I’d like to present an idea this evening regarding the upcoming DEMO and Techcrunch50 conferences. Both conferences will rock and are great places to launch a startup. This year both conferences will overlap in early September. Bloggers and journalists will have to try to cover the 100-125 startups that will launch simultaneously, startups will need to meet with some large number of reporters and readers will be hit by potentially thousands of reviews.

Check out my proposal in the video below. Here’s the basic idea. We all work together. Instead of 50 reviews of the same startup, we create 1 or 2 reviews of each startup. The reviews would be licensed to all of the participating sites with attribution back to the sources. Writer combinations would be picked at random and could create some great matches. A main conference portal site would be created to house all of the reviews plus all of the overall conference coverage. This would allow for a great amount of discovery between the content sources. We’d work to get sponsorship as a whole from larger companies who would absolutely love to be involved with this all-star lineup.

The benefits of this idea are:

• writers can focus on interviews, industry information, overall conference coverage, etc. and not on scrambling to get reviews done. writers also get the chance to work with one or two other writers and pick up tips and techniques
• startups would be able to focus on their presentations and not worry about coordinating 100 reviews
• readers would be able to engage with more content from more sources over the duration of the conferences 

This is just an initial proposal and if the idea is well-received, we would need to get started right away on the details. As a side benefit, these new blogger and journalists relationships will provide education, and you never know what the new relationships might hold for the future. Of course it could just be a crazy idea that won’t go anywhere.

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Over the past 24 hours, Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Loic Lemeur and Michael Arrington have all asked essentially the same question. They are all wondering how they got so many followers on FriendFeed so quickly.

Here at the CenterNetworks Investigation Bureau, we have been investigating this topic since we first reported on it a month ago. Seriously. After the last month of investigation, we are now prepared to share our findings. Please view the video below for the analysis as to why these four people are getting so many followers so quickly. The answer might just surprise you.

So as you can see, FriendFeed has created "defaults" and the four people above are part of the nine-person default set. What this means is that when anyone signs up for a new account on FriendFeed, they are presented with the same nine people every single time. Twitter has no defaults, hence a slower signup rate.

I presented my research to a couple of other top bloggers last week who aren’t included in the default list and their initial response was that Jason and Mike weren’t even participating in FF (they are now which is great). Mack also misses the point when he tries to explain the follower numbers.

Update: two people have emailed me noting that Jason isn’t actively participating, just sharing Mahalo links. They make a good point, he’s only sharing links via the bookmarklet, not actually participating in the conversation (yet I hope).

Defaults don’t just mean more followers, they mean more traffic to the supporting content sites.

When I asked Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit about this, he said, "you are correct however that we should tweak the algorithm to increase diversity when browsing popular feeds such as Scoble’s — FriendFeed has grown by a few orders of magnitude since the algorithm was originally created and so it probably requires some updating." When I spoke with Paul, I hadn’t yet realized that there was this also default nine-person set.

My hope is that FriendFeed will expedite the algorithm change and create more diversity and discovery with their platform. Shouldn’t everyone who uses FriendFeed get a chance to be discovered instead of pushing the same nine people for all of eternity?

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Loren Feldman, the transgressive online-video maker and would-be comic, slams Scoble’s “woe-is-me” posturing over his Facebook ban. Play the video, or read on for the choicest bit.

He’s fighting for himself … It’s dishonest and it’s wrong. Facebook has a right to earn money. You agree to give them your data. Everybody knew about it going in, and that’s not good enough for Robert, because he thinks … he’s above another company’s terms of service … For Robert to wrap it up under the guise of “I’m a freedom fighter for your data” is just completely dishonest.

Source:Valleywag

Blogger Om Malik could never have predicted he’d have a heart attack at the age of 41. But he did foresee one thing clearly: He would never build a business on a single blog so closely identified with one author. His spinoff blogs — Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, Earth2Tech, and FoundRead — have not matched GigaOm’s success; of the four, only NewTeeVee, in my opinion, shows promise of being a breakout hit like the original. But unlike Michael Arrington, who built TechCrunch solely on his startup cult of personality, Malik has sought to diversify his media startup in a way that it can survive him. Until December 28, this was merely wise in theory.

… sorry, no punchline. Scott Johnston, who’s been working at Google since it acquired his former employer, JotSpot, more than a year ago, Twitters:

Just walked past Sergey in an empty hallway, but didn’t say hi because I couldn’t remember his name. Does that make me a bad Googler?

No, Scott, it doesn’t. Sending a Twitter about it makes you a bad Googler.

Source:Valleywag

Silicon Valley’s armchair athletes may want to rethink their training regimen. A recent study shows that Nintendo’s Wii tennis is no substitute for real exercise. In fact, it’s only 2 percent more taxing than playing Halo 3. [Ars Technica]

Source:Valleywag

The main thing anyone ever knew about Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, is that it launched Michael Arrington’s career at TechCrunch. Desperate to find out more information about this “Web 2.0″ thing he kept hearing about, Arrington started blogging, and eventually left Edgeio, swapping a 10 percent stake in TechCrunch for a 10 percent stake in Edgeio. Arrington’s stake is now worthless — which I think would actually make Teare the savvier businessman here — and Edgeio’s assets have been sold at auction.

The auction for the assets closed at $280,000, just $30,000 more than the open price, with only two bidders. This despite Teare’s optimistic claim that: “a buyer will get a huge bargain at almost any price up to $6m. We had term sheets within the last 2 months and interest at valuations around $10m.”

The winning bidder was LookSmart, which has itself been struggling to remain relevant after its early success in Internet advertising and search ten years ago. Arrington, who claims he has tried to avoid discussing his investments on TechCrunch, provides his own positive spin, saying he’s “happy to see the assets move to a company with the resources to move the ideas forward.” Of course, it’s unclear what these so-called ideas are. Can anyone explain, really, what Edgeio did? At that price, LookSmart may well have just been bidding on the servers, office furniture, and links to the domain name from TechCrunch.

Think TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has a problem with women? Boston blogger Ryan Barrett got into “virtual journalism” in part due to her admiration for “Michael Arrington’s razor-sharp sarcasm.” But that admiration didn’t survive an in-person meeting, according to a November post to Barrett’s blog. My favorite part is when she scolds Arrington on when it’s appropriate to “bring out a little prick.”

After a painstakingly awkward exchange where it became increasingly clear that I was being mocked by Arrington and his pals, we took a quick photo together. I smiled and was just about to thank him when he snickered this out of the side of his mouth, “Whatever. It was certainly a pleasure meeting you too.” Then he turned his back to me and laughed with his friends.

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Failing biometrics company Pay By Touch has shed 250 employees in the last “couple months,” COO Eula Adams said on a call for shareholders today. Of that 250, Adams said new management “took out” 90 employees in the last couple of weeks. The cuts came to “non-core” Pay By Touch initiatives in “healthcare, online, government,” Adams said.

All of it confirms a rumor posted by a commenter a few weeks back. “Rumor has it that TODAY IS LAYOFF DAY! Again!”

Thanks for weathering the storm where we did not pay you for six weeks! Sorry for that month we still OWE you! uhm, yeah and we won’t be paying you out when you go, and we’ll probably just keep your vacation. So hoist a few and call a lawyer! It’ll be fun!

This doesn’t answer the question of how Pay By Touch got into “healthcare, online, government” in the first place. Shouldn’t it have, say, figured out how to make money off fingerprint-approved payments first?

Source:Valleywag

Dead startups, lying CEOs, and disgruntled, unpaid employees seem to follow Michael Arrington wherever he goes. He doesn’t cause them, but he sure seems to attract them. First there was Edgeio. Now, the latest is online-storage company OmniDrive, a startup which the conflicts-embracing TechCrunch editor invested last year. Nik Cubrilovic, OmniDrive’s founder and CEO, disputes the assertion that it may be time to put the company on deathwatch. Former employees disagree, pointing out that it’s in a crowded market of bigger players, is beset by technical problems, and rumored to have lost its CTO. What’s the real story?

Cubrilovic claims the company has received funding, is profitable, and has a bright future ahead of it. But Phil Morle, a former CTO for OmniDrive, and another ex-worker claim otherwise.

Morle makes serious accusations. Not only were he and other employees not paid, he says, but Cubrilovic allegedly used a personal PayPal account to take OmniDrive users’ subscription fees, a careless move that could open him up to charges of commingling personal and corporate finances.

It would be nice to know which story is closer to the truth. If only there was an investor and board member with his own technology blog who could clear up this matter. Alas, Arrington so far has been silent on the drama at OmniDrive.

There are murmurs of surprise that videogame retailer GameStop has made its way onto the S&P 500 index. More than a decade ago, it was bankrupt. Now it’s eaten not just its competitors’ lunch, but its entire competition, consuming Babbage’s, Software Etc, NeoStar and Electronics Boutique. It’s one of those great adversity-toppling stories business writers love.

One analyst remarks, “Everyone argued that games would be distributed online … but these guys stuck to their game plan.” That’s true, but GameStop’s success is mostly due to the nascent state of digital distribution. Broadband is still too slow, and console hard drives are still too small. Those limitations hinder the sale of full-length, multiple-gigabyte games. GameStop’s success has been a matter of luck as much as timing. Playing videogames has grown as a mainstream obsession even faster than the broadband pipes that were supposed to make GameStop’s business model obsolete. That, and it’s still really hard to download a Wii. (Photo by maulleigh)

Source:Valleywag

What does Michael Arrington have against women? A lot, apparently. His latest target: A blog commenter named “Shelley,” who spoke up on behalf of a photographer, Lane Hartwell. Hartwell, as we’d guessed, was the copyright complainant who knocked the popular “Here Comes Another Bubble” video off YouTube. Canadian blogger Mathew Ingram said Hartwell was wrong. Shelley responded in Hartwell’s defense. And that’s when Michael Arrington joined in and turned the conversation awkward.

“Mathew is right, you are wrong,” Arrington wrote. “But since Lane is a woman, it really doesn’t matter what she did as far as you are concerned. She’s a woman, so she’s right.” And Arrington’s a man, so he’s right! Got it. We’re beginning to understand why BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy threw a drink in this guy’s face.

Wow, and we thought last week sucked. Googler Larry Page is marrying the Chiclet-toothed Lucy Southworth tomorrow, but no one has posted photos of the lucky couple yet, so as far as we’re concerned, it didn’t happen. The week’s other near-misses that were nonetheless hits:

• TechCrunch honcho Michael Arrington tried to fan some flameage by threatening “war” on Facebook for hiring away one of his techies. His post divided Valley tech workers into two camps: Those who got the joke and found it hilarious, and those who thought Arrington was totally serious and found it hilarious.

• Some girl broke up with her boyfriend on Facebook, then had her Flickr account hacked — or did she?
• Ultravideogenic Natali Del Conte is leaving us for New York City to become CNET’s go-to gal for national TV in January. Just when she’d started hanging out with losers like us! Hurrah for you, Natali, but YOU MAKE BUNNY CRY.

Bernie Ward, for those of you who don’t listen to local talk radio, is a liberal commentator who won a Scripps award for his investigative reporting on sexual misconduct among the local Catholic clergy. Ward himself was indicted Thursday on two counts of sending and receving child pornography online. Ward’s lawyer claims the former priest made an “error of judgement” while researching a book.

Source:Valleywag

I’m sure TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington was joshing when he threatened “war” on Facebook for hiring away one of his technical staffers. After all, the amount of damage a full-on TechCrunch assault of negative articles about Facebook would inflict on the site’s business rounds off close to zero. Still, even jokingly warning another employer to stay away from “my” employees is a Valley faux pas. Such posturing is seen as a sign of weakness. If you want your tech workers to stay, you just offer them a better deal. Right, boss?