Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Weekly Sparkpr Missive Week Ending March 26, 2010

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on March 29, 2010
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What Tongues are Wagging About

  • The Times and Sunday Times newspapers will start charging to access their websites in June, owner News International has announced.
  • Workers at Internet NOCs around the world are trying to figure out why traffic to sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook was redirected to servers in China this week, giving Web surfers around the globe a glimpse of what Chinese Internet users see when they try to access those blocked sites
  • Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.
  • Line2 iPhone app could be even more disruptive than Skype, but did Apple pull it down?
  • Hunch’s new Twitter Predictor is fairly accurate – go to Hunch, share your twitter handle and based on whom you follow and your followers, it will predict your answers to myriad questions.

Events:

  • CTIA
    • Lots of excitement for the HDC EVO, Skype on Verizon and Opera Mini submitting their browser to the Apple App Store
    • The conversation is starting to shift to 4G networks, just as 3G networks have taken hold in the US
    • Apps were a major focus for the first time, even gaining a section in the North Hall dedicated to major app publishers including client GetJar
    • New devices by HTC and Samsung based on Android generating a lot of excitement
    • Augmented Reality apps like Layar got a lot of attention as well
    • Mobile data revenues continue to spike and smartphone growth as well as proliferation of all-you-can-eat data plans are clearing the path for continued growth
    • The closing keynote was a strange mix of speakers onstage:  James Cameron/Avatar director, Biz Stone/Twitter co-founder, and U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy CTO Aneesh Chopra

  • Economist Innovation Conference “Ideas Economy”

o        This was apparently the most successful Economist conference to date

o        Speakers included Ed Catmull of Pixar, Tim O’Reilly, Paul Saffo, Ray Kurzweil, Joi Ito and more

o        Ray Kurzweil was especially thought provoking, saying that we have more resources than we need, including 10,000x more sunlight than we need, but we need to wean off of first industrial revolution techs like fossil fuels first to fully focus on them

VC & Portfolio Cos:

  • PE Hub lists the following as the Ten Most Active VC Firms of 2010 (So Far…):

§         New Enterprise Associates

§         Kleiner Perkins Caufield &Byers

§         Intel Capital

§         Redpoint Ventures

§         Sequoia Capital

§         Benchmark Capital

§         Polaris Venture Partners

§         Venrock

§         (Tied) Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Juvertson and Menlo Ventures

  • Four firms battle for FourSquare lead investor status, sending valuation to $80M
  • RadioShack looking for deep-pocketed investors – wants to raise up to $3BB
  • True Ventures held their party at the new NY Times offices this week

Press Riffs:

  • Owen Thomas, formerly of NBC Bay Area (and famous from Valleywag) has just joined Venture Beat as Executive Editor.
  • Wendy Tanaka joins Forbes

Awards:

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

o        Date of Event: April 16, 2010

o        Location of Event: Fenwick & West, 801 California Ave, Mountain View

o        Focus is IT including: IT including: s/w, services, Internet, communications, h/w, semiconductor, computing, optical networking, component of a system, consumer electronics, systems, mobile, wireless, cleantech, etc.

o        The Visibility Conference is an invitation only fundraising conference with 10 or more Investors and up to 10 Startups. This is an 8:30AM to about 1:00PM event where selected seed and early stage (Series A, B, C, and Restart) companies will give a 10-minute presentation, and receive 10 minutes of feedback and questions from investors sitting in the audience. During other presentations, you will be sitting with the investors in the audience. There is also a networking lunch that is included in the event.

o        Date of Event: May 3, 2010

o        Speakers are given 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, giving each speaker 6 minutes and 40 seconds of fame.

o        It’s also treated as a part of Web 2.0 Expo, and is an alternative way to have your client talk about their vision. The last Ignite event had interesting speakers and was sold out.

o        Angels and VCs like Ron Conway will grade the NYC-based startups, which are pre-funded.

4 Easy Ways to Engage Your Facebook Fans

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on March 20, 2010
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Leyl Master Black is a Managing Director at Sparkpr, one of the world’s top independent PR agencies. Leyl has more than 15 years experience driving high-impact communications programs for emerging technology companies.

While more than three million businesses, brands and celebrities have created Facebook (Facebook) Pages, many are struggling to figure out how best to use them. Companies are finding that even when they keep their pages updated with fresh content, they still aren’t seeing steady growth in their fan base.

And yet there are many brands who’ve surpassed the one million fan mark, while their peers have languished in the thousands. What’s their secret? These companies have figured out how to move from “broadcast” mode into engagement. They have engaged people so well that their fans even invite others along for the ride.

Here are four ways that savvy Facebook marketers are using the medium to engage with their fans.

1. Ask Their Opinion

If you post something on your Facebook Page, you might generate a good number of comments. But if you post your content in the context of a question, you provide an easy call to action. With a question, you engage people’s egos and provoke viral distribution of your content — everyone loves to share their opinion!

At the DigiDay: Social conference this month, social media marketing application developer Fan Appz highlighted an example of how a simple question can boost engagement. One of their customers — a leading video content provider with over 300,000 Facebook fans — routinely posts videos on their Facebook Page. The company found that when they paired videos with a question, video plays jumped by a whopping factor of 7 to 10. This simple yet effective strategy also generated 100 times more Facebook media impressions, as people posted videos to their walls in the context of their response to the question.

The NBA has also adopted this approach, issuing a steady stream of “Top Five” polls and other engaging content that has propelled the organization to top the two million fan mark, an unprecedented number for a sports league on the social networking site. The NBA routinely invites fans to rank their top five shooters, point guards and more. During the 2009-10 NBA season, their Fan Page generated nearly 500 million status update impressions and more than six million video views.

2. Test Their Knowledge

Consider testing people’s knowledge with a fun, relevant quiz, and even tying the results to a giveaway or promotion (more on that later). A clever quiz is not only entertaining, but also lengthens the time a user spends engaged with your brand.

One company embracing this approach is Molotov, a digital marketing agency whose clients include comedians such as George Lopez, David Spade and Jamie Kennedy. Molotov worked with George Lopez to create quizzes such as How Well Do You Know George Lopez? to push his fan base over the one million mark and drive viewership for his TV show.

In another Molotov program to promote a client’s new TV show, the company ran a series of quizzes about the celebrity in conjunction with a sweepstakes for signed merchandise. The quizzes were tests of knowledge about the comedian, his comedy, his routines, even about what happened on last week’s show. Giving people the opportunity to test their knowledge got them into a competitive mode and provided an additional incentive to share their results with friends. In the span of a little over a week, the campaign drove over 12 million brand impressions — and the premiere of the show was the highest rated show on the cable network for the year.

3. Pair Promotions with Content

While a contest or sweepstakes may get you some e-mail addresses, simply posting these on your page provides limited incentive to share with friends or even to participate. The way to boost participation is by tying the offer to content. People taking a brand-related quiz are great targets for your message. They may already have an affinity for the brand, so this is the best time to make them an offer.

In the example mentioned above, Molotov gave fans a chance to enter a sweepstakes to win signed merchandise — but the offer was made within the flow of the quiz. This strategy resulted in a 50% conversion rate. For every ten fans who tested their knowledge, five signed up to participate in the promotion, generating over 30,000 sign-ups for the weekly e-mail blast to promote the show.

The offer doesn’t even have to be big. Before the Super Bowl, the NFL ran a How Well Do You Know the NFL? quiz, with one lucky participant selected to receive a $50 gift card to NFLshop.com. Over 10,000 people took the quiz. If you estimate that each participant has 200 friends, that’s a possible two million impressions in the news feed with a relatively small giveaway.

4. Thank Your Fans

Giving your fans something of value — whether it’s as simple as a coupon, or as flashy as tickets to the Tonight Show — is a great way to show that you appreciate their continued support.

But what about picking one fan at random to get something really special?

The NBA again shows that they are on the leading edge. This brilliant strategy taps some of their biggest stars to record personalized video clips thanking select fans. Here’s a picture of Shaq thanking fan #385. If you’re an NBA fan, you could be next!

Put These Ideas Into Action

You don’t have to be a major brand like the NBA to turn your Facebook Page into an engaging destination. Any business can take these ideas and get creative. A restaurant could pair a quiz about famous restaurant movie scenes with a $100 gift certificate sweepstakes, or a Ford dealership could run a poll gauging people’s reactions to the Toyota recall news and give away interest-free financing to one lucky winner. The trick is to think about what your users would be interested in, what’s trendy or fun, then try it out.

In what ways are you engaging with your Facebook fans?

Weekly Sparkpr Missive Week Ending March 19, 2010

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on March 19, 2010
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What Tongues are Wagging About

  • Facebook overtook Google to become America’s most popular website. Figures for the week ending March 13th showed that the social-networking site accounted for 7.1% of the country’s traffic, compared with Google’s 7.0%, the first time it has had a weekly lead.
  • The press has been flooded with reports about the YouTube Viacom settlement – Viacom claims that YouTube knew about infringing content and should have taken it down (and that Google knew about this and then continued with that policy). Google claims that it’s clearly protected by the DMCA’s safe harbors. TechDirt summarized some of interesting things raised in the filings.
  • Google may pull out of China on April 10, China Business News reported today, citing an unidentified Chinese sales agent for the company.
  • Yelp is under fire. It is facing three lawsuits from businesses that claim it improperly skews reviews in favor of companies that advertise with it and against those that do not. Yelp denies the allegations, blaming misunderstandings about the way it filters reviews to prevent businesses from inflating their ratings.
  • Microsoft privately developing Twitter for business

Events:

  • SXSW
    • The much-anticipated keynote from Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams was not exactly what people expected. Not by a long shot. (See video)
    • It wasn’t the first time a keynote went horribly awry at SXSW Interactive.
    • YouTube introduced Musicians Wanted, a new way for indie bands and artists to get a larger slice of the video-embedding and Web ad pie.
    • Location-aware apps like Gowalla and Foursquare had the biggest buzz at this year’s fest.
    • Other companies with things to say or introduce at the fest included Microsoft, Digg, MOG and Spotify. Apparently Spotify has yet to sign a deal with any of the four major labels in the US

Press Riffs:

  • The New York Times – Nelson Schwartz, formerly European Economics Correspondent in Paris for The New York Times, has returned to New York to cover Wall Street and finance. Nelson can now be reached on +1 (212) 556 3617
  • Rumor has it that reporters from USA Today and other high-profile publications are pretending to have the iPad already and calling app developers to dig for info.
  • VIVmag, an all-digital lifestyle magazine that is available online, plans to introduce an interactive iPad version of its content when the device, from Apple, is released next month.

VC and Portfolio Company Updates:

  • Marten Mickos named CEO of Eucalyptus
  • Yahoo CTO joins Benchmark

Awards:

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

  • Economist Innovation Conference
    • March 23-24, 2010
    • Berkeley, CA
    • Spark will attend and provide recap next week
  • Techonomy
    • August 4 – 6, 2010
    • Lake Tahoe, NV
    • Set to one of the most important events this year from David Kirkpatrick
    • The event aims to begin to change how leaders think about the role of technology and innovation.
    • The program will range from presentations to interviews to panels–even a cooking demonstration. We will not only discuss what can be done, but also give prominence to case studies of what is being done by innovative companies, entrepreneurs, and inventors.
    • Bill Gates is a confirmed speaker – he will present a seminar on what he’s learned about combining technology and good ideas with existing institutions.
    • Other confirmed participants include Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Eric Schmidt (Google) and many more high profile tech leaders.

Weekly Sparkpr Missive _ Week Ending March 12, 2010

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on March 15, 2010
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Weekly Sparkpr Missive

Week Ending March 12, 2010

What Tongues are Wagging About

  • Customers can pre-order iPad’s online at apple.com at 5:30am Pacific time on Friday, March 12.
  • Apple is introducing a multitasking solution through the handset’s 4.0 software update that will finally allow several third party apps to run concurrently and in the background.
  • Apple has been dealt a “severe blow” having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter “i” as part of the name for its products.
  • Launched this week – Tweetshare’s Oscar Fashion Police Caption Contest. Best comment gets at $500 shopping spree!
  • Google has announced the initial roll-out of a new feature for its mobile product search: Local inventory checks.
  • Justin Hall was just hired at ngmoco. He is one of the first folks hired at Wired in the 90’s and made himself famous for indexing the web in links that he publically shared. Some see him as the first blogger. He has been in gaming for the past few years with his own company and got snatched by ngmoco. Good hire.
  • The Economist suggests that concept of computing as a basic utility delivered over the internet is here to stay. In fact, the industry is already taking the first steps toward turning computing power into a tradable commodity akin to electricity.
  • Fits.me, a virtual fitting room for internet clothing retailers based on robots (yes really) has won the European startup competition in Brussels, Plugg.

Events: The GDC Report – GDC was off the charts this year… here was the party schedule

March 9 – Sparkpr Pre-GDC Opener!

March 9 – EA Sports Season Opener Press Event @ The Press Club in San Francisco, CA – 6 PM to 9 PM
March 9 – Super Street Fighter ‘Fight Club’ event @ Slide in San Francisco, CA – 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM
March 10 – Disney Interactive Studios Q1/Q2 lineup previews @ Hotel Palomar in San Francisco, CA – 2PM
March 10 – Sony Computer Entertainment Press Event @ Concourse Exhibition Center San Francisco, CA – 4 PM to 7 PM
March 10 – God of War III GDC Media Event (with special musical performance) + Stig and many members of the dev team present – 7 PM to 10 PM
March 10 – Disney Interactive GDC 2010 reception @ the Disney Family Museum @ The Presidio – 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM
March 10 – MTV Games Rock Band party @ Rockit Room
March 11/12 – PlayStation Blog Lounge  – 10 AM to 6 PM; Gameplay Cocktail Event on Thursday from 3 PM to 6 PM
March 11 – TriplePoint PR & Nyko GDC party @ Otis Lounge – 7 PM to 1AM
March 12 – 2K Games Cocktail party @ Elam Event Venue 6 PM to 9 PM

  • Accel party was pretty happening, and Harlot was jam packed.  A couple of startups like Raptr and GetJar had a good presence. Lots of small game developers, some from as far as South East Asia.
  • EA hosted two events this week, one at the trendy new wine spot Press Club. The event had a great set up, lots of media getting hands on demos of games. People were really intrigued by the new EA sports games which actually will include a heart rate monitor to make gamers more active! Attendees included Mike Snider of USA Today and Chris Buffa of Hammersuit.
  • Playfish held a pre-GDC party at Orson in SoMA. It was totally packed to the gills, free flowing open bar, lots of business press and EA execs milling about.
  • Sparkpr party was packed with young developers, media and former journalists looking for work. A few underage developers were turned away at the door! Inside, a long lively debate ensued whether Argentinean developers were better than Chinese. Argentina 1, China 0.

VC & Portfolio Cos:

  • Reuters Venture Capital Journal published a Q&A with Index Venture’s partner Bernard Dalle. The article focuses on your most recent investment in Mimecast and also mentions other portfolio companies including Dim Dim, OpenX, RightScale and StorSimple.

Press Riffs:

  • Economist Dinner to recognize Matthew Bishop’s new book Road From Ruin, a look at how the US can regain its footing: The dinner was hosted at Martin and Isabelle Giles’ house and included Joe Green, co-founder of Causes.com, Mark Cannice, a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of San Francisco who runs a quarterly VC confidence index; Jerry Michalski and Tom Blaisdell of DCM among others. Conversation ranged from politics (Meg vs. MoonBeam, a full analysis of all philanderers) to the latest green ideas (re-using human waste), the awful state of US school systems, inside gossip on the F’book Harvard days/movie/books and the unflagging schaudenfraud over Tiger Woods/Sarah Palin. There are probably a bunch of twitpics of the cheese course – it was housed and served in an amazing five-story bird cage. ;-)
  • The New York Observer – Felix Gillette is moving from The New York Observer’s television beat to the new media/tech world beat. He takes over for Gillian Reagan who recently left the Observer to join The Business Insider. Felix can continue to be reached on +1 (212) 407 9319 and fgillette@observer.com. He is also on Twitter at www.twitter.com/felixgillette
  • Breaking Trends in the Global VillageT, the London-based global trends intelligence unit, will be visiting California between 20-30 March and has requested an interview with Sparkpr.

Awards (Submission Deadline):

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

  • Smash Summit (3/12/2010)
  • The Smash Summit is a is a one-day exploration of the most successful companies, tools, strategies, and online marketing campaigns being used to acquire and retain customers on search, social, & mobile platforms. Produced by Dave McClure (500 Hats) and Stew Langille (Mint.com) the premise is that your marketing ‘sucks’ and they are going to fix it.
  • InterContinental Hotel, 888 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
    • OMMA Global San Francisco (3/17/2010)
    • OMMA Global is the leading conference and trade show for the business of Online Media, Marketing and Advertising. More than 75 thought leaders and industry innovators come together twice a year to address the state, effectiveness and future of interactive media in four content track sessions – Media, Marketing, Advertising and Online Publishing. The tracks are designed to cover program themes of Search, Behavioral Targeting, Social media, Mobile, Video, In-Game advertising, Metrics & Measurement, Performance & Email Marketing, and so much more. This is the most comprehensive conference and trade show for busy executives tasked with buying, planning, implementing and revolutionizing interactive advertising.
    • San Francisco, California
      • Marketplaces (3/22/2010)
      • Marketplaces is the BIA/Kelsey conference that focuses on the fast growing opportunities in local verticals. Since we introduced Marketplaces in 2007, new social and mobile applications and functionality have dramatically changed the end game in the space. It isn’t (only) about classifieds and coupons anymore. Indeed, in some ways,  Facebook, user reviews, video clips, blogs, dynamic offers, iPhone apps, pay-for-performance and leads management software are as important as traditional advertising.
      • San Diego, California
        • Richmond Digital Symposium (10/24/2010)
        • The Digital Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to reflect on your day to day role, research new solutions and debate key issues with peers. Away from the pressures of the office, in a distraction-free focused environment, you have an opportunity to discuss shared problems and ultimately develop your digital marketing strategy to produce real business results.
        • Phoenician Resort, Scottsdale, Arizona
          • App Showcase (3/30/2010) – Spark attending
          • See newsworthy new apps, get insight from app developers, find unrecognized app gems!
          • Network with other developers, smartphone aficionados, mobile industry professionals, marketing professionals and the media while enjoying appetizers and beer, wine, and cocktails.
          • San Francisco, California
            • GigaOm’s Green:Net 2010 and Mobilize conferences –
            • Organizer Surj Patel is starting to put together keynotes and content for the next GigaOm Mobilize conference in September.  He is looking for a list of credible speakers who have a good background in tech and business and can present ideas well on stage.  He said (as of now) his core topics of interest are:
              • Mobility in the car
              • A little bit on mobile broadband infrastructure
              • What opps in mobility opening
              • Microsoft and their new windows OS
              • iPad and ultimate devices: how  will that affect people (is this the death of the laptop?)
              • China opening up another huge market
              • Any VCs who can speak smartly on mobile
  • DC10 (5/13-16/2010) – The Summit Series – a group of young, affluent, philanthropic hipsters will host its inaugural DC event. Great lineup, great crowd. If anyone is on the E. Coast at that time, it’s worth attending for the networking/panels. I may try to go…

Weekly Sparkpr Missive Week Ending March 12, 2010

Published
by
admin
on March 15, 2010
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Weekly Sparkpr Missive

Week Ending March 12, 2010

What Tongues are Wagging About

  • Customers can pre-order iPad’s online at apple.com at 5:30am Pacific time on Friday, March 12.
  • Apple is introducing a multitasking solution through the handset’s 4.0 software update that will finally allow several third party apps to run concurrently and in the background.
  • Apple has been dealt a “severe blow” having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter “i” as part of the name for its products.
  • Launched this week – Tweetshare’s Oscar Fashion Police Caption Contest. Best comment gets at $500 shopping spree!
  • Google has announced the initial roll-out of a new feature for its mobile product search: Local inventory checks.
  • Justin Hall was just hired at ngmoco. He is one of the first folks hired at Wired in the 90’s and made himself famous for indexing the web in links that he publically shared. Some see him as the first blogger. He has been in gaming for the past few years with his own company and got snatched by ngmoco. Good hire.
  • The Economist suggests that concept of computing as a basic utility delivered over the internet is here to stay. In fact, the industry is already taking the first steps toward turning computing power into a tradable commodity akin to electricity.
  • Fits.me, a virtual fitting room for internet clothing retailers based on robots (yes really) has won the European startup competition in Brussels, Plugg.

Events: The GDC Report – GDC was off the charts this year… here was the party schedule

March 9 – Sparkpr Pre-GDC Opener!

March 9 – EA Sports Season Opener Press Event @ The Press Club in San Francisco, CA – 6 PM to 9 PM
March 9 – Super Street Fighter ‘Fight Club’ event @ Slide in San Francisco, CA – 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM
March 10 – Disney Interactive Studios Q1/Q2 lineup previews @ Hotel Palomar in San Francisco, CA – 2PM
March 10 – Sony Computer Entertainment Press Event @ Concourse Exhibition Center San Francisco, CA – 4 PM to 7 PM
March 10 – God of War III GDC Media Event (with special musical performance) + Stig and many members of the dev team present – 7 PM to 10 PM
March 10 – Disney Interactive GDC 2010 reception @ the Disney Family Museum @ The Presidio – 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM
March 10 – MTV Games Rock Band party @ Rockit Room
March 11/12 – PlayStation Blog Lounge  – 10 AM to 6 PM; Gameplay Cocktail Event on Thursday from 3 PM to 6 PM
March 11 – TriplePoint PR & Nyko GDC party @ Otis Lounge – 7 PM to 1AM
March 12 – 2K Games Cocktail party @ Elam Event Venue 6 PM to 9 PM

  • Accel party was pretty happening, and Harlot was jam packed.  A couple of startups like Raptr and GetJar had a good presence. Lots of small game developers, some from as far as South East Asia.
  • EA hosted two events this week, one at the trendy new wine spot Press Club. The event had a great set up, lots of media getting hands on demos of games. People were really intrigued by the new EA sports games which actually will include a heart rate monitor to make gamers more active! Attendees included Mike Snider of USA Today and Chris Buffa of Hammersuit.
  • Playfish held a pre-GDC party at Orson in SoMA. It was totally packed to the gills, free flowing open bar, lots of business press and EA execs milling about.
  • Sparkpr party was packed with young developers, media and former journalists looking for work. A few underage developers were turned away at the door! Inside, a long lively debate ensued whether Argentinean developers were better than Chinese. Argentina 1, China 0.

VC & Portfolio Cos:

  • Reuters Venture Capital Journal published a Q&A with Index Venture’s partner Bernard Dalle. The article focuses on your most recent investment in Mimecast and also mentions other portfolio companies including Dim Dim, OpenX, RightScale and StorSimple.

Press Riffs:

  • Economist Dinner to recognize Matthew Bishop’s new book Road From Ruin, a look at how the US can regain its footing: The dinner was hosted at Martin and Isabelle Giles’ house and included Joe Green, co-founder of Causes.com, Mark Cannice, a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of San Francisco who runs a quarterly VC confidence index; Jerry Michalski and Tom Blaisdell of DCM among others. Conversation ranged from politics (Meg vs. MoonBeam, a full analysis of all philanderers) to the latest green ideas (re-using human waste), the awful state of US school systems, inside gossip on the F’book Harvard days/movie/books and the unflagging schaudenfraud over Tiger Woods/Sarah Palin. There are probably a bunch of twitpics of the cheese course – it was housed and served in an amazing five-story bird cage. ;-)
  • The New York Observer – Felix Gillette is moving from The New York Observer’s television beat to the new media/tech world beat. He takes over for Gillian Reagan who recently left the Observer to join The Business Insider. Felix can continue to be reached on +1 (212) 407 9319 and fgillette@observer.com. He is also on Twitter at www.twitter.com/felixgillette
  • Breaking Trends in the Global VillageT, the London-based global trends intelligence unit, will be visiting California between 20-30 March and has requested an interview with Sparkpr.

Awards (Submission Deadline):

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

o        The Smash Summit is a is a one-day exploration of the most successful companies, tools, strategies, and online marketing campaigns being used to acquire and retain customers on search, social, & mobile platforms. Produced by Dave McClure (500 Hats) and Stew Langille (Mint.com) the premise is that your marketing ‘sucks’ and they are going to fix it.

o        InterContinental Hotel, 888 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

o        OMMA Global is the leading conference and trade show for the business of Online Media, Marketing and Advertising. More than 75 thought leaders and industry innovators come together twice a year to address the state, effectiveness and future of interactive media in four content track sessions – Media, Marketing, Advertising and Online Publishing. The tracks are designed to cover program themes of Search, Behavioral Targeting, Social media, Mobile, Video, In-Game advertising, Metrics & Measurement, Performance & Email Marketing, and so much more. This is the most comprehensive conference and trade show for busy executives tasked with buying, planning, implementing and revolutionizing interactive advertising.

o        San Francisco, California

o        Marketplaces is the BIA/Kelsey conference that focuses on the fast growing opportunities in local verticals. Since we introduced Marketplaces in 2007, new social and mobile applications and functionality have dramatically changed the end game in the space. It isn’t (only) about classifieds and coupons anymore. Indeed, in some ways,  Facebook, user reviews, video clips, blogs, dynamic offers, iPhone apps, pay-for-performance and leads management software are as important as traditional advertising.

o        San Diego, California

o        The Digital Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to reflect on your day to day role, research new solutions and debate key issues with peers. Away from the pressures of the office, in a distraction-free focused environment, you have an opportunity to discuss shared problems and ultimately develop your digital marketing strategy to produce real business results.

o        Phoenician Resort, Scottsdale, Arizona

o        See newsworthy new apps, get insight from app developers, find unrecognized app gems!

o        Network with other developers, smartphone aficionados, mobile industry professionals, marketing professionals and the media while enjoying appetizers and beer, wine, and cocktails.

o        San Francisco, California

  • GigaOm’s Green:Net 2010 and Mobilize conferences –

o        Organizer Surj Patel is starting to put together keynotes and content for the next GigaOm Mobilize conference in September.  He is looking for a list of credible speakers who have a good background in tech and business and can present ideas well on stage.  He said (as of now) his core topics of interest are:

§         Mobility in the car

§         A little bit on mobile broadband infrastructure

§         What opps in mobility opening

§         Microsoft and their new windows OS

§         iPad and ultimate devices: how  will that affect people (is this the death of the laptop?)

§         China opening up another huge market

§         Any VCs who can speak smartly on mobile

  • DC10 (5/13-16/2010) – The Summit Series – a group of young, affluent, philanthropic hipsters will host its inaugural DC event. Great lineup, great crowd. If anyone is on the E. Coast at that time, it’s worth attending for the networking/panels. I may try to go…