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The Web is huge. And growing. Faster everyday. It's almost like an ocean where there's no evaporation (the data on the Web stays there virtually forever), but yet, it's always raining in it. The rain is the new content that's added into the ocean. Every tweet is a drop, every blog post is a drop, every check-in is a drop that falls into the ocean. This ocean is almost constantly under a tropical storm in some places, like Twitter or Facebook. Sponsor Guest author Julien Genestoux is the founder and CEO of Superfeedr , a company dedicated at making RSS and Atom feeds realtime. It has implemented PubSubHubbub from day one and now host several hubs, including ReadWriteWeb, Tumblr, Posterous and Gawker. Follow Julien on Twitter . When you're a search engine, you obviously have an exhaustivity requirement. You can't really skip on indexing the Indian Ocean. Google sends its bo(a)ts all over the ocean where it's raining to update its index. However, the ocean is growing so fast that it will eventually become harder and harder to stay exhaustive. Unfortunately, not only the ocean is growing, but it's also raining more, which means that if a bo(a)t is away from a zone for too long, when it will be back it will have changed tremendously. That's what happens when you see results in a search engine that are 1- or 2-years old, or even older. They're not wrong, they're just often inaccurate, but rank well. It's a real technical problem for search engines to know where to send their bo(a)ts, and at the right time! And when Google says they're going to feed their search index with PubSubHubbub data, that's what they're trying to do: save a little bit on the boats. I strongly disagree with John Battelle when he says this is not a huge deal . My take is that he sees this only as a great technical and infrastructure opportunity for Google, not so much as an immediate benefit for the end user. I strongly disagree - and so do you . You disagreed when you typed "earthquake" into Twitter Search, or even "hudson crash", or "Mickael Jackson". At that point, you knew that Google wasn't able to provide you with the information you were looking for, and this is a massive loss for Google. Google will have a hard time getting this brain share back. The first thing it needs to do is to actually have results that date back from the minute when people look for these things. You may argue that if you search 10 times a day on Google, you go maybe once a week to Twitter search. I'm the same, no worries. Yet, I know that Twitter is much better than Google at contextualization . When I do a search on Google, I expect to find the absolute truth. If I look for earthquake, I'm looking at facts about earthquakes: pictures or maybe historical data. If I look for earthquake on Twitter, I'm looking for context ; I want what is being said about earthquakes now (and here!). As a matter of facts, Google always had a lot of issues about context because they know so little about the people who search there (or maybe they know a lot, but don't want to scare us). Adding PubSubHubbub is a way for them to be able to take the "time dimension" back. They many never have the conversations that Twitter has, but they will have a much bigger ocean of data than Twitter's sea of Tweets Photo by Pam Roth . Discuss
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Chasing Real-Time Raindrops in an Ocean of Content
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Longtime technology innovation investment firm Battery Ventures increased its capital to over $4 billion Thursday as the firm announced the securing of its ninth fund at a value of $750 million. Startups and entrepreneurs may be able to look at 2010 with high hopes as Battery's fund, one of the largest seen in the last year, comes after a period of decline in venture funding. Sponsor Battery Ventures, which operates out of Boston, Silicon Valley, and Israel, has been investing in tech innovation since 1983. The firm has helped several Internet companies launch initial public offerings (IPOs), such as the early search engine Infoseek , the web app platform Akamai , and analytics provider Omniture . In a press release Thursday, Battery partner Tom Crotty expressed his hope that Battery's new fund signals a rebound of floundering investment dollars. "After a slow investment pace industry-wide in 2009, we look forward to rounding out the portfolio of Fund VIII and initiating the investment cycle for our new fund," said Crotty. "With improving market fundamentals, we believe the next few years will be healthy ones to put money to work." This fresh influx of capital for Battery, which equals the amount raised in their previous fund, should excite early stage startups who have been struggling to raise funding in the down market. Battery, which invests in all stages of companies, could be an excellent benchmark for what is to come in 2010. This new fund, along with other early signals this year, could be a precursor to a steady increase of VC funding. Google may be helping this as well, as the Internet behemoth is giving the M&A market a boost by snatching up companies left and right in 2010. So far this year, Google has acquired Aardvark , reMail , Picnik and DocVerse , all within the first 64 days of the year. In 2009, a year with poor M&A performance, Google only acquired 6 companies; at this year's pace they could buy as many as 20, though they have been known to go on quick brief shopping sprees. In the early summer of 2007, they roped in 11 companies in less than three months, but only totaled 16 that year. As the first quarter of 2010 draws to a close in a few weeks, it will be interesting to see numbers on how the M&A and venture capital markets are fairing. If Battery Ventures' fresh cash and Google's acquisitions are any barometer, things should be looking up for the rest of the year. Discuss
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Battery Ventures Rakes In $750M, Is VC Funding Over the Hump?
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Whether a website sells off your email address or forces you to install some pop-up plagued toolbar just to get 10% off your next online purchase, searching for online coupons can involve treading in dangerous waters. Enter CheapTweet , which uses both algorithms and crowdsourcing to verify its content, and suddenly looking for the best deals online isn't quite so scary. The self-described "Twitter-based social deals search engine site" does precisely that - it finds tweets about deals and coupons through a custom search algorithm and then allows its users to upvote or downvote the deals on its site. Sponsor Tweeting deals, if your wondering, can be big business. In 2009, Dell made more than $6.5 million through Twitter deals and CheapTweet probably sent a few of those customers their direction. The ad aggregator is actually celebrating its 5 millionth indexed deal with a roll-out of a refurbished website, which includes upgrades to its search engine, the voting mechanism, a redesign and and new feature, the "DealStream". CheapTweet allows its users to search for deals by category and keyword and will customize the stream of tweets according to their votes and Twitter conversations. They can also up and down vote tweets, like they've become accustomed to on sites like Reddit, Digg or Google Moderator. The "DealStream", which contains a user's customized results, can also be read as an RSS feed. As CEO Hayes Davis points out in a press release, CheapTweet is poised to help distinguish the good from the bad as more and more companies prepare to monetize through Twitter. "Online channels will only become more cluttered, as social networks start to monetize with ads," said Davis. "CheapTweet's service makes it easier for shoppers to sort through the clutter online and shop more effectively." We've not only heard a number of rumors and anonymous tips on what the Twitter ad platform will look like, but other companies like 140 Proof have begun to enter the market, bringing tweet-like ads to third party clients. This doesn't even account for the vast number of small businesses taking advantage of the service to pass out Web-only deals and coupons. With all of these ads, CheapTweet will help weed out the bad apples. Its users down vote nefarious tweets, the algorithm cuts out spam using a form of natural language processing and the multiple tweets about the same deal are combined to cut down on the noise. We think that a service like CheapTweet has found a perfect niche and its the ideal service to recommend to your less technically-savvy relatives, as well as those just looking for a deal. Like we said, searching for online deals can put you in some dangerous waters and this service helps clear out some of the flotsam and jetsam. Discuss
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CheapTweet Wades Through the Sea of Tweet Deals
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This week we added one of the most exciting events of the year to the calendar: the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 . Sure, we're a little biased, but we think the conference is the place this year to learn about mobile development trends. We hope to see you in Mountain View on May 7. How do you like your events calendar? As a world map ? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 11 March 2010: Los Angeles, California Los Angeles VC and Angel Event At FundingPost 's next event, a panel of investors who will focus on early-stage venture investing. We will be discussing trends in early-stage investing, sectors that these Angels and VCs look at, things that are most important to them when they are considering an investment and the best and worst things an entrepreneur can do to get their attention. Entrepreneur summaries will be given to the investor speakers and attendees - all of the investors will get your company description and contact info! Additionally, there will be an optional pitching workshop lunch where we will completely deconstruct your elevator pitch, and work with you on formulating a clean and concise elevator pitch giving the important information that investors need to hear to make an educated decision on your company! Then you get to give your new elevator pitch in person to the panel of investors during the event! Click here for more information . 11 March 2010 Positioning Roundtable During this weekly 60-minute online session, entrepreneurs are invited to pitch Sramana Mitra - entrepreneur, strategy consultant, Forbes columnist and author of Entrepreneur Journeys - their business ideas in a three-minute presentation. She will review the material in real time and provide feedback on each pitch, as well as address specific positioning questions from the entrepreneur. Afterwards, she will take questions about positioning from other participants. The session is open to 1,000 people to attend, but only the first five who sign up to pitch Sramana will have the opportunity to discuss their businesses. 12 – 16 March 2010: Austin, Texas SXSW Interactive An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, the SXSW Interactive Festival offers five days of captivating keynote presentations, panel sessions, book readings, Salons and Core Conversations that provide hands-on training as well as big-picture analysis. In addition to the business opportunities at the Trade Show and Exhibition and the hands-on gaming fun at the ScreenBurn Arcade, SXSW Interactive provides an array of exciting evening events including the SXSW Web Awards Ceremony. More to the point, coming to SXSW Interactive is a great way to recharge your creativity. The variety of programming offered at SXSW Interactive means that the event focuses as much on creativity as it does on technology. This focus is augmented by SXSW Film, which runs concurrently with SXSW Interactive and SXSW Music. Moreover, a full slate of parties and receptions during the evening hours help to accelerate the social aspect of the event. For more information, visit sxsw.com , or for a handy survival guide click here . 15 – 16 March 2010: London, England 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams: Social Networking World Forum Enterprise social media Social TV World Forum Mobile Social Networking Forum The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more. Full workshop program within exhibition area Evening networking reception Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates Free pass for exhibition only 22 – 26 March 2010: New York City Search Engine Strategies New York Conference & Expo Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York . Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include: Digital Asset Optimization Deep Dive Into Analytics Augmented Reality: It's a Brave New World Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons Advanced B2B Search Marketing Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues 23 March 2010: San Francisco, California S.F. Beta 4.0 After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info. 26 March 2010: San Francisco, California Freemium Summit The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners. Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures. March 29, 2010: Portland, Oregon Social Fresh Portland The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. 7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia ConnectNow ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au . 13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas PubCon South PubCon , the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here . 16 April 2010: Mountain View, California Under the Radar: Cloud Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com . 16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan FutureMidwest FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow. Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here . April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri Social Fresh St. Louis The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. 19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California DrupalCon DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts. Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management. 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration . 7 May 2010: Mountain View, California ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference. An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences . We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks. Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Click here to register now , or to become a sponsor , or to help shape the conference . 11 May 2010: San Francisco, California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available. May 17 2010: San Francisco, California SF MusicTech Summit The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off . 15 – 16 June 2010: New York City Corporate Social Media Summit The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring: Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson), Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here . 29 – 30 June 2010: London Cloud Computing World Forum The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include: Co-located with CloudCamp London Co-located with Green IT conference Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre Free-to-attend evening awards presentation Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services Evening networking party for all attendees 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss
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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 6 March 2010
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What's the best way to leverage the most information out of 140 characters? Should you get to learning Mandarin so each character can be a word? Or start forming German-style pseudo-word hashtags to get the point across? Or perhaps, you could parse the natural language, encapsulate the tweet in meta data and go from there. We've already seen additional information stacked onto our Tweets, as with the geo-location API released last November , but Cascaad's SuperTweet API does more than wrap your tweet in client-provided data like GPS coordinates. Sponsor Cascaad has released its first beta of the SuperTweet API, which it says will allow third-party Twitter applications to "add smart contextual information and monetization , including semantic entity markup, nonintrusive in-text affiliate commerce links, related content [and] social relevance scores". The SuperTweet provides users with "an at-a-glance view of additional information about stories, things and places discussed in the message, without forcing them to leave your application," according to the API documentation . The API allows developers to parse a tweet, identify separate "entities" and then gather external contextual information on those entities. It then adds this information to the original tweet to create a "SuperTweet". If a tweet mentions Lady Gaga, for example, the name "Lady Gaga" becomes a link to a biography pulled from semantic-web database Freebase . Next to that, the SuperTweet gives an affiliate link to Amazon, where you can go buy Lady Gaga CDs. And if a link to an article about Lady Gaga is included in the tweet, the SuperTweet provides a thumbnail preview. In addition to wrapping these entities in contextual information, the SuperTweet API unwraps shortened URLs back into the original link so the user has an idea of what they're clicking on. And, although not yet available in this release, the Conversation API will put the tweet in the context of a conversation, providing access to other public messages in the same conversation thread. The challenging part of all of this is that the API needs to parse a rather variable piece of content - a user created tweet - and find the appropriate meta data. Just like a search engine, it needs to recognize misspelled words or other slight variations to find the proper content. One Twitter developer we spoke with said that, while they like the idea of outside information being added to the base tweet, they have found the contextual results to be hit or miss. It would seem that the concept is solid, but the execution is still in the difficult learning stages. While we like what we've seen of the SuperTweet so far, it will only be worthwhile if it can provide accurate results. If we tweet about the iPhone and it links to the Amazon page for the iPad, the service will fall flat on its face. Get this part right, though, and we're willing to be you're going to start seeing Super Tweets in some Twitter apps soon. Discuss
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SuperTweet: Moving Beyond 140 Characters
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