NexGen Web

The big news coming out of Web 2.0 (other than Facebook’s Evan Zuckerberg somewhat obliquely announcing that FB is going to create its own ad network and dodging a few questions about their developer agreement – see coverage here) was MySpace following in the steps of Facebook and opening up their site to developers. It’s no secret that MySpace has struggled – especially relative to Facebook (at Web 2.0 Murdoch also lowered guidance for MySpace revenue and there have been many reports of MySpace’s significantly lower growth rates than that of Facebook). Facebook’s decision this May to create a standardized development platform for 3rd party app builders has without question been a huge success. MySpace has now jumped on the…

Wow! What can I saw about the TechStars investor pitch/demo day except that it was fantastic. The teams were extremely well prepared and every single one of them really nailed it. We had about 50 private investors and venture capitalists in attendance to see the 10 TechStars teams go through what they’ve been up to this summer. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I’ve been somewhat of a TechStars groupie this summer – I’ve spent many hours with the teams giving feedback, advice and lending a sympathetic ear. I’ve seen early ideas and kluge demos turn into the seeds of real business ideas, real prototypes and true products. The journey has been amazing to watch. For…

As promised – a few thoughts on StartupWeekend now that I’ve had a chance to both get over my disappointment that we didn’t release anything on Monday morning and more importantly time to think about what worked and what didn’t work last weekend. There seems to be no lack of opinion on the subject (see the comments to the “Success and Failure” post on the StartupWeekend website and the mass of comments left on the TechCrunch article about the weekend or just do a Google search for StartupWeekend). Overall, it was a great experience. We had an outstanding group of founders from a broad cross-section of Denver/Boulder technology companies. Andrew did a great job of facilitating the weekend without being…

Just over 48 hours ago 72 people came together in Boulder Colorado to see if they could come up with a business idea and launch by midnight Sunday.  We started Friday night with a handful of ideas . . . winnowed the list down to the top 3 favorites . . . and picked one to run with.  Here’s the result: The process of working on a business with 70 people in such a short period of time was amazing.  I’ll put up some of the notes I took throughout the weekend in a post tomorrow but you can see a running tally of the experience at www.startupweekend.com.  This was entrepreneurship on steroids and was as much about the social…

I have to admit that when I set up my Twitter account I thought I’d be turning it off after a few days for lack of interest. Instead I was calling up T-Mobile ordering a higher volume sms package. I have to say there’s something addicting about it – I like the short message format; I like hearing what my friends are up to; I like the record of my day that it creates for me and for people that are following me; in short – it’s just fun. My Twitter ID is Sether (www.twitter.com/sether) if you want to see what I’m doing. A few quick comments, in case this post finds its way to the Obvious gang (creators of…

Check out socialmeter. It gives you the link count for any site (any specific URL actually) from Bloglines, Del.icio.us, Digg, Google, Rojo, Shadows, Technorati and Yahoo. It’s a bit blunt and it would be useful as a widget (rather than taking you off the page you’re visiting and to the socialmeter page) – not to mention if it had a way to actually parse the link sources – but it’s both fun an interesting. Thanks to Paul at Blau Exchange for the pointer.