Tag Archives: web 2.0

Startup Demo Theme: The Future of Media

Startups demo throughout the venue, all night long. Stop by to check them out! Here’s the list of participants:

Doochoo
Doochoo is much more than just another application think tank — the Doochoo project is about revolutionizing the way opinions on the web carry meaning, starting with some applications, followed by a proprietary platform that will give opinions on the web tangibility and critical weight.

Envolve
Launching at SF Beta! Envolve lets you have topical group chats, private one-on-one conversations, and can do real-time translation in over 50 languages; all of these give your visitors an engaging experience that promotes your brand while increasing time-on-site.

Cisco Eos
Cisco Eos is a hosted software platform that enables Media & Entertainment companies to more economically deliver and effectively monetize social entertainment experiences around branded content.

Reachoo
Reachoo is a revolutionary, free, video classifieds website that connects the local community and assists sellers and buyers within the community to make transactions with ease.

Spreaker
Spreaker is a social service which lets anybody create his own radio show (talk, music, entertainment) and broadcast it live on facebook, mobile phones and internet-enabled radios. Listeners can enjoy single streams or create their personal radio station stitching together several shows.

LazyFeed
Lazyfeed is a unique service that provides a super-lazy way of blogging by actually “feeding” you stuff to talk about. Just follow any topics you want, and watch Lazyfeed deliver all the articles, videos, and photos related to those topics. Never worry about running out of inspiration. Endlessly talk about everything you love.

Diffbot
Diffbot is a seed stage web startup focused on leveraging statistical learning algorithms to achieving the holy grail a truly personalized newspaper that is not limited to structured data sources.

Loudcaster
The future of radio is online, not satellites or towers. Loudcaster enables anyone to create and DJ a interactive on-line radio station. We believe the next generation of broadcasting will come from giving people the power to easily create radio and interact with their audience.

SF Beta is San Francisco’s largest and longest-running startup mixer. Hundreds of founders, developers, investors, and geeks are joining us. Will you?
Our loosely structured event attracts over 350 people from across Silicon Valley. We provide tasty gourmet appetizers and a full cash bar, along with live demos from startups throughout the night.
Details:
• 21+ venue; no minors admitted
• Free appetizers from 5-6pm. (Early birds get the worm — or in this case, the hummus)
• Tickets are non-refundable, but can be transferred
• No formal presentations or talks. Instead, startups give demos at tables across the venue, throughout the night.
• For more information, visit our website at www.sfbeta.com

Ever wonder how people are using the internet? Who is using it the most? Thanks to Jesse Thomas, we not have that answer!

By September 2009, there were 1.73 Billion internet users worldwide! Are you as shocked as we are? Check out the video statistics below, and let us know your thoughts!

By Julie Blaustein

There were a number of great speakers the first day of the SuperNova Conference, but Chris Anderson made it most clear to the audience. The theme for the conference is “Networks are central instruments of the changes sweeping our world… and networks themselves must change to address novel demands.” The first day of this 3 day conference focused on Changing Networks: The evolving infrastructure.

Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired Magazine and well known for his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. He also has a degree in physics and has conducted research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As he sees it, “The past decade was about finding new post institutional models on the web. The next decade will be about applying them to the real world.”

Having recently released his book Free which examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free, he spoke about the democratization of tools from the web that make this possible. He talked of how 3D printers started out at about $7,000 and can now be purchased for only about $700. But he really hammered home his point that the web has been democratized and enables all kind of  new possibilities when he talked of his latest company. DIY Drones works with folks that build amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Its a company with no infrastructure, no office and when Chris was seeking a partner, the most qualified, talented candidate found via the Web turned out to be a 19 year old from Tijuana!

If you are unable to make it to the conference, you can tune into USTREAM‘s SuperNova Channel or join the conversation at their Twitter Hashtag #sn09.

Chris Anderson, Speaker at SuperNova Conference

A Forum for Change in the Network Age

Founder Kevin Werbach, Bradley Horowitz of Google, Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard and Werner Vogels of Amazon

By Julie Blaustein

Past Panelists Robert Scoble, Nick O’Neill, Justin Smith and Dan Farber

SNAP Summit: FailCon is a MUST for this fall calendar! A full-day conference on social web development and startup culture that will be held at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco on October 27, 2009. And we have a 15% off for our readers!

15% Discount for Bub.blicio.us Readers!

In its fourth year, SNAP Summit was founded in 2006 by entrepreneurs Christian Perry and Cassandra Phillipps. Over 250 folks are expected to attend including independent developers, executives, investors, marketers, up-and coming startups, companies looking to get in on the next big thing and the most well known bloggers from the Web 2.0 and Social Web sphere.

This year’s SNAP Summit: FailCon is focused on startup failures, the trials faced by entrepreneurs every day and the exteremely challenging recovery from it. Hear how major players in the industry including Lane Becker, CEO of GetSatisfaction, Mark Pincus, CEO & Founder of Zynga, Kavin Stewart, CEO of LOLapps and Ron Conway, Angel and Partner at Baseline Ventures and more…Learn how they have dealt famously with startup troubles, recovered, and kept a positive, tenacious, and energetic attitude through it all. This is a must to attend for anyone considering business or web 2.0 fields as you WILL encounter these problems and make the mistakes presented at the Summit. Come join us and learn to prepare from those who have overcome them.

Benefits of a full conference pass include:
* Admission to all Main Stage, Workshop, and Demo talks
* Complimentary breakfast, snacks, and beverages
* Free wifi throughout the venue
* Nifty schwag from our sponsors
* Networking time to meet with major players in the online companies and communities.

For more information go to SNAP Summit

StyleFeeder is a community-driven online shopping source that turns your shopping habits and bookmarks into feeds that can be used for personalized recommendations for others. This week the company sent out an announcement notifying the world of its profitably, something that’s rare in the web 2.0 startup scene.

StyleFeeder has only been around since late 2005, and raised $3.5 million in venture capital in 2007. With over 1 million registered users and only 6 full-time employees, StyleFeeder has remained lean in order to turn a profit in a relatively short amount of time.

A few main points to bring up regarding StyleFeeder’s ability to stay lean include outsourcing the company’s entire TI infrastructure over to Amazon Web Services. Freelancers were also brought in whenever possible in order to keep the developer staff small.

Equally as important, StyleFeeder also managed to leverage the Facebook platform just as it was emerging as a new trend. The Facebook platform enabled StyleFeeder to become much more social with less effort on building out its own social network. While StyleFeeder is essentially driven by user-generated content and has many socially-adept features that power its discovery tools among other sharing options, tapping into Facebook helped StyleFeeder delve deeper into social activity in order to grow its brand.

Even though StyleFeeder was among the lucky few to be catapulted into success thanks to the timing of the Facebook platform, there are other ways to still take advantage of Facebook’s large user base despite the decline in direct uptake or conversions through a Facebook application. A key highlight of StyleFeeder’s success through Facebook comes in the form of redistributed content spread amongst Facebook users. This can still be achieved with Facebook Connect, along with leveraging an established user base all the while.

StyleFeeder offers some good pointers on how to turn a web 2.0 profit. See here for details on Newsgator’s white paper, outlining even more ways in which to stay budget-conscious as a startup in a wary economy.