Whoa, Ning has a $750M Valuation

July 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Ning_logoIt seems that Ning, the guys that let you roll your own social network, has taken an additional $15M in investment.

The story as told over at BoomTown is that Ning wasn’t looking for funding, but Lightspeed Venture Partners wanted to participate in Ning’s funding because of Ning’s amazing growth and Ning was okay with it because they liked the idea of getting dough from a high profile VC like Lightspeed.

Win-Win.

Please take our money, we know it’s only $15 million but please take it.  Okay for you, we’ll take it.  We don’t really need it, you know.

The new $15M investment brings to $119M total funding taken by Ning — remember the founders of Ning are Marc “Mosaic – Netscape” Andreesen and CEO Gina Bianchi.

Who says the bubble has burst?  The new funding round makes Ning’s valuation a whopping $750M.

So far for Ning, monetization has meant advertising — they’ve been using Google’s platform, but are working on their own.  They also charge some modest usage fees for customizations like using your own domain name for you Ning network.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Filed Under: Funding, Startups, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Gentle Introduction to Twitter or Twitter 101 for Non-Majors

June 11, 2009 By 1 Comment

twitter-logoAssuming you haven’t been hanging out under a rock off the grid, you’ve likely heard about Twitter, we’ve even written about it here a couple of dozen times. It’s the micro-blogging social network site where you can post-140 character “Tweets” to share what you’re doing, thinking, reading or just about anything else with your “followers“. The Oprah recently turned up the steam on Twitter by starting to Tweet herself on her afternoon talk show.

See Oprah Tweet.

If you’ve thought about giving Twitter a try and joining the global conversation, but just haven’t got around to it — here’s a gentle introduction to the world of Twitter and micro-blogging.  The first part of the introduction will get you signed up for Twitter and your account personalized so that it best reflects who you are.

Getting Started

This is the easy part. Go to twitter.com and push the big green button and you’re on your way.

twitter-join-button

[Read more...]

Filed Under: How To, Social media, Twiiter Tagged With: ,

Logical Alternative to Multi-tasking — Single-Tasking

March 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

single-tasking-whiteboard

What used to be said with pride, “I can do three things at once — I multi-task”, now seems like a fraud.

The simple fact is that you can only do one thing well at a time and other than actions controlled by the central nervous system or muscle memory like turning on the car blinker  when you get ready to make a turn or jumping rope, all actions need some level of concentration.

Hence the way to concentrate at work is to single-task.  This white-board is making the rounds.  I got it from marketing nirvana who got it from caterina.net.

The methodology this person developed for doing one thing at a time allows you to:

    • send email at any time, but only check it a few times a day on schedule.
    • Focus on only 1 to 3 activities a day.
    • Minimize chat, which I guess means with co-workers and online (which would include Twitter).

    I personally don’t see much hope in trying to be finished at 5:30 pm every day (unless I start at 5:30 am).

    Here’s a refinement of the methodology.  Tell us what you think.

    Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

    Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , , , ,

    Where have you signed up before? And what’s left?

    October 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

    usernamecheck-screen

    If you tend to use the same usernames for most of your social networking site (and it is a good idea), Usernamecheck is a great way to see where you’ve been and what is still unexplored territory.

    Type in your username and you’ll get back a report of all the 68 sites that Usernamecheck, well, checks and whether or not your username has been taken.  Also good for checking some of the more common usernames like initials or first initial and last name.

    So far, 146155 usernames have been checked according to their web page.

    Since the site also links to the dozens of social networking sites, it’s a nice directory for finding new sites that you might find interesting.

    Give Usernamecheck a try.

    Here’s my report for my favorite wckdgfy name.  Looks like I have miles to go before I sleep.

    usernamecheck-screen2

    Related articles by Zemanta
    Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

    Filed Under: Web 2.0 Tagged With: , ,

    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.