When Google crawls your website, they’re putting less value in what you have to say about your content (i.e. metadata),and more interest in what the content itself is saying and who is talking about it. Makes sense. If our own assessment of the content of our lives were a true indicator of their worth, we’d all…
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In case you missed it, Facebook opened up new Timeline apps Wednesday so you can share even more with your friends. Among the additions: Foodspotting Ticketmaster Pinterest Rotten Tomatoes TripAdvisor and more What does this mean, besides even better targeted Facebook ads? (Check “How Apps Work” to see what apps can and can’t do with…
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Today, across America, there are sweeping protests against a pair of anti-piracy bills, SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act (the House version of the bill) and the Protect IP ACT (Senate version) would give such widespread power to authorities that many content-providing businesses feel it is unconstitutional and threatening to online industry. Google,…
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Leave it to Google to give the perfect illustration of a problem we forget we have. In the video below, Google asks, “What if real-life purchases were like online checkout?” – with all the confirmations, questions about contact info, and even timed-out sessions – to explain why online sellers need Google Analytics. But the video…
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Google began rolling out its social search on Tuesday, called “Search, plus Your World.” Now, Google results will pull in content and profiles from Google+. “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships,” wrote Google fellow Amit Singhal. For example, a search for “vacation” will display…
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Imagine if Amazon did more than just sell you stuff. Imagine that they manufactured and delivered stuff – and competed with other ecommerce sites like Overstock, manufacturers like Sony and Cannon, and shipping companies like FedEx and UPS. It would be a miracle if they excelled at any of those functions. No one outfit could…
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Did you know that purpose is rapidly becoming the 5th “P” of marketing? According to the Edelman 2010 goodpurpose Study, 86% of global consumers believe that business needs to place at least equal weight on society’s interests as on business interests. In response to this shift in people’s mindsets, Chicago-based GoodPays.me is applying the consumer…
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It’s official – we are hyper-connected. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. One quick stroll down the sidewalk will reveal people intently focused on the 10 sq. inch screen in front of their face. You’ve seen it for yourself. Or maybe you haven’t; you were too busy looking at your own smartphone…
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You have a special someone for whom you must buy a gift this holiday season. This person is a unique breed. He or she is a startup founder and always on the go. You asked them what they want for the holidays, and they gave you the following list: $3.5 million in funding for their…
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Fresh from its official public launch, MentorMob has declared that the “race to disrupt education is on.” Organization in online learning is the goal. With the abundance of quality and free material on the web today, the team at this startup aims to bring cohesion to this valuable, yet currently disorganized, information. MentorMob is a…
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Washington, DC-based video indexing and discovery platform Veenome has announced that they’ve raised a seed round of $500,000 from Ecosystem VC (Investors in Tube Mogul and Facebook), private angel investors from Google, Dingman Center Angels and others. Not bad for just 6 months out of the gate. Veenome identifies products, objects, and brands in web…
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Recently-launched Spreecast, a social video platform that lets people broadcast together, is claiming to be a hybrid of YouTube, Skype, Twitter, and Facebook all rolled into one. Here’s the formula: 1 part user-uploaded video content a la YouTube 1 part face-to-face chat a la Skype 1 part people and topics you follow on Twitter 1…
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Google Music, which has been in beta since May, launched yesterday and expanded to a full service for buying, selling, and sharing music. Google touts its new platform as an alternative to music “spinning out of control” on computers, MP3 players, and phones – perhaps a reference to the constant need to sync on iTunes….
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Online advertising is such a crapshoot. If you don’t do it right, you end wasting a lot of time and money. Boulder-based startup Trada crowdsources online advertising by harnessing the expertise of creatives and those in advertising to provide you with an optimized ad/image combination. Until today, it was only available for Google, Yahoo, and…
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Google is building an empire, and it took a few strides outward last week by rolling out updates to Google Plus. The first is a YouTube “slider.” You click the YouTube icon at the top right in Google Plus (mine hasn’t appeared yet), type in a search term, and see a playlist of related videos…
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Chris Messina of Google joined us for a great chat with Tech Cocktail’s founder Frank Gruber during SXSW for our Delivering Happiness video series. During the brief conversation, he covered the social web and how important it is to make the web in general more accessible to a wider variety of people, as well as…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More