Category Archives: News

by Brian Solis

OK, I’ve been sitting on this for a little while, just waiting for them to officially announce this news.

TechCrunch20 has doubled to the TechCrunch40. And, when combined with the lucky 80 or so companies in the DemoPit, an entirely new set of companies will skyrocket into 2.0 stardom as the inaugural event kicks off and makes its mark in Web history.

After the event, it will be up to company executives to do their best to extend their 15 minutes of fame into profitability and/or a successful exit.

The 40 companies have not yet been announced and won’t be made public until September 17th. We’ll be on hand to cover the event as each company takes the stage and demonstrates to the world why they were good enough to make the cut.

According to the TC40 site, “After reviewing the 700+ applications that we received from 26 different countries, and after personally interviewing 175+ businesses, we decided that there were just too many strong start-ups to limit the conference format to 20 company presentations. So we revisited our agenda, cut out a number of content panels and determined that we could successfully break 40 companies at the conference and still leave room for interesting discussion and debate about new business models and verticals with our expert advisory panel.”

Obviously they’re doing something right. At last check, they have over 600 people registered for the event.

You can see the updated agenda here.

Register here.

Jaiku is rolling out Jabber-based instant messaging capabilities to interact with the service and provide a new way for people to communicate and share content in addition to the existing Web, iPhone, and Nokia Series 60 smart phone clients.

The difference between the Twitter and Jaiku IM functionality is representative of the differences that exist between the services in general. Twitter’s IM client lets users update and read “tweets.” With Jaiku, users can do much more.

By adding jaiku@jaiku.com to Jabber-based IM clients (including Google Talk), the new IM bot introduces the ability to instantly add and read new posts, comments, channel-specific messages, and also receive notifications of inbound responses directly.

Jaiku also lets users choose and receive pre-determined Web feeds from their friends online activities via IM, for example, flickr photos from some contacts, updates from specific blogs, Last.fm recently played tracks from others, etc.

Jaiku is the most versatile microblogging platform available today, allowing anyone to easily post and discover new content in Jaiku’s online community. It goes several steps further than other presence applications by allowing readers to add comments to individual posts and also allowing anyone to create, join and participate in topic related channels.

Jaiku is also a hub for all important online activity. It creates a personal lifestream by fetching the RSS feeds from other personal sources and broadcast it to friends and contacts as it happens, such as when new videos are uploaded on YouTube, business or personal blog posts are published, new social bookmarks are saved, or even collect the status updates from other microblogs and presence apps. Jaiku also recently introduced a Facebook widget for people to send updates directly from their Facebook profile.

Third party developers have also extended Jaiku’s functionality for all major mobile and desktop platforms. Mobile users can access Jaiku via http://m.jaiku.com. The Nokia WidSets mobile widget also powers over 300 phones including Blackberry.

Connect on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or Facebook.

Other voices on the subject:

TechCrunch

Blognation

Technorati Tags: jaiku, twitter, instant+messaging, im, instant, messaging, instantmessaging, microblog, microblogging, lifestream, nokia, pownce

by Brian Solis

Software developer Jess Martin rolled out a new Facebook app that lets MySpace users port their profiles over to Facebook and become even more popular than they are today! That’s right, in the era of social networks, it’s a race to see who can get the most friends!

SpaceLift, cute name, lets you import pieces of your MySpace profile directly into you Facebook account, keeping the structural integrity of the Facebook page (basically, keeping using from “myspacing” aka polluting the network.
Users can display top friends, just like in MySpace, and link back to their profiles either in Facebook or MySpace.

MySpace profile (image courtesy of Mashable)

After SpaceLift

Connect on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or Facebook.

Technorati Tags: mashable, facebook, myspace, social+network, social, network, spacelift

by Brian Solis

Jeremiah at the Dow Jones/Factiva Social Media Roundtable event in 2006

Mr. Web Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang, has left Podtech to join Forrester Research as a Senior Analyst covering Social Computing and Interactive Marketing.

I consider Jeremiah a good friend and I am truly happy for him. In the minds of many, Owyang was already a leading Web strategy and social computing analyst. His posts have delved deeply into analyzing trends and opportunities for web and social media professionals to learn and grow together.

Forrester is a top notch analyst firm, and by joining the team, he is solidifying his place as a thought leader in the social landscape.

Owyang will be joining Charline Li and Josh Bernoff, two other analysts that I hold in high regard.

Cheers Jeremiah. Looking forward to working with you in the future!

More at Podtech

Connect on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or Facebook.

Technorati Tags: jeremiah+owyang, forrester, charline+li, josh+bernoff, podtech, social+computing, social media

by Victor Karamalis

Facebook quietly said on Wednesday that it is working on implementing a targeted ad system based on user information and community-centric themes. Facebook which has declined buyout offers by Viacom Inc. and Yahoo for $1 Billion, believes it can remain independent and create an IPO for as much as $10 billion to the chagrin of its investors. Currently, the company has its $10 per ad “Flyer” program but the new system has become a top priority as publicized through a company spokesman as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The ad system is said to be based on ‘demand generation’ which is based on a combination of user information and other Facebook network information. This is in contrast to ‘demand fulfillment’ as implemented by Google’s ad systems. According to the spokesperson, the company needs to do a better job profiting from its proclaimed 30.6 million user base.

With agreements in place with Microsoft, that IPO may indeed happen. The deal may bring in anywhere from $200 to $300 million through 2011. Facebook claims that their relationship with Microsoft is strong in spite of Microsoft’s attempts to build technology to make it easier for advertisers to place targeted ads on Facebook. As per the Wall Street Journal, a Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment on this issue.

Having Microsoft on board not only bolsters Facebook’s chances on its lofty IPO goal of $10 billion dollars, but it also validates that the software giants are embracing social networking as part of its overall marketing mix. It also sends a message to everyone and its competitors by silently stating ‘we believe we can pick up customers in this relatively young user base’. It would not be surprising to see the other big league tech companies put their hats in the Facebook ring. This may well be the first solid step for Facebook’s Multibillion dollar IPO.

facebook wsj google ads adsense microsoft