Thursday night Garage Geeks hosted Sergey Brin, founder of Google, who was nice enough to answer many of our questions about Google’s past, future, and his view of the Israeli startup scene . So many questions were answered actually that my camera’s battery died at a certain point so I apologize for this video not showing the full Q & A session (though it shows most of it). Thank you to Yossi Vardi and Garage Geeks for making this event happen. Here is the video from the event:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The last set of tickets for MashBash Tel Aviv was just released so anyone who still doesn’t have a ticket and wants to go, should RSVP immediately. No more tickets will be released and there will not be any available at the event itself.

In addition to MashBash, Mashable will also be covering at least 10 Israeli startups throughout their Israel Media Tour Series. I will proudly be covering the Israel Media Tour Series as the exclusive guest writer for Mashable.

One week ago Nine Inch Nails surprised their fans with a special treat giving away their new album Slip absolutely free on their website. The album is available for download in a variety of formats: MP3, lossless at CD quality and 24/96 WAVE format, which means even higher-than-CD quality. Downloaders also receive a PDF with artwork and credits. This is not the first time that Trent Reznor is sharing his music for free. Here’s a little history for you.

In 2007 NIN produced an album called The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust and made it available to fans as a free download. Many thought that Trent was only mimicking Radiohead who asked fans to put their own price on the group’s release in the same year. Though I believe that by the time you’re finished reading this post, you will see that NIN are true innovators that have achieved quite a lot since being released from their major-label recording contract last year. The fact that NIN has given away music various times in extremely high quality formats and released it online using a variety of tools shows that it is serious about this model. This is not just an “experiment” for them like it was for Radiohead who have since said that they will not be releasing online again.

According to Mashable:

Reznor called Radiohead’s effort a “marketing gimmick,” and Yorke’s latest statement does nothing to disprove it. Reznor did it right. He set out his plan very clearly, and he’s doing well, earning 1.6 million dollars from album sales in the first couple of weeks, according to him.

In March 2008 NIN released a portion of their album Ghosts for free via BitTorrent. According to TorrentFreak, the band confirmed that they had uploaded the album themselves to sites like The Pirate Bay, Waffles.fm and What.cd. The NY Times quotes Trent describing file sharing as “a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.” Trent Reznor himself admitted to downloading music using BitTorrent and being a former user of OiNK. The band also offered a digital download of the entire 36-track collection for a flat $5 from its site and Amazon.

On May 4th of this year, NIN released their single ‘Echoplex’ for free via their iLike page and told fans to check the NIN website the next day for a surprise. The surprise came the next day when fans found out they were receiving a full-length NIN album as a gift from Trent for their continued love and support. What an amazing way to cause a buzz and increase the love of fans! Everybody was twitting and digging about the free album.

NIN is truly paving the way for future artists to find new means of distributing (and profiting from) their music. As fadingsignal comments on Digg:

I just wanted to say to those under the impression that more frequent releases could mean less quality, that an artist is typically limited to releasing one album every couple of years mostly due to the surrounding circumstances with a record label. The actual recording process may only take a matter of weeks or months, but everything that happens afterward - the mastering, the artwork, the PR and marketing bullshit, the tour plans, the single/radio release schedule, music video shoots/scheduling - those eat up a lot of time. Trent has really tightened up his audio engineering crew, and with Rob Sheridan now serving as his art director (who I can’t help but also feel is a big influence on Trent where all things Internet are concerned), NIN has become essentially autonomous - they can create and release on their own timeline - the recording industry marketing schedules don’t matter anymore.
Everything surrounding music is changing, and Trent and his crew are definitely at the forefront showing the mainstream how it should be done.

Yet other than revolutionizing the way that artists distribute music, I think it is also important to note that NIN is a truly Web 2.0 band that is communicating with its fans using social platforms and proving to everyone that you don’t need a major-label recording company to promote you.

NIN are on Facebook, MySpace, upload their videos to YouTube, upload their images to Flickr, Trent writes posts on the NIN site for his fans and even has a digg this! button on posts. NIN also allows fans to collaborate with them. Take for example the Nine Inch Nails Ghosts Film Festival where they invited anyone and everyone to create visuals to accompany the album’s music. NIN even created Remix.NIN.com, an interactive community for creating, sharing, and listening to NIN remixes.

I believe that NIN has a great advantage over other bands, promoting themselves using Web 2.0 tools and not fighting them. Utilizing them to communicate with their fans, increase their support and create brand awareness while at the same time building their fan base. I think that many artists, as well as brands, can learn a great deal from NIN on how to socially market right and become not only self sustainable, but prosperous.

Photo taken by Rob Sheridan.

After the first 500 tickets to the Mashbash event were sold out within only a few hours, Mashable has decided to offer a few more tickets. You can now buy a ticket here at $10 a piece. There are currently about 40 tickets left so if you want to attend, you should hurry up and register. In case you do miss this opportunity though, Mashable will be releasing a few more tickets in the upcoming weeks.

As I mentioned in my earlier post regarding the event, Mashable will also be covering at least 10 Israeli startups through its Israel Media Tour Series. I will be covering the Israel Media Tour Series as a guest writer for Mashable. For startups interested in getting involved:

*To apply to be considered for inclusion in the Israel Media Tour, please send an e-mail to events [at] mashable [dot] come with the following information: Company Name, 20 word description, Web site, 50 word description on why you should be covered in the Israel Media Tour.

My friend JD who was here a few weeks ago on the blogger posse road trip interviewed me regarding Israel’s Web 2.0 scene, my background, and services I offer to startups. You can check out my interview here.

JD is a brilliant social media strategist, blogger, podcaster, co-founder of Ourmedia, president of the Social Media Group, and author of Darknet, a book about the personal media revolution.

Mashable is holding its first International MashMeet and it’s in Tel Aviv! Attending MashBash Tel Aviv will be startups, VC’s, Entrepreneurs, high profile CEO’s and Mashable’s Adam Hirsch.

The event will take place on Wednesday June 11th, 7-10pm, at the Galina Beach Club, Hangar 19, Tel Aviv Port, Israel.

In addition to Mashbash, Mashable will also be covering at least 10 Israeli startups (and perhaps a few other surprises) through its Israel Media Tour Series. For startups interested in getting involved:

*To apply to be considered for inclusion in the Israel Media Tour, please send an e-mail to events [at] mashable [dot] come with the following information: Company Name, 20 word description, Web site, 50 word description on why you should be covered in the Israel Media Tour.

As a media partner of MashBash and the Israel Media Tour, I would like to invite you all to register at the following link asap. There’s a 500 person limit so if you’d like to attend, I suggest you register quickly.

The MashBash Tel Aviv and the Israel Media Tour is sponsored by Yedda. Apart from Yedda, other Mashbash exhibitors are: Copenda, HooQs, and outbrain.

Hope to see you there. This will be a tech gathering to be remembered!

Technorati tags: mashbash tel aviv, israel media tour, mashable, tel aviv, event, social networking, adam hirsch, israel, startups, yedda, copenda, hooqs, outbrain, tech

Last week I had a chance to meet one of the most accomplished women in the tech industry, Susan Mernit. In her past, Susan had been a VP at Netscape & AOL and a Senior Director of Product Development at Yahoo!. Currently she works as a social media and web strategy consultant. Susan is amazingly knowledgeable about social media and Web 2.0 products and it was a real pleasure talking to her about these topics.

During The Marker’s COM. Vention, Susan interviewed me for her blog. We spoke about women in the Web 2.0 space, how I started my blog, rules that I abide by, and much more. You can check out the interview here.  

Thanks Susan, for your very positive post. Coming from you, it’s a real honor!

So this morning I get on Facebook and guess what I find? Facebook Chat. Yes it was expected, but it was also a nice suprise.

Since I have I almost 900 friends on Facebook, you can imagine the number of IM’s I’ve been receiving. I find myself spending even MORE hours on Facebook today (if that’s even possible).

This feature will definitely add to the stickiness of the site and also make Facebook a more cohesive community I believe. With chat, its much easier to keep in touch with a larger number of contacts than through private messaging.

The feature is also advantageous for marketers who are looking for constant interaction with individuals in their communities. However marketers should be cautious not to turn chat into yet another spamming tool (like what happened with Super Wall) because this will definitely cause everyone to list themselves as “unavailable”.

I would also advise you to be careful of approaching bloggers in this manner. IM can be quite intrusive to one’s privacy and approaching bloggers through chat, is not a good idea. These approaches should be made by private messaging.

It’s a known fact that many of us already use FaceBook as our main email platform (even though there are many improvements to be made here as well). Now that we have Facebook Chat, seems like Gmail with its chat is becoming even more dispensible.

Anyways, I’d be happy to hear what you guys think about Facebook chat. Love it? Hate it?

In celebration of Earth Day, Zlango has created some fun cards that you can send to your friends. So go ahead, spread some Earth love.

Zlango is a universal icon language for the web and mobile. Zlango connects people from around the world, transcending borders and building bridges between cultures. At the core of Zlango lies a comprehensive, universal iconic language, designed for mobile messaging, web-based exchanges, greeting cards, children’s books, videos, and lots more. You can even read Genesis in Zlango, send a Passover e-card to a friend, or watch a Zlango music video. In addition to fun stuff, Zlango has a variety of products for web and mobile usage such as a mobile application that allows you to send Zlango messages via SMS, IM and email plugins, and the ability to post your own creative messages on the Zlango site and embed them on your social networking profiles or blog. See my message below. Zlango lets you communicate with people from around the world without having to worry about a language barrier. The site has over 1 million users each month from 12 different countries.

Last week I met the lovely Cathy Brooks, Executive Producer of Seesmic. Cathy has generously given me a limited number of invites for Seesmic and I am giving them out to you guys. The first few people who comment “seesmic me” will receive them.

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of Seesmic, the service can best be described as the Twitter of video, however, Seesmic hopes to become much more than that in the future. The service aims to allow for constant user interaction around video content in an open environment. 

Users can record videos directly from a webcam and publish them to their profile page. Alternatively users can also add a URL from YouTube, and post it to their stream. Each user “follows” and has “followers”, much the same as relationships on Twitter. By the way, Seesmic can already be found on friendfeed. In the future Seesmic is said to integrate with sites such as Skype, Facebook, and delicious.

Recently the Company had acquired Twhirl. According to TechCrunch:

“Seesmic says they will continue development of the application and eventually integrate their own service into Twhirl, making it the official Seemsic desktop client.”

Seesmic is currently in alpha stage. The Company was founded in 2007 by the well known European entrepreneur and LeWeb conference organizer, Loic Le Meur.