OregonStartups.com News

Twitter Raises Funding to Fix Infrastructure

From Union Square Ventures (A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing): Twitter Raises A Second Round Of Funding:

Our portfolio company Twitter announced today that they have closed a second round of financing, led by Spark Capital and including Jeff Bezos' investment entity Bezos Expeditions. Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage, another existing investor, also participated in the round.

We remain very excited by the power of marrying communications and social media in the form of small microblog messages shared between friends and followers. Twitter will use the financing to shore up its infrastructure which is the number one priority of the company right now.

So maybe there's hope for Twitter infrastructure improving now...

Google Adsense vs. Building an Ad Sales Team

In a post to his BeyondVC blog, Ed Sim has some  advice for web startups looking to make money on ads.  For example:

...don't ramp up your sales team too quickly until you have a product to sell.  That means if you don't have scale or enough eyeballs you are better off using Google Adsense.

...many startups may not know what kind of ad units to sell but be careful of not having a standard product list or rate sheet when you go out to the market.  Yes, I know you have to be creative if you have a new service and listen to your customers, but at the same time don't base your business on selling one-off ad units for each advertiser because this can be a huge drain on your technical resources over time

MySpace Generation getting Bored of Ads

A recent Business Week article observed that social networking users seem to be growing less responsive to ads.  What a surprise!

... the forecasts for torrid growth may prove unrealistic. Besides the slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be growing less responsive to ads, according to several advertisers and online placement firms. If advertisers can't figure out how to reverse these trends, social networking could end up as a niche market in the online ad world, smashing hopes and valuations across Silicon Valley.

Portland Startups Ranked by Web Traffic

TechVibes is maintaining a list of Portland startups ranked by the amount of web traffic they have.  The top 10 are:

Rank	+	/-	Name	Alexa		Compete		Average
1			AboutUs	2,077		1,382		1,730
2			Discogs	1,055		7,977		4,516
3	N		Kongregate	4,376		11,547		7,962
4		1	MyOpenID	55,261		51,435		53,348
5		2	Splashcast	95,989		25,980		60,985
6		1	Earth Class Mail	71,034		61,538		66,286
7		1	Jive Software	68,134		67,884		68,009
8		4	Sandy	56,285		94,146		75,216
9			Gone Raw	135,649		90,491		113,070
10		2	Cliq	255,901		38,472		147,187

See the full list at this TechVibes page.

The Semantic Web (3.0?)

Marshall Kirkpatrck posted a short discussion of the Semantic Web on his blog that you should check out if you're wondering just what "Semantic Web" means.  There's a link to a great interview with a BYU PhD student that goes into much more detail.

Brand Yourself Online

The 2007 Global Telesummit on "Celebrating a Decade of Personal Branding" has posted a number of MP3 audio recordings of conference sessions, including topics like:

- For job seekers: Use Personal Branding to Take Your Job Search from Zero to 60
- For entrpreneurs: Evangelizing Evangelists to Build a Business and Build Your Brand
- For managers: Building Your Employer Brand to Win the War for Talent

Check it out at the Gobal Telesummit website.

So Many Ads, So Few Clicks

A recent Business Week article suggests that Internet users may be getting numb to all those ads:

The truth about online ads is that precious few people actually click on them. And the percentage of people who respond to common "banner ads," the ubiquitous interactive posters that run in fixed places on sites, is shrinking steadily.  Read more...

Kawasaki funds "Stupidest Idea Ever"

VC Guy Kawasaki started a web 2.0 site "Truemors" to find out what it was like to start a web 2.0 company.   Regarding web 2.0 companies, Kawasaki commented: "The only thing you can conclude is that it's a crap shoot, ... You have no idea what is going to succeed."

U.S. is Behind in Internet Bandwidth

According to a Red Herring article, the U.S. is anywhere from 15th to 24th in the world in terms of broadband penetration -- and it's a disadvantage fro Internet startups. We have less broadband regulation than some countries (such as Japan) depending instead on competition. But regulation seems to do a better job of providing universal broadband access.

Web 2.0: Take the Money or Run?

In his Venture Blog yesterday, Seattle's John Cook wonders: if Web 2.0 companies are so capital efficient, why does a Zillow need $30 million?