One large difficulty facing web startups relying on user-generated content is the chicken-and-egg problem of creating both the content and an audience. Without people creating/sharing material, there’s no reason for people to surf the site; without traffic, there’s little reason […]

Just one day after I suggested that Google’s acquisition strategy is to cherry-pick small pre-significant-funding startups to buy innovation and engineering talent, the company announces that it plans to sell approximately $4.2B in shares of its stock. And as Paul […]

Earlier this morning, it became public that in July Google purchased Andriod, a company which makes mobile software for mobile phones. While there is little known about the company or the transaction, I have a couple quick thoughts and reactions: […]

With search becoming increasingly verticalized, I am seeing both the need and demonstration not just of searching within a specific domain, but also ranking results along multiple dimensions in that domain. For example, Indeed lets me search for positions with […]

Starting before it, but increasingly so after the MySpace acquisition last month, we at Masthead have seen an inordinate amount of companies pitching web services with a foundation on “user-generated content.” I personally believe that there is a lot of […]

Yesterday, Masthead Venture Partners, along with syndicate partner Avalon Ventures, announced an initial Series A investment in InterCasting Corporation. The company’s vision is to “enable the mobile media network revolution” by becoming the “first Location-Aware Media Networking Operator (LMNO) providing […]

Slashdot reported today that Google is not talking to CNET until July 2006 in protest over an article published by the online publication which included personal information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. I’ll leave the comments about the validity of […]

Yesterday Jupitermedia sold its SearchEngineWatch.com and SearchEngine Strategies show to UK-based for Incisive Media $43M in cash. CEO Alan Meckler outlines his reasoning in his blog stating that it was the most effective way to raise cash for future acquisitions […]

Last week, Forrester released a number of reports on RSS for marketers. One of the notions that emerged from the study was that “only 2% of all online households were ‘using RSS.’” WebWatch at Silicon.com picked up on this fact […]

Every entrepreneur is a first-time entrepreneur once. How do VCs, then, evaluate first-time entrepreneurs? How can they garner the confidence to place both their money and time in someone who hasn’t started a company before? Of course, investors can look […]