Leaked doc suggests Myspace is not dead yet, aims to be the next Spotify. Myspace faithful, rejoice. It seems that the team running the former social media powerhouse has a plan to make the service profitable again — and it involves a push into the subscription music space already filled by services like Spotify and Pandora. Oh, and it only needs another US$50-million in funding to get started. According to a confidential leaked presentation posted by Business Insider, Interactive Media Holdings (the rebranded company that bought Myspace from News Corp for US$35-million last year) is looking for investors to finance the marketing, renewed licensing fees and operation costs it needs to expand its services by next year. It’s currently making most of its money from advertising and sponsorship deals, but is looking to branch out into music downloads, desktop and mobile subscriptions, merchandise and gig tickets.
Why you should network when raising funds for your tech venture. The value of attending networking events is often hard to quantify, as it takes valuable time, but it is worth the effort especially if you are considering starting your own business; building an innovative product or trying to raise funding. Funders invest in companies and founders they know Although we receive many proposals through our website at the VC firm I’m part of, all of the deals that we have concluded (i.e. invested in) to date, have been sourced through our networks.
An essential part of our business is the relationships that we’ve been building and nurturing with various suppliers and stakeholders in our industry over many years. We are not unique in this regard. Many funders attend networking events and while in this informal environment, are open to discussing your business and whether it may be something they would be interested in. Leave your comfort zone and create diversity in your networks Tap into the power of your weak ties. From R50m to nothing: Lessons from the Global Vision story. You hear this quite a bit in the start-up world: The thing about technology companies, or any company for that matter, is you have to “fail to succeed”. Many venture capitalists won’t invest in an entrepreneur who hasn’t failed at least once. Some start-ups rise from the ashes to develop into successful businesses.
This is not always the case. Some fail, others thrive, some just evolve. Jon Jacobson, founder of high-profile Cape Town start-up Global Vision, rose to the top of his game, creating a company worth well over R45-million and employing around 90 people at its peak. Just a decade later it all nose-dived. Here is Jacobson’s account of his company’s rapid rise and dramatic fall: I returned from New York after five years of working for a topflight merchant bank. Learning from Mistakes When we started the business we managed our expenses very tightly, but grew the business steadily.
In 2007, we did our first investment deal. Lessons I learned the hard way: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Not free, not open: The Memeburn interview with WhatsApp’s Brian Acton. In one of only a handful of public interviews ever given by WhatsApp, co-founder Brian Acton talks exclusively to Memeburn about simplicity, speed and simplicity, and what it takes to make some cash. The fact that WhatsApp is so popular is no surprise, and yet to become the number one smartphone messaging app in a sea of same-same services is mysterious.
Sure, people like to communicate, and will latch onto a service that lets them do it easily and cheaply. But for every WhatsApp, there are ten other flavours that have cuter logos, more features, more platforms, do more, arguably do it better, and are free. So why is the little green speech bubble growing so fast? It has gone from zero to a billion messages per day between the end of 2009 and the end of 2011. So. What makes WhatsApp special? “Simple mobile real-time messaging. Which is true, but less than half the reason. Real-time means presence, and presence changes a communication between two people into a conversation. Acton laughs. Memeburn | tech, social media & startup news for emerging markets.
32 web frameworks to choose from for your next project. Whether you’re wanting to build a tech startup or enhance your company’s online presence you are going to be facing two constraints. First, a limited budget and second, a tight deadline. A solution to these problems is a web development framework. Frameworks are built on top of programming languages and provide methods of streamlining some of the more mundane and common tasks associated with web development. In essence, they allow developers to achieve more with less coding, saving both time and money. Web development frameworks come in all different shapes and sizes and there is no “best” framework as each has its own specialty and learning curve.
Below, we review some of the most popular frameworks to help you in planning you next project: Ruby on Rails Rails is one of the most popular frameworks in the web development world. Screencasts and tutorials make it easy to dive in to the rails community. Used by NASA Science and commenting platform Disqus Used by The Onion Store and followmy.tv. Is there a viable search alternative to Google? In light of the “Your World” ruckus that is taking the tech world by storm, including more employees who want to leave, perhaps it’s time to look at a few alternatives to el Goog. What can be assured from the get-go is that none of these pretenders-to-the-throne have anywhere close to the ubiquity that Google has in terms of product diversity and user figures: Yahoo!
(The obvious one) With 14% of the world’s search engine traffic, the ailing search engine company is the only competitor that, if it got its house in order, could attempt to topple the search giant. Yahoo is still immensely popular in Asia and enjoys a considerable amount of search spend that advertisers place in the region. Bing (Another obvious one) Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that Yahoo! Addictomatic Users find it really good for varied information sources on one topic.