Bid for London office space and ghosts on eBay
There have been some very odd things sold via eBay - it really is a website that seems to create demand for everything. Even 'a ghost in a jar' managed to find an owner, who spent more than $15,000 to acquire the bona fide gift of somebody else's lifetime, and a jar.
Seriously, you can use eBay to sell anything. A ball of aluminium foil sold for $3.10. A videotape with 'Death Tape: Do Not Watch' written on it sold for $18. Take a blowtorch to some cheese on toast and you can make a million...
AIM preferred to Nasdaq on SOX concerns
Is London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) the new Nasdaq? This is the question being asked in the US by VC’s such as Charley Lax, of GrandBanks Capital.
The figures speak for themselves. Last year some 519 companies sought a listing on AIM, while there were just 45 IPOs on the Nasdaq.
Why is this happening? The Nasdaq is a larger market, so wouldn’t that be a better place for many VC-backed US companies?
Using Web 2.0 to harness innovation in your organisation
Web 2.0 means different things to different people, yet it isn't just about the web, but is also about how your organisation works. Think intranet, as well as internet. Does your organisation work in a 2.0 way?
At the moment there seems to be three primary focuses around Web 2.0:
1) there are the technologists who are figuring out new technologies (there are many libraries and frameworks out there already).
2) there are the marketers and entrepreneurs, who are trying to figure out how use new 2.0 technologies and principles to generate profits, or help empower consumers (call them business people for now) in some way.
3) and finally, there are the users, who are increasingly using and enjoying the results of these new technologies.
But how does all that filter into your organisation in a useful way, feeding into your own innovation cycle?
Is Fjax the best use of Flash ever?
When the big tech brands like Amazon start using Ajax to improve their user interface you know the tipping point has been reached. So how long will it be before the great and good embrace Fjax, aka ‘Ajax 2.0’?
MetaWeather aims to build a better forecast
Have you ever checked the weather online, only to find competing forecasts from different sites? Did Michael Fish's 1987 reassurance that a hurricane was
not
on the way leave you with a mistrust of meteorologists? If so, MetaWeather may be worth a shot.
Developed by two producers at British games content agency Ferrago, the site combines forecast data from multiple sources to round up the predictions to an average - and supposedly more trustworthy - outlook.
London marketing students launch 1000wordpage.com
After the success of Alex Tew’s MillionDollarHomepage we’ve seen innumerable clones and a smattering of twists-on-a-theme. Now, we’ve spotted a new site that is gathering online and offline buzz. It allows you to buy one word as a link to your website, for a period of five years.
So how does it work, and will it work?
Using Digg for web PR is dangerous
There's an interesting piece of advice from Steve Rubel on using sites like Digg for PR . In short, don't!Wetpaint social wiki’s launch - user generated content silver bullet?
Wetpaint is something that I came across a while ago when researching Wiki’s and the effect they’re having on knowledge in the enterprise, and as a subset of social software as a whole.
To be honest I was both really interested but also quite concerned about their business model. They seemed to be long on innovation, but short on long term sustainability. That said, they are working with VC so perhaps someone holding the purse strings knows more than I do!
Web 2.0 startups in the UK – questions to consider
There’s a pretty great post on Particletree about the kind of questions VCs ask when you’re doing a startup, so I thought I’d highlight them here as there seems to be a profound lack of 'noisy' UK-based Web 2.0 startups, and maybe finding finance is one barrier for entrepreneurs?
Where are all the UK web startups? Maybe everybody is just being very quiet (to fail in complete obscurity), or perhaps things are as dead as they seem to be (more than likely). The UK seems almost entirely barren compared with what's happening in the US.
It’s probably worth noting that local VCs seem to be a little behind their US conterparts (two local startups that I can think of off the top of my head have been approached by US investors – names of the innocent withheld). This too could be part of the problem.
Web 2.0 and customer relationships
Web 2.0 isn’t all about rounded corners and social software – there are real benefits to leveraging the Web 2.0 philosophy and technologies in business, but the key is selecting the right entry points to start conversations with your customers, and then to grow from there, using the community you’ve developed as your sounding board.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
