TechCrunch just broke the story.

The inspiration for StreamGlider was a product that launched in the early 1990′s called Pointcast. Pointcast streamed news, entertainment, ads and other updates to screensavers. Pointcast was great, and we, (myself and my co-founders, Bill McDaniel and John Breslin) wondered whether we could evolve that concept and update it for the tablet and mobile era.

We designed StreamGlider to be the ultimate live streaming newsreader. It does what you have come to expect, plus a lot more. And it does it live – it streams live updates to your tablet.

It also offers a lot of new functionality that supports new ways of using a reader.

• StreamGlider pulls live updates from content sources on the Web (RSS feeds, Google Reader, and Web API’s like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, etc.) onto mobile devices, and displays them in a variety of formats.
• It can function as a live digital picture frame for the Web, showing news articles, photos from friends, videos, etc. as full-screen slides that scroll past.
• It can also show streams as a live interactive filmstrips that function like tickers.
• And it can show streams in an interactive magazine format that is similar to a newspaper layout.
• You can also play and watch videos in StreamGlider.

Powerful Features

StreamGlider is fully gesture controlled – everything can be controlled by swiping, pinching, pointing, tapping, etc. You can easily customize the streams you want.

You can also create mashups of streams that pull from many different sources on a theme – for example you can pull from different news sources about sports, or different photo and video sources about a topic.

In addition to all this, you can make very personalized streams that pull from your social media accounts, and filtered streams that search for particular topics in content sources.

StreamGlider is also social. You can share individual items, or even entire streams of items, with your friends.

We designed StreamGlider to be brandable. Partners and customers can create their own private-labelled versions of StreamGlider, with their brand and their content, for their audiences. Brands can sell it or give it away free and run ads in it if they want. (Contact StreamGlider, if you’re interested in doing this for your brand).

This frees publishers, brands, and enterprises to create their own powerful readers for their audiences, with their brand, instead of having to live inside of other apps like FlipBoard or Pulse. They can have their own icon on the desktop and keep their direct relationship with their customers.

There are many use-cases for this – for example, you might want to distribute your own branded StreamGlider for your publication, or for a consumer product, or to your fans, or for a big event, or to your customers or employees. There are many reasons to do this – and you don’t have to be a software company to do it – you can almost instantly get your own branded StreamGlider.

We also designed StreamGlider to be open-source in the future. More news on that later. We hope we can become the Mozilla of newsreaders.

What’s next?

The team behind StreamGlider has a long history of making smart, semantic apps. You can expect that in future versions of StreamGlider, the app will begin to get smarter, more personalized, and even more social. This is just the beginning of our roadmap.

We will also be adding in support for more types of streams. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, you should check it out. Download it to your iPad and see what I’m talking about.

I could see the writing on the wall, and it was less than 140 characters: Social media’s own success was going to be its biggest challenge. The Stream was going to soon become unusable.

In the early days of the Stream, it was actually possible to keep up with your community on Twitter and Facebook effectively. Not anymore. There are just too many people messaging too often. The chances of even seeing a message before it scrolls into history are getting lower every day.

Today, the Stream is growing exponentially. Twitter famously grew by 3x in the last year and sends out more than 250 million Tweets per day. Facebook sends billions of public and private messages per day. And this is just the tip of the iceberg — or the deluge, as it were.

There are so many new and growing sources of messages in the Stream: Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Youtube, RSS feeds, and more are coming. And that’s just the consumer side of the Stream – there’s a whole other side to the Stream: Chatter, Yammer, Socialcast, Jive, and many other enterprise streams are also growing rapidly.

And on top of this there is a whole new deluge of machine and app-generated data that is just starting to join the stream, and may eventually dwarf human-generated data.

At the same time as all these new networks are popping up to enable messaging in the Stream, the barrier to creating and sharing messages has also never been lower. I call this The Sharepocalypse.

It’s never been easier to share — People are sharing more kinds of information, more often, with more people, than ever before. And it’s requiring less thought too — because the messages themselves are so short. This is resulting in a collective overshare of unimagined proportions.

With email, the messages were usually long and required some effort, so people sent relatively few emails per day. And at least with email there were some basic social rules about what you could send to everyone without being a spammer.

Not anymore. In the age of the Stream it’s quite normal to post out what you had for lunch, or some cool product you are looking at in a store window, with a photo, to the entire world. That would have been unthinkable in the email era. In the age of the Stream, it’s not even an afterthought. The Sharepocalypse is here, in spades.

The result of all this adoption and growth of the Stream is a new kind of information overload, stream overload.

Stream Overload is worse than email overload, because it includes email overload.

Email, in my opinion was “Stream 1.0.” Social media (RSS, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) were “Stream 2.0.” And now we’re entering “Stream 3.0″ – when everything – all information, all applications, everyone, even things – become part of the Stream.

(Yes I know, version numbers are so Web 3.0, but it’s helpful to use them as handles for the discussion. Stream 3.0 is indeed a different era from the early days of the Stream.)

We’re already seeing the signs of stream overload — but this is just a preview of what’s to come as Stream 3.0 comes to maturity. The growth of the Stream is still only just beginning. Most of the planet isn’t using it yet. And most people don’t realize how integral it’s going to be in their lives in coming years.

If the Web is the planet’s brain, the Stream is its mind – it’s the living, breathing, thinking, learning, aware, acting part. And we’re all going to be part of it 24/7, whether we like it or not. So it better be good, it better be smart, it better be useable, or we’re all going to be gridlocked and buried in messages we don’t want.

And this is the Next Big Problem: The Stream is going to become both more important, and more noisy at the same time. This is a classic crisis. Either something must be done to reduce the noise, or it’s not going to be useable. And this will lead to problems, because it’s important that it actually is usable.

What happens if the Stream really breaks down under its own weight?

If the signal-to-noise problem isn’t solved, and people can’t keep up with the Stream, they’re going to give up. They’re going to stop paying attention. They’re going to stop trying to keep up. They will never be able to scroll down enough. They won’t even login to sites like Twitter and Facebook if they are too overloaded.

And if nobody is there listening, then there won’t be much point in posting news and updates to the Stream either. People will stop posting too.

And without the people there, marketers won’t post either – so the advertising money will go away. And even in the social enterprise, if streams for teams get too noisy, they will also stop being used and people will move to some new solution.

And without the people there, the Stream will become an automaton. All that will be left is machines posting to machines.

Unless something is done to solve it, of course.

And something IS being done, it turns out. We’re launching Bottlenose tonight. To read more about the history of the project, read Bottlenose has Launched!

Notes

Make sure to follow us on Twitter:

• @bottlenoseapp – the official Bottlenose Twitter account
• @novaspivack — yours truly
• @dominiek — Dominiek ter Heide, Bottlenose CTO

And come check out Bottlenose! The app is still in invite beta so you either have to have a high enough Klout score or an invite code to get in.

The first 500 readers of my blog who want to try it out, can get into Bottlenose using the invite code: novafriends

Check out the what the press is saying about Bottlenose:

Bottlenose Intelligent Social Dashboard Launches Private Beta  — ReadWriteWeb

Bottlenose is a Game Changer for Social Media Consumption — Mashable

Bottlenose is a Social Media Dashboard That Makes Sense of the Stream – Venturebeat

Can This Startup Eliminate Social Media Overload? — Inc.

The Day of the Dolphin: Swim in the Personalized Stream With Bottlenose — SemanticWeb

Bottlenose Launch – A Smarter Way to Skim the Stream – SiliconAngle

Bottlenose is a Web-Based Twitter Client for Power Users — AllThingsD

Managing the Sharepocalypse — AdWeek

Can Bottlenose Help Prevent the Social Sharepocalypse? – GigaOm

Social Overload? Bottlenose Promises Intelligent Filtering — Information Week

While I have co-founded and serve on the boards of several other ventures (The Daily Dot, Live Matrix, StreamGlider, and others), Bottlenose is different from all my other projects in that I am also in a full-time day-to-day role as the CEO. In short, Bottlenose is what I’m putting the bulk of my time into going forward, although I will continue to angel invest and advise other startups.

The story of Bottlenose began when my good friend and advisor, Josh Jones-Dilworth, introduced me to Dominiek ter Heide after I sold my last company, Twine.com in 2010.

Dominiek was at the time working on a new kind of personalization technology for social media. Meanwhile, I had been thinking about how to filter the Stream, and the emerging problem of the Sharepocalypse and what I have been calling “the Stream 3.0 Problem.”

Josh knew both of us and had a hunch that we were really thinking about the same problem from different angles. Dominiek and I started speaking via Skype and soon we teamed up. Bottlenose was officially born in 2010.

Working with Dominiek has been a true pleasure. He’s one of the most productive, talented, software engineers I’ve ever met. It’s been an amazing ride so far. Soon, thanks to Dominiek, we were joined by an A-team of killer engineers with expertise in natural language processing, Node.js, Javascript, HTML 5, machine learning, cloud computing, NoSQL, and more.

Our little band of hotshots has produced an amazingly robust and powerful app — something that even large companies with huge engineering teams would be hard-pressed to develop. I’m honored to be working with these guys, and very proud of the team and the what we’ve built.

We have also been fortunate to be joined by some terrific angel investors, including Andy Jenks, of Stage One Capital, and several others (see the About page on Bottlenose for the complete list).

So what is Bottlenose anyway? Well one way to find out is to visit the site and check out the Tour there. But I’ll summarize here as well:

Bottlenose is the smartest social media dashboard ever built. It’s designed for busy people who make heavy use of social media: prosumers, influencers, professionals.

Bottlenose uses next-generation “stream intelligence” technology to understand the messages that are flowing through Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. It also learns about your interests.

On the basis of this knowledge, Bottlenose helps you filter your streams to find what matters to you, what’s relevant, and what’s most important. Bottlenose also includes many new features, like Sonar, which visualizes what’s going on in any stream, and powerful rules and automation capabilities to help you become more productive.

This is just the beginning of this adventure. Our roadmap for Bottlenose is very ambitious, and it’s going to be a lot of fun, and hopefully will really make a difference too. We’re super excited about this product and we hope you will be as well.

Check back here for more posts and observations about Bottlenose and where I think social media is headed.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter:

• @bottlenoseapp – the official Bottlenose Twitter account
• @novaspivack — yours truly
• @dominiek — Dominiek ter Heide, Bottlenose CTO

And come check out Bottlenose! The app is still in invite beta so you either have to have a high enough Klout score or an invite code to get in.

The first 500 readers of my blog who want to try it out, can get into Bottlenose using the invite code: novafriends

I look forward to seeing you Bottlenose!

For more about the thinking behind Bottlenose, read The Problem of Stream 3.0

Search giants like Google and Microsoft were not likely to provide open access to their search indices because they couldn’t risk giving their crown jewels to potential competitors, and furthermore they were bound by the constraints of for-profit business models.

Gil felt that in the future it would be an important service to provide a truly open Web-scale search index that was not controlled by a for-profit company and was not bound by profit motives. This index would make it possible for startups to innovate in search, and for researchers and students to explore Web Science at scale, and furthermore it would level the playing field in search and distribute the index, preventing any one company from monopolizing the index of humanity’s knowledge.

As a longtime advocate of the open Web, I was excited by the vision Gil shared with me, and agreed to join the board of directors of what became The Common Crawl Foundation, along with Carl Malamud. Gil and lead engineer, Ahad Rana, then went to work actually building the thing. This was no small undertaking and required quite a bit of innovation and ingenuity. You can read about the cloud based solution that was developed here.

Several years later, after a lot of work, it’s starting to be ready for Prime Time, and so we’re happy to announce the Web’s first truly open, non-profit, 5 billion page search index!

With the recent addition of our director, Lisa Green, from Creative Commons, Common Crawl is now beginning a new phase in its rollout, and a new phase for the open Web. You can read our inaugural blog post announcing the project here.

We hope you will come in and take a look around, and we look forward to seeing what you dream up and build with this data set.

At first glance the site seems a bit like Twitter, but it has a different focus. Instead of posting about what you are doing, you post about what you need. Then other people reply with suggestions, ideas, answers, help, or presumably commercial products and services that can meet your need.

This is not a new idea. It’s been done before, at least in print, quite successfully, in the form of “the want ads.” Want ads are classified ads, where instead of offering something, you ask for something. They are basically inverse classified ads. Like a reverse auction is an inverse auction.

But although it’s not groundbreakingly new, it’s beautifully executed and quite simple and elegant. It’s elegant enough in fact that it might catch on. And if it does, it could be quite useful.

The site has some similarities to Quora, but it’s broader. It’s not just about questions and answers – it’s about getting help with any kind of need.

Looking through the initial needs being posted by early users there are requests for restaurants suggestions, a guy asking what gift he should buy for his minimalist girlfriend, a request to understand how UFO propulsion works, requests to hire people, and even a request for affordable health insurance.

There also seems to be quite a bit of spam, or at least unhelpful questions and comments, including some harmless but irrelevant banter. Jig will need to provide for a way to rank needs, comments, and authors so that noise is filtered out. This is a problem that Schachter should be able to solve in his sleep, so I’m not worried about that being a barrier to adoption. It will be resolved soon, I’m betting.

There’s a lot of potential here, if people actively start helping to share their tips and advice for getting needs met. One challenge will be to make it easy for people to find needs they can help with. A categorization system, based on hashtags perhaps, would help to find needs that match your offers or areas of expertise.

All the product level issues are pretty easy to solve. This is not rocket science. But a harder problem to solve is, how is Jig going to make money? Who is going to have to pay for what? There’s always a catch somewhere. At least if the goal is to build a revenue business.

Will users eventually be charged to post certain kinds of needs? Or is the idea to charge companies, for example, as they are asked to do when posting job ads in Craigslist? Or will there be some kind of reverse auction or group buying angle to this – when enough people have the same need they can pool together and negotiate for a group deal?

Time will tell. But since it’s Joshua Schachter, Jig is bound to get a lot of attention. Check it out for yourself and see if it meets your needs.

By the way, if you’re reading this, tell our reporters at The Daily Dot (@dailydot) what you think of Jig, and whether it’s helped you in any interesting ways. We’re curious to hear your perspective.

The Daily Dot is the first of its kind – it’s the Web’s newspaper — the first community newspaper about the Web. We cover the Web like a town paper covers its community. Here’s a video overview of the site.

This venture began with the insight that each of us is spending an increasing amount of our lives online, in various online communities, yet we have very little insight into what’s going in this new landscape. These communities are literally places, and some of them are quite large. This is beautifully illustrated in this “map” of the Web as a geography.

I believe that it’s time for the Web community to have it’s own newspaper. The launch of the Daily Dot — the web community’s first actual newspaper of record — is a turning point, a coming-of-age, for the Web as a medium, as a place, and as a community.

Our editorial focus is different than other publications that cover the Web. Instead of covering the Web as an industry, a technology or a phenomenon, we cover it as a community. We tell the stories of the people, culture, content, events and issues that are making waves in communities around the Web. And to find and report on these stories, we have embedded reporters in those communities: Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, with more communities coming soon.

Just like our physical cities and towns, our online communities are constantly moving and developing, and they are full of interesting people doing newsworthy and important things. The Daily Dot’s mission is to cover these communities just like physical community newspapers cover cities and towns.

Where a town newspaper covers the latest high school sports game, the town meeting, the local crime report, we cover the story behind the hottest viral video sweeping the planet, the latest social movement in Facebook, and important issues (like cybercrime or online bullying) that are happening in our online neighborhoods.

When a major event happens in the physical world – like the revolutions in Arab world, for example — we don’t cover the events themselves, we cover their online footprint — what’s happening online that relates to the story.

The Daily Dot will also cover what’s happening around the Web in time: just like physical community newspapers have calendar sections – The Daily Dot has an online events section, provided in partnership with Live Matrix, one of our other venture productions, that aggregates the schedule of the Web. These two companies are highly synergistic and form the beginnings of our online media network.

While those of us in the Web industry have our fingers slightly more on the pulse of the Web, the vast majority of people who use the Web do not read industry blogs and have little or no visibility into what’s going on in the online world or where it’s headed. Other than a few articles a week published by mainstream media, they are not being informed.

It’s time for that to change. The Daily Dot will be publishing dozens of articles each day about what’s happening online. We’re writing for the mainstream, not for elites or geeks. The Daily Dot is for the people who use the Web — who live in it — not just the people who are building it.

Our content is designed to be entertaining, interesting, informative — and sometimes edgy and controversial – kind of like People Magazine meets USA Today, with a little bit of TMZ thrown in.

If you want to know what’s happening online, or you’re looking to find the hottest emerging entertainment, personalities, viral videos, issues, etc — and the stories behind them — The Daily Dot is your newspaper.

But The Daily Dot is not just a newspaper, it’s also a very interesting business venture. It’s a chance to build what could become one of the largest circulation newspapers in the world someday – a global newspaper about the one community that we all share in common, no matter where we actually live.

I also want to congratulate and thank the amazing editorial and development team at the Daily Dot, who made this possible. And most importantly, I want to acknowledge Nicholas White (Daily Dot CEO), Owen Thomas (Daily Dot founding editor), and Josh Jones-Dilworth (marketing guru), my co-founders in this venture.

Nick and Owen are leading business and editorial, and running the operations, and Josh and myself are on the board, advising to help in our respective areas of expertise. Nick and Owen deserve all the credit here — they have done the heavy lifting to bring this vision to market, and I’m very proud to be working with them.

Please join me us helping to spread the word about The Daily Dot — it’s your newspaper — and we need your help to make it great (and we look forward to your feedback and participation in the comments).

This is going to be a fun ride and I can’t wait to see how it evolves.

I believe that Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn are fundamentally different, and thus, should not be in competition. However, I’m not sure the companies themselves see it this way. It’s likely they will continue dedicating resources to competition instead of differentiation.

And while the social media gods fight it out in the clouds above us, what will happen down here on Earth? What about all of us, the little people — the users?

We’re entering a new era of social network chaos, and this, in turn, is going to create new needs and opportunities for startups.

The Sharepocalypse

Welcome to the “Sharepocalypse,” a new era of social network insanity.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

In a series of articles here on my blog, I’ve explained the differences between these services, and what Google+ is really for and what it means for the rest of the social media giants:

1. Google+ is Really for Sharing Knowledge, Not Social Networking
2. Should Facebook be Worried About Google+?
3. Why Twitter’s API Strategy Must Change in a Google+ and Facebook World
4. Why the Google+ Developer Ecosystem Will be Different from Twitter

The conclusion I draw from all this is that instead of one social network to rule them all, I think it’s more likely that the social media landscape is going to divide into different territories, with each of the major social networks playing a different role.

Here’s how I think this all going to shake out:

• Facebook is for social networking
• LinkedIn is for business networking
• Google+ is for knowledge networking
• Twitter is for notifications

They just don’t know it yet.

Here is some more detail on this idea:

• Facebook is for social networking
  • Facebook is the new social infrastructure for the planet, and Google+ is no match for it. By social, I mean non-professional, personal, friend-to-friend and group communication. There’s a lot more happening in Facebook than this however: gaming, branding, groups, marketing. But all this other activity depends on the fact that people spend so much time in Facebook, socializing. This is very different from what’s happening on Google+ and Twitter as well.
• LinkedIn is for business networking
  • It’s the infrastructure for professional networking in the old-school sense – as in getting a job, finding customers, locating partners, hiring people, doing biz dev and sales, etc. LinkedIn is the most differentiated and focused of all these players: they know what they’re good at and they’re not trying to be all things to all people. Now LinkedIn needs to build more bridges into more third-party applications and services to keep people aware of it and using it.
• Google+ is for knowledge networking
  • Google+ is an infrastructure for sharing knowledge, not social networking. Knowledge has always been Google’s strength and core focus. Knowledge is not just articles, but the conversations around them, and these conversations are one of Google+’s best features. More importantly, because Google has such a powerful search infrastructure, and such a powerful computing architecture, they are in a position to combine Google+ with search and massive analytics and machine learning, to dynamically re-organize and connect both the Web and the real-time Stream. By doing this Google+ could be a potential successor for the Blogosphere, and could leap far ahead of other competing search engines as well.
• Twitter is for notifications
  • Twitter is really a notifications infrastructure. That’s what they do best, and what they should be focusing on. They are executing on the wrong strategy right now. They are trying to be a media company, but that is not their strength and others already are far ahead of them at that. But as an infrastructure for short notifications, Twitter has an opportunity to be unique and win, if they focus on that. Twitter has replaced RSS, for better or for worse, as the primary way people and applications share and track these kinds of notifications. Twitter could leverage this position to become the notifications infrastructure for the whole world – and for all of the other networks – even for G+ and Facebook – if they played their cards right and stopped focusing on competing for eyeballs.

Google+ is not really for socializing; it’s for sharing knowledge. That’s what makes it different from other social networks. It supports more flexible access permissions on content, longer form content, threaded conversations, and soon it will integrate deeply with search.

In many ways, Google+ is a potential replacement for the Blogosphere, which always suffered from the lack of an integrated commenting and search infrastructure. Blog posts and the conversations that emerge around them are fragmented around the Web, but in Google+ they are all in one place. More importantly, in Google+ the conversation around each post is something you can watch growing in real-time.

I don’t think all bloggers will move to Google+, because it certainly lacks the power or customization potential of a WordPress or Moveable Type for example, but there’s certainly a chance that good portion of lightweight blogging market share may go there.

As such, Google+ may be more competitive with lightweight blogging services like Tumblr and Posterous, and with knowledge sharing and Q&A services like Quora, than with Twitter or Facebook.

But that’s just the beginning. By combining Google+ with Google Search, a new synthesis is possible that could make both the static Web and the real-time Stream better. This could be the next evolution of Google’s “organize the world’s information” mission. And this is nothing like Twitter or Facebook: It’s a totally different value proposition.

What happens when Google connects the power of their search engine and their massive compute capabilities with Google+? Both Google+ and Google search will become smarter. This is the Holy Grail of social search that we’ve all been talking about for years.

Google started out with a mission to “organize the world’s information,” and Google+ provides them with a new way to accomplish this. I think this is actually Google’s core competency, and what could be Google+’s unique role in the ecosystem.

Knowledge is not merely information, it is organized information. Google organizes the Web’s information via a search index, but with the addition of Google+ it can start to use the Stream to organize the Web, and vice-versa.

By connecting Google+ and Google Search, Google can figure out what Web resources are important to whom, by looking at the conversations around them. And it can figure out what conversations are important to whom by looking at the Web content and people they cite.

Most importantly, by capturing all this content and conversation in an environment where it can be analyzed, Google, can data-mine to learn things. Like who is interested in what, who is an expert at what, who influences whom, who is influential about what, and which content is relevant to various people or topics.

This will make Google’s graph much richer – and it will also enable Google to begin to do some new things with their graph: things like helping to guide people to conversations they are interested in, helping to connect similar or related conversations, helping people get answers more productively, helping to distribute content to the right people.

The reason Google has the potential to do this better than anyone else is not their Search engine; it’s their backend, which effectively is the world’s largest and most powerful supercomputer.

Google has unmatched computing capacity, and unmatched data to compute on. They are in the best position to do massively distributed computations that combine search analytics, social analytics, and machine learning on both the static Web and the real-time Web (“The Stream”).

With the addition of Google+ to Google, the Web is going to get a lot smarter, and Google’s original mission may evolve from “organize the world’s information” to “organize the world’s intelligence.”

But what’s important to note here, is that Google+ is for doing smart things with knowledge – not necessarily fun things. Sure, Google+ can be used to share the same viral videos that one shares in other places too, but what makes Google+ different is the control it gives around sharing, and the discussions that emerge.

Currently using Google+ requires quite a bit of thought. It’s not easy to figure out. There are many features that are hard to find, or that don’t quite make sense, or are simply non-obvious. At this stage it is still probably not ready for mainstream consumer use. And so the people who are making the most use of it are early-adopter types. This in turn affects the content that is being shared there. It’s pretty brainy in general.

But even once Google+ irons out its wrinkles, it may never be a replacement for the social fun of Facebook or the utility of Twitter.

Google+ is no match for Facebook at Facebook’s core value proposition: socializing. Facebook is way ahead of everyone on that front. Here’s why Facebook does not have to worry about Google+.

But at the same time, Facebook is unlikely to be able to compete with Google+ for knowledge. Google+ has the advantage of being combined with all the other Google products – especially Search – and the power of the Google supercomputer behind it. Facebook doesn’t have anything equivalent.

Google+ is also no match for Twitter at what Twitter does best: enabling everyone to keep up, via short notifications. In fact, Google+ is very hard to keep up with. Their content streams are full of massive posts that take time to read, and long threads that take up a lot of space on the page. It’s not easy to quickly scan and see what’s going on. And Google+’s notification system, while useful, simply cannot scale to notifying every user of thousands of things a day – at least not in current form – it would be extremely overwhelming.

So there are very clear distinctions here. Google+ is a very different kind of animal from Facebook and Twitter; each service has certain talents that make them unique from the others. There is a possible future in which they really don’t compete: they could each play a different but complementary role.

Now what about Facebook? Should Facebook be worried about Google+? Are Facebook and Google+ really competitors? I don’t think so.

Google+ is not as geeky as Twitter, but it’s still too complicated for most consumers to want to use it.

Figuring out how to use Google+, and how to make effective use of it, at this early stage, is like trying to use an old shortwave radio. Actually, it’s like trying to figure out a shortwave radio that is only halfway built. This is not an activity my mom is going to enjoy.

It’s going to be a while before Google+ is ready for primetime consumer use. Facebook is way ahead on that front.

And there’s also the fun factor issue — Facebook has focused on fun: games, pokes, virtual gifts, and all sorts of social silliness that consumers just love.

The lack of play in the Google+ experience is actually a plus, not a minus, for many early users – there’s more signal, less noise, there – at least potentially. And this creates a self-selecting use-case: people are using Google+ for sharing ideas and having real conversations (and as of week two, not only about Google+ it turns out).

As of this article there is certainly an increase in non-serious content showing up on Google+, but it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook’s content mix. This could be an early-adopter effect that could change if more mainstream users adopt G+, but currently, my instincts are telling me G+ content is going to be more serious than fun. I’m not convinced the mainstream consumer audience is going to use G+ for fun.

Google+ is best used for sharing knowledge. This may result in Google+ filling a role that USENET used to play and that the fragmented blogosphere never really succeeded at solving: a unified knowledge sharing and conversation medium.

Hopefully the folks at Google+ will realize that the slightly more serious communication that’s happening in the service is a good thing. Instead of trying to change that by introducing more ways to play, they might want to consider celebrating it.

Keep out the silly social games, don’t introduce the fluff. This will preserve Google+ as a higher signal-to-noise communication channel and will make it unique from Facebook.

Hopefully Google+ won’t immediately integrate Zynga, for example, because that would totally ruin their differentiation from Facebook and take them in a direction they have no in-house DNA for: fun and games.

It’s just not too likely that the serious engineering and science culture of Google can replicate the lightheartedness of Facebook. And anyway if they could make Google+ fun, will anyone want it? After all they already have Facebook for that.

People are not going to use Facebook for serious conversations – it’s already too late for that. And they’re not going to use Google+ for superpoking. They can already poke each other to death perfectly well in Facebook.

Google+ is different from Facebook. And that’s a good thing for both companies. There may actually be room for both of them in this town.

Why? Well for starters, it’s really easy to crank out Chrome extensions and you can market and sell them instantly in the Chrome Web Store to a ginormous captive audience that is many multiples of the size of Twitter’s user-base. I’ve written about how Google+ can leverage Chrome to build an ecosystem here.

And if you succeed, your shiny new Google+ feature might even get you bought by Google for a million bucks. What engineer wouldn’t want to spend a few weeks making a feature that could net them a million bucks and a job at Google in a few months?

Compare that to what it’s like to be a Twitter developer today. Twitter has no plugin framework, no app store, no browser, no OS, and they are clamping down on their API terms of use, and even actively going to war against some of their third-party developers. And they don’t have the kind of acquisition budget or appetite that Google has. Twitter has only made a few acquisitions to date.

To make matters worse for Twitter, there’s very little loyalty to Twitter among Twitter developers right now – mostly there’s fear because of the recent Ubermedia and Tweetdeck situation, and Twitter’s recent moves to add their own photo-sharing, and soon their own analytics.

What opportunities are there really for developers on the Twitter platform, that Twitter doesn’t actually want for itself? Twitter has suggested that it wants it’s developers to “move up the value chain,” but to what exactly? How high should they jump? And if they do, will Twitter just pull the rug out from under them when they land?

This kind of FUD may very likely drive Twitter’s core third-party app developers over to the seemingly greener and safer pastures at Google+. And on Google+ developers can rapidly crank out new features as Chrome extensions, they don’t have to use an API. And this gives them instant marketing to a huge captive market of Chrome users too.

Now it’s worth noting that being a Google+ Chrome extension developer won’t necessarily be safer than developing on the Twitter API in the long run. But it will seem safer for a while, and that will be enough for many developers to go there.

Like Twitter, Google will be able to cherry pick the best opportunities on its platform. Any Chrome extension that really becomes a big hit on top of Google+ will be either acquired or copied by Google, and since Google owns the means of distribution (Chrome and Google+) there will be no competition for such deals (what buyer would compete with Google to buy a Chrome extension that Google wanted to own?).  But there is at least a 12 to 24 month window for developers to create value and potentially get bought by Google before Google starts competing with them.

Meanwhile, while their developers start moving to Google+, Twitter is likely to continue to focus on being a media company. This could be a fatal mistake.

Twitter simply does not have the reach of Google. They will never have it. Google is simply everywhere. It’s a completely hopeless battle to try to be a bigger destination than Google. Google has already won that battle. Twitter will never be as big as Google.

What Twitter DOES have — which Google does NOT have (yet) — is a massive installed base of third party apps publishing and subscribing to their message stream API. Assuming Google+ doesn’t come out with an API quickly, and that they drive innovation onto Chrome before they release a full API, there is a window of opportunity for Twitter to beat Google on the API front.

If Twitter focused on building around their real strength, their API, as I have suggested previously, instead of trying to become a media company and destination, they could have shot at long-term prosperity and differentiation as the messaging infrastructure of the planet. That’s a much bigger play for Twitter than being a media company, and it’s something Google+ is not positioned for. Twitter could win this.

(So why aren’t they doing this? What is Twitter’s management thinking? If you think you know, please comment on this article with your theory)

Twitter does not have the distribution and platform leverage that Google has, nor the huge installed base that Facebook has. And they have another problem: Twitter is still too geeky for mainstream consumers.

It’s just too hard to learn to use Twitter’s syntax properly. And the 140-character limitation results in all kinds of geeky abbreviations and conventions in the content and social behaviors in the system. Compared to other apps like Google+ and Facebook, which support long messages, richer text, and real threaded discussions, Twitter is going to seem cryptic and retro – like IRC.

No offense to Twitter – They’ve done something amazing. And I love geeks and count myself as one of them. So I totally get and like the geekiness. But it’s not going to work for mainstream consumers in the long-term.

Unfortunately, geekiness is hard-wired into Twitter’s DNA. It’s in the syntax of the app, their user-experience, and their culture. It’s also the in DNA of the core of their audience. So it’s not something that’s going to be easy to change. But to win the eyeballs war – the consumer war – you just can’t be that geeky.

So either Twitter has to undergo gene therapy to completely change their DNA to become a lot less geeky (unlikely), or they need to embrace their inner-geekiness and focus on their API and developers again: Cater to the geeks. Love the geeks. Make other geeks rich.

Is the Twitter/Apple deal the solution? Perhaps Apple could eventually buy Twitter and perform gene-therapy on them, transforming them into a more consumer-friendly product company. But if that doesn’t happen (and I doubt it will) then a deal with Apple is probably not enough to transform Twitter into a mainstream consumer product.

The key is that Twitter is not the same kind of animal as Facebook or Google+. Twitter is not a media company; it’s a notification company. It’s insufficient for creating rich content, or building rich conversations, but it’s great for short one-off notifications – and the 140-character limit is actually a good thing when viewed from this perspective.

Instead of trying to be a media company, Twitter should pivot back to fundamentals and focus more on their notifications API. This is what they do best. They should do this soon, and while they are at it, they should encourage third-party clients to build on this API again, instead of discouraging them.

By doing this right Twitter could become be the publish-subscribe messaging architecture for the world – including even for the other messaging networks like Facebook and Google+.

That’s seriously frikkin huge. And it’s unique too: It’s not something that Facebook or Google+ are technically designed or positioned to do. It’s what Twitter does better than anyone else, and it’s really what everyone is using Twitter for anyway.

How Twitter Can Win As an API

As an API focused company, Twitter could be woven into literally every app and service in the world as the means of publishing and subscribing to notifications of all kinds: Notifications between people and people, notifications between people and apps, and even notifications between apps and apps.

If they did this right, people might even use Twitter to keep up with notifications from Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, as well as every publisher, other apps, and individuals.

Twitter wouldn’t necessarily be where the content is created or where it lives – it would be how everyone got notified of the content. The value is in the API, not the eyeballs.

As a global notification infrastructure, Twitter would not be able to monetize the eyeballs on the content, but they could monetize the notifications by including ads in their notification streams, and optionally requiring services to pay to not include Twitter’s ads in their streams.

Here are some steps Twitter could take to make this vision a reality:

1. Buy Gnip and Datasift — the companies they presently (and inexplicably) have handed their entire API business to. Twitter should own these companies and be the source for its own data.
2. Provide a free and premium version of their API and firehose streams. The free versions carry Twitter ads, the premium versions don’t.
3. Stop trying to own and monetize all the eyeballs on Twitter.com and official Twitter apps. Instead, do a 180 and go back to encouraging third-party developers to build Twitter client apps again. Use these apps to massively increase Twitter’s reach, traction, and monetization. Distribute Twitter into the streams of any apps that use the free API, or make money from any apps that opt out of the ads and pay for an optional premium API.
4. Sell Tweetdeck to Ubermedia (or someone else) for $50mm. That would not only be ironic and hilarious, it would be brilliant. That money could be better spent on enriching their publish-subscribe infrastructure. Twitter should be working on becoming like a TIBCO, but for the entire Internet.

Twitter has to take evasive action to increase their surface area by letting as many apps as possible integrate their API. They have to spread out, instead of fighting to be a destination. They have to stop cherry picking their ecosystem and instead enable it. Twitter’s strength is their ecosystem and their massive surface area. Without that they will be marginalized.

We’re already seeing the beginnings of Twitter marginalization happening with Google not renewing their licensing agreement to include Twitter in their real-time search results. Microsoft appears to be following suit.

Twitter’s best move to counter this is to make sure that Twitter content appears everywhere else, in every app, in every website. But they can’t do this by trying to compete with those apps and websites for the same eyeballs. Instead, turn all of them into “Twitter clients” and build a massive distributed real-time ad network.

Twitter cannot win as a destination and they are wasting their ammunition trying to do that. Facebook has them boxed in on one side and Google+ has just flanked them on the other. They have to punch through or they will be totally surrounded. But they CAN win as a notifications infrastructure. And that’s their real strength anyway.

In order to really build value around Google+, of course Google will integrate it with their other products, including Search, Gmail, and more. That will get it in front of a lot of people, many times a day.

But that’s not enough. Google+ has to grow as a product – it has to innovate and evolve, to stay ahead of everyone else. And it has to get hooked into other products so that it become part of everyone’s workflow even when they are not in a Google-owned site or app.

Even with all the engineers at Google, Google+ cannot innovate or integrate fast enough on its own: it has to find ways to get third-party developers to do some of this work in parallel.

The way Twitter evolved was through their API: They leveraged a huge army of free engineering talent around the Web to build them into everything, and to prototype features for them to cherry-pick into their core app.

What about Google+? Will they innovate via an API in the same way? Actually I think it may happen a bit differently.

Google+ has something unique to leverage: Chrome, a platform Google owns. While Google+ may release an API as well, I think Chrome will be more of an early focus and leverage point.

First of all, Chrome is easy to extend and it has a marketplace built in now. Secondly, by driving developers to extend Google+ on Chrome, Google kills two birds with one stone: they get innovation on Google+ and they make Chrome even more necessary and valuable – it will be the best way to use Google+.

I think Google+ is about to explode in new features, and most of them are not going to come from inside Google: They’re going to come from outside developers extending Google+ on Chrome. And this may be Google’s trump card.

Within 6 months there could easily be at least hundreds of new Chrome extensions that add functionality to Google+ and within 12 months there may be thousands of them. If this happens it could completely change the game for Google, Twitter, and their developer communities.

Most of these Google+ Chrome extensions will be features, not full applications. The Google+ product team and M&A team will be able to sit and watch to see which ones get the most usage, and the best of those will become “build vs. buy” candidates for addition to the core codebase of G+.  Think of it as a massive distributed A/B test, a decentralized genetic algorithm to evolve the best new features for Google+.

As these Chrome extensions come out from all directions, they will increase adoption and usage of Chrome, and since they won’t be available on other browsers, Chrome will gain market share. So not only will Google+ increase traction, so will Chrome, and ultimately the entire Google platform.

Many of these Chrome extensions will be free, but some will be paid apps. And Google will share in those revenues. This could be a huge driver of Chrome as a platform in its own right and could really make the Chrome Web store into a big business.

But what about a possible Google+ API; where does that fit into this equation? I think it will certainly happen, but I bet Google will focus more on Chrome extensions first because an ecosystem of Chrome extensions driving eyeballs to Chrome and Google+ simply has greater value to Google than third-party apps using an API.

A Google+ API would be great for developers and third-party businesses, and ultimately for streaming Google ads into G+ streams in third-party apps. But it will not drive adoption of Chrome. Therefore, I’m willing to bet that Google is going to delay the Google+ API for a while. That will leave developers no choice but to make Chrome extensions as a way to build on the Google+ platform. And they will. Every developer I know is drooling about this right now.

But one thing that’s important to note – Google has some work to do to really enable a massive upsurge of Chrome extensions for Google+.

Some of the developers I work with have been poring through the G+ JavaScript and data streams. And what they’ve found is that Google has not made it easy to augment their streams. The code is highly obfuscated and it’s really hard to find what you need in there.

Writing third-party Chrome extensions to augment G+ is doable, but not nearly as easy as it should be. One developer called it “a real pain to find what you need in their code.” Google should make this much easier by making their G+ code and data much more accessible, readable and extensible by third-party developers on Chrome.

If Google+ can add more transparency and developer hooks, it could be a big win for them. Google’s famous “Not invented here” syndrome may then take on a new meaning – much of Google+ may literally not be invented inside of Google, and will happen in parallel all around the Web, leading to massive parallel innovation and developer adoption.

Now what should Twitter do about this? How should Twitter respond, and what should their strategy be? I think Twitter has to change their strategy and focus on their API: Here are my specific recommendations.

Following up on my article about my own experience dealing with a spurious shareholder lawsuit, I put together this list of essential survival tips for entrepreneurs from what I’ve learned. I hope it’s helpful to you.

#1. If you are afraid to fail, don’t be an entrepreneur. Tech ventures often don’t make it, plain and simple.  It’s a risk that we all accept when we start companies or invest in them.  This is such a well-known fact that VC’s assume only a minority of their investments will be successful, and will hopefully be profitable enough to cover their losses. It’s almost certain that if you are involved with enough ventures, you will experience some failures. You have to realize that when you start a venture the odds are against you every step of the way. But don’t let that scare you and never give up.

#2. Lawsuits are more common than you might think. But they’re not the end of the world. If you’ve been around the Valley long enough, you know they’re a dime a dozen. Even if you do well and chalk up a big win, there’s a chance you’ll get sued (think of all the successful entrepreneurs who are being or have been sued by jealous people from the past once they finally made it).  And of course, if your company goes under or sells for a low price, there’s an even greater chance you’ll get sued. It’s just a risk we all take when we start companies. But many lawsuits are questionable and never even make it to court. Others settle. In the end, it’s usually not the end of the world.

#3. You are not alone. I had never been involved in a lawsuit personally and it really shocked me when I was named in a spurious lawsuit. But later people started coming out of the woodwork and sharing their stories.  I found out that many of my colleagues — other entrepreneurs and VCs — have had similar experiences, even though it was not public knowledge. Investor and shareholder lawsuits are rarely talked about because nobody likes to air dirty laundry, but it happens more than you probably realize. If you’ve been sued as a result of a venture deal or acquisition, you are not alone. In fact anyone successful or important becomes a target for lawsuits and it’s not uncommon to be sued. It’s just an unfortunate cost of doing business.

#4. Allegations in legal proceedings should be viewed with skepticism. What really matters is the truth that eventually comes out in court. Our society has become extremely litigious, and a person can allege anything in a lawsuit, regardless of whether or not it turns out to be true. The allegations of a lawsuit can be complete fiction or can be  deliberately overreaching – and it’s up the courts to determine the truth. The rise of spurious and frivolous lawsuits is bad for the economy (but great for lawyers!), yet unless there is legal reform that isn’t going to change. So maintain a healthy skepticism when reading any lawsuit.

#5. Turn your lemons into lemonade. It’s easy to get depressed when you’ve been sued unfairly. But as my wife advised me, “Nova, You can’t expect to take risks or try to do anything significant in the world without having some setbacks. What’s important is not that you fall down, it’s how you pick yourself back up.”  Wise advice.  So I’m staying positive and focusing on moving forward in my life with a number of terrific ventures, great investors and inspiring entrepreneurs. I’m busy working on a new model to help young innovators and entrepreneurs realize their dreams, and some of this model is based on what I’ve learned from my experiences.

#6. Losses can be your biggest teachers. From the loss of my startup I learned a lesson in humility; in how to take my lumps and move on. Losing the company was like losing a child.  It was that hard. And as an intensely loyal person, I hated feeling that I had disappointed people and failed to save the company. I’ll never totally get over it. But I can at least learn from it, and hopefully you can too. Ironically that loss has helped me refocus my life and career on new directions and new growth. Sometimes losses can be the best learning experiences of all.

#7. Be extremely careful about who you accept investment from. Just because an individual approaches you out of the blue and wants to invest in your company doesn’t mean you should accept his or her offer. Make sure they are experienced partners who are aligned with the goals of the business.  And make sure that you draft contractual agreements carefully and unambiguously to minimize the risk of problems down the road.

#8. Get D&O insurance (Directors & Officers insurance). Get as much as you can afford.  This will help to protect you in the event you are faced with the unfortunate prospect of defending a lawsuit in the future. I really don’t think any venture or board of directors should be without this protection in this high-risk economic climate.

#9. Plan for economic downturns. Expect that the economy will continue to remain volatile so make sure to keep your burn rate even lower than what you think is necessary. You’ll be glad you did when the next downturn happens and you need extra runway. Even though we are currently experiencing a new tech venture bubble, it probably won’t last and before we know it we’ll be in another downturn where venture funding will be hard to raise again. Plan your capital strategy accordingly.

#10. Start M&A way before you need to. If you think you may want to get your venture acquired in the next 18 months, start early, while you have plenty of runway, so that you have good negotiating leverage with buyers. It’s much easier to sell when you don’t need to. Don’t let yourself get pushed against the wall and low-balled down the road.

Unfortunately one of them has come to my doorstep.

It is never fun to be forced to deal with such situations, but I decided it would be best to tell you all about it so that you hear it from the horse’s mouth, and so that other entrepreneurs may learn from my experience.

It has been frustrating to have this lawsuit hanging over my head, to have to defend my reputation, and to have to spend so much time on this. And it has been difficult to go through all this, without being able to say anything more detailed about all the evidence I have that demonstrates that there is no merit to the case.

But my lawyers have told me that even the most frivolous lawsuits should be fought in court, not through the media. So up until now I have avoided making any blog posts on this subject.

However, with approval of my lawyers, I am going to comment here once, to set the record straight on this.

The lawsuit in question comes from a plaintiff who was a shareholder in my old company Radar Networks, the makers of Twine.com.

The plaintiff is also the founder of a Bible Website which you can look at here, and which is highly relevant to this lawsuit.

In a nutshell, this one shareholder, out of many that we had, has filed a lawsuit against many of the other shareholders, directors and our acquirer, to try to forcefully regain part of their investment.

This kind of lawsuit is unfortunately not that uncommon when companies are sold, or shut down; It’s just not talked about that much.

The allegations in the lawsuit are simply not in synch with reality.

What’s important to know is that anyone can claim anything they want in a lawsuit, no matter how far from reality it is. All that really matters in the end is the truth that comes out in court.

Regarding the truth, I and my attorneys and everyone who is familiar with this case are confident that the lawsuit is without merit.

Radar Networks, myself, its Board of Directors, and our team, conducted its business properly and with careful oversight. And most importantly, our decisions regarding investment rounds and the eventual sale of the company were made under the extremely professional and diligent advice of several of the most respected Silicon Valley law firms. We were very careful to make sure no investor was treated improperly or unfairly and we acted on advice of counsel in all such matters.

So that’s basically it: The case has no merit. It’s that simple.

But if you are really interested to learn more, feel free to read the rest of this article where I’ll delve into some more details about our funding, the economy, and how the company was eventually sold, in the interest of transparency.

Or, if you’ve read enough, and don’t need more detail, you can just skip to part II where I share some learnings I’ve gleaned from this painful experience — hopefully they will help protect you or other entrepreneurs from going through similar tribulations: 10 Survival Tips for Entrepreneurs That Nobody Likes to Talk About.

Twine

Radar Networks was a labor of love for those involved in it. You can see the history and future of our products here — In a nutshell we were working on semantic social search, the “Holy Grail.” It was a huge technical challenge with great potential.

But was not an easy undertaking – we were going after an ambitious goal, using bleeding-edge new technologies, in a very competitive space. And then right when we were raising our last round of capital, the worst economic recession of any of our lifetimes hit.

Despite all this, all of us who worked on the venture were truly passionate about adding more structure to the Web, and making the Web smarter, based on the W3C’s vision for an open-standards based Semantic Web.

But in the end, we had to sell the company to Evri, a company owned by one of our investors, Paul Allen. It wasn’t the outcome we had hope for, but during the peak of the recession, it wasn’t the worst possible outcome either.

I wrote a postmortem about the company here when we sold the company.

Unfortunately, some ventures just don’t make it. In fact, statistics say that most ventures don’t make it, but we had hoped to be the exception not the rule. But the possibility of failure is the risk all of us took together, a risk that was disclosed and well-understood by all of our investors.

And you can’t go after big ideas and opportunities without taking risks. That’s not to say that failing was easy – it totally sucked – and we worked extremely hard to succeed. But sometimes even your best efforts just aren’t enough.

Nobody was happy with the outcome. Nobody made money from it. It was not what we had hoped and worked for, for so many years.

Selling the Company

Because this is a lawsuit, I’m not allowed to go into much detail, and much of the actual evidence that proves there is no merit to the case has to wait until it can come out in court.

But here is some background that can provide some insight on the context about the situation that Radar Networks was in when we decided to sell to Evri. I am providing this information in order to set the record straight and clarify issues that are raised in the allegations.

Typically search ventures are quite capital intensive. Twine.com’s Semantic Web approach required extensive R&D and infrastructure investment.

Fortunately we had top-tier investors including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Fuse Capital, plus a truly world-class engineering and business team. And everyone believed in the vision and opportunity. In addition, all investors – including angel investors – were informed of the risks of this investment and the both the challenges and potential of the road ahead.

We raised significant funding (in the $20mm+ range) over around 4 years, which included a combination of venture capital and venture debt.

But our funding was still less than the competition. For some comparables: Powersoft raised at least $30mm or more; Metaweb raised around $60mm or more.

It just isn’t cheap to build major semantic search infrastructure like this. So by comparison, Radar Networks raised less and spent less than other comparable companies. From this perspective, if our funding was unusual it was because it was lower than the norm for our category. Despite that, we accomplished a lot.

The first version of Twine attracted a few million monthly visitors at its peak, with around 300,000 registered users, and 25,000 “twines” about particular interests, comprising up to 5 million pieces of user-contributed content. This happened in a relatively short time frame.

We got most of our traffic organically, and via our passionate user base, and via word of mouth buzz. We did limited marketing and advertising, but mainly we focused on word of mouth, viral sharing and invitations, and PR to generate buzz. In addition the large amount of topical user-generated content we published was indexed extensively by search engines, and generated visits.

When the recession hit, investors panicked and pulled back from investing in early-stage tech ventures such as ours. This threw a wrench in our plans to raise our C round of funding which we needed in order to execute our strategy.

So, like many companies in that situation at the time, we took painful and drastic evasive action to reduce our burn and extend our runway to try to outlast the downturn: Everyone took pay cuts, we slashed budgets repeatedly, did rounds of layoffs, and cut business functions, features and goals, to reduce costs and try to last out the downturn.

Around the same time, as luck would have it, Google de-indexed us without warning and our traffic tanked. We still don’t know why they did that – perhaps they viewed us as a competitive search engine, or perhaps their algorithm changed – we don’t know. But when it happened it had a large impact on our site’s traffic.

We tried to petition to get re-indexed with limited success, but never got back to the level of index presence we had had before. This took place during the time frame when we had also drastically reduced our team and budget, and so all things considered, we eventually decided to wait until we could raise more funding, rebuild our team, and deploy the next version of Twine.

On a parallel track to reducing our burn, we were looking for more capital. As well as continuing to seek venture or strategic funding, we explored the potential for selling the company, which we felt was the fiscally responsible thing to do under the circumstances. We hadn’t planned or wanted to sell the company so soon, but we had to explore all options available to us.

Our assets included an award-winning brand, a world-class team, a uniquely powerful platform and product, a passionate user community, a large amount of semantically marked up content contributed by users, plus a a large and important portfolio of semantic web patents and patent applications.

We engaged in many months of M&A discussions with multiple industry-leading companies, and received strong interest, went through due-diligence, and got several offers, but we were running out of cash. When you have little or no cash runway acquirers view it as a firesale and so the offers we got were low-ball offers.

In a last ditch attempt to extend our runway, and improve our chances of getting a better deal done, I personally bridged the company along with several other white knights among our investors. But it just wasn’t enough to buy us the time we needed. We simply had no runway and thus no negotiating leverage.

And so due to terms and deadlines of various offers we had in hand, it was our fiduciary duty to sell the company to Evri, a company owned by one of our investors, Paul Allen. This deal resulted in the lowest risk, best outcome for our stakeholders compared to the other options we had.

But as a result of the terms of the sale, myself and the other Radar Networks shareholders and investors got washed out. We did not break even or profit from the sale in any way, by any standard, in any dimension. So who benefited? The lawsuit alleges that Radar and our Board members and I somehow benefited from the sale to Evri, but that is just not true and it’s easy to prove that.

Still, while this was not the kind of exit that I or my investors had hoped for, and we didn’t benefit from it personally or collectively, in those days, at the peak of the recession when companies were folding left and right, it was not as bad as it could have been.

We at least avoided a shutdown, were able to return some money to creditors. As a result of the deal, the technology would go forward and we believed our users and their data would transition smoothly. And many of our staff got jobs at Evri, which was important. As for myself, while I advised Evri temporarily to help with the transition, I have not had any involvement with them since.

That’s the end of the story. Some ventures don’t work out and when that happens nobody is happy.

One More Detail

Regarding the lawsuit brought by one of our investors. The situation is slightly more complex than a typical shareholder lawsuit, because in this case, the investor in question also became a client of the company in a later phase of our relationship, when we agreed to work together on a joint data visualization initiative, in concert with a second investment from her.

For this project, we worked closely with her, in partnership with several highly-regarded design firms that she approved, and we delivered excellent software that met the agreed specifications. Unfortunately this investor/client is not happy with that project.

I’m truly saddened that this investor/client has decided to go down the path of filing this highly questionable lawsuit. It cannot result in anything but waste in the end.

But, in light of all the facts and evidence we have, I and all our respective legal counsels, are confident that we will prevail on the merits, if we have to go to court. The allegations in the lawsuit just don’t hold water.

What I’ve Learned

It was an indescribably painful process to lose my company – a company I spent nearly a decade pouring blood, sweat and tears into. It felt like losing a child. And as an intensely loyal person, it was also especially difficult to feel like I had disappointed people I truly cared about and wanted to deliver value to.

But while failures are painful, they can also be some of the most fruitful learning experiences. And I would like to share some of that with you.

First of all, one of the many things I learned (the hard way), is that even doing everything correctly and ethically, with the best intentions, great investors, a great team, and with the best legal counsel, isn’t always enough to keep yourself from getting sued by a disgruntled shareholder.

Anyone can file a lawsuit, and allege anything they want in it, regardless of what turns out to be true or not. And it happens all the time. The only thing that is important is the truth that comes out in court.

But that’s just the beginning. I’ve learned about humility, about failure, about ways things can go wrong, and about what it’s like to go through selling at a loss, and a lawsuit. None of these things were really lessons I wanted to learn. But they’re probably important lessons nonetheless.

It was a major blow when I first found out about the lawsuit. I have to admit I felt very depressed about it; the allegations were upsetting because I so completely disagree with them, they are so far from the truth, and so personally hurtful.

But at least, from what I’ve learned from this so far, I’ve put together a few tips for entrepreneurs that could help them protect themselves from this kind of situation: 10 Survival Tips for Entrepreneurs That Nobody Likes to Talk About.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for all of your support, both in the past, and now. I really appreciate it. Especially as I’m going through this challenging and experience.

Topics covered:

• My work over the last few decades
• Big life lessons I’ve had
• My recent “Venture Production Studio” concept
• Stealth ventures I’m working on (realtime web, wireless power, etc.)
• Intelligent assistants
• Predictions for the future
• Augmented reality
• The Singularity
• Do we have free will? Will that change as Global Mind emerges?
• The changing nature of individuality
• The Psychological Singularity
• The Global Brain – history and implications
• The WebOS – Which cloud will win?
• The Semantic Web – what it’s really for, is it being adopted?
• What level does the brain compute at? Neural vs. quantum.
• Nature of consciousness (Buddhist view vs. Western Scientific view) – “I think, therefore I am” vs. “I am, therefore I think”
• The nature of self & possibility of artificial selves
• The Singularity
• John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment
• Digital physics & cellular automata; Ed Fredkin & Stephen Wolfram
• Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis
• Buddhist views on ultimate nature of reality
• My relationship with Peter Drucker (my grandfather) and his influence (management, knowledge workers, social sector etc.)
• The shift to a now-centric civilization
• The fragmentation of the Semantic Web
• Freeing intelligence from human brains (like we did with knowledge)
• Symbiosis; Part vs. Whole – When does the Global Brain change to a new level of order?
• Beyond Homo Sapiens – What’s next? Cyborgs, collective beings, etc.
• Technological ethics – what kind of future are we building?
• Combining the best of Asian and Western intellectual approaches
• IBM-Jeopardy Challenge

Here is an excerpt:

I’ve been puzzling over Twitter’s recent tactical moves around their API, Ubermedia and Tweetdeck, for a few months now, and it just doesn’t add up. In fact I think Twitter’s current strategy may take them in a direction where they end up missing out on their biggest potential win.

If Twitter continues to go down the media company path, without incorporating their API into the plan, that could not only force a large part of their ecosystem to go elsewhere, but it could deprive them of a much larger potential infrastructure revenue opportunity, and could even end up costing them the company.

After all, Silicon Valley is littered with the  burned out wreckage of once-great media companies that failed create and keep third-party app ecosystems: AOL, Friendster, MySpace, Yahoo – to name a few. It’s very hard to maintain leadership as an online media company without an ecosystem of outside apps increasing reach, innovation, and stickiness.

In light of this, I’ve been exploring an alternate path for Twitter that leverages their API in a much bigger way, and this path appears to be a better strategy. According to my own experimental revenue  projections for Twitter, this alternative path is not only a good tactical move, but it’s a good business move because it increases Twitter’s reach, number of active users, and revenues massively.

….. Read the rest here.

This event will bring together Internet leaders and political leaders, for two days of discussions about the Internet. The goal is to advise the G8 leaders on important issues related to the Internet.

I’m looking forward to this event, and I am hopeful that it will produce useful recommendations for the G8 leaders, and perhaps lead to an ongoing process to advise them on Internet policy.

But in researching and preparing for this, I have found very little information about the event, who the other attendees will be, and what the real motivations for the event are.

In addition – for an event of this magnitude, it is somewhat surprising that there has not yet been any significant press coverage of it yet.

So, in the interest of transparency, and in helping to bring together the community of participants, and in addition, to seek suggestions from others for what issues or suggestions we should focus on, I am going to unveil the information I have received about the event publicly, for the first time.

I believe this is the first time this information has been shared publicly, and I think you will find it interesting…

Then, in the second half of this article, below, I will discuss my questions about what this event might achieve, what we might bring to the table there, and in particular what  ideas or proposals you might have as well?

The Invitation

Dear Mr. SPIVACK,

In my current capacity as President of the G8, I would like to place the issue of the Internet on the agenda of the Summit of Heads of State and Government that will be held in Deauville on 26-27 May 2011. We are all in agreement that it is essential for our States to consider the development of the Internet and its economic, political and cultural effects in our own countries and throughout the world.

This commitment from the Heads of State and Government shows that the time has come to engage in genuine dialogue with the main world players in the information and communication technologies sector, particularly in order to strengthen the Internet’s major contribution to economic growth.

It is for this reason that I have decided to organise the “e-G8 Forum” in Paris on 24-25 May. Over these two days, the CEOs and the leaders of the Internet’s most leading companies and organisations will work together before sharing their proposals with the Heads of State and Government in Deauville.

Participants in the e-G8 Forum will be able to exchange ideas about cutting-edge products and services. They will also be able to discuss the challenges and opportunities which they believe relevant to the future of the Internet, offering their opinions on a wide range of issues, including for example human rights, intellectual property and technological investment.

Given the key role you play in the field of information technology, as an entrepreneur and a leader, I would be honoured if you could attend this unprecedented conference.

Nicolas SARKOZY

 

The Fact Sheet

e-G8 Forum
The Internet: Accelerating Growth
Paris, May 24-25, 2011

The French President Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, as current President of the Group of Eight countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – is convening an extraordinary invitation-only meeting of the best and the brightest technology leaders from the G8 and the rest of the world. He wishes to include in the G8 Summit agenda the possibilities opened up by the Internet and to enable the e-G8 Forum to contribute their viewpoint and reflections to the discussions of the Heads of State.

The e-G8 Forum will be held in Paris on May 24-25, immediately preceding the G8 Heads of State and Government Summit in Deauville on May 26-27.

The e-G8 Forum is designed to inform the G8 discussion and encourage dialogue between governments and global media/technology companies. This year, for the first time ever, the Internet’s role in society and the economy will be formally on the G8 Summit agenda. Although invited on the initiative of the President of the French Republic, the stakeholders in the digital economy will be free to choose their topics, agenda, content and conclusions which will be submitted to the discussion of the Heads of State. That is why President Sarkozy wishes the e-G8 Forum to be a private organization, placed under the presidency of Maurice Lévy, Chairman & CEO of Publicis Groupe.

e-G8 Forum Theme: The Internet: Accelerating Growth. The reach and impact of the Internet, fast-evolving technology and the roll-out of broadband across the world have been huge contributors to economic growth, job creation, education and empowerment in the last decade – and this digital ecosystem will be critically important in accelerating global growth in coming years.

Location: Stunning custom-built forum space in the Tuileries gardens, located between the Musée du Louvre and Place de la Concorde in the center of Paris.

Participants: Strictly by personal invitation only, the e-G8 Forum’s explicit goal is to gather leading global players of the digital ecosystem. This high-level community includes CEOs, technologists, entrepreneurs, and industry experts. Forum participants are invited to an extraordinary e-G8 Forum Dinner at the Louvre Museum on Tuesday May 24.

Program: Combining plenary sessions, town hall discussions and private dialogue, the e-G8 Forum will include discussions on economic growth, social issues such as human rights, intellectual property protection and privacy, and the Internet of the future.

Ideas from the e-G8 Forum will be presented at the G8 Summit, for the first time giving a voice to leading companies investing in technology and the future of the Internet.

Organization: President Sarkozy has asked Maurice Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, to organize the e-G8 Forum.

Press: For press accreditation presse-eg8forum@publicislive.com

General Information: info-eg8forum@publicislive.com

Website: www.eg8forum.com

The Agenda

e-G8 Forum
The Internet: Accelerating Growth
Pre-program

 

MONDAY 23 MAY
17h00 – 21h00: Welcome and Registration -Tuileries Gardens

TUESDAY 24 MAY

08h30 – 10h00: Registration, coffee and networking

10h00 – 10h10: Welcome & Introduction, Maurice Lévy, Chairman & CEO, Publicis Groupe, Chairman of the e-G8 Forum

10h10 – 10h45: Opening Keynote
Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, current President of the G8
10h45 – 11h00: Q&A with President Sarkozy

11h00 – 12h00: Plenary I
“Silicon Power: The Internet & Economic Growth”
Information Technology and the entire digital ecosystem have been a powerful creator of jobs and wealth around the world. How to ensure this continues?

12h00 – 13h00: Plenary II
“Rewiring Societies” The Internet has empowered people around the world, most recently and most spectacularly in the Middle East, but also in many other instances. Are we seeing the emergence of a new society: more open, transparent and free?

13h00 – 14h30: Lunch

14h30 – 15h30: Plenary III
“Future of the Net: What Next?”
Broadband, booming data, video, the explosion of cloud computing, storage: the financing of infrastructures, how value is created and shared

15h30 – 16h00: Coffee break and networking
16h00 – 17h00: Content and intellectual property
17h00 – 18h00: Conversations with legendary figures of the Internet
20h00 – 22h30: e-G8 Dinner at the Louvre Museum and private visits of the museum

WEDNESDAY 25 MAY
08h00 – 09h00: Continental breakfast and networking

09h00 – 10:00: Plenary I
“Innovation and Financing”
The impact of new technologies on strategies for innovation and R&D What are the best strategies for creating innovative ecosystems and clusters?

10h00 – 10h30: Coffee break and networking

10h30 – 12h00: Parallel Workshops I
1. Fostering Innovation and Education
2. The impact of the digital revolution on small and medium-sized businesses
3. Entertainment and Culture in the Digital Age

12h00 – 13h00: Parallel Workshops II
1. Mobile Internet: how mobile is transforming commerce
2. Protection of privacy and the youth
3. The Net and the Media: the future of media in a digital society

13h00 – 14h30: Lunch

14h30 – 15h30: Parallel Workshops III
1. In the Social Media Age: the impact on society
2. Creativity and entrepreneurship on the Net
3. Trust: Creating and maintaining trust in a world of booming data

15h30 – 16h00: Coffee break

16h00 – 17h30: Plenary II
“Start-up Nations: the best and the brightest start-ups”

17h30 – 18h30: Closing Plenary of the e-G8 Forum

My Thoughts and Questions

I am honored to be among the invitees and do plan on participating. However, that said, I also have a number of thoughts and questions about this gathering, its purpose, and the results that may or may not come from it. I am certainly hopeful and optimistic – but I also think an event of this nature will face a number of challenges.

First of all, this event is being organized rather suddenly, with very little advance-notice to potential attendees. So my first question is, who will actually be going? I am definitely attending, but I’m curious to know who the other attendees will be?

In searching Twitter for the terms  “eg8“, “e-G8,” “#eg8“, “#e-G8” I have found a few others, such as Leo Laporte and Jimmy Wales who have also announced their intention to attend. If you are attending, please announce it on Twitter at the hashtag #eg8 so we all can see who the delegates will be.

My second question is about the motivation for the event. Why is President Sarkozy organizing this event at this time? Is there a political agenda at work here, or is this simply to bring one of the major drivers of global society and economics to the table at the G8 level for the first time? Perhaps both are factors in the decision to do this?

It is also interesting to note that President Sarkozy, along with the other G-8 leaders, have generally supported polices which are not always in the best-interests of the people who use the Internet – for example, around issues of privacy, freedom of speech, taxation, and net neutrality.

Is this event designed to truly bring all perspectives together in order to craft new policies, or to build support for policies that have largely already been set by the G-8 nations?

Will this event result in helping Big Corporations and Big Governments be even Bigger, or will it also provide a voice to the people, the citizens of the Web? Will the delegates be thinking about themselves and their companies, or will they try to bring larger issues to the table?

Another question is what can be achieved in only two-days, especially when dealing with multiple very different cultures with widely divergent views about privacy, free speech, taxation, etc? I think this will be perhaps the main challenge of this gathering: will it be possible to bridge these differences and have not only a meaningful dialogue, but one that results in useful and new ideas and proposals for the G8 leaders to consider?

I am skeptical that it will be possible to reach any sort of agreement on such complex and controversial issues in a short timeframe, however, perhaps it will be possible for the delegates to come up with recommendations for Internet-related issues that require urgent attention from the G8 leaders, at least.

Another useful output of this event could be a new network of relationships that connect a broad cross-section of Internet leaders with government leaders at a very high level. The new relationships and communication channels that result from this could perhaps become very important in influencing and shaping policy in the future. In the end, this may be one of the key long-term benefits of this gathering.

What Should We Discuss?

As a participant in the e-G8, I hope I can contribute something useful, and hopefully novel. I presume many of the other delegates will be from giant corporations, and will have viewpoints that at least to some extent reflect the goals of those corporations. In my case, I am not affiliated with any giant corporation presently; I work mainly with small, emerging technology startups.

At an event of this nature, I hope I can help to represent the viewpoint of the startup community, entrepreneurs, innovators, angel investors, incubators, and consumers on the Web. This is a perspective that is often drowned out in gatherings of leaders of multibillion dollar corporations and large governments — yet it is also one that is extremely valuable, since the technology startup sector is actually a key engine of new jobs, economic development, innovation, and growth.

I think it is of vital importance to find ways to transplant the DNA of Silicon Valley into other regions around the world, so that this kind of new economic opportunity and growth spreads and benefits more regions.

Another area that I focus on is the future of the Internet. Where is it going, and what is needed to get it there in the optimal way?

There are many issues to discuss around this ranging from identity, privacy, open standards, open-source software, and net neutrality (which should be re-branded as “net equality”), to who owns personal information, copyright law, software patent law reform, accessibility, and infrastructure – particularly infrastructure that can’t be easily controlled or compromised by any one party.

I’ve been involved with the Internet since the 1980′s, and helped to pioneer the early days of the Web, as well as the Semantic Web, “Web 3.0″ and new initiatives around the real-time Web. These technology movements have captivated me with their potential for increasing human freedom and capabilities. But there is equally great potential to use them to limit freedom and control humanity even more.

What concerns me most today is that more power over the Internet is falling into fewer hands, and this trend is continuing with the eager support of big corporations and governments.

What is of greatest importance, for the people of the world, is to find new ways to decentralize and democratize the key capabilities of the Internet (such as bandwidth, messaging infrastructures, identity infrastructures, privacy systems, data storage, on-ramps, and even the content of the Web) and to protect them from attempts to control them, co-opt them, or limit them.

If we are not extremely careful and diligent in our efforts to protect the open Internet from commercial and government interests, I think it is likely that we will end up building an Internet that is a kind of prison instead of a launchpad for greater levels of human evolution.

Here is just one example of what I’m worried about – Facebook is now considering limiting free speech in order to placate governments around the world. But Facebook isn’t alone in this – all the large global online services are having to balance complex opposing concerns – and too often in these situations, money wins out over human rights.

Social networks are the cultural nervous systems of our new 21st century civilization. The problem is, they are being created and governed by commercial interests, not by their constituents.

If commercial social networks truly do become the fabric of our new societies, what happens to our civilization? It becomes privatized and controlled by commercial interests, not elected governments. Is that a world you want to live in?

The Internet is a new global resource, which, like the oceans, the atmosphere and the rainforests, must be protected in order to be of greatest benefit. It is something which every human should be able to share in, equally, and in fact, equal access to the Internet may soon become necessary in order to participate equally in any society or government.

One thought along these lines that I have been exploring recently: Do Internet users need to be protected with certain guaranteed basic rights and freedoms in their online lives? And should we all agree to a new online social contract, or even laws, for what kinds of behavior are acceptable? Is it time for these kinds of agreements to be formed?

Civil rights, standards of behavior and laws, are necessary for any society to function, and our emerging global online society is no exception. Perhaps it is time to propose the first Internet Bill of Rights, and a standard Internet Code of Conduct?

Of course, such initiatives are risky to propose – they could easily backfire and instead of promoting freedom they could become new means of limiting freedom. So I do not believe these policies should be created in a vacuum – I think they would require broad participation and comment from the entire community of Internet constituents. I do however think it is possible that such initiatives could be very valuable in the future.

What Do You Think?

These are just a few preliminary thoughts, but really I am more interested in hearing from you — what issues should the e-G8 be thinking about? What issues should we be proposing to the G8 leaders? And do you have any specific proposals to offer?

I am very interested in hearing from you, as I am sure the other e-G8 attendees are as well. Please add your thoughts in the comments below so we can see what you suggest and are thinking about. I look forward to being able to represent a broad perspective at this event.

Sincerely,

Nova Spivack
novaspivack.com

Bottleno.se has developed a very powerful new personalization system that is optimized for making sense of Twitter and other real-time information streams. The product is in alpha and invite beta is planned for June.

It began when TechCrunch broke the story about the company, earlier this week.

That was followed by an interesting article by Marshall Kirkpatrick on the Twitter overload problem, and then a detailed article by Jenny Zaino about how bottleno.se hopes to solve that problem.

And, there was also a false rumor that bottleno.se might get bought soon which started spreading like wildfire online – but we’ve publicly stated that we not looking to sell at this early stage, whether or not there is interest.

ff you’re curious what all the buzz is about, sign up for the invite beta this summer. We’ll start letting folks into the beta on a rolling basis in June, in order of influence on the invite list, since the product is focused on influencers.

If you want to ensure that you get in early, you can show us your level of influence by getting other people to register for the beta with you, by tweeting or inviting friends via a special link we give you in the registration form. The more people who register via your links, the higher on our invite list you rise.

More news is coming soon, so follow @bottlenoseapp on Twitter, as well as @dominiek and @novaspivack (me) to keep up with us.

The story of The Daily Dot began several years ago when I was thinking about where the Web was headed. At the time I was thinking a lot about the future of emerging online communities such as Digg, Facebook, the early days of Twitter, and even my own Twine.com — as well as about the growth of fully immersive games and virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life. I realized that these communities really were virtual places, and some of them literally even contained the equivalent of towns, leagues, guilds, nations.

But when I looked at how the media was covering the Web at the time, I saw a huge gap. Coverage broke out into two areas: stories aimed at an industry audience (TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, Venturebeat, Techmeme) and coverage aimed at an early-adopter tech audience (Wired, Engadget, Slashdot, Boing Boing). But collectively, these audiences made up only a small slice of the overall Web audience pie.

Even more notable was that nobody was covering online communities like places — the way that newspapers cover nations, cities and towns. There were no local reporters, embedded reporters,  no stringers or correspondents in various online communities. In short, traditional media was covering the Web like a technology, not like a place.

Where was the coverage for the majority of the audience? The mainstream consumers who spent the better part of every day in this new place we call the Web? Where was the coverage of what was happening in the communities on the Web? The stories about the people on the Web? The stories for the people who used the Web?

Curiously, when I dug into this, I found that the mainstream was receiving scattered attention, in the form of only a few human interest or business articles per week in the major national media outlets (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CBS, NBC, ABC). Mostly these articles were either curiosities or they were about big financial deals around hot companies. They too failed to address the Web as a place.

While the Internet industry audience was being deluged with thousands of geeky articles and blog posts every day, the mainstream audience was for the most part being ignored by the media. My mainstream audience member friends confirmed this – they had no clue at all about what was really going on online – even around topics they cared about like brands, celebrities, music, major privacy issues that would affect them, the birth and death of major online services, new social trends and memes, new legislation, cybercrime. The small amount of this news they were aware of, reached them weeks after it was fresh, when the major outlets finally covered it.

I realized that here was an opportunity – in fact a need – for a newspaper that covered news about the Web for the people who use the Web — mainstream people. A newspaper by and for the people of the Web (in other words, all of us). A newspaper that would cover the Web like a place and as a community. In further discussions about this concept, my wife, Kimberly Rubin, came up with the perfect name, “The Daily Dot” and I went about buying the domain name.

The idea gestated and grew. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Finally, I decided this was a good enough idea to actively produce it in my new “venture production studio” — And so with that in mind I began looking for the right CEO and co-founders to produce the venture around.

As fate would have it, I had been introduced to Nicholas White through my longtime friend and PR guru, Josh Jones-Dilworth. Nick and I had been circling for a while. He had this “young Richard Branson” vibe — which everyone comments on after they meet him. I knew he was going to be someone important but I wasn’t sure exactly in what way.  Then it hit me.

Nick grew up in a newspaper family, working in the print newspaper biz. For over a century his family has been running community newspapers; Today they own 22 newspapers and radio stations. Like me and Josh, Nick had been thinking about the same problem — how to evolve community news reporting for the new millennium, but from the perspective of the newspaper business.

Nick was thinking about how to save the newspaper business — thoughts which he has elaborated on this week in  a new article about how he hopes to save the newspaper business by leaving it. As we spoke about the Daily Dot and his own ideas, I realized Nick had both the pedigree and the passion to build what I had envisioned. Nick was the perfect CEO for the Daily Dot. And so we invited him to co-found the venture.

With Nick’s experience at the helm, we are already making great progress. An example of this is last week’s announcement that the widely-followed editor, Owen Thomas, has left his position as executive editor at Venturebeat (a terrific publication that I read every day), to join Nick and the team as founding editor of the Daily Dot. And around Nick and Owen we are already growing a team of really awesome editors, writers, designers, coders, marketers and investors. It’s really starting to take shape, rapidly.

Owen in particular brings a strong editorial background, and is already helping to focus our strategy. We were all impressed by Owen’s incredible network of connections to the movers and shakers of the Web, as well as to the users of the Web — and also with his knowledge of all things media, pop culture, gossip, fashion, design, entertainment and more. He really understands what people use the Web for, and he’s got a great nose for news. In short he’s got exactly the right mix to head up the Daily Dot’s editorial strategy.

As Owen explains it, The Daily Dot, is going to cover the Web in a new way: It’s about people. We’re going to cover the Web not just as a technology or an industry, but as a community — actually a community of communities — spread across a virtual landscape of online places. Some of these communities, like Facebook, are even larger than physical nations, and contain communities within them that are larger than many cities. Others, like World of Warcraft, are complex parallel worlds complete with warring factions and their own economies.

And there are many other vibrant communities on the Web: Youtube, Etsy, Second Life, 4Chan, the Word Press blogging community, Tumblr, Reddit, and literally millions of micro communities around vertical interests. These communities have people in them — yes actual people, not just technologies and venture capitalists! And these people have stories, stories we want to know about. And so do the people who participate in them. But who is telling those stories?

Imagine a nation or city without its own daily newspaper — how would people know what’s going on, what would hold it together, would it even feel like one nation or city at all? A newspaper is a critical enabling catalyst that transforms a crowd into a community. It gives people news, but also a sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of community. It tells the story of the place, it holds the record of the place. On a deeper level, a newspaper provides a mirror of the whole back to the parts, enabling an essential feedback loop. In short, newspapers are the lifeblood of communities.

The Web today is like that nation or city without a newspaper. It’s missing something essential – the one key catalyst that will transform it from a crowd into an actual community. By providing the Web with its own newspaper, The Daily Dot will make the Web feel more human, more connected, and more cohesive. And this is really important.

The Daily Dot aims to be the community newspaper for the Web as a whole, as well as for each of the communities within it. And by doing this, we may just end up play a key role in the life of the Web. But that’s the just the beginning: We may also become the first truly global newspaper; the newspaper with the largest daily readership on the planet. After all, what newspaper today has 6 billion daily readers?

There is no geographic print newspaper audience that large. But The Daily Dot is not limited by geography; it has a real chance at achieving a truly global readership by covering the one community that everyone on this planet has in common: The Web. It’s the first newspaper that everyone may actually read every day.

The Daily Dot is still young – in fact we haven’t really even launched it yet. And as we launch it’s going to be a work in progress: We’ll be starting with a series of experiments, a newsletter, and some explorations of new approaches for involving the community in making its own news, and then we’ll be launching a major new site — currently in private beta.

Meanwhile, we’re hiring writers and editors, so if you share our passion for this mission (and you’re awesome) definitely apply. We look forward to hearing your stories.

In a nutshell, I’ve been working behind the scenes for the last year to co-found and angel invest in a number of exciting new ventures. Several of these ventures will be launching soon, and so it’s time to begin telling the story of what they do, and the big idea behind them: a new approach to building startups that borrows from how Hollywood produces movies.

And in keeping with this, I’ve moved with my wife Kimberly Rubin (a TV producer with 11 movies to her credit), from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where Hollywood production studios began. I believe LA is a great place to build this concept out.

I call this new model of venture incubation the “production studio model” and in this approach I work as a producer of ventures, not merely a founder or angel investor.

As well as being a better fit for the needs of early stage startups than the typical angel investor or VC approach, the production studio model has enabled me to start a number of really excellent ventures, for less cost, in less time, than I ever thought possible.

Production Portfolio

But before I go into more detail about the model, here is the current portfolio of companies that I am actively producing. With the exception of Live Matrix and Klout (which were started earlier), all of these companies were started in the last year and will be launching soon:

• Live Matrix — The schedule of the Web. Live Matrix is the only guide to what’s happening, when, online – across all media types (video, audio, chat, gaming, shopping, and more). I co-founded and seed-funded this venture with CEO, Sanjay Reddy, and I continue to incubate it and actively participate, in the same way as I have since we began, by serving on the board and helping on product strategy, marketing and technology. Live Matrix is launched and busy making deals and launching new features. More news coming soon.
• Klout — Klout is the standard for measuring influence. I discovered the company when I was a judge at the SXSW Accelerator in 2009. I was really impressed with the founders and soon became the company’s first outside investor. Since then I have served actively as an advisor to the company. They recently raised a terrific venture round with Kleiner Perkins and are off to the races.
• Bottlenose — You’ll be hearing a lot about this venture soon. It’s a new personalization technology designed for the realtime Web and social media. I co-founded this company with Dominiek ter Heide. As well as seed-funding the company, I’m taking an increasingly active role in helping to build this company.
• The Daily Dot — The Daily Dot is a new online newspaper about the Web, for consumers. Most of the coverage of the Web today is targeted at the tech industry, a tiny fraction of the audience, but the Daily Dot will cover the Web for the majority of the audience: consumers who spend much of their day, every day, online. The Daily Dot hasn’t launched yet but it’s going to be an exciting company. I co-founded it with newspaper-industry CEO, Nicholas White and co-founder Josh Jones-Dilworth. More news will be coming out soon!
• StreamGlider — StreamGlider is a new visual real-time dashboard for tracking interests across various types of devices, starting with the iPad. It’s got a gorgeous user-interface and some novel features that are especially suited to keeping up with streams of rich media. I co-founded this venture with two leading technologists in the information filtering and semantics space, Bill McDaniel and John Breslin. This will be launching soon as well. More news will be available at launch.
• “Project Nikola” This new venture has a breakthrough new energy technology and is totally in stealth. This isn’t even its real name; even that is a secret, for now. What I can say currently is that it really works, it’s mind-blowingly cool and just may disrupt the entire power grid someday. But there’s still a lot of R&D to do before we release it.
• The Earth Dashboard. This is a not-for-profit initiative (yes, I sometimes help produce game-changing nonprofits too) that is working to create an interactive live dashboard about the state of the planet that brings together, and visualizes, all the key global indicators, in one place for the first time. This project is led by Medard Gabel, who worked with Buckminster Fuller, and the creative director is Mia Hanak and her accomplished museum exhibit design team.The Dashboard will be available online as well as in major physical public locations around the globe.

Several of these companies have a common thread – and a common passion for me — they are focused on helping people filter the Web in potentially disruptive ways. Some are using “Big Data” analytics, data mining and extraction, natural language processing, machine learning and semantics, to understand the Web. These are areas that I am deeply familiar with from my many years working around information filtering, AI and search. The Nikola project is an exception — it is outside of the Internet space but springs from a multi-decade interest I’ve had in radical alternative energy technologies.

A History of Incubation

Since 1994, I’ve been involved in starting companies as an entrepreneur, and since 2000 I’ve also been an angel investor. Through incubating numerous ventures (my own and those I’ve angel invested in), I’ve gained some experience into the art of incubating startups.

But one of the best experiences I had was starting one of the more successful incubators, nVention, at SRI, which I conceived of and co-founded with Norman Winarsky (now head of ventures at SRI) in 1999. nVention is now global and has launched more than 40 ventures.

Unlike many incubators, nVention acts in a very hands-on way. First of all, most of nVention’s work focuses around creating ventures to commercialize intellectual property that was originated at SRI. Secondly, nVention bring teams of internal and external experts together to help incubate its companies from concept stage through commercialization. In effect, nVention acts like a production studio, and the people who work there function like producers. It’s a model I’m emulating, albeit in a more grassroots and distributed way.

The Venture Production Model

As a producer, I work actively to develop new original intellectual property, or to source it from great innovators, and then I angel invest and/or bring funding to the deal, shape products and strategies, build teams, invent and develop products, and actively grow companies and take them to market. In many cases, the ventures I’m producing are originated by me, but I also have several ventures in my portfolio that were originated by others, or in partnership with others.

The key to this approach is that I usually get involved at or even before concept stage — even before there is a real team — and I actively work to shape it into a venture, from concept through commercialization.

To accomplish this, across more than one venture at a time, I partner with excellent people to co-produce these companies. In some cases I act as the startup CEO, in other cases my partners do, or we find and partner with the right person to be CEO. Often I find myself partnering with entrepreneurs and helping to coach them to be CEO’s. But in all of these cases, we focus on producing ventures together, as a team. And we’re all in it for the long-term. Because I’ve found excellent partners to work with, including excellent CEO’s where needed, I’m personally able to focus more intensively on helping each venture. This has worked very well so far.

The production approach to venture creation is quite different from the “fire and forget” or “spray and pay” (or “pay and pray”) model that many VC’s and angel investors are engaging in. Instead of spreading lots of fairly hands-off bets across dozens of companies, in the production model I really focus and get deeply hands-on with a pipeline of projects of various stages.

This the opposite of the index fund or hedge fund approach that some funds are taking in the Valley. And I think it is a much better fit for the needs of early stage companies.

The production approach is also different from what many incubators and start-up accelerators are doing these days. Incubators and accelerators play an important role in the startup ecosystem, but the key difference is that in the Hollywood-inspired production model I’m testing, I often start earlier in the process – before there is a concept, company, product, CEO or even a team. Many incubators and accelerators start later in the process.

Here’s how it works. My associates and I source candidate ideas both from our own stream of inventions, as well as from people in our network, and from other innovators we find or who find us. Next we “option” the best ideas with joint R&D agreements and/or with initial prototype funding to test them out. We then filter these prototypes and choose the best ones to produce.

We then form companies, build teams, develop business plans, branding and strategy, and bring additional funding together to develop the commercial offerings, launch, market, and grow them into full ventures. It’s a very hands-on process – and just like movie production, and we usually have a number of projects going on at each stage in our pipeline at once.

The process is similar to producing a film. With a film, first you have to create or find the story, then hire writers and a director, recruit talent, and build a production team, get the financing and early distribution deals in place, shoot the film, do post-production, get broader distribution, market the film and release it.  In the early stages of companies, we all wear many hats, and as they grow, we specialize. In my own case, I assume different roles and levels of involvement according to the needs of the ventures as they grow.

The New Role of the Producer in Tech

A key to this process is really in understanding the new role of a producer in the venture world. It’s not exactly the same as the role of an angel or VC, or an EIR, or even a typical “superhero CEO.” It’s a new role that connects them all together.

Another key is having a model that is designed to attract excellent producers and talent to team up with. To do that, I’m working with a structure that gives my partners a better opportunity than they can find anywhere else. Whether it is an externally or internally originated venture, the model I’m working with is, by far, the most entrepreneur-friendly deal in the entire industry.

In most of my ventures today I take a minority, or at most, an equal partner position, with my cofounders – even in the ventures I originated and funded. In some of the ventures I have angel funded, I have continued to maintain the original equity split with my co-founders, even as the amount of funding I have contributed has increased over time. Where other angels and VC’s take the approach that money is everything, I take the exact opposite view. Talent is everything. Talent is rare, and it’s the lifeblood of ventures.  I don’t believe it is healthy for any company to have the investors take control away from founders — too often that results in disaster. My model is all about cultivating and facilitating the founders.

Why do I do this? Because I believe that you get the best out of people when they really feel they own their venture, and when they feel respected and valued for their contributions. Part of this is because as an entrepreneur myself I have experienced life on the other side. I know intimately what it is to be an entrepreneur, and I know how some VC’s, and even some angels, take advantage of entrepreneurs and founders, suck the life out of companies, and destroy businesses by over-controlling them, and I vowed NOT to be like that.

The terms I offer are the same terms I always wanted for myself. No bullshit and no games. We all succeed or fail together. It’s a true partnership. I’m not betting the odds across dozens of companies and expecting only 1 or 2 to survive; I’m NOT doing shotgun investing like most angels out there, I’m making extremely careful, extremely deeply involved long-term commitments to build companies side-by-side with my partners. And I don’t just talk about this, I do it – my model reflects this.

At the same time, I also spend money in a different way than angels or VC’s. For example, in many of my projects I’ll start on spec with a developer and an idea. No money is initially invested. They work on the idea and prove they have the goods. Then if that works, there is a small grant to “option” it and we develop it further, much like a production studio options a story. I then work with the technical or product teams to see what they can deliver with this initial grant – usually a prototype. This is a test.

If the test goes well and progress is good, we make a production deal in which money, and time, are invested in stages, by myself and others in my network, as needed, rather than all at once. We’re not talking about huge dollar investments early-on, it’s frugal and careful, but it’s enough, and it’s extremely value-added. Later in the process, when the time is right, more money can be brought to work.

Building out the Production Studio

Another way I help my portfolio companies is by bringing pre-negotiated deals with handpicked best-of-breed vendors for many of the services they need. I bring the top law firms and patent teams, the best PR and marketing teams in the business, and accounting and HR services, from partners I know and trust. This saves ventures valuable time and money, and protects them from making early mistakes.

Once the ventures are aimed at a clear target and have something to show, we go together to other angels and venture funds in my network to raise the roll-out money. There’s no reason to give up equity until we need to. The result is that entrepreneurs who work with me end up owning bigger stakes of their ventures than they would if they worked with traditional angels and VC’s.

On the investment side, I’ve been meeting with interesting angel investors – some are pros and some are new to this – and we’re teaming up to jointly fund these ventures together. By working with a production team such as mine, angel investors can put their money to work with less hands-on effort on their parts – because we’re doing the production work for them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t involved – we consult with them as much as they want and we actively solicit their feedback and ideas at every step — but it means they can have confidence that an experienced team is doing the groundwork day-to-day. By working with producers like myself and my team, angels and funds can spread their bets without being spread too thin. If you’re an angel investor, or even a VC, and you’re curious about working with our network, drop me a line.

On my own side, of course, I have to be very picky about what ventures I get involved with, so that I and my team are not spread too thin as well. For that reason, we only allow for about 4 ventures in any stage (from concept stage, through R&D, to beta, and commercialization) of our pipeline at once. But this is a model that I think can scale as we add more producers and team members to the mix. Scaling this is an area that I am actively thinking about right now. If you’re an exceptional venture producer and you would like to be involved, get in touch. This is not about anyone being a superhero, it’s about creating an awesome and highly collaborative team, supported by an incredible network.

There’s so much more I could say about all this, and in time, I’ll write more about it.You will be hearing a lot more about this model, as well as all of the ventures we’re producing in coming months, as well as some new ventures not listed above that are in the pipeline and will become visible in the future.

In the meantime, I’ll be posting here and on my Twitter feed, about my thoughts and what we’re learning as this goes forward. I welcome your thoughts too — this is one of the reasons I’ve written this. So please don’t hesitate to ask questions, offer advice, or observations. Stay tuned, it’s going to be an adventure!

– Nova

Clicker bills itself as the next-generation of TV Guide and the majority of Clicker’s content is mostly pre-recorded rerun videos of TV shows as well as other online professional video. The team at Clicker has, to their credit, done a phenomenal job of making a nice user interface to, and database of, online TV content.

However Live Matrix is not really competing directly with Clicker. Unlike Clicker, Live Matrix focuses exclusively on first-run scheduled and live events that take place online, and many of these events are not available on TV, or on Clicker, at all.

Live Matrix includes many more types of content than just video. Live Matrix’s index includes millions of scheduled online events, and much of this index is not aggregated or easily found anywhere else, including in Clicker.

Live Matrix makes it easier to provide and find live scheduled online events of all kinds with a suite of tools for event providers and event consumers. It helps event providers list their events and schedules, and promote them to interested consumers around the Web. It helps event consumers find scheduled online events of interest, and get reminders when events are about to start.

Live Matrix is not limited to just online TV events, it includes all types of online scheduled events. This is a major difference between Live Matrix and Clicker. Live Matrix has content that nobody else has, about events that are scheduled to happen on the most important medium today, the Web.

Why did Live Matrix make this choice? Because we want to be able to show consumers all kinds of events around an interest. If they are interested in the Olympics, we want them to be able to find scheduled video, audio, chats, and online sales that relate to that interest. We want to be able to tie together all the different kinds of events that are happening online around a topic. This provides consumers with the most value around their interests.

Live Matrix includes:

• Live scheduled video streams of concerts, sports events, news, and conferences
• Scheduled audio streams
• Scheduled live chats with celebrities
• Time-limited online shopping sales and deals
• Scheduled online game tournaments
• Live online product announcements and press conferences
• Scheduled online release of pre-recorded content such as video “Webisodes” of online entertainment series, and the scheduled online releases of music videos, new albums and songs to buy, or reruns of popular TV shows.

Where Clicker and Live Matrix overlap slightly is around live video and audio events. But there are many other types of events, such as scheduled live chats and scheduled online sales, that Live Matrix covers but Clicker does not include because they are not “television.”

The Scheduled Web

Live Matrix is the first guide what I call “the Scheduled Web” — a Web of scheduled events that take place in time (for more on this trend, see: The Birth of the Scheduled Web). Of course there will always be a lot of events that happen online in a non-scheduled, spur-of-the-moment or on-demand manner, but there are and will also always be a significant number of scheduled events as well. In fact, as the technologies for streaming live content on the Web improve and bandwidth increases, the percentage of events that are live and scheduled is likely to increase in coming years. This is because the world itself is scheduled — certain types events happen in time, they have start and end times — things like sales, or live sports events, live entertainment events, shopping events, news and corporate events.

Live online events are not a temporary phenomena. In fact, as more people are connected online more of the time (thanks to mobile Internet devices), there is an even bigger potential audience for live online events than there is for live TV. Furthermore, there will always be certain kinds of content that is perishable, scheduled and live – and this is true on the Web as well. Live Matrix is the only source for finding this content right now. It’s some of the most highly-valued content on the Web.

The Clicker acquisition, along with the December 2010 acquisition of CastTV by Tribune, is evidence that media companies are starting to think about this category.  The current focus of media companies on the online TV space is going to naturally progress to the broader scope of live content online as there will be vastly greater numbers of scheduled live events happening online. As part of CBS, Clicker will undoubtedly focus even more on TV, leaving Live Matrix in an even more uncontested unique role as the best and only place to find out what’s happening now and what’s upcoming all around the Web.

Live Matrix: A Search Engine for Finding Perishable Content

One way of thinking about what Live Matrix does is that it’s a search engine for finding perishable online content, while that content is most valuable. It is also an alerting system that helps remind people to come view perishable content, while the content is still available.

In Live Matrix, not only can you find the best and most relevant upcoming perishable content (such as scheduled online events), but you can also RSVP to get reminded by email when it becomes available. This can be an advantage in some cases where knowing something first has value (you can trade on it, you can tweet it, you can make decisions based on it, you can buy it while it’s available, you can be the first to comment or ask a question, etc.).

On the other hand, Clicker focuses on less perishable content, like pre-recorded TV reruns. This content is also perishable, but not as perishable as live first-run content.

Most scheduled live online events are highly perishable — they decrease in value rapidly after they start and finish, so it matters to watch or participate in them as close to when they actually start as possible. For some live online events, it is not even possible to participate in them after they are finished (for example, you can’t participate in an online sale after it ends, you can’t play in a scheduled online game tournament once it’s over, you can’t participate and ask questions or make comments in a live chat with a celebrity after the fact.)

There are other cases where the content can be consumed later, but the experience isn’t as valuable – it is perishable because the experience is no longer as fresh or interactive.  For example, it’s just not the same to watch a sports event after the game is over and you already know who won, it’s not the same to watch a major cultural event like the dropping of the Ball on New Year’s eve in New York City after New Years has passed, it’s not the same to watch a live newscast or even sports highlights of a game days after it was first broadcast, it’s not the same to watch the unveiling a hot new product days after it’s already become old news. Not only is the information “old news” after the fact, but one also misses out on being part of the experience of sharing the event with other people – interacting with them, experiencing the suspense or drama of the event live, and being a part of the zeitgeist.

It’s important to note that perishable content can be live or pre-recorded, but in either case it is content that loses value quickly with time. It is content where there is great value to content providers and consumers in finding out about it before it becomes irrelevant or is no longer available, before it perishes.

Why Live Matrix is Needed

Live Matrix is sitting in the middle of this ecosystem, connecting the purveyors of perishable content with consumers who want it.

Perishable content has a shorter shelf-life and so providers of perishable content need to get as many eyeballs to the content as fast as they can before its value decreases. Live Matrix is an essential ally in this process, because it provides a way to inform the audience of the availability of perishable content during the time window when it is relevant and most valuable, and it actually reminds those who are interested to come while they can.

Similarly, consumers who are interested in various perishable content (such as live online sports coverage, or live online celebrity chats, or scheduled online auctions or special deals) need to find out about that content as early as they can, so they don’t miss it. They want the content before it perishes. Live Matrix helps consumers find and consume perishable content while it is available and most-valuable to them.

What’s Next for Live Matrix?

Live Matrix has been working hard on a number of new features that are going to make the site even more useful to consumers and content providers. These are launching soon. They include:

• Personalized daily reminders via email for recommended and upcoming events of interest
• A next generation widget that enables sites to use Live Matrix to provide schedules of their own events on their own sites, and to generate new ad inventory and content by including Live Matrix event schedules for topics like sports, entertainment, etc.
• A major site redesign that streamlines registration and provides a much better look and feel

As a co-founder, board member, and investor in Live Matrix – I’m optimistic about the opportunity. Live Matrix is such a unique property, and it fills such a necessary role in the ecoystem. The Clicker deal shows that the industry is starting to notice this space and as the most unique property in the space, this is good for Live Matrix.

His passing was at times difficult, but ultimately peaceful, and took place over five days, during which he was surrounded by love from close family and friends. His presence and spirit, and the intense experiences we all shared over those last days with him are unforgettable: the most incredible experience of love and spiritual connection I have ever had. He was as great in death as he was in life.

This is the story of my relationship with my father: the things I appreciated most about him, what I learned from him, and what he gave to me at the end of his life. By sharing this, I hope to amplify and share his gifts with others.

My father was a truly unique person, and a Boston legend. He was multi-talented and worked in many fields at once, mastering them all (you can read more about his actual work here). He had a vast intelligence, a palpably original approach, and an even greater heart. He was a true Renaissance Man, a great intellectual and artist, and often an unintentionally entertaining and eccentric genius. He had a profound influence on all who knew him well.

As a father, he was a large, warm, loving, fuzzy bear of a man who never really lost his childlike innocence. He was the kind of father everyone wanted to have and when they met him they instantly wanted to hug him. His greatest accomplishment was his compassionate heart: Everyone could feel it.

But despite his brilliance, or perhaps because of it, my father never really fit in. There was no box that could contain him. He was an only child, a loner, and an outsider with little interest in conformity. He had a disdain for formality and social conventions, which always manifested, much to our embarrassment, in the most formal and conventional of settings. He described himself as an iconoclast. Despite his unconventional ways, he was loved and appreciated for his humor, his quirkiness, his unselfconscious originality, and his always out-of-the-box thinking, even (and sometimes especially) by those in the mainstream.

One funny story we recently remembered illustrates his irrepressible spirit: He was invited with his wife to a major European conference of art restorers in Italy. There was a formal reception at the home an Italian Duke. My father, never comfortable with any kind of formality, playfully took one of the candles from the reception, and wore it on his head for the entire night. During the 5 course formal dinner and the reception, he was introduced to various members of the Venetian nobility and the European art world, all the time, balancing this burning little candle on his head, yet also acting completely as if it wasn’t there and not acknowledging it at all. Everyone thought that, because of his first name, “Mayer,” he was actually the eccentric “mayor” of some city in the USA and so despite their horror they were too afraid to point out that there was a candle on his head.

In another infamous incident, my father sat on the Arts Council for the city of Newton, Massachusetts. One day a photo was taken of the Council members, none of whom were actual artists, aside from my father — they were prominent upstanding Newton business leaders and socialites. In the photo they are all wearing three piece suits and looking very formal and proud. My father is also wearing a three piece suit, except that, much to the dismay of the other Council members, his suit pants are tucked into gigantic calf-height silver moon boots (to him it was winter and it was perfectly logical to wear snow boots).

In a similar vein, whenever my father was invited to a black tie event, he would reluctantly attend, dressed appropriately, except with a black dress sock tied around his neck instead of a bow tie. Of course he would never acknowledge this to anyone, and they were all too shocked to point it out to him.

One more example of my father’s individuality: when we were children in the 1970′s in Boston, my father got a great deal on a World War One field ambulance. That was our family “car.” He also had a longstanding love affair with army surplus, to which he had special access through his position on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. From some special warehouse, he acquired a full Coast Guard extreme-weather helicopter rescue snowsuit — a bright orange practically bulletproof insulated monstrosity. To him it was extremely practical – warm, waterproof, and visible even in the worst white-out snowstorm conditions.  He was entirely unselfconscious of the fact that he looked like he had just descended from a rescue helicopter when he wore it. And so this was what he wore, along with his usual silver moon boots, all winter, every winter, through my early childhood.

My poor brother and I would have to be dropped off every morning at elementary school this way: We would pull up in an an antique white ambulance — a big man in an orange emergency jumpsuit, sunglasses, and silver moon boots would get out, tromp through the snow, and open the rear doors (where the stretcher would normally be) and then my younger brother and I would pop out, much to the shock and awe of our fellow schoolmates. Thus were the origins of my own life as an alien and outsider. While these experiences were a source of horror and embarrassment for us growing up, today we laugh hysterically when we remember them — they are what we are made of and I wouldn’t trade them back for anything.

My father was a huge influence for me as an innovator. He was a prolific, constant professional inventor and my childhood was filled with his inventions, in various stages of development. He was such a good inventor that corporations like Polaroid, Otis Elevator and others, would hire him to come up with inventions. I remember him once telling me that he made 100 inventions for Polaroid in 100 days. There was another time when my father was hired to invent new uses for Silly Putty — he received a giant vat of the stuff from the Silly Putty people. With the attention of my father, two kids, and all our friends, the Silly Putty gradually dispersed throughout our house, until little blobs of Silly Putty could be found in every corner, crevice, crack, cranny and nook.

My brother and I grew up inventing things with our father. In fact, we were not allowed to have or watch a TV as children – instead we had three rooms dedicated to making things, in which we spent most of our time: one for building things with wood, one for drawing and painting, and another was my father’s studio. These rooms were stocked with all kinds of tools and art supplies.

As an inventor, my father always had tools and various devices hanging off of him, clipped onto his belt, in fanny packs, in holsters, backpacks, special cases, and in holders of his own making. Our nickname for him at times was “Inspector Gadget.”  He was always infatuated with some new tool or device.

I remember, for example, what we refer to as his “Hot Glue Phase,” when I was in junior high school. Hot glue is a plastic that you melt through a device called a hot glue gun. It creates a white plastic goo that hardens as it cools and is unfortunately able to fasten just about anything together, much to my father’s delight, and our misfortune. I remember going to junior high school with a rip in my pants repaired visibly with hot glue, my sneakers repaired with hot glue, my book bag repaired with hot glue. There was nothing that hot glue couldn’t be used on, we discovered. Clothes. Plates. Furniture. Our house was at one time filled with little spider web strands of hot glue residue, stringing together our possessions, our home, our clothes, us.

One of my father’s most memorable inventions was “The Body Sail” – a precursor to the Windsurfer, on which the sail was not attached to the board  but rather was held by hand using a special boom. He once won the Charles River Boat Festival sailing that contraption – of course, wearing a full body scuba suit. My brother and I used to use his Body Sail on ice skates in the winter, on frozen ponds. My father, of course, preferred to sail it on roller skates, in full bodysuit, helmet and gloves, right through parting waves of startled lunchtime crowds in Harvard Square.

No story about my father would be complete without mentioning his love of sailing. It encompassed not only his Body Sail invention, but a series of boats, particularly multi-hulled boats such as catamarans and eventually trimarans. In his later years he moved to Marblehead outside of Boston, a worldwide center of sailing, where he became an avid fan of high-speed sailing, eventually designing and starting to build his own trimaran out of aerospace composite materials, which, had it ever been finished, would have been among the fastest, and certainly the most computerized and advanced, trimarans on Earth.

My father was also a classically trained artist and particularly a widely shown sculptor — I grew up surrounded by his artworks — photos, drawings, and sculptures made from found objects, industrial artifacts, natural materials. I played in his studios – surrounded by tools for making things, prototyping, and inventing. As an artist, my father was also truly unique. An early pioneer of the use of “found objects,” his artworks were made from rusty pieces of industrial machinery, wooden molds for casting pieces of ships, old rusty farm tools, pieces of found wood and materials from nature. I grew up surrounded by these artworks. There were hundreds of them and he had numerous exhibitions.

One series of works he called “Foundiron” consisted of pieces taken from the intestines of large industrial boilers and furnaces. Another series used wooden molds for casting brass for ships, appeared like a set of primitive human figures – perhaps from Easter Island. Later works included a two ton angelic shape made from the massive steel blades of a snowplow for train tracks, and gossamer drawings in air made from the unwound springs of massive clocks that reminded one of Picasso’s drawings. His Shrine Series included animal bones, bird wings, industrial spindles, parts from clocks, early computers, and metronomes, and melted industrial alloys. One of his larger installations is made from three giant steel train car hitches that he cut apart and welded back together like hands grasping each other, and now stands permanently in Boston’s new South Station.

He was also a photographer and some of his images — for example macro images of honeycombs and turtles, still remain in my mind as if I saw them yesterday. At one point his entire office was rigged up with a complicated system of prisms, blackout shades, lenses, reflective materials, and rear projection screens so that he could take photos of shapes made of pure light that he called Lumia – which he then blew up to massive size and animated with a bank of slide projectors — some of these images can be seen on his weblog.

Another area of life that my father dove into deeply was music. He had a profound connection with music. His music collection included many of the greatest works of classical music, but also Jazz and folk music, and even Indian classical music. Our childhood was filled with music, and also with musical instruments of all kinds – particularly unusual instruments: aboriginal instruments, vibraphones, banjos, harpsichords, flutes, guitars, percussion instruments. My own broad taste in music came from this. My brother, Marin Spivack, took it even further, becoming a masterful Jazz saxophone player, as well as learning to compose for and play guitar, drums, piano, bass.

My father’s fascination with science and his massive appetite for knowledge translated into a home filled with books about science, scientific journals, and discussions about physics, biology, chemistry, brain science, psychology, architecture, engineering, and anthropology. We spent countless hours discussing science, the future, the brain, and technology, and coming up with new theories and inventions.

In my own life as an innovator, my father was my biggest fan and supporter. He taught me to invent – it was his passion. He wrote about it, and refined his theories and methods for innovating and enhancing creativity over the course of his life, and as children my brother and I were his very fortunate experimental guinea pigs.

I can remember being brought by him as a child to MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where my father had done his graduate studies — there my brother and I were subjects in early experiments on children and computers: we were observed as we played the early computer game, “Wumpus,” and learned how to use computers, by his colleagues. I still remember my father’s love for MIT — how he took my little brother and I on nighttime expeditions into the hidden catacombs under the campus, and the many times we met with his friends, colleagues and relatives from various MIT departments. My father wore his MIT ring proudly right until his last breath: It was the only club he ever wanted to belong to.

As I got older my father shared with me his work with architects and designers, and his “Design Log” methodology for documenting and improving any kind of design process. Later, as an adult he shared his new theories about human intelligence, learning disabilities, dyslexia, and what he called “syncretic associative thinking.” His theory of syncretic cognition proposes that there are two fundamentally different, yet complementary, forms of human intelligence — linear and syncretic. According to my father’s thinking, syncretic thought is associative and seemingly chaotic, yet out of it great creative leaps and innovations are born.

Dyslexics, of which my father was one, were examples of the extreme case of syncretic thinking: despite difficulties with linear logic, dyslexics are often brilliantly creative; in fact many great geniuses – especially artists, but also scientists — have been dyslexic. My father believed that instead of viewing dyslexics as “learning disabled” they should be viewed as “creativity enabled” and trained and taught differently, to leverage their unique cognitive abilities.

Instead of being viewed as bad at math or slow at reading, dyslexics might instead be viewed as unusually talented at associative thinking, brilliant in the arts and inventing. It was all a matter of perspective. My father advocated passionately for the often-overlooked talents hidden within dyslexia in his own writing, and also in his parallel career as a trained psychotherapist working with hundreds of people, especially learning disabled people, engineers and artists.

My father’s interest in the many flavors of intelligence extended not just to humans but also to animals: He had a long fascination with animal intelligence. His homes were always filled with animals – particularly highly intelligent parrots of various breeds, with whom he would speak, whistle, sing, and explore his theories about learning and cognition. When I was just a newborn, he had a pet crow — which he said was one of the most intelligent of birds.

My father painstakingly studied crows and eventually learned how to mimic their various kinds of calls. I can distinctly remember how, throughout our entire life together, he would suddenly start embarrassingly screeching, “Caaah  caaahhh Caaaaaaahhhh,” whenever he encountered a crow in some random tree.

In another famous story from my father’s MIT days, he became fascinated with echolocation — the form of navigation through sound used by animals bats and dolphins. Bats in particular became a bit of an obsession for my father. Bats navigate with high frequency clicks. These clicks bounce off of surfaces like walls, buildings, plants, insects, other bats and the reflections are turned into images in the bat brain.

My father decided that bat echolocation would be a great way to help the blind navigate through cities. So he invented a bat clicker device you could wear on your head. It would emit rapid loud clicks that were within the range of human hearing. He spent a week blindfolded, wearing this device, walking around the MIT and Harvard campuses, and apparently he was able to navigate successfully with it.

He recounted that after many days of using this contraption, blindfolded the whole time, his brain adapted and he was able to discern the different types of materials, objects and surfaces from the subtle differences in sound reflections. He was able to cross streets, navigate around buildings and obstacles, and could even find his way through crowds (although we all suspected the crowds were probably parting of their own volition around this strange blindfolded man with the clicking machine on his head). The astonished people of Cambridge who encountered him must have thought he was some kind of alien exploring a strange new world. And one can only wonder what the bats themselves must have thought.

At various times in my childhood my father also had pet frogs, lizards, turtles, fish, snakes, squirrels, cats, and later, his beloved pug. We grew up with enormous aquariums, terrariums, and aviaries — as kids these were wonderlands. This love of all kinds of living things would eventually guide him to his second wife: Boston artist, Louise Freedman. We knew they were made for each other when, for their first date, they chose to go to a local cemetery pond to collect pond water and frogs together.

As their lives merged, so did their always increasing menagerie of animals. And gradually there was less and less room, or time, for humans in their house. During my college years, my father and his wife had started raising African Grey parrots, and had also become close friends with Harvard/MIT animal cognition researcher, Irene Pepperberg, and her famous parrot, Alex.

When I would visit their home on school breaks, the parrots were as much a part of the family as my brother and I, and occupied a central location in the family room. A typical mealtime conversation in our family was a combination of English words, chirps, clicks and whistles, spoken by humans and parrots alike. My father and Louise eventually moved into a home that literally was like a tree — surrounded by trees on many levels, on the edge of a huge nature sanctuary on Marblehead Neck. There amongst the branches, they could almost live as birds. My brother I joked — half-seriously — that for an upcoming wedding anniversary, we would throw out their couch and instead replace it with matching human-sized perches for them.

But my father’s fascination with animals wasn’t just about intelligence, it was also about love. I remember one day as a child, while frantically evacuating from Cape Cod ahead of a fast oncoming hurricane, my father suddenly backed up miles of panicked traffic when he stopped the car in the pouring rain and lightning to scramble around on his hands and knees, risking his own life, to rescue a turtle that had strayed onto the freeway. This deep love of animals, and people, that he manifested throughout his life, was at times a source of embarrassment for me, but later became what I admired most about him. For my father, this simple love of all living things was his religion. But for most of my life, I didn’t realize what an accomplishment that was.

Although my father influenced me in so many ways, the most important facet of life that we shared — and struggled over — was spirituality.

He was a dedicated scientific materialist and rejected superstition, which to him included all institutionalized forms of religion. He even sometimes referred to himself as an atheist, although I think more accurately, he was an agnostic. I on the other hand, while also deeply interested in the sciences, had come to the conclusion that science alone could never fully explain reality or consciousness — I felt that there was a common underlying truth in all the great religions which science had so far completely missed, a truth that was essential for a complete and accurate understanding of reality. This debate between science and religion became the fulcrum on which we wrestled endlessly and in many different ways.

I had always known, even as a child, that there is something more than meets the eye about reality that is extremely subtle, yet at once vividly evident. Growing up, I had a number of spontaneous mystical experiences that I could not explain, and later I witnessed highly unusual phenomena taking place in monasteries in Nepal and India that convinced me that there must be more to the mind, and to reality, than our western scientific worldview could presently measure or explain. I was perplexed by the apparent incompatibility of these experiences, and the Western scientific framework that my father and I both lived and worked in.

In my attempts to reconcile these two worlds, I became obsessed with physics, computer science and artificial intelligence. I began searching for a grand unified theory. I sought to create software that could simulate physics, the brain, and the mind.  With some of the world’s most cutting-edge physicists and computer scientists, as well as at some of the top artificial intelligence companies, I worked on on several major initiatives in computational physics, parallel supercomputing, and artificial intelligence, as well as my own software projects and theories.

All of these attempts failed to achieve their goals so thoroughly and so repeatedly that eventually I began to question if it was even possible to do. I reached a point where I began to doubt the assumptions behind these projects — I began to question my own questions. This led me to a deeper exploration of the mind and the foundations of reality – a journey from cognitive science and physics to philosophy, and finally to spirituality. Paradoxically, I ended up back where I began, looking inwards rather than outwards, for the answers.

My quest for spiritual meaning took me through a survey of all the major Western and Eastern religions, and while traveling in Asia for a year after college, I landed in Tibetan Buddhism, with its intense focus on the nature of mind and consciousness. I was home. For me, Tibetan Buddhism had the perfect combination of rational and objective logical analysis (my father’s influence), and the mystical direct experience of the union of consciousness with divinity that I had tasted in my own experience.

In Tibetan Buddhism I finally found a rational yet holistic framework that could account for all the dimensions of observed experience: both the outer physical world and the inner dimensions of consciousness. From the Buddhist perspective, we humans are manifestations or projections of a deeper ultimate nature of reality, as are all sentient beings, and in fact all animate and inanimate things. This deeper level of reality is the origin of both the subjective and objective poles of experience, and it’s nature is transcendental, empty, yet aware.

The direct proof and experience of this can be found many ways: through logical reasoning, through prayer, through love, through nature, through art, through meditation, and perhaps most easily, by searching for the source of one’s own consciousness. Consciousness is a unique phenomena that we all have direct, equal, and immediate access to, yet which science cannot measure let alone explain. By persistently searching for the source of our own consciousness, and discovering that we can’t find it yet it is not non-existent, we are inevitably brought to a direct realization of the ultimate nature of reality.

Over decades of searching for consciousness, first through science, then through Buddhism, I had come to the conclusion that rather than consciousness emerging from the brain, it had to be the other way around: All experience, and indeed the body, brain and even the physical universe, emerge from consciousness. I had discovered that consciousness is a gateway to a sourceless, deep and endless wellspring of mysteries. And more importantly, I had found what I thought would be conclusive evidence that would finally convince my father that I was right.

But when I tried to relate these realizations to my father, he was entirely unconvinced. He argued that my experiences were not really objective, and that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain; a wonderful side-effect, a remarkable illusion that nonetheless could be reduced to neurochemistry and atoms. I countered that in the special case of consciousness, subjective observations could in fact be objective, under the right circumstances. I claimed that it was possible to scientifically and objectively observe consciousness by looking at it under the microscope of carefully trained meditation. But he cast doubts on these claims, citing numerous examples from psychology and neuroscience.

So I tried many other arguments. I cited the work of philosophers like John Searle who provided many illustrations of how conscious experiences could not be reduced to the brain or any kind of machine. I used lines of reasoning from Buddhist logic. I even cited recent findings in quantum theory that seem to imply that the act of conscious observation interacts with experimental results. But all of these arguments failed to convince my father that consciousness was fundamental or irreducible. He remained a skeptic and I felt invalidated. And so I strived even harder to find a way to map my experiences to his worldview, so I could finally prove the scientific foundations for my experience and belief in divinity to him.

This ongoing debate between my father and I — between science and religion — was not unique to us; it had been going on for millennia, and yielded many great works of both science and art. Our conversations were often frustrating and ended in exhaustion and exasperation, but we also sensed that somehow we were getting somewhere, if not mutually, then at least as individuals. We were foils to one another, worthy opponents. Like many who had come before us, the dialectical process of trying to convince one another of our conflicting views of reality, caused us to generated volumes of new writing, theories, inventions, and ideas we could not have arrived at on our own.

Nevertheless, despite my father’s strong rebukes of superstitious belief systems, and his skepticism towards my Buddhist beliefs, he was in fact a deeply spiritual man, in a very human, unembellished way. His spirituality was not tied to any system or institution — it was natural and basic: it was how he lived and the ideals he lived by: Love, Science, and Art. His spirituality was not about words, it was about actions. He expressed it in his art, his good deeds, his compassion, his joyful creativity, and his ability to love and be loved.

What I failed to see was that my father’s spirituality was immensely humble. So humble that he would not even claim to be spiritual, and certainly wouldn’t go so far as to conceptualize it. Instead, he was simply a truly good man, a mensch. While I continued to try new tactics in my campaign to convince him, and as I judged him as closed-minded and non-spiritual, he was in fact actually living my spiritual ideals better than I could understand at the time. But, not realizing this, I was certain he was missing out on something of vital importance, something that I had to convince him of before he died. And so our debate continued.

Then, in the last few months of my father’s life, we were finally able to bridge this divide. As his illness progressed, his wife called me and urged me to visit before it was too late. “He’s really getting worse, and I want you to have a chance to be together while he’s still strong enough,” she said. And so I flew to Boston and we resumed the debate.

Perhaps it was our mutual sense that time was running out, or perhaps it was that we had both exhausted all our prior arguments, but this time we reached a level of discourse that was essentially mathematical in nature; pure logic, pure set theory. Without imposing the assumptions of either science or religion, we started anew from first principles and through pure reason and observation, we derived a new common language, on neutral ground. And with this in hand, we arrived at a single nondual phenomenology — At last we had arrived at the basic nature of reality.

When we finally reached the point of agreement and mutual understanding, after decades of debate, and we both witnessed the simultaneous unification and transcendence of our prior belief systems — we saw that we had always actually agreed on a deeper level. And on that December afternoon, as we sketched out the full picture together, in a way that neither of us had done before on our own, we both breathed a sigh of relief. It was an incredibly cathartic moment for both of us.

At the conclusion of our decades long debate, we sat quietly together, just being in that understanding — a meditation on awareness and knowledge, on physics, time and space — on our mutual respect for the immensity and majesty of the universe. I will always treasure that time.

The day after that experience, before I left to return to California, I sat by my father’s bed. He was almost unable to walk at this point. As I said goodbye, thinking I might never see him again, I said, “Don’t forget what we discovered together, it is the highest realization.” He replied, “There is still one more realization that is higher.” Surprised, I asked him, “What?” He answered, “To live it!”

About a month later my wife called again. “He’s dying,” she said, “come back as soon as you can.” The cancer had advanced unexpectedly fast and so I flew back to be with him one last time.

I stayed by his side, looking into his eyes, talking to him, even though he had lost the ability to move or speak. His eyes smiled back. My brother and I kept telling him, as he labored to breathe for the final two days, “It’s ok to go now, you can let go, we love you, we’ll be ok, we’ll take care of each other.” But his drive to love and protect us all was so strong. He wasn’t ready to go. Even while in the depths of his own suffering, he was still filled with compassion, he was worried about what would happen to all of us. It was noble and beautiful to witness.

We played him the music he loved, the music he played for us as we grew up. We laughed and told him our memories and stories of him. We stroked his hair and his beard and tried to make him as comfortable as possible as he lay there, struggling, and probably frustrated that he couldn’t communicate, and at times in terrible pain. Yet through great effort he still found ways to let us know he heard us, loved us, and was still conscious.

As his breathing changed and we saw the signs of death advancing further through his body, he maintained his clarity and brilliance and even got brighter — we could feel his heart, and see his kind and intelligent spirit in his eyes. He tried to speak to us by making what little sound he could and moving his eyebrows in response to us. “Remember what we talked about, what we realized,” I said to him over and over, and I could see he was living it.

Finally, on the evening of February 12, 2011, he let go and died peacefully in his wife’s arms as she sang to him gently. All of us felt at that moment an incredible, all-embracing, boundless love and bliss, even as we grieved. It was him. My father, Mayer Spivack. Our Buddha. He went into Love.

I made the decision for many reasons. First of all my wife wanted to move back here – she lived here for 16 years (during which time she produced 11 TV movies), and she has a huge community of friends here. In addition, many of my closest friends live in LA as well. Secondly, Live Matrix, a venture I co-founded with Sanjay Reddy, is based here, and I wanted to be closer to HQ. But beyond these reasons, I think LA is on the cusp of becoming the center for Web media, and it’s a good time to move here.

After nearly 6 years in SF, it’s exciting to be in a new and larger environment. LA is a big city, like New York City, where I previously lived for 11 years. The tremendous range of businesses in LA, the cultural diversity, and the amazing talent here, are really exciting. I tend to thrive in big cities, and although San Francisco had a lot of charm, I missed the pulse of New York. LA seems to be a happy medium, with much better weather.

As an Internet entrepreneur and angel investor, moving to LA also offers a ripe new frontier. While Silicon Valley is  the center of Web technology, I believe the LA region, with Hollywood, Studio City, Santa Monica, Pasadena and Caltech within easy reach, is going to become the center for Web Media — for example online entertainment, gaming, online video, live streaming, and social media. Already there is a strong and growing community of startups in or near LA. In fact, CrunchBase lists more than 500 of them within 30 miles of LA.

There is also a growing early-stage investment community in and around LA — “the City of Angels” is becoming “The city of angel investors.” There is a long-standing culture of investing in films here, and this culture is a natural fit for investing in Web startups. In addition, there is a huge pool of talented Web savvy developers and business people here, and the costs for hiring, renting space, and building startups are significantly lower than SF or Palo Alto. In short, I think LA is prime territory for building Web ventures. And it’s close enough to get to Silicon Valley and back in a day for meetings when necessary.

As for my many friends and colleagues in San Francisco, well I’ll be back a lot, so it’s not really goodbye. I’ll probably in SF or Silicon Valley at least every month. Ironically, we’ll see each other more, now that we have to actually plan getting together.

It’s only been a few days here in LA, but I’m really looking forward to exploring my new home (there is a lot to learn) and connecting with the many interesting startups, investors and thinkers here in LA Web community.

But what’s most interesting about this event is the innovation stream within the conference. It’s called the Innotribe and is focused on exploring and innovating the future of financial services.

This year the Innotribe will have an incredible “who’s who” of speakers from the tech sector coming to speak about topics like cloud computing, the Long Now, Smart Data and the Semantic Web, digital identity, mobile transactions, social media for financial services, and other hot topics. Innovation is just one track among many topics at SIBOS, but it’s bigger than many stand-alone technology conferences.

It’s going to be a fascinating week. For more background, here’s a promo video showing some coverage of last year’s Innotribe Labs. The Labs are meant to be fun, creative, and a place to think “outside of the box.” Here’s a powerpoint with more info.

In addition to the roster of A-list speakers, the Innotribe will have several Labs taking place in which participants will work interactively over several days to innovate together, culminating in a competition for the best breakthrough proposals. I will be helping to mentor the participants in the Smart Data and the Semantic Web stream.

If you are interested in where financial services are heading, the Innotribe is going to be the place to be.

The conference runs from October 25 – 29, 2010.

I encourage to participate in the Innotribe if you can make it to Holland for the event. Hope to meet you there!

Live Matrix is the schedule of the Web — We help you to find out “What’s When on the Web” — the hottest live online events happening on the Web: concerts, interviews, live chat sessions, game tournaments, sales, popular Webshows, tech conferences, live streaming sports coverage, and much more.

It’s like TV Guide was for TV, but it’s not for TV, it’s for the Web. There are all kinds of things happening online — and while Live Matrix includes a lot of live streaming video events, there is much more than just video in our guide. Live Matrix includes any types of scheduled online events — but we don’t include offline events — to be in Live Matrix an event must enable people to participate online.

The site combines elements of a guide, a search engine, and a DVR, to help you discover events and then get reminded to attend them, or catch them later if you missed them.

The insight that led to Live Matrix was that the time-dimension of the Web is perhaps the last big greenfield opportunity on the Web. It’s an entire dimension of the Web that nobody has made a search engine for, and nobody is providing any guidance for. Nobody owns it yet — it’s a whole new frontier of the Web.

There are millions of scheduled events taking place online every day. Some of these events are very cool, some are very relevant — but there is no easy way to find out about them. To find out what’s happening when on TV for example, we have TV Guide, but there is no equivalent for finding out what’s happening when on the Web.

In my own case I kept finding out about cool online events that I would have participated in — concerts, conference streams, webinars, online debates and interviews, and sales –  if only I had known they were happening. I think many Internet users have experienced this.

Google, Yahoo and Bing all focus on what I call the “space dimension” of the Web — they help you find what’s where — where is the best page about topic x? — But they don’t help you find out what’s when — what’s happening now, what’s coming next. They only help you find out what’s already finished and done with. How do you find out what’s happening now? How do you know what’s upcoming?

It was an “aha moment” when this all became clear — there is a new opportunity to be the Google or Yahoo for the time dimension of the Web. Or at least to be the equivalent of a TV Guide for the Web.

Furthermore, All trends point to this being a big opportunity. The continued growth of the realtime Web (Twitter, etc.) and the emerging Live Web (video and audio streaming) has been discussed extensively in the media; most recently comScore reported nearly a 650% increase in time spent viewing live video online.

So with this opportunity clearly in mind I set about looking for a co-founder who would be the right person to team up with, someone who would be the CEO.

That person was Sanjay Reddy. Soon after I met Sanjay it was clear to me that he was the exact right guy to partner with: his background in media and technology were what impressed me (for example, he was head of corp dev, strategy and M&A at Gemstar-TV Guide, where he led the $2.3 billion dollar sale of the company to Macrovision, and he had also worked at other Silicon Valley startups and investment banks as well).

Sanjay and I spent quite a bit of time just talking about ideas and eventually decided to join forces. My Lucid Ventures incubator, along with Sanjay, seed-funded the new venture and named it Live Matrix, to go after our mutual vision.

Soon after Sanjay joined we were fortunate to be joined by our two highly experienced colleagues, Edgar Fereira (formerly VP of data for TV Guide Data and TV Guide Online) and Tobias Batton (serial entrepreneur, product manager, game designer). Then others joined around us.

Eventually we formed a small (but awesome) startup team and began working on a prototype and eventually an alpha. We debuted a closed beta preview at TechCrunch Disrupt last spring and received enthusiastic reviews. Now, today, we are releasing our public beta.

Read the full press release here.

I hope you like what we’ve created so far. But please note it is still a BETA. We are interested in your feedback and we already have a lot of feedback from our private beta. Here are some of the ideas we are working on for our next few releases:

• The Number One request we have received so far is to make it easier and faster for people to find events that would interest them. So for the remainder of the year one of our big priorities will be to add in more personalization and recommendations.
• We’re also working on new UI concepts, including some more ways to view the schedule of the Web.
• And we’re going to make it easier and faster for you to add events to Live Matrix — we’ll be launching improvements to our publisher tools section, as well more ways for people to suggest events for us to list.
• And we also plan to add new categories of events — for examples, Business, Technology, Games, and more.

So stay tuned! Live Matrix is just getting started. But this could be the start of something big.

ps. Here’s a screencast with a quick tour of Live Matrix

Live Matrix Demo from Doug Freeman on Vimeo.