Regator Archive

Last year at SXSW we filmed a video demo of Atlanta-based Regator. The service provides curated blog aggregation on hundreds of topics. It looks like the Regator team is in Austin again this year and I’ve noticed their ads on all of the “Plastic-wrapped columns” around the convention center.

You can see their ad below – pretty interesting. They use a Twitter bubble along with names of two popular bloggers: Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb and Robert Scoble from Rackspace. I first noticed the ad because the @marshallk caught my eye.

Instead of pushing the service on the ad, they push two of their popular users. The names may draw people to the ad and then to the site which could mean longer levels of engagement.

I tried to persuade Allen to move back to Atlanta at SXSW, but when I saw his recent “Where Should I Live Next” post, I knew I hadn’t been convincing enough. Time to try again. Though it’s a city that needs no introduction to Allen, who lived here for almost a decade, you might be surprised to hear that Atlanta offers much more than plentiful greenery, lazy afternoons on the porch swing, and some of the loveliest weather you’ll find anywhere. (And no, we don’t all wear giant belt buckles and eat grits…but we do say “y’all.”) Here are six great reasons for startup enthusiasts to head to Hotlanta.

1. Atlanta is affordable. According to CNNMoney.com’s fancy comparison calculator, in order to have the same standard of living that $50,000 will buy in Atlanta, you’d need $88,288 in San Francisco, $64,072 in Boulder, $60,220 in Portland, $63,938 in Seattle, $63,984 in Philadelphia, and $113,782 in Manhattan. This low cost of living makes it a great place to bootstrap a startup-and you’ll still have money left over for a beer.

2. Georgia is a great place for business. Last year, our state made a massive leap from fifteenth to fifth in the Forbes Best States for Business list-finishing in the top ten in four of six categories. Only New York, Houston, and Dallas have more Fortune 500 headquarters than Atlanta, which is one reason why the city’s population has doubled in the last twenty years and is expected to grow another 10+ percent by 2012. Forbes also attributes the dizzying growth to a “growing pool of educated labor, low business costs, and one of the best transportation networks in the country.” We’re educated and it’s cheap, but I’ve gotta be honest and say I have no clue where they’re hiding that world-class transportation system because I haven’t found it.

3. Atlanta is entrepreneurial. According to the 2009 Kauffman Report on entrepreneurialism (reporting on 2008), Atlanta had the highest entrepreneurial activity rate of any metro area in the nation. We’ve got lots of nifty startups to prove it: Band Metrics, Feedscrub, MaestroFM, Chirbit, Krumlr, Twitpay, Spitter, Cloud Sherpas, Skyblox, We The Citizens, and of course (self-promotion warning), Regator to name just a few. Atllogos.com run by TechDrawl has a much longer list of local startups and there are more starting every day as our community grows.
Continue reading “Why I Love Atlanta” »

Here are today’s startup updates from the humid, moist New York City.

Worldwide startup updates

• Regator launches iPhone app – Regator
• How to create a mind map – Creately
• New templates added for invoicing – Invoicera
• Devver code tool moves into beta – Devver
• Freshbooks decorated their office for cheap – Freshbooks
• Tungle calendar app moves into Ning – Tungle
• Get tags and search now – Task.fm
• Tr.im URL shortener to be community owned – Tr.im
• A look at redesigning search – WebMynd

New York startup updates

• Pingg partners with Patrick McMullan for new designs – Pingg

Regator is an Atlanta-based startup which provides curated blog aggregation. They have created aggregated pages for over 550 topics ranging from arts to health to local interest to politics. Readers can vote a story up or down within Regator and that helps to make the story more important in the Regator index. 

Check out my chat with Regator co-founder Scott Lockhart where we discuss Regator along with his tips for growing a site when you aren’t located in the valley.