Ideatrotter

The Global Intelligram: Trotting Disruptive New Age Intelligence in a Limitless World

Search

Links

Ideatrotter

Related Posts

More liked posts

For a Future-Friendly Web | Mobilism 2012 

The web isn’t what it was 10 years ago, and it wont be the same in the next 5 years. It is evolving, much like a organism with an active neural network. It’s evolution comes from programmers and content artists, who design their framework  for the changing needs of their audience. But what strategy should they follow? Is an app always necessary to derive mobility? How much should they focus on technology versus content. Brad Frost’s presentation provides a good look into the web’s next horizon. 

A preacher, 500 startups, and a dream to change it all

Dave McClure represents that egregious class of geeks whose success makes a suit consider the so-called “hoodie” path. Beyond founding 500 Startups and Geeks On A Plane, Dave has gone on a bender, trying to discover entrepreneurs in different corners of the world, bringing their emerging talents to the forefront.

Heading Paypal’s marketing in the 2000s, McClure was later given $3 million to manage the Founder’s Fund and Facebook Fund. This small pool of money led to the birth of 500 Startups. Why not help launch startups for cheap earlier where the cost impact can be minimized? Now McClure hopes to take his success to destinations like Latin America and India, where startup-dom is the new wave. Gigaom’s link provides a nice in-depth article into why McClure’ boyish dream may actually become a reality. 

Mirror Trading: Trade based on experts’ ideas

Online trading has been around for awhile. Traditional online trading institutions represent the likes of Scottrade, Etrade and Ameritrade, brokerage houses that let you use their platform and charge a flat fee per transaction. Self-research would dictate the trades executed. 

Social media has negated the need for self-reliance. Decision making has trickled in not only consumer habits, but trade habits as well. Using the backbone of individual’s lack of confidence in their investing habits pre and during the recent recession, multiple startups such as Roboinvest, Stocktwits and Covestor have been born, letting users trade based on the investment profiles and ideas of other users. This is definitely the next frontier in online trading. It also represents a way to derive expertise from our so called experts of trade, making not only their ideas, but performance transparent as well. 

EdX: The Future of Online Education

EdX is a not-for-profit joint venture between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer online versions of their classes and those of other universities. At the same time, edX will support Harvard and MIT faculty in conducting research on teaching and learning on campus through tools that enrich classroom and laboratory experiences. The goal of this initiative is to create a global community of online learners while improving education for everyone. 

Link
 View high resolution
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Buy ‘Em?  When Zynga agreed to buy “Draw Something”, it was the hottest game on the mobile charts. It was the game that would bring OMGPOP to the limelight and hook millions of users instantly. With such a big fan following, Zynga decided to buy out OMGPOP for a cool $200 million. It seems Zynga has employed the clean buyout strategy whenever it sees a competing gaming mobile app move up the charts. However, since April, Draw Something has seen a steady decline of over 5 million users, bringing the once daily active user population from 15 million to 10 million. Speculations for the decline seem to elude that the barrage of ads from brands maybe a potential reason. Another maybe the sheer repetition of words, which have affected user interest levels. A similar example of this would be how the buzz around iPhone pictionary wore off awhile back.  Whatever the case, Zynga now holds the reigns to the game. One wonders if they could have bought OMGPOP for cheaper had they waited for the buzz to wear off. 

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Buy ‘Em? 

When Zynga agreed to buy “Draw Something”, it was the hottest game on the mobile charts. It was the game that would bring OMGPOP to the limelight and hook millions of users instantly. With such a big fan following, Zynga decided to buy out OMGPOP for a cool $200 million. It seems Zynga has employed the clean buyout strategy whenever it sees a competing gaming mobile app move up the charts.

However, since April, Draw Something has seen a steady decline of over 5 million users, bringing the once daily active user population from 15 million to 10 million. Speculations for the decline seem to elude that the barrage of ads from brands maybe a potential reason. Another maybe the sheer repetition of words, which have affected user interest levels. A similar example of this would be how the buzz around iPhone pictionary wore off awhile back. 

Whatever the case, Zynga now holds the reigns to the game. One wonders if they could have bought OMGPOP for cheaper had they waited for the buzz to wear off. 

Zuckerberg Stake Post IPO Greater than 10,000 Walmart Stores' Revenue

Zuckerberg has come a long way since his Harvard days of writing the source code for the largest social network in the world. Controlling over 1/8th of the world’s online experience, Zuckerberg sits tall as the CEO of the largest social network. Now Zuckerberg is part of an elite club that sits next to the president at the White House, discussing national strategies. 

While “The Social Network” portrays Zuckerberg as an awkward, lanky teenager who stole an idea, he is representative of one of the best execution artists. An idea is as good as its execution, and Zuckerberg had to battle Friendster, MySpace, Buddylists and social networks originating from similar Ivy League campuses. The Winklevosses had their own separate social network which never took off. Now imagine a world where Zuckerberg followed all the rules and collaborated with the Winklevosses. 800 Million Users? I think not. 

Link
 View high resolution
Reuters & Klout 50: The Most Influential Execs on the Web Reuters, along with Klout, have ranked the most popular web celebs, based on their popularity score, as measured by Klout. In top place is Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable, followed by Oprah, Branson, Cuban and Dorsey. Some noteworthy mentions are Kevin Rose of Milk Inc making the top 10, Torey Johnson of Women for Hire making the top 20 and Michelle Rhee of StudentsFirst making the top 50. Click on the image to view the complete list of web executives making a difference. 

Reuters & Klout 50: The Most Influential Execs on the Web

Reuters, along with Klout, have ranked the most popular web celebs, based on their popularity score, as measured by Klout. In top place is Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable, followed by Oprah, Branson, Cuban and Dorsey. Some noteworthy mentions are Kevin Rose of Milk Inc making the top 10, Torey Johnson of Women for Hire making the top 20 and Michelle Rhee of StudentsFirst making the top 50. Click on the image to view the complete list of web executives making a difference. 

Link
 View high resolution
Pinterest Usage Dips, Confidence Levels Need A Boost Named as the third most popular social network online, Pinterest has enjoyed increasing popularity, enjoying a 52% growth in the month of February. However, the new user growth this month has only been 5%. The monthly active usage in March fell by 150,000 users. This was followed by a 2.75 million active usage decline in April. Pinterest is treading cautiously, so as not be named as another social hype and wipe website. These numbers have been sourced using AppData, an analytics service that analyzes user activity via third party plugins, examples being Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest users typically use these plugins to sign up for their accounts. 

Pinterest Usage Dips, Confidence Levels Need A Boost

Named as the third most popular social network online, Pinterest has enjoyed increasing popularity, enjoying a 52% growth in the month of February. However, the new user growth this month has only been 5%. The monthly active usage in March fell by 150,000 users. This was followed by a 2.75 million active usage decline in April. Pinterest is treading cautiously, so as not be named as another social hype and wipe website. These numbers have been sourced using AppData, an analytics service that analyzes user activity via third party plugins, examples being Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest users typically use these plugins to sign up for their accounts. 

Is There a YCombinator Valuation Bubble or Not?

In 2011, Jon Bruner from Forbes had posed the same question with relation to the general industry and whether we were close to a tech bubble. His interview with Hiten Shah, CEO of Kissmetrics, led them to believe that there is no imminent danger that would warrant the birth of a bubble or, atleast, the bubble would not be the size of the 2001 one. They designed a very comprehensive infographic, detailing their research.

Circa 2012, Instagram was acquired; Facebook is on the brink of its IPO and tongues are wagging about Google acquiring Pinterest to counter the Facebook-Instagram acquisition. Y Combinator has fuelled the birth of many young and energetic startups, looking to reach the big leagues. Valuation caps per startup have increased in the 33%-100% range in the past year. In contrast to the industry valuation caps, the YC valuation caps have increased between 375%-500%. 

This led Jason Calacanis to ask the following questions again:

1. Is there a bubble?

2. Is there a YC bubble?

3. Are You Better off Investing in Two Non-YC Startups at 1/2 the Price?

The link provided mentions what he had to say.

25 Up-And-Coming Startup CEOs In New York

New York City is always pushing itself to compete with Silicon Valley in terms of launching competitive startups. Although New York City startups do not share the same prominence as that of the Googles and Facebooks, it is has young and up and coming entrepreneurs who share the same promise, with their raw energy levels and desire to persevere. 

Below is the list of CEOs, who represent the 25 hottest up and coming startups. To learn more about each CEO, please click on the title.

  1. Jason Goldberg, CEO of Fab
  2. Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs of Warby Parker
  3. Jake Schwartz, CEO of General Assembly
  4. Lily Liu, CEO of Public Stuff
  5. Matt Meeker, CEO of BarkBox
  6. Vinicius Vacanti, CEO of Yipit
  7. Perry Chen, CEO of Kickstarter
  8. Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot
  9. Neil Capel, CEO of SailThru
  10. Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed
  11. Wiley Cerilli, CEO of SinglePlatform
  12. Irving Fain, CEO of CrowdTwist
  13. Jason Baptiste, CEO of OnSwipe
  14. Chantel Waterbury, CEO of Chloe + Isabel
  15. Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media
  16. Philip James, CEO of Lot18
  17. Noah Brier, CEO of Percolate
  18. Nihal Mehta, CEO of LocalResponse
  19. Britta Riley, CEO of Windowfarms
  20. Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna, co-CEOs of Birchbox
  21. Jordy Leiser, CEO of StellaService
  22. Joe Essenfeld, CEO of Jibe
  23. John Laramie, CEO of AdStruc
  24. Jonathan Hefter, CEO of Neverware
  25. Aaron Schildkrout and Brian Schechter, co-CEOs of HowAboutWe

Loading posts...