 162 (Newly tracked)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 2nd overall, behind January.
(If you divide visitors/days, it's pretty close. Visitors/posts set a record.)

Blog Value Estimator: $147,344.94


You can see January's momentum largely continued through February, despite fewer posts.

Top Five Most Visited February Stories (According to Analog)

1. FeedBurner Quietly Kills All-Time RSS Feed Stats
2. LinkRiver Enters Life Streaming Fray, Focused on Link Blogs
3. Yahoo! Calls Microsoft Cheap, Will Reject Offer
4. Warning: Google Reader Congestion of Up to Five Hours
5. Expanding and Explaining the Early Adopter Role

Others receiving votes: Companies That Listen to Their Users Will Win In the End, Dear LazyWeb, Won't Somebody Notice RSSMeme's Updates?, AssetBar Proposes Solution to Twitter Scaling Problem, AssetBar Adds River of News, Extends New Invites, and FriendFeed Admits They Know Me Pretty Well...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. Watch Every Episode of The Simpsons Online - Free
2. Rating Burner Debuts With RSS Feed Ranking, Growth Stats
3. I Have Seen the Future of Social RSS Feed Readers
4. Add Items to Your Google Reader Link Blog Without Subscribing
5. Kudos to Mashable, and Three Links Their Way

As anticipated, I just didn't have as much time to devote to the blog in February as I did in January, with things getting quite busy offline. I revealed my wife and I are now expecting twins, and are about 20 weeks along. This just might impact future schedules, as can work, travel, etc. During February, I was glad to introduce the new blog design for louisgray.com, and some critical pages which best explain what the blog is about, as well as tracking coverage, and hope to keep advancing forward. On to March!

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on our shared link blog!

What? You thought because I wasn't the first to jump on MyBlogLog's new lifestreaming option, that somehow I had missed it? Wrong. Sometimes, life can get in the way. And the travel to and from Boston meant just about everybody's already done the usual, anticipated, immediate analysis, response and FriendFeed comparisons before me. And so far, MyBlogLog doesn't look like it's winning. By and large, most reports see it as an interesting update, but not one that puts it in a leadership position by any means. Unfortunately, I have to agree.

(See: WebWare, VentureBeat, Webomatica, bub.blicio.us, and TechCrunch)

Two weeks ago, we first got an e-mail titled "MyBlogLog Profiles Going Dynamic" from Ian Kennedy, Product Manager for MyBlogLog, who said the new feature, called "New with Me" would "aggregate your latest activity on sites such as Twitter, Last.fm, Digg and YouTube." The idea? "Transform your static profile into a dynamic one."

As one of the loudest, most well-recognized FriendFeed advocates out there, I had personally asked Ian in December to add FriendFeed as one of the supported services for the popular "About Me" MyBlogLog widget. (See: Will There be One Profile to Rule Them All?) While his first response, saying "So many social networks, so little time!" made the trivial seem difficult, on February 19th, he followed up to say FriendFeed was added, but events wouldn't be pulled from the feed, given clear issues with duplicate items. (See: Ian's comment)

It's clear MyBlogLog, whether inspired by FriendFeed or not, fell in love with the idea of making the site something more than a stale page, which it had been for some time. Interestingly, this move toward lifestreaming is just about 100% the opposite direction of what I had expected out of them from a post in September, when I asked, "What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?" In that post, I wrote, "MyBlogLog is exactly what its name implies - it is My Blog's Log, not My Personal Log." I already have sites that cater to following me around. What I want instead, is something that more directly follows my blog around - with increased statistics, linkage and visitor details. I wanted MyBlogLog to get more in touch with what made it interesting in the first place, its communities, and networking individuals, not showing me what they are doing somewhere else. This move only makes the data found elsewhere more important, and what MyBlogLog first served to do even less important.

So why would I dump on MyBlogLog for doing what FriendFeed and others have tried? Because MyBlogLog is way behind on day one.

FriendFeed delivers significant value not just because they aggregate my Web lifestream, but because they enable interaction, through comments and discussions. MyBlogLog doesnt. FriendFeed also lets me choose my friends, and doesn't force them on me based on how many times I've visited a site in aggregate. It's enough to make me avoid sites I've visited before just to keep out of a community. As MyBlogLog preferences can be set to auto-join communities thanks to visit frequency, I may often find out I'm "friends" with popular news sites, not "friends" with my real peers, the way FriendFeed has. And making things worse, MyBlogLog is way slow. Right now, according to MyBlogLog, I haven't done anything online for the past three hours. But FriendFeed knows the truth. FriendFeed shows in those same "idle" three hours, that I added a blog post, sent one note on Twitter, and shared four items on Google Reader, for starters.

I want to root for these guys, but this time, I can't. On day one, MyBlogLog is underfeatured against FriendFeed. It has fewer services than FriendFeed. It doesn't accurately track my friends, and it doesn't enable communication. It doesn't track as quickly. And it doesn't give me more information about "My Blog", which is in the service's name, for crying out loud. While I was once worried that MyBlogLog had gotten too static and lacking in development, I now see they were just focused on the wrong things. Maybe they'll continue to update the service and surprise me with new directions, but for now, I'm all too happy to stick with their blog widgets, and dam up their lifestream.

Unless you're a brand-new visitor to louisgray.com, you might remember a post from a few weeks ago where I revealed my wife and I are expecting twins, our first children. While that announcement was sure exciting, there are a number of very real offline preparations which are going to take real physical labor and change - not the least of which being getting our home ready for two permanent visitors. But as easy as it is to plan things online, it's those offline who can throw snags into the whole operation.

With my wife having more than a decade's experience in teaching school, and the two of us having accumulated our fair share of material goods, we're going to need a place to put some of our own things and get a room in our condo ready for the kids. So, on Monday night, before my trip to Boston, I reserved a 10' by 15' unit at a local Public Storage, letting us start moving our items. I was able to register online, and gained a confirmation e-mail, saying, "This price and unit will be held for 7 days."

But during my time in Boston, Public Storage called my home phone number, which I had left on the site, on Tuesday and Wednesday to confirm we would be ready to move in by Saturday. By Thursday, the afternoon I came home, a final message was left by a woman who gruffly said as we hadn't returned her call, that we had lost our spot. Held for 7 days indeed. A short 7 days from the night of the 25th to the afternoon of the 28th!

Did I get a single e-mail asking me to confirm I would be ready to move in on Saturday? No. If I had gotten one, I definitely would have responded. And what am I supposed to do now? Sue them for breach of contract? It's not even worth it. So of course, I logged back on today and reserved a new unit at a different Public Storage somewhere else in town for about the same amount, and yes, its automated e-mail has the same "7 days" guarantee.

I recognize that I can't exactly compress my offline materials, attach them to an e-mail and send them to a new location, while that would be nice. But it's gotten to the point I expect customer service to be much better and for true online companies to be much more responsive and interactive than these offline clowns. That they wouldn't even think of sending an e-mail, after the initial confirmation made no sense. Why ask for it then?