Bambi Francisco

Vator Splash seeks 10 hot startups to present onstage in February

CEOs and/or founders of 10 companies, chosen by their peers and vetted by judges, will have the opportunity to present onstage and give a three-minute pitch in front of some 300 business professionals, comprising of executives from startups and large companies, angel investors, VCs, and media.

Vator is holding its inaugural Vator Splash Competition to find up-and-coming,  early-stage startups to present at the Vator Splash event on February 4, 2010 at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco.

(Presenters will join Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Smule CEO Jeff Smith, August Capital VC Howard Hartenbaum, Google Ventures VC Bill Maris and Greycroft Partners VC Dana Settle, and more. For more details about Vator Splash and to buy your tickets now, click here. There are limited tickets, so buy them soon)  

Vator, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, and a provider of news and information through VatorNews, is looking to recognize and film promising startups across technology, including digital media, social media, consumer Internet, software, SaaS, iPhone apps, mobile, etc.

Vino E Veritas

The Greek symposium was designed for friends and neighbors to converse over relevant topics while also enjoying fine wine. We're trying to do the same with Vino E Veritas, a weekly gathering in my home with co-host Bart Garrett, lead pastor at Christ Church, leading the discussion.

Some questions to ponder: What's the source of beauty and is it subjective or objective? What drives your ambition? And, why is it we always seek more?

Here's a photo of Ezra and Bart kicking off the event:

Playing around with Wize's new widget

My son Will and niece Amanda

See this video on Vator.tv »

Twitter's Jack Dorsey talks about monetizing his company

In 2004, I wrote: “I’m searched, therefore I am. To borrow from Rene Descartes' philosophy, in today's Internet-obsessed world, we know we exist, not because we think, but because we're searched.” Today, thanks to Twitter, it's more like "I'm followed, therefore I am." Indeed, even Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey says Twitter essentially captures the "status of everything." Wait, I thought Google was God?  Anyway, Jack came to the Vator studio for a three-part interview to talk about Twitter’s business model, the Summize acquisition, the introduction of video updates, and how he views Seesmic, which calls itself a video Twitter, FriendFeed and Twitter clones, such as Pownce, Plurk and Identi.ca. This is the first part.

The new news model (in black and white)

The news business has changed dramatically in the last 50 years, since the days of pioneer TV news broadcaster Edward Murrow, who delivered his segments with cigarette in hand and opened and closed his newscasts with his signature phrases: "This is CBS" and "Goodnight and good luck." In this smoking, black and white episode of Vator Box, we bring you back to those days (well, at least we try). And, who better to be our guest host than Chris Tolles, outspoken CEO of Topix, a local news site whose content is 85% user-generated with 125,000 comments posted daily. John Shinal, veteran journalist and Vator managing editor also joined us. Get two guys passionate about the imploding news business and you get a lot of fireworks and sideswipes.

In this episode we look at two companies - Intense Debate and NowPublic - changing the news paradigm, not so much for the companies themselves, but for their participating in ushering in those changes. Both companies are shaping the way individuals and society are interacting with one another and interpreting the world.

RockYou's Jia Shen: 'Hands down bigger than Slide'

In a world where marketers care more about engagement than passivity, RockYou, a top application maker on social networks, has a great shot at being the place to distribute ads to reach today's youths. The trick is innovating faster than RockYou's oft-mentioned rival, Slide, and building a bigger and better ad sales team. To that end, RockYou, which raised $35 million at a roughly $230 million valuation, plans to double its staff to 100 people by the end of this year, Jia Shen, RockYou's 28-year-old co-founder and CTO told me in this interview. 

RockYou, which makes popular applications such as Super Wall, is gunning to be a top five Web destination in the world. RockYou hopes this can be achieved as more Internet users browse and interact on the Web through a social context. 

It's not a modest goal, but it's something that’s not out of reach for this first-time entrepreneur and his team. Despite what some other publications say, RockYou is bigger than Slide across Facebook, Beebo, hi5, Friendster and Orkut, Jia says with confidence.

“We’re pretty much hands down bigger than them (Slide) on every statistic,” he said, referring to the number of applications installed and users engaged on Facebook. According to Jia, Super Wall – an application that lets you send photos, videos, and graffiti to friends – is the No. 1 application on Facebook. (Go to Vator.tv to read the rest.)

Video - the next acquisition for CBS?

CBS, which just recently swallowed up CNet for a cool $1.8 billion, is still on the prowl. That’s according to Mike Marquez, the head of mergers and acquisitions and business development for CBS Interactive. “We still are very active on the acquisition front,” said Mike, who stopped by the Vator studio in San Francisco for this interview, and to be our guest host in our upcoming Vator Box show. He and Quincy Smith, the President of the online division for CBS, are always looking for ways to “accelerate growth through external actions,” he said.
So, what is he looking for? In this interview, Mike seemed to emphasize "video” a lot. Is that video search, video ad networks, user-generated or produced video content? I asked? You'll have to watch to hear what he had to say. Go to Vator.tv for the rest of the story.

Seesmic expands video comments with Disqus

Pretty soon, video commenting will be a requisite feature on traditional media sites. And, Seesmic - in partnership with Disqus - hopes to be that underlying platform. 

Seesmic, a video Twitter with aspirations to be a 'worldwide talkshow in video, and Disqus, a hoster and aggregator of comments across blogs, are partnering in Seesmic's effort to be the video commenting platform across publishing sites. Disqus, a two-person team co-founded by Daniel Ha last year, hosts comments for 13,000 blogs, including my personal Bambi.blogs, as of yesterday. (Thanks Daniel for helping set that up on TypePad).   

It's a good partnership as Seesmic, which has $6 million in funding from some high-profile angels, like Ron Conway, seeks to ramp up its user base, which now stands at 15,000. As Seesmic CEO and founder Loic Le Meur will tell you himself, at this point, it's all about getting users, users, users! He's determined to reach 1 million, though he won't commit to a date he thinks he'll reach that milestone. (Watch Loic's Seesmic pitch in this video.) 

Given that the site is invite-only, once he opens it up officially in mid-June, I'm sure the adoption rate will accelerate, especially with partners like Disqus. By partnering with Disqus, all of Disqus members will automatically be part of Seesmic. That could be 100,000 new users immediately. Daniel says that he has an active commentator base of 100,000. An active user is someone who comments in the past seven days. Moreover, Disqus' approach to getting new users is pretty clever. Partner with the most active blogs that generate dialogue and claim users commenting as your own.

Read the rest of the article on Vator.tv