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May 2008

The Archives

05.11.08

Who Are We? Welcome to the Tribe.
Social Media
The other day I was talking to a friend about the various communications outlets I use such as this blog, my RSS reader, Twitter, Facebook and a host of other services. My friend then asked what kind of people read Leveraging Ideas? I explained that the make-up of my readership is basically smart people who ‘get it’ technology wise. He was surprised that my readership comes from all over the country, including a huge span in age and profession. I explained that this same group of highly-connected people tend to use and interact across a number of different mediums ...
05.09.08

Monetizing Twitter
Social Media
Adrian Henry from ReadWriteWeb offers the following suggestion as the ‘Ultimate Twitter Revenue Model’: The perennial debate surrounding Twitter's revenue model continues to live on…If an acquisition isn't shaping up, monetization will be necessary to keep Twitter afloat…leveraging context may prove to be a great way to drive revenues while maintaining the integrity of the platform. Essentially, this would entail Twitter parsing over the Tweets of a given user, as well as the Tweets of the users he/she is following. Common keywords, themes, and phrases are then pulled from this data and associated with that user. As a result, highly-targeted ads can ...
05.06.08

Ten Interesting Memes Plucked From The Blogosphere
Social Media
I’ve been noticing a lot of memes floating around the social media/2.0 space over the last two weeks and I decided to pluck 10 of my favorites. If you haven’t been glued to Google Reader or Twitter, here is a run-down of memes worth paying attention to... Socialprise: Social tools + enterprise = "socialprise." According to RedWriteWeb this meme represents one of the biggest shifts in business today. AVC questions whether it’s an oxymoron. Suckage: Refers to a general feeling among smart technologists such as Umair Haque that entrepreneurs aren’t addressing real problems but instead creating ’me-too’s.’ Umair has even issued a ...
05.05.08

The Anti-Facebook
Workstreamr
We recently met with a well-known VC who offered the following observation (I am paraphrasing): At its core, Facebook is pure entertainment. It helps people waste time and feel important – and that’s good. However, we believe that there is an opportunity for a company that does the exact opposite of Facebook. Instead of helping a community of people waste time and be entertained, this service would help them get work done and accomplish productive things. The potential market is enormous. Indeed.
05.04.08

The Dangerous Games Startups Play
Venture Capital
What’s a startup to do?!!? Entrepreneurs live in a new age where the lowered costs for development and marketing (theoretically) mean that a company can be launched without having to take traditional venture capital financing. For entrepreneurs this seems great because they can keep more of the company, rather than needing to sacrifice a big hunk of equity in exchange for a million bucks. However, this also means that many startups have begun to play dangerous games. In particular, many a young startup is seeking an angel(s) to provide a seed round, more akin to a bridge loan, that will see them ...
05.02.08

Twitter Scaling Woes: A Visual Depiction
Social Networking
05.01.08

Unused Gift Cards Should Go to Charity
CSR
I just used a Starbucks gift card I had been given. I got it back from the Barista with $.90 remaining. Likewise I have a gift card from Best Buy with $4 remaining on it. I’d like to see a more charitable way of dealing with ‘left-over’ gift cards. If you have less than $10 left stores should ban together and offer to split the difference; give me the option on the spot to have 50% or more be donated to a worthwhile charity like the One Campaign.

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