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Tuesday, 30 September 2008 23:00 |
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This evening, I went to Geeksessions to listen to four speakers talk about web analytics and also did some socializing and networking. Sorry, but I dont have any pictures. I have been a little lazy and taking a bit of a break from bringing my camera to all the events that I go to. Each speaker spoke for 20 minutes and honestly, the sessions were a little boring and I did not really learn too much. I then ventured off to the Monthly Mashable SF event at Roe. On the car trip over to Roe, I brought along with me, Alicia Lin of Mashable. On this car ride over, I asked Alicia what she thought about the whole economy recession, web 2.0 bubble, and she brought up the point of the seven year cycle. The internet bubble popped in 2001. It is now seven years later. Since then, many can say that it has been quite different. Companies are not spending as lavishly as they did back then and most companies have a good business plan and strategy. However, there has also been numerous startups that have come up with plenty of venture capital money that do not necessarily have a good business strategy yet. There are tons of new startups popping up everyday, and I am sure almost everyone knows someone who has left their safe and stable job to start up a company. The companies can be self funded, funded by angel investors or by VCs hoping to cash in on the next big idea. We have seen plenty of successful companies come out of nowhere. Some very good examples are Facebook and Youtube. Both websites are on the list of top five most visited websites in the world. Facebook has turned down numerous offers for acqusitions and finally settled for $240 million from Microsoft for 1.6 percent of the company in October 2007. This valued Facebook at over $15 billion. Youtube was created in February 2005 and in October 2006, Google acquired Youtube for $1.65 billion. Every startup basically has Facebook and Youtube as their role model but obviously, it is not an easy job to be as successful as these companies. A little more recently, we have seen companies such as Twitter and Digg gain plenty of funding. These companies have gained a huge amount of traffic but we have yet to see them cash in. There are now also plenty of social networking or related websites. There are also plenty of companies and people creating Facebook applications. Facebook applications have become a huge hit these last two year and there are now over 30,000 applications. People were able to make big money from the amount of ad revenue generated from these apps that many people even quit their jobs to pursue making Facebook apps. It is almost impossible to keep up with the latest apps now however, and it seems like the Facebook app phenomenon has died down. The new phenomenon has currently been Iphone apps, which we see a similar fad happening as more and more apps come out everyday. The Iphone applications are a little more regulated as Apple has to approve the apps and actually sell it on Apple's own Iphone App Store. From attending numerous conferences, sessions, demos, and networking events I have seen a lot of different startups. There are a lot that are creative and look like a good idea, but there are also plenty of startups that look like garbage. As I see more demos and startups, the number of garbage websites seems to be increasing. There are also plenty of websites that try to do the same exact thing. The goal is to do the same job better, but that is not always easy to do. The fun part about all these startups and tech industry in the bay area is that there are plenty of events and parties to go to. Many events are sponsored by startups to promote their products and websites. In the bay area, there is literally at least one tech networking/socializing event happening every single weekday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, there are always multiple events happening. This all seems like it is a web 2.0 bubble waiting to burst. The seven year cycle is a cycle that applies to life. At age seven, a child's self realization begins to occur. At fourteen, you become a teenager and begin to develop into an adult both physically and mentally. At twenty one, you become an adult. The cycle continues every seven years. Many things happen in sevens. The planet Saturn has a seven and a half year cycle and Saturn transits are sometimes blamed for changes that occur. As the stock market crashed on September 29th 2008, the Dow Jones went down 777 points. Even thought it came back up 500 points the day after, we are still not out of the woods. The banking and housing crisis have already hit and we are basically in a recession. Things do not look like they are going to get back to normal anytime soon. There are many that hope that this is the bottom but there are also plenty that fear it is not the bottom. The web 2.0 bubble could be the next thing to happen. Unemployment is rising, banks and lending companies are extremely strict now about lending money, so VCs are bound to be a lot more cautious now. The bubble could pop by the end of the year or even early next year, but it seems like something is bound to happen sooner or later. You can't avoid the inevitable. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 October 2008 17:38 )
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Friday, 12 September 2008 15:29 |
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DJ Sam Ronson aka. Lindsay Lohan's girlfriend was the DJ for the Myspace party
The week of Techcrunch50 was definitely a fun and exciting week to be in San Francisco. The conference was from Monday to Wednesday Sept. 8-10, 2008 as were the after parties every night. I attended the parties all three nights but only attended the conference on Wednesday. The TechCrunch50 conference actually featured 52 demos of startups that basically just launched after the demo. The demos took place over 3 days but also featured plenty of other startups in the demo pit that didnt make it into the 50 or demoed last year at Techcrunch40. Each session also featured some prominent people in the tech industry as judges such as Mark Benioff, Marc Andreesen, Don Dodge, Marissa Mayer, Om Malik, Mark Cuban, Tim O' Reilly, Jeff Weiner, Sheryl Sandberg, Robert Scoble, and many more. An exciting demo of Blahgirls was even presented by Ashton Kutcher. Yammer took the top prize of $50,000 and is basically a Twitter for the corporate environment with a business model. Overall, I would have to say it was a pretty good conference that gave people a good exposure to all the different types of startup companies that are coming out this year. Michael Arrington has made the Techcrunch brand quite successful and continues to attract more people to his website everyday. The parties were definitely well worth having the conference and at this rate, next year's conference could be called Techcrunch100 and have even better parties! As I try to recouperate from the long week, I will feature some of the companies that were seen at Techcrunch50. So stay tuned! Monday's party was held at Mezzanine and was sponsored by Myspace. An open bar until midnight with guest DJ Sam Ronson caused for a packed house even though it was a Monday evening. 
members of Lead-us.org
Tuseday Night's party was held at Temple and featured a performance by MTV's America's Best Dance Crew Season1 winners, Jabbawockeez. It was another night of open bar sponsored by Norton and was obviously a great party for Mark Cuban and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo quite drunk. 
Justine Ezarik of IJustine was in the house
On Wednesday night, the official afterparty took place at 330 Ritch and was sponsored by Seesmic. The place was once again jam packed even though there was no open bar. If you manage to get there early enough, you would have gotten two drink tickets and and gotten some of the appetizers being carried around. I also made it to Fluid SF for another Techcrunch50 closing party sponsored by Plista. This place unfortunately was not as packed and there was no food or free drinks. If you manage to stay late enough though, there ended up being a pretty decent crowd of people. 
Steve Chen and Jimmy Ku of GoPlanit along with Don Dodge in the middle.
Dancers promoting Causecast.
Searchme provides for a pretty cool web 2.0 interactive way of searching online.
The Microsoft Surface was on display and was pretty neat to play and to see.
FiveSprocket, a virtual Production Studio
More of my pictures can be seen at Flickr. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 13 September 2008 12:18 )
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Wednesday, 27 August 2008 16:19 |
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Michael Arrington says that TechCrunch50 is not all about the parties, but the best parties always occur during conferences! The TechCrunch50 Conference takes place September 8-10 7:30am-6:30pm at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse and will feature 50 new startups and demos, speakers, and panels. Monday September 8th will be the MySpace/TechCrunch Launch Party with an open bar from 9pm-12 and will be DJed by Sam Ronson. Tuesday Sept. 9th will be the Blast Off with Norton party at Temple from 8pm-12 with another top shelf open bar all night! MTV's America's Best Dance Crew winner Jabbawockeez will also be performing. Wednesday Sept 10th, will be the Seesmic/TechCrunch closing party at 330 Ritch from 7pm-11pm with music entertainment by Alland Byallo and more. Plista is also having a party on Wednesday at Fluid Ultra Lounge. I am sure there are plenty of other parties happening that week as well. In case this isn't enough partying for you,
Thursday Sept 11th, Omnisio is having its Celebration Party of being acquired by Google at Pink, 2925 16th St, San Francisco with yet another open bar from 7pm-10pm. It will be a busy week for party goers and will be a tough week to get some work done. |
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Tuesday, 26 August 2008 16:40 |
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The first Mashable Monthly San Francisco event took place last week and packed the whole Roe Restaurant and Lounge. I wasn't able to make it to the special pre party event for bloggers and press and actually didn't get to the party until around 9ish but better late, than never. The top floor by that time, was packed with people while the blogger lounge downstairs had a little more breathing room but was not exactly empty either. Mr. GQ of San Francisco, Pete Cashmore was the celebrity of the hour of course, taking pictures most of the night in front of the Mashable/Bub.blicio.us backdrop. Don't these pictures make you wish you were there! 
Pimpin Pete
Lorna, Andrew, and Vanessa
Krystel, Andrew, and Alice
Awesome Aubrey with two glasses of wine to cure her jetlag back from Beijing.
Morgan and Kaley
More images from the event here |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 August 2008 17:06 )
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 10:06 |
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By Alex Ho 
I went to the Ses Conference on day 1 and saw that there was not too many people there but then I realized that the expo did not start until Day 2 and Day 1 was mainly just the keynote and sessions. I attended a couple of the sessions mainly in advertising in video. I think sessions give a good general idea and starting point for things so that people can go home and do more reading and research on what they heard or saw at sessions. They can also get people thinking more about the topics but for me, I think I lose focus halfway into sessions. A lot of people bring laptops into sessions, and I find it really annoying when people are typing away at their laptops really loudly throughout the sessions. 
Here are some of the booths from Day 2 of the SES Conference. The Google Booth had a lot of traffic and they were basically just demoing the different products that they had. 
The Yahoo Booth was just promoting Yahoo Search, so it was not too exciting as you can tell from the picture above. 
The Omniture booth had a Smart Car that they were giving away and also had a ton of remote controlled mini RC cars which I thought was a pretty cool free schwag giveaway. From my consensus of attending the SES Conference and talking to people at the Conference, I would say that it was not the best conference in the industry but, then again, not every conference has a Google Dance! 
The annual Google Dance is always a great event worth going to, at least in the last 3 years that I have attended. This year in my opinion was better than last year. The food I thought was a lot better as they had a BBQ theme with beef brisket, chicken drumsticks, beans, fries, mac and cheese and more. The first piece of chicken I got however, was undercooked, so that was a little disapointing. In addition to turning their main cafeteria into a dance floor with popular DJs providing the music, there was also an outdoor dance area and both ended up being pretty packed later in the evening. 
I really liked the innovative giant Lite Bright that was created where they reused old pieces of glowsticks as the pegs into a glowing box with light inside. Of course I tried to be creative and had to make the Yahoo symbol shown below. 
There was a giant Rock Band stadium setup for people to perform, the standard remote control robots on display, and plenty of glowsticks to hand out. The candy aisle is always a popular attraction as everyone usually tries to jam as much as they can into their candy bag. This year's Google Dance displayed some interesting outside vendors. There were two GetFlipped photobooths that created a mini 3d photograph where you move the picture back and forth and see two different images. This was much more fun than a typical photobooth since it allowed people to be more creative and get to take two shots. 
Another fun booth was the Digital Caricatures where instead of the old school handmade drawings, a caricature was done on a tablet and displayed on a giant LCD screen. 
In another Yahoo! plug attempt, I tried out the Graffiti booth which uses a giant projector, a camera, and a software that allows a green laser pointer to paint on a wall that is 500 ft away. It uses color/intensity detection between the darkness and the bright glow of the laser pointer to determine where you are pointing it to display the movement on the projector. I enjoyed the event as usual, so until next year! More images here |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 20 August 2008 15:43 )
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