Techcrunch just featured a very interesting new search company, ChaCha.
Its basic idea is that your search query gets forwarded to a “Guide” who supposedly is an expert in what you’re looking for, or at the very least, knows which sources to use to provide you with relevant results. ChaCha provides a little chat window left […]

Just got the scoop via SPIEGEL (German).
Firstly - Congrats, Ehssan. I guess this kind of money soothes the pain caused by the recent bad press you got.
With the given userbase / acquisition price ratio, each profile got a valuation of 100 €.
Given that there are a lot of dead / fake accounts, the valuation of […]

StudiVZ.net has been down for the last few days (and will be until tomorrow or so) to fix several severe security issues.
In the meantime users who hit the page get pointed to StudiVZ’s blog, which is now overflowing with comments on the latest scandals, news and server problems (I don’t think I have ever seen […]

It’s been tough times for Ehssan, founder of StudiVZ - personally I’ve never seen anyone being put down so hard by the German blogosphere - it almost seems as if a bunch of bloggers decided to make this their primary topic.
And of course, the old media at some point just has to follow.
Anger got aggregated […]

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Abe Lincoln

Google to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.
CNN

What would YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and any other user generated content based web services be without their users […]

As of today, Lijit.com is alive! It might still be a little shy and fragile, that’s why we cannot let all registered users in immediately (sorry!). Dear existing beta testers - there are still a few tiny bugs that hide in the darker corners of the system, if you find them, let us know… - […]

Girls will rule the new web - I’ve claimed this a while ago. I promised to come up with some real data to support this idea, but haven’t had time to do serious research. In the meantime, I am just going to point to outstanding female bloggers. At some point I might have enough anecdotes […]

This is a test to include vote for/against microformats into a blog post.
Usually, a link does not carry any information regarding quality or my stance towards the contents I am linking to. Microformat Vote-links enable you to add this information to links by putting rev=”vote-for” or rev=”vote-against” between a and href.
So…I don’t like iPower Domain […]

The Gross Attention Product is the Attention Economy’s equivalent to the classical economy’s Gross Domestic Product, which is
the most comprehensive single measure of aggregate economic output. Represents the market value of the total output of the goods and services produced by a nation’s economy. (via business.gov)
Obviously “Gross Attention Product” is meant as a metaphor […]

Just a short hint for users of the German Facebookclone StudiVZ: Yesterday the team around StudiVZ posted a “call for songs” on each user’s page. Users are encouraged to produce a StudiVZ fan song and send it to their team. Nice idea, but watch out for the fine print (German):
7. Sämtliche Informationen und Einsendungen, die […]