Peter Chun

Andrew Monfried’s presentation was the most interesting at tonight’s Ad Club Meetup. The founder/president of Lotame talked about advertising in social networks.

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Reports surfaced yesterday, and now we have the official word from Facebook. Users will now have to opt-in to share purchases via Beacon:

Stories about actions users take on external websites will continue to be presented to users at the top of their News Feed the next time they return to Facebook. These stories will now always be expanded on their home page so they can see and read them clearly.

Users must click on “OK” in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.

If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK” to publish or click “remove” to not publish.

Users will have clear options in ongoing notifications to either delete or publish. No stories will be published if users navigate away from their home page. If they delay in making this decision, the notification will hide and they can make a decision at a later time.

Clicking the “Help” link next to the story will take users to a full tutorial that explains exactly how Beacon works, with screenshots showing each step in the process.

It seems like a win for users, although I’m sure the ramifications of this announcement will be dissected and considered in the hours and days to come. First impressions though: the immediate defaulting to privacy is sure to appease many critics, but the details may still raise some concerns, for example Facebook is still capturing this data, the only difference now is that it wont automatically share it. Will this be enough? advertisers will still be able to tap into Beacon for purchasing preferences and other details based on activity on Facebook so the privacy option is really only skin deep.

(via AllFacebook)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

I first met Sarah Meyers when she crashed our 2006 party at August Capital. She was booted, but got enough video footage to make this video. This year she was back at the party, but as an invitee - see one of her videos here.

Meyers now lives in New York, and has been working on a new live daily tech show. It hasn’t officially launched, but her first shows started streaming earlier this week at PopSnap.net.

The show shows live daily. A time will eventually be nailed down, she says, but for now you have to check the calendar (powered by 30Boxes) to see exactly when it goes on the air. When the show is not being shown live, the last show is played on a loop. Eventually, clicking on the video will start it from the beginning.

Users can comment on the show via an embedded meebo chat widget. The show itself is powered by Mogulus, a live streaming video startup we covered back in June.

The show is clearly still working through some kinks, so be kind. But Sarah’s charisma comes out strongly in these first few episodes, and it’s clear that she will have a large following of loyal viewers.

Check out the show now and give your feedback through the chat widget. The site will officially launch in December, and archives will become available then. We are going to be one of the charter sponsors of the show.

Update: Well, she shut the site down.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

I attended MatchupCamp tonight. It was an idea Eran mentioned to me when I first met him at Startupcamp awhile back and thought it was a great idea. It finally came into fruition.

The idea behind it was that it was going to be an "open-space networking event
where everyone you meet is a potential match for your talent or idea."

It was basically a nextNY networking event. Unfortunately one that was short on drinks.

They had some tools to facilitate the networking

• Color-coded nametags

• Demospace: If you brought your laptop you can show off your goods anywhere
  

• Pitch wall= physical job board.

The name tags were a nice touch. But I still felt that more could have been done to facilitate interaction between job providers and job seekers

Three ways of possibly facilitating the group
1. Either having a speed dating deal. Where startups looking for people would sit on one side and people looking to join a startup on the other. Every 5 minutes ppl would switch, etc...
2. Placing tags around the room and ppl would congregate in areas of interest. (ex. php, ruby, music, video, advertising, etc)
3. Have people go around the room announcing their names this way people could put faces to all the names that were posted on the wiki.

However I'm not really sure if the people attending tonights event would have benefited from these types of structure.
Since there were more people looking for hires than people looking to be hired.

All in all, I had a great time chatting with fellow nextNYers in person, thanks to Eran and everyone who helped organize and promote the event. I look forward to the next Matchupcamp.
If you attended I would love to hear your thoughts and experience.

Tonight was the first MatchupCamp in NYC put on by the NextNY crew with Eran Hammer-Lahav and Charlie O'Donnell leading the crew. The event was held at the For Your Imagination studios and Silicon Alley Insider provided the funds.

Turnout was great with about a 70/30 mix of startup/marketing and developers. Didn't see many designers but there were a lot of startups representing. I tried to capture all of the request flyers below. My suggestion for next time is to have people put their pictures with their flyers for easy identification. Someone else also suggested that startups get 5 minutes on a mic to go over who they are and what they are looking for. I would say shorten it to 2 minutes, no demo.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and said hi - I grabbed many cards and will have more reviews coming as the products and services move into actually functioning prototypes.

Additional recaps:

• Michael Galpert

Here are some photos from the event (view all photos):

    

    

Here are the videos I captured:

Welcome video:

Wan Hsi Yuan - 8coupons.com (www.8coupons.com):

Jason Amster - BeenVerified (www.beenverified.com):

Kareem Kouddous - beYOU.tv (www.beyou.tv):

Looking forward to the next Matchup Camp!