by Brian Solis

Interesting times indeed in Silicon Valley. And if you’re a geek and follow tech, then I’m sure you’re following three very public stories involving the impending IPO of Facebook, the ups and downs of Technorati, and the rumors circling Podtech.

All three were in the news this week.

Facebook COO Owen Van Natta’s title was reportedly demoted to chief revenue officer and vp operations.  

Kara Swisher reports, “Van Natta now shares power – how uneasily it remains to be seen – with newly installed Vice President of Marketing and Operations Chamath Palihapitiya . . . longtime exec Matt Cohler, vice president of strategy and business operations . . . newly installed CFO Gideon Yu . . . co-founder and Vice President of Product Engineering Dustin Moskovitz; and CTO Adam D’Angelo.”

PaidContent.org’s Staci D. Kramer describes it as “an expansion of the management team as [Facebook] hovers between well-funded, fast-growing startup, acquisition target and possible mega IPO.”

Technorati’s founder, David Sifry stepped down as CEO today finally succumbing to rapidly increasing outside pressure to create a long-term business model.  The search for a new CEO, which started last spring, failed to turn up an promising candidates. The company, over the last year, was also forced to make additional cuts to prolong cash flow.  CFO Teresa Malo, VP of engineering Dorion Carroll and VP of Marketing Derek Gordon will run the show until a new CEO is in place.

Earlier in the year, over at 625 2nd Street aka the Looksmart building, several community leaders discussed this very subject in the hallways and basically predicted this result. One of the industry pundits said directly, “You can’t run a successful companies with your fingers plugging your ears. There are too many good business opportunities out there to fail.”

Podtech has been taking a lot of heat lately, many of it based on unsubstantiated rumors. What is true however, is that CEO and Founder, John Furrier has been leading an effort to find a replacement to help take the company to the next level.

Podtech announced that COO, James McCormick, is stepping into the roll. McCormick brings 23 years of operational, finance, and senior management experience to the company.

According to TechCrunch, Loren Feldman’s 1938 Media ended its parternship with Podtech. I like that guy.

 technorati podtech john+furrier david+sifry facebook ipo

by Alison McNeill

LendingClub is a site that offers person to person lending so people can pay off their debts, or whatever they need, and get an average of 3% cheaper rates than going to the bank. It’s a pretty sweet deal, but an even better one is the recent contest LendingClub put on.

The challenge was to create a video talking more about LendingClub and explain all the things people could use the service for and put it on Youtube. The original plan was to give $5000 to the most-watched video, but there turned out to be a 4-way tie.

The prize, along some additional goodies that were thrown in, was split amongst the following:

$3,000 Best Video Award – Chris Barrett: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G43bLni8Or4

$3,000 YouTube® Viewers Award – Steve Dinelli http://youtube.com/watch?v=S6RtyX47r_M

$1,500 Storyboard Award – Jonthan Reed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSn9nlZC8kM

$500 Jury Prize – Share Ross
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOyl4Vh-ZhE

Congrats to all the winners and be sure to check out the videos, they’re pretty good!
For more info on LendingClub go to: www.lendingclub.com

Tags: bub.blicio.us bubblicious lendingclub lending+club p2p loans credit lend

words and pictures by Brian Solis

Palo Alto was host to the first ever Demo Summer event which attracted past Demo participants from all over the country. In the ten years I’ve been going to Demo, I’ve never scene an off-season party quite like this. In fact, it reminded me of the first night soirée usually held during the first night of Demo Fall and Demo Spring.

The entire crowd consumed Zibibbo in Palo Alto, with an elbow-to-elbow collection of thought and technology leaders catered to with a never-ending array of cocktails, exquisite appetizers, and delicious desserts – including homemade Ding Dongs.

It’s fascinating that after all of these years, Chris Shipley still commands respect and recognition for her role in identifying exceptional companies and also remaining relevant during some of the most volatile, promising, revolutionary, and also difficult, times in tech.

3tera

Rudy Ruano of Scanr

Carl Ajers

Larry Chiang

Christine Herron

Tom Foremski

Vic Podcaster

Ivaylo Lenkov of SiteKreator

Francine Hardaway

Cathy Brooks and Charlotte Ziems of Guidewire Group

Aymeril Hoang of the French Embassy

Kiran Patel of RingCube

Shel Israel, author and Munjal Shah of Like.com

Harry McCracken, Editior in Chief of PCWorld

Megan McCarthy of Valleywag

Red Herring Publisher Alex Vieux

Deb Schultz and Dave Mathews

Dave McClure

Andrew Lewis (left)

John Furrier of Podtech

For more pictures, please visit the set on flickr.

Connect on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or Facebook.

demo alumni tech conference web+2.0 web 2.0 web2.0 party

by Brian Solis

Sure Russia is commited to fighting piracy, after all it only took years to finally crack down on one of its most notirious perpetrator, allofmp3.com, while turning its cheek to other equally guitly copy cat networks – mp3sugar.com, and allofmp3.com sister site, mp3sparks.com, among many, many others.

In further proof that Russia wants to strenthen ties to the WTO, the owner of Allofmp3.com was found not guilty of breaching copyright law.

Denis Kvasov, head of MediaServices which owned the site, was put on trial after entertainment companies EMI Group Plc, NBC Universal and Time Warner Inc. publicly pressed for a prosecution, in a very agressive and global manner.

Kvasov always said he was within the law because the site paid part of its income to ROMS, a Russian organisation which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders.

According to CNN, Judge Yekaterina Sharapova agreed and remarked, “The prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law.”

by Brian Solis

So far the stock market is attracting dotcom activity again, but it is giving new life to Web 1.0 companies, instead of attracting Web 2.0 players – at least for now.

With over 40 million members, Classmates filed for a $125 million IPO and is considered one of the first successful social networks which paved the way for today’s hot startups. The company connecting millions of members throughout the U.S. and Canada with friends and acquaintances from school, work and the military. While it’s not Facebook, once can’t help but analyze the timing, which couldn’t be any better for any company in social networking, especially if it’s related to students and a more professional caliber of participants.

However, Classmates is not Facebook. And while this is one network where I do not maintain a profile in my greater experiments in social media, obviously there are hordes of former students that do.

Classmates is a unique experiment in connecting people with a very emotional link. According to the company, it has over 2.7 million paid accounts and growing. And considering it has been around for over 10 years, it doesn’t even rank among the top social networks (according to comscore). The IPO is looking to change that.

For the quarter ending March 30, the company had a net loss of $250,000 on revenue of $42.4 million. For 2006, the company had a profit of $171,000 on revenue of $152 million.

A rising tide floats all boats. Let’s see if that saying stands true in the face of impending IPOs in this space.

classmates myspace friendster facebook bebo social network ipo social+network