Tom Foremski
Latest from Tom Foremski
Making AOL Look Foolish: Arrington Continues to Post Despite Losing Techcrunch Job
SVW was the first to point out that Mike Arrington lost his job at Techcrunch over his insistence to be an investor in his beat companies. Arrington Replaced At Techcrunch As AOL Seeks To Shore Up Media Credibility – SVW However, he continues to post articles on Techcrunch in defiance of AOL’s and Arianna Huffington’s ...
StartupWatch: Engine Yard Moves Beyond Rails To PHP
It’s always a pleasure to catch up with John Dillon, CEO of Engine Yard because he’s a Silicon Valley veteran and that gives him a perspective into trends and key issues that less experienced managers lack. At Engine Yard, he’s smack dab in the middle of some of the most innovative software developments because his ...
StartupWatch: A Trillion Line Spreadsheet – Manipulating Big Data
New York based 1010 Data likes to ask: “What could you do with a trillion row spreadsheet?” because it shows off the capability its technology has in analyzing massive amounts of data. Sandy Steier, co-founder of 1010 Data says that the trillion line spreadsheet approach to big data is a more useful way of analyzing ...
There’s a Hush in the Air…and a Burn Coming Up
There’s been a perceptible hush in the air around San Francisco as people get busy finalizing their Burning Man preparations. You can see cars and vans being packed, bikes being strapped and roof racks piled high. Burning Man is very much a San Francisco/Silicon Valley festival. It’s a type of Dionysian harvest festival where people ...
Does The Sexuality of a CEO Matter?
The sexuality of CEOs is a dull subject I have no interest in what they do with their genitalia and I think I’m right in speaking for the majority of people in our Silicon Valley circles. I raise this point because Felix Salmon, a journalist blogger at Reuters raised it. He took reporters to task ...
Steve Jobs is Silicon Valley’s Babe Ruth, but Where’s the Next Generation of Leaders?
I used to meet with Steve jobs in the 1980s, when he was lauded as a visionary. To be honest I wasn’t that impressed with him. Sure, he deserved credit for the Apple I and then Lisa, which turned into the Macintosh but it was too early to tell what he was capable of doing. ...
HubPages CEO on Google’s Panda: SEO Doesn’t Work
I met with Paul Edmondson, CEO of HubPages, and Jason Menayan Director of Marketing to talk about how the publishing site is dealing with the aftermath of Google’s major update to its algorithm, Panda, released earlier this year. Panda has caused huge problems for publishers because it cut off massive amounts of traffic in a ...
‘Big Data’ Fuels Mohr Davidow Investments
A few weeks ago I was over at Sand Hill Road to meet with a group of startups funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The theme was “Big Data” and how these companies were using data to build their businesses. It was a varied and interesting collection of startups. Here are some of my notes: – ...
Here Comes the Flood: Major VC Firms Funding Corporate Media Push into Social Media
Somewhat lost in Monday’s news because of Google’s acquisition of Motorola, Buddy Media, a New York startup raised $54 million at a $500 million valuation. Buddy Media helps corporations set up and run their presence on a wide range of social networks. From Buddy Media: We are in the midst of a massive shift online ...
Google Refuses Korean Real-Names Policy, but Imposes it on G+ Users
Google’s insistence that people use their real names on Google Plus goes against its official policy of refusing to comply with South Korea’s Real-Name verification law. The Korean law forces web sites with more than 100,000 visitors per day to force users to use their real names. Google got around it by stopping Korean users ...