Six Degrees of Social Media

Today I spent my day at the SocialMediaClub HQ working on the official announcement for the working group dedicated to developing a new, social media aware standard for press releases.

This is exciting stuff and I really believe that this is the sign of many new things to come that will (and already is) fundementally changing the PR industry and its targets.

Some of the most influential, smart, and visionary people are already on board, including:
Chris Heuer, Social Media Club and Brainjams
Tom Foremski, SiliconValleyWatcher
Mark Nowlan, PR Newswire
Laura Sturaitis, BusinessWire
Todd Defren, Shift Communications and PR Squared
Jen McClure, Society for New Communications Research
Jason Baptiste, TheWeblogWire
Todd Van Hoosear, Topaz Partners

Stay tuned...the release will drop next week and we're looking for additional innovators.

Since we're on the subject, Lee Odden over at TopRank Online Marketing Blog, published a great post, "Resources for New Media and Social Media PR." It's a great post thats serves as a highly qualified hub for learning, sharing and elevating SMPR.



Per Odden, "There’s a growing amount of buzz about social media lately, but specifically of interest is social media press releases. As we fold the new media press release, press room and media relations tactics into our PR strategy, I’ve been monitoring a number of resources on the topic of new media PR and the hRelease or social media release and offer some of those links here."

Tags: hrelease, Social Media, socialmediaclub, Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher, Howard Greenstein, Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, brainjams, futureworks, PR2.0, Jennifer McCluer SNCR, todd defren, shift, pr-squared, Todd Van Hoosear, topaz partners, Jason Baptiste, theweblogwire, Laura Sturaitis, businesswire, microformat, businesswire, prnewswire , lee odden

Livermore 25th Annual Harvest Wine Celebration

For those of you not going to Burning Man or spending the long weekend catching up on blog posts, consider heading up to wine country this holiday weekend. No, not that that wine country, the other one. I can’t even say that, there are way too many wine country regions around here, so I better be a bit more specific.

Livermore Valley is hosting its annual Harvest Wine Celebration, and this one appears to be the grandest yet.

Labor Day Weekend -Sunday & Monday, September 3 & 4, 2006 Noon - 5:00pm

It’s only one time a year, two days, 35 wineries, 30 open house locations all featuring wine tasting, live music, food for purchase and over 100 arts and crafts vendors! Oh, and there will be wine there too ;)

Here are a few of my personal favorites:
Stony Ridge Winery
The Steven Kent Winery
Tamás Estates
Wente Vineyards
White Crane Winery
Concannon Vineyard
Page Mill Winery
Murrieta’s Well

And for those of us that dare to judge a wine by its label, give these a shot:
Bodegas Aguirre Winery
Crooked Vine Winery
El Sol Vineyard

Livermore, like our neighbors in Gilroy, San Martin, Fremont, Santa Cruz, Lodi, and Amador, produce some of the most incredible wine on the market. If you have the time, make it happen. You’ll discover some incredible varietals, new wineries, great wine, and more importantly, incredible stories behind the wineries.

Here’s a breakdown of events:

LIVE MUSIC
Live music at every winery includes famous local bands such as Georgi and The Rough Week at Concannon, The Tom Rose Band at Fenestra, T Lane & the Nighthawks at Garré, The Hummingbirdz at Mitchell Katz, Hurricane at LVC, The Bacchus Brothers at Steven Kent, plus reggae to classic rock, acoustic guitar to rockabilly and good old blues.

FOOD
Enjoy every cuisine imaginable with food offerings that will tempt every palate, with Mexican to Mediterranean, Hawaiian style to house made hummus, Grape Stomp Salad to garlic fries, Prime Rib to Kalua pork sandwiches, plus ice cream, baklava, brownies and of course, BBQ.

DISPLAYS
Fine Art, Classic Cars, Winery History and much more.

SPECIAL TASTINGS
Special barrel tastings are available at almost every winery for a nominal fee.

TICKETS
2-Day
$35 in advance ($40 day of event) Includes entrance into winery open houses on both Sunday and Monday, wine tasting, commemorative wine glass, official program, live entertainment and courtesy bus shuttles between wineries

Monday only
$30 in advance or day of eventIncludes entrance into winery open houses on Monday, wine tasting, commemorative wine glass, official program, live entertainment and courtesy bus shuttles between wineries

Non-drinking/Designated Driver
$5 for two daysIncludes entrance into winery open houses for both days, official program, water, live entertainment and courtesy bus shuttles between wineries

For more information, follow this jump.

Send me an email if you’d like a few recommendations on each of the wineries…pr2point0 at gmail dot com.

Salud!

Tags: Stony Ridge Winery, The Steven Kent Winery, Tamás Estates, Wente Vineyards, White Crane Winery, Concannon Vineyard, Page Mill Winery, Murrieta’s Well, Bodegas Aguirre Winery, Crooked Vine Winery, El Sol Vineyard, Livermore, wine, Amador, lodi, Gilroy, san martin, solis

YouSendIt - IGetIt - An easy way to send large files online

Last month at STIRR, I was introduced to YouSendIt, “the leader in file delivery.” It’s an interesting service that allows anyone to send large files, securely, to contacts through email, bypassing any filters or limits set in place by admins on other side of the firewall.

For a couple of years, I’ve used a similar service from Dropload – basically, when I needed to send files in excess of 5-10MB.

According to Dropload’s site, it is a place for you to drop your files off and have them picked up by someone else at a later time. Recipients you specify are sent an email with instructions on how to download the file.

In my opinion both services work extremely well and are helpful in ensuring that large files make it, intact, to their intended recipients. The difference is the level of perception, branding, and professionalism you wish to portray.

Per the YouSendIt site, “The company was founded in 2003 to solve a simple problem - we needed to get big files to other folks reliably, without email limits, firewall constraints, esoteric FTP or ‘briefcase’ contortions. And we wanted it to be simpler than email, yet as secure and dependable as FedEx and such are in the real world.”


Photo Credit: Angie Chang

YouSendIt allows you to send up to 1GB files at a time. The site also promises that your data will stay secure: “Your data goes to who you want it to and nobody else. No risk of having data end up in the wrong hands.”

For example, today I was working with PRNewswire, and I needed to prepare a series of folders consisting of high-resolution digital images weighing-in at about 10MB each. I decided to give YouSendIt a try, and within minutes, the files were received…in tact.

The company offers a variety of packages for personal and business users.

YouSendIt Lite
Your own Inbox
Sent files history
Address book
100 downloads per file
$Free

YouSendIt Plus
No ads on your pages
Track downloads
3-day email support
200 downloads per fileSend files up to 2 GB
$4.99/month

YouSendIt Business Plus
Display your brand on file deliveries
Request files from clients through your own branded Dropbox
No ads
Track downloads for 30 days
2-day email support
Send files up to 2 GB
Files available for 14 days
500 downloads per file
$29.99/month

YouSendIt BusinessDisplay
No ads
Track downloads for 30 days
2-day email support
Send files up to 2 GB
Files available for 14 days
400 downloads per file
$19.99/month

At the end of the day, I was impressed with YouSendIt’s straight-forward and dependable service. I will still use Dropload for sending personal files (out of loyalty) and for business, I will continue to use YouSendIt. Either way, my files will arrive securely and on-time, which at the end of the day, is all that matters. Oh and for those of you who want to make some cool “YouSendIt” paper airplanes….follow the jump for the company’s set of instructions.

Digg This!

Tags: dropload, yousendit, business, angie chang, web2.0, web 2.0, stirr, prnewswire

TechCrunch Hits 100k

I wrote that headline and realized that readers could interpret it as either monthly revenue or subscribers. Well, according to Feedburner, TechCrunch hit 100k readers right on the money - literally. And, take a look at Technorati's numbers...Techcrunch, Rank: 8 (43,393 links from 12,110 blogs).

While the number may read 100k, I believe that TechCrunch has had a much bigger impact than Feedburner or Technorati numbers can represent here.

Let's not talk about the accuracy or relevance of Web 2.0, or whether or not TechCrunch is losing its edge, or how much the CrunchNetwork brings in on a monthly basis, or whether or not TechCrunch UK or CrunchGear were good business ideas...it's all irrelevant at the moment. Afterall, 800 people clawed their way into TechCrunch7 and many, many more tried. Take a look at the flickr stream and its obvious that this crowd is enthusiastic, renewed, and inspired. The question is, whether or not it will ultimately invigorate the Silicon Valley economy. Oh, just a side note, it's annoying and somewhat tacky when you delete your older photos and re-upload them so that they'll always be close to the front when searching...you know who you are!

Regardless of opinions or skeptic observations, it's representative of a movement. People ARE ready to celebrate tech, the web, marketing, and networking. Hell bring Industry Standard back and let's get some rooftop parties going!

When Mike announced the milestone on CrunchNotes, A couple of the comments, other than, "congrats" were interesting and also enlightening:

Richard OCallaghan, August 29th, 2006
Congrats Mike!
Out of curiousity, What sort of rate is your readership increasing at?
Richard

Mike, August 29th, 2006
Thanks Richard. It was doubling every three months for the first year. For that trend to continue, though, we’d have to add another 50k subscribers by the end of September, which isn’t going to happen.

Dave Winer, August 29th, 2006
Sorry, I chose my words poorly. I was asking a question, curious to know how they (Feedburner) calculate that number. Clearly the number of hits they’re getting for your feed must be going up, and perhaps the number of unique IP addresses is going up too. Do they count all the readers at Microsoft as 1 subscriber? Just curious to know what the method is.
I congratulate you a lot Mike, as you noted there are lots of positive mentions of TechCrunch in the archive of my weblog. I didn’t mean it in a negative way.

The last comment lead to Winer's blog and a series of discussions around this topic to find the answer.

• Mark Fletcher writes that Bloglines reports the number of subscribers each time it requests the feed.
• Lorenzo Viscanti: "Feedburner's count is just an approximation."
• Feedburner: "Subscribers is an approximate measure of the number of individuals currently subscribed to your feed."

The explanations continue here.

Digg this!

Tags: michael arrington, techcrunch, crunchnotes, scripting, dave winer, mark fletcher, lorenzo viscanti, feedburner, web2.0, web 2.0, parties, rooftop, industry standard, bubble, bubble 2.0, flickr, technorati, silicon valley

WifiTastic - Look Out Fon and the rest of you Fon'eros!

With all of the hype and buzz around free WiFi and big investments in companies trying to bring free connectivity to a neighborood near you, including venture-funded Fon, Google's new service for Mountain View residents and employees and Wireless Silicon Valley...one company is taking a different approach. They are making Wifi earn money for you!

Founded by David Sidrane and Rob Harding, WifiTastic officially introduced its public BETA program recently. Unlike the others, WifiTastic enables any broadband subscriber to create a revenue generating hotspot, providing high speed, wireless internet access to users ofWiFi-ready laptops, PCs, Macs, and PDAs. In a sense, it's a one stop shop package to seamlessly resell shared access to the Web.

By setting up a commercial hotspot (within minutes), owners can earn moneyby charging people in the vicinity of their wireless router to connect for a fixed hourly, daily or monthly fee. WifiTastic handles the billing andreturns 60% of the proceeds directly to the hotspot owner.

The service is compatible with the Linksys WRT54G router.Users can simply purchase a pre-configured router or update their existing Linksys router by downloading and installing a free firmware update from the company.

"WifiTastic is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to set up a secure, reliable commercial WiFi hotspot," said David Sidrane, Co-Founder of WifiTastic. "Instead of providing advertising-supported WiFi access, we're letting any broadband users earn money by securely sharing their high speed access. Whether it's with neighbors at home or work, or offering Internet in their café, bar, or hotel, WifiTastic, for the first time, makes it practical for anyone to operate a WiFi hotspot."

As part of the beta promotion, the Linksys WRT54GL router is availabledirectly from WifiTastic for free. The BETA program is expected to last through May 2006. BETA testers can register now at www.WifiTastic.com.

Now there are discussions as to whether or not "reselling" broadband acess is permitted by ISPs. Honestly, the legalities of it are going to be on a case by case basis. You'll have to read your contract if you feel obligated to bother. In my opinion, I think this is a very interesting approach. It comes at a time when free WiFi is a value-added, something used to lure customers and keep them coming back. But in residential and high traffice locales, not driven by the ability to access the Web, it makes sense.

Digg this!

Tags: fon, wifitastic, wifi, hotspot, linksys, beta, wireless, wireless silicon valley, silicon valley, google, mountain view, joint venture, Silicon Valley Network, vc, venture+captial, david sidrane, rob harding, smartphonecentral, hobbyist software

Amanda Congdon is Popurl'ar Again

(c) Amanda Congdon

I stopped by Amanda's place over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised to read her latest post.

According to Congdon, "I'm SOOOOOOOOOOO Popurl!!!! Wow!! My popurls collaboration is getting quite the attention."

And according to the Popurl blog, "pop goes the url again! I’m announcing the cooperation with amanda congdon. launching in september she will remix the best urls from popurls every weekday in her own little box right on popurls."

Cool.

Amanda then continued in her blog, "Never did I imagine my fun little side project born Friday morning and blogged about Friday evening would find its way to scobleizer."

Indeed, it showed up on Scobleizer and let's just say that he didn't have the most supportive position on the topic. According to Scoble, "On the other hand this demonstrates how NOT to do PR on your blog. That’s a TOTAL opportunity lost. It demonstrates that maybe even hip, new startups, should hire a company that understands how to communicate with the word-of-mouth network properly."

For the record, we're available to help those in need in the future. ;)

He wasn't finished yet though, "Update: That’s just lame for both parties. If Amanda had announced a video project that’d be one thing. But this really is lame on all sides."

And if that wasn't enough, it continued to take a series of interesting turns here:

Thomas posted this comment to Scoble's blog, "Hi Robert, To clarify this: popurls is no company or startup but just an aggregator of popular websites - amanda will post a daily collection of interesting links on popurls, that’s it - nothing more."

Why would Thomas take away from any potential thunder here?

Scoble replied to Thomas, "That’s really lame on both PopURLs and Amanda’s part. She should have made sure that the first news we heard about her was a video show. People are forgetting who she is. Every day she waits she loses more value — the mainstream press won’t pay attention to this story anymore, they’ve already moved on."

Ouch.

And then there was the painfully accurate comment from anonymous, "Silly me, I thought marketing was about drawing new users."

And back on Amanda's blog, "Endeavor's publicity team will be handling that with a press release and I will announce personally with a video, of course!"

OK...OK.

A couple of things here...
Why Thomas decided to downplay it, and continue to play tit-for-tat with Scoble, I'm not sure. Obviously it was exciting enough for both Popurl and Amanda to announce it separately and therefore could have been more strategically released with the right tools, targets, and timing.

In my opinion, this indeed is an opportunity that wasn't handled in the most effective manner. Regardless of the goals or intentions, Amanda has the blogosphere by the heart strings and we're all hoping that she lands somewhere incredible. I disagree with Scoble that the world has moved on. In fact, I would counter that any bit of news from her carries a lot of weight - at least for now, which is why this should have been announced with a bit more strategic and targeted PR.

A press release is a start...but, let's package the story and get it out to the key bloggers, and even targeted media, for a joint roll-out (regardless of how big or small this is.) There's no reaon why this wouldn't be interesting to a lot of Amanda's fans and web-savvy folks out there.

Digg this!

Tags: Amanda Congdon, Popurl, pophub, scobleizer, robert scoble, rocketboom, PR, endeavor, public relations, press release, futureworks, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, tags,

This just in: Rocketboom Gets a New Map

Well today, after much fanfare, ok not really, Rocketboom 2.0 introduced its new "map" and a not- so-flattering hair style for Joanne Colan (sorry Joanne). After spending all of two seconds on the subject, they moved on to discuss Pluto and jumped to an on-the-scene report that captured the landmark vote that stripped it of its planetary status. For the record, Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, which now makes Mercury the smallest planet in our galaxy.

The most interesting thing that came out of this episode was the fact that millions will have to spent on revising anything and everything relating to Pluto. Truth is, it's a whole new way for these companies to spike sales growth for years to come. What will cost millions to fix will earn more in return.

Riveting.

Tags: rocketboom, joanne colan, Pluto, mercury

New Media Release NMRCast #6

I joined Chris Heuer and Shel Holtz for the latest edition of the NMRCast (New Media Release) for Shel's award-winning For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast.

NMRCast #6 - Business Wire Joins the Group is available online here.

Content summary: Just a brief update about the status of the working group, Chris’s efforts to attend the XPRL working group meeting in London, and Business Wire’s involvement.

Participants: Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Shel Holtz.

In This Edition:
New Media Release wiki
Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)

History: The series was inspired by Tom Foremski's original post, Die Press Release, Die Die Die, where he tells the PR industry that things cannot go along as they are . . . business as usual while mainstream media goes to hell in a hand basket. Foremski has even offered advice on how to create a better press release:

• Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the journalists. The journalists are going to go with their own spin on the story anyway, so why bother? Keep it straightforward rather than spintastic.
• Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the journalists. The journalists are going to go with their own spin on the story anyway, so why bother?
• Keep it straightforward rather than spintastic.
• Provide a page of quotes from the CEO or other C-level execs.
• Provide a page of quotes from customers, if applicable.
• Provide a page of quotes from analysts, if applicable.\Provide financial information in many different formats.
• Provide many links inside the press release copy, and also provide a whole page of relevant links to other news stories or reference sources.
• And tag everything so that I can pre-assemble my stories.

Tags: NMR, social media club, shel holtz, chris heuer, tom foremski, FIR, silicon valley watcher, SES, search engine strategies, hrelease, san jose new media, new PR, futureworks, pr2.0, pr 2.0, pr, public relations, press release, brian solis, podcast, SEO digitalpr onlinepr, businesswire, prnewswire, marketwire, prweb

You're Invited - Women 2.0 Party Today

Come join the women from Women 2.0 for a summer’s-end pool party co-hosted with the boys at Meetro. This is an event for Women 2.0 enthusiasts interested in business, technology, and entrepreneurship - who want to hang out, chat about their ideas, and meet new people while getting some sunshine and drinks!


Photo credit: miss_rogue

Host: Women 2.0 & Meetro
Location: Women 2.0 Clubhouse w/ Pool 235 Bernardo Street, Sunnyvale, CA View Map
When: Saturday, August 26, 1:00pm
Phone: (510) 710-8336
Cost: $5 per person (this includes food, alcohol, cool people, a pool, festivities, entertainment, etc.).

Wine will be generously provided by Four Vines.

Sign up at Evite.

Tags: women 2.0, meetro, women2.0, fourvines, four vines

Dead 2.0 Runs Killer Article - Should VCs fund bloggers’ wet dreams?

Skeptic over at Dead "Twenty" - inside joke- ran an impressive post today regarding the ideas, benefits, and consequences of blogs taking VC funding.

I'll run a few excerpts, but make sure to jump over there and read the full article.

He starts by asking, "So the question is, can bloggers successfully build businesses that are worth funding?" Then continues, "An even better question is: why raise the money?"

His post explores the market as well as high profile funded and private blogs.

The article features insight from Om Malik, Paul Kedrosky, and some guy named Brian Solis.

Tags: dead2.0, web2.0, skeptic, VC, venture capital, om malik, gigaom, paul kedrosky, michael arrington, techcrunch, blogs, bloggers, web 2.0, dead 2.0, brian solis

Reaching the Blogosphere Part Duex – working with enthusiasts to attract customers

My article...Part 2 of who-knows-how-many in a series to help up-and-coming PR professionals (and those verterans who are wondering when the hell blogs became part of the PR mix) just ran on Forward Moving.

"Blogger relations is an important addition to a PR program because enthusiast bloggers within a given community/market can strongly influence consumer behavior. According to Technorati, it is tracking more than 51.5 million blogs, of which, many are speaking to and advising your customers on their next move."

Forward's mission: To provide a comprehensive, ever-evolving, online springboard for students and young professionals in PR.

Who they are: Forward is the collaborative effort of a team composed of students, faculty and professionals from around the globe from varying levels and areas of expertise. (More about the regular contributors.)

Please take a moment to keep this article in the spotlight for a bit at NewPR - thank you.

Tags: Forward Moving, blogger relations, blogs, pr, public relations, pr2.0, pr 2.0, futureworks, brian solis

Lifebits, the Future of Personal Content Sharing?

A friend of mine let me know about his latest venture. Alex Limberis is the CEO of a new Silicon Valley startup, Lifebits.

Lifebits is a personal content sharing service that makes it easier for the average consumer to capture, catalog and share their digital memories.

Alex and company are genuinly excited about this service and it will formally launch within the next couple of months. Lifebits aims to solve real problems for real consumer that capture a lot of life events and then struggle to store, share, and catalog them in a sensible way.

Alex Limberis stated, "Lifebits was created to solve the problems my family and I had, and I suspect that your family has as well. The ultimate goal here is to make this simple enough for the non techie to greatly enrich the family sharing experience."

Lifebits is accepting volunteers for those of you interested in participating in the beta testing process, . They hope to be running within the next 4 to 6 weeks, just in time for Christmas.

Your will need one of the following devices to fully participate in the program:
1) Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone with Digital Camera (MPX220) for example
2) Windows Mobiel 2003 Pocket PC phone edition with Digital Camera
3) Windows Mobil 2005 Pocket PC phone edition with Digital Camera
4) Cingular 2125 Smartphone 2005
5) Cingular 8125 PDA phone
6) Other smartphone such as the OD2 QTEK, Imat PDA2K etc will work
7) Symbian Java based S60

Sign up at www.lifebits.com

Oh by the way, they're hiring....send an email to jobs@lifebits.com

Tags: lifebits, alex limberis, photo sharing, web 2.0, web2.0, photography, digital cameras, digicams

China Opens Halfway House for Internet Addicts

Reuters ran an interesting story this morning. Mainland China opened its first halfway house for Internet addicts, which offers teenagers counseling, books -- and the use of computers????

The shelter can hold four minors for one-night stays, which is intended to provide a sanctuary between them and their parents.

Since online gaming has exploded in China over the years, an estimated 14 million people have jumped in to feverishly accelerate the growth. Even with a halfway house, it's simply no match to curb the growth.

Amid growing concern that more and more young people are getting hooked, China has issued a raft of regulations aimed at curbing excessive game playing at Internet cafes and heavily fining owners that admit minors.

The Shanghai shelter, modeled on one already in operation Hong Kong, took in the first three guests on Monday, including Chen Jiafeng -- a 17-year-old who is "fed up with the depressive atmosphere" of his family.

In May, the parents of a 13-year-old boy who killed himself after playing a computer game for 36 hours sued the game's Chinese distributor.

According to the article, China has issued a raft of regulations aimed at decreasing excessive game playing at Internet cafes by heavily fining owners that admit minors.

Perhaps there's a reason that these kids are looking to get out of their homes and escape by spending hours/days online. Halfway houses might wind up providing more family counseling services than providing steps to alleviate online addiction. In the first few instances, counselors have already stepped in to help parents communicate better with their children.

Tags: Internet, china, halfway house, shanghai, online, addicts

Travelers Take Flight to World Wikia - a Free, Editable Travel Directory

Gil Penchina of Wikia just gave me a heads up on their latest announcement.

Travellers and contributors to its recently launched World Wikia project have already compiled over 1,000 original articles in less than one month.

For those unfamiliar with the launch, World Wikia is a free, fully editable worldwide guide of places to go and things to do.

The home page for World Wikia greats visitors, "Welcome to World Wikia a free travel directory that you can edit." It continues, "Add information, create new pages, and share experiences about the city where you live or the countries where you've travelled."

Enthusiastic travellers have created Travel Guides for more than 50 separate locations, including Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Singapore and Portland, Oregon, among many others.



The site now includes approximately 100 local-authored City Wikis. The City Wikis help visitors and other residents by providing common and lesser-known facts about that isn't necessarily available on travel and city-focused communities. To date, City Wikis have been created for Keene, New Hampshire, Ottawa, Ontario, South Korea, Chicago, Illinois and many more locations.

With Wikia, groups can share information, news, stories, media and opinions that fall outside the scope of an encyclopedia. Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley launched Wikia in 2004 to provide community-based wikis inspired by the model of Wikipedia -- the free, open source encyclopedia founded by Jimmy Wales.

Bookmark - Del.icio.us Digg Furl It Spurl RawSugar Simpy Shadows Blink It My Web

Technorati Tags: world, travel, lodging, wiki, city, wikipedia, wikia, world wikia, city names, jimmy wales

Web 2.0 Bullsh**t Generator

Alright, while we're at it...guess who holds the number one spot on Blogpulse? Nope, not TechCrunch, it's the The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator™ brought to you by Emptybottle.org.

According to the homepage, "The web is getting hot and sweaty again, and the dollars are flying almost as fast as the bullshit."

That statement couldn't be more accurate. As someone working in PR and writting for this site, you have no idea how many of these verbs, adjectives, and market disruptors I hear on a daily basis.

This site playfully encourages marketing and business professionals to utilize this service for developing business plans and to devise bullshit-compliant products and services with the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator.

So I gave it a few whirls and here's what it returned:

• create A-list network effects
• share rss-capable widgets
• create embedded ecologies
• aggregate peer-to-peer networking
• syndicate citizen-media networking
• design rss-capable tagclouds
• tag long-tail networking
• integrate standards-compliant web services

Sound familiar?

There's also a link to help name your new Web 2.0 site with Andrew Woolridge's Web 2.0 Company Name Generator.

According to the site, "Web Two Point Oh helps you create the next million dollar idea with a pre-created, VC-friendly Web 2.0 company."

First up...

Your company name:
Rieetix

Your company product:
ad-supported shopping via browser toolbar

and again...

Your company name:
Blinodirati

Your company product:
tag-based search engine via flash

Either way, expect to see a lot more of these "generatrs" (note: intentional removal of the letter "o" to be 2.0 compliant" as the Web 2.0 phenomenon, errr, bubble, continues to inflate. In the meantime, don't be surprised if you see at least of these companies present at O'Reilly's next web conference or written about on Skeptic's site, Dead 2.0.

Side note from Valleywag: We're upping the August Capital ante. Whoever gets onstage at John Battelle and O'Reilly Media's Web 2.0 event with a fake startup wins a free year of Valleyschwag.

Although it seems that one may have already infiltrated one of the hottest "valley" parties. Give me a D, give me a C, Give me an O...well you get the picture, GoooooooooOOOOO dcongo. It will make more sense when you click the links ;)

Tags: bullshitr, web2.0, web 2.0, dead2.0, dead 2.0, valleyschwag, valleywag, emptybottle.org, andrew woolridge, generator, blogpulse, bubble2.0, bubble 2.0, bullshit, dcongo

Web 2.0 Logo Creatr Climbs to #15 on BlogPulse

This is a hiliarious and painfully accurate parody of the unique world of Web 2.0 logos...although we're missing lime green here. The Web 2.0 Logo Creatr by Alex P. has created a small frenzy on the web and managed to climb to # 15 on the latest BlogPulse analysis report.

When asked why he created this site (by himself in a mock interview), Alex P. responded with, "This is meant to be a parody of Web 2.0 Logos. While they are pretty cool, they are all kinda the same. It was created as a joke, not a serious logo maker. But feel free to use it to make a logo."



A couple of months ago I wrote a short piece that linked to a series of Web 2.0 logo compilations on flickr, Web 2.0 from a Designer's Perspective. Wow, notice the striking resemblence? It just fits right in the mix doesn't it?

Tags: Web 2.0, logo, PR 2.0, web2.0, pr2.0, creatr, blogpulse, flickr

Laughing Squid - The Valleywag / TechCrunch Peace Accord

photo credit: Scott Beale

Thank you to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid for the TechCrunch7 reference earlier...

From Laughing Squid: "Monkey Notions has made an excellent video about the Valleywag / TechCrunch Peace Accord using my photo of the now famous, less-than-enthusiastic handshake between Nick Douglas of Valleywag and Michael Arrington at the TechCrunch 7 Party."

Quoting Brian Solis on Flickr:
TechCrunch7 Party $100,000
Open Bar $50,000
Picture of Mike and Nick shaking hands, Priceless…

Tags: nick douglas, valleywag