Author Archives: Ken Yeung

Another company has fallen victim to their own PR disaster–and to be quite honest, it probably could have been easily prevented. Yesterday, Charles Arthur, The Guardian’s technology editor,  posted a pretty lengthy and detailed Storify post that most definitely raised some eyebrows. The culprit of this debacle were the two founders of a up-and-coming startup called Geeklist.

If you’re not aware of Geeklist, it’s being described as an “achievement-based social street cred builder for ‘bad-ass developers’”. Just last year, it received $600,000 in angel funding to enable developers to create their own profiles and give them a place to tout their developer supremacy. Sounds promising, right? Well, any great feelings one may have had about the startup soon faded away when a Twitter spat emerged and changed everything.

It all started out with Shanley Kane, a product person with Basho Technologies, making a harmless post on Twitter where she comments, albeit somewhat indirectly, about what she and many others perceive to be a degrading video against women. According to Mr. Arthur, it’s “a classic piece of ‘objectification’: attractive girl wearing sloganned t-shirt and…knickers.” So Ms. Kane furthers her query to the founders of Geeklist because it is believed that since the girl in the video is wearing a Geeklist t-shirt (with knickers embroidered with their logo), they must know something about this or be in a position of power to do something to remedy the situation. And in her exchange, she simply asks why an ad with a woman dancing in her underwear was done by Geeklist, to which Christian Sanz, one of the founders, replied that it was an old ad, but that “we need an updated version that shows less skin! “. Immediately afterwards, Ms. Kane thinks that it’s grossly sexist and that they should (please) take it down and that it’s “fucking gross”. And this is where things all went downhill…

One of the hottest startups to hit the tech scene has got to be Path. This private social network was the center of attention at tonight’s edition of PandoMonthly, a monthly event hosted by PandoDaily, the tech publication started by journalist Sarah Lacy just a few months ago. If you’ve never been to one of these events, you should definitely try to go because for entrepreneurs and those eager to break into the scene, this is one of those events that will shed some light and help answer questions you might have about starting your own business and understanding life lessons that famed technologists have gone through. And as tonight’s subject centered around Path, logically the one being interviewed by Mrs. Lacy would have to be none other than Path’s founder, Dave Morin.

Held in the Mission district of San Francisco at Madone Studios, this was PandoDaily’s second monthly event and I must say that tonight’s talk with Mr. Morin was perhaps the best one yet. Entrepreneurs, journalists, tech enthusiasts, and those who work in Silicon Valley all attended to better understand what makes Mr. Morin tick and what he did to overcome all the obstacles to create the antithesis of Facebook. Ms. Lacy wasted no time getting down to the nitty gritty–but instead of talking about anything truly scandalous or outrageous, Mr. Morin was peppered with questions about his humble beginnings at Apple to what he created at Facebook and then ultimately to his failures and successes with his very own startup, Path.

Six years ago, one of the world’s most life-changing digital communication tools was born. It was six years to the day when a man named Jack Dorsey sent a simple message on what was a simple system which simply said “just setting up my twttr“. From there, a new form of social media was born that has helped spur a bit of a revolution on not only text messaging, but also with mobile applications. It wasn’t until a couple years later when Twitter pulled their famous guerrilla marketing at SXSW. From there, the world started to pay more and more attention to the company. And in successive years, even celebrities, politicians, mainstream media, and brands are recognizing the potential of the microblogging platform and are definitely standing up to pay attention to how it’s moving forward.

Today, in honor of their sixth birthday, Twitter has shared with the world some fascinating stats on how far its come since its startup days. Just over the past year or so, the company has seen some significant shake-ups, with two of the original founders leaving to start another company and the other exiled one re-emerging to take the helm of one of the most popular companies here in Silicon Valley. It has also seen some remarkable growth in investments–it now has amassed over $1.1 billion in funding from the likes of Charles River Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, DST Global, Kleiner Perkins Caufeld & Byers, and many others. And with that $1.1 billion in the coffers, Twitter has certainly made good use of it. Within their last year alone, they’ve acquired companies to help fill their ranks or absorb into their collective to make the service even better. Companies like Tweetdeck, BackType, Summify, Dasient, and Posterous are all notable acquisitions, all of which total just a fraction ($45.2 million) of their total funds.

All of these efforts (and then some) have definitely helped spur innovation and create a massive community where all you do is communicate with one another using 140 characters. Granted, you’re not necessarily going to be posting things on your friend’s wall or creating a photo album or even having groups, but even without all of this an impressive number of users have signed up to the service. According to Twitter, when Mr. Dorsey first sketched out the notion of Twitter back in 2006, no one thought that the service would have the success that it has had. Now, as of today, there are over 140 million active users on the site–140! And out of that number, Twitter is processing over 340 million tweets per day–they equate that to over 1 billion tweets every 3 days! Not bad for a service that has helped break news about political events and news, sporting events, Academy Awards, disasters, weather, gadget announcements, and even cultural and historic revolutions.

Now, with plenty of funds in the bank and millions of users, what lies ahead for Twitter? They’ve made some significant strides in building out brand pages for businesses, redesigned Twitter.com to have a real-time stream that is devoted to creating a very unique experience, broadened their advertising platform for brands, and even started to figure out a way to monetize their services so that they can finally make some real money.

On Twitter’s official post marking the anniversary, they quote Mr. Dorsey as saying “I’m happy this idea has taken root; I hope it thrives.” Well Mr. Dorsey, I’m pretty sure that with over 140 million active users and the buzz that has been generated over the past five years, rest assured that people are not going to be leaving Twitter for some time.

Happy Birthday Twitter!

Photo Credit: On average 140 million tweets are sent a day, which is up nearly 100 million on the amount posted on a daily basis a year ago via The Telegraph. Taken by PA.

Over the past several years, lots of people have been excited or confused by what has apparently been all the rage and has become the standard of measurement: digital influence. This unique form of measurement has been thrust into the spotlight through the high interest of services like Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, and many others. The intrigue one gets by looking up their score and determining their stature against their peers is quite interesting and on services like Klout, you can even give props (or +K in Klout’s case) to help show others why you think that person is influential. Consumers also like these services because the more chatter you throw onto the Internet through the use of social media can make you eligible for perks–and they’re not insignificant either…I’ve received Klout perks for Virgin America flights, TV shows, Eye-Fi cards, discounts to conferences, and much more. Real brands are starting to pay attention to these services because they feel that it can help them reach influential people and increase sales.

Well hold on a minute…trying to find a way to increase your reach and influence the influencers is one thing, but for brands who want to rely solely on those scores that these services provide you can be a bit misleading. Consumers probably don’t care about the breakdown of their scores, but for brands, it just might be the key selling point. They’re interested in knowing whether the score you have on Klout, PeerIndex, or Kred will tell them whether your social media engagement is relevant to their goal. Well shockingly, none of the major top measurement services seem to do just that. And what brands need to know is how to better understand the concept of “digital influence” and in a new report written by Altimeter Group’s Brian Solis, companies may have their answer.

If you’ve ever had to register for a party or an event, chances are that you’ve had to sign up using Eventbrite. Nearly anyone who’s anyone that has hosted an event has used the ticket service. Perhaps the ticketing powerhouse that will surely rival any of its nearest competitors, Eventbrite is a juggernaut eager to help make buying tickets easy and social. The four-year-old San Francisco-based company is always on the lookout to try and find ways to improve the event registration space, and today, they’ve just unveiled what could be the crown jewel for all event planners.

Known as the At The Door Card Reader, this device will be especially helpful for those planners who are pre-charge their attendees to come by, but also understand that on game day, there will be those stragglers who realize they didn’t register and will try and get in at the door. Well, normally the person at the door will have to charge the fee, but what if the attendee doesn’t have enough cash? Then they’ll need to get cash and what if you don’t have exact change? Believe me, it could wind up being a total mess. You probably don’t want to deal with that headache–instead, just use what most people probably have on them: a credit or debit card. And that’s exactly where the At The Door Card Reader comes in. Through the use of this card reader, you can easily sell more tickets and merchandise and track those sales right through transactions done with the card reader.