Archive | Apr, 2010
Why Do We Prefer Founders as CEOs?
When I introduced our venture firm on this blog in July , I wrote extensively about the types of entrepreneurs and companies we want to fund: technical founders, brilliant and motivated entrepreneurs, product-focused companies, and so on. I got widespread head nods on most of the criteria. But many people were skeptical about the “founder-as-CEO” filter. To express their skepticism, people would ask me some variant of this central question: “shouldn’t the founding CEO just get the company jump started, then recruit a professional CEO to drive once the company is up and running?” While we agree that startup CEOs and “grow the company” CEOs need dramatically different skill sets (a point Ben hinted at in his last blog post ), we wanted lay out our thinking on why we prefer funding startups whose founding CEO plans to run the company for a good long time . Cue the hip hop.
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Why Do We Prefer Founders as CEOs?
Google Engineers Offering Free Course in Black PR
Has a competitor launched a new feature that concerns you? If so, how do you react? Google, well known for their public relations expertise, does not like the idea of Facebook creating an (eventual) distributed ad network based on demographics data. In spite of Google personalizing search by default (without asking), Google opting you into behavioral targeting (without asking), & automatically opting you into Google Buzz (without asking), suddenly they are a company concerned with the privacy of people on *other* networks. An effective attack typically should not look like it comes from corporate, but sound more like a list of alarmed concerns issued by individuals just like you . And so we get alarmed stories from the likes of Ka-Ping Yee , a software engineer for the charitable arm of Google: Facebook’s new system for connecting together the web seems to have a serious privacy hole , a web developer has discovered. … “It seemed that anyone could get this list. Today, I spent a while checking to make sure I wasn’t crazy,” he wrote on his blog. “I didn’t opt in for this. I even tried setting all my privacy settings for maximum privacy. But Facebook is still exposing the list of events I’ve attended, and maybe your event .” The best thing to do is disable your Facebook account and wait it out. It is easy to do, and you can always enable it later! 
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Google Engineers Offering Free Course in Black PR
Facebook On AIM Is A Hit: 1 Million Users
In February AOL added the ability to message your Facebook friends on AIM, giving Facebook users a nice stand alone client to chat with their Facebook friends. Since then, more than 1 million people have used Facebook Connect on AIM to access that Facebook friends list, AOL tells me, and all of these were new installs of the AIM client. That’s about 5% of the total 21 million monthly AIM users, according to Comscore. And those numbers should rise significantly – recently AOL also added the ability to sign into AIM directly with your Facebook credentials. AOL is also having success with its Lifestream product that they released in March. That social networking aggregator is built into their iPad application, which is currently the second most popular social networking iPad app after Twitterific. Soon, says AOL, users will be able to sign into the AIM iPad app using their Facebook credentials, too. We spoke with Brad Garlinghouse , the AOL executive who runs AIM and other community products, late last month about his vision for aggregating social content . CrunchBase Information AOL Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
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Facebook On AIM Is A Hit: 1 Million Users
Trends Audio Announces Combo 1i for iPod and iPhone | iPodBiZZ.com
The iPhone and iPod are great devices for carrying around a lot of digital music, but they don’t exactly offer top of the line audio quality. The new Combo 1i system from Trends addresses that issue. Read more… …
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Trends Audio Announces Combo 1i for iPod and iPhone | iPodBiZZ.com
Nook Outsells Kindle in March, E-Reader Sales Expected to Hit 11 …
Demand for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader increases as it surpasses Amazon’s Kindle. E-reader sales expected to hit 11…
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Nook Outsells Kindle in March, E-Reader Sales Expected to Hit 11 …
Playdom Continues Shopping Spree; Acquires Social Game Developer Merscom
Playdom is continuing its shopping spree today with the acquisition of social game developer Merscom. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It appears that the acquisition is based around talent and Merscom’s branded games business. Playdom says that it plans to leverage Merscom’s expertise in working with IP owners as the gaming giant moves to develop partnerships with “powerful global brands.” Founded 16 years ago, Merscom has produced over 250 games in total and over 30 casual games for such brands as Lifetime Networks, Paramount and Starz Entertainment and is currently developing games for Sea World, Purina, National Geographic and NBC Universal. Playdom, which recently brought on a new CTO, has steadily been expanding its presence on Facebook, most recently acquiring Facebook game developer Offbeat Creations and developer Three Melons. Playdom also invested $5 million in Facebook game developer MetroGames. Merscom has a number of Facebook games that will be added to Playdom’s arsenal. In November, Playdom raised a massive $43 million at a $260 million valuation. According to our stats from November, Playdom has 28 million monthly game users. 60% of traffic is from MySpace v. 40% from Facebook. Playdom’s main competitor is gaming giant Zynga, which is a leading game developer on Facebook. CrunchBase Information Playdom Information provided by CrunchBase
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Playdom Continues Shopping Spree; Acquires Social Game Developer Merscom
pt 2/5 Top Trends In 2010 | Gerald Celente on King World News …
www.kingworldnews.com GeraldCelente is the Founder & Director of the Trends Research Institute. Gerald has been quoted and.
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pt 2/5 Top Trends In 2010 | Gerald Celente on King World News …
Google Street View Adds Local Business Listings
Last week, the newly renamed Google Places added a ton of features to help local businesses create a directory page right on Google. Today, Google’s Street View is joining the party by showing links to local business listings right in Street View. As you turn around in Street View, names of local businesses and other “Google Places” will show up overlayed on top of buildings. As you hover over those names, a small pop-up window shows some of the listing details such as business name, phone number, and ratings. There have been links from business listings on Google Maps directly to Street View for almost a year, but now those business listings appear right within Street View itself. Google clearly wants to own local and is sprinkling these listings everywhere it can. The next step I’m waiting for is to see Street view in a mobile augmented reality app, so that you can just point your phone camera at a building and see the businesses listed inside. That would be so Tonchidot of Google. Our augmented reality future awaits. CrunchBase Information Google Maps Tonchidot Corporation Information provided by CrunchBase
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Google Street View Adds Local Business Listings
In Its Local Brawl With The NYT, The WSJ Pulls Out Some Foursquare Badges
The Wall Street Journal introduced a metro section today for Greater New York in Rupert Murdoch’s ongoing efforts to go after the New York Times. The top story right now is “ Rats Mob The Upper East Side” (seriously). The New York Times sent out a staff memo today to journalists mocking the Wall Street Journal ‘s efforts, and offering “helpful hints to our Journal colleagues” such as “the Dodgers now play in Los Angeles, Soho is the acronym for South of Houston, Fashion Week has moved to Lincoln Center, Idlewild is now JFK and Cats is no longer playing on Broadway.” The New York Times might have a 160-year history of reporting on the city, but it doesn’t have one thing the Wall Street Journal does. That’s right, Foursquare badges . As part of its local launch, the Wall Street Journal has created three new badges for die-hard New Yorkers and Journal readers: The Banker Badge (for checking into the financial district three times), the Urban Adventurer badge (for hitting all five boroughs), and the Lunch Box badge (for twice checking into a restaurant reviewed by the WSJ’s Lunch Box column. Hopefully, the Lunch Box reviewer will be staying away from the Upper East Side. These badges probably won’t do much to convince New Yorkers to turn to the Wall Street Journal for local reporting beyond the financial pages, but they represent another branding coup for young Foursquare. This deal comes on the heels of VH1 and the History Channel embracing the social geo startup. If you are a media company searching for street cred, it seems that you need a Foursquare badge. Obviously, the New York Times cannot ignore this. It must respond with its own branded badges. Perhaps a Bagel Badge for checking into a bagel place for five consecutive days. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Wall Street Journal Information provided by CrunchBase
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In Its Local Brawl With The NYT, The WSJ Pulls Out Some Foursquare Badges
Blippy’s Security Plan: The Details
As I mentioned in Sunday’s post , Blippy’s founders were hammering out a new security plan to assure users that all their information, especially their credit card numbers, would be safe. They delivered this morning, in their latest blog post , issuing new details about the blunder, how it worked with Google, and the framework for a go-forward plan. In addition, Blippy sounded more contrite about the situation. On Friday their post said, “it’s a lot less bad than it looks,” this Monday the tone is less defensive and more apologetic: “However, this is a very serious issue and simply apologizing is not enough. We’ve spent the last 48 hours working around the clock to dissect the issues, reach out to affected users, and put together a plan to ensure this never happens again.” The new security plan is a five-pronged effort: After reaching a resolution, we spent today working on a go-forward plan to ensure that this never happens again. Plan 1. Hire a Chief Security Officer and associated staff that will focus solely on issues relating to information security. 2. Have regular 3rd-party infrastructure & application security audits. 3. Continue to invest in systems to aggressively filter out sensitive information. 4. Control caching of information in search engines. 5. Create a security and privacy center that contains information about what we are doing to protect you. The security of our users is our highest priority. If there are additional measures you would like us to take to improve Blippy’s security, please do not hesitate to email us at hello@blippy.com. We will personally respond to each and every recommendation. Reading this list, I wondered why some of these measures were not implemented on day one. They’re a small start-up, so I understand not having a designated Chief of Security yet, but they should have had a security and privacy center (because of the high volume of sensitive information) and a closer relationship to search engines. Of course, that old cliche: better late than never, certainly holds true here. Conclusion, it’s thin on details but if executed properly, it could go a long way in restoring trust and persuading new users to come on board. For their full post, click here . CrunchBase Information Blippy Information provided by CrunchBase
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Blippy’s Security Plan: The Details
