Weekly Spark Missive Week Ending February 5, 2010 at Sparkpr

What Tongues are Wagging About

TechCrunch pay for play drama: Michael Arrington posted an apology late last night, and the offending intern, Daniel Brusilovsky was canned. A good play by play with links is here: http://www.inquisitr.com/60670/daniel-brusilovsky/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Inquisitr+%28Inquisitr%3A+All%29
Daniel’s parents are also supposed BFF with Arrington, which he confessed to a Sparkster was how he got the gig
- Lots of ramping up from mobile companies of all sorts for the annual giant meetup Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb 15-18
- Big controversy this year about both Nokia and LG pulling their booths from MWC, but rumours are they have hired nearby venues to host meetings, events, etc.
- Android dominated the conversation and will again this year
- With the success of AppStore and the announcement of iPad and Kindle, expect more emphasis on the app ecosystem
- Spark has 6 clients attending the show: INQ Mobile, Ideaworks Labs, Waze, VirtualLogix, AlertMe and GetJar
- TechCrunch UK will host another half-day satellite event on Wednesday from 2-6pm and many Spark clients are speaking
- Popular mobile blogger Rudy de Wael is hosting a “Mobile Sunday” event with the international mobile blogger community as well
- Here is a great link for all the parties happening at MWC including those listed above:

Events:

VC & Portfolio Cos:

Alexa chart was posted in the comments on TC. Sarah’s MyHeritage story was fantastic and the traffic surge is really impressive.
TrialPay Q&A with Alex in PEHub: http://www.pehub.com/62239/qa-with-trialpay-ceo-alex-rampell/
Saul in VentureWire’s “Tough Times Ahead For Start-Ups Raising Second Rounds”
Bernard’s Q&A (to also include Mimecast news) will appear in next issue of VCJ

Awards: