Two of the best sessions at this week’s Mesh Conference in Toronto were the ones related to Web 2.0 and VC money. Don’t know which inspired me more, Paul Kedrosky’s or Rick Segal’s. Mark Evans of the National Post condensed his thoughts in his article published today (which he lobbied to get pulled out from behind the “walled garden” of subscription only). Here are some excerpts from his article:

There is, however, some evidence the environment is changing. For one, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs don’t need large amounts of money because they can use free open-source software, and low-cost hardware and network bandwidth to develop and distribute a new Web-based service.

This means entrepreneurs can take an idea and create a business without worrying about whether they can get financed. This is a healthier approach because the start-ups that are successful in attracting customers and generating revenue have better leverage when they decide to pursue venture capital to jump-start growth.

At the same time, some VCs have started to realize they need to behave differently if they want to play in the Web 2.0 world. They need to be more aggressive, they need to take more risk and they need to accept the reality that financial success could come from a variety of small investments rather than a few large opportunities.

[snip]

It appears VCs could have an easier time discovering new Web 2.0 start-ups if the enthusiasm and energy of the entrepreneurs who gathered at the mesh conference is any indication. Some of the companies to watch are DabbleDB, iUpload.com, Freshbooks.com, B5Media, Bubbleshare.com, EndlessEurope.com and Octopz.com.

This is an new and exciting time for Canadian Tech. More sharp people are getting their ideas out and some forward-thinking VCs are getting in on the game.

Tags: Canadian tech, VC funding, Paul Kedrosky, Rick Segal

Bob Parsons, CEO of bargain domain registrar GoDaddy, has been blogging for a few months. In this post, he tells his company’s side of the story for why the NFL and Fox chickened out at the last minute from airing the second of its racy ads during the Super Bowl.

So, Ask Jeeves just launched a blog. About time, considering the very identity of the company is the pesonification of personally answered questions online.

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Oh, this is rich. The latest example of someone getting fired for blogging comes from an employee of no less savvy socially networked company than Friendster (which, so far as I am aware, has no official blog of its own to address the controversy on; too bad, that). According to the blogger in question, Joyce Park, aka TroutGirl, the offending posts were both quite short and, to my outsider interpretation, fairly innocuous. I predict this is going to have a bad PR fallout for Friendster in the blogosphere.

UPDATE:
Ted Pibil notes in my comments thread on this post that Jon Udell has an excellent wrap up on this: Why we owe Troutgirl our thanks. Lots of good links there to add context and further the analysis of the implications of this. Thought it was worth highlighting here in the main post. Thanks Ted.

TroutGirl: Shitcanned

Not to be outdone by Google’s blog, Yahoo just launched its own blog. The first post, a bit of self-congratulations about how great Yahoo’s search is, was written by Jeff Weiner, SVP of Yahoo! Search & Marketplace. From the sound of it, however, others will also join in the blogging:

Be sure to check back here for news about new product introductions, updates and exclusive betas.

In addition, this blog is designed to provide a window into what our team is thinking and doing, in their own words (and maybe some guest bloggers as well).

Above all else we hope this blog enables you to share our excitement for the search industry and what the future holds. 

Powered by Movable Type. Funny that they wouldn’t use Blogger, as it’s free

😉 

Comments are turned on and filling up fast.

ClickZ offers additional perspective.

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Well, ever since we spotted the trial blog at Google a few weeks ago, we knew this was inevitable. The Google Blog was born on May 10th. Disappointing there hasn’t been a new post yet today — seems like they’d have a lot to talk about, but I wonder whether it will end up being a more occasional blog, like Blogger’s own blog. Another peculiarity of the blog seems to be that there is no obvious author. The first post (see below) is from Evan Williams, appropriately enough, creator of blog software tool Blogger.com, which Google acquired last year. But we know this only because he signed the post within the body of the post. The footer information about each post does not contain an author identification, so the second post is anonymous.

Here’s Evan’s first post to the new Google blog:

Ever since I came to Google, they’ve been talking about putting up an official Google blog. And now, less than 15 months later, voil√†.

Oh well, it’s not like we own a recently relaunched service where you can create a blog in two minutes or something. Okay, we do. (Sorry for the plug.) But I guess other Googlers have been a little busy what with all the searching. And the advertising. And filling out purchase orders for all those hard drives.

Anyway, I’m excited the blog’s up. We’re going to post stuff here – regular bloggy things: What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson’s Creek character reminds us most of Eric.

And perhaps, news about Google, and our thoughts on whatever random events cross our horizon.

Oh, and we have email feedback too. So we hope to hear from you, as well.

– Evan Williams

(Blogger Program Manager, Google)

ClickZ makes this pertinent observation:

Interestingly, the launch comes as Google is preparing for an initial public offering of stock, during the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "quiet period" in which companies usually refrain from making public statements that could be interpreted as an offer to sell stock.

CNET’s New.com is already nit-picking at Google’s blog for having discretely edited a post to tone down potentially controversial comments about outsourcing. It’s clear that this blog will remain under a magnifying glass for some time to come, at least through Google’s IPO.

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It has been quite surprising that Google has not yet started blogging, given their acquisition last year of Blogger.com, and all, not to mention their perfectly aligned sensibilities with blog culture, or at least one would assume.

Well, it looks like we’ll see something interesting soon. As of this writing, the google.com/blog page says only “test,” but it’s certainly cause for hope.

[UPDATE 5/6/04: This page now comes up as an error. Someone is obviously playing around with something, though. Stay tuned…]

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Mena Trott

Publishers of the popular Movable Type and TypePad blog publishing tools, Six Apart maintains several customer service blogs, including:

• SixApart’s homepage for general company news.
• Mena’s Corner, from Six Apart’s president and co-founder Mena Trott, “is our outlet for updates about Six Apart and the weblogging space through our perspective. It is, an attempt, to show the inner workings of a start-up and let the outside world understand the challenges we face and achievements we accomplish.”
• Everything TypePad, for product and customer service announcements about the company’s hosted solution, TypePad (which is what we use to produce BusinessBlogConsulting.com).
• Movable Type’s homepage is also a weblog with product annoucments and customer service news for that product.
• Mena.Typepad.com, company president Mena Trott’s personal blog
• Ben.Stupidfool.org, Six Apart’s CTO, co-founder and Mena’s husband and high school sweetheart (awwww) Ben Trott’s blog, which it looks like he doesn’t update lately.

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It’s disappointing that Blogger.com, the guys who basically invented blogs (now owned by Google), don’t showcase the potential of business blogs more prominently with their own service, but they do update Status.Blogger.com sporadically, pertaining to system status issues, and Blogger.com’s homepage is itself a blog, though it likewise appears to be updated only once or twice a month. On the other hand, several folks on Blogger’s management maintain their own blogs, including Evan Williams, Jason Shellon and Biz Stone.

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Creator of the super-popular free classifieds service Craig’s List now blogs

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