Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 12/08/2008
I'm sure a lot of people have been noticing the outage [1]. It's been long enough for me to shop this gem. [1] http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/systemwide-gmail-outage/
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 02/08/2008
As often happens in the valley, people switch jobs. Speaking from experience, people around here have a certain sense of innovation ADD. After you stay at a job for a while, there's just a depreciating return in experience for every additional month you continue. So, it's no great surprise that one of the valley's Jet setters, Adriana Gascoigne, has moved into a new position. Adriana has switched Ogilvy...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 26/06/2008
It looks like Top Friends is completely wiped from the FB app directory. I can't even access it through the the original app link, nor find it in searches. TechCrunch [1] and InsideFacebook [2] are reporting the same. It looks like this wasn't planned by Slide either, considering the promo for Top Friends on their site forwards to Human Pets. Normal downtime is also usually accompanied by a note from...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 24/06/2008
Consider this a public service announcement for bloggers and public relations professionals. The A-List bloggers are the A-List for a reason. I hold TechCrunch [1], Venturebeat [2], GigaOm [3], and ReadWriteWeb [4] in that category. They work hard, write well, and respect the relationship between themselves and the companies they cover. I can't say the same for some of the others. But, after only four...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 24/06/2008
Advertising in social networks is challenging. Social networks have created highly engaging and sticky sites for their users to meet and play with friends. As a consequence, users are often more interested in each other than the advertisements. Much has been written about Facebook and MySpace's own difficulty in making ads appealing to their users. Venturebeat has its own take [1]. But what if you...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 19/06/2008
As Jason wrote about [1] over on TechCrunch, SocialMedia has paid out over $8 million to developers on social networks. It's a good sign, and I hope it will get people thinking twice about "childish" or "pointless" applications and realize that at least these earnings are a proxy for the enjoyment people are getting out of social applications. I also think it's important to note that this money was...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 17/06/2008
My Skype Status button isn't working, so just Skype Nick.Gonzalez around that time if you want to chat.
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 13/06/2008
So, Google Friend Connect went live on Orli Yankul’s blog recently ( link ). Like I’ve said on SocialMedia’s blog, I think it’s an important trend to watch. Applications on webpages will be distinctly different from apps on social networks. On social networks it’s like you’re setting up shop in a mall. All the plumbing is there and foot traffic is nearby, people just need something interesting to...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 05/06/2008
As I've noted before, I'm working with Dave McClure on a series of high value meetups targeted at venture capitalists, and novice and experienced entrepreneurs. The events feature a presentation from top talent with moderated discussions at each table. The first event was in Palo Alto and featured a talk on speed [1] by Mike Cassidy. Venturebeat has some great coverage [2] of the event. Mike Cassidy...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 31/05/2008
Twitter's negative press has got to be the envy of every other startup. Every complaint over downtime or downright incompetence just shows how vital the startup is for the services most vocal users. Now Ustream just posted [1] an online petition to make the service even more transparent than live blogging their recovery. Lets just hope they have more luck than Zooomr's experiment [2] in live coverage....
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 30/05/2008
In my mind Yahoo is missing a huge opportunity to wield influence over the blogosphere. Yahoo's front page generates hundreds of thousands of clicks a second. When Buzz was on the front page, it would push some of those clicks off to third party sites that earned their way to the top. Now it sounds like a brilliant way to suck traffic from Yahoo and push on to blogs, but that's because Yahoo doesn't...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 29/05/2008
Conferences are a great place to do business development or get a high level introduction. This works for essentially two groups of people: hallway networkers, and new comers. Anyone looking to take home some real action items is left out. That's why I've gotten involved in two new conferences: Social Media Business School [1] and Startup2Startup [2]. Instead of multi-day mega-conferences, these two...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 23/05/2008
I just tried to message a friend and even look at his profile when I was greeted with two errors: an inability to message, and a complete meltdown of CSS on their page.
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 22/05/2008
Facebook previewed their new design recently, featuring a new feed interface and tabbed pages. It's all looking strikingly more like a portal start page I imagined before. The app page has essentially become a version of Netvibes within Facebook. Users can add/remove applications to a separate page in the same way Netvibes adds widgets (in fact you could add Facebook to Netvibes). There are minor...
Running With Foxes (Free subscription) | 22/05/2008
Co-Founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanion is not only hilarious, he's charitable. For the second time, he's auctioning off a laptop for charity (link [1]). This time it's an OLPC XO laptop (last time [2] it was their Reddit laptops for curing cancer). The XO laptop (pictured) is up for auction on eBay [3] and is signed by notable attendees of ROFLcon (Tron guy, Xkcd, etc., list here [4]). It expires on...
