Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report from last month takes a big turn from previous reports - the focus is nearly 100% on social applications and how they are taking over the Internet.
The Echo Nest develops music search, personalization and interactive applications based on their Musical Brain technology. The Musical Brain automatically reads about music and listens to music everywhere on the web. Their API allow you to upload any song and receive an XML ‘musical score’ detailing tempo, beats, time signature, song sections, timbre, key, and other musical attributes.
Their application This is My Jam allows you to search for artists and reate beat-matched micro-mixes of your favorite songs to share on blogs and social networks. Imagine the possibilities.
Try it: http://www.thisismyjam.com/
FOWA Miami,
originally uploaded by hyku.
Fowa Miami was an amazing event. I met some very cool people including Digg founder Kevin Rose, Flickr engineering lead Cal Henderson, Pownce founder Leah Culver, Twitter architect Blaine Cook, Google evangelist Kevin Marks, Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg, RTM founder Emily Boyd… the list goes on. Right now I’m testing the ‘blog this photo’ feature on Flickr, to post to my Wordpress blog (that will also show up on my Twitter account). I’ll blog some more about the event soon. There’s lots to report.
The last couple of days I’ve been in Palm Dessert California at the Demo 08 - the start-up launch conference. This is my first time at Demo and it won’t be the last. The mix of new companies and solutions is a fantastic barometer of the industry.
Join us on January 22nd, from 8 to 10am at the State Street Financial Center in Boston for an exciting event: Seeding your Web 2.0 Start-up. Click here to register
Web 2.0 startups are fast becoming an integral part of every company’s online strategy. Web 2.0 products, which include those facilitating user participation, podcasting, social networking and blogging, have become integrated into all aspects of business. This allows a continual interaction between brands and consumers, companies and clients.
Many of these web-based startups require smaller levels of capital. VCs, who previously may not have funded any companies for less than $3M, want to be involved. For example, larger cap firms are offering seed investments such as “Quick Start” loans for $250K and programs for entrepreneurs coming out of college offering $7.5K to $15K grants. The benefits of getting even small amounts of VC money are huge. It allows startup companies to recruit top-level talent while raising money for future rounds of funding.
Seed money IS coming into New England and IS going toward web 2.0 and emerging technology companies. Find out how to get your piece of this pie.
About the MITX/K&L Gates Legal Series
The MITX/K&L Gates Legal Series covers legal issues related to the interactive and technology industries. Over the course of 2007, this series will address important aspects of employment law, on line marketing and Intellectual Property.
K&L Gates, State Street Financial Ctr, One Lincoln Street, Boston
In October Larry Webber did a book signing at Digitas. I found it very impressive, the topic being marketing to the social web, he didn’t have a PowerPoint presentation, didn’t show any Web sites, it was a conversation. Then I think of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth slides or Dick Hardt’s Infamous Identity 2.0 presentation and ask “How do we get away from all the slides?” Its difficult in consulting because the deck becomes a record of the deliverable - its the reference to look back on, and it serves as content for those that couldn’t attend. This presentation suggests you create a document with all the details and the PowerPoint remain a visual aid. Everyone should check out this brilliant presentation on Slideshare, “Death by PowerPoint.”
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Meebo CEO and co-founder Seth Sternberg said, “If Google is a search site, and YouTube is a video site, and MySpace is where you leave messages for people, we want to be the site where people interact live.”
Twitter Poster is an interesting project that uses the Twitter API to provide a visual representation of the degree of influence of the Twitter users. The poster is constructed of thumbnail images from user profiles in 3 sizes (24 x 24 pixels, 48 x 48 pixels and 72 x 72 pixels). The image are arranged by the number of followers the user has, from most to least starting on the left.
This is an interesting composite application that can provide some interesting insight into the Twitter community and influencers in the social media realm. I’d like the hear what other think of Twitter Poster.
An early pioneer in interactive media, Dean Whitney is a Web 2.0 and Social media technology evangelist. Start-up veteran, President of Garfield Group Interactive a Boston-based digital agency.
