Posts with tag "startups"

Notice to all those cool web startups – quit the crap

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Posted 1304 days ago

dear-god-make-it-stop Being involved the way I am writing about web 2.0 and social media I see news about new startups fly by me every day. For the most part I tend to ignore them because they are either in areas that don’t interest me in the slightest or they strike me as just plain stupid. However once in a while I see one that catches my eye and I decide to give it a look, and maybe sign up for it.

Invariably though there is one common trend that I see with these stealth, alpha, beta, by invite only web services – lack of information about the service. I was reminded of this today when I saw a Twitter message from Orli about a new service called Pip.io. Now I like Orli because this woman is a great social media service resource (if you aren’t following her you should be) so I decided to take a look and this is what I saw when their page loaded

TechCrunch conference not as important as poker

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Posted 1418 days ago

sacks Or at least it’s not as important as placing at the World Series of Poker and if your name is David Sacks (CEO of Geni/Yammer).

According to Michael Arrington Sacks is scheduled to speak at the Real-Time Stream CrunchUp conference hosted by TechCrunch. Right now however it is day one of the three day poker tournament and David Sacks is up by $91,000. Day three of the tournament falls on the same day as the TechCrunch conference.

Sacks apparently told Arrington that if he was still in the money at the tournament he wouldn’t be able to speak at the conference. This apparently hasn’t made Arrington a very happy camper

The tournament has just started so there isn’t much to report yet. One concern we have – Sacks is set to speak at our real time event this Friday, which is day three of the tournament. He told me today that if he makes it to day three he “has to play,” and won’t make the event. My response? It was NSFW.

Good luck to everyone. Except Sacks. I hope he loses it all on day 2.

Granted Sacks, if he makes it to day three, could have a shot at winning part of the $50 million prizes being awarded but pissing off Arrington in the process? I sure hope Sacks wins enough to offset the slapfest Arrington will probably have if Sacks skips out on the conference.

From the Pipeline – 8.12.08

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1745 days ago

Been spending most of my day testing out some different themes and I still haven’t found anything that really seems to grab me but I’m still trying. So don’t be surprised if the site changes looks over the next day or two – probably quite a few times. In the meantime here’s a few things that caught my eye when was looking through my FriendFeed pipeline.

White House DJ Battle [nw] :: Blender – the graphic alone is worth taking a moment to check out this post.

Why First Use often determines the success or failure of a startup or technology [nw] :: Alexander van Elsas – the guy goes away for a vacation and no sooner than he is back that he’s pumping out those excellent posts – well worth reading.

Misspelled Tattoos: Spelling Mistakes For Life [nw] :: Typo Buddy – can you imagine me as a tattoo artist .. not a good idea I think.

The Benefits of Bananas [nw] :: The Beat Post – another fruit to add to the list of what is healthy for you .. maybe next week they’ll discover that it’s not so good for you.

Audi-O…get it? [nw] :: Yanko Design – time to get that drool towel out again.

Apparently, I’m the Last Person in the World to Realize: Digg = USELESS [nw] :: Pixel Bits – all I can say Mona is better late than never

Long-time web personalities move to Friendfeed and Identi.ca [nw] :: SEO and Tech Daily – maybe this time there will be some serious traction to moving away from Twitter.

From the Pipeline – 6.24.08

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1794 days ago

Today has been a great day - what with joining the staff of bloggers over at Mashable as a full time member and actually getting some work done on the web home of Elite Tech News. Being productive on so many different fronts can sure make one’s day an enjoyable one. For now though here’s a few things I found on today’s FriendFeed pipeline that you might find interesting.

Bored With Web 2.0? Demand Change :: ReadWriteWeb – Sarah has a really good post on how to take this whole Web 2.0 thing in stride and maybe not so seriously

What I learned about tech and the web while on the road :: Online Media Cultist – Eric passes along some of the things learned about being online; and offline, while traveling.

The Death of Stealth Mode :: Redeye VC – so who’s to really blame when a startup trying to fly under the radar gets exposed after a round of funding?

TechCrunch Gets into Copy and Paste Press Release Journalism :: Drama 2.0 – some rather interesting questions being asked over a recent post at TechCrunch about a new Web 2.0 service

Unpatched Flaw In Apple Remote Desktop Brings About Trojans & Community Fixes :: The Apple Blog – as Apple becomes more popular it is only a matter of time before things like this will become more commonplace.

Conference of egos

Category: Technology
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Posted 1876 days ago

My conference is better than yours In an environment that is meant to be the breeding ground that show cases the best of start ups the conferences that dot the calendars throughout Silicon Valley and the rest of the tech world the opening shots of a Tolkien One Conference to rule them all has been sounded.

In an interview on c|net news.com Michael Arrington came out with guns a blazing by declaring that “Demo needs to die” suggesting that that the DEMO model was just to old school in order to compete in today’s startup marketplace. While Michael blamed the overlap of the SEMO conference with his own TechCrunch50 conference on mundane things like it being the only dates that they could get that would support the projected 1,000 to 2,000 people expected at TechCrunch50. Just because they happened to overlap the days that the DEMO 08 conference was running was just to bad.

Meanwhile the folks over at DEMO 08 while not surprised by the competition wonder why it is that an organization; like TechCrunch, would be creating an environment where startups are doing nothing more than shouting into a hurricane of conference noise where no-one is a winner in the long run.

TechCrunch might be gunning for the popularity of DEMO and looking to become the premier conference for startups but the simple fact is that it is the startups that are going to lose out in the long run. After all with two major tech oriented conferences trying to get the best of the best in the startup world to show their wares the real news is going to be centered around the battle for attention being fought by DEMO 08 and TechCrunch50.

Startups are further hampered by the fact that both conferences require that any startup being included in the lineup can not have shown at any other conference. It is getting to the point that the startups are becoming nothing more than the ropes around the boxing ring where monetized egos fight it for dominance in a field that really is about nothing more than bragging rights and money.

In the end like most fights it is the promoters who take home the money and the startups are left bloody and bruised wondering what just happened and what is next.