Category: Web 2.0

61 Interviews with Founders of Web 2.0 Websites

Want to know some of the secrets which make a great web 2.0 startup? Well why not learn from the founders of the most well known web 2.0 companies. Below is a collection of 61 interviews

Alex Giron, founder CSSBeauty
Alexander Kirk, founder of Blummy
Amy Bohutinsky, of Zillow
Benjamin Bejbaum, founder of Dailymontion
Bill O’Donnell, founder of Kayak
Chris Hughes, founder of Facebook
Christoph Janz, of Pageflakes
Christopher Janz, founder of Pageflakes interviewed by SEOmoz
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist interviewed by Netsquared
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist interviewed by SEOmoz
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist interviewed by SFgate
Dave Pell, founder of Rollyo
Dave Pell, founder of Rollyo interviewed by Technosight
David Sifry, founder of Technorati
David Sifry, founder of Technorati interviewed by SEOmoz
Eric Costello, Client Development Lead for Flickr
Eric Rodenbeck, Mike Migurski and Tomas Apodaca, founders of Mappr interviewed by Emily Chang
Garret Heaton, founder of HipCal interviewed by SEOmoz
Garrett Camp, Co-founder of StumbleUpon interviewed by Centernetworks
Garrett Camp, Co-founder of StumbleUpon interviewed by ReadWriteWeb
Geoffrey Arone, co-founder of Flock interviewed by ZDnet
Jacob DeHart, founder of Threadless interviewed by Folksonomy
Jason Fried, founder 37signals interviewed by Web20show
Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Creative Director of Threadless interviewed by Juxaviews
Jen Mazzon, founder of Writely interviewed by SEOmoz
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia interviewed by SearchEngineLand
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia interviewed by Goodexperience
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia interviewed by Wikinews
Joshua Schachter, founder of Del.icio.us interviewed by Rands In Repose
Joshua Schachter, founder of Del.icio.us interviewed by ZDnet
Justin LaFrance, founder of StumbleUpon interviewed by SEOmoz
Kevin Burton, founder of Tailrank interviewed by Emily Chang
Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, founders of Digg interviewed by Talkcrunch
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg interviewed by Philoneist
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg interviewed by Playlistmag
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg interviewed by ZDnet – part 1
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg interviewed by ZDnet – part 2
Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn interviewed by Sleepyblogger
Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn interviewed by SEOmoz
Mark Fletcher, founder of Bloglines interviewed by Bloxpert
Mark Fletcher, founder of Bloglines interviewed by Searchviews
Martin Stiksel, founder of Last.fm interviewed by SEOmoz
Mike Davidson, founder of NewsVine interviewed by SEOmoz
Mike Reining, Co-founder of BlinkList interviewed by Emily Chang
Mike Tatum, founder of Wayfaring interviewed by SEOmoz
Nick Wilson, Co-founder Performancing interviewed by Centernetworks
Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable interviewed by Netsquared
Robert Kalin, founder of Etsy interviewed by SEOmoz
Ron Hornbaker, founder of Propsmart interviewed by SEOmoz
Sam Shillace, founder of Writely interviewed by Emily Chang
Seth Godin, founder of Squidoo interviewed by Emily Chang
Seth Sternberg, founder of Meebo interviewed by SEOmoz
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, founders of Reddit interviewed by Talkcrunch
Tariq Krim and Florent Fremont, founders of Netvibes interviewed by Emily Chang
Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media interviewed by ReadWriteWeb – Part 1
Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media interviewed by ReadWriteWeb – Part 2
Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media interviewed by ReadWriteWeb – Part 3
Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, founders of Myspace interviews by Spiegel
Various Web 2.0 founders interviewed by Michael Arrington

Say hello to Web Analytics 2.0

Its true, its been over a week since I was last excited by a web post. Unplugging from the Matrix has been great and so has
the bright sunshine in London. Anyhow, Web Analytics is becoming increasingly important on tracking how your site, blog, or online marketing campaign is going.

Our friends over at Google, offer some free cool analytics though a little limited. So imagine, my surprise when I came across http://getclicky.com

Clicky is available for FREE to all users with sites that average less than 1,000 page views per day. They also have a premium service that is required for sites with higher traffic levels, but, they also give you access to a few cool features such as RSS and Spy. When you first register, you get a free two week trial of premium, after which you are downgraded to the free plan if you have not paid the price of just $14.99/year. You can upgrade to premium at any time, before or after your trial ends. Simply go to this page to sign up.

Very Nice..

Online ad spending had a healthy growth in 2006

Online ad spending in the U.S. grew 34 percent in 2006, compared with 2005, as marketers continued expanding their use of the Internet to promote their products and services, according to a new study. With an estimated $16.8 billion spent, the U.S. is a “healthy environment” for online advertising, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said Wednesday.

Convinced that Internet advertising’s effectiveness continues to improve, U.S. companies are steadily increasing their online marketing budgets, the organizations said. Ad spending grew an estimated 32 percent in the fourth quarter to $4.8 billion, the highest quarterly total ever. With another year of solid growth, the U.S. online advertising market distances itself more from the difficult years that followed the dot-com bust, when spending money for online marketing was somewhat discredited.

After peaking at $8.2 billion in 2000, U.S. online ad spending fell in 2001 and 2002 but began regaining lost ground in 2003 as the once-disgraced Internet industry showed its first signs of recovery and the start of the Web 2.0 era.
In 2004, with the emergence of Google as a search engine and advertising powerhouse, online marketing increased its momentum. That year, the market finally broke the 2000 record, ending with $9.6 billion in online ad spending, and Google’s IPO became further proof of the Internet industry’s rebound.

By growing every year since 2003, online ad spending has played a major part in fueling a new wave of technical innovation and venture capital investment in the Internet market. A particularly vibrant segment has been search engine pay-per-click ads, the format that generates most of Google’s rising revenue. IAB and PwC reached their estimates from data they collected from the top 15 online ad sellers in the U.S. The organizations will report actual results for the third and fourth quarters of 2006 next month.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070307/tc_infoworld/86628

Online Ad Spending to Total $19.5 Billion in 2007
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004635

Here’s how to improve your Google web site rankings!

Sssssshhh! Can you keep a secret?

Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl lays out 5 simple steps for finding the keywords that can make or break an online business. Keyword research is fundamental to starting and growing an online business according to Derek Gehl, CEO of the Internet Marketing Center

“Keyword application goes way beyond search engine optimization,” Gehl says. “It’s also critical to finding viable niche markets and researching new products. Yet it’s an area that many of my customers have questions about.”

To address these questions, Gehl has released a report that breaks the process down into five easy-to-follow steps:

Step 1: Create a list of 200 to 300 keywords. “It’s essential to think like a customer in this step,” Gehl says. “What words would you plug into the search engine to find something you don’t know a lot about?”

Step 2: Perform a “competition search” in Wordtracker. Wordtracker is an Internet marketing research tool that shows you exactly how many people are searching for a keyword compared to how many sites are already ranking under it.

Step 3: Size up the competition in the search engines. “Find out whether the sites ranking under these keywords really are competition,” says Gehl. “Are they selling competing products? Do they look professional?”

Step 4: Use pay-per-click ads to test the best keywords. Pay-per-click advertising gives online marketers a quick method for testing which keywords attract the most traffic and which convert best into sales.

Step 5: Include the top-performing keywords in website “hotspots.” Gehl recommends that his clients put their top-performing keywords in key areas on their website, including “title” tags, headlines, and in the first and last paragraphs of text. “The keywords in these areas are given more weight by the search engines when deciding how to rank a site,” Gehl says.

The full report on how to use Internet marketing research tools to find viable keywords is available at http://www.MarketingTips.com/newsletters.

Web 2.0 – A lucid explanation

What is Web 2.0? This is the question many are asking. So let’s answer it.

Web 2.0 concerns four different paradigms converging:

1. Community. This is the most obvious one. Community is basically interaction between members, between websites, and between the website admins and its members. The best example is Wikipedia: no one claims copyright control over it, and so we are breaking the traditional authorship rights. When we contribute to Wikipedia, anyone can read our contribution, anyone can copy it, anyone can edit, and dang it, anyone can delete it. This is very new.

The other new thing is voting. Now we have popularity contests of our contributions. Digg.com becoming the ultimate voting system. If you think hard, you can also convince yourself that, Google’s PageRank system is essentially an algorithm that measures social popularity (link = vote).

2. Technology. XML, AJAX, RSS, APIs and other BLAH! I’m not going to bore you with the in depth technology. However, take this away. The technologies mentioned above and more importantly, allow a standard agreed method for websites, blogs, My Space, YouTube to work. This, in my opinion is the biggest “technological” breakthrough.

3. Architecture. This is best described by the Cluetrain Manifesto as:

Quote:
The Web has become the new corporate infrastructure, in the form of intranets, turning massive corporate hierarchical systems into collections of many small pieces loosely joining themselves unpredictably.

4. Look. Every movement has a look: the 80s, 90s and now Web 2.0. Long gone are square boxes with plain boring color. No man, bring on bright, vibrant colours. Give me some jive. Don’t be square. Lively and fresh is what we are. Why be something else? And yes, white space is the new “black”

So this is Web 2.0 in a nutshell. Web 2.5 is in beta now and will be released shortly.

25 Startups to watch for in 2007

Business 2.0 magazine has listed 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch for in 2007

1. www.stumbleupon.com [Social Media]
2. www.slide.com [Social Media]
3. www.bebo.com [Social Media]
4. www.meebo.com [Social Media]
5. www.wikia.com [Social Media]
6. www.joost.com [Video]
7. www.dabble.com [Video] (Using a weird “loser” logo??
8. www.metacafe.com [Video]
9. www.revision3.com [Video]
10. www.blip.tv [Video]
11. www.fon.com [Mobile]
12. www.loopt.com [Mobile]
13. www.getmobio.com [Mobile]
14. www.tinypictures.us [Mobile]
15. www.soonr.com [Mobile]
16. www.turn.com [Advertising]
17. www.adify.com [Advertising]
18. www.admob.com [Advertising]
19. www.spotrunner.com [Advertising]
20. www.vitrue.com [Advertising]
21. www.successfactors.com [Enterprise]
22. www.janrain.com [Enterprise]
23. www.logoworks.com [Enterprise]
24. www.reardencommerce.com [Enterprise]
25. www.simulscribe.com [Enterprise]

Startupping.com launches

Startupping is a one-of-a-kind community resource created for Internet entrepreneurs by Internet entrepreneurs. It is a place to share information, ask questions, and tap into the experience of others who have built and are building web businesses. Read blog posts about startup issues and participate in discussion forums.