Disqus - Latest Comments for Adam Ostrow

Re: This Girl Just Hired by CNBC

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:13:38 -0000

lol, really? CNBC Europe I assume?

Re: Tumblr

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:00:59 -0000

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.

Re: The next step in Digg clones (Scripting News)

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:17:54 -0000

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.

Re: Well I’ll be damned

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:44:31 -0000

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

Re: Amanda splits with ABC — does anyone care?

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:57:41 -0000

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.

Re: Google: Why Jaiku and not Twitter?

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:09:43 -0000

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.

Re: Google: Why Jaiku and not Twitter?

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:17:49 -0000

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 ...

Re: Facebook: Conference call notes

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:57:36 -0000

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 :-)

Re: How much is a SuperPoke worth?

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:42:38 -0000

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.

Re: How much is a SuperPoke worth?

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:11:16 -0000

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

Re: Seesmic: Still don’t really get it

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:00:39 -0000

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 ...

Re: Lance Ulanoff’s death spiral has begun

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:48:01 -0000

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?

Re: RSS aggregator ReadBurner relaunches, better than ever

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:14:23 -0000

Thanks for the post MG. The Disqus "streamback" is a go as soon as its available in the Disqus API. Daniel Ha blogged about it today on the Disqus blog.

Re: @Social Aggregators GIVE ME MY COMMENTS!

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:30:49 -0000

fav.or.it is a new RSS reader I reviewed recently with integrated comments that also show up on the original story.

Re: Share An Item That’s Not In Google Reader

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:36:28 -0000

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?

Re: http://www.readburner.com/item/30089/5-ways-to-find-more-friends-on-twitter

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:49:52 -0000

Just a test comment ...

Re: ReadBurner

Adam Ostrow — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 09:58:47 -0000

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

Re: Disqus – making blog comments social

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:08:09 -0000

cool, glad you found Disqus through us, they are great :-)

Re: Disqus – making blog comments social

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:16:46 -0000

thanks, glad you're enjoying it!

Re: I Have a Writer, His Name is Anthony

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:53:06 -0000

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

Re: Social Times Receives $15 Million Valuation

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:28:44 -0000

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).

Re: The Automated Facebook PR Agent

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:21:56 -0000

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

Re: Other Investors Put Money in Facebook

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:38:57 -0000

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

Re: 2007/09/23/gmail/

Adam Ostrow — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:59:57 -0000

Great ideas. Especially would like the durable uploads feature.

Re: 2007/09/23/gmail/

Adam Ostrow — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:02:47 -0000

Hmm not sure I follow on 8&9 ... how exactly do you make it so you can view more messages?

Re: 2007/10/11/facebook-yahoo/

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:45:29 -0000

Yup. Yahoo doesn't get much credit for being "early" on things like Flickr and del.icio.us. Given Photobucket went for $300M+, you would have to think Flickr would at least be in that range today if it were still independent. Yahoo got it for around $30M.

Plus, I don't know what exactly "investing" in Facebook gets them. Whereas Microsoft would be preserving its ad deal, it's not really clear what Yahoo would gain other than making money on their investment if Facebook continues to go up in value.

Re: 2008/03/25/sony-bmg-subscription-service/

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:14:20 -0000

well, it would be a fairly high margin business for the record labels no? Eliminating the middle-men like Rhapsody, iTunes, etc.

Re: 2008/04/09/verionica-belmont-revision3/

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:40:21 -0000

@Lan - thanks for letting us know - added the credit

Re: 2008/04/10/get-your-startup-on-mashable/

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:38:30 -0000

@lapp lol, what hair? :-)

Re: 2008/04/10/get-your-startup-on-mashable/

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:11:33 -0000

Hi Nils - I have seen your complaints about not getting covered, but no actual pitch of what your site does :-) Perhaps it didn't get thru to us. Send it along - news@mashable.com

Re: 2008/04/11/summize-twitter-search/

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:50:01 -0000

hah, great moment in journalism. fixed :)

Re: 2008/04/21/igoogle-developer-sandbox/

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:58:04 -0000

lol, c'mon, pacman is the past, present, and future of technology.

Re: 2008/05/08/chamillionaire/

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:43:26 -0000

Sorry about that, got lost in the mail, added ...

Re: Can Twitter Crack the Teen Market?

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:24:32 -0000

Hey Andy - Where have you seen the number that Twitter has more than one million users? Just curious ...

Re: Can Twitter Crack the Teen Market?

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:30:30 -0000

Ah, missed that. It says "according to comScore" so I assume they are assuming to traffic, not actual registered users. I have a hard time believing Twitter has 1.2 million registered.

Re: Is News Coverage On The Web Becoming Like Consumer Packaged Goods?

Adam Ostrow — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:42:42 -0000

As one of the authors of the "redundant" coverage you link to, I think consumer packaged good is a great analogy. People have their brand preferences between all of these news services, based on things like writing style, whether or not they think they "fit in" with a certain brand, and the relationships/conversations they can have with the authors, both on the site and on other outlets like Twitter and FriendFeed.

And, while most of "us" live off of our RSS reader and aggregators like TechMeme, our stats show that a lot of people just come direct to the web site, which means we have an obligation to cover everything that's relevant to our audience, with our brand's own unique style.