DISQUS

Haha congrats Nick, I'll buy one drink's worth of shares at that valuation at tonight's Mashable event :-) As accurate or inaccurate as YouNoodle might be, it could end up just like Alexa or Compete where people don't necessarily take the numbers too seriously but use them as a frame of reference (one startups valuation versus another according to YouNoodle).

Just a test comment ...

Hmm I can't seem to get this to work. I've now got the bookmarklet installed, but when I click it, it brings up search results for the given post inside of Google Reader, but doesn't seem to share it (and there is no "share" option on the search results page). Any ideas?

ReadBurner will be the best way to break the TechMeme habit!

Good post, Nick. And so true - most people still write into Mashable thinking Pete writes everything :-)

Congrats Steve ... Hope I can get my MBL situation sorted out too :)

Great headline Mathew. I actually laughed out loud :-)

Couldn't agree more with the story too, but it's all about the headline these days anyhow right?

Agree with you Mathew and the post from Valleywag, and I still consider myself a "kid" :) Video just isn't a very efficient way to communicate, though I do occasionally like to video chat with friends I haven't seen in a while via Skype. Plus, versus watching a video for a minute to determine if I'm going to get something useful, I can read the first paragraph of a blog in 15 seconds and figure out if I want to keep reading. The time adds up pretty quickly ...

I didn't say it was fair value, but that's what the supposedly rational open market is valuing them at ;-)

I recently came to the conclusion that an installed user is worth about $1.40, based on the earnings of the only pure-play FB app company that is publicly traded (that I know of) - http://mashable.com/2008/01/16/snap-interactive/

Of course, that numbers can change a lot based on the biz model of the app.

Hey Nick - see the date on that VentureBeat article. The Frazr investment was last summer :)

This idea makes a lot of sense, and is sort of similar to the new direction we've taken at MindSay.com. We (there's two of us) recently decided to go the social news route, making our homepage a blog and letting users submit their own entries for consideration. We then sort through these entries and edit/link them with a consistent style. So far it seems to be going pretty well, with users submitting interesting stuff that seems to get a lot of comments.

Essentially, we took our existing community and tasked them with digging up news for us. Not everyone participates, but for those that do, it creates a news site with articles very relevant to them. I think you'll find a lot of success taking a similar approach to tech news.

My question is that as a VC, what "problem" did Tumblr convince you they are solving? And, with their tool being so simple and easy to duplicate, what is their competitive advantage? These seem to be the first things VCs have asked me whenever I've pitched an idea, and am wondering how a company as simple and in as crowded a space at Tumblr pitched it.

Indeed, virtually no substance on the call. I was going to do a summary afterwards, but then realized I had very little to add that the initial coverage didn't already address. Smart move letting a bunch of us publish some not-so-valuable notes instead of you :-)

Finally a Facebook application that solves a major real world problem :-)

I'd be surprised if that happened. I haven't been able to track down Dodgeball numbers circa acquisition time, but I'm assuming Jaiku's user base is way bigger than Dodgeball's was when Google bought it. Dodgeball was a little ahead of its time IMO, but Jaiku has too many users at this point for Google to totally ignore the community and catch the wave of negative PR. At least, that's how I would rationally think about it ...

Well, at least we can be pretty sure the reason wasn't money :) I'm guessing the answer will start to make itself apparent as Google's mobile OS plans become clearer over the next few months.

I agree. And honestly I think a good part of the success of Rocketboom was due to the fact Amanda was a cable news style "babe" being put in front of an audience of 90% males who spend the better part of their day in front of a computer. On TV, there are dozens who do the same thing, most of them better.