Last night, we asked folks if they’d rather have cash or services (like marketing, development and HR services) to help their early stage startup grow.
While our readers’ responses were pretty evenly split, the split between startups that seek capital first far outweigh those that seek to make equity-for-services deals. Also, the number of VC…
After wrapping up a panel with a gamut of pro- and anti-VC types at SXSW, I’m left wondering why there aren’t more services-oriented startup firms.
Let me explain: Most of the time, when a startup goes after venture capital, they’re still in the process of building a product and bringing it to market. They need things like servers, developers…
First, we’d like to thank all 596 survey respondents and the many Open Thread commenters who gave such interesting and valuable feedback in our recent post “Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?”
Over the past couple days, we’ve been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of…
For obvious reasons, we care about what goes on in various parts of the world, particularly New Zealand and other areas that are underserved in terms of Internet access.
So, we were quite excited to learn this evening of a new proposal that would give New Zealanders – including a couple RWW staff members – a better broadband experience…
When it comes to tech conferences, the first thing most people think about is the parties.
They might think about networking opportunities or learning experiences, but all too often, these are brushed off as mutual admiration societies and redundant, unoriginal chatter. I’ve heard every critique imaginable about some of the best-known tech…
Bookmarking service Delicious has just rolled out a Google Chrome browser extension.
Like other Chrome extensions we love to play with, this one is lightweight, fast and useful. There’s no bulky sidebar here. Bookmarks can be created and saved with a miniscule “TAG” button and they can be searched from Chrome’s excellent omnibar. So, do you…
Social media gurus: We all know one. If you’re lucky, you know only one.
They are the attendees of tech parties, the “Twitter consultants,” the armchair generals of the Internet, and their numbers grow by the day. Yet most of them couldn’t distinguish a line of code from a badly punctuated haiku.
What’s to be done with the social media experts…
One of our favorite geeks has just released an e-book on best practices for Twitter use.
Chris Pirillo’s 140 Twitter Tips, a 14-page PDF, is a concise compendium of useful guidelines and helpful hints for every kind of Twitter user, from doing-it-wrong noobs to social media addicts. From the best time of day to get retweets to how to process…
It seems the 17-year-old truant who created Chatroulette has applied for a visa.
The youngster, be he lucky or brilliant, has indicated he might want to transition to the American scene at some time in the near future. With all the media attention he and his service have received and the explosion of traffic – and monetization potential – on his…
For many years, I have been famously (or notoriously) anti-Silicon Valley. There’s nothing wrong with the place in iteself; what I detested was the snobbish notion that the Valley is the de facto or “best” place to run a startup or be involved with the tech world.
I’m now forced to eat my words as my hetero life mate and I prepare to move into a…
In times of Internet censorship and governmental interference with citizen Web use, the need for private browsing has never been more apparent or more crucial to political processes.
Perhaps in response to its woes in China, Google has reaffirmed its support of online anonymity for political purposes in a recent blog post on Tor, a project it’s…
In just a couple more days, a healthy section of the RWW team – and a good number of our friends and fans – will be convening in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive. A couple of us have been asked to speak on panels; we wanted to share that information with you and ask you to share your panels and talks with us (and the rest of our readers…
According to figures released today by the singularly focused blog Inside Facebook, the ubiquitous social network made upwards of $700 million in 2009 and is expected to reach a phenomenal $1 billion in revenues in 2010.
Year over year, Facebook’s revenues have typically doubled, from $150 million in 2007 to around $300 million in 2008 and so…
To all those companies and developers focused exclusively on iPhone apps: Watch your back. The Android platform is catching up, and none too slowly.
As Android’s growth continues to explode since the release of the Droid, only the most foolish of app shops are not planning to expand beyond Apple’s walled garden. One developer, in fact, wrote…
A ReadWriteWeb Guide
So, you’ve booked your passage, you’ve made sleeping arrangements, you’ve got your Interactive Badge all lined up and you just can’t wait for the second week of March to roll around. You’re a first-time SXSW attendee!
We know the feeling: The manic excitement, the trepidation, the wondering which essential knickknack you’ll…
Google Street View has made a few headlines at RWW lately – once for getting itself into hot water in Europe and once, notably, for bringing Street View’s photo-tour features into retail outlets.
Now, we’ve learned that Street View will also begin to feature user-submitted photographs. According to a recent Google Lat Long blog post, “We began…
We’ve recently come across an app that literally brings its users “talking pictures.”
Essentially, Fotobabble attaches an audio caption to any image you can upload. It’s a cute, fun way to share and narrate photos with friends, and could even be useful for certain kinds of online businesses – for example, photographers who wanted to explain more…
Last year, Foursquare was called the break-out mobile app of the conference by more than one tech journalist.
This year, a new contender has appeared – Austin’s native Gowalla. And Brightkite is still hanging on to the LBS community, if only by a thread of loyal users – but they still offer more features than some of their better-known…
After looking over recent stats from Hitwise Intelligence on the decline of e-cards and the simultaneous rise of social media, we were stopped mid-yawn by this weird little blip on the radar:
On Mothers’ Day, e-cards show a less drastic YoY decline, and social media visits actually temporarily plunge, showing a 13 percent decrease in site visits…
TheSixtyOne Seeks to Solve the Problem
In an interesting move against those who would manipulate traffic on the social web, music site TheSixtyOne is looking for a programmer who can crack the codes of voting rings.
On sites such as Digg, Reddit and even TheSixtyOne itself, spammers can rig a supposedly democratic system that allows good…