Peter Chun

As many of you know I have been fairly focused on the question of how to improve the state of the technologist community in New York.

Unfortunately, we do not have the same kind of technologist community as other geographies such as Silicon Valley, and while there are many many technologists in the New York area, in my view there is not sufficient connectedness among us. Many of you are buried inside much larger institutions such as investment banks, and other organizations for which technology is more of a necessary means to an end, than something in and of itself to be interested in or excited about.

So today, I am proposing the creation of a group called the Geek NY.

Geek NY will be modeled on several ideas that I have seen work, and that I think could be effective. The anchor of the concept, which I hope can be similar to the NY Tech Meetup, is a monthly meeting where one or two people will present a technical idea or issue that would be of interest to the technology community at large. An example might be someone coming in to talk about the concept of map/reduce as a new paradigm for programming.

The idea is, at the monthly meetings, to offer presentations that are broadly valuable to the technologist community. Presenters will be a mix of local technologists, and presenters from the corporate or academic world. However, the idea would never be to promote specific products, but more to discuss new ideas, processes and thinking.

Once we begin to improve connectedness, I believe there will be an opportunity to tackle some of the broader issues that keep New York from really being on the map as a great place to create technology and to build technology companies.

Several months ago we formed the New York Tech Boosters mailing list, which I would encourage everyone to join, as it will be the starting point for all discussion about Geek NY. If you are in the Tri-State area, join us.

Two thing jumped out at me when I read a CNET interview with John Battelle of Federated Media this morning - his direct criticism of competitor Glam Media as a “flavor of the month,” and his suggestion that he may take equity stakes in his publishers.

Full disclosure - Federated Media is our ad selling partner. Sometimes we love them. Sometimes, not so much.

Glam Media: A Flavor Of The Month

The first thing that stuck out was his criticism of competitor Glam. CNET’s Stefanie Olsen asked Battelle “Vertical ad networks like Glam Media are really popular right now. Investors love them. Why do you think that is?” His response: “Because people don’t understand them and they hope things that they don’t understand will pan out.” He added “I just think they are the kind of flavor of the month, but you have to get down to where do you add value to the marketer and where do you add value to the publisher.” In a world filled with over-media-trained executives, its refreshing to see someone go after a competitor with such a direct statement.

My next question would have been to ask him how Federated Media is different from Glam. Federated Media sells advertising for tech sites; Glam sells ads for women-focused sites (although their biggest partner is MyYearbook). Other than the focus of the ad sales effort, the differences are not obvious to the casual observer.

The truth is the networks have significant strategic differences. Glam owns a few properties of its own, which helped in the early days as anchor properties. Federated Media does not own any major publishing sites.

Glam also guarantees revenues to partners. MyYearbook is rumored to receive a guaranteed CPM on page views, and many of the blogs get guaranteed monthly payments of $10,000 or more. Those guarantees resulted in a loss for Glam of $3.7 million last year on $21 million in revenue. But it also accelerated growth and allowed them to raise a massive round of financing.Federated Media, by contrast, doesn’t guarantee revenues but is profitable. They’ve raised just $7.4 million.

But Battelle also reportedly has Glam envy. He turned down a $100 million buyout offer, reportedly because he felt Federated Media should be worth at least as much as Glam ($400+ million).

Will Federated Media Buy Or Invest In Publishers?

The weak point of Federated Media’s model is that they don’t control their own publishers. If a better deal comes along, those publishers will bail - which is what happened last year when Digg left the network for a big, three year guaranteed revenue deal from Microsoft.

One way to solve that problem without guaranteeing revenue is to own publishers, or at least a stake in them in return for a contract they can’t get out of. When Olsen asked Battelle what he intended to do with the venture capital he’s in the process of raising, he said:

Word has it you’re looking to raise money and you’ve hired Savvian to vet offers. (CNET News.com story here.) Given that you’re already profitable and don’t need the cash, what do you plan to do with the money?
Battelle: Well, I can’t say specifically what we might do with any money that we might raise, should we do a fund-raising round. But I think there are an awful lot of opportunities in this emerging field and it’s just good to have access to capital to execute any reasonable ideas that we might have. It’s a very quickly changing market and it needs financing. I mean individual sites need financing and we want to be a good partner for all of our sites.

What do you mean individual sites need financing? You want to fund some of the sites you represent?
Battelle: I’m not saying that we’ll necessary do that. I’m saying that it might not be a bad idea to be ready, should that become something that those sites are looking to do. In a fast-evolving model, it pays to have a strong balance sheet.

So Federated Media says they want the option of investing in their publishers down the road. But certainly there will be strings attached. Here’s what I think he really means: They’ll either buy sites outright, or guarantee revenue, or guarantee revenue in exchange for equity. A publisher wouldn’t consider Federated Media an attractive investor versus venture capitalists simply because it would mean tying their revenue to them over the long term.

But at one point in the interview Battelle said a roll up wouldn’t work, because authors must be independent to be authentic (I’m interpreting, not quoting). So there’s some conflict in some of his statements. What are they really thinking? I have no idea. But revenue guarantees would be a nice place to start.

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The results of the Australian Startup Carnival were announced Sunday, and as a judge I had the opportunity to review every entry. The carnival was entry based, so not every Australian startup was featured, and yet there were some great entries.

The winner was Perth, Western Australia based Scouta, a media recommendations service we’ve featured a couple of times on TechCrunch. The judges felt that although not without competition, Scouta’s recommendations across video as well as music offered something unique. Scouta has also moved into white-label service provision, offering a solid business plan that is already starting to see results.

Second placed was Good Barry, a service we covered in October 2007. GoodBarry’s GoodBusiness is an easy to use hosted eCommerce platform.

Third was a Google Mashup I frequently use myself: SuburbView. We’ve not covered it before on TechCrunch, and although it’s not the prettiest mashup, its ability to pull data from Australia’s leading real estate sites and break down that information into finite detail, from number of bedrooms, price, suburb, and even building type make it a practical service that is ripe for takeover.

A full list of the results can be found on the VS Consulting blog here. Judges comments are available here; it doesn’t take too much guessing as to which my comments were

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This week there was a new conference on the Web 2.0 block in Europe. Plugg saw investors and startups from across Europe come together to discuss the market and some 20 startups pitched their companies at the event, attended by about 300 people. Although much smaller than Le Web 3 in Paris (which gets about 1,500 attendees), Plugg had the makings of a more intimate atmosphere amongst European startups and being in Brussels meant it was easy to get to from London as well as plenty of other continental European cities.

So the heads-up on the startups: The winner of the start-ups rally was Viewdle, while Zilok got the best ratings from the audience.

Viewdle is a digital media platform for indexing, searching & monetizing video assets. One of it’s key USPs is that it uses facial recognition to index the video, frame-by-frame, to create a real-time index of on-screen appearances. Viewdle was a Crunchies finalist and presented at TechCrunch40.

Zilok is a service which allows you to rent anything online. Yes, the idea is not brand new, but this is a French startup which launched in November last year and is also available in the US. Think eBay for renting your stuff. TechCrunch reviewed it in more detail here.

The rest of the twenty startups who pitched are here.

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In the age of social media—when everybody is busy creating personal broadcasts on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, blogs, Justin.tv, you name it—what happens to the notion of the broadcast? I am not talking about TV or radio, where traditional broadcasts still work the way they always have. I am talking about broadcasting an event or a message on the Web. Does the notion of broadcasting even make sense anymore in a narrowcasting world where anybody can read, watch or listen to any piece of information on their own schedule? And if it does make sense, how do you pull together the personal media of the Web into a coherent experience rather than produce something in a top-down fashion to be released upon a no-longer-passive audience?

These are the kinds of questions that Tola Oguntoyinbo wrestles with all the time. Tola is the CEO and co-founder of Sonecast, a bare-bones social media marketing startup in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that is credit-card funded. His sonecasts (social network broadcasts) pull social media from practically any source into a dedicated, branded site. The closest thing to it is perhaps a combination of Meebo Rooms and SplashCast (which just raised $4 million earlier this week). Sonecasts tend to work better around a live event, like this one for a DJ Spooky concert or this one for the Crunchies that he ginned up after the fact (see also screen shot below).

In the Crunchies sonecast, there is a floating frame on the page with little tabs that bring up clickable thumbnails of Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and blog posts from the event. There is also a live tab that would have shown the live video feed from Mogulus during the awards ceremony. Each photo, video, or blog headline you click on opens up a new window and lets you comment on each item. The DJ Spooky one broadcast live video from a concert at Duke University, which is now archived and still viewable. Other tabs include photos from Flickr and Facebook, DJ Spooky videos, music, and posts from MySpace, a podcast interview from the event, and a fully-featured music widget with complete streaming songs, music videos and links to posts about the artist on music blogs.

Please note that these are demo sites, they are a little slow to load, and probably cannot handle a ton of traffic. (The service is still in a closed alpha). But the approach taken with the user interface is instructive. It is both economical and all-inclusive at the same time. And while it is tapping into social media for marketing purposes, it is not trying to create a corporatized social network along the lines of Mzinga or Networked Insights.

“We’re really about leveraging existing content networks,” says Tola. He makes a distinction between “ego-centric” social networks and “object-centric” ones where the “objects” people organize around are photos, videos, and links. Ego-centric social networks, in contrast, like Facebook or MySpace, are organized around user profiles. They are about “people surfing versus content surfing,” he says.

The sonecasts can combine professionally-produced video or other broadcast material with relevant audience-produced material about the same event. Flickr photo streams, Twitters and YouTube videos can all easily be pulled into a sonecast. The idea is to create social activity around the events. Sonecasts can also be created around brands or products. For instance, a sonecast for the Pleo toy dinosaur (click on the middle dummied-up screen shot below) could include Flickr photos from enthusiasts, posts from the Pleo blog, or videos of the Pleo being hacked.

A Sonecast is a place to collect the lifestream of a product or a brand, if you will, just as people are beginning to gather their own lifestreams from across the Web into services like FriendFeed. Except there is also the broadcasting component—that initial, compelling content that will draw people to the Sonecast in the first place. That is the biggest challenge here: Getting people to the Sonecasts in the first place and making sure there is something there for them to do.

A good place to start would be syndicating its widgets across the Web to draw people back into the richer experience of each full site. (SplashCast, in contrast, only does widgets. Having both widgets and a destination page could be an advantage). It also needs to do a better job with showing who else is in a Sonecast and what they are doing there. But it does open your eyes to the possibilities of broadcasting in a totally different way.

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MAJOR DC is known for their innovative New Era designs and execution on fitteds.  With the recent release of the MAJOR x New Era EQT Pack & MAJOR x adidas EQT Hi, which came through with an unreal and never-before-attempted rendition of the Washington DC Metro map in satin on the fitted’s interior, they continue to improve and create instant classics. Oh yeah they also have a vast selection of sneakers and streetwear, all the top accounts you wish your shop had. 

But this post focuses on two New Eras that are slated to release later this spring/summer. Matching with some yet to be seen shoe releases?  Time will tell… (more…)

Its Good Friday and while millions will be enjoying the day off, others will be attending church and praying for salvation. According to a Pew survey in 2004, 64% of American Internet users perform spiritual and religious activities online, so here’s a few sites appropriate for the day.

GodTube

We covered GodTube in April 2007 and the site is still spreading the word. GodTube is a YouTube like Flash video sharing site focusing on using “technology to connect Christians for the purpose of encouraging and advancing the Gospel worldwide.”

People2Pray

According to ChurchMarketingSucks.com, “If you’ve ever complained about the smut and garbage that can happen on community-driven sites like MySpace, then People2Pray is the answer to what good is all this online community.”

CrossConnector

Billed as a 37signals for Jesus followers, CrossConnector helps users plan and manage mission trips and church activities.

Faith2

Faith2 is a Popurls/ Alltop style site for “the Christian Web 2.0.”

eBible

Search the bible through a search box or navigate via tag cloud, eBible is “your personal online Bible that is easy to search and fun to use.” See our May 2006 review here.

Lolcat Bible

For those looking for something lighter, the lolcat Bible offers a different interpretation of the Easter Story. Matthew 27, 1:5.

1 So liek iz teh mornins and all teh ppl sez tehy duznt liek Jesus and wantz to kills him;2 So tehy ties him upp and maed him goes to Pilate.

3 Judas feels teh stoopid and bringes teh moniez back,4 becuz he iz liek, “I iz stoopid, made invisibul err0r. Jesus iz innucent, k?”

And teh big catz sez “whtevr.”

5 So Judas sez “Do not want!” and he trows teh moniez and then killz hisself wiht sum yarn.

If God isn’t your thing, check out YouTube Awards finalist AngryLittleGirl on YouTube; her nominated video on religion here.

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LinkedIn, the boring social network that won’t find you a date but may land you a job, is expanding beyond people profiles.

On Friday morning they will launch company profile pages that partly serve as fact sheets for about 160,000 companies and partly serve to reveal the connections that members have with them.

These private pages (you have to be signed in to see them) pull in some information from Capital IQ, a sister company to BusinessWeek, such as company descriptions, industries, types, statuses, headquarter addresses, sizes, founding dates, and websites. Many of the companies to which people belong on LinkedIn, however, aren’t big enough for Capital IQ to recognize them. So the bulk of the data shown on these company pages comes from LinkedIn’s own knowledge of people’s careers.

LinkedIn uses this knowledge to display recent hires, related companies, recent promotions, top locations for employees, and so-called “popular profiles” (people who get lots of profile views and mentions in the press). The data has also been used for company comparison purposes. You can see which companies employees usually come from and leave for, as well as which companies the current employees are most connected to.

Additional features include relevant news articles to a company (first discovered on LinkedIn last December) and personalized job listings.

The company says that it plans to wiki-fy these company profile pages in the next few months, allowing employees to edit company overviews, upload logos, and add other custom modules. Some of the information on these pages will also be distributable via widget.

The addition of company profile pages (which, dare I say, remind me of Facebook network pages) and the plans for more user generated content are good moves for LinkedIn, since the company needs to give users better reasons to return and use the site on a regular basis.

LinkedIn says it attracts one million new users each month and plans to have company profiles for a million companies. The social network has raised $27.5M so far.

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BlogCatalog, one of the oldest operating blog directories is expanding with a with the beta launch of Social Search, a cross-network aggregation search engine that searches multiple social networks.

The Social Search feature is built on top on BlogCatalog’s Social Dashboard, which (like many services lately) aggregates member activity across other popular networks. The search feature allows users to search by single user, friends, or by anyone who has opted in to use the Social Dashboard feature.

I haven’t visited BlogCatalog in a long time, so I was surprised by some of the other features they are also offering. Personal news feed widget SocialStream allows members to broadcast their personal aggregated social network activity, wherever they place it, a similar function also available from Plaxo Pulse. This on top of a decent enough social networking platform that is built around a members blog listing and includes friends a topical group discussion.

Ultimately any site is only as good as the number of users it is attracting, and BlogCatalog is pumping through some great numbers, with comScore reporting just over 2 million unique visitors a month for the site on 6 million page views for both January and February. As the chart shows, this is significantly more than Plaxo, who offer some similar services. Newer aggregation services (including Friendfeed) were either not available or too small to be recorded by comScore so could not be directly compared. Alexa does provide some size and influence comparison here for those interested.

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Check out the detail pics of the upcoming 08 summer release Nike Dunk Low New England Lobster..

Check here - Dunktionary