SOMEWHAT FRANK

Compete Cashes In, Acquired By TNS

Compete, the Boston-based web analytics and online market research firm startup founded in 2000, was just acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), a leading market information and insight company for $75 Million. Compete leverages clickstream data to determine traffic, engagement and other valuable analytics. According to the press release TNS plans to leverage this data  to provide insight based on online and offline behavior and on consumer attitudes. Congrats to Compete on the recent acquisition!

TECH cocktail Boston Was Wicked

TECH cocktail Boston took place last night in the shadow of Fenway Park and brought the Boston tech scene together. With about 400 people in attendance, TECH cocktail Boston brought together a number of startups, entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts for an evening of food, drinks and passionate conversations. It was pretty wicked!

TECH cocktail In Beantown Sign-up Now

Last week I mentioned that TECH cocktail, an event I co-founded with Eric Olson, was coming soon to Boston and now I am pleased to announce that you can now sign-up for TECH cocktail Boston.

Bzzster For Simple Sharing Via Email

Looking to send a link quickly and too lazy to send it in an email or instant message? Bzzster is a site for sharing links and recommending content with your friends over email.

Similar to Share2Me which I previously reviewed, Bzzster also offers users a bookmarklet that enables users to share a link over email without having to launching into your email application. Links sent in a nicely formatted Bzzster email but unlike Share2Me do not include thumbnail previews of each link. Bzzster offers social bookmarking by offering users the ability to expose email shared links publicly on list of links that can be on your Bzzster profile, mine can be found here, and it includes a feed. Social bookmarking sites are a dime a dozen, so it will be interesting to see if Bzzster's simple and clean approach lures people to give it a whirl. Bzzster and other similar "send to friend" sites might want to look into working with exisiting social bookmarking sites in addition to creating their own sites. For example, users could use Bzzster to send an email and also opt to submit the link directly to digg or del.icio.us all in one swipe thus saving time.

Bzzster is the creation of Jay Meattle and David Cancel both of Compete.com. You can find out more about Bzzster via the Bzzster blog and follow its every move by following Bzzster on twitter.

Web Influencers, Netvibes Security Issues, AIM is #1, Go2Web20.net Revamped, Attention 200 & Design Geekery

It rained quite a bit this week in Silicon Valley so I thought this photo titled rain on tuesday taken by Daisy Romwall was appropriate.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.11.07

The Wizards of Buzz
The Wall Street Journal took an in-depth look at some of the social bookmarking sites that help others to discover the hottest content on the web. These sites include Digg.com, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Newsvine – all of which empower users to submit content items from around the web. Items are rated and promoted via voting or other mechanisms within the site.The most popular or highest rated items bubble to the top and usually become even more popular as traffic surges towards sources of these hot content items. These social bookmarking sites are managed by a number of users but there are some key influencers that do the most consistent heavy lifting. WSJ put out a podcast to go along with the article and it can be downloaded here.

Netvibes module developer collects web creds, personal content
Niall Kennedy highlights how Netvibes, the personal homepage startup, recently experienced some serious security issues. Netvibes was recently praised by Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg, but it appears its open-source approach to development has left its users at the mercy of rogue developers. What does this mean? Basically, it means a rogue module developer could take advantage of Netvibes’ users to steal personal information like emails, bank information and just about anything else personal you might find in a homepage module. This is unfortunate for Netvibes as most of its quick growth and development is due to its developer network. I guess Netvibes will have to rethink its security and privacy approach if it or risk losing the trust of its users.

Wall Street Journal IM Ratings: AIM Is #1
What instant messaging product do you use? If its not AOL’s AIM 6.0 you may want to reconsider your choice as an article published this week in the WSJ titled "Rating the New Instant-Messaging Programs" compared AIM 6.0, Yahoo! Messenger 8.1, and Windows Live Messenger 8.1. AIM 6.0 was rated #1.

A Lesson in Viral Video
Inside Higher Education details the events surrounding the Web 2.0 video created by Michael Wusch which Somewhat Frank helped surface in the blogosphere. The article further emphasizes the viral power of the web and the influences of the blogosphere.

Go2web20 Relaunched!
The popular and slick web 2.0 directory created by Orli Yakuel has been revamped and relaunched with a number of improvements which should make the faster and easier to use. It should also offer more information for users. Included in the changes is the creation of a few innovative advertising options.

RocketDock: Add A Mac-like Dock To Your PC
If you are a Mac-lover stuck in a PC-user’s body then you might want give RocketDock a try. Lifehacker recently showcased it as a download of the day so I gave it a try. Upon installing the application created by Punk Software it instantly fulfilled my longing for a Mac-like dock for managing my desktop. Here is an instructional video which details the various configuration options of this nifty little add-on. Oh and buy some schwag or donate to support their development efforts.

31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online
If you are into tracking what people might be saying about you online you might want make sure you are checking a bunch of online sources. This article lists 31 places to keep your online reputation in check.

23 Signs That You're Becoming a Design Geek
While developing products I often find myself thinking I am a designer and I know I am not alone. I am admittedly not even close to the skill level of a full-fledged UI designer (like the designers I work with at AOL – they rock!). Nonetheless, this article will give you 23 design geek signs.

Announcing: The Compete Attention 200™
Compete recently posted a list of the top 200 online destinations based on their metrics tracking systems. Surprisingly, Somewhat Frank did not make the Attention 200 – this has to be some sort of mistake.  :-)

Compete Confronts Alexa Head On

Are you a web metrics junkie? If so you probably have been using Alexa to access public site rankings and metrics. Alexa now has a legitimate contender in the space in Compete, a subsidiary of the online market research firm CompeteInc, as they recently decided to change their game-plan by allowing a comparable public metrics site.

So which is better Alexa or Compete? I have been planning an article to compare the two services since I had a chance to chat with some of the Compete team at TechCrunch 8. I was impressed by their recent move to offer a handful of consumer products. Compete offers a toolbar which tracks your clicks on the Internet and thus as a reward offers deals related to the various sites visited. Compete has a unique search engine which taps into Compete's five years of  metrics data to list Compete Picks above regular search results. Finally, Compete SnapShot is the product that takes on Alexa head on. To see it in action check out the the comparison of two popular domains below.

Ironically, Compete recently beat me to the punch to tackle the Compete vs. Alexa debate itself. 

TechCrunch In the City

TechCrunch 8, an event celebrating the web 2.0 movement, took its show on the road to New York City this past week (November 16, 2006) and I traveled to be in attendance. AOL supported the event by being one of the many sponsors. AOL also had space at the event to demonstrate AOL Video, SearchVideo and the recently updated dev.aol.com. A small group of AOLers snagged the daily corporate shuttle from Dulles to NY. It was my first trip on the corporate jet and was definitely a memorable one as we maneuvered in front of a nasty line of storms.

We were not the only guests flying in for the event. There were people in from all over the world. I met TECH cocktail co-founder and friend, Eric Olson at the event who flew in from Chicago (though weather delayed him for three hours). Jeff Pulver and Chris Brogan dropped in for awhile. I got a chance to meet Greg Galant the popular voice of the VentureVoice podcast. I even ran into old Tribune colleague Matt Terenzio who was nice enough to bring Mike Arrington a pretty sweet stogy. Digg CEO Jay Aldeson was also in the house but unfortunately, the crowd around him never died down enough to chat.

TechCrunch 8 was held at BED New York, a comfortable but swanky nightclub made famous by its mainstream placement in episodes of the popular sitcom, Sex in the City. BED is usually filled with a number of beds, hence its name, but many of the beds were removed to accommodate the large crowd and lend to comfy conversations about web 2.0. The guys from Fleck flew in from the Netherlands to launch at the event - of course, I signed their white suits. HitTail had decked the place out with balloons and other schwag and demonstrated their publisher metrics system. While Compete showcased its consumer facing metrics offerings and gave out interesting bobble head schwag including a Mike Arrington bobble head – a nice touch. Me.dium showed off an interesting browser sidebar product which I will talk about in more detail soon. Eurekster, a company I have written about previously, was previewing some new features and even had the Somewhat Frank logo in its slide deck. You can see Eurekster in action in the right rail. PartyStrands seemed to feel right at home at a party since its product offering is a SMS controlled collaborative social jukebox. They had had logos flying all over the venue. CozmoTV also explained its personalized TV product. There were a number of other companies as well which are mentioned in this TechCrunch article.

For more details on each of the companies that demonstrated  check out this TC8 wrap-up by Read/Write Web. Valleywag has posted photos and a wrap-up here. Check out public photos from TechCrunch 8.

Bottom-line: TechCrunch 8 united web companies from across the globe to a swanky NYC club to an entertaining evening of mingling and checking out the latest product offerings.

Tagged: techcrunch8, techcrunch 8