Tag Archive for 'Web2.0'

A New Net

Published on February 6, 2012 in High Tech & Media and Real-Time Web. 0 Comments Tags: .

A startup called Nicira is launching a product today with the audacious goal of making all Internet services smarter, faster, and cheaper. With his startup, Nicira, Martìn Casado intends to make Internet services slicker by rewriting some of the rules of computer networking.

The crux of that supposedly unworkable idea was to take away the stubborn independence of the network hardware. All those routers and switches would take orders from one central piece of software; a single command could then reconfigure every piece of a network.

Casado’s PhD thesis showed that it was possible. By writing software that could reprogram routers and switches, he was able to turn computer networks into the secure channels that he had been asked for back in 2003. A different intelligence agency put up the money for further trials of the technology, and in 2007 Casado, McKeown, and Berkeley professor Scott Shenker founded Nicira. Rich entrepreneurs and two of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture capital funds soon put in money of their own [Source].

New Apps Aim for Social Serendipity In Real Life

Published on May 25, 2011 in Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

People have created a web of connections online through social networks. But a new wave of apps aim to help people create spontaneous connections when they arrive at specific locations, giving rise to temporary social networks that are built around a place and a time.

LoKast, a proximity-based media sharing service, is updating its mobile app today to enable local chatting among strangers and other social tools. Two of the start-ups at TechCrunch Disrupt this week Karizma and Sonar showed off the ability for people to connect with others right around them for video chats or live interactions. A couple of months back, Color made a splash in the photo-sharing app space with the promise of letting people share pictures with the people immediately around them.

We’ve already seen some of this momentum with apps like Yobongo, a new chatting app that brings people together in one area. Local question and community-assisted recommendations sites like LocalMind and CrowdBeacon help get answers for people from the nearby community. Gay dating app Grindr also works to bring people together locally. But many of those are targeted on a larger area, not just built around one specific location [Source].

YouTube hits 3 billion daily views on its sixth birthday

Published on May 25, 2011 in High Tech & Media and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Proving yet again that it’s an unstoppable video juggernaut, YouTube announced today that it surpassed 3 billion daily page views this past weekend — a 50 percent increase over last year.

That’s a pretty good birthday present for the company, which launched six years ago in May 2005. On its fifth birthday last year, the company announced that it had hit 2 billion daily views, which was just six months after it hit 1 billion daily views.

With the rise of 4G networks and faster smartphones this year, I suspect YouTube will hit 4 billion daily views before its next birthday [Source].

Facebook reportedly partnering with Spotify for music service

Published on May 25, 2011 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Facebook plans to launch a new music-streaming service powered by Spotify in as little as two weeks, according a report by Forbes. The partnership will only be in countries that already have a Spotify presence, which excludes the U.S.

When launched, Facebook users in Spotify-enabled countries–such as Sweden, France, and the U.K.–will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeeds. Users that click on the Spotify icon will first install the service on the desktop and then allow users to stream millions of songs for free through Facebook.

Another interesting aspect of the service is the ability to let a user and his or her Facebook friends listen to music at the same time. It could be pretty neat to listen to new music and talk about it in real-time with multiple friends in one online spot [Source].

Twitter officially acquires Tweetdeck

Published on May 25, 2011 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

After plenty of speculation and reports, Twitter announced officially today on its blog that the company had acquired popular third-party client Tweetdeck.

“This acquisition is an important step forward for us,” the company wrote. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.”

After Twitter’s purchase of iPhone app Tweetie and its partnership with TwitPic, it wasn’t exactly shocking to hear the company wanted to buy one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, which has versions available for desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android. The company has indicated in the past it wanted to better control the user experience, and such, acquisitions like this are the easiest way to accomplish that goal [Source].

How internet companies profit from data on the web

Published on February 27, 2011 in Global Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Across the internet economy, companies are compiling masses of data on people, their activities, their likes and dislikes, their relationships with others and even where they are at any particular moment—and keeping mum.

“They are uncomfortable bringing so much attention to this because it is at the heart of their competitive advantage,” says Tim O’Reilly, a technology insider and publisher. “Data are the coin of the realm. They have a big lead over other companies that do not ‘get’ this.”

Re-using data represents a new model for how computing is done, says Edward Felten of Princeton University. “Looking at large data sets and making inferences about what goes together is advancing more rapidly than expected. ‘Understanding’ turns out to be overrated, and statistical analysis goes a lot of the way.” Many internet companies now see things the same way. Facebook regularly examines its huge databases to boost usage. It found that the best single predictor of whether members would contribute to the site was seeing that their friends had been active on it, so it took to sending members information about what their friends had been up to online

VCs flocking to mobile photos

Published on February 2, 2011 in Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Instagram, the startup behind a popular iPhone application for editing and sharing photos, just announced that it has raised $7 million in funding led by Benchmark Capital.

Instagram also unveiled some famous new angel investors, including Quora co-founder/former Facebook chief technology officer Adam D’Angelo, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, and Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca.

Noticeably absent from the investor lineup is Sequoia Capital, which was earlier rumored to be backing Instagram. Sequoia did end up investing in blogging service Tumblr, which is so photo-heavy that it could be seen as a photo-sharing site.

Gearing Up for the Coming Tech Boom

Published on November 30, 2010 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .


Amongst others, VC firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is gearing up for the coming tech boom. That’s one of the reasons they hired famous Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker as a new partner on Monday [Source].

Meeker said: “We’re at the beginning of another great wave of tech innovation and I am incredibly excited by the opportunity to help the next generation of Internet technologies and leaders.” [Source]

Gordon (partner @ Kleiner) said he sees a big boom coming, not a bubble, much like Kleiner’s managing partner John Doerr, who said that we’re in the midst of yet another boom for internet investments at the recent Web 2.0 Summit. The reason is that he sees a lot of technologies that are changing the way we live.

“The world of digital media is being transformed,” Gordon said. “A bunch of new businesses can be reinvented, thanks to social graphs, the mobile internet, and the new shopping habits of the young. Those are going to create a whole generation of cool new companies.” [Source]

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Silicon Roundabout

Published on November 28, 2010 in Global Strategy, High Tech & Media and International Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

London’s high-tech start-ups: A patch of east London has quickly become a world-class technology hub. Last.fm, a music website and Silicon Roundabout’s biggest success so far, was bought by CBS Interactive, an American company, for £140m ($280m) in 2007.

Silicon Roundabout’s firms are generally small-to-medium sized and highly specialised. One makes software for the fashion industry; another runs an online dictionary. There is a hotel-comparison website, a firm specialising in 3D and interactive content, and several digital-design firms with their own niches.

Measured by the concentration of technology firms and the availability of generous and informed investors, California’s Silicon Valley is still in a league of its own. But in the second division of hubs, this chunk of east London is near the top, along with the likes of Boston and Tel Aviv.

Silicon Roundabout emerged without government support, or even direct links with universities, should pique the interest of countries that have tried to cultivate technology hubs without the same success [Source].

Another Technology Bubble?

Published on November 24, 2010 in International Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Is the world ready for another Internet bubble?

Ready or not, it appears to be coming. In fact, it may already be here. And it seems to look, not surprisingly, like the last Internet bubble [Source].

First, there’s plenty of deal flow. Dealogic data shows that the number of technology deals — more than 5,100 so far this year — is at its highest point since the year 2000. Back then, in the peak year for Internet deal-making, there were 7,007 technology mergers and acquisitions.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Venture capitalists John Doerr said technology was in the middle of a third wave of innovation. (The previous two waves were the PC revolution in the 1980s and the Internet boom in the mid-1990s.) The current wave, he said, is focused on smartphones and social networking — or “social graphs” as he called them.

Doerr: I prefer to think of these bubbles as booms. I think booms are good. Booms lead to overinvestment, booms lead to full employment, booms lead to lots of innovation. You know, there was a boom when they started the railroads. We’re in another bubble — or boom — and it’s an exciting time [Source].