Bloggers Go Biserk…
Stowe has a classic summary of the now legendary LesBlogs incident in which one of the Bloggerati lectures a packed hall of bloggers on the need for civility – while this is going on a couple of bloggers are IMing away – the content of which is being projected on the screen behind the speaker. Finally, one member of the IMers comments that the speech is bullshit. To which the speaker calls the individual to account and suggests he is an asshole. So much for civility. Classic!
I’m feeling so warm and civil I could melt… Actually, in all seriousness, we really do need to stop taking ourselves so seriously.
This is so packed full of irony it’s just too funny. The fact you would have something called a “backchannel” projected onto the screen behind a speaker is just too much. Backchannel? Sounds like self-inflicted interference.
Squidoo
The Squidoo Beta is up and running – probably has been for yonks – but I just saw it today. It’s pretty cool. Unfiltered, it seems to be like well moderated zones in which a “lensmaster” throws light on a particular topic.
This could have a pretty neat application inside large enterprises that are interested in non-heirachical communications. Where, say, an evangelist can drive a dialogue and throw light on a topic.
Here are couple of my fave lenses:
Mediasite
If you are looking to hear Jack Welch or Michael Dell, drop by Mediasite. Stowe wasn’t too keen on it. The problem with receiving so many of these pitches is that their very presence turns you off the content and product.
Less Venture Capital
Good read from Clarence Wooten via the 37 Signals blog:
The average venture capital fund size currently stands at $280 million, which presents a problem for VCs focused on investing in early-stage software companies. Generally speaking, the larger the fund, the more money it must invest on a deal-by-deal basis in order to justify the time commitment by the fund. But significant venture funding is not what today’s capital-efficient, Web 2.0 startups need—especially those that leverage the LAMP -stack, open-source frameworks and blog-fueled promotion. The old style of venture capital just doesn’t work for the type of company generally seen profiled on TechCrunch.He goes on to say…
Instead of VCs changing their model to invest smaller amounts, we are seeing an increase in Series A valuations. It’s not that startups have suddenly becoming more valuable, it’s that funds need to deploy larger amounts of capital. Considering the movement towards less capital and competition by the likes of Google, VC’s are increasing the valuations of young companies. The valuation increase enables the fund to deploy enough capital to make the investment worth their time.But…
The problem is that increased capital is always accompanied by expectations of increased return, which translates to increased time to liquidity and increased market risk. Unfortunately for the entrepreneur, additional capital seldom equals additional return. If the company is going to be sold, the acquisition price has to be significantly higher than it would be had the entrepreneur taken less venture capital to begin with. If it isn’t significantly higher, the entrepreneur stands to lose out on all or a substantial portion of their return. As many experienced during the bubble, this outcome was the norm, not the exception.
Growing Pains @ Wikipedia
C/Net reports on growing pains at Wikipedia. This was inevitible.
To critics of Wikipedia–which, in a spin on the open-source model, lets anyone create and edit entries–the news was further proof that the service has no accountability and no place in the world of serious information gathering.“Wales, in a recent C-SPAN interview…insisted that his Web site is accountable and that his community of thousands of volunteer editors…corrects mistakes within minutes,” former Robert Kennedy aide John Seigenthaler wrote in USA Today. “My experience refutes that…For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin.
