In a funny, rapid-fire 4 minutes, Reddit Founder & Entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian tells the real-life fable of one humpback whale’s rise to Web stardom at TedIndia 2009 Event. The lesson of Mister Splashy Pants is a shoo-in classic for meme-makers and marketers in the Facebook age. A great story to show how social media can effect a change in the real World. If you want to watch the video, go ahead.

Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit, a social-voting news website with geek allegiances, a small-town feel and a penchant for lighting up the memes your friends IM you about next week. Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, both 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia. It received its initial funding from Y Combinator. Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, acquired Reddit on October 31, 2006. Ohanian left Reddit in his official capacity in 2009, but continues to be involved with the site’s direction as a sort of godfather, dispensing friendly wisdom (and t-shirts) from his user account, kn0thing. Of late, he’s focusing on Breadpig, a hub for geeky books and merchandise.

Did you know, monkeys have 12 hairs at any one time

I can’t write valuable posts for a long time because of our ongoing projects and my full time job (In fact, there are more than  10 draft posts which i should check and update before I post if i could find enough time and a free brain).  But i try to share valuable resources, especially experiences of successful Internet entrepreneurs with you and this is one of them.

At The Future of Web Apps London, Kevin Rose shares the secrets to Digg and Wefollow’s explosive user growth. He covers ten unique strategies that turn passive users into passionate advocates and what he did to increase his users to 1,000,000 and beyond.  You can both watch his presentation video or view his presentation slides.

As 2009 ends and 2010 begins, we wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays and a happy new year. If you wonder, you can check how Christmas buzz is taking shape and what products are being talked about on the web in this Mashable post.

The first ever Gov 2.0 Summit was held in Washington,DC; in September 2009. The summit brought together leaders from the private, public and government sector to find better ways of dispensing information.

Eric Ries from VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was one of the speakers at Gov 2.0 Summit. In the video below, Eric Ries is sharing his wide experience about creating “Lean Startups” by “Doing More with Less” as both a former entrepreneur and a VC advisor.

Eric Ries became a Venture Advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, after co-founding and serving as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups including pbWiki, Bunchball, FooMojo, Causes and KaChing.

Aaron Patzer’s personal finance manager Mint is one of the best examples for building a successful company from nothing. Aaron Patzer started Mint.com when he was 25. Mint launched in September 2007 at TechCrunch40 and in September 2009, Mint is acquired by Intuit for $170m. Mint.com has reached over 1.5 million users and helped them of people pay debt, manage job loss in the downturn. Aaron has packed a lot of experience in a very short time and shared his experiences and advices on several platforms.

Aaron Patzer isn’t only a successful Internet entrepreneur, but he also likes to help others about Internet business development. In the embedded video below, he  tells the story of Mint and gives incredibly useful advices for Internet entrepreneurs at a startup competition event called Juice Pitcher on the Microsoft campus.

Today, September 27th is Google’s 11th birthday and Google has a special logo to celebrate its birthday.

Google is using its logo in marketing for both social and commercial purposes. What Google does with its logo is a good example to use company logos as a valuable marketing tool for free.

Google has changed our lives and still changing; even why we use logos. Happy 11th birthday Google!

Yesterday was September 9th, 2009 (09/09/09) and a special Google Logo appeared at Google’s homepage. Google has different and interesting logos for special dates and i think these surprise logos represent the  social side of the company.

The dates like 09/09/09 are exaggerated by some people. For example; in Russia and China thousand of people flocked to marry on ‘lucky 09/09/09′.

Numerologists and marketers alike share a fascination for dates like 09-09-09, which might explain why computer giant Apple, the distributors of Beatles music and filmmaker Tim Burton are all peddling new products. Tim Burton’s new movie premiered yesterday. It’s simply called “9.” The Apple Event was held at San Fransisco yesterday.

*Also, 09/09/09 was my wife’s birthday and she became 27 years old which equals  “3 times 9″. It was a lucky date  for me , because i gave her “9 gifts”.

Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris makes online art that captures the world’s expression — and gives us a glimpse of the soul of the Internet. Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we’re all feeling and looking for. In this Ted Video, Jonathan Harris tells The Web’s Secret stories.

This is the first colorful logo of Google. Google’s first name was Backrub. Backrub’s logo was simply a scan Larry Page’s hand from a flatbed scanner. Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google – a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. After the name change, the new logo is designed. The first logo looks like a ‘Wordart’.

The screenshot below shows how Google was in 1997.

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There’s a battle emerging over the industry structure of e-books: Amazon has one approach, Barnes & Noble another. Will the clash play out like the computer wars of the late 80s, or the music wars of the late 90s? Let’s take a look.

Years of declining music sales reflect a grim story for the music business — the amount of music people are willing to pay for has dropped dramatically, the unit of business has shifted fundamentally to music by the song, and the preferred medium for acquiring music is now downloading individual songs, rather than purchasing a complete CD. Who is winning in the battle for the soul of the music business? The popular verdict at the moment would certainly be Apple, to the detriment of the traditional music producers and distributors, and with mixed effects for artists.

What are the implications for the current battle over e-books? Amazon.com is certainly gunning for the traditional book business with the advent of its Kindle reader. Note the characteristics of this business model — Amazon sells proprietary hardware, which is linked to a list of electronic books over which they have considerable control, and tied to their website which facilitates just about every aspect of a user’s experience, from the first moment you might become aware that you have a need to getting that need fulfilled, time and time again.

To read the rest of this Harvardbusiness.org blog post, click here.

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. Shirky, a prescient voice on the Internet’s effects, argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works.

In this Ted Talk which took place at took place at the U.S. Department of State, Clay Shirky tells the effects of Social Media on our livings.

Internet is developing quickly and changing the ways we live.  There are simple things you can do to save the Earth and money with the help of Internet. You can turn the power of Internet to cool global warming.

1-Prefer Online Shopping: If you can buy some of your needs online and stay off the road, you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will save you gas and time.

2-Use Electronic Invoices: Electronic invoicing helps  businesses save vast amount of paper by eliminating the need for printed invoices. Electronic invoicing can also help customers to save time to reach and pay the invoices. The true environmental cost of traditional invoicing is more than paper. The printed invoices also need ink and energy to be printed gas to be transported to the customers. So using electronic invoices will save you paper,energy,gas and time which mean money.

3- Use Second Hand Books: The Internet is a great source to search & find & buy what you need. If you are a college student, textbooks take big bite from your budget. A student spends about $1000 a year on books. To hold costs down, students are searching for new and used textbooks at online stores and marketlaces. If you want a Textbook lookup, all you need is the ISBN number of the book you’re searching. You can save money and reduce the use of paper by using used books resell the books you don’t want to keep.

4-Donate or Recycle Your Electronic Equipments: As the number of electronic equipments we own increases, management of electronic wastes becomes more important. You can learn how to donate or recycle your old electronic equipments from web sites like TechSoup.org .

5-Learn More Green Tips: Internet is an ultimate source for learning DIY and green tips. Green Living Tips and  The Daily Green are only two of millions of web sites to reach green living tips and they’re all free.

6-Encourage Others To Conserve : Use all the tools of social networking; tweet, write blog posts, send emails about the environmet to share information about recycling and . For example, I try to write one tenth of my blog posts about green technology and the environment.

These 6 simple tips will help you reducing your energy use and budget which means less dependence on the fossil fuels and paper.

Celebrated yearly on 5 June, World Environment Day (WED) is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. WED was firstly established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.The theme for 2009 is climate change and the broader consequences of environmental change, and what societies can do in response.

Combating climate change and preserving ecosystems services that underpin our economies is an issue for everyone. Every individual’s efforts, no matter how small, can contribute to the sustainable development of our economies and communities around the world.

On this day, individuals, non-governmental organizations, community and youth groups, business, industry and the media organize activities to renew their commitments to protect and develop the environment. They organize activities such as clean-up campaigns, tree planting, colourful street rallies, green concerts, essay and photo competitions in schools, and recycling efforts.

Internet has an important effect for the announcement of these types of activities. Especially; as social networking platforms get more popular, we see different examples of “How Social Networking Can Change The World” . Individuals, communities and organizations use social networking as a fast and reliable tool to reach targeted people. The community-driven web can really make a difference.

There are easy ways of using social media to try to change the world for a good cause. One of them is publishing a  blog post on a universal topic, as i do. One another way is tweeting with a purpose. An example for tweeting with a purpose is United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) “Twitter for trees” campaign. UNEP has a platform called “UNEP and You” – an on-going social networking platform for environmental activism. UNEP has pledged to plant 100,000 trees for 100,000 followers– or one for every follower if we can achieve more than 100,000– by World Environment Day, 5 June. This effort supports the UNEP – Billion Tree Campaign’s goal to plant a total of seven billion trees- 1 for every person on the planet- by year’s end.Add your voice and tweet loudly www.twitter.com/UNEPandYou to help the environment!

We’ve seen how social media is good for business. It helps build a brand, drives traffic and awareness and builds out communities.But, what we’ve also seen is social media bringing together people to lend their time to important causes on a global level. By using the sites we live on every day-why not use all of these friends and followers to do something good? With the help from online communities this process can become even easier, and the results can be nearly instantaneous.

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Google’s new service, Google Wave is generating so much buzz and everyone really wants to learn more about Google Wave. Thousands of articles and blog post are written in one day about Google’s new service. To help you save time, we’ve compiled a list of top ten links that describe Google Wave best.

1. Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave : Google’ s Softaware Engineering Manager, Co-developer of Google Maps and Google Wave, Lars Rasmussen tells about Google Wave in this official Google Blog post.

2. Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web : MG Siegler of TechCrunch describes Google Wave as a new platform for a new web in his article.

3. Sergey Brin: Google Wave Will Set A New Benchmark For Interactivity : TechCrunch IT Editor Steve Gilmor caught up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin and asked him about Google Wave. Don’t miss this video interview.

4. Google Wave: A Complete Guide : Mashable editor, Ben Parr compiled key information you should know about Google Wave.

5. Is Google Wave a Twitter Killer? avid Coursey from PCWorld searches an aswer to this question.

6. Google Wave: the Early Days : Tim O’Reilly, the Internet guru who first defined Web 2.0; wrote about the early days of Google Wave story which he learned from his conversation with Lars Rasmussen, at the Google I/O conference.

7. Google Wave: Five Things You Must Know : Mark Hachman form PcMagazine lists five thing you must know about Google Wave.

8. Five Reasons to Be Terrified of Google Wave : This FastCompany post written by Chris Dannen describes five reasons to be terrified of Google Wave.

9. Gmail in real-time: Google does the Wave : A must-read CNET article about Google Wave by Tom Krazit.

10. Google Wave API : Google Wave API central for developers interested in building applications for Google wave.

Google Wave is still unavailable and and if you want to be informed when it is available, signup for Google Wave updates.

In January, one of the top stories of the Internet was that a single Google search generates 7 g of CO2. The story came out from an article published in The Sunday Times of London which focused on the enviromental impact of Google searches.   Google responded to the article very quickly, stating a Google search is actually equals to 0.2 g of CO2 and the efforts & supports of Google to further Green energy.

Google reminds us  how green it is, often since accused of being a energy hog. According to this official Google Blog post, Google engineers calculated that a cheeseburger emits as much CO2 as 15,000 Google searches and Co2 emissions of an average daily newspaper equals the amount of 850 Google searches.

Here are some other comparisons:

There’s no doubt that Google is polluting the earth less than its competitors per search, but Google should take into consideration that the total number of Google searchs are mind-blowing and these numbers continue to rise at the speed of light. Google has the most efficient datacenters but nobody has more datacenters than Google.

I think the only way for Google to protect itself from future “global warmer” accusations is to generate and use noteworthy part of the energy required for its datacenters from green resources and to show that to the whole world.
For the rest of us, we should think again about eating a cheeseburger

There’s no doubt that YouTube is the biggest player in online video industry. YouTube outperformed its competitors and has become a winner in video sharing. YouTube is one of  the most succesful web stories of all time, since 2006 and still growing very fast.

When Google acquired Youtube for $ 1.65 B, Google was criticized for paying huge amount of money for a website without a business model. Everybody except Google was thinking that YouTube was overvalued. Video sharing sites have the biggest costs in Internet World. They need really fast servers and huge storage space and the bandwith costs are the highest. Because of the high costs, ROI (return of investment) of online video businesses are very slow. It’s hard to monetize broadband video and the only ways to monetize this type of business are showing ads and subscription.

According to the YouTube Blog, YouTube’ s 1 minute is worth 20 hours. In mid-2007, 6 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute and in January ‘09 it grew to 15 hours per minute. Now,  20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and we’ll see 24 hours – a day’s worth of video uploaded to YouTube, very soon.

YouTube dominates the statistics of online video industry, but doesn’t make Google any money. YouTube streams more than 5 billions videos in a month but less than 5 percent of those videos have ads.  YouTube serves one-third of  all online videos. Industry experts predicts US Online Video Ad Spending as $ 750 M in 2009 and rising to $ 5.8 B in 2013.  Undoubtedly, YouTube will get a big part of this pie if it’ll survive. YouTube’s operational costs are rising and bandwith costs are estimated about $ 470 M for this year alone. Day by day, it’s getting harder and more expensive for Google to support YouTube.

Hulu, a smaller and newer competitor of YouTube made a head-to-head US revenue (about $90 M) with YouTube. Hulu is focusing on exclusively on professional content and held by NBC Universal, News Corp and Disney which are also very important video producers for television. Hulu’s advantage is its professional content without copyright problems. But because of some copyright restricitons, Hulu is a U.S. only service. YouTube proves that there’s a big market for user-generated content but Hulu shows us that advertisers want to spend money for professional content.

* YouTube had more than 77 million unique visitors in April when Hulu had about 7 million unique visitors.

Industry experts estimate  an average value of $15 CPM for video sites and $40 CPM for focused video sites like Hulu and Heavy.

Other video sites will never be able to grow as much as YouTube, but their revenue can surpass YouTube’s in the future. YouTube (and Google) must find a way to monetize its content effectively and reduce the costs. I think the only way to do is to serve more professional content as quickly as possible and find an innovative way to monetize user-generated content. Maybe, sharing the revenue gained from user-generated content with the users who created the  content can increase the quality and the chance of the user-generated content to get ads.

It’s true that YouTube has mind blowing satistics and  the third most popular website in the world. YouTube’s one minute is worth 20 hours; but we really wonder how much is YouTube’s one minute worth in US $?

Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled “a ragtag band of volunteers,” gave them tools for collaborating and created Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.

Thanks Ted.com for organizing these unmissable talks.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

You can’t go a day without mention of the “credit crunch” in the media.  Everyday, new companies goes bust and the unemployment numbers are bleak. The unemployment rate hit 8.5 in US in March (8.1 in US in February).

Being an entrepreneur has always been a hard thing but in these tough times, it gets harder. Starting a new business or trying to expand a current business needs very much courage, when you look at around and see all those bust companies and unemployed people . We wondered and searched the net to learn how the entrepreneurs are handling the downturn.

Courage
A recent survey shows, 45% of entrepreneurs says “Yes”, 35% says “No” and 21% says “Not Sure” to the  “Is now the time to launch a new business?” question. Also in the US,69% of entrepreneurs stated that they will continue with their business growth plans despite the prevailing economic climate. Even in downturn, brave entrepreneurs are going on their ways and launching new businesses.

Resistance

Fear is a fatal feeling in the downturn; but feeling of hope is very important to take risks. Some desperate entrepreneurs won’t be able to resist the downturn but 78% of entrepreneurs expect their business to survive this downturn.

Responsibility

Companies are squeezed by the recession and the surplus of some companies reduced and become insufficient to pay salaries and bills. Some entrepreneurs cut own pay to stay alive and not to cut jobs. This is unusual even for a recession but a very responsible attitude. What a business owner tells is, “All those small-business books say, ‘Pay yourself first.’ [But] not paying myself enabled me to keep a couple of other people around,” he says. “It’s not [the employees'] fault that I bet on growth.”

You can read these, if you want to read more about this topic:

How entrepreneurs are feeling@ CNNMoney

Entrepreneurs Cut Own Pay to Stay Alive@ Wall Street Journey

Web 2.0 started as a revolution that uses the web to link people together. Web 2.0 means communicating, sharing, discussing and trading online in very useful ways never possible before. Web 2.0 simplifies collaboration and information exchange. But words aren’t enough to describe Web 2.0 .These extremely enjoyable videos describe Web 2.0 in  the most creative ways.
Michael Wesch is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and leads the Digital Ethnography Working Group. On Nov. 20, 2008, CASE and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching honored Wesch as Professor of the Year. Proffessor Wesch was trying to find a way to describe Web 2.0 for a paper that he was writing and found that words were not quite enough – instead he created the videos; “Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us” and “Information R/evolution”

by Michael Wesch

The long time awaited the public beta version of Google Analytics API is finally available. The API will allow developers to extend Google Analytics in new and creative ways that benefit developers, organizations and end users.

Developers can develop applications that access Google Analytics API and integrate Google Analytics API into their existing products and create innovative dashboards for end-users. Developers hae already developed very good examples of how-to use Google Analytics API. You can check out examples and learn more about the API from this official Google Analytics Blog post.

Web 2.0 started as a revolution that uses the web to link people together. Web 2.0 means communicating, sharing, discussing and trading online in very useful ways never possible before. Web 2.0 simplifies collaboration and information exchange. We get used to Web 2.0 services as a part of our daily lives and these services are being more popular day by day.

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how is it possible to make money by starting a Web 2.0 business? We are sure that there are very successful Web 2.0 companies. Google makes money based on  “free” search,  Facebook and other social networks  grow so quickly and their content is created by their users.

This concise list is prepared to explain what’s different about Web 2.0 and  to help you about how to create a successful Web 2.0 business.

1. A Simple Business Idea: Every succesful business requires a business idea.  The main problem abot business ideas is that people think a complex idea means more success. Most succesful Web businesses focus on simple problems and solve them perfectly. There were search giants before Google but Google improved search results, localized its services with a very-simple interface and for free. Don’t forget, complexity is the enemy of Web 2.0 . Think simple!

2. Create and Release as Early as Possible: The development velocity is important when you start a Web 2.0 business. Investors want to see working prototypes before they invest in your projects and don’t forget the competitors; some of them are experts about getting others valuable ideas and transform into businesses.

3. Use The Network Effect: Web 2.0 World is people-centric and there are countless free ways of collaboration with people who may become your users, investors or team-mates. Social networks and social bookmarking sites likes Digg are the best places to find volunteers for testing your products or advertising your business for free. Listen to your customers and let their feedback shape your product.Try to develop a community around your web business and hire a community manager as soon as possible. Motivated fans will be the best and the cheapest marketing staff of your company. The network effect is the main reason why leading Internet companies got so big, so  fast.

4. Use Web 2.0 Tools To Cut Costs & Save Time:The simple rule to calculate how much money you need for a startup is; ”If you plan to develop in a year, it’s going to take two; if you think it’s going to take $100K, it’s going to take $200K”. So you must find a way to cut your costs and finish your project in due time. Web 2.0 tools help you to complete your tasks in a fast and mostly for free (or at a small charge) way. For example FreshBooks offers a simple invoicing and time tracking services that help you manage your business and lets you . Google Voice gives you anumber for all your phones, voicemail and sms. Especially in the startup phase, online services save you time and money, be available 24/7 and make you look professional.

When developing your products; don’t re-create what you can source from elsewhere. Another website’s API or Google App Engine may reduce your development time. Try to source it from elsewhere before you build something up. If you’re lucky it can be for free but sometimes it’s worth buying a ready solution; your time is priceless.

5. Monetize Every Chance: Advertising can often seem overly commercial especially in the startup stage but a sponsorship or small advertising sections are good for your business to make some money. Every pageview of your web business has potential as an earning point. You can also find innovative ways.

6. Track Your Users & Rankings: Success of your web 2.0 business depends on your business’ statistics. More users mean more money. You must track how man users visit your site, how much time they spend on your site, the most popular and the least popular parts of your site, how much registered users you have and etc… There are plenty of web 2.0 services to track your user analytics and  I think Google Analytics or a similar service is adequate for this purpose. You must also track and evaluate the demographics of your users to understand their needs and level of interests. User registration and polls are good options.
Tracking you site’s ratings is another important thing. Google’s PageRank, Alexa’s Traffic Rank and other rankings show how popular your site is and enables benchmarking of your site’s performance to your competitors’. You must know who’s talking about your company and in what way,too.

7. Don’t Forget Marketing: If developing a good web service is 50% of your business; the other 50% is marketing. Most of the creative & innovative solutions become trash because they can’t become brands. New users mean new markets; having a well-planned market strategy can save your business’ life. Instead of diving into a crowded market like a red ocean full of sharks, look for emerging areas on the web and try to find niche markets.  You should read something about Blue Ocean Strategy to learn niche marketing better. Marketing and brand positioning are two important points that you can need a professional’s help.

8. Read About Successful & Unsuccessful Internet Companies: Experience means money and time. A web entrepreneur must read the success stories of Amazon, Google, Youtube, Yahoo, Digg, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn,  PlentyofFish and the others, once. But an internet entrepreneur must read the stories of unsuccessful Internet companies that entered the deadpool, twice.

9. Have a Revenue Model: You can have 10 million pageviews, your users can spend several hours in a day on your site but it’s possible that you earn nothing. Every business needs a revenue model. You can sell physical goods, just run ads or sell your online services. It’s your business and  you will make a decision.  Don’t forget without a revenue model, starting a web business is a business suicide.

10. Continually Improve Your Business and Develop Improvement Metrics: Continuous improvement is the key factor to stay alive in Web 2.0 World; without continuous improvement, Web 2.0 itself can’t stay alive.  Experience is important and failure breeds success. You must learn from your mistakes and not repeat them.
You should define your targets and the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to reach your targets. For example, ROI rate is very important if you have investors. Define your metrics and check them often and improve your strategies to improve your business.

This post is a brief of personal experience and inspired by Dion Hinchcliffe’s “50 Essential Strategies For Creating A Successful Web 2.0 Product” article.

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The first Web 2.0 EXPO of 2009 has begun in San Fransisco, CA. Because of the recession the Expo is downsized; the number of attendees was more than 10,000 last year and this year about 8,000 attendees are expected.

I think the hot topics of the Expo will be:

- Less is More – The art of staying less expensive and more efficient
- Goverment 2.0 & How Obama used and will use the Web 2.0
-Will Twitter be able to have a revenue model? & Using Twitter in business for profit
-Using Web 2.0 as a tool to cut costs

Despite economic situation, the Web 2.0 Expo is alive and still one of the most important events in the IT industry. The Expo’s theme “The Power of Less” expresses the benefits of using Web 2.0 based collaborative tools for cost saving.

If you can’t attend and still wonder wha’s going on Web 2.0 Expo like me, you should check the its website after the Expo. We’d appreciate O’Reilly & TechWeb sharing the keynote video and presentation slides from all events they organize in the way of Web 2.0 .

Google finally launched its venture capital fund. Google Ventures welcomes startups from a broad range of industries; including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care.

The FAQ of Google Ventures tells all the vision and targets of the fund. Google says that they are looking for entrepreneurs who have solutions for problems in creative and innovative ways. They also say that they are also able to invest amounts ranging from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars, depending on the stage of the opportunity and the company’s need for capital and they welcome the opportunity to co-invest along with outstanding venture or strategic partners. I think they don’t want to seem as a competitor only, also a potential partner for other investors.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington  sums up Google Ventures as:

Is this a good investor for your startup? The cachet of having Google behind you is great for marketing. But if you think you have the next new Google-killer search idea, you may want to bake it a while before showing the technology to these guys.

I think the same as Michael Arrington except the last part: Google would love to invest in the next new Google-killer search idea and then acquire it!

Google Ventures is now open and ready to fund your startups, but i think you will have to wait in a very long queue.

Web 2.0 has become a business and has created its own information sources: blogs.

As Internet entrepreneurs; everyday we follow our favorite blogs to learn about new startups, web events, web people, web culture and enterprise opportunities.

If you’re interested in Web 2.0 as an entrepreneur or as a power user, then you must follow these influential  Web 2.0 – oriented blogs:

#1 TechCrunch:

Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch is the number one source for Web 2.0 news, especially about 2.0 startups. TechCrunch is a must-read blog to watch & learn the development of Web 2.0 . TechCrunch has more than 2 million RSS readers and ranked #3 in “Technorati Top 100 Blogs” list. Also, TechCrunch is the fastest Web 2.0 blog to publish a new post.

#2 O’Reilly Radar:

Tim O’Reilly is the one who denominated the new web as “Web 2.0″ .  O’Reilly Radar is the right place to  get information about the concept, the theory and the philosophy of Web 2.0 . O’Reilly also started Web 2.0 Conference .

#3 Mashable:

Pete Cashmore’s Mashable is one of the most popular blogs focused on Web 2.0 and social media news.  Mashable is very good at profiling new web sites and services and has 5+ million monthly pageviews.

#4 ReadWriteWeb:

A new Zealander, Richard Macmanus founded ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and ReadWriteWeb has around 275k RSS and email subscribers. ReadWriteWeb provides Web technology news, reviews and analysis.

#5 Official Google Blog

There is no doubt that, Google has a lot of Web 2.0 services and everyday a new product is or product change is added to Google’s product range. Official Google Blog is the best place to learn about Google’s web services.

#6 Web2Asia

Web2Asia is a consulting firm for Western Internet, e-commerce and mobile application companies to successfully launch and grow their business in Greater China, Japan and Korea. There are more than 430 million Internet users in these 3 countries and Web2Asia’s Blog is the best place to learn what is going on about Web 2.0 in Asia.

#7 Somewhat Frank

Frank Gruber is an Internet entrepreneur and a Web 2.0 blogger. Frank is well-known for the blog Somewhat Frank, and for his analysis on Web 2.0, social media and emerging technologies and has been featured in a number of publications including TechCrunch, iMediaConnection, ReadWriteWeb Network as well as on his blog and related video podcasts on Somewhat Frank TV.

* This is not a “best ones list”; it only shows our favorites. All the comments and additions are welcome.

(This post is co-authored with Web2INC Magazine)

The most stressful phase of a business is its start-up phase. If starting a business was easy, everyone would do it! You need 5 things to create a successful business: Idea, Courage, Time, Money, People.

Idea

There are billions of creative ideas in our brains, but ideas mean nothing if you don’t follow up by taking real action. Taking an idea into real action isn’t enough; your business model must cover what customers want. If you’re going to do what everyone is doing, you can’t be successful; you must solve a problem and create additional value for your customers.

Courage

A start-up without any risk is a dream. Forget about failure and  if you think you have a great idea, step out of your comfort area and go for it. Failures breed success!

Time & Money

There is a simple rule to calculate how much time and money you need for s startup: ” If you plan to develop in a year, it’s going to take two; if you think it’s going to take $100K, it’s going to take $200K”. So be patient and spend your money carefully and don’t run out of money. Also, growing too fast sometimes means unnecessary stress of a loan.

People

To succeed, the person you hire must do his job well and be success – oriented. In the start-up phase, the best way to motivate your employees and them make them more efficient is giving them your company’s shares.

You need more people who will help you develop your business for no money. These are friends, candidates for testing your product or service, a friends’ friends at advantageous positions for you to make PR and free marketing. This is called business networking.

To read more about this topic, you should read Paul Graham’s (partner at Y-Combinator) “How to Start a Start-Up” essay on his website. This essay is a must-read resource for entrepreneurs before starting a start-up.

Also, Inc.’s “Start-Up Secrets” slide is worth looking at.

After a very hot auction between ToysRUs and National A-1, ToysRUs bought the domain name Toys.com at for $5.1 million. This was the first great domain name purchase of 2009. In fact, this is the second sale of Toys.com in one month.

Firstly, Faculty Lounge has put $1.25 million on the table for Toys.com in an auction organized as a result of the recent meltdown of The Parent Company. The Parent Company filed for bankruptcy in December 2008 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware, and has auctioned off several substantial assets at the law offices of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP.

ToysRus really wanted the domain, for obvious reasons. Everyone except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A-1 (owner of domains such as free.com, boys.com, girls.com, and divorce.com) bowed out of the auction at $3 million. The last $2 million was just those two companies going back and forth for hours.

To encourage type-in visitors, a domain name needs to be simple to remember: A domain name can be reached in two ways: one in which an internet user types in the name on the browser and another where it comes up when a relevant keyword is fed into a search-engine. Toys.com is an answer to these two ways.

Domain name market has a divergent behaviour : A meaningless name like “Google.com” may become the most valuable domain in the world but generic domain names like “Toys.com” are still valuable, too. Real estate business seems dead but online real estate business is still alive!

In 2004, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote to prospective shareholders about their vision for the company, they outlined a commitment to contribute significant resources, including 1% of Google’s equity and profits in some form, as well as employee time, to address some of the world’s most urgent problems. That commitment became Google.org.

Google.org is a hybrid philanthrophy, to address world’s most urgent problems and also managing Google Foundation. Google.org is supported financialy as 1% of Google’s equity and profits. Google.org is as “Social Responsible Face  of Google” . Google also established the Google Foundation in 2005, which is a separate 501(c)(3) private foundation.  The Google Foundation is managed by Google.org and supports Google’s mission and core initiatives as one of our sources of funds for grant making. As of May 2008, Google.org has committed over $85 million in grants and investments to further their  initiatives. You can look at the details of Google.org’s projects and investments here.

Now, three years after Google.org was founded, Google is trying to do the best to take things forward. In this blog post of Google; which is posted by Dr. Larry Brilliant, Chief Philanthropy Evangelist of Google.org; Dr. Brilliant tells the future scope of Google.org:

It’s clear that I am most effective in helping to identify “big ideas” and potential partners, as well as raising awareness about society’s biggest challenges. I am therefore very excited to become Google’s Chief Philanthropy Evangelist. I think this is the highest contribution that I can make both to Google.org and to fighting the urgent threats of our day: from climate change to emerging infectious diseases, to issues of poverty and health care. By focusing my energy outwards I hope to be able to spend more time motivating policy makers, encouraging public and private partnerships, and generally advocating for the changes that we must make as a global society to solve these problems. Long-time Googler Megan Smith will take over day-to-day management of Google.org, joining as General Manager to lead us through this transition, in addition to her existing role as Vice President of New Business Development.

One of the first things that Megan will focus on is how Google.org can best achieve its mission. As a first step, Google has decided to put even more engineers and technical talent to work on these issues and problems.

In this global economic crisis, the work Google.org is doing, together with our many colleagues around the world, to help develop cheap clean energy, find and fight disease outbreaks before they sweep the globe, and build information platforms for underserved people globally, is more important than ever. We hope that Google.org will invest more on projects like Flu Trends, RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter and other big companies follow Google to transform their charity organisations into sustainable businesses.

Fizy is a very new online music service. It just launched in 22 December, 2008. Fizy is a track-by-track music search service. You don’t need to download or make a playlist for listening to what you want.

Everyday people use Google for searching what they need. Because Google has a very easy-to-use interface and finds you what you want very fast. The best part of fizy is its very easy and fast interface, too. You just search for and play tracks you’re seeking. Google indexes every bit of the Internet and Fizy does the same for online legal music. Fizy is claiming 75+ billion tracks and 25+ billion video clips indexed by using  about 50 different APIs and supports 29 languages and all the content is legal! This is  what we call “convergience” and Music 3.0

Fizy become very popular in only one month because of a viral spread like Google. It’s spread isn’t as huge as Google but huge enough for a site like Fizy. Robert Yaris, c0-founder of Fizy shared the site over Digg to his 20 friends and one of this 20 friends shared it with social media strategist Dave Delaney. When Dave shared “Impressed with http://fizy.org for searching for music to listen to NOW without download.” status message on his twitter account with his 3,000 + followers, it was the time Fizy started to go viral!

In an interview with Robert Yaris, he tells that he and his team mates are addicted to music and were very bored to make efforts to listen to music online. “Offering content in the fastest and easiest way: This is Web 3.0″, he says.He also adds that a manager from Google has contacted them to talk about Fizy before 1 month passed after the launch.

Fizy has become a legend in one month and had 17.000.000 page views in January ‘09. This shows the power of social media to go viral. Fizy means collaboration  and it is the candidate for becoming “Google of Music” and it’s definitely worth trying. We wish them good luck…

Update: Turkish Internet advertising company, ReklamZ has acquired 40% of Fizy.org