Web 2.0 Expo SF Launchpad: Six New Startup Stars

This year's Launchpad at Web 2.0 Expo SF features six new Web 2.0 startups that have captured our interest and attention:

1. Acquia
2. Triggit
3. Chirp Interactive
4. Oortle
5. JobScore
6. TradeVibes

Here's a brief description of each of these cool new companies:

Acquia is an open source software company providing products and services for the wildly popular Drupal social publishing system. At Acquia, we believe that open source development and social publishing technology have the power to connect people and unleash their collective creative potential in order to achieve great things.

Triggit makes it quick and easy for web publishers to monetize their sites with advertising. Using a cross platform web application, publishers can now drag and drop ad units directly into their pages, optimize efficacy and track the results. Triggit takes the pain out of monetization.

Chirp Interactive (www.chirp.com) creates solutions that help you discover relevant and interesting friends, content, and information that helps you stay connected with your friends and derive value from your relationships. Our first product, chirpscreen, helps you discover and share the content you care about. The items displayed can range from photos and messages from your friends, to items you may want to purchase, to public pictures on topics of interest. We source this content from sites like Facebook, Flickr, eBay and Twitter to provide you with an engaging, interactive display of content that you can easily share with friends.

Oortle enables people to share rich media with each other in real-time, using their existing social networks & connections. Oortle's "synchronous web" applications span social networks and take user engagement to the next level. Our first product Photophlow has been praised as a live version of Flickr, and has demonstrated a dramatic increase in user engagement on Flickr photos with its chat, social search and synchronized photo viewing. Today we are also demoing our second product Videophlow, an application for sharing & watching YouTube videos in real-time with your friends.

JobScore empowers employers to recruit cooperatively. Today, companies spend billions of dollars recruiting online, only to disqualify and discard virtually every resume they receive. The JobScore Network makes it easy for you to efficiently build your own candidate pipeline and zero in on qualified job applicants. Then, you can share resumes with other employers, exchanging your un-hired resumes for qualified, interested candidates. JobScore is a win-win: we privately connect your un-hired candidates with similar jobs and offer you on-demand access to the qualified people you need.

TradeVibes is the best way to discover and research hot new startups online. It's a platform for our community to share, discuss, and evaluate information about these companies. TradeVibes is also a tool for finding and sharing news and opinions about companies. By using the collective wisdom of our community, TradeVibes separates the best startups from their competitors. Here is a link to a TradeVibes product video screencast. TradeVibes was founded in 2007 by four early employees of PayPal who shared a passion for entrepreneurship and cool new startups.

The crowd will be discussing the Launchpad on Meebo starting at 1:30 PM PST.

[disclosure: dave mcclure is an advisor/investor in 2 of the startups listed above: Oortle & TradeVibes. LaunchPad startup selections were made by our VC judging panel, not by either of the conference co-chairs brady forrest or dave mcclure]

Graphing Social Patterns West: Monday Highlights & AppNite Demo Contest

Alright folks, we're less than 48 hours away from the beginning of Graphing Social Patterns West 2008... w00t! I'm flying down to San Diego tomorrow, and looking forward to seeing everyone :)

If you're a developer, make sure you enter our AppNite Live Demo Contest -- submissions are due by *midnight Saturday 3/1* (that's tonight!). Two lucky winners will receive MacBook Air notebooks for the best app demos.

Here's the lineup for Monday:

• The Future of Social Networks - Charlene Li, Forrester Research


• MySpace Platform Overview - Amit Kapur, MySpace


• Facebook Platform Overview - Ben Ling, Facebook


• Ten Million in Ten Weeks - BJ Fogg, Stanford University


• Facebook Business Marketing 101 - Rodney Rumford, FaceReviews.com


• Giving Good Poke - Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog


• Yahoo!'s MyBlogLog API - Ian Kennedy, Yahoo / MyBlogLog


• Social Networks & the NEED for FEEDS - panel


• Bring Your Own Platform (BYOP) - panel


• Widget Strategies & Social Platforms - panel


• Privacy Management & Data Portability - panel


• DiSo: Distributed Social Networking - Chris Messina, Citizen Agency

In addition to the conference sessions above, in the evening we'll have the AppNite contest, the O'Reilly Radar keynote from Tim, and then Ignite ETech organized by Brady Forrest, the program chair for ETech, being held concurrently with GSP.

See you in San Diego!

Sneaking Around With Other People's Platforms ... and a Countdown to Graphing Social Patterns West

Last summer, I fell in love. Please don't tell my wife.

This spring, i'm taking another lover. Please don't tell Facebook.

I'm not alone. Ask any alpha geek in Silicon Valley. They're all double-timing on Other People's Platforms every chance they get. I've spoken to dozens of pasty-faced coders, and every last one is pinching themselves to make sure it ain't a dream, they never had it so good. I'm telling you, folks: there hasn't been a market for eggheads this strong since Italy in the 14th century.

Developer Renaissance: Sistine Apps

If you're a web developer or recent computer science graduate, these are most certainly the best of times. With the groundbreaking launch of Facebook Platform last year, and the subsequent emergence of multiple new [open] social platforms this year -- MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Friendster, Ning, Meebo, LinkedIn, etc -- we are experiencing a Geek Renaissance the likes of which the software community has never before seen.

While there have been notable spikes of technology innovation on new software platforms in the past -- DOS in the 80's, Windows in the early 90's, the browser & the Internet itself in the mid-to-late 90's -- the recent explosion of both users and developers active on multiple social networks and platforms is unparalleled. These multiple platforms make this Brave New World such a competitive and fast-changing landscape.

Consider this: In just a few short years, MySpace and Facebook have come out of nowhere to become Top 10 Internet properties, with hundreds of millions of users and billions of monthly page views. And in addition to those two juggernauts, there are seven or eight other social networks among the top 25 sites worldwide. Several of them have also launched their own social platforms. Even Google entered the fray last fall by announcing Open Social, not a platform per se but rather a common API framework for building other social platforms (aka "containers") and applications.

In short: it's ON. That is, a massive global competition for the bits and minds of nerd-dom and every socially-enabled application on the planet has begun.

One Man's Viral Loop is Another Man's Spam Soup

So why all this attention to social platforms? Because social apps appear to be the most amazing viral and infectious method for acquiring new users quickly. The breakout growth of a number of Facebook apps in the past year -- several of which topped a million installs in just a few weeks, sometimes days -- demonstrated that integrating social network connection data into traditional software applications enables astonishing levels and rates of customer acquisition.

On the other hand, such a high level of viral customer acquisition appears to (currently, at least) be driven by a rather "spammy" invitation process, which can also have negative effects on user experience and cause "app fatigue". (Note to Facebook and others: why not dial up virality and discovery via the News Feed? What are you waiting for?) Viral distribution and user engagement aren't mutually exclusive, but it does seem that most apps tend towards one or the other -- with the notable exception of "social games" (ex: Scrabulous, Warbook, Oregon Trail).

Social Graph Clone Wars

Just as apps compete for user attention, social platforms are now also competing for developer attention using a variety of features and levels of enabled distribution (virality), engagement, and monetization. Platforms will now compete for developers by offering alternate strategies for differentiated reward -- and at the same time, those same platforms will have to make decisions about how committed they are to preserving a "happy" user experience that limits spammy app invitations and notifications.

On this particular point, Max Levchin, Founder/CEO of Slide.com, has written a tour-de-force essay on game theory for social platforms, and how platforms should structure developer incentives to drive growth. It's one of the best thought pieces i've read all year. I encourage you to check it out.

See the Apps @ Graphing Social Patterns West (March 3-4, San Diego)

I also encourage you to check out Graphing Social Patterns West, O'Reilly's newest conference on the business & technology of social platforms, coming up March 3-4 in San Diego (co-located with ETech). If you are looking for one conference that covers social networks from top to bottom, this is it. We will have keynote presentations from Google, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, and Forrester Research, and a ton of innovative startups and developers discussing marketing strategy and technical architecture for people building on social platforms. I hope you'll join us for an amazing journey and conversation.

(note: App developers who enter the GSP West AppNite Live Demo Contest can register for 50% off the normal conference fee)

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