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Sport Relief

(I should apologise for bringing you here by illicit categorisation and tagging, but I won’t. You might have wasted just 10 seconds. Hopefully you will make the choice to change someone’s world in less than a minute).

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Tales from the Inside: Niklas Zennström, founder Skype, Joost & Atomico Investments

Here is an opportunity for all you technology marketers to rub shoulders and ask questions of two technology heavyweights.

Second Chance Tuesday are chatting to the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones and Niklas Zennström, the latter who was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the year in 2006 and is one of Europe’s most successful technology, media and telecoms entrepreneurs.

When: 19 February 2008, 6.30pm to 9.30pm
Where: The Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, London NW1 4LE
Cost: £45, with a discount to £25 for entrepreneurs and is payable in advance.

For those of you who have been asleep for 5 years, Niklas Zenntröm is an Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Atomico investments, Joost, Skype and Kazaa among other companies. Through Atomico, Niklas serves as a Board Member for several start-up companies, such as FON.

In his career to date, Niklas has won a series of industry awards including ‘Business Leader of the Year 2006’ (European Voice), ‘Innovation in Computing and Communications 2006’ (Economist Innovation Awards) and the ‘Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for Technology Change Agent of the Year 2006. Niklas has also been named ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ (European Business Leaders Awards 2006).

Rory Cellan-Jones is a journalist for BBC News. Starting out as a presenter at BBC Wales, he transferred to London and became the business and economics correspondent. After the dot com crash of 2000, he wrote the book Dot.bomb. Since January 2007, Cellan-Jones has been the BBC’s Technology Correspondent with the job of expanding the BBC’s coverage of new media and telecoms, and the cultural impact of the Internet.

Update 20/02/08:   BBC take on Zennstrom and the TV revolution here

If you are a networking freek, previous guests have included have attended from organisations like: 7Digital, ASOS, B3ta, Babble.net, Bebo, Betfair, BT, Buildersite.co.uk, The Cloud, Cominded, Crowdstorm, eBay, DTi, Endemol Gaming, Figleaves, Firebox, Freshminds, The Friday Project, Friends Reunited, Friends Abroad, Gala Coral, Glasses Direct, GNR, Google, Gumtree, Hitwise, Houses of Parliament, Imagini, Joost, iSporty, Ladbrokes eGaming, Last.fm, Lulu.com, Play.com, Match.com, MoveMe.com, Million Dollar Homepage, Microsoft, Ministry of Sound, Mofo Games, MOO, Monumental Games, Moreover, MTV, Mydeo, Myspace, News International, Nexagent, Oracle, Orderwork, Oxygen Games, Quikker, Paypal, Play.com, Reuters, Shopping.com, Shop Qwik, Skinkers, Skype, Snipperoo, Sony, Technovate, The Universal Music Group, Toptable, Yahoo!, The Young Foundation, Weeworld, Zopa, Zoomf, Zubka.

Typical investors have included : 3i, Atlas Ventures, Accel Partners, Advent Ventures, Atomico Investments, Benchmark, Battery Ventures, Close Ventures, Creative Capital Fund, Deutsche Bank, DFJ Esprit, Doughty Hanson Technology Investors, Episode 1, Fleming Private Equity, Goldman Sachs, IBIS Media, Index Ventures, Ingenious Ventures, London Seed Capital, London Technology Fund, Liberty Global Investors, Morgan Stanley, Nesta, New Media Spark, Mathematical Capital, Oxford Capital Partners, Seraphim Capital Fund

And of course the press has included: Angelnews, BBC TV and Radio, Business Week, Channel 4, City am, The Daily Express, The Evening Standard, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Guardian, ITN, Netimperative, New Media Age, The Observer, Sharp Edge, Silicon.com, Techcrunch, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Spectator.

I can’t make it, so I would really like to hear from anyone who attends.

Filed under: 2.0, Business, Entertainment, Events, Fun, Influence, Planning, Research, Second Chance Tuesday, Strategy, dotcoms, ideas, marketing, startups, technology, venture capital , 0 most influencial, 10, Atomico investments, BBC, Dot.Bomb, FON, investment, Joost, Kazaa, marketing, Niklas Zennström, Rory Cellan-Jones, Second Chance Tuesday, Skype, technology, Time Magazine, venture capital, Zennstrom

Trusted advice or marketing clap-trap. Your choice.

I have written about Crowdstorm in my posts The UKs small firms – “failing to make use of web” and 13 British dotcoms to watch, and yesterday the price comparison site developed by Philip Wilkinson, the founder of Kelkoo UK and Shopgenie, was launched.

What I like about this offering is that it’s a shop comparison site plus much more.  The wisdom of a crowd (community) is leveraged to help buyers make better informed purchase decisions, based on the crowd’s advice and recommendations.  This overlays the usual price comparison elements. The result is a one stop destination for researching products and getting impartial buying advice from a crowd of experts and trusted users.

Nice.

I’ll take trusted advice over marketing clap-trap anyday.

Go take a look at there offering.

Filed under: 2.0, BBC, Buzz, Entrepreneur, Social Media, User Generated Content, dotcoms, marketing, startups, trust , advice, Crowdstorm, dotcom, trust

Watching the British dotcoms: Update

 

Back in August I said that there were 13 British dotcoms to watch.Well TIOTI (Tape it off the Internet) just launched.

TIOTI is a social media aggregator for television. Huh? ‘What does that mean?’, I hear you say. Well TIOTI is designed to use the web to put together all sorts of information about TV shows, and let the audience edit and add to that. TIOTI lets you see what’s hot, what other people like and where you can get it from. Simple.

And at a time when under-30s now watch 40 per cent of their ‘television’ by downloading it over the internet or viewing it ‘on demand’ rather than watching it as it is broadcast, I’d say the timing is right.

Filed under: 2.0, Online, Online Video, Social Media, TV, User Generated Content, Web2.0, dotcoms, startups, web 2.0 , aggregator, dotcoms, download, startups, television, TIOTI

Second Chance Tuesday – Learn from Last.fm

This afternoon I was invited to join Second Chance Tuesday for a rare opportunity to hear first hand, the inspiring story of how three swashbuckling entrepreneurs developed their ground-breaking social music experience, raised angel and venture capital from some of Europe’s most respected investors, guided their user growth to over 20 million active users in 240 countries, and sold to CBS as one of the biggest European Web 2.0 exits to date.

Sound interesting to you? Go register

The BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, will be unearthing the secrets of their success, debating the future of online communities and digital content, and posing some more lighthearted questions including whether they still sleep in tents on the roof of their office, and what they plan to do with their share of the $280m. Spend it?

Who’s Who?

Felix Miller is CEO of Last.fm. He came to London from Germany to study in 1997. He met Martin Stiksel at a gig through a mutual friend. He was in a punk band at the time.

Martin Stikselis the co-founder and CCO of Last.fm. Martin came to London in 1995, where he created a sound design company (working on commissions for the likes of MTV and the BBC), before meeting Felix Miller at a gig in the late ’90s. The two of them set up an online record label, before launching Last.fm in 2002.

What is last.fm?

Founded in 2002 in London, Last.fm is the online, social music revolution that connects people with music and artists with listeners. By joining the Last.fm community, music fans can choose to share their music preferences by linking their media player to the Last.fm database. This database is populated continually with over 500 million monthly track submissions from Last.fm music fans. As a result, Last.fm can intelligently recommend songs, artists, local concerts and even other members based on their musical tastes.

Thanks to partnerships with EMI, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, independent aggregators The Orchard and IODA, and more than 100,000 independent musicians and 20,000 labels that upload music directly to the site, Last.fm can draw recommendations from one of the most extensive online music catalogues.

Second Chance Tuesday is an event for anyone who believes in the power of the internet to change everything, from the way we communicate to the way we entertain ourselves.

Interested in mingling with London’s leading entrepreneurs and investors (as well as some older and wiser faces from the ‘99 dot.com boom) who are helping create the world-changing ideas of tomorrow?

Filed under: 2.0, BBC, Business, CBS, EMI, Entrepreneur, Events, IODA, Music, Online, Second Chance Tuesday, Social Media, Sony BMG, Strategy, The Orchard, User Generated Content, Warner Music Group, Web2.0, dotcoms, last.fm, marketing, startups, venture capital, web 2.0

13 British dotcoms to watch

Britain is experiencing another internet surge – I hesitate to use the word ‘boom’ – but which web companies are best placed to take advantage? According to the Guardian its this set of 10. Hmmm. I think there are a few missing……

Here is the original 10.

Zubka Recruitment 2.0

Zopa Bringing the betting exchange model to finance.

Trusted Places Venue guide with social features.

Touch Local Local business search engine.

OnOneMap Map-based property searching.

Moo.com Funky print on demand business cards.

MindCandy Alternate reality gaming.

Garlik.com Online identity management.

Extate Deep intelligent property search engine.

Dopplr.com Social networking for frequent travellers.

But there are at least three great sites missing from the list.

Crowdstorm – Social Shopping. The theory is you find stuff to buy based on how much of a buzz there is around it, as well as signing up trusted users whose opinion you’d seek before buying something new. If 25% of retail sales will be conducted online in the next 5 years, social shopping will form a large slice.

Last.fm – Social Music (stretching the startup definition here – but hey no list like this is complete without them). Last.fm taps the wisdom of a community, leveraging each user’s musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.

Tioti – Online TV. It’s like Last.fm, but for telly. You can share details of what you’re watching with friends, and it also points you in the direction of (legal) places to download shows.

Filed under: 2.0, Buzz, Web2.0, dotcoms, marketing, startups, web 2.0