Tonight the nextNY group held a business development session named, "The Business Development Discipline: Practitioners’ Roundtable". About 50 people attended the session where a variety of business development topics were discussed. Most of the discussion was around business development for "major" startups and large companies.

The evening’s speakers included:

• Chris Phenner - VP of Business Development, Thumbplay (left side of camera)
• Dan Rosenberg - VP of Business Development, Rave Wireless (right side of camera)
• Matt Milner - VP of Social Media, Hearst Corporation (right side of camera)

I was able to tape the first hour of the discussion and part one (30 minutes) is below. The other half of the discussion will be posted on Tuesday morning.

Earlier this year, the nextNY group held a workshop on hiring for startups. If you plan to do any hiring for your startup, the videos are a must watch.

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Spleak Media Network, which started last year with the single launch of CelebSpleak, has been adding more and more niche themes to its growing network of communities. The latest to join the network are StyleSpleak, TVSpleak, and GameSpleak, bringing the total number of niche “spleaks” to six.

As with the other Spleak communities, the newcomers will feature integrated content sharing through multiple chat clients, publishing related news across the Web in an interactive format that combines user-generated content with editorial articles. The result is a multi-faceted distribution service that encourages contributions from anyone that has something more to add. A number of mainstream publications have jumped on board, from Hearst to Fox Sports, offering their news content to go alongside user-generated content, all within these themed Spleaks that are accessible to users in a number of ways.

Spleak began as an AIM application, delivering news bites in an easily consumed fashion. With all the instant messaging platform options now available, and Spleak’s growing Web and mobile presence, now is a good time for Spleak to continue its expansion, as it’s better able to deliver news directly to users in a growing number of interactive ways. I think these recent vertical additions are also good topics given the audience and distribution of Spleak content, with a narrowing focus on the entertainment sector. Now that Spleak has established a good set of verticals for its expansion, I imagine deeper integration with mobile and social networks will be a growing area of interest for the company as well.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Spleak Verticals: Sports and PoliticsSpleak Lands Hearst for Hybrid Publishing NetworkSpleak: IM Gossip Bot is Now a Full-Fledged Media NetworkWishpot Closes Series A with an Extra $1 MillionKosmix Raises $10M for Search VerticalsDigg’s New Verticals To Launch This MonthHearst and Jango Launch Celeb Jukebox. Listen to What the Stars Like.

Richard Laermer of RLM PR is either into some really depraved adult entertainment. Or he’s very lazy. That’s the conclusion of fellow flack Peter Shankman, an early riser who was no doubt checking out Laermer’s source code at 4 a.m. before going for a jog. The site’s code reveals links to sites featuring bestiality and “nonconsensual sex,” a cute little euphemism for rape porn. So how did Laermer let all that onto his site?

Search engine optimization experts told PR blogger Peter Shankman that if Laermer isn’t a violent sex fiend, he either copied his code from a porn site or he doesn’t have effective security in place to keep porn “bots” from writing over his HTML to boost their search rankings. (Photo by It’sGreg)

Source:Valleywag

The latest issue of Wired devotes pages and pages to Adeo Ressi, the anonymous “Ted” who runs TheFunded.com. Wired worked with Ressi to coordinate his unveiling with the story’s publication at Wired.com on Thursday evening. Ressi’s thrilled, right? Wrong. He complained at yesterday’s event that Wired still didn’t give him enough play. His take: He’s a hot tech celebrity. His site is a big story. He expected to be this month’s cover. Mr. Ressi, your wish is our Photoshop command. Apologies to Wired creative director Scott Dadich, who we’re sure would never, ever use ITC Stone Sans Bold on the cover.

Source:Valleywag

Despite condemnations from Star editor and notorious nobody Julia Allison, who called Google’s New York cafeteria “questionable,” the New York Department of Health has decided the loudly colored eatery is safe enough for now, according to health-inspection reports found by the Hygenie blog. It’s cleaner, even, than old-media stalwart Hearst’s cafeteria. This despite the fact that Google houses its New York office in a grimy old SoHo loft and Hearst just spent $500 million on its new headquarters. (Photo by advencap)

“The news business is like the tobacco business: you want to reach new readers at as young and impressionable an age as possible,” Onion president Sean Mills said. “MySpace was, of course, a natural partner in that regard.” The truth hurts and causes lung cancer: MySpace and The Onion are now exclusive content partners. [Infectious Greed]

Source:Valleywag

Attention, blogtards: Michael Arrington has seceded from the blogosphere, a space in which his ego no longer apparently fits. In an otherwise tiresome review of yet another Web 2.0 product, Arrington made this fascinating observation:

The bloggers seem to like it, though… Ah, I love the blogosphere.

Apparently he’s no longer a blogger — just a distanced observer of you keyboard-chained louts. Take note of this the next time he tries to use his blogger cred to whine about the mainstream media.

Source:Valleywag

Who put the itching powder in media companies’ Web 2.0-buying jocks? Well, Rupert Murdoch, obviously. Ever since he slurped up MySpace for what now looks like a song, everyone else is trying to find a bargain. Condé Nast bought Wired.com and then Reddit, Forbes just picked up Clipmarks, and now it looks like the Hearst Corporation is adding social shopping network Kaboodle to its kit. Sure, Hearst might be trying to inject some social-networking mojo into its readership, but we suspect this deal is more about pulling the rug out from under Condé Nast’s competing portfolio of travel and fashion websites, which use Kaboodle’s technology. Such macho posturing over such girly pursuits. Well, whatever scratches your itch, guys.