Author Archive
German most influential tech blog on auction on Ebay
Posted by: | CommentsRobert Basic, owner of the most influential tech blog in Germany called Basic Thinking, decided to start something new from scratch and to sell his blog on Ebay. As he wrote on his blog, Basic Thinking generated around 37 000 Euro annual income. Current auction price on Ebay has reached around 24 000 Euro.
Germany is big and important Web market, and in my opinion, having a blog named to be as “the most influential German tech blog”, or to be classified like “German Techcrunch” deserves much better price from that, especially with that annual income.
My opinion is that influential blogs are worth much more and with blogs, not everything is counted by pure math – like how much income it generates. In many cases, a certain blog is much more valued because of the influence it has
Crunchies finalists, runner-ups and winners announced
Posted by: | CommentsThe Crunchies, a TechCrunch 2nd annual show where Silicon Valley opinion makers, startups, investors and everyone else involved and interested in Web 2.0 gathered, in the sold-out ceremenony, in front of 900 people spotlighted best people, companies and services in their opinion for 2008.
I will include here only winners (because winners take all 
):
Best Application – Google Reader
Best Technology Innovation/Achievement – Facebook Connect
Best Design – Cooliris
Best Bootstrapped Starup – GitHub
Most Likely To Make The World A Better Place – GoodGuide
Best Enterprise Startup – Amazon Web Services
Best International Startup – eBuddy
Best Clean Tech Startup – Project Frog
Best New Gadget/Device – iPhone 3G
Best Mobile Startup – Evernote
Best Mobile Application – Imeem Mobile
Best Startup Founder – Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone (Twitter)
Best Startup CEO – Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Best Overall Startup In 2008 – Facebook
10 tips for successful communication with editors
Posted by: | CommentsIf your work involve (online) PR you communicate quite often with editors of web sites and magazines of your interest. Here are some tips that can be of help.
1. Don’t send immeditely you see some new section/site about your/your client industry. Find some time and read what kind of articles they publish, how they are written to see if they use more formal or funky style in writing, how long are the articles etc.
2. Go to the meeting with the editor. Many people never find time to see the editor of the certain site/magazine. They think it is enough to send a press release and content-hungry editors will publish it if they like it. Internet is great but don’t avoid face2face meetings.
3. Don’t send the same press release to everyone. Try to identify your most important media partners and adjust your press release and content of your email to them. It is not enough just to change the name of the recipient when you write Dear, [editorname]. Everyone likes to see that they are important, and also not many editors like to publish the same content like dozen of other media.
4. Don’t bold keywords and sentences in your press release. Editors are smart enough to know what is important and what is not so imporatnt.
5. Send objective news and not over-hyped press releases. Usually editors don’t want to publish over-hyped press release because they will sound as a free ad and not informative news and they won’t bother to adjust your press release.
6. Proofread your press releases.
7. Give a proper Subject name for your emails. Many people send press releases with blank Subject line or with the Subject line: For immediate release
8. Send your press release in the body of email and as an attachment. Because many editors won’t publish it immediatelly and they want to save the file somewhere, but some other editors don’t like getting attachments. Also, some local letters can be shown in error if sent in email because of recipient email client’s settings.
9. Don’t be pain in the ass. Once you sent the news don’t call every day and ask when it will be published. It is good to know what is the standard schedule for publishing and if you see that it passed too long since they got your email (in case of web sites several days) you can call them.
10. Give some benefit to journalists. Some exclusive information, product review or taking them to your company travel/conference or sponsoring their trip that can be later used in their articles is usually a nice thing to do. They will appreciate it.
Conferences about Internet business in SEE and CEE region
Posted by: | CommentsIt seems that Autumn, especially October is the favorite month for conference organizers. Here I compiled some conferences that can be interesting for you if you are interested in regions of SEE and CEE.
Sorted based on dates
Internet Hungaria – premier conference about Internet business in Hungary, held at the Balaton, in place called Tihany – October 14th and 15th
Internet CEE – premier conference focused on CEE region, the first conference was organized in November 2007. Place and date of this year’s conference is Warsaw, Poland, October 28th and 29th
TMT Ventures ‘08 Zagreb – a New Europe Event, about Venture Capital industry, this time held in Zagreb, Croatia – October 28th
BizzBuzz – 3rd conference about Internet business, which is held in city in southeast Serbia called Nis, theme for this year is Content management on the Web – October 29th-31th
JavaSvet – conference about Java technology, held in Belgrade, Serbia – October 29th and 30th
View from the virtual world – conference organized by well-known PR agency in Serbia McCann Ericksson PR, held in Belgrade – November 1st
WebStrategija – 3rd conference called WebStrategija is held in Zagreb, Croatia, topic of this year’s conference is SEO – November 6th
Edgios P2P search engine has been launched
Posted by: | CommentsEdgios is a search engine based on a P2P model which means it is highly dependent on the user base. It is a new search engine, and they are focused on making the initial community who will test the search engine so if you would like to see how P2P search engine works you can visit www.edgios.com and get information how you can start using it. Basically, model works like standard P2P network model, so you download and install Edgios software on your computer and the aim of that software is to monitor your Internet activity and based on that activity search engine will show results to its users.
Making a good search engine is very risky but can be also very lucrative business if projects become popular. Many companies want to make a Google killer or at least very good alternative search engine to the highly popular Google search engine. Definitely, the thing is that everyone knows that there is a lot of additional possibilities how search engine results and user satisfaction with the search results can be better and because many companies wants to make “the next big thing”. We will see who will succeed in that competition.
It is interesting to say that one of the premier VC companies DFJ (invested in Hotmail, Skype and other very successful ventures) invested in Edgios and also development team of the project is also based in Serbia.