Product Reviews ReadBurner and the Future of Leveraged User Data ReadBurner is an interesting new project that displays the hottest URLs at any given time according to the Google Reader "shared items" feeds users have submitted for tracking. It's a relatively simple concept but it just makes sense and the possibilities for the future are exciting to consider. One way to describe ReadBurner is that it's… Marshall Kirkpatrick View comments
Advertising Consumers Ready for End of Pre-Roll Ads "Pre-roll ads are going the way of popups and other intrusive ads," predicted Fred Wilson a little over a month ago. "They won't be around in a couple years. And the online video services that use them to monetize their audience won't be around either." It seems that consumers agree. Silicon Alley Insider points to a new survey that says that half… Josh Catone View comments
Music We7: Getting Closer to a Workable Model for Free Music Downloads The music industry is in desperate need of new models and an interesting one got some financial support today. We7 announced today that it's raised $6 million from Peter Gabriel and Spark Ventures. The UK site offers DRM-free MP3 downloads with super-short ads preceding each song - for the first 4 weeks after download. Once a month you can… Play Marshall Kirkpatrick View comments
Trends Viral + Monetizable = StartUp Magic Quadrant Hotmail is credited with inventing online viral marketing. I am sure there were earlier examples, but the whole point of viral is that it's so infectious that it obliterates memory of earlier attempts. I was an early Hotmail user - it was just so simple, obvious and useful. Most of the Web 2.0 success stories have been viral. Apart from Hotmail… Bernard Lunn View comments
Product Reviews Live Blogging 2.0 If you're a blogger who is into covering live events, like keynotes, press conferences, meetings, or sports events, you may be interested in the new, free service from CoveritLive. In development since 2006 and emerging from beta in November of 2007, the CoveritLive platform gives you an easy way to blog events as they happen and it also… Sarah Perez View comments