Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Valley Goes to the Mountains, in Full Blogging Mode - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times

The Valley Goes to the Mountains, in Full Blogging Mode - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times: "Tech is back at Davos this year,” one of the participants exclaimed to me before I left Silicon Valley for the annual conference at this ski resort town.

It doesn’t feel that way. Silicon Valley’s participation at Davos peaked just before the dot-com bubble burst, and it has never really recovered. The high point was probably the year that Sun Microsystems took over a small villa across the street from the Congress Center — probably in 2001. (After the crash, Microsoft inherited the choice location.)

This year, much of the focus appears to be on tech-centric philanthropy, such as the Gates Foundation and the newly arrived Google.org. Microsoft itself plans to join Dell and Bono’s Product RED in a press announcement later this week.

In 2007, tech’s presence seemed to center around the Web 2.0 world and the arrival of the bloggers, who were permitted to attend and cover the conference for the first time."

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Long Tail of Social Networks « CauseWired

Found via Twitter. Tom Watson's blog

The Long Tail of Social Networks « CauseWired: "The Long Tail of Social Networks
January 20, 2008 · No Comments

I’ve been quiet here for a very good reason: I’ve been writing! But I wanted to point out a recent post over at GigaOM that shows the long history of online social networks. Lots of folks believe they kind of sprung from the Internet ether sometime after the year 2000 - but in fact, what we call online social networking has existed as long as modems have connected human beings."