Tag Archives: michael arrington

10 Jan

Facebook Takes Top Award for Third Straight Year at the 2009 Crunchies Awards

The 2009 Crunchies award winners were revealed Friday night at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. This was the third annual Crunchies Awards ceremony put on by TechCrunch, along with its partners GigaOm and VentureBeat. For a third straight year Facebook took home the Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2009 award. Mark Zuckerberg was on hand to accept the award:

Zuckerberg also sat down for an on-stage interview with TechCrunch Founder and Co-editor Michael Arrington. They discussed Internet privacy and how Facebook has been aggressive on that front. They talked about the future of Facebook Connect and Zuckerberg said that this year Facebook will focus on making it easier for users and developers to use Facebook Connect because “much more is going to be developed outside of Facebook then inside.”

Arrington asked Zuckerberg if Facebook will get more aggressive on acquisitions, in which Zuckerberg commented on the motivation behind Facebook’s past acquisitions. He said the acquisitions “have been primarily to get great people to join the company” and then he went on to talk about each. Watch the full interview here:

And one of my favorite parts of the evening was the Richter Scales performance. Their performance was highly entertaining and lots of fun:

Like last year’s Crunchies Awards, the evening ended with a celebration at the Crunchies Awards after party across the street at San Francisco City Hall’s rotunda. Check out the pictures from the ceremony and after party: Crunchies2009′s photostream.

To see all the nominees, runner-ups, and winners, head on over to TechCrunch; and to watch the recording of the Crunchies head on over to the Crunchies page or TechCrunch’s Crunchies Ustream channel.

Follow me on Twitter: @MiikoMentz

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to Bubblicious, I also work at FutureWorks. FutureWorks was the video sponsor for the Crunchies and I was part of the video crew for last night’s ceremony.

19 Dec

TechCrunch Bribes Readers With Tickets To Watch “Avatar” – I’m Totally Sold.

No…TechCrunch didn’t really bribe us with tickets to Avatar. They actually did something really great. Thanks to Michael Arrington and the team at TechCrunch, dozens of readers were able to crowd into the Metreon theatre in San Francisco last night to watch a screening of James Cameron’s new blockbuster movie Avatar. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend that you do, especially with a bunch of friends – it makes it that much more fun.

Don’t worry, this post won’t include any spoilers, but here’s the background, a marine goes to another world called Pandora to join a program designed to help in the interaction with the natives. The natives don’t trust humans and so the humans try and use avatars which are controlled through the minds of the human hosts. Needless to say, romance, battles and self-discovery ensue. Lots of internal struggle and philosophical idealism that is brought into light.

A bevy of who’s who showed up last night for the showing, including most, if not all, of the TechCrunch team, Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Saad, Oren Michaels from Mashery, Ethan Bloch of Flowtown, Robert Scoble, Karl Long, Cyan Banister, Adam Jackson and many more. As an added treat, they even gave out ten Avatar action figures, but unfortunately they didn’t have enough for a couple of the kids that were in attendance. So (shameless plug), since I got one, I decided to give it to a kid that wanted it more.

Hilarity also ensued throughout the movie as Arrington opened the evening off with some opening remarks and noted that Scoble wasn’t in attendance (he did show up a few minutes after movie previews) because of Rackspace having issues and temporarily shuttering TechCrunch’s website. When Avatar did begin, lots of “oooooh’s” and “aaaaaah’s” for the 3D special effect. And probably the last thing that got a few laughs before everyone got settled in? Someone excitedly pointed out that there was a CrunchPad in the movie – we all laughed…but did Arrington?

Overall, the Avatar screening was really great. TechCrunch did a great thing sharing this with their fans and readers.

Great job, TechCrunch!

You can read TechCrunch’s article on the screening by clicking here.

19 Sep

TechCrunch50: The Event Startups Are Made For.

This past week, the third annual TechCrunch50 event was held at the San Francisco Design Center. Of course it wasn’t always known as TechCrunch50 – but the format still remained the same: 50 startups were selected by the event committee (specifically serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington) to present their startups and demonstrate their product to the audience and 100 different startups were also selected to pitch their wares to the crowds in the “Demo Pit”.

As this was my first time attending TechCrunch50, I was hoping for something different from the numerous conferences I had attended previously. I really wasn’t disappointed since this exclusively focused on companies that were specifically launching something that day. Whether it was a new product or it was a new company that they wanted to promote, they were there. It wasn’t a lecture circuit like typical other technology conferences and there weren’t any panel discussions. Instead, there were expert judges on stage to critique each startup – almost like it was a tech version of American Idol to help the audience make an informed decision about the viability of the startup.

Amazingly the Internet connection was not something to even be concerned about since it seems that the fine folks at TechCrunch put in some additional dollars (rumored to be about $56,000) on running ethernet cables throughout the conference hall and upgrading their bandwidth. Even Arrington remarked that he was surprised it held up as near the end of the conference he was quoted to have said something along the lines of:

I was watching from the back and noticed that someone was watching the live stream [via Ustream] on his laptop…

Each day presented something new and exciting to talk about. But rather than blabbering on, here are some photos of the event to help tell the tale:

1938 Media’s own Loren Feldman made an appearance at TechCrunch50.

The event hosts of TechCrunch50: Jason Calacanis & Michael Arrington.

Michael Arrington trying to weasel out some information from Mint.com’s CEO, Aaron Patzer, after it was officially confirmed Intuit was purchasing Mint.com.

Some of the fine folks in attendance at TechCrunch50.

One set of panel experts including Google’s Marissa Mayer, Roelof Botha, Marc Andreessen, Lior Zorea & Zappos’ Tony Hsieh.

Hanging out with great people at one of the many TechCrunch50 after-parties.

Kevin Rose

Chamillionaire made a special guest appearance to be a judge.

Girls in Tech at TechCrunch50.

The winners of TechCrunch50 and $50,000 – RedBeacon – with Heather Harde & Jason Calacanis.

View more photos of TechCrunch50 by clicking here for the first day or the last day.

14 Sep

Discover and Connect with Your Audiences

I’ve volunteered to help the organizers of Audience, a conference dedicated to exploring, defining, and connecting audiences in the technology era.

Hosted at the Hudson Theater in New York on 11/5-1/6, Audiences 09 is bringing together some of the most exceptional people in the world. From the entertainers who engage audiences directly to the statisticians who measure them, to the technologists building tools to help us reach new and larger audiences and engage with them.

Delivering a unique understanding and examination of what audience is, this conference will explore the very things that affect the dynamics of audience and community and the changes in communication, science, engineering, and technology and how they have impacted our ability to address and influence audiences as well as the effects they have on our society.

Sponsors

I’m currently seeking sponsors to help us make this event legendary. If you can help, please contact me: brian {at} future-works {dot} com

Opportunities include: