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|  The problem with all of these people who are walking out the door at MySpace isn't so much the number of them, because MySpace is trying to replace them by hiring more people. It's the fact that the best people are leaving, and taking a lot of the knowledge base with them.
Three star senior employees left to go to cross-town startup Gravity, we reported earlier this week. And tonight we've heard that Jeff Webber, the engineering director that oversees the email, instant messaging and other "communications" platforms for MySpace, resigned earlier this week as well to join a startup. He's been at MySpace for nearly three years and was one of the star engineers and leaders, says one source.
Other recent departures - VP and General Manager of Mobile John Faith, SVP User Experience Katie Geminder and most of her team. And of course CEO Owen Van Natta. And lots more as well, only a few of which we've reported.
 | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:32:29 GMT |
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| | Jaclyn Konzellman's been hard at work. Most people would consider fourth-year Mechanical Engineering hard enough, especially if it was under the auspices of as competitive an institution as the University of Waterloo, but in-between work and university life she's managed to squeeze in a little bit [...] | | Prashanth Gopalan - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:48:39 GMT |
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| | Mitch Joel, journalist, publicist, president of Twist Image - a digital marketing agency - and author of the book Six Pixels of Separation, elaborates on the need for marketers to embrace the paradigm-shift afforded by social media tools.
Mitch contends that marketing will never be the [...] | | Prashanth Gopalan - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:59:29 GMT |
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|  How many e-book readers do you think are out there right now for you to choose from? If you did a little digging, I bet you'd find 50 or so. Maybe 10 really worth checking out. But right now is a bit of a weird period in e-reader history. The Kindle cemented e-readers in the consumer headspace, catapulting them from weirdo alternative technology to mainstream gadget. That's what the iPad threatens to do with tablets — we'll see about that. But the Kindle and the iPad are two important forces in the current e-reader wars; the question, upon the answer of which depends the success of many a device, is whether "bonus" features like second screens and weird form factors in e-readers will be enough to differentiate them from the high-profile devices pressing them on both flanks?
See, the vast majority of e-readers were designed as a response to the Kindle, not to tablet computers, which may or may not obsolete e-readers altogether. It's a bad situation: the whole time you're improving your competitor's product, someone else is skipping your entire device class on the grounds that it will be made ridiculous by their awesome gadget. Some of the special features developed to combat the Kindle will stay, and some won't live to see their own first birthday. | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:47:44 GMT |
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| Angels have been in the air lately—especially around the Northwest. Last month, Atlas Accelerator hosted what might have been the largest-ever gathering of active angel investors in Seattle, at its first investor open house. Wings, a new angel group to invest in medical devices and software, has gotten started. Last week, there were prominent [...]
 | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:47:29 GMT |
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|  Ever wanted to tell the world how much you love BMW, Coca-Cola, and any of the other biggest brand names on Earth? Here's your chance: MyBrandz is a new community site that looks to let people talk about their favorite brands with other users, allowing them to share their favorite products, photos, and more. You may remember MyBrandz as the company that convinced a guy to tattoo the YouTube logo to his arm a few months back.
My initial reaction to the site was that it was a bit bizarre - is there really an audience of people who want to talk about how much they love these multibillion dollar corporations (many of which couldn't give a hoot about their customers)? And then I remembered the throngs of die-hard Apple fans that police internet forums, and the Ferrari store in downtown San Francisco that sells $200+ leather jackets emblazoned with the classic logo.  | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:50:34 GMT |
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| | On March 22nd, the Canada Trade Commissioner Service is hosting the first of a new speaker series called Insights from the Silicon Valley in Vancouver. In their inaugural presentation, Clint Chao of Formative Ventures will talk about Building Revenue and Market Mindshare from the Ground [...] | | Rob Lewis - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:16:31 GMT |
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| | What is Chevrolet doing at South by Southwest (#sxsw)? They're not showing off their new 2020 concept cars. The music, film and interactive conference in Austin, Texas will be introduced to three emerging technologies that Chevrolet is looking to promote and test: location-based [...] | | Karim Kanji - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:42:28 GMT |
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| | Thanks to the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's recent Budget announcement on Section 116, this year's CVCA Annual Conference in Ottawa on May 26-28th should have a celebratory feel to it. And no doubt Conference headliner Rick Mercer will have plenty of new material ready for the audience after [...] | | Rob Lewis - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:32:17 GMT |
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Mobile social networks have tremendous potential to flourish in developing countries where mobile phone usage trumps internet connectivity. SMS based social networks like SMSGupshup have gained considerable traction in Asia because of this. For example, in India, there is currently a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio. Mig33, a mobile social network that involves VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, and picture sharing, has accumulated 35 million registered users of its service and is growing fast in South Asian markets such as Indonesia and India. Assuming 3 to 10 percent are active on a monthly basis, that would be 1 million to 3.5 million active users.
Mig33's users are now sending over 1 million virtual gifts a month, and posting approximately 100 million messages a day on its network, or 1,000 messages every second. Twitter, in comparison, just passed 50 million a day.  | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:02:26 GMT |
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| There’s a billion-dollar-a-year research operation in the middle of Washington state, with 4,600 staff, working on some of the biggest energy challenges in the world. Yet very few of the locals know a thing about it. And while it hasn’t solved the world’s energy woes, people should start counting on breakthroughs to emerge from there, [...]
 | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:30:20 GMT |
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| For the past year, AllSeniorHomes.com co-founder Chris Rodde said he's been operating the business in "super bootstrap mode" with a small staff, bare bones office space and a tiny amount of angel financing. And while the bootstrap mentality will continue, Rodde has attracted a bit of a financial cushion as AllSeniorHomes looks to expand its business nationwide. | | - Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:56:12 GMT |
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