The big news in the startup world is that Israeli startup Shaker won the big prize at the Techcrunch conference this week. Many, including AOL employees, wonder what it is that Shaker is “disrupting” while others are talking about the conflicts regarding the finalists and AOL/CrunchFund’s funding of 2 of the top 3 and an upcoming investment in the winner. Of course questions are nothing new with Techcrunch (now aol) conferences – heck, I wrote about MC Hammer investment questions with regards to DanceJam at the first TC40.

When I saw Shaker, the first thing that popped into my head was, “oh it’s the new version of that game!” But I couldn’t remember the name of the game until Dean Collins replied to my message on the NYTM messageboard noting that Shaker is Leisure Suit Larry! And yep that’s exactly what it looks like.

TC writer Leena Rao describes Shaker as, “…a mixture of Second Life, The Sims, and Turntable.fm all mixed together using your Facebook data and connections. Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar, your pictures are placed on an virtual wall, you can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear and you can even buy people drinks.”

Shaker looks like a fun game but what frustrated me in the Shaker demos is that the founders kept suggesting that this virtual world was, ” just like real life”. It is absolutely nothing like real life.

Rackspace startup blogger Robert Scoble seems to love Shaker – I just don’t see it here. I mean seriously – maybe I am missing something – but it’s a virtual world where you walk around and chat – AOL 1996 called. Sure you can click on a person and get their info but otherwise what, you dance on a bar? And just wait – the minute a woman “walks in” to the virtual chatroom, you will watch all the males run over. Something tells me these “bars” will be all male. Maybe it will work for the concert concept but even that will be a stretch.

As I watched the two demos of Shaker, I could only think of one thing (which applies to more than just Shaker)…

HOW ABOUT CALLING UP A COUPLE OF YOUR REAL FUCKING FRIENDS AND GOING OUT TO A REAL FUCKING BAR AND HAVING A DRINK OR DINNER AND SOME FUCKING CONVERSATION INSTEAD OF SITTING IN SOME FUCKING VIRTUAL WORLD.

And if you don’t have local friends or are new to your town, go to Meetup.com or Plancast, find a freaking meetup and get the gosh damn fuck out of your house. Walk up to a person, shake a hand, exchange a business card (heh), and smile. Learn something in your conversation.

I know it’s not easy to go outside and it’s way easier to stay home/office and chat on a social network or, now, play some 2.0 version of Leisure Suit Larry. But trust me, the more we sit at home and live online, the less we will be able to live offline.

Ok I am done. Now get out there and do something.

Find more stories about: AOL, Conferences, Meetup, Shaker, TechCrunch

It seems like the big pre-SXSW bitchfest this past weekend was around whether anonymous commenters are good or bad, whether they are trolls and whether they are the scum of the earth and should be shot with a nerf gun until they give up who they really are. AOL tech blog Techcrunch switched from using the Y Combinated Disqus comments system over to using Facebook comments. Let me just say this as Allen not as anonymous commenter 2382389A, the move was made to get more traffic to Techcrunch. Period. (nothing wrong with wanting to make money)

Robert Scoble nearly died (I think his caps lock key got jammed too) after reading some post by Steve Cheney. There seems to be two main issues going on within the posts regarding Facebook comments and trolls stories:

1. Are anonymous comments bad or good
2. Should we be willing to let Facebook control how we use the Internet outside of the walls of Facebook.com (I will save this discussion for another day)

It seems whenever the discussion of “internet commenting trolls” comes up, I always get into an offline discussion about which came first on a blog – shitty content or the trolls? In most cases mice and rats don’t just show up – they come when you put food out there for them. The conversation usually ends up with everyone agreeing that the trolls show up when shitty content is placed out there for them.

There are three types of anonymous commenters from what I can tell:

• those who write comments that should absolutely be deleted and ignored – racist, sexist, etc.
• those who just want to pick a silly fight – for example, when a blogger writes an “apple is great i love steve jobs” posts and the Google fans come out to just cause a silly fight or vice-versa
• those who provide commentary about why the post was clearly wrong or why the post author was wrong in his or her research or conclusion – it is this type that I think will be lost with the Facebook comment change

With regards to the last type of commenter, it’s pretty interesting to watch how different bloggers internalize feedback from anonymous commenters. I’ve noticed that one of the Techcrunch writers has seemingly been trained to believe that there is no way in hell that an anonymous commenter could be right. All you need to do is watch her Twitter stream or her replies on posts where there are a lot of anonymous comments and it’s easy to see the training she’s received. And she’s not alone – there are many others with the same type of response.

Another good example points to the SXSW Zuckerberg interview from a few years ago. It bombed, people commented on Twitter and blogs – most of the people on Twitter weren’t anonymous and yet the interviewer still told everyone to “f-off”. As if there is no way in hell she did a bad job, no way.

The real issue I see is that many bloggers don’t want feedback – there is no freaking way someone commenting on my post can be right. There’s no way my grammar could be crappy – or my research wrong. Imagine if each blogger spent some time looking at their comments and then decided if perhaps I should change how I do research or try a new style. My fear is that a move to Facebook comments will mean more “you are great” and less “here’s why you are wrong” comments.

Feel free to leave an anonymous comment below :)

Find more stories about: Bloggers, Blogging, blogs, comments, Robert Scoble, TechCrunch

Evelyn Rusli, anchor for Techcrunch TV has announced that she has resigned from the AOL-owned Techcrunch blog and will be moving to NYC and will begin working for the New York Times. Rusli left Forbes in mid-March to join Techcrunch and just six months later she is off to the land of Yankees, Giants, knishes and the best subway system.

Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington noted on Evelyn’s hire, “(she) will be our main anchor for breaking news content as well as planned shows”. So what happens to TechcrunchTV now that the main anchor has left? My guess is not much as most of the content on TechcrunchTV are interviews and weekly series rather than only breaking news.

Good luck to Evelyn in my home city – I am sure she will love it there!

Update: Some new questions have come up in chats I’ve had since this post went live. The questions all revolve around whether the NY Times will be looking to get more into video with the hiring of Rusli. Based on her messages, it does appear she will have a larger content scope than at Techcrunch.

Find more stories about: AOL, TechCrunch

Last month AOL made three large acquisitions: video service 5min, tech blog network Techcrunch and Thing Labs (makers of the Twitter client Brizzly).

Louis Gray reported that the Thing Labs acquisition price was $18 million with a total including earnouts of $30 million. Peter Kafka reported that the 5min acquisition was an all-cash deal valued at somewhere between $50-65 million. Most have suggested the Techcrunch sale price at between $25-40 million. (Om Malik originally broke the news of the Techcrunch acquisition.)

Assuming all three acquisition reports are correct, that would mean a total acquisition price of ($18 + 50-65 + 25-40) between $93-123 million. So assuming the lower numbers are correct, that would fall in line with today’s announcement.

Update: the AOL 10-Q notes the 5min sale at $64.7 million (that’s what Kafka initially reported) which leaves $32.4 million for Techcrunch and Thing Labs. If Gray is correct that Thing Labs was acquired for $18 million, that would leave $14.4 million for Techcrunch, a much lower number than the $25-40 million reported by some outlets. But the only confirmed number at this point is the 5min acquisition price so the other two are still a mystery. These amounts don’t include the earnouts – much of which I assume goes to TC because it’s critical that some of their staff stay on board.

AOL has released their Q3 earnings today and the announcement includes a short brief regarding the acquisitions. Total price for all three: $97.1 million plus $23.1 million in earnouts over the next three years. They were able to lump all three acquisitions together which means we may never know exactly what each acquisition price was.

Here’s the bit regarding the acquisitions, “In late September 2010, we completed the acquisitions of 5Min Media, Thing Labs and TechCrunch for $97.1 million in the aggregate, net of cash acquired. In addition, we have agreed to pay an aggregate of $23.1 million in total to certain employees of the acquired companies over the next three years contingent on their future service to AOL.”

Find more stories about: 5min, acquisitions, AOL, Brizzly, TechCrunch

A couple of weeks ago, technology blog Techcrunch was hacked. At the time of the hacking they were using the Rackspace Cloud Sites service as their hosting provider.

Today I noticed that everything  on Techcrunch is now pointing to WordPress.com. If you run a traceroute of the techcrunch.com domain, it points to WordPress. Images and static files (e.g. s3.wordpress.com/wp-content/themes/vip/tctechcrunch) are also hosted by WordPress. Most likely this means that Techcrunch has moved off of the Rackspace Cloud Service and has become a VIP customer. GigaOm is another popular blog that is also hosted on the WordPress VIP service.

Assuming I am right and Techcrunch has moved to WordPress.com for hosting, it’s interesting how short of a time they were hosted on the Rackspace Cloud Sites service. I have pinged a couple of Rackspace employees and will update this story once I get any further details.

Update: I can now confirm that Techcrunch has moved to WordPress VIP hosting as noted in their footer. Rackspace employee Robert Scoble has also confirmed the move in the comments. It will be interesting to see if they continue to run the Rackspace advertisement going forward. It does appear the other sites in the Techcrunch family are still hosted on Rackspace – they could be in the process of moving.

CenterNetworks is currently hosted on the Rackspace Cloud Sites service (we pay full price, actually lately we’ve paid a lot more than the base rate). I’ve never posted a full accounting of all of the good and bad of using the Rackspace Cloud Sites service. Alison Gianotto posted an open letter to Rackspace management last month. In January Rackspace raised their Cloud Sites base pricing by 50% for new customers.

Find more stories about: Rackspace, TechCrunch, wordpress

Last year, top 100 tech blog Techcrunch added a “meta refresh” to their homepage which allowed your Internet browser to refresh the homepage at specific intervals of time without your instruction. This refresh serves two purposes:

• it allows readers who leave their browser open to the Techcrunch.com site to always view the latest stories when they return to the page
• it allows Techcrunch to add monetizable pageviews to their ad base

After what appears to be a bad hacking event last night (I feel for their staff as I know all too well about hacking over the past year), Techcrunch appears to have added an “interstitial” advertisement. Interstitial ads are basically ads that are placed on pages between the content. In this case, the ad displayed below is presented to a user upon the first load of techcrunch.com, but doesn’t appear again.

Technically, code on the techcrunch.com home page pushes users to the interstitial ad if they don’t have the cookie which tells the server that they have already seen the ad. Also, it appears the ad is running through Google Ad Manager and appears to be a custom campaign with Blackberry (congrats to their team on the ad sale).

With all the traffic from discussions about the hack, to the big Steve Jobs iTablet/slate/whatever event tomorrow, that Blackberry interstitial ad should provide for some very nice income for CEO Heather Harde and team.

As an aside, it also appears they are running the “very controversial” Comscore beacon tracking pixel. Comscore was at the center of last weekend’s bitchfest.

Find more stories about: advertisements, blogs, online advertising, TechCrunch

When I review startups and/or services, I like to make sure I review them from the perspective of the target user. With that said, last weekend I decided to take a look at what a new Twitter user would experience. One thing is clear…Twitter seems to want to push new users away. The overall design and experience just screams “get lost” to a new user. Even if we look at average users (like myself), it’s easy to get confused.

This post is only in reference to twitter.com and does not include any of the desktop apps including Hootsuite, Seesmic, Tweetdeck, Brizzly, etc. New users won’t download those apps straight away – their first experience will be with twitter.com.

Concepts to grasp:

• happening posts – this is the new text box that you are supposed to answer the question, “What’s Happening?” While there is no notation, this is the content that is referred to as a tweet
• re-tweets – today there are two types of tweets – the old kind “RT @centernetworks moo” and the new kind by clicking the retweet link under a tweet which only appears when you mouse over a tweet
• replies – a reply to a comment/tweet made by another user (note I didn’t say person because so many twitter accounts are just robots- be it RSS robots or auto-tweet robots)
• lists – this is the new one – people are added to lists created by other Twitter users.

That list above is already a lot for a new user to grasp. Frankly the new retweet function should have been named “share” because that is what you are doing. Instead we get new terminology that new users have to attempt to figure out what it means and how it works. Sure you could read the 74 “manuals” that Mashable has put together but most new users want to rip open the package and start playing the video game, not read that button A is shoot and button B is death ray warp.

Finding users to follow:

When you signup for a new Twitter account, you can choose to import your contacts from your email or another social service. I am not sure what percentage of people do this but I imagine it’s somewhere around 50%. The other 50% get nothing to start with except a default list (also known as the suggested user list). <sarcasm>This is great for new users.</sarcasm> The default list gives a new user about 200 followers that are pre-selected by Twitter. Ya’all know how I feel about the default list and why it needs to go so I will leave those comments out of this post. 

Let’s assume you are interested in food, with the default list you grab feeds for Techcrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb. Nothing against these blogs but they have nothing to do with food. You also get other people and companies to follow like Kevin Rose, Victoria Belmont, Jetblue, Al Gore, Justine, 50cent, all the twitter execs, and a cat. None of these accounts have to do with food. Once again, Twitter is basically pushing new users away by not offering them people to follow based on interest or location.

A default list would be great plus for new users if it matched interests, location and provided some discovery.

Now what?

Ok, so you have your account, you’ve got a basic grasp on how to use twitter.com and you have a list of “excellent” accounts to follow. So what to do now? I guess I type something into the box about what’s happening in my life. If I only have the default list of followers, there will be zero interaction. If I’ve added my contacts and they have added me to their Twitter account, there is a slight chance that someone might reply. Most people I talk to who are new at using Twitter believe it’s a conversation. I type a message and others reply. But if I have very few users and/or have users who won’t reply, then is it a conversation at all?

This is another major hurdle that Twitter is going to have to figure out…how to get new users some level of interaction so they feel like sticking around.

New Tweets

Twitter has decided to try to become more “alive” by adding a notation when new tweet messages are available in your stream. Here’s what the message looks like:

If you have a lot of followers (let’s say you picked all 200 default users or imported your contacts), the message above will appear over and over. If the count goes above 25, a problem arises. When you click the message, the page refreshes with the new tweets but only the first 25 or so are displayed. So now you have to click the next button at the bottom of the page, but now you are behind on the latest tweets. It’s a never-ending cycle.

My guess is that eventually Twitter will make the “stream” live like they have done with the new widget and will be yet another copy of FriendFeed’s features. That will present a whole new slew of new user issues but until that functionality is added, we have to stick with what’s available today.

Retweets

The new retweet functionality (which as I noted above should be switched immediately to “share”) is pretty confusing. Let’s take a look at the three options if you click the retweets link on the right side of the page:

1. Retweets by others – my page is always blank – I have no idea what this is for – I assume for tweets by other people that are retweeting? But who? How does my page get filled up?
2. Retweets by you – here is a list of the tweets I shared (see how easy that works?)
3. Your tweets, retweeted – so here is a list of tweets that I wrote that were retweeted by others. But it’s important to note that this only includes the new retweet option not the old way – damn that’s confusing.

Maybe they need to add an option — something like — tweets that were retweeted by the tweeter who tweeted them by retweeting? Just change the language to share – stop trying to invent something new when it just isn’t needed.

If Twitter is going to stick with the “retweet” lanaguage – then let’s do a quick usability fix for them. Move the retweet tabs as follows:

1. retweets by others – becomes a tab on the main screen – it makes the most sense here
2. retweets by you – would be a filter on the above tab
3. your tweets, retweeted – moves to a tab on the replies function

Conclusion

As you can see,  Twitter is not easy to use as a new user. If Twitter wants to continue to grow their userbase and stay away from becoming a quick fad, they will need to spend time and effort on making things simpler. Just because Scoble can make 150 lists and manage 10 accounts, doesn’t mean the average Internet user can.

I share this story so that each of you will think about these issues as you design your startups. So many of the ideas I review or provide feedback on are great but the ability to connect with the core user is what holds the startup back from success.

Find more stories about: TechCrunch, Twitter

Yesterday Kontera announced a new $15.5 million dollar round of funding. Kontera provides in-text ads which are the ads that typically are double underlined on a page. When you mouse over one of the in-text ads, a “window” opens with a bit of info and images about the ad and a user can click on the ad if they are interested. Publishers are only paid if the user actually clicks on the window and visits the advertiser’s website.

I’ve run in-text ads from Kontera competitor Intellitxt for about a year on our sister site HTMLCenter. The results were strong in the beginning but have since slowed to a point where I will most likely remove the ads at some point in the near future. Earlier this week I noticed that Bing appears to be running a massive campaign with Intellitxt.

When the Kontera funding news hit the wire, Techcrunch writer Robin Wauters posted about the news and called the in-text ads “annoying”. He noted, “I find this type of contextual advertising annoying from a reader perspective…”

Last night a friend of mine messaged me after a “conversation” with Robin on Twitter about his Kontera post and comments. Here’s the conversation (my emphasis):

• Till – Do you realize the double standard when you call Kontera annoying while TechCrunch runs snap.com?
• Robin – why? you can turn Snap off as a reader.
• Till – That’s beyond hilarious. Next time, for full disclosure, I suggest you add, “TechCrunch runs the also annoying snap.com”.
• Robin – did you fail to grasp what I just wrote? you can turn snap off. clue. find it.
• Till – You can disable Kontera with an ad blocker. Snap isn’t less annoying. Just like spam, “please unsubscribe here”.
• Robin – you’re either retarded or trying hard to pose as one. disabling snap is a snap setting.
• Till – You don’t see my point. You call out a service, while you run something very, very similar. That’s a double standard.
• Robin – why do I get into insane arguments with hopeless idiots so late at night? night all!
• Till – Aside from personal attacks (Congrats!) – if you had your homework, you would know that you can turn off Kontera as well.

It’s very disappointing to see a writer for the so-called tech blog leader calling people names when asked about their posts. Insults aside, Till has an excellent point – one that Robin appears to have missed. I am unsure if Techcrunch is paid by Snap but the magic 8ball says “all signs point to yes”. Earlier this year I had several chats with the Snap team about adding the paid publisher service to CN and they confirmed that TC was part of the same program.

I guess I don’t understand how Kontera could be considered annoying while Snap is ok? Both services provide the same user experience. I am not suggesting any of the services are annoying or not – just pointing out that calling one annoying means calling all of them annoying – including the one your company is currently utilizing.

Snap, Kontera, Intellitxt and most other in-text services allow you to remove the service from your browser by installing a cookie via their websites. For Robin’s edifcation, here are links to remove all three services:

• Kontera - click the removal link at the bottom of the page
• Snap - click the FAQ for removal
• Intellitxt

You can also get to the removal pages directly from the windows each service provides. It’s important to remember that all of the removal options use cookies so if you clear your cookies, you will need to remove the links again.

Wanna know what’s really annoying? Going to a blog and seeing tons of links to a company directory instead of direct links to the source. Or even worse — rarely to never linking out to other blogs. That’s the annoying of annoying.

Find more stories about: online advertising, TechCrunch, text link ads

This morning we noted that DEMO was now offering some amount of money in advertising to the two winners at their startup-infomercial. As I noted in an update on that article, I am no longer sure if the total amount is $1 or $2 million.

TC50 founder Michael Arrington has doubled the amount of advertising. He says whatever DEMO offers, he will double it.

Arrington notes, “Our ads will be on our various TechCrunch networks sites and via our terrific sponsors, who are going to be adding their own inventory as well. We’ll give half to the top two winners, and half to everyone else who launches.”

It seems the silly wars appear to be on yet again this year. 

I think it’s great that both DEMO and Techcrunch50 are offering bigger prizes – anything to help the startups that present past the initial buzz is a good thing. Let’s just hope Jason, Heather, Mike and Matt remember the end goal and don’t get back to last years “TC50: 1 – Demo: 1 – Startup: 0“.

Find more stories about: Conferences, DEMO, TechCrunch, TechCrunch50

Last month I discussed presenting at the DEMO and TC50 conferences later this year. In the comments, Techcrunch50 founder Jason Calacanis noted that one of the big differences between the two startup-infomercial conferences is that his Techcrunch50 offers $50,000 to the winner.

Now it appears DEMO has stepped up the prize pool bigtime by offering two $1 million dollar prizes. The prizes will be awarded to the best enterprise startup and the best consumer startup. The prizes are basically ad buys over the six month period following the conference.

Update 5:30PM: It appears that the total prize is $1 million, not two million as I previously noted. I am not sure if I got it wrong or if they changed it. I thought it read that two winners (one consumer, one enterprise) would each receive $1m.

Conference organizer Matt Marshall notes regarding the prize, “The campaign will include print advertisements, web banner placements, text link promotions, email newsletter promotions, and video ads. The package includes the development of creative content that is to be featured on IDG media properties – another huge value proposition to the winning companies.”

I assume the ads will be priced at the rack rate so the $1m is probably worth less had you bought the ads yourself and negotiated a better rate (probably 30% at best). No matter what, it’s good to see the winners get some publicity past the few posts they will get from the conference buzz.

How many of the companies that presented at either conference last year can you name? Can you name 10 of the 50 that presented at TC50? This huge ad buy should help two companies stay top of mind for at least six months and could give them a lift to build from.

Find more stories about: Calacanis, Conferences, DEMO, Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, TechCrunch50

Last night while winding down and watching Ask This Old House, I was alerted to an important post by MG Siegler (MG writes for Techcrunch). The post noted that Microsoft Corporation is now tweeting (that means they are posting up to 140 character messages on the Twitter service). This is huge news! Microsoft’s competitors like Google and Sun and Oracle and Zappos are already tweeting so it’s huge news that Redmond is now on their game too.

MG then went all Columbo on us by explaining the stats on the Microsoft official twitter account.  He notes that only 1,000 people were following the account but as of this morning it’s up to nearly 5,000! MG also found out who is behind the account. He notes, “The account is being run by its corporate communications team, consisting of four people.”

The big news here is that since the post, Microsoft’s 4-person twitter communications team has added a third tweet. That’s right…a company with two tweets makes big headlines (the story got a lead from Techmeme ) so I figured I’d watch the account as best I could and I setup a SMS alert when content is added. So I present now, the third tweet message from Microsoft Corporation:

USA Today on Bing v Google “For a search that sings you may want to Bing it” ^JR

CenterNetworks will continue to monitor the account and will report back of any further important developments.

Update: Microsoft has since added tweets 4 and 5 to their account. We can confirm they are now closing in on Oprah’s count.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, TechCrunch, TechMeme, Twitter

The title of this column is a question I am asked a couple of times a week…”should I present/apply to the DEMO or TC50 conference?” Both conferences require applications to be turned in by June 30th so I thought this was a great time to share my thoughts and feedback I’ve received about the conferences.

Let’s get the logistics out of the way – DEMO will be held on September 21-23, 2009 and Techcrunch50 will be held on September 14-15, 2009. Depending on the date of registration, attendees pay $2,000-3,000 for DEMO and $1,500-3,000 for Techcrunch50. (as a side note, I’ve seen tc50 producer Jason Calacanis giving away bunches of free tickets on his podcast, so you might try that road to avoid the high costs).

Last year I was one of the few people who attended both pitch events. You can read all of my coverage and an in-person comparison between both events. Overall DEMO was a better run show logistics-wise.

My thoughts are based on web/Internet businesses. If you have a physical product or other IT-related service, DEMO is basically the only choice.

DEMO

DEMO requires companies that present on stage to pay $18,500. Presenting companies are also provided with space in the expo hall over the three days of the conference. They have launched a new “alpha pitch” program this year which offers companies 90-seconds on stage, two conference passes and expo hall space for $5,000. To present at DEMO, the product must make it’s public debut on stage at the conference.

The decision here is whether the $20k will provide a better return than if the $20k was spent elsewhere. If you bought ads, hired a temp dev/design/biz person to build out the product further, attended more conferences with the cash, would you receive more media impressions than dropping the $20k on DEMO? I’ve only heard from a few DEMO presenting companies but overall the feedback on the logistics were good.

Techcrunch50

Techcrunch does not charge a fee for companies who present and (at least last year) the companies were offered one day of space in the expo hall (referred to as demo pit). Other companies can pay to be part of the expo hall. Like DEMO, Techcrunch50 requires that your product not be accessible before the conference.

Since there is no “cost” to present at Techcrunch50, it makes it a bit more difficult to compare directly to DEMO. If your product is still a few months from going live, I’d say go ahead and apply, it can’t hurt to get onto the radar of some of the players that the conference has recruited. If your product is ready today, I am inclined to say launch now.

I put cost in quotes above because a number of stories I’ve heard from presenting companies is that if you do get to present, you will be required/pressured into providing all of your future news to Techcrunch. As for the demo pit/expo hall space, most of the stories I heard as I walked around were very negative. The majority of the negativity was logistics-based but there were also complaints of not enough time with the conference attendees. Of course many of those same companies said much more positive things in the press which I guess is required. I am sure there will be more drama this year so if you can’t deal with drama, then don’t apply.

Some additional final thoughts

Another consideration is where your product is in terms of development. If it’s ready to go now, ask yourself if you want to put it on the shelf for nearly 90 days waiting and wondering if another player will step into the arena before you hit the stage.

There are good opportunities at both conferences to meet with venture capital folks. If you are seeking vc funds, attending one of the conferences might be a good way to meet with multiple vc firms at once. On the flip side, the vc firm attendees will be overwhelmed with pitches so it might make sense to pitch as you normally would.

My top suggestion for anyone considering applying to either/both conferences is to pick 2-3 companies from last year’s events that are closely related to your company. Do the research to see what type of media impressions and reviews they received. And watch the media impressions after the conference-sizzle dies down (about 2 weeks out) – are the companies still seeing good media traction?

You might even try contacting the companies and offering lunch in return for some off-the-record discussion. The most important thing I’ve learned by attending these pitch conferences is that what’s said when the camera is on is typically very different when the camera is off.

If you do apply to present at one of the conferences, please make sure your presentation is memorable.

Whatever you decide, best of luck and success for your startup. Remember that no conference, no blog, no newspaper, no one anything can make your company be a success. You need to keep working to build the audience over time and continue to move the needle up and to the right.

Find more stories about: Conferences, DEMO, startups, TechCrunch, Techcrunch40

Over the past couple of weeks the chatter about search functionality with regards to Twitter has come up again so I thought it might make sense to take a look back at how search has evolved with this exploding worldwide platform.

The Early Days

While most of Twitter’s users today weren’t around in the early days, many of you were. These were the days of the whale of fail, the rat in your pc and the general fun. Back then, there was no search function. If you wanted to know what your friend had for lunch or if your friend’s cat made a #2 on your friend’s carpet, you had to go to the account for your friend or his/her cat and just page back and forth. It was a tough time.

Summize

Then, like cream cheese on a fresh bagel, here comes NY-based Summize. Now we are talking! (well searching). Summize allowed us to search in near real-time for our friend’s messages. Want to know if that really was an earthquake? Pop “earthquake” into Summize. It was a real pleasure. Soon after the search engine was acquired by Twitter and renamed to Twitter Search and it still lives today. Twit messages are ranked by last posted in the results and there is no weighting to the results. The search functionality is also available within the Twitter site itself on the right side of a profile page.

Authority Search

Late last year during the “made up fights” between several valley bloggers and entrepreneurs, a discussion arose about creating an awesome Twitter search engine that would rank search results based on who has more followers. This was awesome…users who have lots of followers would appear higher in search. Bloody brilliant concept! Surely there would be no way to game the system to get more followers, right? Well, six months later and the rank by followers chatter has died out.

Note: somewhere in here Twitter introduced the Default List – this is the list that pumps certain celebs, FOT, fluffers, people who deliver cupcakes to twitter hq, etc.

Retweet Search

I thought I was excited to learn that they are remaking The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. But now I know what real excitement is when I saw the launch of Topsy. Topsy is the engine that has got Twitter Default User Mike Arrington really excited. Here’s how Topsy works…rather than displaying results by authority or post date/time, Topsy ranks the results by how many times a link or query has been retweeted. If you need a moment, take one please, I know I did. So now let’s get serious for a moment. It’s interesting that in Mike’s gushingly positive post about Topsy, he failed to mention that those on the Default List will have an overwhelmingly higher chance of getting better rankings than us mere-non-cupcake-mortals.

Louis Gray did a Columbo-style investigation and found that, indeed, the default list members do control many of the Topsy topics. Louis looks at search queries including the iPhone, Tesla Motors and more. Duncan Riley took a look at Topsy from the “short url” standpoint.

Could a retweet search engine work? Perhaps but certainly not the way Twitter is setup today.

What’s Next?

Robert Scoble and others have said that Friendfeed does a better job at searching Twitter. Will Friendfeed become the search of choice for Twitter users? Maybe…if Friendfeed can win over the mainstream crowd.

Will Google begin to index twit messages? My magic 8 ball says “all signs point to yes”. Google wants to get some of the “realtime” loving that’s going around now and once they can index Twitter messages in some fashion, users will have even more reason to remain on Google. Google has already added a time panel on search results pages. Although I am not even sure that realtime matters for Google. I could see the search engine starting with just relevancy first – I do hope they separate Twitter or any of the other services from traditional online content.

My only hope is that all of the search engines will allow me to filter “-user: -cat -dog -sheep”.

Find more stories about: FriendFeed, Michael Arrington, social search, Summize, TechCrunch, Topsy, Twitter

I don’t know about you but when I read all the Twitter coverage on some of the major tech blogs like Techcrunch, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Some of my friends say it can just be too much for one person to take. You might be questioning “why” or “how”. From what I’ve heard, some turn to drinking, some have begun to smoke, even the ones I thought were strong are starting to feel the effects.

There’s good news as NY-based doctor appointment service ZocDoc has announced that their service now works with psychiatrists. Perhaps a few visits to a shrink will help return those we have lost back to full sanity. Couple of those happy pills will help just about anyone! The ZocDoc service is free to use as they get paid by the listed doctors after an appointment has been scheduled.

ZocDoc lets you review your doctors after the appointments have concluded – it will be interesting to read the reviews of the listed psychiatrists.

Check out my real world review of ZocDoc when I attempted to go to the dentist.

Find more stories about: nextNY, NYC, TechCrunch, Twitter, ZocDoc

Online video host Brightcove has announced a new partnership with Germany-based Sevenload. Sevenload describes their service as, “professional social media network for modern internet television and User Generated Content.”  The partnership will allow Brightcove customers to distribute their content on the Sevenload network. The content can be monetized through additional online video advertising. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

From the release, “The partnership announced today will make it easy for any organization using the Brightcove platform to program and syndicate advertising-supported video content across the sevenload network. This integration will also enhance the online video experiences for sevenload users by making top-rated programming from Brightcove customers available for viewing and sharing with the wider sevenload community.”

German sports site SPOX is the first to distribute their content to Sevenload via this new partnership and Brightcove says more sites will be announced soon.

Find more stories about: Brightcove, online video, social media, Social Networking, TechCrunch, TechMeme