Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Union Square Ventures

SmartLinks: Give Readers More Without Taking Them from Your Site

November 4, 2007 / / 1 Comment

AdaptiveBlue is a company founded by my friend Alex Iskold, who also does some great analysis type posts on Read/Write Web regularly. (I’m looking forward to seeing Alex at the Defrag conference, which starts tomorrow in Denver.) AdaptiveBlue, based in NJ, was launched at DEMOfall ’06 (my coverage). It has since received funding from Union Square Ventures in NYC.   I like the company’s mission: they want everyone to "browse smarter."  Who can’t support that?  Alex and his firm are very much out in front of the whole Semantic Web movement.  But they aren’t just talking about it; they coming up with practical tools now to help us see the power and the potential of the Semantic Web. The latest of these?  SmartLinks, which bring what Alex decribes as "fun, utility, and a social dimension to your pages…whether you’re a blogger or a big media company."  Here’s a screenshot showing some of the sites whose links are displayed when you click on a SmartLink.

Smartlinkstypes

It’s all based on a little blue icon that appears next to certain links on your site. I’ve intalled SmartLinks on this blog, and here’s what one of those little blue icons looks like, at the end of a book link on my blog: Smartlinkiconrebook

And here’s what you see when you click on this icon in this case — choices on where you can go to get the book, information on the author, reviews, and other links. (Installing was a breeze, by the way — it’s one click for Blogger or Typepad, my platform; a plug-in for WordPress; and just a single line of code for other types of sites. Note: to see where SmartLinks appear on my site, scroll down to the books section in my sidebar.) Smartlinkresultsrebook

Key point about these SmartLinks: they let your readers explore related information, such as book reviews,
similar movies, stock research, music videos, etc, without navigating away from your content. That is huge.               

One use of SmartLinks that’s really getting a lot of attention since the company introduced the tool a week or so ago is SmartLinks for stocks.  Here’s an example of what you’d see when you click on that little blue icon next to a Google link (stock symbol: GOOG): Smartlinksforstocks

For more discussion of what this is all about, see the company’s blog, including a post on how to use Smart Links for stocks. Also, on the same blog, here’s a Q&A on Smart Links.

VCs Who Blog vs. Those Who Don’t

September 24, 2007 / / 5 Comments

Great piece in the Boston Globe yesterday by Scott Kirsner: In Venture Capital, a Growing Rift Over Blogs. It’s the best look I’ve seen so far into why some VCs blog and why others pass. Makes some excellent points about the main advantage for VCs — better deal flow — and the main advantages for entrepreneurs — leveling the playing field, including from a geographic standpoint.  That latter point is one I’ve written about a lot, and a very real issue for founders not lucky enough to be located in one of the VC hotbeds.

I like the way Kirsner characterizes VC blogging as the "new parity in the world of venture capital."

The article quotes one of the best-known VC bloggers out there, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures in NYC, a guy who’s invested in many Internet and Web 2.0 deals. Here’s an excerpt from the article that quotes Fred:

Venture capitalists who blog say it isn’t just about helping pump up
their firm’s reputation and show how market-savvy they are. Blogging,
writes Wilson via e-mail, is "the best tool for VC investing that I’ve
ever seen, and I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years."

Wilson
says his blog not only helps him meet more start-ups, but it brings him
companies that are "more targeted and more relevant" to the areas he’s
interested in. Wilson also likes it when his readers argue with him or
tell him about companies he might not already know; it’s not unusual
for one of his posts to attract 25 or 30 comments. "You can’t buy that
kind of education," he writes, "and I get it every day for free."

Later in the piece, an opposing viewpoint is put forth:

"My gut says that there’s no correlation between VC blogging and
financial returns," Spark Capital’s (Bijan) Sabet says, noting that blogger
Fred Wilson has done well with his investments – but so has John Doerr
of the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins, who doesn’t blog but has
put money into Amazon, Google, and Intuit.

The trouble with that characterization, however, is that those latter deals were done long before blogging was popular. Granted, it’s hard to argue that big-kahuna KP needs to blog. But there’s a whole universe of newer, younger VCs out there who are finding it benefits them.

IDG Ventures’ Jeff Bussgang adds this great thought:

…as entrepreneurs increasingly maintain blogs of their own, Bussgang
says, "they want to see that the VCs are their peers and are wrestling
with similar issues and thinking through things."

I wonder how many VC bloggers will be at DEMOfall, starting later today?  I’m looking forward to talking with them.

What do you think about blogging representing "the new parity in venture capital"?  What are your experiences?

 

Firefox Users, You’ll Love the Cool, New “BlueOrganizer Denim” Plug-In

May 23, 2007 / / 0 Comments

AdaptiveBlue, a company we covered here and here last September when they debuted at DEMOfall, today launched the latest version of its BlueOrganizer plug-in for the Firefox browser, which it calls Denim. Alex Iskold, the founder and CEO, is a friend of mine, and a fellow writer at Read/Write Web. (Okay, I’ve written two posts there and he’s done what seems like 50 or more, and they’re all amazingly good.) How he finds time to do all this writing and run a startup, I don’t know. I’m threatening to start calling him Superman. Alex’s firm is based in New Jersey and was funded in a Series A round last fall by Union Square Ventures of New York City.

Anyway, I downloaded and installed the plug-in in about 30 seconds on my Mac. It’s an elegant solution — and the web site is very clean, well functioning, and informative, with good demos, graphics, and explanations. The plug-in worked flawlessly for me right from the start, and I’m now thinking it could turn me into more a Firefox user… 🙂

Blueorganizer
Duncan Riley reported on the launch today on Tech Crunch, noting that “Adaptive Blue also enters the widget market. The new ‘sharing links’ feature allows users to embed semantic links into any web page, include bookmark style lists in a sidebar, or just embed a traditional widget. Affiliate programs are fully supported with no revenue sharing; if a user includes their affiliate code for programs such as eBay and Amazon they keep 100% of any associated revenue.”

Richard MacManus also published a post today on BlueOrganizer on Read/Write Web, under the title “Semantic Web In Action?” He explained that BlueOrganizer “aims to provide extra contextual information to you while browsing the Web. Basically, after you install BlueOrganizer in Firefox, it enables you to discover all kinds of relevant content while you’re browsing – such as books, music, links, related information, etc. Essentially then, it adds personalization and semantics into the browser.”

How’s the new version of the plug-in different? “First,” says Alex, “it’s just much more fun! Its lighter, more clickable, and takes less space both in the toolbar and in the sidebar. There’s also a new BlueMenu right in the toolbar. This makes the menu much easier to use for people who are not into right-clicking.” He also says that the latest context detection algorithm “is a huge improvement over the previous versions. Try it on blog posts about books, music, wine or another topic and see for yourself.”

Probably the most important new feature is SmartLinks, according to Alex. “These are web links that feature contextual shortcuts. They carry all the smarts about the objects right into blog posts, web pages, and social network profiles.” With SmartLinks, he noted, you can share the power of context and semantics with your friends, family, or readers.

“This is fundamental and big,” Alex proudly points out. “We’re bringing semantics into the most basic element of the web – the link. Imagine the web where links no longer point to pages, but point to things….users can get to information faster; information that’s contextual and relevant.” While some people might call this the Semantic Web, “we would not be so presumptuous,” Alex says. “But we think BlueOrganizer and SmartLinks are powering a smarter web and that, in turn, paves the road to the real Semantic Web.”

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