Ten Percent of Twitter Users Account for 90% of Activity

Article Link: Adage

Article Author: Nicholas Carlson

Article Date: 02-June-09

From the Article:

A new Harvard Business Review study reveals that 10% of Twitter users account for more than 90% of Twitter messages sent.

Twitter search engine Topsy launches with $15M

Article Link: VentureBeat

Article Author: Camille Ricketts                  

Article Date: 01-June-09

From the Article:

Topsy.com, launched last week, is a brand new search engine focused exclusively on Twitter content. Like Google, it presents its results based on popularity metrics, namely the popularity or influence of the tweeter in question — a factor determined by how many followers the user has and how many time his or her messages have been re-tweeted.

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Five Things Wolfram Alpha Does Better (And Vastly Different) Than Google

Article Link:  Mashable

Article Author:  Stan Schroeder

Article Date:  19-May-09

From the Article:

Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. Perhaps it will one day become one, but currently it’s exactly what its tagline says: a computational knowledge engine. However, it looks like Google it provides you with answers and therefore most users will try to use it as a search engine, which doesn’t always yield good results. Once you start asking it the right questions, it’ll give you better answers.

SupersonicAds Building Virtual Currency Monetization Platform for European App Developers

As the number of social apps and games making money through virtual currency continues to grow, the number of companies helping those developers monetize their apps continues to increase as well. Today, Inside Facebook has the exclusive first look at a new company focused on helping European social app and game developers monetize through virtual currency.

New startup SupersonicAds is coming out of stealth mode for the first time today. The company, based outside Tel Aviv, Israel, is focusing its efforts exclusively on the European social app and game developer market, founder and CEO Gil Shoham tells Inside Facebook.

Shoham, most recently a VP at AdsMarket, started SupersonicAds late last year with many former teammates from video sharing site Metacafe, where he served as general manager and head of international sales for several years. Arik Czerniak, a co-founder of Metacafe, is also a partner in SupersonicAds.

“Over the last couple of years, people have discovered that CPM performs pretty poorly in social media,” Shoham says. “But if you integrate the advertising in the right way for the right audience, it works well.”

Shoham says the company chose to focus on Europe because that is where it has experience working with advertisers and publishers. It has spent the last few months developing and scaling its technology infrastructure, putting tracking and customer service functions into place, and optimizing performance.

In addition, Shoham says the company has localized its service for every language in Europe, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch.

SupersonicAds is now live on Honesty Box on Facebook, whose lead developer Dan Peguine is also coming on board as a strategic partner for the company, as well as on Save An Alien, a popular virtual pet website.

While SupersonicAds is open to any and all advertisers, Shoham said he expects offers related to mobile content, gaming, and dating will work well for European users. The company plans to add a mobile payment option as well, but hasn’t finalized its choice of SMS partners yet.

For now, the company is focused on building out its core platform. It is self funded, but may raise money later this year, according to Shoham.

As virtual currency monetization space continues to grow, we’ll have all the details for you here on IF and ISG.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/04/22/supersonicads-building-virtual-currency-monetization-platform-for-european-app-developers/

Reid Hoffman: My Rule of Three for Investing

Article Link: Tech Crunch- Reid Hoffman Rules

Article Author: Guest Author

Article Date: 20-Apr-09

From the Article :

“The formula is to build an audience with a great product – then secure enough funding to figure out how to make it pay. With these three elements in place – mass audience, unique value, stable funding – a startup has time to discover where it can make money. Few business plans ever pan out like their owners intend. PayPal started as a plan to beam payments between Palm Pilots. Google raised funds with a vision to capitalize on enterprise search and ended up in advertising.”